some kids who didn't receive such things in their childhood may have to put forth a lot of effort to do a particular assignment
So there's the effort that they should be getting credit for.
A related problem is that kids who are bright and/or come from a good environment come to expect to get A's without much effort. That sets them up to be discouraged or poor students as they get older and the going gets tougher. My 4th grade daughter is a bright kid who (I hope) comes from a decent environment. People used to tell her she was smart, which infuriated me, despite (or because) it's true. I've finally gotten them to stop (mostly) and I tell her that just because she's bright is no excuse to not work at school. I expect more because she's smart. I don't take it to an extreme, like scolding her because she got a B, but I will gently ask her why she didn't do better. Thankfully I think it's sinking in.
For me and many that I know, taking notes can be a way of summarizing and processing the information coming in.
In other words, everybody learns in a different way. All the more reason this Big Brother software is a bad idea. The worst possible thing would be to try to force everyone into a standard way of studying.
Is it as efficient as if you could simply test out of the bio credit? No, but I don't believe that's possible with a large number of institutions.
Been some years for me, but as I recall some colleges charge as much to challenge the course as to take it. If you do challenge it, they'll bust your shoes in any way possible. Easier, and no more expensive, to take the class and snooze.
I am patenting Pageturner, proven to be the best way to spoof your e-book reading!
Perfect! Between the Big Brother software and the anti-Big Brother software, at least it'll get the economy moving. Keynes (cue conservative and libertarian rants) once opined that in a recession you could help the economy by paying group A to dig holes and group B to fill them in. Certainly a good example of pointless for that era, but I doubt he realized how amazingly good computers would be at doing pointless things.
The danger here is substituting the easy to measure metric "Pages Read" for the much tougher "Material Understood".
Not only easier to measure, but more "socially desirable". Instead of grading students on whether they've learned the material, you can grade them on whether they've tried to learn the material. This avoids the sometimes embarrassing fact that not everyone can hack certain courses.
At a lower level, I'm not a hard-ass about this. "A for effort" may be appropriate, to a certain extent, in elementary school, where you have to take into account that kids mental abilities may develop at different times, and can't be properly ascertained until they're a bit older. But in college? No way. At a college level nobody should even care if you attend classes, so long as you learn the material.
Woohoo! We replaced one tyrant with another. Now that's striking a blow for freedom! Operation Ajax had nothing to do with fighting communism, and everything to do with preserving the profits of British Petroleum (nee Anglo-Iranian Oil Company).
Usually called a Constitutional Republic. Real democracy will eat you
Warning: the English language is subject to change over the centuries. Right wingers and libertarians particularly take note. In the 18th century the word "democracy", without further qualification, generally referred to direct democracy. We are currently the 21st century (check your calendars if you doubt it). At this time, and for many years, the term "democracy" has taken on a more general meaning, and may refer to either direct or representative democracy, with or without a constitution. This may be verified by using a new type of reference called a "dictionary".
If you can't find anything more substantial to complain about than your fetish for using 18th century meanings for certain words, do you actually have anything to say?
and do i trust wikileaks to be impartial to the information in those documents?
LOL of course not.
Wikileaks has already demonstrated that they're willing to skew the data and completely misrepresent data if that misrepresentation supports their political views.
As has the US government. Which is why no good student of history relies on a single source.
And while the "Collateral Murder video", as originally released, was as much a piece of propaganda as any US government release, Wikileaks has a much better track record when it comes to raw dumps. Not necessarily because they're unbiased, but because they don't have the resources to edit them. If nevertheless the US government believes the cables have been selectively released, I'll look forward to their release of additional information to set the record straight.
Normalizing relations with China while not abandoning Taiwan is an example of something that could have become a festering wound that he avoided.
To give the devil his due, there are certain things that Nixon/Kissinger did right. You mentioned one of them. Others are détente and SALT I. But those are no reason to loose sight of the corrupt, murderous, and possibly outright treasonous things that they also did. History is full of such contradictions. For example, nobody likes to mention that without Stalin's forced industrialization in the 1920's and 30's, the Nazis probably would have won.
