It is possible to believe in a literal interpretation of the entire Bible where figurative language is not clearly present, including the various scriptures about early Earth without contradicting science. It doesn't even require you to stretch your scientific or religious beliefs.
If you believe that Lucifer was fallen by the garden of Eden times, it immediately follows that you must place this in history before then but after the original creation in Gen 1:1. If you study Isaiah 14, it is clear that when he rebelled against God, he led other developed - to some extent - peoples. This then requires civilization before Adam and Eve. If you study Jer. 4, you see the earth in a destroyed state, yet that state is more severe by far than that described by the flood of Noah. If you compare the two, it more closely resembles the state of the Earth in the first part of Genesis 1 - the Hebrew expression that is usually translated "without form and void" is used in both places, and only those two places. This would also make sense if it was God's judgment on Lucifer and whatever part of the Earth he ruled. It matches 2 Pet as well where it is recorded that the kosmos - social system - was destroyed in a flood. This also did not occur in Noah's more localized flood as the social system survived. There are also different Hebrew words for the create of Gen. 1:1 and that sometimes translated create and sometimes translated made in the rest of the chapter.
Thus the account in Gen. 1 can be viewed as simply restoring Earth to a habitable state and repopulating it where and as needed. You have consistent theology and science, even with a literal interpretation. The fossil record seems to match up with this. You have several competing humanoid species that come to an abrupt end and you have modern man emerging after that. The Bible doesn't give many details of this period, because it isn't important to the Bible's purpose of reconciling Man to God. It doesn't say whether evolution occurred in ancient times or whether God just had fun creating stuff. All it says is that a break happened when Lucifer went bad and God started again. That He would start over with similar creatures with a similar environment would seem to be a no-brainer.
I didn't mention science class once. My point is that even in the non-science courses where cultures are studied and religious aspects are talked about, Christianity is rarely studied, thus failing the neutral test.
The supreme court does not always rule in a way that lines up with what the framers of the Constitution intended. A perfect recent example would be the twisted logic of the majority opinion for the Affordable Care Act lawsuit.
The US Constitution - as amended - just prevents requiring you to belong to a particular religion to hold elected office.
It doesn't prevent teaching about religions. In practice, the education system doesn't prevent this either in most cases. You only face resistance if you teach about the predominant religion. You can teach about Greek and Roman mythology, American Indian beliefs, Mayan beliefs, Inca beliefs, Egyptian beliefs, and certainly Muslim, Hindu, or other far Eastern beliefs of the modern age. You can talk some about Mormons and their trek west. Just label it cultural diversity training or lump it in with geography and you're golden. Just don't teach about Christianity or someone will get you fired.
While that is technically true, I'm pretty sure that several recent presidents have declared and fought wars that were never formally declared by Congress. Oh Congress approved the spending after the wars started and some committees may have given tacit approval before hand, but the constitutional process was never carried out before we joined the fights. The executive branch caused a huge pile of money to be spent. It is the one major item that has broken the budget.
I'd suspect that the average age of an employee at Google or most tech companies is so low compared to the rest of the business world that they expect to rarely pay out anything. If most of their workforce were expected to stick around till retirement age and it would actually cost them significant bucks due to natural causes versus accidental causes, I doubt they would be offering this benefit.
This was in the before time, before the Internet and e-trading, when you called your broker and talked to him or her to place an order. It was even before they graduated to phone systems where you could do "automated" entries of orders using your telephone handset. Not quite back to sticks and stones, but close.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that part about taking money away from every stockholder, and all. Back in the old days before high frequency trading was in vogue, you would place a stock trade with your broker. Depending on the brokerage firm, it was amazing how many trades that were made claimed to be near the low of the day if you were selling or near the high of the day if you were buying. Of course proving anything was impossible, but the people actually doing the trading were still making a killing.
Now, when you place a stock order you will in most cases in normal markets get it filled at the price that was being quoted when you hit the sell or buy, even if the stock has moved several dollars per share over the course of the day. This is largely due to HFT. Yes, they are making fractions of a cent each share traded and are making lots of money. But they are also providing the opposite side of trades that you want to make at a price near what is being quoted, That lets you, as an individual investor, get the price you have considered to be fair for the security.
Yes, I know all about limit orders and other options to try to control the price you pay or receive and that is always an option, but HFT - when working correctly - has largely eliminated the need for them.
All software trading algorithms are dangerous and can easily cause massive problems when they play against each other or feed on each other. I don't necessarily like them and wouldn't mind them going away. But to say they provide nothing of value is not true -even for a common stock trader who only does a few trades every few months.
Mr. Templeton was a Presbyterian and a Christian who was also interested in other religions. He became extremely wealthy by stock market investment. He set up the foundation to explore religious topics. His foundation - His choice as to what its goals are for funding research.
The problem is not getting rid of the current group of politicians.
The problem is finding a different set of politicians who value the constitution and are willing to go against the entrenched bureaucracy to write laws that tear down the apparatus that has been built up and follow through to make sure that it stays torn down. This is the challenge. Neither of the major parties have a sufficient number of these individuals in them although there are a few. Nobody wants to take a chance on a third party such as the Constitution Party, which might actually accomplish this because "they can't win".
