Um, who do you think the "United States" are? In 1787, there was no such thing as the welfare of a singular "United States." There was only the welfare of the plural "United States." But you are right that the intent was not to provide for California at the expense of Ohio (or more to the point, to provide for Virginia at the expense of Rhode Island). It was to provide for the general (not specific) welfare of the states, ensuring for example that the states were not molested by foreign powers or by each other (hence, enumerated powers to regulate foreign and interstate commerce and raise armies). People didn't really have a concept of "a" United States in 1787. They considered themselves first to be citizens of their individual states. Their citizenship in the union of states was really secondary. The Framers were very suspicious of centralized government. The folks pushing the idea of giving a federal government any real power at all (even just a few limited, enumerated powers) were the left wingers of their day. They only won because confederation had demonstrably failed. But it really wasn't until the south lost the Civil War that the Union started severely curtailing states' sovereignty and forging a more concrete, unified identity. The states are closer to provinces now.
Also, that grant is to provide for the general welfare of the states, not the people who inhabit those states. Nobody even tries to use that clause to pass social programs. It's too absurd. Instead, they use the interstate commerce clause. Thanks to FDR and his threats to stack the Supreme Court if they didn't give him what he wanted, a farmer who grows his own wheat on his own land to feed his own pigs is engaging in interstate commerce (Wickard v. Filburn). Which really means that no matter what you do, it's interstate commerce, and the Federal Government gets to regulate it. The Federal Government will never be reigned in unless the interstate commerce clause is reigned in.
You say: Nefarious government mind control and newspeak! Conspiracy! Deceit! Run for your lives! Next they'll be coming for your Warcraft!
I say: Some random guy tells his college buddies, "Dudes, this shouldn't even have to be said, but if you're planning to work for the State Department, where you will need a security clearance (which is based on the State Department trusting you to keep classified documents secret), it's a bad idea to go around posting links to classified documents."
Nice quote. But what does it have to do with some guy telling buddies at his alma mater that if they want to work for the state department, it's a bad idea to post links to leaked classified documents?
To remove the perceived stigma, we would need to have more scientists talking openly about issues of religion, where such issues are particularly relevant to their discipline.
The surest path to atheism is open discussion of religion.
That's a cute platitude, but since you're apparently a rational, scientific-minded person, I'd like to see your evidence of this. It doesn't comport with my personal experience.
Interesting quote. The reference to a "Starship" makes it sound like it might be from Star Trek, but the Star Trek universe is demonstrably free of any movie with that line.
Hummmm. I really don't know about that. I really don't. My brother (with a family of 4) does manage it. But, many of the families I know certainly don't have much to go around (on two incomes). I'm very curious if you live in or are familiar with folks that live in an area that has very cold winters. Seriously. The cost of heating can literally put a family in debt.
We moved around quite a bit when I was younger, but some of the places we lived had cold winters. I also have four married sisters who all stay home with their kids. They are married to an engineer, a prison guard, an air-force two-striper, and a dental student respectively. Three of them live in places with very cold winters. All of them live on substantially less than I do. All four have talents they could pursue for commercial gain if they wanted to. All four stay home because they choose to do so. Like I said, I know there are circumstances where it truly is not an option. And yes, I was exaggerating a little (but not that much, and not in all cases). But speaking from my own experience, most people I know personally could do it if they really wanted to.
What if some children are raised in an economically poor environment without examples of character (and the importance of education)?
All I'm saying is that, in my experience, the character is more important than the money. I grew up with very little money, but with two parents who set an excellent example of character and hard work. Their children have grown up valuing education and hard work. I've seen that pattern repeated many times. I've also seen plenty of kids who grow up with lots of money, but with lousy parents, who end up contributing very little to society. And while not everybody can just "choose" to be wealthy, you can choose to set a good example for your kids.
I won't re-type this entire post, but you don't need to lecture me on the stresses of not having money. I've been there, both as a child and as an adult. And my point is, my kids did start learning to read when they were 5 or 6, and by now, they've caught up with most of the kids who could read earlier. On the other hand, I never went to pre-school, but I was reading quite comfortably by the time I started Kindergarten because I simply enjoyed it. My parents never had money for pre-school or special tutors, but (just for example), my older brother is a doctor, I'm a patent attorney, and my next younger brother is a Biochem Ph.D. who just started his own business. It wasn't money. Nobody lined our way with golden bricks. We just did it because we had parents who were emotionally engaged and taught us we could do it. It was parenting. And that's my whole point.
