And I bet you all of those corrections are not in text books currently being used with the exception of there now only being 8 planets. While I am impressed you had to memorize all the names and capitals of countries in 7th grade that seems to be beyond most schools, the most I had to do was all the states and capitals and that was in the 7th grade. The biggest problem with text books isn't that they are out of date but that they seem to be dumbed down to the point where it doesn't matter. I doubt any high school text on microeconomics will cover cases were actors aren't behaving rationally or the issues with supply and demand curves as these are probably college level issues. That is like expecting a high school student to be aware of new developments in computational theory or how to properly apply the pumping lemma. A grade school education is very rudimentary. As for literature there is a fair amount that is considered to be the classics (most from an English language perspective) that will probably never change:
Canterbury Tales, Beowulf
Shakespeare (sonnets and plays)
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Aeneid
Gilgamesh
Le Morte d'Arthur
The Divine Comedy
The Three Musketeers
The Count of Monte Cristo
War and Peace
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
One Thousand and One Nights
The Prince
The Art of War
Middlemarch
Pride and Prejudice
The grapes of wrath
Death of a Salesman
Catcher in the Rye
The Song of Roland
I can keep going if you would like but those stories alone would probably more than fulfill any literature requirement for any high school student.
How much of this is incompetence and how much is really malice? As much as everyone seems to like a good conspiracy I have a feeling that this is probably going to be more like the Sony PSN security breach and less like the Sony rootkit DRM fiasco
I wonder what it means if this suit succeeds? Does it mean that mean that all laws Bush signed after the 2004 election are illegal along with all executive orders from the same time period? Personally I doubt that will be the case but I do wonder especially since the article didn't go into what the suit was about. For those who would like to complain about the 2000 election that one already went all the way to the supreme court so we are kind of stuck with that decision.
Probably not in the mind of those who are really pushing bit coin. If you want a leading indicator on possible bad times I would see if stores that sell canning supplies start running out, also if people who normally don't can things start taking an interest. I can food, but then I learned from my grandmother and it really saves on freezer space so I can store that eighth of a cow and eighth buffalo I get each. It saves so much time just to open a jar of stew, sauce, chili and just heat up what I want to eat since for most of those things it takes the same amount of time to make one batch (about half a gallon) or 10 gallons. Then again I am probably one of the cheapest people alive.
So you mean having your leaders killed but then fighting an insurgent war for almost 10 years wasting 100s of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. If Iran were serious about wanting to destroy the Great Satan TM this sounds like one of the better approaches.
You grow your own food, I just go wandering through the forest buck naked and eat the random berries, nuts, and leaves I find. I also just use rocks and sticks to kill my own food and then chow down no need for fire here, since you know progress is overrated.
In reality just because something is new or shiny doesn't necessarily make it better.
our Director of sales would take clients down to the production offices to show them THAT server room full of apple servers instead of the real one. Simply because that room looked professional and random Sun+Dell+HP servers look like a hodge podge mess even though it was very clean.
This co worker probably could have. We worked out a lot together (it was an out of town job) and aside from drinking there wasn't much to do other than go to the gym in the apartment everyone was put up in.
Finally, expenses need to be realistic, teachers and kids using computers from more than 4 years ago is a waste of resources. IT budgets need to be changed.
So do you mean like my college where the general student lab that was mostly used for e-mail, internet browsing and typing up papers had computers that were replaced every 2 years with the highest end desktops they could get from Dell or Apple while the CS department computer lab was awash in truly ancient crap that was 15 years old (best machines in there were some 486dx4 120s with 64mb ram).
Except for the apathy of the parents. I think booting problem children, you know the ones who are disruptive, violent, criminals, those who just don't want to be there, would do more for the education system than privatizing it. Make the problem children the parents issue, not the schools issue, we might actually see less parental apathy if parents were inconvenienced with their problem children instead of the rest of society.
I think you need to look at how your state's charter laws are written then. Here in Minnesota we do have some issues with charter schools but generally they have done well given what they have to work with. The biggest is that they are used as dumping grounds by the other public schools for low achieving, or misbehaving students and pushed on parents as a place where they can get more personal attention. Typically charter schools have a higher percentage of special ed and special needs students. We do have some mismanagementissues and some fraud but it is getting better. The biggest issues that has raised concerns is that they can't own their buildings so they have to rent them. This is where the money laundering issues come up is that a non-profit group called "friends of " is formed and they go and get a mortgage for a building and then use the rent aid to pay the mortgage. Problems arise when this money ends up being funneled to an individual who owns an existing building like in the TiZA academy case or someone is skimming off the top at the "friends of " non profit.