If you really find a solution, please let everyone know.
I realize that that is true. I wish that it could still be done for a reasonable price. Sadly, there are few low priced public colleges around. A few community colleges can still be said to be reasonably priced and should probably be used to serve this purpose. This is particularly true if you can live at home and reduce your costs further. But most universities are very expensive for most people. I suspect that in future years college will become even more expensive.
I think the latest statistics on debt for education in the US was around 1 trillion dollars. Granted it wouldn't be so big a number if it were adjusted for inflation. Yet it is still a massive number and a real drain on many individuals.
As far as why they were created, I suppose that depends on how far back you go in history.
I'd agree with your comments in general. CS happens to be a discipline where you can learn on the job or in a trade school environment. People who can do the work are favored over those who have the courses for entry level positions. I would suggest that in any large company, those who have the degree are generally promoted to higher organizational positions over those who can do the work. The degree does indicate a certain level of discipline and follow through.
But there are many degrees you can get at college that have no on-the-job or trade school equivalent. This would certainly include engineering, sciences, and math. Others provide the basics for those going on to higher degrees in medicine or law. There are also degrees or chosen professions where a gunshot approach with a narrow focus in a few courses is best. You're striving to be well rounded. These might include diplomatic or political careers. The people planning for a career in politics generally realize this and don't complain about the breadth requirements.
I think that your Bio department head is wrong though. If a person wants to excel in biology, that person should be able to do that with a view to getting a job in the field. Only the very, very rich can afford to go to college with no view to an eventual job. To try to imply that college should not be preparing the vast majority of students to work in a particular field is myopic. Long gone are the days of well rounded college students going off to government posts or to run a business while everyone else went to trade school to learn a craft. I think she's about a century behind the times.
I do agree that most courses in the specialized fields aren't meant to equate directly to jobs, but they do provide background knowledge that anyone hiring for a position expects the student to have. In this sense, while not job training, they are definitely job preparation. The more courses you have to take to make you well rounded, the less time you have to be adequately prepared. If I was an employer, I'd be much more interested in whether my new chemist could balance equations than whether the individual had gotten an A in "Studies of the American Cinema in the 21st century". That these types of courses are even available and taught for credit and to fulfill somebody's graduation requirements I think makes my point that universities are broken today.
This is why I suggested that if they didn't know what they wanted to do, they take some time and find out first before investing the money in a degree they could not use or did not enjoy. Realistically, if they focused more on their major, they might find it easier to get that job in the first place and wouldn't be picking up whatever job they could find.
Clearly, part of that process is knowing what the industry demand is. I think that there is a major failure on the part of high school guidance departments in this regard.
While I agree concerning the mastery of English or your primary native language and English for any Engineering or CS curriculum, this instruction really should be taken care of during high school. At the college I attended, you wrote an essay during freshman orientation. If it was deemed sufficiently well written, you got to skip the English course. All engineering and CS courses required basic physics, chemistry, organic chemistry for dummies, and their associated labs along with many math courses as they should. It was particularly gratifying to get an A in Chem Lab with all the psychotic pre-meds around. Even 30 years ago, we had to take an upper level CS course where we did a complete project in a team environment.
I don't have problems with courses that are going to be useful for your major, even if in other university divisions. I certainly think you should have time in your schedule to explore any other field you wanted. I chose courses from the classical studies department covering Egypt and Greece, and also took a course on the history of nuclear energy and a few others. The breadth should rarely be required to graduate though.
You shouldn't have to study Shakespeare to get a physics degree.
That is exactly the problem with our university system in the U.S. and evidently other countries as well. I went through two B.S. degree programs in four years. The combined program that did that only required 18 hours of miscellaneous garbage - the equivalent of six courses. One of the courses had to be economics and one had to be business law. That left four non-core courses in the entire combined program. There were still many courses in math and science, but we were spared the bulk of the absolute garbage that most schools require.
If you want to study a foreign language or two, that is what you should be able to concentrate in along with history of that part of the world. If you want to study math, you should be able to study math. If you want to go into science or medicine you should be able to concentrate in those fields without having to everything else just to keep the professors employed. If you want to study engineering, that is where you should be able to concentrate. If you don't know what you want to study you should wait to go to college until you know and not waste everyone's time dabbling here and there in some broad based curriculum
I know that it would be hard to do 100% engineering or 100% science courses, but the breadth required in many schools is absurd. You've got the rest of your life to read classics, study history, and attend the gym to work out. There's no reason to pay college tuition rates to do that. . You won't regret the college loans if you haven't had to subsidize a bunch of teachers who instruct in courses which have no bearing on your life or career.
It actually does generate revenue. By reducing the tax rate, capital assets are sold - private companies, stock, tangible items - to take advantage of the lower tax bite. Without the lower tax bite, they are retained - hoping for a lower tax rate at some point in the future and thus a better return on the original investment. I'll agree that at some point with enough years of low tax rates, much of this selling has been done. However dropping tax rates does produce more income for the government for at least a certain period of time even at the lower rates.