And, by the way, my wife taught at a low income elementary school. There were parents there who were dead broke, including single moms, who still managed to be engaged parents, and their kids did quite well. They did a lot better, in fact, than the kids whose parents came up with the money---whether they had it or not---to ensure that Little Johnny had a shiny new PlayStation to occupy him. Sure, money has some effect on a child's success, but it's not the only factor, and not even the most important one.
You should check out the number of folks that cannot survive on a single income. Thus, negating the possibility that one parent can devote their full time and attention to between say, one and three offspring. That custom attention (and the level of caring and devotion typical in a parent in an upper-middle-income household) is more educationally valuable than a "premium" day care or kindergarten and even elementary school. Also, don't underestimate the value of living "comfortably". Less stressed parents means both more patience for the children and less stress on the children. Both of which improve the living and developmental environments.
I realize that circumstances vary, but you can't play the "you're just privileged card" with me either. My wife has stayed home with our kids for nine years. During that time, I've been in school while working full time, been laid off, worked for about a third of what I make now, and been to law school. There have been lots of times it would have been easier if she just went back to work. It's only been in the last year's that we've had a very comfortable income.
What's more, I grew up with eight siblings (and my parents have adopted four since I got married). Seven of us were born before my dad left graduate school for a job that paid in the 30s. Even in the 80s, that wasn't a lot money, especially for that many people. So we never had cable while I was growing up. We didn't get a VCR until I was about 12. We got an 8088 about the same time, but our house was burglarized, and we didn't get another computer (another 8088, which by that time was ancient) until I was a junior in high school. Sometimes my mom had to make hamburger stretch by adding wheat gluten. Most of our clothes were second-hand or hand-me-downs. Our cars were generally large junkers, and we often only had one. In the meantime, my dad was working his tail off to get an education and still provide for us. But they did it. And in both cases---my mom, and my wife---they did it because it mattered to them, not because it was always comfortable. When most people say, "we can't afford for mom to stay home," what they really mean is, "we can't afford for mom to stay home, and still have two late-model cars, America's Favorite 500 Channels cable package, a 56-inch flatscreen television, a separate media room with surround sound, a PS3 with scores of games, and three eat-outs a week." The question is not whether mome can stay home---it's how much the family is willing to give up for mom to stay home.
Yes, I know that there are lots of single parents. There are plenty of people in such tight circumstances that they literally need two incomes just to have basic food, shelter, and clothing. In those cases, it truly isn't an option; what they would have to sacrifice is no longer acceptable. I have the highest respect for mothers who work hard to care for those they love because they literally have no other choice. But that's not true for most people I know, and probably not true for most families in America. Most families I know could find a way to do it if it was important to them. Maybe they have different priorities than I do. That's their business. But just because it's comfortable now doesn't mean it was a matter of convenience ab initia. It's a choice that we made.
An equation with only complex solutions, where the solutions are supposed to be physical quantities, can in some sense be said to be "unsolvable," or rather, it has no true physical meaning because its solutions are not physical.
Any time you put a capacitor or an inductor in a circuit, you have just created an equation with only complex solutions, with true physical meaning. The real portion is magnitude and the imaginary portion is a phase shift. If I remember my mechanical stuff correctly, the same thing happens when you put a spring or a dashpot in a mechanical system.
You obviously never took a 1,000-student GE history course in college. Those are pretty much memorizing facts and spitting them out on a Scantron. I frequently skipped class but still had a ~98% average grade. The only thing I got from the lectures that I couldn't get from the text is the knowledge of which points were important enough to the Prof. to go on the PowerPoint slides. To be fair, I doubt the guy wanted to be at those lectures any more than we did. It was a joyless, "check the box" requirement on both sides.
This really isn't true. I live on a comfortable upper-middle-class income. My wife stays home with the kids, so they don't get sent to day care. Our oldest daughter went to a sort of neighborhood pre-school where the moms just took turns teaching the group. She was never in GT Kindergarten (seriously---why do we need GT Kindergarten?) But she's in third grade now, and she's one of the best students in her class. She's well ahead of some of the kids who got shoved into "top-notch" pre-schools when they should have just been playing with toys.
