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User: Catbeller

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Comments · 3,326

  1. Re:my two cents on LAUSD OKs Girls-Only STEM School, Plans Boys-Only English Language Arts School · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To your point (sorry!) There is no "fault". Girls tend not to care about STEM subjects. It's that simple. STEM requires endless hours studying alone, about subjects that would bore an anvil to tears. We literally drug our children to hold still and have the stuff poured into them. It isn't for everyone; that's why so many antisocial types gravitate towards it. You either like it, or you don't.

    Teachers don't "fail" - students fail. And "failure" is not the right word. You can't force interest into a human child like some personality-altering enema. A teacher can instill the basics of how to be a human being, like history, and arithmetic, and reading. The rest comes from the child and the matrix the child lives in. You can't manufacture Alan Turings, and God help us if you could - the world does NOT need to be composed of semi-autistic math prodigies. We need the other types as well.

    Let the DAMNED children become what they want to become. Here's a poser: has any one of these STEM-pushers asked the kids what they think about their "failure" to become good corporate tech fodder?

  2. Re:my two cents on LAUSD OKs Girls-Only STEM School, Plans Boys-Only English Language Arts School · · Score: 1

    The whole "privatize schools into moneymaking ventures to raise test scores and thus provide cheaper, better labor for corporations" IS the experiment. But finding failure in the experimental results will not be tolerated. The schools will be turned into corporate labor factories, and we've no mechanism to stop them.

    What are we losing? Imagination. The overworked, no-time-for-play lab mice have no damned imaginations. They will not be able to grow their minds that way. That requires free time, and freedom to wander around and do nothing but dream. That is no longer tolerated. Damaged mice. And eventually, a damaged culture, a passive, corporatized citizenry that can't even perceive what it has lost.

  3. Re:Occam's razor? on LAUSD OKs Girls-Only STEM School, Plans Boys-Only English Language Arts School · · Score: 1

    And oh yeah: this is being done because employers want more job applicants and thus will be able, over time. to turn STEM jobs into a paper hat minimum wage paradise - for them. They are sick at the idea of all that money flowing out of their platinum parachute accounts and into the pockets of mere laborers. It has to stop!

  4. Occam's razor? on LAUSD OKs Girls-Only STEM School, Plans Boys-Only English Language Arts School · · Score: 1

    Perhaps girls aren't as interested in STEM subjects as boys, because their intrinsic culture, the floating "girlness" passed on from mother to daughter and from playmate to playmate, veers towards social interaction and the softer subjects. STEM is inherently a loner's paradise.

    Reengineering people is not a good idea. Girls will find their own way into whatever they wish to do. You can't force them to like what you like, no matter how many Starfleet academies you lock them into.

  5. Re:Shows just how far the U.S. will go to get him on Bolivia Demands Assange Apologize For Deliberately False Leaks To the US · · Score: 1

    There are no "rape charges". Never were. He's wanted, by order of a single right-wing prosecutor which our intel boys carefully selected, to answer questions about not using a condom once during a threesome - a session be conducted only on a particular spot next to a convenient airport for the US to snatch him up and drag him to a kangaroo trial wherever they care to hold one. If they even bother to charge him. They refuse to ask the questions anywhere but where the US can snatch him. For this he's been in a single room in an embassy for half a decade while the Brits spend millions of pounds to watch the doors, at the behest of the English-speaking intelligence nations little club. The fact that he exposed their crimes seems to be a bit pertinent. They're the charged, and convicted, and yet they have the guns ready to shoot him. No one is waiting for them to leave their holes.

    BTW, one of the women has departed this "case" in disgust, because she figured out she's being used by the US. What Assange did, if he did it, was to not use a condom during a night of three-way sex. They said. It's a crime only in that country; nowhere else in the world can this "crime" be charged. And the "crime" isn't rape. Let's put it out there: US intelligence used its NSA superpowers to track down every woman Assange ever slept with, contacted them, and twiggled and wiggled until they found something, somewhere, to start an investigation on territory they could use to grab him. Even then, they had to shop until they found a rightwinger that hated him enough to start the process. Other prosecutors had refused to gin up a crime. Simultaneously they used their widespread network of tame journalists and news companies to spread the "rape" accusation far and wide, to destroy his credibility and blacken his name. And as the HB Gary emails showed, there is software sold by HB Gary and others used by people employed by corporations and the government to set up networks of fake personas to splatter newsgroups such as this with horseshit that they want to promulgate. Truth may just be getting its shoes on while lies run around the world, but now they have paid groups of fake people shooting the truth before it gets out the goddamned door...