Addressing entitlements and military spending (wars fought to no purpose) must indeed be addressed for the near and long term health of the country.
But realistically, the tax base needs to be drastically broadened and deductions reduced. Until the federal tax bite starts biting everybody, there will continue to be too many people who keep voting the same old people into office to spend money the same way the always have. Making the federal tax start biting everyone is the only way to change the way "business" is done in Washington. Taking more from the rich won't fix the long term problems the country has. They don't have that kind of money.
You may be completely correct about the pay rates being offered. I think it is more likely that people just want nothing to do with uranium mining and he has real limits on what he can pay based on the going price for delivered product. This isn't a government company but I don't know the name of the company he works for either.
That doesn't change the problem that most who are applying can't pass drug screens or don't have reasonably clean driving records. Actually in our part of the country, alcohol is a bigger problem than drug use, but they can't test for that except what may show through in a driving record. The extraction industries are very dangerous and you can't do them impaired or you'll lose a body part or your life. Our on the job injury rates are much higher than the rest of the nation.
But my comment on where the jobs are is equally valid. Few people want to move to states where the economy is tied to a small number of industries and where there aren't many other people around. We aren't quite as bad as the great lakes area for winters as they tend to be drier, but they are frequently cold with high winds along all the high plains. Most don't like the small number of colleges - none of which are well known - and we don't either, but at least they are funded and don't have the problem of say - California. People think they'll miss wide varieties of restaurants and things to do - and they will. The days of just two movie screens in town is long past, but it was true for a very long time. Small town life simply isn't for everybody, especially when there are no really large towns anywhere near and driving to one is multi-day trip if you do anything of substance while you're there. If I hadn't been born here, I'd probably feel the same way.
It's much safer to stay in a big town where there are likely to be many jobs available when the economy improves than to move to the boonies where if the price of oil crashes or the government regulates the coal industry to oblivion there are few other options that pay as well. I'd possibly have made a lot more money working for one of the big companies I had offers from than coming back home to work for a small private engineering firm. But the cost of living has been much lower here than in most of the places they were at, and I've had steady work at the same firm for 30 years through boom and bust and the firm is still growing.
In the oil field, mining, and other extraction industries, you generally have to drive a company vehicle in order to get to the actual work site on a daily basis. DUIs mean you may not be able to be insured for the company vehicle so can't be sent out to do something on your own.
1. I'm not the employer in question - I don't even live in ND - I just used it as an example because we do a lot of work for oil companies up there. 2. It actually doesn't matter to me at all - I agree with you. 3. The major oil companies have huge liability exposures for environmental damage, loss of life, injury, and the rest. The coal mining companies and uranium mining companies (who the person with the jobs in question worked for) are in a similar situation. Their insurance carriers force them to limit their liabilities to the greatest extent possible, so what you or I think doesn't matter a bit. The safety training has gone through the roof for us to be allowed on site at all. All the subcontractors have to fulfill all the requirements the major oil/mining company employees do, so we have the same hiring requirements.
Most of the major mining operations and oil operations do include excellent benefits, even for manual labor. My high school daughter is working at a day care part time this summer and making $8/hr - although without benefits - and they were happy to get her and would hire more if they could. They're trying to get her to work after school during the school year. She applied at I think three places the last week before school let out and she was offered a job as soon as she could pass the public health TB test with the day care. That isn't a great wage by any means and it is part time, but she's not even out of high school either.
The biggest problem people have today aren't reflected in the statistics. The housing market is not liquid or they are underwater on their mortgage so they can't easily move to where the jobs are. Moving costs real money. So the distribution is far from even. Likewise, there has been a big shift in what it takes to do a job and older folks aren't easily retrained to do work that is needed today.
We're in the process of building a new building to hold our new hires and have hired I think three engineers and several programmers this last year. I don't know about the rest of the state - I know there are places that are hurting - but our neck of the woods has been fortunate this recession. You just have to not mind the 40 MPH winds when the temp is below 0.
Check the employment statistics for the major oil, coal, and uranium producing states along with the state job listings. ND's site under oil field lists general requirements and drug free / clean driving record is among the top general requirements by industry.
Sorry your comment is being misinterpreted. Tort reform is definitely needed and the lawyers in Congress ducked their responsibility to fix this with the health care package. It's needed whether you take a pay cut or not.
Just reducing the risk of malpractice lawsuits would incrementally (not drastically) reduce the cost of health care brought on by cover my liability type tests.
Unfortunately, Congress didn't have any business messing with the medical industry at all. There isn't any constitutional basis for it.
Really, the states should band together and do their own united single payer system and roll the Federal Medicare and VA programs all into it. Since most health care providers already deal with Medicare the interface would be the same. Come up with one or two insurance plans and let everyone choose one - no family plans - all individual. Make one a simple one that covers all major medical type expenses that aren't routine and perhaps provides coverage for eventual end of life care - nursing home etc - the things that are most likely to bankrupt a normal family today. Make another that is much more broad based - preventive tests, well baby care, dental, eye, and everything included in the base policy. Let people switch every time they get a decade older if they want so people can't just switch when it is convenient.