Our second daughter didn't go to any pre-school. She didn't want to, and we didn't see any reason to force a four-year-old to do it. But she had a lousy Kindergarten teacher who basically assumed that all the kids had gone to pre-school (which meant she didn't have to teach---just "review" what they're already supposed to know, and then shove worksheets at them). She treated our daughter like she was dumb because we had dared to let her just be a little kid, and that shot her confidence. We spent the whole year basically trying to mitigate the damage formal education was doing to both her emotional and intellectual development. That year, she learned despite her schooling, not because of it. Then this year she's had a really good first grade teacher, and like the older one, she's pretty much caught up with her friends who went to "top notch" pre schools.
This "get an early start" mentality is stupid. Kids that little don't need to be learning vector calculus. They need to be playing. Sure, teach them things while they play. Our youngest son likes to watch the Leapfrog alphabet video, and then he'll find the letters on his alphabet puzzle and tell us what sound they make. We're even thinking about letting him join a little twice-a-week pre-school this fall, but only because he seemed to really enjoy it when we checked it out. We don't stress him about academics. He's going to have plenty of academic stress the rest of his life. No point in starting it early.
Basically, this mad rush for early academic excellence is a way for people to feel a vicarious sense of achievement at their children's expense. It's stupid, and it doesn't help the kids. By the time they're in second or third grade, you'd never know which ones went to pre-school and which ones didn't. The ones who are going to excel will excel. The ones who are going to flounder will flounder. The really big difference is not what they were doing when they were three. It's what's going on at home right now.
If you really want your kids to be successful, let them be kids while they're young, fill your home with lots and lots of books, make education a priority, and spend time with them. Eat dinner together, for crying out loud and then sit down and read with them and help them with homework. Kids who associate reading with spending time with their parents will love books. Kids who do nothing but melt their brains playing video games all afternoon---while Dad surfs porn and Mom gossips on Facebook, and everyone munches on greasy delivery pizza and flat Dr. Pepper---are not going to become the next Stephen Hawking just because they had a year or two of pre-school.
I believe what you're looking for is the new "paperback" book reader. Text shows up on an organic, fibrous display via the PII (physical ink imprint) protocol. There's no backlight, so you may need a lamp next to your bed, but daylight visibility is unmatched, and I have yet to exhaust the battery on one. There's even a special exception that lets you use them on airplanes during takeoff and landing. And the text delivery is strictly one-way---there's no backhaul connection to the publisher. They're basically impossible to hack without physical access to the terminal, and they tend to be very error tolerant (I've seen some that have still been usable after being left in rain and mud). You may even have a local repository near you where they will loan you a reader for free. And they're so pervasive, even Amazon has started selling some now. You should check it out!
The thing is, the fee structure would have to change significantly to influence large business tactics. Whether you're small or large, the attorney fees you pay are way bigger than the filing fees. I just don't see this making that big a difference for the huge guys like Microsoft and IBM. But it will hurt universities, where a lot of legitimate innovation takes place, because they tend to be more fee sensitive.
I think the better way to deal with the pendency is to just dispose of applications earlier. Get out of this mindset that it's absolutely mandatory to reject on the first office action. If the examiner thinks he/she has relevant prior art, do something like they're doing on the pilot program where all first office actions result in a phone call (seriously, I know they have phones there---I call examiners all the time). Then attorney and the examiner can try to work out some agreement on the claims instead of going three rounds of paper filings. I mean, I know they get a count for drawing an RCE, but they also get a count for final disposition. So let's agree on something and dispose of the thing. I don't want a second office action any more than you do.
In the movie House of Flying Daggers, there's a swordfight scene where the two rivals finally clash in an epic struggle as the seasons change from summer to fall to winter all around them. Obviously nobody can fight for nine months. Obviously the sword choreography was on a completely different time scale to the environment they were in. Details like this matter if you're a weak-minded literalist. As pretty as the visuals were, it simply communicated a story like a line in a novel. It was a powerful visual metaphor.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one. The whole film took place in late fall (which was an intentional visual metaphor). When they started fighting, it was sunny outside (perhaps that's what gives the impression of summer), but the leaves are all brown and autumney. The director was planning to film a straight autumn scene, but then (according to the director's commentary), in a great moment of serendipity, it started snowing in the middle of the shoot. So they went with the snow, thereby further enhancing the visual metaphor, since winter seems to come on just as (SPOILER ALERT) Mei dies. You also get the outstanding visuals of blood in the snow and the dagger shaking snow out of the tree. And that little bit of serendipity makes this one of my favorite cinematic scenes of all time (well, that, and the "showdown," where what happens doesn't make sense unless you think carefully about each character's motivation in doing what he/she does, and then it makes perfect sense).