  6. Re:Apologies already offered on Bolivia Demands Assange Apologize For Deliberately False Leaks To the US · · Score: 1

    Who did he lie to, again? Did he phone them up and tell them, or did he drop that turd on the NSA listeners? Either way, he didn't point any gun at anyone.

    WE DID.

  7. Re:What. The. Hell. on Bolivia Demands Assange Apologize For Deliberately False Leaks To the US · · Score: 1

    How did Assange "give" them that intel?

  8. Cheney. Plame. on Bolivia Demands Assange Apologize For Deliberately False Leaks To the US · · Score: 1

    Cheney and his little cohort committed cold blooded murdered when they outed Valerie Plame and her Iranian anti-nuke intel program. Just to get even with her husband. That's Kingpin-level asshole murder. Any Iranian associated with her front groups was tortured to death as a traitor.

    Bill Kristol is floating the idea that Cheney should run for President this week. I don't see Cheney imprisoned in any embassy. I don't see roboposters slamming his rep and spreading false charges on every. single. thread. on. the. internet. his story might be told.

  9. Re:hes not the one to blame. on Bolivia Demands Assange Apologize For Deliberately False Leaks To the US · · Score: 1

    Whom did he throw the bone to? Was it to the NSA, who were listening to his calls? How else? He must have told someone that he was on that plane. He most certainly didn't call up the White House to tell them. He must have told someone, knowing full well that person would rat him out, or he knew his calls and emails were being monitored in real time.

  10. Except that she has. Not that the investigation has anything to do with her; it's to haul Assange to the US.

  11. One did walk away, because she was disgusted with being used.

  12. Re:Shows just how far the U.S. will go to get him on Bolivia Demands Assange Apologize For Deliberately False Leaks To the US · · Score: 0

    There are no "rape charges". Never were. He's wanted, by order of a single right-wing prosecutor which our intel boys carefully selected, to answer questions about not using a condom once during a threesome - a session be conducted only on a particular spot next to a convenient airport for the US to snatch him up and drag him to a kangaroo trial wherever they care to hold one. If they even bother to charge him. They refuse to ask the questions anywhere but where the US can snatch him. For this he's been in a single room in an embassy for half a decade while the Brits spend millions of pounds to watch the doors, at the behest of the English-speaking intelligence nations little club. The fact that he exposed their crimes seems to be a bit pertinent. They're the charged, and convicted, and yet they have the guns ready to shoot him. No one is waiting for them to leave their holes.

    BTW, one of the women has departed this "case" in disgust, because she figured out she's being used by the US. What Assange did, if he did it, was to not use a condom during a night of three-way sex. They said. It's a crime only in that country; nowhere else in the world can this "crime" be charged. And the "crime" isn't rape. Let's put it out there: US intelligence used its NSA superpowers to track down every woman Assange ever slept with, contacted them, and twiggled and wiggled until they found something, somewhere, to start an investigation on territory they could use to grab him. Even then, they had to shop until they found a rightwinger that hated him enough to start the process. Other prosecutors had refused to gin up a crime. Simultaneously they used their widespread network of tame journalists and news companies to spread the "rape" accusation far and wide, to destroy his credibility and blacken his name. And as the HB Gary emails showed, there is software sold by HB Gary and others used by people employed by corporations and the government to set up networks of fake personas to splatter newsgroups such as this with horseshit that they want to promulgate. Truth may just be getting its shoes on while lies run around the world, but now they have paid groups of fake people shooting the truth before it gets out the goddamned door.

  13. Re:Color blindness is useful though on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 1

    Robot cars won't need them. Are you against progress, grandpa?

  14. Re:My skin is colored you insensitive clod on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 1

    Crayola needs to make a crayon color called Indoor White Boy.

