"The machines aren't about making you safer, it's about training you how to be a slave in this new globalized terrorist-filled society."
I think not. The machines and procedures are a result of serious breakdown in our government-cum-corporation system, alongside a fear-mongering "if it bleeds it leads" mass media. The slave-mentality-production is a sick side effect.
I do think that institutional problems like this are the result of evolutionary accidents. They are not intelligently designed. Or: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
"It's a hurdle. That is its function. It doesn't have to make sense. It would be unrealistic if it did. PLENTY of things along the way in your education will not make any sense at all. It is important that you learn this."
Bullshit. Institutional problems like this are the result of evolutionary accidents. They are not intelligently designed.
Or: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
"Both the administrators and teachers are to blame."
Teachers have absolutely nothing, zero, zip, zilch to do with either admissions or IT infrastructure.
I wish that weren't the case; teacher input to college governance is decreasing all the time. The ultimate goal, it seems, is to have teachers be fully fungible line workers (admittedly like every other job in America).
"All colleges from their beginnings emphasized mental, spiritual, and physical development."
"It is something over a quarter of a century since I labored with Ezra Cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name...
We had especially determined that the institution should be under the control of no political party and of no single religious sect, and with Mr. Cornell's approval I embodied stringent provisions to this effect in the charter... As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether to be more astonished or amused at our simplicity... As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned their flocks against the 'atheism', then against the 'infidelity', and finally against the 'indifferentism', of the university, as devoted pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I took the defensive..."
[Andrew Dickson White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Volume I, Introduction, 1895]
"I meant 'pseudo-change' in more of a grand sense, like how the French keep rewriting their Constitution and instituting new Republics."
I was reading up on this recently. Note that all these rewritings/institutions have been the result of overthrow of the existing government by war or coup (which happened quite a lot in France in the last 200 years). Working backwards:
* Fifth Republic (instituted 1958, currently in force) -- Triggered by coup of army near end of Algerian war for independence from France. Fearing abandonment of Algiers, the army invaded French Corsica and drew up plans to assault Paris if the government did not step down and turn over control to De Gaulle (seen as pro-army and anti-Algerian independence), who then rewrote the Constitution. See: "May 1958 Crisis/ Algiers Putsch". * Fourth Republic (1946) -- Necessary after Nazi Germany took control of France in WWII. * Third Republic (1870) -- Overthrow of Emperor Napolean III's "Second Empire" (losing Franco-Prussian War, Siege of Paris, etc.) * Second Republic (1848) -- After 1848-1852 revolution to overthrow Napolean's "First Empire". * First Republic (1792) -- Reign of Terror, destruction of monarchy.
Etc., etc. So my point is that France doesn't just "rewrite the Constitution" like it's a polite intellectual exercise -- It's the result of a continual series of ferocious, bloody conflicts where people are getting killed and sequentially enslaved by tyrants, and having to re-fight for their freedoms. In short, I would not want to see that (violent tyrannical coup) in my lifetime in America.
"Is this a playoff system? Did I infringe any patent by posting this?"
(1) Yes. (2) Maybe not; now you get to argue about specific claims in the patent.
For example, in the granted patent, it has specific claims on two polls that would be used to establish initial placements, a weighting formula for the polls, a primary tournament with specifically 12 teams, a secondary tournament held on different days from the primary tournament, initial games scheduled the week after Thanksgiving, championship game held on New Year's Day, and a bunch of other stuff. I'm not seeing that you infringed any specific claims -- I just scanned it briefly and I'm not a lawyer of any sort, but that's my initial guess.
Still immensely stupid that patents for business methods of any sort are granted, especially stuff like this.
I'm not sure I could count almost any of that as agreeing with my grandparent post.:-/ I count "justifications" as part of the nuts-and-bolts, and I'm largely down on memorizing random stuff.
As a part-time college math teacher, I almost totally disagree with Lockhart's Lament. (Ironically, the K-12 school where he teaches is close to the neighborhood where I live.)
It's not that it's bad to see that math can be an art and a pattern-finding exploration (some part of the time), but someone has got to teach and be held accountable for the nuts-and-bolts of how to read and write mathematical vocabulary, notation, and justification (algebra and geometry, for starters). Knowing about the scientific method is necessary, but exclusively spending your K-12 time re-inventing the wheel is inefficient at best. It's the same problem as in English nowadays -- I was told last weekend that teachers in junior high schools are forbidden from teaching the rules of grammar. That is, it's exclusively about expressing "big ideas", no matter how poorly-formed or unreadable. The more this produces crippled students, the more we seem to run deeper in the same direction -- if you abandon teaching the basic structure of our shared communication systems, then we thereby just generate more and more unreadable nonsense as time goes on.