Now before everyone starts to blame Bush for every child left behind he proposed it but the actual bill was written by John Boehner (R), George Miller (D), and Senator Judd Gregg (R) so there is plenty of blame to go around. Also keep in mind that in 2014 every school will be classed as failing since that is when it requires that every student be grade level proficient (actually 95% or so).
Part of the demand for special ed teachers is there are more students classed as special ed. Lots of districts do this as it entitles them to additional funding from both the state and feds. Also the school system is very top heavy, people piss and moan about teachers and their pay but one should look at the real cost. In Minnesota the total per student funding is around $10,000 per student (I may be low by a couple thousand as this is a number I remember from several years ago). With an average class size of 20 students (lower than the real average) that puts the total cost per class at $200,000, you should be asking where all that money is going since teacher pay and benefits comes to what $70,000 or something like that (this includes insurance, base pay, and pension) so where is the other $130,000 per class going? There are lots of classroom aids (probably another $40k-50k a year each) various administrators, bureaucrats in the district offices, and the superintendents who get pay packages with golden parachutes similar to those of CEOs.
I wouldn't hold outdated text books up as an example. I doubt there have been many changes in basic mathematics up to calculus in the last 300 or so years, same with thing with: classic literature, basic science, history, microeconomics, geography (I know there have been a few map changes but excluding former soviet states and the split of Sudan in Africa nothing that I studied in grades k-12 has changed). I will give you text books having incorrect info and teachers telling kids wrong things.
I would add getting the problem children out of the classes. There has been this push to mainstream students who shouldn't be, and no I am not talking about those who are a bit slow. In my high school we had a group that was called Conboy's convicts, basically they were the students who should have been in jail but weren't. They tended to deal drugs, start 90%+ of the fights, steal vandalize things.
My senior year one of them decided to start a fight with me (I was 17 he was 18) at lunch to show how tough he was since I looked like easy picking since I was at a lunch table alone (my friends hadn't made it through the lunch line yet). Problem was it was picture day and I was wearing a nice long sleeve shirt so he could tell I was short but had no idea what he was getting into. He ended up punching me and broke my glasses across the bridge of while I was seated. I stood up and he friends were egging him on to hit me again and when he wound up to try again I threw an uppercut like I was doing shot put (this was my sport in high school) and ended up breaking his jaw and knocking him out cold. The school then tried to press charges against me (5th degree assault) for fighting but they couldn't get them to stick since I maintained that it was self defense since he was going to hit me, I was a minor while my attacker was 18, my attacker started it verbally, my attacker also had already hit me already once.
Or my favorite: "My children are your responsibility while they're at school" shortly thereafter followed by "You can't discipline my children, you're not their parent."
Which is why we need to bring back the "board of education". All kidding aside my wife deals with this all the time since she is a teacher. One thing I like is that her coworkers always mention how well behaved my oldest is (almost 3). There is a clear understanding that poor behavior is not tolerated even when mom or dad aren't around.
This may be on the way to the real problem: American culture
We tend to glorify stupidity, ignorance, and idleness. At my previous job I was out with some of the other people on the team one was a black guy. When we were walking back from the bar some other black guys shouted out the window of a crappy car that he was a traitor to his race. The black guy on the team just shrugged it off and I asked if he gets that a lot. He said he did but it doesn't bother him as he is making $200 an hour as a contractor and won't die in a gutter.
I think it is because there is a lot of libertarian anrcho-capitalism where those pushing Bitcoin have wet dreams of the dollar failing and being relegated to the status of the old German Notgeld
You can have the sum total of my Bitcoins but I will trade them at a total of $0.50 a coin which is well below the market price. So if you would please deposit $0.00 into my account you can have them.
The biggest problem is that in general people don't value Bitcoins, the only people who do are those who are Bitcoin fanatics. It is somewhat similar to the people who preach buy gold now. At least gold has some use in a high tech society, and in general people place some intrinsic value on that soft yellow metal beyond its industrial uses, the same is true for silver. For those of you who are really worried about the collapse of the dollar I suggest theseasalternatecurrencies. These will be by far more useful for trade and general day to day life than some imaginary digital currency that requires an internet connection and power to be traded. Add to it that you now have a tangible object and you should even be able to placate the goldbugs who don't like fiat money since it isn't backed by something physical.