And on an unrelated note, nobody should ever watch this movie with the lame English dubbing. Watch it with the awkwardly-translated subtitles, and enjoy Zhang Ziyi's expressiveness.
Or in other words, you can be a dumb 17-year-old girl and negligently run a stop sign, thereby accidentally killing a classmate, and not go to jail. Or you can be an adult member of one of the most influential and powerful political families in the nation, and (quite likely) be driving drunk, and when you put your car in the drink and strongly suspect that you have drowned your passenger, and then fail to report it until morning when you will no longer test positive, and the delay could possibly be a proximate cause of your passenger's death, depending on whose theories you listen to, and your family's money and political connections could ensure that you never go to jail.
I seriously doubt that either one was intentional, but they're also not really analogous. In one case, the circumstances are very consistent with a teenage girl not paying attention. In the other case, the circumstances are very consistent with somebody who has big political ambitions probably not setting out to hurt anyone, but realizing he screwed up big time, and doing his best to cover it up.
This is what I hated about Carly Fiorina. What did Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard start out doing in their garage (literally)? Instrumentation. What was HP known for? Rock-solid instrumentation. The other thing they did really well was calculators. And what did Carly Fiorina do? She took a once-proud company whose name was synonymous with quality instrumentation, spun off the instrumentation into a separate company with the astonomically-stupid name "Agilent," shut down the Australian Calculator Division, and tuned HP into the equivalent of McDonald's for computers. HP no longer means rock-solid anything. HP now just means over-priced junk. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard are spinning in their graves.
I still have my HP 48g from school/engineering days sitting on my desk (the one with a massive 32k memory). Unfortunately, the most complex math I usually do anymore is adding up billable hours and multiplying by my hourly rate. Still, it sure feels nice to turn the old 48g on and see the old, familiar menus.
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Am I the only person who watched Doctor Who reruns on PBS in the 80s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Doctor_Who)
I believe it was "Overide all security." See, only a truly brilliant hacker would know to misspell "override."
Um, who do you think the "United States" are? In 1787, there was no such thing as the welfare of a singular "United States." There was only the welfare of the plural "United States." But you are right that the intent was not to provide for California at the expense of Ohio (or more to the point, to provide for Virginia at the expense of Rhode Island). It was to provide for the general (not specific) welfare of the states, ensuring for example that the states were not molested by foreign powers or by each other (hence, enumerated powers to regulate foreign and interstate commerce and raise armies). People didn't really have a concept of "a" United States in 1787. They considered themselves first to be citizens of their individual states. Their citizenship in the union of states was really secondary. The Framers were very suspicious of centralized government. The folks pushing the idea of giving a federal government any real power at all (even just a few limited, enumerated powers) were the left wingers of their day. They only won because confederation had demonstrably failed. But it really wasn't until the south lost the Civil War that the Union started severely curtailing states' sovereignty and forging a more concrete, unified identity. The states are closer to provinces now.
Well played.
Also, that grant is to provide for the general welfare of the states, not the people who inhabit those states. Nobody even tries to use that clause to pass social programs. It's too absurd. Instead, they use the interstate commerce clause. Thanks to FDR and his threats to stack the Supreme Court if they didn't give him what he wanted, a farmer who grows his own wheat on his own land to feed his own pigs is engaging in interstate commerce (Wickard v. Filburn). Which really means that no matter what you do, it's interstate commerce, and the Federal Government gets to regulate it. The Federal Government will never be reigned in unless the interstate commerce clause is reigned in.
You say: Nefarious government mind control and newspeak! Conspiracy! Deceit! Run for your lives! Next they'll be coming for your Warcraft!
I say: Some random guy tells his college buddies, "Dudes, this shouldn't even have to be said, but if you're planning to work for the State Department, where you will need a security clearance (which is based on the State Department trusting you to keep classified documents secret), it's a bad idea to go around posting links to classified documents."
Po-tay-toh, Po-tah-to.
Nice quote. But what does it have to do with some guy telling buddies at his alma mater that if they want to work for the state department, it's a bad idea to post links to leaked classified documents?
To remove the perceived stigma, we would need to have more scientists talking openly about issues of religion, where such issues are particularly relevant to their discipline.
