Speaking of corporations, what the heck is up with the summary: "how universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America"??
Hmm... the MOST authoritarian institutions in America. A little hyperbole? I suppose it depends on how you define "institution." If you mean "institution" as in "institute" which often implies a research organization, the claim is probably trivially true, since universities are probably the most common independent research organizations in America.
But that's a dumb reading. So if we interpret "institution" in the broader sense of an organization created for a particular purpose, how about... I don't know... the TSA, the military? They aren't "authoritarian" at all... [\sarcasm]
Or, for that matter, most corporations that have at-will employees. How many places could you keep your job if you acted in your workplace like many college students act on college campuses?
The article identifies a real issue, but colleges are now the MOST authoritarian organizations in the U.S.? Hardly.
Grouped by author, ordered chronologically by date of author's first major work.
Only way to go.
It's the "only way to go" if you tend to have only books by single authors, and most of those authors have been dead for centuries.
What about?
collections by more than one author (books of poems, collections of short stories, etc.)
collections of essays (very common among academics)
reference books (even if they have a primary author, it's usually not very relevant)
sets of books written by different authors
etc., etc., etc.
If I followed this system, probably 10% of my library couldn't even be catalogued, and at least half of it would be catalogued in a way that would NEVER be helpful (and impossible to remember).
I can only imagine this system would be useful for a collection of old "classic" works, or perhaps in a collection that was focused on one field or genre where chronology may be helpful. For anyone who owns a reasonable amount of reference works, non-fiction works (not pop non-fiction), academic works, etc., this system may not be practical.
I absolutely agree with you. On the other hand, I've encountered lots of crazy people (including here in Slashdot) who seem to terrified that an unseen hoard of terrorists are eager to jump on planes and blow them up if we all don't take off our shoes and belts, take the special baggie out of our luggage with our mini-shampoo in it, and do "the special pose" for the new scanners. I've even had serious people here -- not trolls -- tell me that we need to be worried about terrorists shooting lasers at planes from the ground at airports. (I wish I were kidding.)
The government and media has done a great job of convincing people that this invisible hoard exists. And with all that disinformation, any poll is going to be biased in weird ways away from a rational response. In that light, it would not surprise me that the GP's assertion was true and that a large number of Americans are afraid enough to be in favor of the TSA overall.
Re:many people learn best hands on not in classroo
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many people also learn best hands on not in a pure classroom or a classroom with loads of theory and very little hands on.
True but then university is not really designed for these people. If you want to learn hands-on skills then there are vocational training colleges which will do this far better than a university and which have better connections with the industries that you will likely end up working in.
I would say that most jobs are also not demanding proper skills from university graduates. Universities should not actually be seen as "theoretical" training exercises for a career. The vast majority of professions would be better learned "on the job" or perhaps in a hybrid apprenticeship with some (probably minor) academic component.
The problem isn't just that too many people are going to universities and thinking of them as a way to get a career -- it's also that too many businesses have come to think that a 4-year degree is actually useful preparation for a job. In reality, many universities are little more than screening systems -- providing a credential that says, "yeah, I can get a minimal number of tasks done and might know a little useless information that could relate to a job in field X." Then the corporation spends a few years while that person figures out field X actually functions in the real world and acquires the skills actually necessary to perform the job.
The whole system would be more efficient if most companies just hired people out of high school and had competitive apprenticeship programs (with some minor theoretical elements perhaps required as outside classwork as necessary). Outside of truly "academic" disciplines (liberal arts, abstract math, advanced research), I can think of very few jobs which really need years of theoretical training courses.
The problem these days is that neither employees nor employers feel any loyalty toward each other, so a company wouldn't want to take a risk training high-school grads only to have them jump ship after they actually know what they are doing, or, worse, turn out to be a dead-beat failures. On the other hand, that's exactly the reason why it's become so hard for people straight out of college to land entry-level positions -- companies know that college education is mostly useless in terms of real-world skills, and they don't want to try to invest in someone for a few years teaching them how to actually do stuff without knowing their reliability or how committed they are to the field. In a competitive market, it's easier just to throw out any resume without at least a couple years of experience.
this, and the many other articles I've been reading lately that decry the death of the university, completely ignores the fact that many people learn best when they have the routine of going to a physical classroom and being in a seminar-style setting where there is an instructor and other students to ask questions and round out one's understanding of a topic.
And not just what goes on in the classroom. In college, I learned just as much through conversations with other students who were thinking about all sorts of things (sometimes for classes, sometimes not) as I did in class. Not necessarily "learned" in the sense of acquiring specific facts or knowledge, but more about how to think and explore ideas, how to learn, how to interact socially and intellectual with others, etc.
While some of this can be replicated through electronic communication, sometimes the greatest learning comes in a (possibly drunken) conversation at 2am in the dormitory lounge about how relativity "really" works or even deep philosophical discussions about the nature of life or ethics or whatever.
If I heard these discussions replayed now, most of these conversations would probably sound stupid or ridiculous, but most people probably gain a lot by feeling their way through "bigger ideas" among peers... which can add significantly to intellectual development.
I agree with most of what you say, and I think it's a good summary of a lot of problems in academia. To add a few things:
You see, academia is not the dreamworld that professors want you to think it is.
I don't know any professor who claims that. Even those who were tenured at small colleges before the publish-or-perish escalation of the past few decades and otherwise live a charmed life are generally stuck in the mire of new administrative bureaucracy (or else have retired to get away from it).
In reality, academia has been corrupted by corporations, who have found that they can offload job training onto universities and thus save money.
I can't imagine it saves corporations a lot of money on job training. For example, if we had the system, I bet most engineers could skip college, go directly into an apprenticeship on the job with actual engineers, and be competent in their job within half the time of what it takes in a college degree. As it is now, we have young people who waste four years in school and spend 1-3 years on the job figuring out how the hell things work in the real world. They could have just started out spending those 1-3 years in the real world. If employers really wanted to outsource training, they should fund apprenticeship programs that employ people upfront while they take a few courses on the side to fill in "academic" gaps in knowledge which they wouldn't pick up naturally on the job (advanced math, etc.).
(And yes, I know about summer internships or even semester internships for advanced undergrads or masters students -- those still presume that the time spent in college is actually spent efficiently learning useful stuff.)
If anything, corporations depend on colleges mainly for their ability to screen entry-level candidates. Someone with a 4-year degree is presumed to be committed enough that you might take a chance hiring that person and waiting 1-3 years until they have a clue about what they're supposed to do. If you just hired a random high school grad, you'd have to have more rigorous screening and perhaps competition for apprenticeship spots.
Regardless, that system isn't even working that well right now, since it's been so hard for people with fresh college degrees to find an entry-level position. Why? Because college is effectively useless for training, so corporations want someone who has actually had practical experience, and there are enough people out of work right now that companies can be selective.
Universities cannot be too demanding when it comes to academics, because the vast majority of students are not looking for rigorous academic education, they are just looking for their ticket to a "good job" i.e. a high-paying job.
Well, the problem is that tuition costs have skyrocketed so much that people won't enroll if they don't expect that they will graduate and be able to make more money to pay off that cost. When a student or parent is paying $50,000 per year at an elite school, they come to expect that the student will get good grades and get a good job (or get into a good professional school to make even more money).