Include everyone. Get rid of all of the bad things insurance companies do that the existing act fixed. Manage it by a non-profit organization supervised by randomly selected members from insurance oversight boards among the 50 states. Fairly value the assets backing the private insurance companies medical divisions and buy them out completely and roll them into the NPO at a fair price. Likewise let the federal government chip in for existing Medicare/VA people.
Bill everyone a uniform price based on charges actually accrued by the country in the previous year and the best estimate of costs for the next n years on average. Adjust yearly with say 3 months warning so people would now how to budget.
You'd be covered anyplace in the US. With just 2 policies at most, the doctors would know what they could and could not do. The patients would be permitted to pay for extra services themselves if they wanted. It's not perfect - there would be some areas of the country where care is expensive (high cost cities or rural areas with load volume) that would end up being subsidized by the rest, but it's better than the mess we have now.
In our Sunday School class welfare and the associated topics came up - why don't these people get a job was the comment of a retired gentleman. An employer said he had roughly 50 or 60 job openings for people who could do manual labor type work or higher openings that they can't fill. The reason - the people who apply can't pass drug screens or have too many DUIs on their driving record.
Yes - everyone would like to start out as a CEO making huge wages. Yes - many have gone to college an got an Arts and Crafts degree for an inflated price instead of taking something hard that might actually have a job waiting for them and have huge loans to pay off due to that. Yes, even for those who have engineering or science/medical degrees, there are many companies that aren't hiring in the US but are outsourcing engineering work and knowledge overseas.
But there are jobs out there - at least in the mining industries and petroleum industries and those fields and towns that service them. In some of the booming oil field towns in ND, even food service is paying really well compared to the rest of the country because everyone who can is out working in the oil field. Whether this will keep up with Europe crashing is anyone's guess. The trouble is, you can't live on the coasts to do them and they are real work. You also have to live in small towns without much culture or big name stores around. Just picking up and moving entails real risk because once you're there you can't just go to a nearby town for a different job - there are no nearby towns. Rents are through the roof and housing is completely unavailable in some cases. Winters can be brutal. But there is work out there and the companies aren't going to go under any time soon.
Which would require multiple utility corridors all of which would need to be maintained, twice as many "unsightly" poles and twice the cost of running the service in the first place - read higher lot prices, twice the maintenance work to keep the trees cut back, twice as many unhappy homeowners as their trees that they planted to close to the right of way are cut back - "I didn't know it would grow that high!", lots of isolation and distribution stations where even more things could go wrong, and you'd still be at the same risk when a big storm hit.
If you don't like the situation, buy a big diesel generator and wire it in. Then have a big storage tank of diesel close by.
While I agree with most of your points, the new KDE start menu (at least in its lancelot incarnation) lets you resize the start menu to whatever size your are comfortable with.
It depends a great deal on where you live and how good the school system is there, how many kids you have, whether you are a good teacher across all subjects, whether you are willing to vanquish your pride and hire a tutor where you aren't, and equally important - whether your kids can learn from you. My kids go to public school. My wife went through a pre-school curriculum with each, but when they reached school age she gladly turned them over to the school system which is very good here. We both help them when they have problems even now.
We know some kids that are home schooled and my daughter found out one of them was going to be taking a math course at the college because it was beyond their parents. My daughter was impressed till she found out she'd learned the course material the high school kid would be taking in 5th grade. My daughter is taking pre-calculus this year - IB math next hear - and will take calculus as a senior. She enjoyed chemistry this year too.
You get out of public school what you put into it. If you put in a good effort, you are likely to go much farther across all subjects than a home schooled child will. That isn't to say a home schooled child might not beat a public school child in certain subjects if the parents were well versed in them, but overall, they will lose. That is particularly true if you have multiple kids - there just aren't enough hours in the day to adequately prepare all of them and cover multiple grades adequately.
Yes, some kids do very well as home schooled kids. They may have gone even farther in a good public school system.
Yes, the public school system wastes too much time testing everyone - but I'd counter that home schooled kids aren't tested enough to compare how they are doing against their peers. It is often too late when parents realize there are problems.
If the child in the main post has trouble reading, start there. Stop worrying about chemistry - it's the least of your worries at 10 years of age - public schooled or not. Check their eyes to make sure they can see clearly (print out an eye chart from the internet and use it if you can't get them to an eye doctor). Make sure they can properly track words on a page - have them watch your finger as you move it toward their nose and make sure both eyes track and don't pop out. Then move your finger left to right and make sure they track. It's a simple test that everyone should do with their kids - don't rely on your eye doctor to catch it (been there done that).
Read your property tax notice a little closer - or if you rent ask to see your landlords property tax notice. The amount that goes to public education is not small.
