How far does "they were warned" let an officer go? Get out of my way or I'll hit you with a club? Get out of my way or I'll shoot you with a gun?
Well, "stop making me feel threatened regardless of how reasonable that perception of threat might be or I will shoot you with a gun" is fair play in some states.
So putting two different accounts of a story on YouTube is a good way of figuring out what really happened?
. ..and frankly, the occupiers usually come off as smug hipsters with a victim mentality - demonstrated through their actions and creative editing. But maybe it's just me.
Nah. All the cool people hate "hipsters" these days.
If they voted for Obama because of his skin color, their motivation was racist.
Not so fast. If they voted for him because they think that his race endows him with a superiority over people of other races, then their motivation was racist.
I've never heard anyone make such a claim. On the other hand, many people consider the additional challenges that black men face in America and admire his accomplishments all the more. This is not "racist". Their is no component of race based animus. There is no attribution of supposedly race-based qualities.
If we grant additional respect to someone who completes a marathon after recovering from a double leg amputation, does it mean that we hate people with two legs? Of course not. It simple means that we recognize the person's additional perseverance.
This is reverse psychology from an iPartisan. The hope is that these competitors will stop creating alternate tablets just to prove that they aren't "freaking out".
The public education system is broken on EVERY level. It is a classic example of "the weakest link". Unfortunately every link in this chain is weak.
Education is a fundamental link in a chain that every other part of our society relies on. Homeschooling can't solve this problem because the preponderance of people must be educated for that link to be strong, and according to your view of the world the preponderance of people are crappy.
The crappy-ness must be adressed. Even the best homeschoolers can't insulate their families from the decay that surrounds them.
Parents are the largest demographic, with the most incentive to improve of education (presumably, but who knows any more).
The problem is that it feels artificial and that you're forced into the environment. Not to mention that being locked in a building isn't the only way to interact with others (even a diverse group of people). In real life, you might not find you need to interact with those "diverse" group of people much at all, for instance.
Most people will be required to navigate such environments, at one time or another. I don't believe there is any way to know when a person is a child that they will never benefit from the experience of adapting to a large social and institutional environment unless you intentionally narrow their ambitions.
Moreover, whether they can avoid interacting with people or not, society benefits when all of its members at least can interact with them.
In general, my point was that public schools offer ample success stories.
Because of schools, or in spite of them? What of all the failures?
Homeschoolers fail too. In any individual case, it could be a number of factors. My feeling is that both can be adequate, but that communal schools offer a better potential maximum outcome for society at large, without lowering the potential maximum outcome for individuals with parents who have the dedication it takes to homeschool a particularly ambitious or gifted student. Such parents have ample time outside the school day to supplement their childs education, tailored to their other personal/professional aspirations.
Rather, I believe that fostering critical thinking, curiosity and creativity along with socialization should be the priorities at these ages.
Which I believe is something the current school system is totally failing to do. Not all schools, but I believe many of them are (and No Child Left Behind certainly isn't helping). Then there's the fact that not everyone learns the same way.
I agree. On the plus side, this means that "fixing" schools does not mean reconciling a myriad of religions/ethinc/political priorities, but simply re-articulating what primary/secondary education should be, and what parents should teach their children on their own time if it is indeed so important to them.
That said, I am not really optimistic. If education changes at all, it will be towards the foolish notion that we should be able to anticipate what jobs will be available 20 years in the future so that our schools can teach "relevant" skills.
I was simply asking a question I felt was relevant: assuming most people truly are well-adjusted and successful, is that because of public school? Would they be better if they were home schooled (the problem is not all parents would be able to home school their children)?
Actually, I wrote "the vast majority of well-adjusted, successful (or just decent) people are not home-schooled". Whether that includes most people in general, I am not so sure.
If one believes that experience is beneficial to proficiency (which I do), than the experience of dealing with more people is more likely to lead to proficiency in dealing with people. So in that sense of "adjustment", I do think that public schools are better when they expose students to a larger (and more diverse) peer group.
In general, my point was that public schools offer ample success stories. Thus, while homeschooling may be better in some situations, it is not a necessary for successful outcomes.