Stop hiring useless administration and stop the "arms race" for new "student life" crap (state-of-the-art dorms, that new climbing gym, continuous renovations to almost all facilities), and tuition might start to settle down a bit... which might allow schools to actually feel okay failing people who pay the full tuition costs just to be there... which would allow standards to be raised again.
Also, there's this ridiculous idea in our culture that everyone should go to college, presumably to get a higher-paying job. Not everyone should go to college, relatively few jobs should actually require a college degree... then the people who were actually in college could be held to higher standards.
College is broken because of bureaucracy, publish-or-perish, and the fact th
Re:To bad that non college education does not resp
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As an English teacher, I applaud your effort to chastise the GP for his inability to spell common homonyms, but your inability to use commas correctly - I found disconcerting.
Good lord. You're an English teacher? Try learning to write a sentence that flows well. How about: "As an English teacher, I applaud your effort to chastise the GP for his inability to spell common homonyms, but I found your inability to use commas correctly [to be] disconcerting" or simply "... but your inability to use commas correctly is disconcerting."
Abrupt unnecessary dashes often signal an inability to connect subclauses efficiently.
Not to mention, the incorrect use of the semicolon.
Not to mention the incorrect comma in the middle of a sentence fragment. (Hint: If your first sentence didn't sound like a run-on, you should have joined this fragment to the previous clause.)
I really can't stand pedants who make errors while correcting pedants who make errors.
By the way, the interesting thing about the error here is that it is a "prescription" involving a public punishment for a woman, which is fairly close to the original ancient Latin meaning of "proscribe," although in that case, the person would be "proscribed," not the punishment.
I originally thought the GP was making a pun, which is the only reason I ended up reading the arguments.
When I see "Proscribe", I see the prefix "Pro", (antonym of "Con") meaning "In favor of / supporting".
That's not the most common meaning of "pro," at least from an etymological standpoint. "Pro" as a prefix more commonly means "before" (prohibit - literally "before having," progenitor - an ancestor before the immediate family) and by extension "in front of/forward/outward" (promise - to send forth [an expectation], prospect - looking forward, produce - lead forth, pronunciation - send a message outward, propagation - fasten/extend/reproduce outward) or sometimes "in place of/on behalf of" (pronoun, pro se).
I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that our modern "pro" as meaning "for" something is an extension of that last meaning -- "in place of/on behalf of." Someone who speaks about the "pros" is arguing on behalf of something. The meaning of "pro" as "in favor of" is a later extension of meanings, so I would say if you're thinking etymologically, you probably shouldn't start with that as the assumed meaning in an unfamiliar word.
(Nevermind that 'conscribe' is not a word, or at least not a proper word.)
Actually "conscribe" is a word, though these days it tends only to be an unusual variant of "conscript."
So, "proscribe" means "Written in support of." (Like with an editorial, citing a proposed course of action; a proscribed action.)
Well, using the more common meanings of the prefix "pro" mentioned above, "proscribe" should mean "to write outward," which is actually the meaning -- someone who was "proscribed" in the Roman republic was a person whose name was "published forth" and singled out for punishment. Hence, it came to mean the same thing for things -- to prohibit or to outlaw.
Etymologically, "proscribe" is very much the same as "program" (the latter from Greek rather than Latin roots for writing) -- both originally meant a public notice of something, a "writing forth" to the populace at large.
A democracy cannot function without rational politicians and citizens.... The first thing I would want in a politician is that they are rational.
Obviously a lot of your fellow citizens don't agree with you, or else they have a different definition of "rationality."
The fundamental problem lies the morons who vote wackos into office in the first place. Which might lead to questioning of the assumption of a functional democracy -- is that even a rational possibility? Unless we're going to require a logic test before certifying anyone's ability to vote, the most rational people in a society will always be subject to the tyranny of the less rational majority.
That's actually the definition of a functional democracy. Now, if you want a representative republic with all sorts of checks against the irrational masses, as the Founders started with, maybe you could start working toward rationality in politics.
Like all sciences they are inexact, with a margin for error; but the chances of the poll averages being wrong in this case were incredibly small.
Well, if we were talking about raw poll numbers with a calculated margin for error, you would probably be right.
The question about Silver's methodology (if there is one) is that he has a rather complicated weighting and averaging system that combines stats from a whole history of polls, and how it works is not entirely transparent.
I'm not criticizing Silver or saying he's wrong, but the aggregate numbers he was quoting were not simple averages of polls. Therefore, it's a lot more complicated to evaluate whether his chances of "being wrong in this case were incredibly small."
Have you considered obtaining a teaching "certificate" (not necessarily a teaching degree) and teaching kids how to code? Consult your local school system to see if your skills and experience can be used.
I wish we lived in a world where this would be a good option for an older person with a lot of experience.
Yes, you might be able to get a job at a community college and get paid $1000 or $2000 per class per semester for a lot of prep, grading, etc. If you're smart enough to automate a lot of the grading, it might be worthwhile after the first iteration or two of the class, but the first time teaching will probably require you to be working for minimum wage in terms of your salary. And you won't be able to make a living unless you cobble together an insane teaching load, probably at multiple community colleges.
To go into public schools, you'll probably need a teaching credential, and I have some sad news about that too. About a decade ago, I went through a certification program (which didn't require a further degree) to teach math at the high school level. There was a teaching shortage in the state and area I lived in math and science.
There were a lot of people in the math program, the vast majority of them older people (mostly male) with a lot of practical experience in math -- former engineers, finance people, some computer science people, etc. I would have hired most of them in a heartbeat to teach.
But most of them had a terrible time finding a job, even in districts I know that had multiple openings... even schools in crisis were hesitant to hire a 60-year-old man who actually LIVED math if they had some idiot straight out of college, especially if that idiot had a proper "teaching degree." Administrators don't want to have to keep hiring people, which disadvantages older folks who might retire soon, and they often tend to like younger folks whom they think might "relate" to students better.
So, I really wish we had a culture that would value this person's labor as a teacher, since his experience is probably incredibly useful. But unless he's willing to work for nothing or is lucky enough to get a break from an administrator, this may not be a viable option.
And...WHY is this bad exactly? I've had friends and relatives go through arbitration and frankly the corps ended up settling for MORE than they asked for and was QUICKER than going to court.
Arbitration can be great in many cases, as you point out.
The most important thing that is bad about arbitration is when things get hidden in private arbitration proceedings that should have been brought in a public class-action lawsuit.
Extreme example: someone gets severely injured or even killed because of the action of some corporation (bad product design, improper service, whatever). There doesn't seem to be any criminal intent or liability, so the matter doesn't make headlines and there's no public accountability for the corporation.
A lawsuit could be filed for damages, cost for treating injuries, or wrongful death. A public trial would put all the information about this case on public record, as well as potentially bringing attention to the issue.
Forced private arbitration often can lead to a quicker settlement instead, and companies are often very happy to pay up and get rid of the "problem."