  15. Re:Stop trying to cure me. on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 1

    I think I may have responsed to the wrong post. Abject apologies.

  16. Confidence, that's the ticket on Transforming Robot Gets Stuck In Fukushima Nuclear Reactor · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Don't worry, a billion self-driven cars will never make an error. We've thought of everything. Because that's how engineering works. No errors, all the time. Unless it's turning a corner or something--

  17. Re:The buried lede was awesome on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 1

    I read the article. What I mostly took away is this: genetic disorders are about to become repairable as a matter of routine injections, in an increasing number of cases. We took a ten year detour because of Bush and his fetal position, and that idiot pair of parents who sued a research line into a ten year hiatus and ruined one of the best researchers in the world. But it's coming back. Stupidity can stop this only so long, it seems. The age of wonders is coming. We need this hope, as so much else is being ruined that we can do nothing about.

  18. We've lost. on Spain's Hologram Protest: Thousands Join Virtual March In Madrid · · Score: 1

    The 20th century has been repealed. It's over. Back to kings, merchant princes, and ghostly immortal power structures.
    Kind of glad I'll be dead soon.

  19. Re:Why stop there? on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 1

    Greenish-purple. The colour of magic.

  20. Re:Stop trying to cure me. on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 0

    Ah, Fox News. Incapable of detecting humor. Especially when you're the joke.

  21. To which I say: Holy Shit. on UW Scientists, Biotech Firm May Have Cure For Colorblindness · · Score: 1

    The future is finally coming. Damn.

    Here's a thought: would it work on dogs? We could test it by color coding the box with food in it, figuratively or literally.

  22. Re:Easy grammar on Ask Slashdot: What Would a Constructed Language Have To Be To Replace English? · · Score: 1

    The words were pronounced differently in different parts of the English speaking world, so the spellings matched the different ways. Dictionary writers nailed down their own preferences, so we're stuck with it.

  23. Re: Easy grammar on Ask Slashdot: What Would a Constructed Language Have To Be To Replace English? · · Score: 1

    And the correct pronunciation of "buyed" is "bawt". Today. Four hundred years ago? "Bawgkt", as it is spelled. Fight was "figkt. The English language spells out exact how stubborn and irrational the main British culture (that would be Planet America, too) is, when you strip the paint off and stare at it for a while.

    English usage froze almost solid the day they started printing dictionaries. It won't change much - the past is no longer prologue when it comes to pronunciation drift. We also have audio recordings, so pronunciation is pretty much what is was a hundred years ago.

  24. Re: Easy grammar on Ask Slashdot: What Would a Constructed Language Have To Be To Replace English? · · Score: 1

    yuz = use.

    We can't recognize our own words if spelled phonetically!

    Ben Franklin had a crack at this during his own lifetime, trying out a phonetic alphabet. He corresponded with his son that way, for a bit.
    In the 70's, there was Unifon, I believe, one letter for each unique sound. And there are so many more.

    I have to say, learning English spelling would take about two days instead of seven years. We really do waste a hell of a lot of our kids' time with idiotic adherence to learning past mistakes. And no, I have no idea if it could ever be corrected.

    However, we *could* adopt phonetic spelling as an alternative, secondary spelling, the way the Japanese language can be spelled using three different sets of characters. But using real time translation apps will kill such needs, I guess.

  25. Re:Remember kids, sync to cloud. on The Courage of Bystanders Who Press "Record" · · Score: 1

    But if you sync to the cloud, that is, transmit your incriminating video from you registered phone through a cell provider who has your credit card information to a storage provider who also has your credit card information, the cops can show up at your door, follow your car, and get "in your face" until they find something to hang you with. The method of your "empowerment" is the means of your destruction by those who can access the unanonymous information embedded in the file, the video stream, the phone company, the NSA, and various app companies whom you agreed to share your location data with who in turn sell your location to thrird parties who sell it to anyone, including the cops.

    All this doesn't factor in the Homeland Security efforts (coming soon) to grant authorities such as the police the ability to transmit a Kill All Cameras command in a geofenced area. That's coming soon, and the police really, really are looking forward to that.