The surest path to atheism is open discussion of religion.
That's a cute platitude, but since you're apparently a rational, scientific-minded person, I'd like to see your evidence of this. It doesn't comport with my personal experience.
Interesting quote. The reference to a "Starship" makes it sound like it might be from Star Trek, but the Star Trek universe is demonstrably free of any movie with that line.
Hummmm. I really don't know about that. I really don't. My brother (with a family of 4) does manage it. But, many of the families I know certainly don't have much to go around (on two incomes). I'm very curious if you live in or are familiar with folks that live in an area that has very cold winters. Seriously. The cost of heating can literally put a family in debt.
We moved around quite a bit when I was younger, but some of the places we lived had cold winters. I also have four married sisters who all stay home with their kids. They are married to an engineer, a prison guard, an air-force two-striper, and a dental student respectively. Three of them live in places with very cold winters. All of them live on substantially less than I do. All four have talents they could pursue for commercial gain if they wanted to. All four stay home because they choose to do so. Like I said, I know there are circumstances where it truly is not an option. And yes, I was exaggerating a little (but not that much, and not in all cases). But speaking from my own experience, most people I know personally could do it if they really wanted to.
What if some children are raised in an economically poor environment without examples of character (and the importance of education)?
All I'm saying is that, in my experience, the character is more important than the money. I grew up with very little money, but with two parents who set an excellent example of character and hard work. Their children have grown up valuing education and hard work. I've seen that pattern repeated many times. I've also seen plenty of kids who grow up with lots of money, but with lousy parents, who end up contributing very little to society. And while not everybody can just "choose" to be wealthy, you can choose to set a good example for your kids.
I won't re-type this entire post, but you don't need to lecture me on the stresses of not having money. I've been there, both as a child and as an adult. And my point is, my kids did start learning to read when they were 5 or 6, and by now, they've caught up with most of the kids who could read earlier. On the other hand, I never went to pre-school, but I was reading quite comfortably by the time I started Kindergarten because I simply enjoyed it. My parents never had money for pre-school or special tutors, but (just for example), my older brother is a doctor, I'm a patent attorney, and my next younger brother is a Biochem Ph.D. who just started his own business. It wasn't money. Nobody lined our way with golden bricks. We just did it because we had parents who were emotionally engaged and taught us we could do it. It was parenting. And that's my whole point.
And, by the way, my wife taught at a low income elementary school. There were parents there who were dead broke, including single moms, who still managed to be engaged parents, and their kids did quite well. They did a lot better, in fact, than the kids whose parents came up with the money---whether they had it or not---to ensure that Little Johnny had a shiny new PlayStation to occupy him. Sure, money has some effect on a child's success, but it's not the only factor, and not even the most important one.
s/year's/couple of years
And I even previewed.
You should check out the number of folks that cannot survive on a single income. Thus, negating the possibility that one parent can devote their full time and attention to between say, one and three offspring. That custom attention (and the level of caring and devotion typical in a parent in an upper-middle-income household) is more educationally valuable than a "premium" day care or kindergarten and even elementary school. Also, don't underestimate the value of living "comfortably". Less stressed parents means both more patience for the children and less stress on the children. Both of which improve the living and developmental environments.
I realize that circumstances vary, but you can't play the "you're just privileged card" with me either. My wife has stayed home with our kids for nine years. During that time, I've been in school while working full time, been laid off, worked for about a third of what I make now, and been to law school. There have been lots of times it would have been easier if she just went back to work. It's only been in the last year's that we've had a very comfortable income.
What's more, I grew up with eight siblings (and my parents have adopted four since I got married). Seven of us were born before my dad left graduate school for a job that paid in the 30s. Even in the 80s, that wasn't a lot money, especially for that many people. So we never had cable while I was growing up. We didn't get a VCR until I was about 12. We got an 8088 about the same time, but our house was burglarized, and we didn't get another computer (another 8088, which by that time was ancient) until I was a junior in high school. Sometimes my mom had to make hamburger stretch by adding wheat gluten. Most of our clothes were second-hand or hand-me-downs. Our cars were generally large junkers, and we often only had one. In the meantime, my dad was working his tail off to get an education and still provide for us. But they did it. And in both cases---my mom, and my wife---they did it because it mattered to them, not because it was always comfortable. When most people say, "we can't afford for mom to stay home," what they really mean is, "we can't afford for mom to stay home, and still have two late-model cars, America's Favorite 500 Channels cable package, a 56-inch flatscreen television, a separate media room with surround sound, a PS3 with scores of games, and three eat-outs a week." The question is not whether mome can stay home---it's how much the family is willing to give up for mom to stay home.