If this is a single case of the issue, no big deal. But what if dozens or hundreds or thousands of people have been injured by the same problem? Maybe only a fraction of them even come forward to try to force arbitration and get a settlement. No public records are kept of information about the company, so every person is on their own in trying to prove an issue in arbitration.
In such a case, it might be cheaper for the company to keep paying off a few people who actually manage to get to arbitration and manage to prove something, rather than to fix the problem.
On the other hand, lawsuits and particularly trials leave a public record. If the first lawsuit doesn't succeed, the second or third might, by drawing on evidence dug up in previous actions. People might begin to see patterns and even lead to a class-action suit. In any case, with a pervasive problem where many individuals have been injured, there's a better chance of forcing the company to change when there's at least the option of a lawsuit and trial.
There should be a news source for people who really don't care about Honey Boo-Boo. Usually, that's a high-quality newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times.
Hmm... except my perception of the Journal and the Times is that they too often are pretty loaded with crap. Just about anything that pretends to be "news" is. Take a look at an issue from the NYT from 10 years ago. Chances are that 85% of that "important stuff" on the first couple pages seems completely irrelevant now, and most of the remaining 15% is devoted to ongoing situations (wars, etc.) where daily updates aren't really helpful to most people. The in-depth articles that make up less than 5% of these papers on a given day are sometimes exceptions.
I wouldn't mind if we lost all the "news" that was contentless, yellow or salacious (gossip). The perception is that many more people "want" that news than not.
There's a reason why the supermarkets and other stores stock tabloids near check-out and not many issues of the New York Times -- most people want that crap. I don't want it, and you don't want it, but we're probably in the 2% of the population who doesn't.
more people are willing to pay for real news than for the Honey Boo-Boo, or rather, that people who like Honey Boo-Boo "news" aren't willing to pay for it.
I sincerely doubt that "more people" would be willing to pay for real news. I think that a small percentage of people are willing to pay for quality, which is true of any kind of item. But these are the people who already subscribe to a copy of the NYT or WSJ at home or at the office, even if they live far away from New York. The even smaller number of people who care about quality writing and less about frivilous news subscribe to weekly to monthly magazines (The Atlantic, New Yorker, various Reviews, etc.) that cover real issues in-depth, rather than the cursory treatment you get in a daily.
These are the people keeping those few quality news sources afloat. The rest of the populace will be happy with a Twitter headline of 140 characters or fewer, and they don't really want to pay for anything more... except maybe an occasional rag about "Honey Boo-Boo" at the check-out counter.
Would you agree that if someone believed that the Easter Bunny was an actual creature, who hopped around all over the world on Easter, hiding eggs in his yard; that he might be considered delusional?
This has absolutely nothing to do with my post. I was merely commenting on the fact that Dawkins thinks he's been a relatively nice guy and wonders why people feel he is aggressive. I pointed out that calling someone "delusional" might sound a little more aggressive than simply remarking that they are ignorant of the details of some scientific field (e.g., evolution).
I'm mostly on the side of Dawkins. I think many religious people can be a little crazy. But I think a lot of people can be a little crazy in their beliefs. Some and perhaps many of them could be classified as delusional.
But so what? That isn't what I was commenting on -- I was just trying to clarify that Dawkins may not realize how he comes across, which I think is a problem if he's actually trying to have a productive conversation.
reacting negatively to a book because of a title, rather than the content... is borderline retarded.
I agree. But, as I said again, it's not just the title. It's a general attitude thing of Dawkins, which I think has clearly become a little more aggressive in recent years.
I will not be able to take a person like that seriously, as it's obvious their head is somewhere, anywhere, except on topic.
Whether you like it or not, a title says a lot about a book. That's why publishers often fight with authors to make the title into something they think is more "marketable." As someone who has actually published a number of things, I can say that these conversations are very difficult -- because, like it or not, the title is actually a first impression. Like many things in life (whether first dates, interviews, whatever), a first impression sets the tone, and if you begin in a negative manner, you'll be fighting an uphill battle against that perception.
Dawkins is smart enough to know what his title implied and whom it would offend, as well as the reasons why publishers (and authors) fight so hard over these things -- they matter A LOT. Say all you want, but if Dawkins actually "hated" the title and thought it misrepresented his views, he did himself an incredible disservice by publishing it under that title.
Or, more likely, I bet Dawkins actually didn't protest too much against the title -- he may not have thought it was best, but he didn't object... and that tells us something about his attitude toward religion. So, the "borderline retarded" people who pay attention to the title probably are onto something in their judgments....
"Delusional" is the correct term for anti-Bayesian beliefs, and religious beliefs are by definition anti-Bayesian, because they are founded on faith, which is a belief that is by definition impervious to evidence.
While I'm mostly on the side of Dawkins in this debate, I don't think you're being fair. In particular, you're defining "religion" and "faith" in a way that allows you to win your argument.
Believing something is plausible based on evidence, and being willing to update that belief in the face of new evidence according to Bayes' rule, is not faith. Faith is specifically a profound commitment to ignore all evidence that would under the ordinary application of Bayes' rule lead to a decreased plausibility for the belief in question.
Okay, what about Deism? Say that someone "believes" that some Creator made the universe -- caused the Big Bang to occur or whatever -- and basically "set the gears" in motion, but that person does not "believe" that the Creator has any influence or takes any current action in the present universe.
Such a "belief" may be unprovable according to current empirical methods, but it can neither be proved true nor false. There is no Bayesian evidence to enter into the question. Is this person "delusional" for "believing" in something that can neither be proven true nor false? It may seem like a ridiculous suggestion to you, but declaring such a religion to be "delusional" has no foundation, because you have no evidence to disprove it.
Many religious beliefs are like this, particularly ones that deal with past events. You are correct that some people hold fast to beliefs even in the face of new evidence that contradicts them, but this is hardly only true of religious zealots. Even scientists have often been known to hold on to pet theories long after an objective evaluation of new data should have led them to give up their "beliefs." This is a human trait, and while some religious folks may be more irrational and even delusional about this than others, I'm not going to make such an accusation at all possible religions or all possible beliefs.
Say "thank you" to his publishers for being sensationalist marketing pricks that they are. He hated that title.
I had heard that. But if he really hated it, he should have fought against it, and if the publishers didn't agree, he should have refused to publish or taken it elsewhere. He was previously a best-selling author; he had some clout. Also, with his reputation, I'm pretty sure he could have gotten it published elsewhere under a title conforming closer to his wishes.
Many people I've talked to have reacted negatively to the book just because of the title. Dawkins clearly should have recognized that would be the case. If he truly believes in the stuff he's saying now about not being offensive or aggressive, he should never have allowed the book to come out under that title.
Regardless, Dawkins has become more aggressive about such issues in recent years. It's not just the title.
He made a pretty good point there. There's only solution I've found to the problem of people taking your disagreement as an insult, and that is to pose every concern as a question for more detail.
I absolutely agree, though I think Dawkins underestimates his aggressiveness. From the summary:
And I think that accounts for part of what you've picked up about my apparent image of being aggressive and offensive. I'm just telling it clearly.
Dawkins used to be a little nicer about this stuff. But when you publish a book called The God Delusion, I think you've gone beyond calling people "ignorant" of evolution. You've accused them of being delusional.