I'll add that individualized education (homeschooling, professional tutoring etc.) is probably superior when it comes to subject matter or development of individual strengths, but I do not believe that these are the primary purposes of primary or secondary education. Rather, I believe that fostering critical thinking, curiosity and creativity along with socialization should be the priorities at these ages.
Many other (smaller) countries don't have these problems, because they don't have all this disagreement and discord; instead, country A teaches things one way, country B teaches them another way, according to the culture of the people there.
Nor do these countries attract immigrants, including students, from all over the world. Diversity is a strength. It comes with challenges, but surmounting these challenges is a valuable exercise. Of course success if more easily attainable if you lower the bar!
Your falling for the "only one problem" myth. The problems with our education system is (as you say, the parents). It is also the teachers, the unions, the administrations, the local, state and federal governments. The problem runs from parent to POTUS.
Suppose that's true -- who votes the POTUS into office? Among the groups you list, which casts the largest number of votes?
I'm not saying that parents are the only problem. I am saying that if even they can't or won't shape up, nobody else can fix the problems for them.
All of my children are in a home school program to specifically achieve the following:
* Dramatically improved science curriculum over state requirements. * Aggressive reading and mathematics programs. * Enhanced educational environment (a quiet, well equipped classroom). * Teachers who really care, and want each child to be able to compete in a demanding global economy as adults. We love our students like parents should, because we are both.
Could you do this outside of school hours as a supplement? For that matter, could you then extend these benefits to a larger audience of dedicated students/concerned parents?
They are going to be bound to the abilities of their peers at some point, the chain only being as strong as the weakest link and all.
I'm glad that your situation worked out for you. On the other hand, the vast majority of well-adjusted, successful (or just decent) people are not home-schooled, no? The vast majority of humans are able to interact with peers in their age group at all ages.
Don't you think that it is likely that if you did not have the option to be home schooled, you would still have been learned self-esteem and will power, determined what you wanted to study in college, etc., just as is normal for the rest of us?
Because if you think that these achievements are limited to the home schooled, that seems like a sheltered perspective to me.
For the "good of society," I do like home school. Partly because I believe individual freedoms are important, and partly because I believe it's a good solution if schools are inadequate or downright terrible.
This attitude is antithetical to "society", as I understand the term (granted, I went to public schools). In a society, where common institutions fail, the community organizes to fix them. Education is a common interest, being that the entire community relies on a well-informed populace (partly to understand and take best advantage of individual freedoms/responsibilities).
Parents with a keen interest in teaching beyond the common standards can always do so in their own time. If they have time for one parent to devote their full day to educating their children, it should be no burden to devote a couple hours in the evening or a weekend afternoon.
If all parents cared, school systems could focus on what they are best suited to doing -- educating. School systems "fail" when they have to pick up the slack from parents who won't/can't take responsibility for their own children.
Schools can not effectively manage malnourished, abused, ignored or otherwise un-nurtured children no matter how much they "care". Especially when they are dependent on support for the same people who don't think their kids are worth any investment of money or time in the first place.
I agree that universal (and I'll throw in equal) education is good for society. The question is how to bootstrap this potential good from a society with such perverse priorities.
Diversity is all about which races you need to have to be diverse.
Racial diversity is not what diversity is all about. Its also about differences that tend to break down on financial lines (though that is often just a coincidence of our societal priorities).
A community where a 1400sq ft. house costs $1m has no place for people who devote their lives to educating children, caring for the victims of unpopular maladies like getting old or mental illness, or even ensuring that basic infrastructure is maintained and protected. When the providers of these services are not part of the community, they invisible to residents, the value that they provide is artificially diminished, as is their incentive to perform or even continue to provide services. This drives quality down, and the cost of raising quality up.
"Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness." - Major Motoko Kusanagi
This situation probably sounds like something somewhere on the scale from no big deal to f'in great if you are a 20-30 something temporarily occupying that space between overpaying employer and overcharging rentier.
Meanwhile, cities can not sustain themselves on these kind of demographic patterns. Cities need all kinds of people working at all income levels to work efficiently. Banishing the working poor to the hinterlands drives up costs (commuting). It also perverts the perspectives of those living on either side of the tracks, where the motivations and plights of each other become alien, leading to misunderstanding and unnecessary tensions.