Yes, I know that there are lots of single parents. There are plenty of people in such tight circumstances that they literally need two incomes just to have basic food, shelter, and clothing. In those cases, it truly isn't an option; what they would have to sacrifice is no longer acceptable. I have the highest respect for mothers who work hard to care for those they love because they literally have no other choice. But that's not true for most people I know, and probably not true for most families in America. Most families I know could find a way to do it if it was important to them. Maybe they have different priorities than I do. That's their business. But just because it's comfortable now doesn't mean it was a matter of convenience ab initia. It's a choice that we made.
An equation with only complex solutions, where the solutions are supposed to be physical quantities, can in some sense be said to be "unsolvable," or rather, it has no true physical meaning because its solutions are not physical.
Any time you put a capacitor or an inductor in a circuit, you have just created an equation with only complex solutions, with true physical meaning. The real portion is magnitude and the imaginary portion is a phase shift. If I remember my mechanical stuff correctly, the same thing happens when you put a spring or a dashpot in a mechanical system.
Can we all agree that the hippies on acid episode was bad?
You obviously never took a 1,000-student GE history course in college. Those are pretty much memorizing facts and spitting them out on a Scantron. I frequently skipped class but still had a ~98% average grade. The only thing I got from the lectures that I couldn't get from the text is the knowledge of which points were important enough to the Prof. to go on the PowerPoint slides. To be fair, I doubt the guy wanted to be at those lectures any more than we did. It was a joyless, "check the box" requirement on both sides.
This really isn't true. I live on a comfortable upper-middle-class income. My wife stays home with the kids, so they don't get sent to day care. Our oldest daughter went to a sort of neighborhood pre-school where the moms just took turns teaching the group. She was never in GT Kindergarten (seriously---why do we need GT Kindergarten?) But she's in third grade now, and she's one of the best students in her class. She's well ahead of some of the kids who got shoved into "top-notch" pre-schools when they should have just been playing with toys.
Our second daughter didn't go to any pre-school. She didn't want to, and we didn't see any reason to force a four-year-old to do it. But she had a lousy Kindergarten teacher who basically assumed that all the kids had gone to pre-school (which meant she didn't have to teach---just "review" what they're already supposed to know, and then shove worksheets at them). She treated our daughter like she was dumb because we had dared to let her just be a little kid, and that shot her confidence. We spent the whole year basically trying to mitigate the damage formal education was doing to both her emotional and intellectual development. That year, she learned despite her schooling, not because of it. Then this year she's had a really good first grade teacher, and like the older one, she's pretty much caught up with her friends who went to "top notch" pre schools.
This "get an early start" mentality is stupid. Kids that little don't need to be learning vector calculus. They need to be playing. Sure, teach them things while they play. Our youngest son likes to watch the Leapfrog alphabet video, and then he'll find the letters on his alphabet puzzle and tell us what sound they make. We're even thinking about letting him join a little twice-a-week pre-school this fall, but only because he seemed to really enjoy it when we checked it out. We don't stress him about academics. He's going to have plenty of academic stress the rest of his life. No point in starting it early.
Basically, this mad rush for early academic excellence is a way for people to feel a vicarious sense of achievement at their children's expense. It's stupid, and it doesn't help the kids. By the time they're in second or third grade, you'd never know which ones went to pre-school and which ones didn't. The ones who are going to excel will excel. The ones who are going to flounder will flounder. The really big difference is not what they were doing when they were three. It's what's going on at home right now.
If you really want your kids to be successful, let them be kids while they're young, fill your home with lots and lots of books, make education a priority, and spend time with them. Eat dinner together, for crying out loud and then sit down and read with them and help them with homework. Kids who associate reading with spending time with their parents will love books. Kids who do nothing but melt their brains playing video games all afternoon---while Dad surfs porn and Mom gossips on Facebook, and everyone munches on greasy delivery pizza and flat Dr. Pepper---are not going to become the next Stephen Hawking just because they had a year or two of pre-school.