The remedial math I teach (basic algebra; about half my assignment load) is almost entirely about just reading & writing. Even the first unspoken step of simply transcribing symbols (i.e., an expression) from one page to another is almost impossible for about half my students, because no one has ever asked for any level of precision in their reading, writing, or observation skills (whether in English, math, or anything else). To me, basic math is an opportunity to focus on precision in thinking and writing -- applications belong in other classes! No, that's not what a professional mathematician works at on a daily basis, but frankly, not every K-12 class can be an independent research opportunity. At some point you've got to eat your vegetables, and if you run entirely away from that, then it truly is a monumental waste of time.
With (as per link) all kinds of exceptions -- Tort Claims Act, Tucker Act, discrimination, suit by U.S. vs. state, suit by state vs. another state, "stripping doctrine", abrogation doctrine, certain contracts with government, etc.
FTA: "Peters deposited the $808,988.90 in checks received from the purported Malaysian at the Chino Commercial Bank. After the bank notified Peters that the checks had cleared, Peters wire transferred $468,000 to Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter, the checks were dishonored after the bank detected that they had been altered. Since Peters was personally liable for any overdrafts on the account which had only a few thousand dollars, the bank sought to attach property owned by Peters to collect on the overdraft. The trial court granted the bank’s motion to attach against Peters in the amount of $458,782.60...
Despite the obvious life lessons, the legal one is this – don’t transfer funds received unless and until you know that collection of the original deposit is final. This is particularly true for lawyers and others who receive funds in trust. (Chino Commercial Bank v. Peters, Dec. 13, 2010, Case No. E049170.)"
So my question is this -- HOW do you know that collection of the original deposit is final? (I've never even heard that phrase before.) Apparently being told "the check has cleared" doesn't do it?
In my case, coming from a rural middle-class family, I was accepted to an Ivy school and got bupkis for a financial aid offer. It would have beggared my family, which is why I went to state school instead.
Seems to me it's far more likely for some wacko on the jury pool to just say that out of their pointy-headed little mind, and there's no redress for that.
To me, this seems not dissimilar to the "Air Force blocks New York Times" story. Clearly they want our juries passing verdicts on fellow citizens to be the dumbest, least informed, least inquisitive, most sheepish people we can find.
I think key responses to the "compare bias" question are:
- Was any other network founded and presided by a man who was part of the media campaign staff for every single winning presidential campaign of a specific party from the 1960's to 1990's? (Roger Ailes, founder and President of Fox News, was media adviser for the Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush campaigns):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes
- Does any other network currently have 4 of 5 major presidential contenders for a specific party currently under contract? (Palin, Gingrich, Santorum, and Huckabee are all under contract with Fox, and rarely permitted to speak to other news organization under the terms of that contract):
"(c) Classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information. This is the key part of the order... The order this article is talking about makes perfect sense."
No, as I said further up, the order is ridiculous and laughable. It is similar to many "zero tolerance" policies that result in similar absurd situations.
"If I put a bottle on the table with a skull and crossbones on it and say 'This is poison. it will destroy your health, family, marriage, and ultimately kill you' and you push me out of the way and down the bottle? Well then frankly your are too stupid to live. Why should I have to spend billions building a fence around the bottle and cages to put you in, just to keep you from drinking it?"
Maybe you're a family member.
(Vehemently anti-drug war, but just pointing out the obvious and fatal weakness of this kind of appeal to mean-spiritedness.)
Slashdot Mirror
"The machines aren't about making you safer, it's about training you how to be a slave in this new globalized terrorist-filled society."
I think not. The machines and procedures are a result of serious breakdown in our government-cum-corporation system, alongside a fear-mongering "if it bleeds it leads" mass media. The slave-mentality-production is a sick side effect.
I do think that institutional problems like this are the result of evolutionary accidents. They are not intelligently designed. Or: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
And here I was just reading Joel Spolsky's 10-year-old article "Wasting Money on Cats" earlier today:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html
"As someone who actually enjoys a lot of advertising..."