Sooner or later, these booms become busts or the underlying social structure collapses, leaving dysfunction.
What I want to know is how an industry that constantly sells itself on easy communication and reduced operational friction continues to centralize itself in a way that drives up its own costs of living and makes it physically vulnerable.
I always consider the geography when looking for a house. River valley, probably a flood plain. Dense bush nearby, forest fire risk. Steep slopes, too prone to landslides. Silt bed in an earthquake zone, well, let's just say that I want a chance of survival. The thing is, after taking out the crazy risks, there are still plenty of places to live.
Not really. Especially if you count earthquakes and extreme weather.
Besides, most of the "crazy risk" areas have attendent benefits such as wilderness, ocean and mountain access for recreation and commerce. Plus their living conditions that are superior for the 99.99% of the time that some natural disaster is not in play.
They have... umm... a little problem... um... no one likes their shitty products and they are bleeding money. ..
And yet there are no better products that offer equivalent features. Perhaps their troubles are related to the fact while people want security, its not so easy to deliver it along with the other features that end-users demand.
XBox 360 + accessories + a few games = $650 Felt S22 triathlon bike ($1200) + shiny spandex ($150) =~ $1350
Your prices are also out of whack.
The Felt S22 is towards the low end for a "real" bike, and $150 won't even buy rich dad a pair of cycling shorts that he would be caught dead wearing. A rich dad is going to have much closer to $5000 in gear than $1350. Probably much more.
Of course, he could ride just as far, just as fast and as comfortably for well under $2000. But that is not waste, for some reason.
For many of the rest of us, providing these goods and services for poor people to "waste" their resources on is how we make a comparatively good living.
Slashdot Mirror
How far does "they were warned" let an officer go? Get out of my way or I'll hit you with a club? Get out of my way or I'll shoot you with a gun?
Well, "stop making me feel threatened regardless of how reasonable that perception of threat might be or I will shoot you with a gun" is fair play in some states.
Would you at least concede that putting a second side of the story up might actually further distort the facts?
They were warned and they made a choice - and the narrative quickly went from "police brutality" to "protester choice".
The narrative remained "non-violent protesters, undeterred by threat of violence from police, ultimately met with violence by police".
There's two sides to every story. . .
So putting two different accounts of a story on YouTube is a good way of figuring out what really happened?
. . .and frankly, the occupiers usually come off as smug hipsters with a victim mentality - demonstrated through their actions and creative editing. But maybe it's just me.
Nah. All the cool people hate "hipsters" these days.
So what is the difference between harassing and being obnoxious?
The same as the difference between throwing bottles at a wall (obnoxious) and throwing bottles at a specific person (harassing).
If they voted for Obama because of his skin color, their motivation was racist.
Not so fast. If they voted for him because they think that his race endows him with a superiority over people of other races, then their motivation was racist.
I've never heard anyone make such a claim. On the other hand, many people consider the additional challenges that black men face in America and admire his accomplishments all the more. This is not "racist". Their is no component of race based animus. There is no attribution of supposedly race-based qualities.
If we grant additional respect to someone who completes a marathon after recovering from a double leg amputation, does it mean that we hate people with two legs? Of course not. It simple means that we recognize the person's additional perseverance.
Since when is innovating "freaking out".
This is reverse psychology from an iPartisan. The hope is that these competitors will stop creating alternate tablets just to prove that they aren't "freaking out".
The public education system is broken on EVERY level. It is a classic example of "the weakest link". Unfortunately every link in this chain is weak.
Education is a fundamental link in a chain that every other part of our society relies on. Homeschooling can't solve this problem because the preponderance of people must be educated for that link to be strong, and according to your view of the world the preponderance of people are crappy.
The crappy-ness must be adressed. Even the best homeschoolers can't insulate their families from the decay that surrounds them.
Parents are the largest demographic, with the most incentive to improve of education (presumably, but who knows any more).
The problem is that it feels artificial and that you're forced into the environment. Not to mention that being locked in a building isn't the only way to interact with others (even a diverse group of people). In real life, you might not find you need to interact with those "diverse" group of people much at all, for instance.