I don't think the problem is the cheapness of petrol as diesel isn't that much more. At the station nearest my house gasoline is $3.77 and diesel is $3.92. The real problem is that previous time there was a push for diesel vehicles in the US they were mostly junk. The engines were an Oldsmobile 5.7l or an Oldsmobile 4.3l and both were junk. They lacked power, had all sorts of mechanical issues, really smelt bad, and spewed black soot that would put a long haul trucker to shame. This is what people associate with diesels, unless they owned a MB, VW, or Volvo diesel which were actually good vehicles ran for damn near forever and were on part with power, and smell with american gasoline engines of the day, they still put out more soot, but nothing like those Oldsmobile diesels. Unfortunately there were tons more vehicles with crappy Oldsmobile diesels than VWs, MBs, and Volvos so when people hear diesel car they picture junk instead of quality.
A manual transmission (excluding the clutch which will wear out prematurely if you suck at driving stick) can take a lot more abuse and in general are a more robust and reliable system. Now for the average person this doesn't matter, but if you really like to abuse your vehicle or want a long lived one a manual is a better option.
You really believe you need 4wd? Unless you are a forester you are kidding your self. I have a BMW 540i and when driving on regular paved roads have never had a problem. If you get lots of snow they make these tire amendments that do wonders for traction, I have pushed a pile of snow that was coming over my hood with these on. Also I have taken that 540i into places where I probably shouldn't have, specifically down some of the logging roads and unimproved roads in norther Minnesota. Basically a nice one of these roads compacted dirt with not too many ruts and free of trees with a trunk larger than 1 inch in diameter. Bad ones have lots ruts, are washed out, have lots of trees in them and here it would have been nice to have a high clearance vehicle. I do own a vehicle with 4wd and I have only needed 4wd about 3 times, once when hunting and the low area was completely a swamp with tons of deep loose mud that was torn up by the logging truck, and twice last winter when I needed to get out of my drive way and there was a pile of hard packed snow at the end of the drive way from the plow.
Slashdot Mirror
So just like MLB records during the steroids era then.
And I bet you all of those corrections are not in text books currently being used with the exception of there now only being 8 planets. While I am impressed you had to memorize all the names and capitals of countries in 7th grade that seems to be beyond most schools, the most I had to do was all the states and capitals and that was in the 7th grade. The biggest problem with text books isn't that they are out of date but that they seem to be dumbed down to the point where it doesn't matter. I doubt any high school text on microeconomics will cover cases were actors aren't behaving rationally or the issues with supply and demand curves as these are probably college level issues. That is like expecting a high school student to be aware of new developments in computational theory or how to properly apply the pumping lemma. A grade school education is very rudimentary. As for literature there is a fair amount that is considered to be the classics (most from an English language perspective) that will probably never change:
Canterbury Tales, Beowulf
Shakespeare (sonnets and plays)
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Aeneid
Gilgamesh
Le Morte d'Arthur
The Divine Comedy
The Three Musketeers
The Count of Monte Cristo
War and Peace
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
One Thousand and One Nights
The Prince
The Art of War
Middlemarch
Pride and Prejudice
The grapes of wrath
Death of a Salesman
Catcher in the Rye
The Song of Roland
I can keep going if you would like but those stories alone would probably more than fulfill any literature requirement for any high school student.
How much of this is incompetence and how much is really malice? As much as everyone seems to like a good conspiracy I have a feeling that this is probably going to be more like the Sony PSN security breach and less like the Sony rootkit DRM fiasco
I wonder what it means if this suit succeeds? Does it mean that mean that all laws Bush signed after the 2004 election are illegal along with all executive orders from the same time period? Personally I doubt that will be the case but I do wonder especially since the article didn't go into what the suit was about. For those who would like to complain about the 2000 election that one already went all the way to the supreme court so we are kind of stuck with that decision.
Probably not in the mind of those who are really pushing bit coin. If you want a leading indicator on possible bad times I would see if stores that sell canning supplies start running out, also if people who normally don't can things start taking an interest. I can food, but then I learned from my grandmother and it really saves on freezer space so I can store that eighth of a cow and eighth buffalo I get each. It saves so much time just to open a jar of stew, sauce, chili and just heat up what I want to eat since for most of those things it takes the same amount of time to make one batch (about half a gallon) or 10 gallons. Then again I am probably one of the cheapest people alive.