Slashdot Mirror
It is possible to believe in a literal interpretation of the entire Bible where figurative language is not clearly present, including the various scriptures about early Earth without contradicting science. It doesn't even require you to stretch your scientific or religious beliefs.
If you believe that Lucifer was fallen by the garden of Eden times, it immediately follows that you must place this in history before then but after the original creation in Gen 1:1. If you study Isaiah 14, it is clear that when he rebelled against God, he led other developed - to some extent - peoples. This then requires civilization before Adam and Eve. If you study Jer. 4, you see the earth in a destroyed state, yet that state is more severe by far than that described by the flood of Noah. If you compare the two, it more closely resembles the state of the Earth in the first part of Genesis 1 - the Hebrew expression that is usually translated "without form and void" is used in both places, and only those two places. This would also make sense if it was God's judgment on Lucifer and whatever part of the Earth he ruled. It matches 2 Pet as well where it is recorded that the kosmos - social system - was destroyed in a flood. This also did not occur in Noah's more localized flood as the social system survived. There are also different Hebrew words for the create of Gen. 1:1 and that sometimes translated create and sometimes translated made in the rest of the chapter.
Thus the account in Gen. 1 can be viewed as simply restoring Earth to a habitable state and repopulating it where and as needed. You have consistent theology and science, even with a literal interpretation. The fossil record seems to match up with this. You have several competing humanoid species that come to an abrupt end and you have modern man emerging after that. The Bible doesn't give many details of this period, because it isn't important to the Bible's purpose of reconciling Man to God. It doesn't say whether evolution occurred in ancient times or whether God just had fun creating stuff. All it says is that a break happened when Lucifer went bad and God started again. That He would start over with similar creatures with a similar environment would seem to be a no-brainer.
I didn't mention science class once. My point is that even in the non-science courses where cultures are studied and religious aspects are talked about, Christianity is rarely studied, thus failing the neutral test.
The supreme court does not always rule in a way that lines up with what the framers of the Constitution intended. A perfect recent example would be the twisted logic of the majority opinion for the Affordable Care Act lawsuit.
The US Constitution - as amended - just prevents requiring you to belong to a particular religion to hold elected office.
It doesn't prevent teaching about religions. In practice, the education system doesn't prevent this either in most cases. You only face resistance if you teach about the predominant religion. You can teach about Greek and Roman mythology, American Indian beliefs, Mayan beliefs, Inca beliefs, Egyptian beliefs, and certainly Muslim, Hindu, or other far Eastern beliefs of the modern age. You can talk some about Mormons and their trek west. Just label it cultural diversity training or lump it in with geography and you're golden. Just don't teach about Christianity or someone will get you fired.
That's an exaggeration - but not a very big one.
While that is technically true, I'm pretty sure that several recent presidents have declared and fought wars that were never formally declared by Congress. Oh Congress approved the spending after the wars started and some committees may have given tacit approval before hand, but the constitutional process was never carried out before we joined the fights. The executive branch caused a huge pile of money to be spent. It is the one major item that has broken the budget.
I'd suspect that the average age of an employee at Google or most tech companies is so low compared to the rest of the business world that they expect to rarely pay out anything. If most of their workforce were expected to stick around till retirement age and it would actually cost them significant bucks due to natural causes versus accidental causes, I doubt they would be offering this benefit.
Just my cynical 2c worth
This was in the before time, before the Internet and e-trading, when you called your broker and talked to him or her to place an order. It was even before they graduated to phone systems where you could do "automated" entries of orders using your telephone handset. Not quite back to sticks and stones, but close.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that part about taking money away from every stockholder, and all. Back in the old days before high frequency trading was in vogue, you would place a stock trade with your broker. Depending on the brokerage firm, it was amazing how many trades that were made claimed to be near the low of the day if you were selling or near the high of the day if you were buying. Of course proving anything was impossible, but the people actually doing the trading were still making a killing.
Now, when you place a stock order you will in most cases in normal markets get it filled at the price that was being quoted when you hit the sell or buy, even if the stock has moved several dollars per share over the course of the day. This is largely due to HFT. Yes, they are making fractions of a cent each share traded and are making lots of money. But they are also providing the opposite side of trades that you want to make at a price near what is being quoted, That lets you, as an individual investor, get the price you have considered to be fair for the security.
Yes, I know all about limit orders and other options to try to control the price you pay or receive and that is always an option, but HFT - when working correctly - has largely eliminated the need for them.
All software trading algorithms are dangerous and can easily cause massive problems when they play against each other or feed on each other. I don't necessarily like them and wouldn't mind them going away. But to say they provide nothing of value is not true -even for a common stock trader who only does a few trades every few months.
Mr. Templeton was a Presbyterian and a Christian who was also interested in other religions. He became extremely wealthy by stock market investment. He set up the foundation to explore religious topics. His foundation - His choice as to what its goals are for funding research.
The problem is not getting rid of the current group of politicians.