Whether or not any particular religious person is "delusional" is not something I want to judge. But I think Dawkins is already starting out with a reputation now for something who is very aggressive in his atheism, and that's a reputation he has cultivated in recent years. With a reputation like that, he has already alienated most people who don't subscribe to his ideas already -- and if he calls them "ignorant" on top of it, it's not going to be productive.
Having worked in middle schools, high schools, with community college transfer students, and then the resulting university undergrads, I have to say: If the general population doesn't HAVE to learn something or if there isn't something someone sufficiently passionate to help them learn something new regardless, they won't bother.
I absolutely agree, as someone who has also been an educator for well over a decade, at various levels from secondary education up through university teaching.
The rest of America's children do not thrive on learning and providing online education will not change that.
I agree. On the other hand, I think we may need to ask why that is so.
My experience with my own kid and with very young kids (up to age 3 or so at least) is that they do actually thrive on learning. But at some point -- whether due to no one challenging them, parental attitudes or actions, attitudes of their peers, attitudes of teachers, curriculum or classroom environments that aren't engaging, society priorities in the U.S. in general, etc. -- the vast majority of kids in the United States begin to view further learning as boring or as a burden or (perhaps most importantly) as something different from "living," in the same way most people refer to "work" as chores they must do, while the rest of what they do is "their life."
The challenge of any type of teaching method is to convince most students that learning is interesting and worthwhile, despite most messages in our society that don't value it. Or to fight the messages that only emphasize it as a direct means to an end (e.g., "if you go to college, you can get a higher salary," rather than "if you go to college, you can understand the world better and have new perspectives that would provide skills and experiences to deal with a greater variety of problems and situations... which could also potentially allow you to go into a wider variety of careers and jobs").
A good teacher can find ways to engage students and revive those innate learning tendencies that every toddler has. A series of bad teachers could shut kids down for good so that they thoroughly believe societal messages that say that school is pointless or only something that "nerds" enjoy.
Electronic resources can do the same -- they can facilitate learning in some circumstances, but in other cases, like a bad teacher, they will be woefully inadequate.
Unless we change our societal attitudes about the value of learning, we'll always be fighting an uphill battle. Real human interaction with actual teachers can be valuable for many kids, if the teachers care and can engage the students. Electronic resources alone would probably not be sufficient unless we can completely change our perspective on learning, and even then, a computer is not going to replace the real-time adaptability of a skilled teacher in targeting the needs of individual students any time soon.
When legality is defined by whatever a mall security guard says then nobody can ever be sure about what is or is not legal.
I can't speak to local statutes, but an owner of private property (e.g., a mall) can have restrictions on what constitutes acceptable behavior on that property. If you violate them, they can ask you to leave; if you don't, they can have the police arrest you for trespass.
If you come into my house and do something I deem inappropriate, I have the right to ask you to leave. If you don't, I can call the police to force you to leave my property. The same thing is true of owners of malls.
Mall security guards are generally assumed to have the authority of the owner to enforce and interpret the owner's policies.
That's why we have laws codified by government and available for everybody to read. Security guards don't get to make it up as they go.
Actually, they can "make it up" to some extent, as long as they have the support of the owner. There is no requirement that their actions even be consistent, as long as they do not violate other laws (physical assault, discrimination against a particular race or something, etc.).
In this case, the security guards clearly had the right to request someone to leave after taking a photo, if they deemed it within the scope of what the owner of the property would consider inappropriate activity (and a mall owner might in fact not want photos or videos of his security personnel showing up on the internet).
That said, they did not have the right to confiscate his property. If there was a posted warning that people who entered the property could not take photographs, they might be able to get the police to take legal action on their behalf, or perhaps sue the person in court to force compliance with the mall policy -- e.g., if the person posted video of the mall on the internet, the mall might be able to sue for damages if it clearly had a policy disallowing photography. It doesn't sound like there was any posted warning in this case, at least from the incomplete account in TFA.
It sounds like it all went wrong when the police arrived, and they forced an arrest and confiscation of property, rather than simply forcing the person leave the premises, as was probably the appropriate legal remedy for the security guards here.
The security guards may have been in error for overstepping their own bounds in their request, but in doing so they did not commit any crime (again, I'm relying on the account in TFA). But the real issue here is the police who assaulted a private citizen (and, it sounds like, authorized the mall security to assist in assaulting him) and confiscated property apparently without cause.
I would not say the "I wonder if the document contains a every day" is a valid approach to the issue.
I think it is ( should be? ) more "hey, doctors learned how to abort fetuses today, what legal impact does that have, is that murder, assault? How do I proceed WRT law in the face of this?"
Abortions have been possible for hundreds of years. Most of anti-abortion laws were actually passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, after the Fourteenth Amendment (and other amendments supposedly containing a "right to privacy") had already been in existence.
Some of those laws were challenged. Nobody, and I mean nobody before the mid-1900s thought there was some sort of Constitutional right to abortion.
Then, one day, justices woke up and decided that parts of the Constitution contained that right, where no one saw it there before. Suddenly, dozens of laws were invalid.
It's not like doctors learned to abort fetuses in the 1960s -- people knew how to do it for centuries. It did become much safer in the 20th century, but the practice itself was not new.
Take some time and actually read the opinion Roe v. Wade. There's a great summary of history written into the opinion going from ancient Roman times through medieval Catholicism and up to the present day in terms of the status of the fetus and abortion.
Or "hey, they just invented email, would emails be covered as "papers and effects" WRT privacy"?
This might be a better example for your argument, since email didn't exist during the drafting of the Constitution. I don't take as much of an issue with this kind of interpretation, since it was obviously not a settled question in the 1700s as email didn't exist then. The ability to pass laws outlawing abortion, on the other hand, was basically settled law until some justices found rights in the Constitution that no one saw there before.
Look, I want to be clear -- I personally think that abortion should be legal. But I don't think there's anything in the Constitution that explicitly implies that, and I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that any legislator at the time of the amendments thought there was any problem with anti-abortion laws.
If we actually passed a Constitutional amendment dealing with rights to privacy and related rights, maybe people wouldn't be so worried today about a Republican president appointing enough justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don't know if abortion is a "fundamental right," but if it's really that important that we don't want future courts tinkering with it, it would have been better not to make up new "interpretations" of existing law that already had clear interpretations.
The ninth amendment invites us to "interpret" rights not written in the constitution.
I never said it didn't. My concern is that unenumerated rights may be "interpreted" out of our judicial system as well. There's a reason why the Bill of Rights actually listed a number of rights -- they were thought to be so important that they should be listed separately.
So, if we actually value a "right to privacy" enough, I think it would be better to pass an Amendment that actually does enumerate it, lest some Supreme Court come along in 20 years and decide it doesn't exist anymore... and that previous "interpretations" were in error.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of corporations, what the heck is up with the summary: "how universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America"??
Hmm... the MOST authoritarian institutions in America. A little hyperbole? I suppose it depends on how you define "institution." If you mean "institution" as in "institute" which often implies a research organization, the claim is probably trivially true, since universities are probably the most common independent research organizations in America.