Only the editorial board.
I wouldn't be too worried about a hurricane in the middle of a desert.
So you mean having your leaders killed but then fighting an insurgent war for almost 10 years wasting 100s of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. If Iran were serious about wanting to destroy the Great Satan TM this sounds like one of the better approaches.
You grow your own food, I just go wandering through the forest buck naked and eat the random berries, nuts, and leaves I find. I also just use rocks and sticks to kill my own food and then chow down no need for fire here, since you know progress is overrated.
In reality just because something is new or shiny doesn't necessarily make it better.
our Director of sales would take clients down to the production offices to show them THAT server room full of apple servers instead of the real one. Simply because that room looked professional and random Sun+Dell+HP servers look like a hodge podge mess even though it was very clean.
So just marketing as usual.
This co worker probably could have. We worked out a lot together (it was an out of town job) and aside from drinking there wasn't much to do other than go to the gym in the apartment everyone was put up in.
Finally, expenses need to be realistic, teachers and kids using computers from more than 4 years ago is a waste of resources. IT budgets need to be changed.
So do you mean like my college where the general student lab that was mostly used for e-mail, internet browsing and typing up papers had computers that were replaced every 2 years with the highest end desktops they could get from Dell or Apple while the CS department computer lab was awash in truly ancient crap that was 15 years old (best machines in there were some 486dx4 120s with 64mb ram).
Except for the apathy of the parents. I think booting problem children, you know the ones who are disruptive, violent, criminals, those who just don't want to be there, would do more for the education system than privatizing it. Make the problem children the parents issue, not the schools issue, we might actually see less parental apathy if parents were inconvenienced with their problem children instead of the rest of society.
I think you need to look at how your state's charter laws are written then. Here in Minnesota we do have some issues with charter schools but generally they have done well given what they have to work with. The biggest is that they are used as dumping grounds by the other public schools for low achieving, or misbehaving students and pushed on parents as a place where they can get more personal attention. Typically charter schools have a higher percentage of special ed and special needs students. We do have some mismanagement issues and some fraud but it is getting better. The biggest issues that has raised concerns is that they can't own their buildings so they have to rent them. This is where the money laundering issues come up is that a non-profit group called "friends of " is formed and they go and get a mortgage for a building and then use the rent aid to pay the mortgage. Problems arise when this money ends up being funneled to an individual who owns an existing building like in the TiZA academy case or someone is skimming off the top at the "friends of " non profit.
Now before everyone starts to blame Bush for every child left behind he proposed it but the actual bill was written by John Boehner (R), George Miller (D), and Senator Judd Gregg (R) so there is plenty of blame to go around. Also keep in mind that in 2014 every school will be classed as failing since that is when it requires that every student be grade level proficient (actually 95% or so).
Part of the demand for special ed teachers is there are more students classed as special ed. Lots of districts do this as it entitles them to additional funding from both the state and feds. Also the school system is very top heavy, people piss and moan about teachers and their pay but one should look at the real cost. In Minnesota the total per student funding is around $10,000 per student (I may be low by a couple thousand as this is a number I remember from several years ago). With an average class size of 20 students (lower than the real average) that puts the total cost per class at $200,000, you should be asking where all that money is going since teacher pay and benefits comes to what $70,000 or something like that (this includes insurance, base pay, and pension) so where is the other $130,000 per class going? There are lots of classroom aids (probably another $40k-50k a year each) various administrators, bureaucrats in the district offices, and the superintendents who get pay packages with golden parachutes similar to those of CEOs.
I wouldn't hold outdated text books up as an example. I doubt there have been many changes in basic mathematics up to calculus in the last 300 or so years, same with thing with: classic literature, basic science, history, microeconomics, geography (I know there have been a few map changes but excluding former soviet states and the split of Sudan in Africa nothing that I studied in grades k-12 has changed). I will give you text books having incorrect info and teachers telling kids wrong things.
I would add getting the problem children out of the classes. There has been this push to mainstream students who shouldn't be, and no I am not talking about those who are a bit slow. In my high school we had a group that was called Conboy's convicts, basically they were the students who should have been in jail but weren't. They tended to deal drugs, start 90%+ of the fights, steal vandalize things.