The problem is finding a different set of politicians who value the constitution and are willing to go against the entrenched bureaucracy to write laws that tear down the apparatus that has been built up and follow through to make sure that it stays torn down. This is the challenge. Neither of the major parties have a sufficient number of these individuals in them although there are a few. Nobody wants to take a chance on a third party such as the Constitution Party, which might actually accomplish this because "they can't win".
If you really find a solution, please let everyone know.
I realize that that is true. I wish that it could still be done for a reasonable price. Sadly, there are few low priced public colleges around. A few community colleges can still be said to be reasonably priced and should probably be used to serve this purpose. This is particularly true if you can live at home and reduce your costs further. But most universities are very expensive for most people. I suspect that in future years college will become even more expensive.
I think the latest statistics on debt for education in the US was around 1 trillion dollars. Granted it wouldn't be so big a number if it were adjusted for inflation. Yet it is still a massive number and a real drain on many individuals.
As far as why they were created, I suppose that depends on how far back you go in history.
I'd agree with your comments in general. CS happens to be a discipline where you can learn on the job or in a trade school environment. People who can do the work are favored over those who have the courses for entry level positions. I would suggest that in any large company, those who have the degree are generally promoted to higher organizational positions over those who can do the work. The degree does indicate a certain level of discipline and follow through.
But there are many degrees you can get at college that have no on-the-job or trade school equivalent. This would certainly include engineering, sciences, and math. Others provide the basics for those going on to higher degrees in medicine or law. There are also degrees or chosen professions where a gunshot approach with a narrow focus in a few courses is best. You're striving to be well rounded. These might include diplomatic or political careers. The people planning for a career in politics generally realize this and don't complain about the breadth requirements.
I think that your Bio department head is wrong though. If a person wants to excel in biology, that person should be able to do that with a view to getting a job in the field. Only the very, very rich can afford to go to college with no view to an eventual job. To try to imply that college should not be preparing the vast majority of students to work in a particular field is myopic. Long gone are the days of well rounded college students going off to government posts or to run a business while everyone else went to trade school to learn a craft. I think she's about a century behind the times.
I do agree that most courses in the specialized fields aren't meant to equate directly to jobs, but they do provide background knowledge that anyone hiring for a position expects the student to have. In this sense, while not job training, they are definitely job preparation. The more courses you have to take to make you well rounded, the less time you have to be adequately prepared. If I was an employer, I'd be much more interested in whether my new chemist could balance equations than whether the individual had gotten an A in "Studies of the American Cinema in the 21st century". That these types of courses are even available and taught for credit and to fulfill somebody's graduation requirements I think makes my point that universities are broken today.
This is why I suggested that if they didn't know what they wanted to do, they take some time and find out first before investing the money in a degree they could not use or did not enjoy. Realistically, if they focused more on their major, they might find it easier to get that job in the first place and wouldn't be picking up whatever job they could find.
Clearly, part of that process is knowing what the industry demand is. I think that there is a major failure on the part of high school guidance departments in this regard.
While I agree concerning the mastery of English or your primary native language and English for any Engineering or CS curriculum, this instruction really should be taken care of during high school. At the college I attended, you wrote an essay during freshman orientation. If it was deemed sufficiently well written, you got to skip the English course. All engineering and CS courses required basic physics, chemistry, organic chemistry for dummies, and their associated labs along with many math courses as they should. It was particularly gratifying to get an A in Chem Lab with all the psychotic pre-meds around. Even 30 years ago, we had to take an upper level CS course where we did a complete project in a team environment.
I don't have problems with courses that are going to be useful for your major, even if in other university divisions. I certainly think you should have time in your schedule to explore any other field you wanted. I chose courses from the classical studies department covering Egypt and Greece, and also took a course on the history of nuclear energy and a few others. The breadth should rarely be required to graduate though.
You shouldn't have to study Shakespeare to get a physics degree.
That is exactly the problem with our university system in the U.S. and evidently other countries as well. I went through two B.S. degree programs in four years. The combined program that did that only required 18 hours of miscellaneous garbage - the equivalent of six courses. One of the courses had to be economics and one had to be business law. That left four non-core courses in the entire combined program. There were still many courses in math and science, but we were spared the bulk of the absolute garbage that most schools require.
If you want to study a foreign language or two, that is what you should be able to concentrate in along with history of that part of the world. If you want to study math, you should be able to study math. If you want to go into science or medicine you should be able to concentrate in those fields without having to everything else just to keep the professors employed. If you want to study engineering, that is where you should be able to concentrate. If you don't know what you want to study you should wait to go to college until you know and not waste everyone's time dabbling here and there in some broad based curriculum
I know that it would be hard to do 100% engineering or 100% science courses, but the breadth required in many schools is absurd. You've got the rest of your life to read classics, study history, and attend the gym to work out. There's no reason to pay college tuition rates to do that. . You won't regret the college loans if you haven't had to subsidize a bunch of teachers who instruct in courses which have no bearing on your life or career.