From the documents released a few years ago Ford was bribed (donation to Republican party) by the leader of Indonesia to put pressure on Australia and other nearby nations to stay out of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.
Cite? Not that I'm terribly skeptical, just that I'd like to read up on it.
since you seem to be sympathetic to the former U.S.S.R
Clearly anybody who criticizes actions that led to blowback that has severely harmed the US and its citizens is sympathetic to the USSR. What next, Churchill was a Nazi sympathizer because he thought the bombing of Dresden was a mistake?
The USSR was a fascist country, although the red sort of fascism
Red fascism? Is that supposed to be an oxymoron? Fascism and communism were mortal enemies. You might want to look up a minor historical incident called World War II.
What fascism and communism did have in common was that they were both totalitarian. Words have a meaning; use them appropriately.
I am glad the West's only country capable of standing against the USSR had politicians like Dr Kissinger that were focused on winning.
And how was Henry focused on winning? By sabotaging peace negotiations and prolonging the Vietnam war so Nixon could win in 1968? The Vietnam war was a quagmire for the US and as such the USSR loved it. They could grind down the US just by shipping a few weapons to North Vietnam. Hence he was giving aid to our enemies - the Constitutional definition of treason.
It may be hard to get the general public's sympathy for the poor exploited workers who are dissatisfied with making only twice what ordinary people do.
Not at all, and I've successfully tried it. The popular perception of programmers, engineers, etc. is of people who've done reasonably well through talent, education and work. It's hardly the 0.01% that own the government, and the general public knows that. People who aren't quite as successful financially generally don't resent it, and maybe have a cousin who's done it or a kid they hope will do it. The general public still rightfully categorize programmers, etc. who work for a living and are subject to getting screwed by greedy and corrupt PTB.
If we had a Justice Department that was worth a damn, there would be criminal anti-trust cases brought against Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc like right now.
If we had a Justice Department worth a damn, those cases would have to take a back seat to the criminal fraud cases in the finance industry. Search on William K. Black for a earful on that. He helped prosecute over 1000 successful criminal fraud convictions arising from the S&L crisis. Similar prosecutions in the Great Recession: zero.
I think if the Silicon Valley companies look outside of their little World and realize that, for one, their technology isn't so groundbreaking after all, and for another, maybe could move development operations to let's say, Metro Atlanta where Lockheed just canned a bunch of really talented guys?
Hear, hear!
It amazes me how many people in SV consider themselves cosmopolitan, or even "global citizens", yet are in fact incredibly insular and provincial. It's as though they have world maps with only two places marked on them: SV and India.
Get a clue folks. SV is but one small part of America, and there are many others with substantial amounts of tech talent. If you have trouble hiring good people at a reasonable price, instead of screaming for more H-1B's, take a look at Google Maps for some of those other parts of the US. It's an approach that businesses have used since time immemorial: if the cost of doing business in one part of the country gets too high, you branch out to other parts. Yet somehow it doesn't occur to the tech geniuses of SV, despite crowing about how modern communication has eliminated so many barriers.
Unfortunately, they will "get this shit taken care of" by getting an amendment passed that essentially says "unless the perpetrator is a major campaign contributor to a congressman of their choice".
No need for an amendment; in contemporary America that's a bedrock legal principle.
the main argument for international trade, comparative advantage, violates "common sense"
It doesn't.
Not everybody has the same "common sense". I never thought comparative advantage terribly counter-intuitive either, but many people do. Hence an appeal to "common sense" in defense of trade is a poor, and ironic, approach.
Bad history. Our economy collapsed in 1929. Smoot-Hawley was passed in 1930.
No. Our economy collapsed for the next four years after the stock market crash.
Agreed, but SH still didn't cause the GD. It would have happened without it.
Smoot Hawley and the subsequent tariff war was a big part of what made that happen.
That's been exaggerated. Trade was simply not that much of our economy back then. Even a devout free trader like Milton Friedman concluded that SH was a minor factor.