But that's a dumb reading. So if we interpret "institution" in the broader sense of an organization created for a particular purpose, how about... I don't know... the TSA, the military? They aren't "authoritarian" at all... [\sarcasm]
Or, for that matter, most corporations that have at-will employees. How many places could you keep your job if you acted in your workplace like many college students act on college campuses?
The article identifies a real issue, but colleges are now the MOST authoritarian organizations in the U.S.? Hardly.
You know what they say:
First they came for the youtube commenters ...
... and I was not a Youtube commenter, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the spammers, and I was not a spammer, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the advertising trolls on blogs and internet forums, and I was not an advertising troll, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, they saw I had excellent Slashdot karma, and they went to find somebody else...
Meanwhile, I rejoiced as I finally turned my calendar from September to October after all of these years....
Grouped by author, ordered chronologically by date of author's first major work.
Only way to go.
It's the "only way to go" if you tend to have only books by single authors, and most of those authors have been dead for centuries.
What about?
collections of essays (very common among academics)
reference books (even if they have a primary author, it's usually not very relevant)
sets of books written by different authors
etc., etc., etc.
If I followed this system, probably 10% of my library couldn't even be catalogued, and at least half of it would be catalogued in a way that would NEVER be helpful (and impossible to remember).
I can only imagine this system would be useful for a collection of old "classic" works, or perhaps in a collection that was focused on one field or genre where chronology may be helpful. For anyone who owns a reasonable amount of reference works, non-fiction works (not pop non-fiction), academic works, etc., this system may not be practical.
It's all in how you ask the question.
I absolutely agree with you. On the other hand, I've encountered lots of crazy people (including here in Slashdot) who seem to terrified that an unseen hoard of terrorists are eager to jump on planes and blow them up if we all don't take off our shoes and belts, take the special baggie out of our luggage with our mini-shampoo in it, and do "the special pose" for the new scanners. I've even had serious people here -- not trolls -- tell me that we need to be worried about terrorists shooting lasers at planes from the ground at airports. (I wish I were kidding.)
The government and media has done a great job of convincing people that this invisible hoard exists. And with all that disinformation, any poll is going to be biased in weird ways away from a rational response. In that light, it would not surprise me that the GP's assertion was true and that a large number of Americans are afraid enough to be in favor of the TSA overall.
many people also learn best hands on not in a pure classroom or a classroom with loads of theory and very little hands on.
True but then university is not really designed for these people. If you want to learn hands-on skills then there are vocational training colleges which will do this far better than a university and which have better connections with the industries that you will likely end up working in.
I would say that most jobs are also not demanding proper skills from university graduates. Universities should not actually be seen as "theoretical" training exercises for a career. The vast majority of professions would be better learned "on the job" or perhaps in a hybrid apprenticeship with some (probably minor) academic component.
The problem isn't just that too many people are going to universities and thinking of them as a way to get a career -- it's also that too many businesses have come to think that a 4-year degree is actually useful preparation for a job. In reality, many universities are little more than screening systems -- providing a credential that says, "yeah, I can get a minimal number of tasks done and might know a little useless information that could relate to a job in field X." Then the corporation spends a few years while that person figures out field X actually functions in the real world and acquires the skills actually necessary to perform the job.
The whole system would be more efficient if most companies just hired people out of high school and had competitive apprenticeship programs (with some minor theoretical elements perhaps required as outside classwork as necessary). Outside of truly "academic" disciplines (liberal arts, abstract math, advanced research), I can think of very few jobs which really need years of theoretical training courses.
The problem these days is that neither employees nor employers feel any loyalty toward each other, so a company wouldn't want to take a risk training high-school grads only to have them jump ship after they actually know what they are doing, or, worse, turn out to be a dead-beat failures. On the other hand, that's exactly the reason why it's become so hard for people straight out of college to land entry-level positions -- companies know that college education is mostly useless in terms of real-world skills, and they don't want to try to invest in someone for a few years teaching them how to actually do stuff without knowing their reliability or how committed they are to the field. In a competitive market, it's easier just to throw out any resume without at least a couple years of experience.
this, and the many other articles I've been reading lately that decry the death of the university, completely ignores the fact that many people learn best when they have the routine of going to a physical classroom and being in a seminar-style setting where there is an instructor and other students to ask questions and round out one's understanding of a topic.
And not just what goes on in the classroom. In college, I learned just as much through conversations with other students who were thinking about all sorts of things (sometimes for classes, sometimes not) as I did in class. Not necessarily "learned" in the sense of acquiring specific facts or knowledge, but more about how to think and explore ideas, how to learn, how to interact socially and intellectual with others, etc.
While some of this can be replicated through electronic communication, sometimes the greatest learning comes in a (possibly drunken) conversation at 2am in the dormitory lounge about how relativity "really" works or even deep philosophical discussions about the nature of life or ethics or whatever.
If I heard these discussions replayed now, most of these conversations would probably sound stupid or ridiculous, but most people probably gain a lot by feeling their way through "bigger ideas" among peers... which can add significantly to intellectual development.
I agree with most of what you say, and I think it's a good summary of a lot of problems in academia. To add a few things:
You see, academia is not the dreamworld that professors want you to think it is.
I don't know any professor who claims that. Even those who were tenured at small colleges before the publish-or-perish escalation of the past few decades and otherwise live a charmed life are generally stuck in the mire of new administrative bureaucracy (or else have retired to get away from it).
In reality, academia has been corrupted by corporations, who have found that they can offload job training onto universities and thus save money.
I can't imagine it saves corporations a lot of money on job training. For example, if we had the system, I bet most engineers could skip college, go directly into an apprenticeship on the job with actual engineers, and be competent in their job within half the time of what it takes in a college degree. As it is now, we have young people who waste four years in school and spend 1-3 years on the job figuring out how the hell things work in the real world. They could have just started out spending those 1-3 years in the real world. If employers really wanted to outsource training, they should fund apprenticeship programs that employ people upfront while they take a few courses on the side to fill in "academic" gaps in knowledge which they wouldn't pick up naturally on the job (advanced math, etc.).
(And yes, I know about summer internships or even semester internships for advanced undergrads or masters students -- those still presume that the time spent in college is actually spent efficiently learning useful stuff.)
If anything, corporations depend on colleges mainly for their ability to screen entry-level candidates. Someone with a 4-year degree is presumed to be committed enough that you might take a chance hiring that person and waiting 1-3 years until they have a clue about what they're supposed to do. If you just hired a random high school grad, you'd have to have more rigorous screening and perhaps competition for apprenticeship spots.
Regardless, that system isn't even working that well right now, since it's been so hard for people with fresh college degrees to find an entry-level position. Why? Because college is effectively useless for training, so corporations want someone who has actually had practical experience, and there are enough people out of work right now that companies can be selective.
Universities cannot be too demanding when it comes to academics, because the vast majority of students are not looking for rigorous academic education, they are just looking for their ticket to a "good job" i.e. a high-paying job.
Well, the problem is that tuition costs have skyrocketed so much that people won't enroll if they don't expect that they will graduate and be able to make more money to pay off that cost. When a student or parent is paying $50,000 per year at an elite school, they come to expect that the student will get good grades and get a good job (or get into a good professional school to make even more money).