It actually does generate revenue. By reducing the tax rate, capital assets are sold - private companies, stock, tangible items - to take advantage of the lower tax bite. Without the lower tax bite, they are retained - hoping for a lower tax rate at some point in the future and thus a better return on the original investment. I'll agree that at some point with enough years of low tax rates, much of this selling has been done. However dropping tax rates does produce more income for the government for at least a certain period of time even at the lower rates.
Addressing entitlements and military spending (wars fought to no purpose) must indeed be addressed for the near and long term health of the country.
But realistically, the tax base needs to be drastically broadened and deductions reduced. Until the federal tax bite starts biting everybody, there will continue to be too many people who keep voting the same old people into office to spend money the same way the always have. Making the federal tax start biting everyone is the only way to change the way "business" is done in Washington. Taking more from the rich won't fix the long term problems the country has. They don't have that kind of money.
You may be completely correct about the pay rates being offered. I think it is more likely that people just want nothing to do with uranium mining and he has real limits on what he can pay based on the going price for delivered product. This isn't a government company but I don't know the name of the company he works for either.
That doesn't change the problem that most who are applying can't pass drug screens or don't have reasonably clean driving records. Actually in our part of the country, alcohol is a bigger problem than drug use, but they can't test for that except what may show through in a driving record. The extraction industries are very dangerous and you can't do them impaired or you'll lose a body part or your life. Our on the job injury rates are much higher than the rest of the nation.
But my comment on where the jobs are is equally valid. Few people want to move to states where the economy is tied to a small number of industries and where there aren't many other people around. We aren't quite as bad as the great lakes area for winters as they tend to be drier, but they are frequently cold with high winds along all the high plains. Most don't like the small number of colleges - none of which are well known - and we don't either, but at least they are funded and don't have the problem of say - California. People think they'll miss wide varieties of restaurants and things to do - and they will. The days of just two movie screens in town is long past, but it was true for a very long time. Small town life simply isn't for everybody, especially when there are no really large towns anywhere near and driving to one is multi-day trip if you do anything of substance while you're there. If I hadn't been born here, I'd probably feel the same way.
It's much safer to stay in a big town where there are likely to be many jobs available when the economy improves than to move to the boonies where if the price of oil crashes or the government regulates the coal industry to oblivion there are few other options that pay as well. I'd possibly have made a lot more money working for one of the big companies I had offers from than coming back home to work for a small private engineering firm. But the cost of living has been much lower here than in most of the places they were at, and I've had steady work at the same firm for 30 years through boom and bust and the firm is still growing.
In the oil field, mining, and other extraction industries, you generally have to drive a company vehicle in order to get to the actual work site on a daily basis. DUIs mean you may not be able to be insured for the company vehicle so can't be sent out to do something on your own.
1. I'm not the employer in question - I don't even live in ND - I just used it as an example because we do a lot of work for oil companies up there. 2. It actually doesn't matter to me at all - I agree with you. 3. The major oil companies have huge liability exposures for environmental damage, loss of life, injury, and the rest. The coal mining companies and uranium mining companies (who the person with the jobs in question worked for) are in a similar situation. Their insurance carriers force them to limit their liabilities to the greatest extent possible, so what you or I think doesn't matter a bit. The safety training has gone through the roof for us to be allowed on site at all. All the subcontractors have to fulfill all the requirements the major oil/mining company employees do, so we have the same hiring requirements.
Most of the major mining operations and oil operations do include excellent benefits, even for manual labor. My high school daughter is working at a day care part time this summer and making $8/hr - although without benefits - and they were happy to get her and would hire more if they could. They're trying to get her to work after school during the school year. She applied at I think three places the last week before school let out and she was offered a job as soon as she could pass the public health TB test with the day care. That isn't a great wage by any means and it is part time, but she's not even out of high school either.
The biggest problem people have today aren't reflected in the statistics. The housing market is not liquid or they are underwater on their mortgage so they can't easily move to where the jobs are. Moving costs real money. So the distribution is far from even. Likewise, there has been a big shift in what it takes to do a job and older folks aren't easily retrained to do work that is needed today.
We're in the process of building a new building to hold our new hires and have hired I think three engineers and several programmers this last year. I don't know about the rest of the state - I know there are places that are hurting - but our neck of the woods has been fortunate this recession. You just have to not mind the 40 MPH winds when the temp is below 0.
Check the employment statistics for the major oil, coal, and uranium producing states along with the state job listings. ND's site under oil field lists general requirements and drug free / clean driving record is among the top general requirements by industry.
Sorry your comment is being misinterpreted. Tort reform is definitely needed and the lawyers in Congress ducked their responsibility to fix this with the health care package. It's needed whether you take a pay cut or not.
Just reducing the risk of malpractice lawsuits would incrementally (not drastically) reduce the cost of health care brought on by cover my liability type tests.
Unfortunately, Congress didn't have any business messing with the medical industry at all. There isn't any constitutional basis for it.