There is only one restriction: It must be voluntary. If you accept that "restriction", then Trade creates wealth. It's always beneficial, provided it's voluntary. This isn't an assumption
No, its an assertion. And the cite you used to back it up is nothing more than a series of assertions, without real argument, theory or evidence. If you say something often enough, does that make it true?
and it doesn't require "balanced trade" (whatever the hell that is)
Please tell me you're joking when you claim not to know what balanced trade is, or why it matters. And here's a hint: almost every economist working on trade, from Ricardo on, has in their theories assumed that trade is balanced. Remove that assumption and most of the theories are invalid.
It's simple, common sense.
Ah, the last bastion of those without real arguments. It's common sense that the world is flat, it's common sense that heavier objects fall faster, it's common sense that light, being a wave, must travel through a medium like the aether.
But the great irony is that the main argument for international trade, comparative advantage, violates "common sense", and has long been noted as such. By insisting on "common sense", you destroy the most powerful argument for trade!
High tariff barriers is one of the causes of the Great Depression.... A few years [after Smoot-Hawley]... our economy collapsed.
Bad history. Our economy collapsed in 1929. Smoot-Hawley was passed in 1930.
Now Smoot-Hawley probably exacerbated the Great Depression, and was a bad idea. So why don't you tell China to drop its tariff barriers and domestic purchasing requirements, which are much greater than ours.
You're missing the real story about tariffs and the Great Depression though. Our tariffs prior to Smoot-Hawley were still very high, which prevented European countries from exporting to us and using the revenue to pay off their WWI debts to us. Hence our trade surplus was a major factor in the banking crisis that started in Europe. Hmmm, large creditor country helps to wreck the world economy by insisting, by whatever means necessary, on maintaining a trade surplus. That was America in the 1920's... and China today.
Also, Al Hamilton is a canadian hockey player.
If I gave a rat's ass about Canadian hockey players, I'd complain about him stealing the name of our first Secretary of the Treasury. You know, the one whose policies (including high tariffs) helped make the US the greatest industrial economy in the world for many years, instead of an agricultural backwater.
Slashdot Mirror
some kids who didn't receive such things in their childhood may have to put forth a lot of effort to do a particular assignment
So there's the effort that they should be getting credit for.
A related problem is that kids who are bright and/or come from a good environment come to expect to get A's without much effort. That sets them up to be discouraged or poor students as they get older and the going gets tougher. My 4th grade daughter is a bright kid who (I hope) comes from a decent environment. People used to tell her she was smart, which infuriated me, despite (or because) it's true. I've finally gotten them to stop (mostly) and I tell her that just because she's bright is no excuse to not work at school. I expect more because she's smart. I don't take it to an extreme, like scolding her because she got a B, but I will gently ask her why she didn't do better. Thankfully I think it's sinking in.
That's taking it to an extreme, which may well happen some places. At a more moderate level it's another story.
For me and many that I know, taking notes can be a way of summarizing and processing the information coming in.
In other words, everybody learns in a different way. All the more reason this Big Brother software is a bad idea. The worst possible thing would be to try to force everyone into a standard way of studying.
Is it as efficient as if you could simply test out of the bio credit? No, but I don't believe that's possible with a large number of institutions.
Been some years for me, but as I recall some colleges charge as much to challenge the course as to take it. If you do challenge it, they'll bust your shoes in any way possible. Easier, and no more expensive, to take the class and snooze.
I am patenting Pageturner, proven to be the best way to spoof your e-book reading!
Perfect! Between the Big Brother software and the anti-Big Brother software, at least it'll get the economy moving. Keynes (cue conservative and libertarian rants) once opined that in a recession you could help the economy by paying group A to dig holes and group B to fill them in. Certainly a good example of pointless for that era, but I doubt he realized how amazingly good computers would be at doing pointless things.
The danger here is substituting the easy to measure metric "Pages Read" for the much tougher "Material Understood".
Not only easier to measure, but more "socially desirable". Instead of grading students on whether they've learned the material, you can grade them on whether they've tried to learn the material. This avoids the sometimes embarrassing fact that not everyone can hack certain courses.
At a lower level, I'm not a hard-ass about this. "A for effort" may be appropriate, to a certain extent, in elementary school, where you have to take into account that kids mental abilities may develop at different times, and can't be properly ascertained until they're a bit older. But in college? No way. At a college level nobody should even care if you attend classes, so long as you learn the material.