Most people will be required to navigate such environments, at one time or another. I don't believe there is any way to know when a person is a child that they will never benefit from the experience of adapting to a large social and institutional environment unless you intentionally narrow their ambitions.
Moreover, whether they can avoid interacting with people or not, society benefits when all of its members at least can interact with them.
In general, my point was that public schools offer ample success stories.
Because of schools, or in spite of them? What of all the failures?
Homeschoolers fail too. In any individual case, it could be a number of factors. My feeling is that both can be adequate, but that communal schools offer a better potential maximum outcome for society at large, without lowering the potential maximum outcome for individuals with parents who have the dedication it takes to homeschool a particularly ambitious or gifted student. Such parents have ample time outside the school day to supplement their childs education, tailored to their other personal/professional aspirations.
Rather, I believe that fostering critical thinking, curiosity and creativity along with socialization should be the priorities at these ages.
Which I believe is something the current school system is totally failing to do. Not all schools, but I believe many of them are (and No Child Left Behind certainly isn't helping). Then there's the fact that not everyone learns the same way.
I agree. On the plus side, this means that "fixing" schools does not mean reconciling a myriad of religions/ethinc/political priorities, but simply re-articulating what primary/secondary education should be, and what parents should teach their children on their own time if it is indeed so important to them.
That said, I am not really optimistic. If education changes at all, it will be towards the foolish notion that we should be able to anticipate what jobs will be available 20 years in the future so that our schools can teach "relevant" skills.
I wasn't home schooled.
I was simply asking a question I felt was relevant: assuming most people truly are well-adjusted and successful, is that because of public school? Would they be better if they were home schooled (the problem is not all parents would be able to home school their children)?
Actually, I wrote "the vast majority of well-adjusted, successful (or just decent) people are not home-schooled". Whether that includes most people in general, I am not so sure.
If one believes that experience is beneficial to proficiency (which I do), than the experience of dealing with more people is more likely to lead to proficiency in dealing with people. So in that sense of "adjustment", I do think that public schools are better when they expose students to a larger (and more diverse) peer group.
In general, my point was that public schools offer ample success stories. Thus, while homeschooling may be better in some situations, it is not a necessary for successful outcomes.
I'll add that individualized education (homeschooling, professional tutoring etc.) is probably superior when it comes to subject matter or development of individual strengths, but I do not believe that these are the primary purposes of primary or secondary education. Rather, I believe that fostering critical thinking, curiosity and creativity along with socialization should be the priorities at these ages.
That's probably because most people are forced into public school. Do we have any idea what it'd be like if most people were home schooled?
Do you know what you would be like if you weren't home schooled?
Many other (smaller) countries don't have these problems, because they don't have all this disagreement and discord; instead, country A teaches things one way, country B teaches them another way, according to the culture of the people there.
Nor do these countries attract immigrants, including students, from all over the world. Diversity is a strength. It comes with challenges, but surmounting these challenges is a valuable exercise. Of course success if more easily attainable if you lower the bar!
Your falling for the "only one problem" myth. The problems with our education system is (as you say, the parents). It is also the teachers, the unions, the administrations, the local, state and federal governments. The problem runs from parent to POTUS.
Suppose that's true -- who votes the POTUS into office? Among the groups you list, which casts the largest number of votes?
I'm not saying that parents are the only problem. I am saying that if even they can't or won't shape up, nobody else can fix the problems for them.
All of my children are in a home school program to specifically achieve the following:
* Dramatically improved science curriculum over state requirements.
* Aggressive reading and mathematics programs.
* Enhanced educational environment (a quiet, well equipped classroom).
* Teachers who really care, and want each child to be able to compete in a demanding global economy as adults. We love our students like parents should, because we are both.
Could you do this outside of school hours as a supplement? For that matter, could you then extend these benefits to a larger audience of dedicated students/concerned parents?
They are going to be bound to the abilities of their peers at some point, the chain only being as strong as the weakest link and all.
I'm glad that your situation worked out for you. On the other hand, the vast majority of well-adjusted, successful (or just decent) people are not home-schooled, no? The vast majority of humans are able to interact with peers in their age group at all ages.