I believe what you're looking for is the new "paperback" book reader. Text shows up on an organic, fibrous display via the PII (physical ink imprint) protocol. There's no backlight, so you may need a lamp next to your bed, but daylight visibility is unmatched, and I have yet to exhaust the battery on one. There's even a special exception that lets you use them on airplanes during takeoff and landing. And the text delivery is strictly one-way---there's no backhaul connection to the publisher. They're basically impossible to hack without physical access to the terminal, and they tend to be very error tolerant (I've seen some that have still been usable after being left in rain and mud). You may even have a local repository near you where they will loan you a reader for free. And they're so pervasive, even Amazon has started selling some now. You should check it out!
The thing is, the fee structure would have to change significantly to influence large business tactics. Whether you're small or large, the attorney fees you pay are way bigger than the filing fees. I just don't see this making that big a difference for the huge guys like Microsoft and IBM. But it will hurt universities, where a lot of legitimate innovation takes place, because they tend to be more fee sensitive.
I think the better way to deal with the pendency is to just dispose of applications earlier. Get out of this mindset that it's absolutely mandatory to reject on the first office action. If the examiner thinks he/she has relevant prior art, do something like they're doing on the pilot program where all first office actions result in a phone call (seriously, I know they have phones there---I call examiners all the time). Then attorney and the examiner can try to work out some agreement on the claims instead of going three rounds of paper filings. I mean, I know they get a count for drawing an RCE, but they also get a count for final disposition. So let's agree on something and dispose of the thing. I don't want a second office action any more than you do.
In the movie House of Flying Daggers, there's a swordfight scene where the two rivals finally clash in an epic struggle as the seasons change from summer to fall to winter all around them. Obviously nobody can fight for nine months. Obviously the sword choreography was on a completely different time scale to the environment they were in. Details like this matter if you're a weak-minded literalist. As pretty as the visuals were, it simply communicated a story like a line in a novel. It was a powerful visual metaphor.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one. The whole film took place in late fall (which was an intentional visual metaphor). When they started fighting, it was sunny outside (perhaps that's what gives the impression of summer), but the leaves are all brown and autumney. The director was planning to film a straight autumn scene, but then (according to the director's commentary), in a great moment of serendipity, it started snowing in the middle of the shoot. So they went with the snow, thereby further enhancing the visual metaphor, since winter seems to come on just as (SPOILER ALERT) Mei dies. You also get the outstanding visuals of blood in the snow and the dagger shaking snow out of the tree. And that little bit of serendipity makes this one of my favorite cinematic scenes of all time (well, that, and the "showdown," where what happens doesn't make sense unless you think carefully about each character's motivation in doing what he/she does, and then it makes perfect sense).
And on an unrelated note, nobody should ever watch this movie with the lame English dubbing. Watch it with the awkwardly-translated subtitles, and enjoy Zhang Ziyi's expressiveness.
Thanks. I'll be here all week.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good quote. (See also: "I can see Russia from my front my back yard").
Or in other words, you can be a dumb 17-year-old girl and negligently run a stop sign, thereby accidentally killing a classmate, and not go to jail. Or you can be an adult member of one of the most influential and powerful political families in the nation, and (quite likely) be driving drunk, and when you put your car in the drink and strongly suspect that you have drowned your passenger, and then fail to report it until morning when you will no longer test positive, and the delay could possibly be a proximate cause of your passenger's death, depending on whose theories you listen to, and your family's money and political connections could ensure that you never go to jail.
I seriously doubt that either one was intentional, but they're also not really analogous. In one case, the circumstances are very consistent with a teenage girl not paying attention. In the other case, the circumstances are very consistent with somebody who has big political ambitions probably not setting out to hurt anyone, but realizing he screwed up big time, and doing his best to cover it up.
This is what I hated about Carly Fiorina. What did Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard start out doing in their garage (literally)? Instrumentation. What was HP known for? Rock-solid instrumentation. The other thing they did really well was calculators. And what did Carly Fiorina do? She took a once-proud company whose name was synonymous with quality instrumentation, spun off the instrumentation into a separate company with the astonomically-stupid name "Agilent," shut down the Australian Calculator Division, and tuned HP into the equivalent of McDonald's for computers. HP no longer means rock-solid anything. HP now just means over-priced junk. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard are spinning in their graves.
I still have my HP 48g from school/engineering days sitting on my desk (the one with a massive 32k memory). Unfortunately, the most complex math I usually do anymore is adding up billable hours and multiplying by my hourly rate. Still, it sure feels nice to turn the old 48g on and see the old, familiar menus.