Stop hiring useless administration and stop the "arms race" for new "student life" crap (state-of-the-art dorms, that new climbing gym, continuous renovations to almost all facilities), and tuition might start to settle down a bit... which might allow schools to actually feel okay failing people who pay the full tuition costs just to be there... which would allow standards to be raised again.
Also, there's this ridiculous idea in our culture that everyone should go to college, presumably to get a higher-paying job. Not everyone should go to college, relatively few jobs should actually require a college degree... then the people who were actually in college could be held to higher standards.
College is broken because of bureaucracy, publish-or-perish, and the fact th
As an English teacher, I applaud your effort to chastise the GP for his inability to spell common homonyms, but your inability to use commas correctly - I found disconcerting.
Good lord. You're an English teacher? Try learning to write a sentence that flows well. How about: "As an English teacher, I applaud your effort to chastise the GP for his inability to spell common homonyms, but I found your inability to use commas correctly [to be] disconcerting" or simply "... but your inability to use commas correctly is disconcerting."
Abrupt unnecessary dashes often signal an inability to connect subclauses efficiently.
Not to mention, the incorrect use of the semicolon.
Not to mention the incorrect comma in the middle of a sentence fragment. (Hint: If your first sentence didn't sound like a run-on, you should have joined this fragment to the previous clause.)
I really can't stand pedants who make errors while correcting pedants who make errors.
By the way, the interesting thing about the error here is that it is a "prescription" involving a public punishment for a woman, which is fairly close to the original ancient Latin meaning of "proscribe," although in that case, the person would be "proscribed," not the punishment.
I originally thought the GP was making a pun, which is the only reason I ended up reading the arguments.
In the mode of pedantry....
When I see "Proscribe", I see the prefix "Pro", (antonym of "Con") meaning "In favor of / supporting".
That's not the most common meaning of "pro," at least from an etymological standpoint. "Pro" as a prefix more commonly means "before" (prohibit - literally "before having," progenitor - an ancestor before the immediate family) and by extension "in front of/forward/outward" (promise - to send forth [an expectation], prospect - looking forward, produce - lead forth, pronunciation - send a message outward, propagation - fasten/extend/reproduce outward) or sometimes "in place of/on behalf of" (pronoun, pro se).
I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that our modern "pro" as meaning "for" something is an extension of that last meaning -- "in place of/on behalf of." Someone who speaks about the "pros" is arguing on behalf of something. The meaning of "pro" as "in favor of" is a later extension of meanings, so I would say if you're thinking etymologically, you probably shouldn't start with that as the assumed meaning in an unfamiliar word.
(Nevermind that 'conscribe' is not a word, or at least not a proper word.)
Actually "conscribe" is a word, though these days it tends only to be an unusual variant of "conscript."
So, "proscribe" means "Written in support of." (Like with an editorial, citing a proposed course of action; a proscribed action.)
Well, using the more common meanings of the prefix "pro" mentioned above, "proscribe" should mean "to write outward," which is actually the meaning -- someone who was "proscribed" in the Roman republic was a person whose name was "published forth" and singled out for punishment. Hence, it came to mean the same thing for things -- to prohibit or to outlaw.
Etymologically, "proscribe" is very much the same as "program" (the latter from Greek rather than Latin roots for writing) -- both originally meant a public notice of something, a "writing forth" to the populace at large.
A democracy cannot function without rational politicians and citizens. ... The first thing I would want in a politician is that they are rational.
Obviously a lot of your fellow citizens don't agree with you, or else they have a different definition of "rationality."
The fundamental problem lies the morons who vote wackos into office in the first place. Which might lead to questioning of the assumption of a functional democracy -- is that even a rational possibility? Unless we're going to require a logic test before certifying anyone's ability to vote, the most rational people in a society will always be subject to the tyranny of the less rational majority.
That's actually the definition of a functional democracy. Now, if you want a representative republic with all sorts of checks against the irrational masses, as the Founders started with, maybe you could start working toward rationality in politics.
That's true, but if you strategize when you need 110% and when you can deal with 90%, it can indeed be quite useful.
Maybe. Or maybe you have to deal with 90% most of the time and caffeine just gets you to 100%, in which case it isn't useful.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/06/02/219229/caffeine-addicts-get-no-additional-perk-only-a-return-to-baseline
(Note that I'm not saying this study is conclusive, and it's not the only one out there. But the "benefits" may not be clear-cut.)
Like all sciences they are inexact, with a margin for error; but the chances of the poll averages being wrong in this case were incredibly small.
Well, if we were talking about raw poll numbers with a calculated margin for error, you would probably be right.
The question about Silver's methodology (if there is one) is that he has a rather complicated weighting and averaging system that combines stats from a whole history of polls, and how it works is not entirely transparent.
I'm not criticizing Silver or saying he's wrong, but the aggregate numbers he was quoting were not simple averages of polls. Therefore, it's a lot more complicated to evaluate whether his chances of "being wrong in this case were incredibly small."
Have you considered obtaining a teaching "certificate" (not necessarily a teaching degree) and teaching kids how to code? Consult your local school system to see if your skills and experience can be used.
I wish we lived in a world where this would be a good option for an older person with a lot of experience.
Yes, you might be able to get a job at a community college and get paid $1000 or $2000 per class per semester for a lot of prep, grading, etc. If you're smart enough to automate a lot of the grading, it might be worthwhile after the first iteration or two of the class, but the first time teaching will probably require you to be working for minimum wage in terms of your salary. And you won't be able to make a living unless you cobble together an insane teaching load, probably at multiple community colleges.
To go into public schools, you'll probably need a teaching credential, and I have some sad news about that too. About a decade ago, I went through a certification program (which didn't require a further degree) to teach math at the high school level. There was a teaching shortage in the state and area I lived in math and science.
There were a lot of people in the math program, the vast majority of them older people (mostly male) with a lot of practical experience in math -- former engineers, finance people, some computer science people, etc. I would have hired most of them in a heartbeat to teach.
But most of them had a terrible time finding a job, even in districts I know that had multiple openings... even schools in crisis were hesitant to hire a 60-year-old man who actually LIVED math if they had some idiot straight out of college, especially if that idiot had a proper "teaching degree." Administrators don't want to have to keep hiring people, which disadvantages older folks who might retire soon, and they often tend to like younger folks whom they think might "relate" to students better.
So, I really wish we had a culture that would value this person's labor as a teacher, since his experience is probably incredibly useful. But unless he's willing to work for nothing or is lucky enough to get a break from an administrator, this may not be a viable option.
And...WHY is this bad exactly? I've had friends and relatives go through arbitration and frankly the corps ended up settling for MORE than they asked for and was QUICKER than going to court.
Arbitration can be great in many cases, as you point out.
The most important thing that is bad about arbitration is when things get hidden in private arbitration proceedings that should have been brought in a public class-action lawsuit.
Extreme example: someone gets severely injured or even killed because of the action of some corporation (bad product design, improper service, whatever). There doesn't seem to be any criminal intent or liability, so the matter doesn't make headlines and there's no public accountability for the corporation.