Don't you think that it is likely that if you did not have the option to be home schooled, you would still have been learned self-esteem and will power, determined what you wanted to study in college, etc., just as is normal for the rest of us?
Because if you think that these achievements are limited to the home schooled, that seems like a sheltered perspective to me.
For the "good of society," I do like home school. Partly because I believe individual freedoms are important, and partly because I believe it's a good solution if schools are inadequate or downright terrible.
This attitude is antithetical to "society", as I understand the term (granted, I went to public schools). In a society, where common institutions fail, the community organizes to fix them. Education is a common interest, being that the entire community relies on a well-informed populace (partly to understand and take best advantage of individual freedoms/responsibilities).
Parents with a keen interest in teaching beyond the common standards can always do so in their own time. If they have time for one parent to devote their full day to educating their children, it should be no burden to devote a couple hours in the evening or a weekend afternoon.
If all parents cared, school systems could focus on what they are best suited to doing -- educating. School systems "fail" when they have to pick up the slack from parents who won't/can't take responsibility for their own children.
Schools can not effectively manage malnourished, abused, ignored or otherwise un-nurtured children no matter how much they "care". Especially when they are dependent on support for the same people who don't think their kids are worth any investment of money or time in the first place.
I agree that universal (and I'll throw in equal) education is good for society. The question is how to bootstrap this potential good from a society with such perverse priorities.
Diversity is all about which races you need to have to be diverse.
Racial diversity is not what diversity is all about. Its also about differences that tend to break down on financial lines (though that is often just a coincidence of our societal priorities).
A community where a 1400sq ft. house costs $1m has no place for people who devote their lives to educating children, caring for the victims of unpopular maladies like getting old or mental illness, or even ensuring that basic infrastructure is maintained and protected. When the providers of these services are not part of the community, they invisible to residents, the value that they provide is artificially diminished, as is their incentive to perform or even continue to provide services. This drives quality down, and the cost of raising quality up.
"Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness." - Major Motoko Kusanagi
This situation probably sounds like something somewhere on the scale from no big deal to f'in great if you are a 20-30 something temporarily occupying that space between overpaying employer and overcharging rentier.
Meanwhile, cities can not sustain themselves on these kind of demographic patterns. Cities need all kinds of people working at all income levels to work efficiently. Banishing the working poor to the hinterlands drives up costs (commuting). It also perverts the perspectives of those living on either side of the tracks, where the motivations and plights of each other become alien, leading to misunderstanding and unnecessary tensions.
Sooner or later, these booms become busts or the underlying social structure collapses, leaving dysfunction.
What I want to know is how an industry that constantly sells itself on easy communication and reduced operational friction continues to centralize itself in a way that drives up its own costs of living and makes it physically vulnerable.
. . .all anyone needs to know is what it will take to get Kevin Bacon to change from on social network to another.
I always consider the geography when looking for a house. River valley, probably a flood plain. Dense bush nearby, forest fire risk. Steep slopes, too prone to landslides. Silt bed in an earthquake zone, well, let's just say that I want a chance of survival. The thing is, after taking out the crazy risks, there are still plenty of places to live.
Not really. Especially if you count earthquakes and extreme weather.
Besides, most of the "crazy risk" areas have attendent benefits such as wilderness, ocean and mountain access for recreation and commerce. Plus their living conditions that are superior for the 99.99% of the time that some natural disaster is not in play.
They have ... umm... a little problem... um... no one likes their shitty products and they are bleeding money. . .
And yet there are no better products that offer equivalent features. Perhaps their troubles are related to the fact while people want security, its not so easy to deliver it along with the other features that end-users demand.
Your prices are also out of whack.
The Felt S22 is towards the low end for a "real" bike, and $150 won't even buy rich dad a pair of cycling shorts that he would be caught dead wearing. A rich dad is going to have much closer to $5000 in gear than $1350. Probably much more.
Of course, he could ride just as far, just as fast and as comfortably for well under $2000. But that is not waste, for some reason.
For many of the rest of us, providing these goods and services for poor people to "waste" their resources on is how we make a comparatively good living.
Plank One -- Nonsensical polling idea that will be sure to attract attention.