Only on Slashdot.
"It's a hurdle. That is its function. It doesn't have to make sense. It would be unrealistic if it did. PLENTY of things along the way in your education will not make any sense at all. It is important that you learn this."
Bullshit. Institutional problems like this are the result of evolutionary accidents. They are not intelligently designed.
Or: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
That's totally false.
"Both the administrators and teachers are to blame."
Teachers have absolutely nothing, zero, zip, zilch to do with either admissions or IT infrastructure.
I wish that weren't the case; teacher input to college governance is decreasing all the time. The ultimate goal, it seems, is to have teachers be fully fungible line workers (admittedly like every other job in America).
Here's more data, then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Patent_Office#Criticisms
"All colleges from their beginnings emphasized mental, spiritual, and physical development."
"It is something over a quarter of a century since I labored with Ezra Cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name...
We had especially determined that the institution should be under the control of no political party and of no single religious sect, and with Mr. Cornell's approval I embodied stringent provisions to this effect in the charter... As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether to be more astonished or amused at our simplicity... As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned their flocks against the 'atheism', then against the 'infidelity', and finally against the 'indifferentism', of the university, as devoted pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I took the defensive..."
[Andrew Dickson White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Volume I, Introduction, 1895]
"I meant 'pseudo-change' in more of a grand sense, like how the French keep rewriting their Constitution and instituting new Republics."
I was reading up on this recently. Note that all these rewritings/institutions have been the result of overthrow of the existing government by war or coup (which happened quite a lot in France in the last 200 years). Working backwards:
* Fifth Republic (instituted 1958, currently in force) -- Triggered by coup of army near end of Algerian war for independence from France. Fearing abandonment of Algiers, the army invaded French Corsica and drew up plans to assault Paris if the government did not step down and turn over control to De Gaulle (seen as pro-army and anti-Algerian independence), who then rewrote the Constitution. See: "May 1958 Crisis/ Algiers Putsch".
* Fourth Republic (1946) -- Necessary after Nazi Germany took control of France in WWII.
* Third Republic (1870) -- Overthrow of Emperor Napolean III's "Second Empire" (losing Franco-Prussian War, Siege of Paris, etc.)
* Second Republic (1848) -- After 1848-1852 revolution to overthrow Napolean's "First Empire".
* First Republic (1792) -- Reign of Terror, destruction of monarchy.
Etc., etc. So my point is that France doesn't just "rewrite the Constitution" like it's a polite intellectual exercise -- It's the result of a continual series of ferocious, bloody conflicts where people are getting killed and sequentially enslaved by tyrants, and having to re-fight for their freedoms. In short, I would not want to see that (violent tyrannical coup) in my lifetime in America.
"Is this a playoff system? Did I infringe any patent by posting this?"
(1) Yes. (2) Maybe not; now you get to argue about specific claims in the patent.
For example, in the granted patent, it has specific claims on two polls that would be used to establish initial placements, a weighting formula for the polls, a primary tournament with specifically 12 teams, a secondary tournament held on different days from the primary tournament, initial games scheduled the week after Thanksgiving, championship game held on New Year's Day, and a bunch of other stuff. I'm not seeing that you infringed any specific claims -- I just scanned it briefly and I'm not a lawyer of any sort, but that's my initial guess.
Still immensely stupid that patents for business methods of any sort are granted, especially stuff like this.
I'm not sure I could count almost any of that as agreeing with my grandparent post. :-/ I count "justifications" as part of the nuts-and-bolts, and I'm largely down on memorizing random stuff.
As a part-time college math teacher, I almost totally disagree with Lockhart's Lament. (Ironically, the K-12 school where he teaches is close to the neighborhood where I live.)
It's not that it's bad to see that math can be an art and a pattern-finding exploration (some part of the time), but someone has got to teach and be held accountable for the nuts-and-bolts of how to read and write mathematical vocabulary, notation, and justification (algebra and geometry, for starters). Knowing about the scientific method is necessary, but exclusively spending your K-12 time re-inventing the wheel is inefficient at best. It's the same problem as in English nowadays -- I was told last weekend that teachers in junior high schools are forbidden from teaching the rules of grammar. That is, it's exclusively about expressing "big ideas", no matter how poorly-formed or unreadable. The more this produces crippled students, the more we seem to run deeper in the same direction -- if you abandon teaching the basic structure of our shared communication systems, then we thereby just generate more and more unreadable nonsense as time goes on.