Really, the states should band together and do their own united single payer system and roll the Federal Medicare and VA programs all into it. Since most health care providers already deal with Medicare the interface would be the same. Come up with one or two insurance plans and let everyone choose one - no family plans - all individual. Make one a simple one that covers all major medical type expenses that aren't routine and perhaps provides coverage for eventual end of life care - nursing home etc - the things that are most likely to bankrupt a normal family today. Make another that is much more broad based - preventive tests, well baby care, dental, eye, and everything included in the base policy. Let people switch every time they get a decade older if they want so people can't just switch when it is convenient.
Include everyone. Get rid of all of the bad things insurance companies do that the existing act fixed. Manage it by a non-profit organization supervised by randomly selected members from insurance oversight boards among the 50 states. Fairly value the assets backing the private insurance companies medical divisions and buy them out completely and roll them into the NPO at a fair price. Likewise let the federal government chip in for existing Medicare/VA people.
Bill everyone a uniform price based on charges actually accrued by the country in the previous year and the best estimate of costs for the next n years on average. Adjust yearly with say 3 months warning so people would now how to budget.
You'd be covered anyplace in the US. With just 2 policies at most, the doctors would know what they could and could not do. The patients would be permitted to pay for extra services themselves if they wanted. It's not perfect - there would be some areas of the country where care is expensive (high cost cities or rural areas with load volume) that would end up being subsidized by the rest, but it's better than the mess we have now.
In our Sunday School class welfare and the associated topics came up - why don't these people get a job was the comment of a retired gentleman. An employer said he had roughly 50 or 60 job openings for people who could do manual labor type work or higher openings that they can't fill. The reason - the people who apply can't pass drug screens or have too many DUIs on their driving record.
Yes - everyone would like to start out as a CEO making huge wages. Yes - many have gone to college an got an Arts and Crafts degree for an inflated price instead of taking something hard that might actually have a job waiting for them and have huge loans to pay off due to that. Yes, even for those who have engineering or science/medical degrees, there are many companies that aren't hiring in the US but are outsourcing engineering work and knowledge overseas.
But there are jobs out there - at least in the mining industries and petroleum industries and those fields and towns that service them. In some of the booming oil field towns in ND, even food service is paying really well compared to the rest of the country because everyone who can is out working in the oil field. Whether this will keep up with Europe crashing is anyone's guess. The trouble is, you can't live on the coasts to do them and they are real work. You also have to live in small towns without much culture or big name stores around. Just picking up and moving entails real risk because once you're there you can't just go to a nearby town for a different job - there are no nearby towns. Rents are through the roof and housing is completely unavailable in some cases. Winters can be brutal. But there is work out there and the companies aren't going to go under any time soon.
Which would require multiple utility corridors all of which would need to be maintained, twice as many "unsightly" poles and twice the cost of running the service in the first place - read higher lot prices, twice the maintenance work to keep the trees cut back, twice as many unhappy homeowners as their trees that they planted to close to the right of way are cut back - "I didn't know it would grow that high!", lots of isolation and distribution stations where even more things could go wrong, and you'd still be at the same risk when a big storm hit.
If you don't like the situation, buy a big diesel generator and wire it in. Then have a big storage tank of diesel close by.
While I agree with most of your points, the new KDE start menu (at least in its lancelot incarnation) lets you resize the start menu to whatever size your are comfortable with.
It depends a great deal on where you live and how good the school system is there, how many kids you have, whether you are a good teacher across all subjects, whether you are willing to vanquish your pride and hire a tutor where you aren't, and equally important - whether your kids can learn from you. My kids go to public school. My wife went through a pre-school curriculum with each, but when they reached school age she gladly turned them over to the school system which is very good here. We both help them when they have problems even now.
We know some kids that are home schooled and my daughter found out one of them was going to be taking a math course at the college because it was beyond their parents. My daughter was impressed till she found out she'd learned the course material the high school kid would be taking in 5th grade. My daughter is taking pre-calculus this year - IB math next hear - and will take calculus as a senior. She enjoyed chemistry this year too.
You get out of public school what you put into it. If you put in a good effort, you are likely to go much farther across all subjects than a home schooled child will. That isn't to say a home schooled child might not beat a public school child in certain subjects if the parents were well versed in them, but overall, they will lose. That is particularly true if you have multiple kids - there just aren't enough hours in the day to adequately prepare all of them and cover multiple grades adequately.
Yes, some kids do very well as home schooled kids. They may have gone even farther in a good public school system.
Yes, the public school system wastes too much time testing everyone - but I'd counter that home schooled kids aren't tested enough to compare how they are doing against their peers. It is often too late when parents realize there are problems.
If the child in the main post has trouble reading, start there. Stop worrying about chemistry - it's the least of your worries at 10 years of age - public schooled or not. Check their eyes to make sure they can see clearly (print out an eye chart from the internet and use it if you can't get them to an eye doctor). Make sure they can properly track words on a page - have them watch your finger as you move it toward their nose and make sure both eyes track and don't pop out. Then move your finger left to right and make sure they track. It's a simple test that everyone should do with their kids - don't rely on your eye doctor to catch it (been there done that).
Read your property tax notice a little closer - or if you rent ask to see your landlords property tax notice. The amount that goes to public education is not small.