Woohoo! We replaced one tyrant with another. Now that's striking a blow for freedom! Operation Ajax had nothing to do with fighting communism, and everything to do with preserving the profits of British Petroleum (nee Anglo-Iranian Oil Company).
Usually called a Constitutional Republic. Real democracy will eat you
Warning: the English language is subject to change over the centuries. Right wingers and libertarians particularly take note. In the 18th century the word "democracy", without further qualification, generally referred to direct democracy. We are currently the 21st century (check your calendars if you doubt it). At this time, and for many years, the term "democracy" has taken on a more general meaning, and may refer to either direct or representative democracy, with or without a constitution. This may be verified by using a new type of reference called a "dictionary".
If you can't find anything more substantial to complain about than your fetish for using 18th century meanings for certain words, do you actually have anything to say?
LOL of course not.
Wikileaks has already demonstrated that they're willing to skew the data and completely misrepresent data if that misrepresentation supports their political views.
As has the US government. Which is why no good student of history relies on a single source.
And while the "Collateral Murder video", as originally released, was as much a piece of propaganda as any US government release, Wikileaks has a much better track record when it comes to raw dumps. Not necessarily because they're unbiased, but because they don't have the resources to edit them. If nevertheless the US government believes the cables have been selectively released, I'll look forward to their release of additional information to set the record straight.
Normalizing relations with China while not abandoning Taiwan is an example of something that could have become a festering wound that he avoided.
To give the devil his due, there are certain things that Nixon/Kissinger did right. You mentioned one of them. Others are détente and SALT I. But those are no reason to loose sight of the corrupt, murderous, and possibly outright treasonous things that they also did. History is full of such contradictions. For example, nobody likes to mention that without Stalin's forced industrialization in the 1920's and 30's, the Nazis probably would have won.
From the documents released a few years ago Ford was bribed (donation to Republican party) by the leader of Indonesia to put pressure on Australia and other nearby nations to stay out of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.
Cite? Not that I'm terribly skeptical, just that I'd like to read up on it.
if you read the cables, it doesn't read like a Stephen King novel
And how did you expect a raw dump of 200,000 cables to read? Let me know when you've read and studied all of them.
since you seem to be sympathetic to the former U.S.S.R
Clearly anybody who criticizes actions that led to blowback that has severely harmed the US and its citizens is sympathetic to the USSR. What next, Churchill was a Nazi sympathizer because he thought the bombing of Dresden was a mistake?
*I* am in Schrodinger's box...or am I?
Schrodinger was in the cat's box.
The USSR was a fascist country, although the red sort of fascism
Red fascism? Is that supposed to be an oxymoron? Fascism and communism were mortal enemies. You might want to look up a minor historical incident called World War II.
What fascism and communism did have in common was that they were both totalitarian. Words have a meaning; use them appropriately.
I am glad the West's only country capable of standing against the USSR had politicians like Dr Kissinger that were focused on winning.
And how was Henry focused on winning? By sabotaging peace negotiations and prolonging the Vietnam war so Nixon could win in 1968? The Vietnam war was a quagmire for the US and as such the USSR loved it. They could grind down the US just by shipping a few weapons to North Vietnam. Hence he was giving aid to our enemies - the Constitutional definition of treason.
It may be hard to get the general public's sympathy for the poor exploited workers who are dissatisfied with making only twice what ordinary people do.
Not at all, and I've successfully tried it. The popular perception of programmers, engineers, etc. is of people who've done reasonably well through talent, education and work. It's hardly the 0.01% that own the government, and the general public knows that. People who aren't quite as successful financially generally don't resent it, and maybe have a cousin who's done it or a kid they hope will do it. The general public still rightfully categorize programmers, etc. who work for a living and are subject to getting screwed by greedy and corrupt PTB.
If we had a Justice Department that was worth a damn, there would be criminal anti-trust cases brought against Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc like right now.
If we had a Justice Department worth a damn, those cases would have to take a back seat to the criminal fraud cases in the finance industry. Search on William K. Black for a earful on that. He helped prosecute over 1000 successful criminal fraud convictions arising from the S&L crisis. Similar prosecutions in the Great Recession: zero.