My senior year one of them decided to start a fight with me (I was 17 he was 18) at lunch to show how tough he was since I looked like easy picking since I was at a lunch table alone (my friends hadn't made it through the lunch line yet). Problem was it was picture day and I was wearing a nice long sleeve shirt so he could tell I was short but had no idea what he was getting into. He ended up punching me and broke my glasses across the bridge of while I was seated. I stood up and he friends were egging him on to hit me again and when he wound up to try again I threw an uppercut like I was doing shot put (this was my sport in high school) and ended up breaking his jaw and knocking him out cold. The school then tried to press charges against me (5th degree assault) for fighting but they couldn't get them to stick since I maintained that it was self defense since he was going to hit me, I was a minor while my attacker was 18, my attacker started it verbally, my attacker also had already hit me already once.
Or my favorite: "My children are your responsibility while they're at school" shortly thereafter followed by "You can't discipline my children, you're not their parent."
Which is why we need to bring back the "board of education". All kidding aside my wife deals with this all the time since she is a teacher. One thing I like is that her coworkers always mention how well behaved my oldest is (almost 3). There is a clear understanding that poor behavior is not tolerated even when mom or dad aren't around.
This may be on the way to the real problem: American culture
We tend to glorify stupidity, ignorance, and idleness. At my previous job I was out with some of the other people on the team one was a black guy. When we were walking back from the bar some other black guys shouted out the window of a crappy car that he was a traitor to his race. The black guy on the team just shrugged it off and I asked if he gets that a lot. He said he did but it doesn't bother him as he is making $200 an hour as a contractor and won't die in a gutter.
I think it is because there is a lot of libertarian anrcho-capitalism where those pushing Bitcoin have wet dreams of the dollar failing and being relegated to the status of the old German Notgeld
You can have the sum total of my Bitcoins but I will trade them at a total of $0.50 a coin which is well below the market price. So if you would please deposit $0.00 into my account you can have them.
The biggest problem is that in general people don't value Bitcoins, the only people who do are those who are Bitcoin fanatics. It is somewhat similar to the people who preach buy gold now. At least gold has some use in a high tech society, and in general people place some intrinsic value on that soft yellow metal beyond its industrial uses, the same is true for silver. For those of you who are really worried about the collapse of the dollar I suggest these as alternate currencies. These will be by far more useful for trade and general day to day life than some imaginary digital currency that requires an internet connection and power to be traded. Add to it that you now have a tangible object and you should even be able to placate the goldbugs who don't like fiat money since it isn't backed by something physical.
I don't think the problem is the cheapness of petrol as diesel isn't that much more. At the station nearest my house gasoline is $3.77 and diesel is $3.92. The real problem is that previous time there was a push for diesel vehicles in the US they were mostly junk. The engines were an Oldsmobile 5.7l or an Oldsmobile 4.3l and both were junk. They lacked power, had all sorts of mechanical issues, really smelt bad, and spewed black soot that would put a long haul trucker to shame. This is what people associate with diesels, unless they owned a MB, VW, or Volvo diesel which were actually good vehicles ran for damn near forever and were on part with power, and smell with american gasoline engines of the day, they still put out more soot, but nothing like those Oldsmobile diesels. Unfortunately there were tons more vehicles with crappy Oldsmobile diesels than VWs, MBs, and Volvos so when people hear diesel car they picture junk instead of quality.
A manual transmission (excluding the clutch which will wear out prematurely if you suck at driving stick) can take a lot more abuse and in general are a more robust and reliable system. Now for the average person this doesn't matter, but if you really like to abuse your vehicle or want a long lived one a manual is a better option.
You really believe you need 4wd? Unless you are a forester you are kidding your self. I have a BMW 540i and when driving on regular paved roads have never had a problem. If you get lots of snow they make these tire amendments that do wonders for traction, I have pushed a pile of snow that was coming over my hood with these on. Also I have taken that 540i into places where I probably shouldn't have, specifically down some of the logging roads and unimproved roads in norther Minnesota. Basically a nice one of these roads compacted dirt with not too many ruts and free of trees with a trunk larger than 1 inch in diameter. Bad ones have lots ruts, are washed out, have lots of trees in them and here it would have been nice to have a high clearance vehicle. I do own a vehicle with 4wd and I have only needed 4wd about 3 times, once when hunting and the low area was completely a swamp with tons of deep loose mud that was torn up by the logging truck, and twice last winter when I needed to get out of my drive way and there was a pile of hard packed snow at the end of the drive way from the plow.