The remedial math I teach (basic algebra; about half my assignment load) is almost entirely about just reading & writing. Even the first unspoken step of simply transcribing symbols (i.e., an expression) from one page to another is almost impossible for about half my students, because no one has ever asked for any level of precision in their reading, writing, or observation skills (whether in English, math, or anything else). To me, basic math is an opportunity to focus on precision in thinking and writing -- applications belong in other classes! No, that's not what a professional mathematician works at on a daily basis, but frankly, not every K-12 class can be an independent research opportunity. At some point you've got to eat your vegetables, and if you run entirely away from that, then it truly is a monumental waste of time.
1st line assumption: "let A=1, B=1".
Thus, second case is a contradiction.
With (as per link) all kinds of exceptions -- Tort Claims Act, Tucker Act, discrimination, suit by U.S. vs. state, suit by state vs. another state, "stripping doctrine", abrogation doctrine, certain contracts with government, etc.
Example news from today -- "Judge orders feds to pay $2.5M in wiretapping case": http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_warrantless_wiretapping
So when this guy's (or anybody's) bank told him "the check has cleared" that's a meaningless statement?
FTA: "Peters deposited the $808,988.90 in checks received from the purported Malaysian at the Chino Commercial Bank. After the bank notified Peters that the checks had cleared, Peters wire transferred $468,000 to Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter, the checks were dishonored after the bank detected that they had been altered. Since Peters was personally liable for any overdrafts on the account which had only a few thousand dollars, the bank sought to attach property owned by Peters to collect on the overdraft. The trial court granted the bank’s motion to attach against Peters in the amount of $458,782.60...
Despite the obvious life lessons, the legal one is this – don’t transfer funds received unless and until you know that collection of the original deposit is final. This is particularly true for lawyers and others who receive funds in trust. (Chino Commercial Bank v. Peters, Dec. 13, 2010, Case No. E049170.)"
So my question is this -- HOW do you know that collection of the original deposit is final? (I've never even heard that phrase before.) Apparently being told "the check has cleared" doesn't do it?
Two decades back.
From the link: "Yes. For the past decade, as we have increased our scholarship program..."
Well there you go, my acceptance to Harvard was 20 years ago: very small loan offer, no grant. Sucks to be me.
Skeptical -- Citation needed.
In my case, coming from a rural middle-class family, I was accepted to an Ivy school and got bupkis for a financial aid offer. It would have beggared my family, which is why I went to state school instead.
Seems to me it's far more likely for some wacko on the jury pool to just say that out of their pointy-headed little mind, and there's no redress for that.
To me, this seems not dissimilar to the "Air Force blocks New York Times" story. Clearly they want our juries passing verdicts on fellow citizens to be the dumbest, least informed, least inquisitive, most sheepish people we can find.
Can they use a dictionary? Probably not, I'd bet.
I think key responses to the "compare bias" question are:
- Was any other network founded and presided by a man who was part of the media campaign staff for every single winning presidential campaign of a specific party from the 1960's to 1990's? (Roger Ailes, founder and President of Fox News, was media adviser for the Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush campaigns):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes
- Does any other network currently have 4 of 5 major presidential contenders for a specific party currently under contract? (Palin, Gingrich, Santorum, and Huckabee are all under contract with Fox, and rarely permitted to speak to other news organization under the terms of that contract):
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=506E9A42-0184-3BF7-6F2F8D12EC95F5F3
"(c) Classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information. This is the key part of the order... The order this article is talking about makes perfect sense."
No, as I said further up, the order is ridiculous and laughable. It is similar to many "zero tolerance" policies that result in similar absurd situations.
"...viewing leaked classified documents, even though it is on the public domain, on an unclassified DoD computer results in a security violation."
No, the policy makes no sense on its face and is worthy of laughter and ridicule.
"If I put a bottle on the table with a skull and crossbones on it and say 'This is poison. it will destroy your health, family, marriage, and ultimately kill you' and you push me out of the way and down the bottle? Well then frankly your are too stupid to live. Why should I have to spend billions building a fence around the bottle and cages to put you in, just to keep you from drinking it?"
Maybe you're a family member.
(Vehemently anti-drug war, but just pointing out the obvious and fatal weakness of this kind of appeal to mean-spiritedness.)