A lawsuit could be filed for damages, cost for treating injuries, or wrongful death. A public trial would put all the information about this case on public record, as well as potentially bringing attention to the issue.
Forced private arbitration often can lead to a quicker settlement instead, and companies are often very happy to pay up and get rid of the "problem."
If this is a single case of the issue, no big deal. But what if dozens or hundreds or thousands of people have been injured by the same problem? Maybe only a fraction of them even come forward to try to force arbitration and get a settlement. No public records are kept of information about the company, so every person is on their own in trying to prove an issue in arbitration.
In such a case, it might be cheaper for the company to keep paying off a few people who actually manage to get to arbitration and manage to prove something, rather than to fix the problem.
On the other hand, lawsuits and particularly trials leave a public record. If the first lawsuit doesn't succeed, the second or third might, by drawing on evidence dug up in previous actions. People might begin to see patterns and even lead to a class-action suit. In any case, with a pervasive problem where many individuals have been injured, there's a better chance of forcing the company to change when there's at least the option of a lawsuit and trial.
There should be a news source for people who really don't care about Honey Boo-Boo. Usually, that's a high-quality newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times.
Hmm... except my perception of the Journal and the Times is that they too often are pretty loaded with crap. Just about anything that pretends to be "news" is. Take a look at an issue from the NYT from 10 years ago. Chances are that 85% of that "important stuff" on the first couple pages seems completely irrelevant now, and most of the remaining 15% is devoted to ongoing situations (wars, etc.) where daily updates aren't really helpful to most people. The in-depth articles that make up less than 5% of these papers on a given day are sometimes exceptions.
I wouldn't mind if we lost all the "news" that was contentless, yellow or salacious (gossip). The perception is that many more people "want" that news than not.
There's a reason why the supermarkets and other stores stock tabloids near check-out and not many issues of the New York Times -- most people want that crap. I don't want it, and you don't want it, but we're probably in the 2% of the population who doesn't.
more people are willing to pay for real news than for the Honey Boo-Boo, or rather, that people who like Honey Boo-Boo "news" aren't willing to pay for it.
I sincerely doubt that "more people" would be willing to pay for real news. I think that a small percentage of people are willing to pay for quality, which is true of any kind of item. But these are the people who already subscribe to a copy of the NYT or WSJ at home or at the office, even if they live far away from New York. The even smaller number of people who care about quality writing and less about frivilous news subscribe to weekly to monthly magazines (The Atlantic, New Yorker, various Reviews, etc.) that cover real issues in-depth, rather than the cursory treatment you get in a daily.
These are the people keeping those few quality news sources afloat. The rest of the populace will be happy with a Twitter headline of 140 characters or fewer, and they don't really want to pay for anything more... except maybe an occasional rag about "Honey Boo-Boo" at the check-out counter.
Would you agree that if someone believed that the Easter Bunny was an actual creature, who hopped around all over the world on Easter, hiding eggs in his yard; that he might be considered delusional?
This has absolutely nothing to do with my post. I was merely commenting on the fact that Dawkins thinks he's been a relatively nice guy and wonders why people feel he is aggressive. I pointed out that calling someone "delusional" might sound a little more aggressive than simply remarking that they are ignorant of the details of some scientific field (e.g., evolution).
I'm mostly on the side of Dawkins. I think many religious people can be a little crazy. But I think a lot of people can be a little crazy in their beliefs. Some and perhaps many of them could be classified as delusional.
But so what? That isn't what I was commenting on -- I was just trying to clarify that Dawkins may not realize how he comes across, which I think is a problem if he's actually trying to have a productive conversation.
reacting negatively to a book because of a title, rather than the content... is borderline retarded.
I agree. But, as I said again, it's not just the title. It's a general attitude thing of Dawkins, which I think has clearly become a little more aggressive in recent years.
I will not be able to take a person like that seriously, as it's obvious their head is somewhere, anywhere, except on topic.
Whether you like it or not, a title says a lot about a book. That's why publishers often fight with authors to make the title into something they think is more "marketable." As someone who has actually published a number of things, I can say that these conversations are very difficult -- because, like it or not, the title is actually a first impression. Like many things in life (whether first dates, interviews, whatever), a first impression sets the tone, and if you begin in a negative manner, you'll be fighting an uphill battle against that perception.
Dawkins is smart enough to know what his title implied and whom it would offend, as well as the reasons why publishers (and authors) fight so hard over these things -- they matter A LOT. Say all you want, but if Dawkins actually "hated" the title and thought it misrepresented his views, he did himself an incredible disservice by publishing it under that title.
Or, more likely, I bet Dawkins actually didn't protest too much against the title -- he may not have thought it was best, but he didn't object... and that tells us something about his attitude toward religion. So, the "borderline retarded" people who pay attention to the title probably are onto something in their judgments....
"Delusional" is the correct term for anti-Bayesian beliefs, and religious beliefs are by definition anti-Bayesian, because they are founded on faith, which is a belief that is by definition impervious to evidence.
While I'm mostly on the side of Dawkins in this debate, I don't think you're being fair. In particular, you're defining "religion" and "faith" in a way that allows you to win your argument.
Believing something is plausible based on evidence, and being willing to update that belief in the face of new evidence according to Bayes' rule, is not faith. Faith is specifically a profound commitment to ignore all evidence that would under the ordinary application of Bayes' rule lead to a decreased plausibility for the belief in question.
Okay, what about Deism? Say that someone "believes" that some Creator made the universe -- caused the Big Bang to occur or whatever -- and basically "set the gears" in motion, but that person does not "believe" that the Creator has any influence or takes any current action in the present universe.
Such a "belief" may be unprovable according to current empirical methods, but it can neither be proved true nor false. There is no Bayesian evidence to enter into the question. Is this person "delusional" for "believing" in something that can neither be proven true nor false? It may seem like a ridiculous suggestion to you, but declaring such a religion to be "delusional" has no foundation, because you have no evidence to disprove it.
Many religious beliefs are like this, particularly ones that deal with past events. You are correct that some people hold fast to beliefs even in the face of new evidence that contradicts them, but this is hardly only true of religious zealots. Even scientists have often been known to hold on to pet theories long after an objective evaluation of new data should have led them to give up their "beliefs." This is a human trait, and while some religious folks may be more irrational and even delusional about this than others, I'm not going to make such an accusation at all possible religions or all possible beliefs.
Say "thank you" to his publishers for being sensationalist marketing pricks that they are. He hated that title.
I had heard that. But if he really hated it, he should have fought against it, and if the publishers didn't agree, he should have refused to publish or taken it elsewhere. He was previously a best-selling author; he had some clout. Also, with his reputation, I'm pretty sure he could have gotten it published elsewhere under a title conforming closer to his wishes.
Many people I've talked to have reacted negatively to the book just because of the title. Dawkins clearly should have recognized that would be the case. If he truly believes in the stuff he's saying now about not being offensive or aggressive, he should never have allowed the book to come out under that title.
Regardless, Dawkins has become more aggressive about such issues in recent years. It's not just the title.
He made a pretty good point there. There's only solution I've found to the problem of people taking your disagreement as an insult, and that is to pose every concern as a question for more detail.
I absolutely agree, though I think Dawkins underestimates his aggressiveness. From the summary:
And I think that accounts for part of what you've picked up about my apparent image of being aggressive and offensive. I'm just telling it clearly.
Dawkins used to be a little nicer about this stuff. But when you publish a book called The God Delusion, I think you've gone beyond calling people "ignorant" of evolution. You've accused them of being delusional.
Whether or not any particular religious person is "delusional" is not something I want to judge. But I think Dawkins is already starting out with a reputation now for something who is very aggressive in his atheism, and that's a reputation he has cultivated in recent years. With a reputation like that, he has already alienated most people who don't subscribe to his ideas already -- and if he calls them "ignorant" on top of it, it's not going to be productive.
Having worked in middle schools, high schools, with community college transfer students, and then the resulting university undergrads, I have to say: If the general population doesn't HAVE to learn something or if there isn't something someone sufficiently passionate to help them learn something new regardless, they won't bother.
I absolutely agree, as someone who has also been an educator for well over a decade, at various levels from secondary education up through university teaching.
The rest of America's children do not thrive on learning and providing online education will not change that.
I agree. On the other hand, I think we may need to ask why that is so.
My experience with my own kid and with very young kids (up to age 3 or so at least) is that they do actually thrive on learning. But at some point -- whether due to no one challenging them, parental attitudes or actions, attitudes of their peers, attitudes of teachers, curriculum or classroom environments that aren't engaging, society priorities in the U.S. in general, etc. -- the vast majority of kids in the United States begin to view further learning as boring or as a burden or (perhaps most importantly) as something different from "living," in the same way most people refer to "work" as chores they must do, while the rest of what they do is "their life."
The challenge of any type of teaching method is to convince most students that learning is interesting and worthwhile, despite most messages in our society that don't value it. Or to fight the messages that only emphasize it as a direct means to an end (e.g., "if you go to college, you can get a higher salary," rather than "if you go to college, you can understand the world better and have new perspectives that would provide skills and experiences to deal with a greater variety of problems and situations... which could also potentially allow you to go into a wider variety of careers and jobs").
A good teacher can find ways to engage students and revive those innate learning tendencies that every toddler has. A series of bad teachers could shut kids down for good so that they thoroughly believe societal messages that say that school is pointless or only something that "nerds" enjoy.
Electronic resources can do the same -- they can facilitate learning in some circumstances, but in other cases, like a bad teacher, they will be woefully inadequate.
Unless we change our societal attitudes about the value of learning, we'll always be fighting an uphill battle. Real human interaction with actual teachers can be valuable for many kids, if the teachers care and can engage the students. Electronic resources alone would probably not be sufficient unless we can completely change our perspective on learning, and even then, a computer is not going to replace the real-time adaptability of a skilled teacher in targeting the needs of individual students any time soon.
When legality is defined by whatever a mall security guard says then nobody can ever be sure about what is or is not legal.
I can't speak to local statutes, but an owner of private property (e.g., a mall) can have restrictions on what constitutes acceptable behavior on that property. If you violate them, they can ask you to leave; if you don't, they can have the police arrest you for trespass.
If you come into my house and do something I deem inappropriate, I have the right to ask you to leave. If you don't, I can call the police to force you to leave my property. The same thing is true of owners of malls.
Mall security guards are generally assumed to have the authority of the owner to enforce and interpret the owner's policies.
That's why we have laws codified by government and available for everybody to read. Security guards don't get to make it up as they go.
Actually, they can "make it up" to some extent, as long as they have the support of the owner. There is no requirement that their actions even be consistent, as long as they do not violate other laws (physical assault, discrimination against a particular race or something, etc.).
In this case, the security guards clearly had the right to request someone to leave after taking a photo, if they deemed it within the scope of what the owner of the property would consider inappropriate activity (and a mall owner might in fact not want photos or videos of his security personnel showing up on the internet).
That said, they did not have the right to confiscate his property. If there was a posted warning that people who entered the property could not take photographs, they might be able to get the police to take legal action on their behalf, or perhaps sue the person in court to force compliance with the mall policy -- e.g., if the person posted video of the mall on the internet, the mall might be able to sue for damages if it clearly had a policy disallowing photography. It doesn't sound like there was any posted warning in this case, at least from the incomplete account in TFA.
It sounds like it all went wrong when the police arrived, and they forced an arrest and confiscation of property, rather than simply forcing the person leave the premises, as was probably the appropriate legal remedy for the security guards here.
The security guards may have been in error for overstepping their own bounds in their request, but in doing so they did not commit any crime (again, I'm relying on the account in TFA). But the real issue here is the police who assaulted a private citizen (and, it sounds like, authorized the mall security to assist in assaulting him) and confiscated property apparently without cause.
I would not say the "I wonder if the document contains a every day" is a valid approach to the issue.
I think it is ( should be? ) more "hey, doctors learned how to abort fetuses today, what legal impact does that have, is that murder, assault? How do I proceed WRT law in the face of this?"
Abortions have been possible for hundreds of years. Most of anti-abortion laws were actually passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, after the Fourteenth Amendment (and other amendments supposedly containing a "right to privacy") had already been in existence.
Some of those laws were challenged. Nobody, and I mean nobody before the mid-1900s thought there was some sort of Constitutional right to abortion.
Then, one day, justices woke up and decided that parts of the Constitution contained that right, where no one saw it there before. Suddenly, dozens of laws were invalid.
It's not like doctors learned to abort fetuses in the 1960s -- people knew how to do it for centuries. It did become much safer in the 20th century, but the practice itself was not new.
Take some time and actually read the opinion Roe v. Wade. There's a great summary of history written into the opinion going from ancient Roman times through medieval Catholicism and up to the present day in terms of the status of the fetus and abortion.
Or "hey, they just invented email, would emails be covered as "papers and effects" WRT privacy"?
This might be a better example for your argument, since email didn't exist during the drafting of the Constitution. I don't take as much of an issue with this kind of interpretation, since it was obviously not a settled question in the 1700s as email didn't exist then. The ability to pass laws outlawing abortion, on the other hand, was basically settled law until some justices found rights in the Constitution that no one saw there before.
Look, I want to be clear -- I personally think that abortion should be legal. But I don't think there's anything in the Constitution that explicitly implies that, and I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that any legislator at the time of the amendments thought there was any problem with anti-abortion laws.
If we actually passed a Constitutional amendment dealing with rights to privacy and related rights, maybe people wouldn't be so worried today about a Republican president appointing enough justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don't know if abortion is a "fundamental right," but if it's really that important that we don't want future courts tinkering with it, it would have been better not to make up new "interpretations" of existing law that already had clear interpretations.
The ninth amendment invites us to "interpret" rights not written in the constitution.
I never said it didn't. My concern is that unenumerated rights may be "interpreted" out of our judicial system as well. There's a reason why the Bill of Rights actually listed a number of rights -- they were thought to be so important that they should be listed separately.
So, if we actually value a "right to privacy" enough, I think it would be better to pass an Amendment that actually does enumerate it, lest some Supreme Court come along in 20 years and decide it doesn't exist anymore... and that previous "interpretations" were in error.