I think if the Silicon Valley companies look outside of their little World and realize that, for one, their technology isn't so groundbreaking after all, and for another, maybe could move development operations to let's say, Metro Atlanta where Lockheed just canned a bunch of really talented guys?
Hear, hear!
It amazes me how many people in SV consider themselves cosmopolitan, or even "global citizens", yet are in fact incredibly insular and provincial. It's as though they have world maps with only two places marked on them: SV and India.
Get a clue folks. SV is but one small part of America, and there are many others with substantial amounts of tech talent. If you have trouble hiring good people at a reasonable price, instead of screaming for more H-1B's, take a look at Google Maps for some of those other parts of the US. It's an approach that businesses have used since time immemorial: if the cost of doing business in one part of the country gets too high, you branch out to other parts. Yet somehow it doesn't occur to the tech geniuses of SV, despite crowing about how modern communication has eliminated so many barriers.
What about radiation shielding?
Unfortunately, they will "get this shit taken care of" by getting an amendment passed that essentially says "unless the perpetrator is a major campaign contributor to a congressman of their choice".
No need for an amendment; in contemporary America that's a bedrock legal principle.
That explains the gophers with the diamond jewelry.
your average high school student knows more about science and technology than half of Congress
Come on, our high schools can't be that bad.
the main argument for international trade, comparative advantage, violates "common sense"
It doesn't.
Not everybody has the same "common sense". I never thought comparative advantage terribly counter-intuitive either, but many people do. Hence an appeal to "common sense" in defense of trade is a poor, and ironic, approach.
Bad history. Our economy collapsed in 1929. Smoot-Hawley was passed in 1930.
No. Our economy collapsed for the next four years after the stock market crash.
Agreed, but SH still didn't cause the GD. It would have happened without it.
Smoot Hawley and the subsequent tariff war was a big part of what made that happen.
That's been exaggerated. Trade was simply not that much of our economy back then. Even a devout free trader like Milton Friedman concluded that SH was a minor factor.
There is only one restriction: It must be voluntary. If you accept that "restriction", then Trade creates wealth. It's always beneficial, provided it's voluntary. This isn't an assumption
No, its an assertion. And the cite you used to back it up is nothing more than a series of assertions, without real argument, theory or evidence. If you say something often enough, does that make it true?
and it doesn't require "balanced trade" (whatever the hell that is)
Please tell me you're joking when you claim not to know what balanced trade is, or why it matters. And here's a hint: almost every economist working on trade, from Ricardo on, has in their theories assumed that trade is balanced. Remove that assumption and most of the theories are invalid.
It's simple, common sense.
Ah, the last bastion of those without real arguments. It's common sense that the world is flat, it's common sense that heavier objects fall faster, it's common sense that light, being a wave, must travel through a medium like the aether.
But the great irony is that the main argument for international trade, comparative advantage, violates "common sense", and has long been noted as such. By insisting on "common sense", you destroy the most powerful argument for trade!
High tariff barriers is one of the causes of the Great Depression. ... A few years [after Smoot-Hawley] ... our economy collapsed.
Bad history. Our economy collapsed in 1929. Smoot-Hawley was passed in 1930.
Now Smoot-Hawley probably exacerbated the Great Depression, and was a bad idea. So why don't you tell China to drop its tariff barriers and domestic purchasing requirements, which are much greater than ours.
You're missing the real story about tariffs and the Great Depression though. Our tariffs prior to Smoot-Hawley were still very high, which prevented European countries from exporting to us and using the revenue to pay off their WWI debts to us. Hence our trade surplus was a major factor in the banking crisis that started in Europe. Hmmm, large creditor country helps to wreck the world economy by insisting, by whatever means necessary, on maintaining a trade surplus. That was America in the 1920's ... and China today.
Also, Al Hamilton is a canadian hockey player.
If I gave a rat's ass about Canadian hockey players, I'd complain about him stealing the name of our first Secretary of the Treasury. You know, the one whose policies (including high tariffs) helped make the US the greatest industrial economy in the world for many years, instead of an agricultural backwater.
You should probably review a little bit of your history before making the following statement, "at the behest of his Wall St. masters."
Where do you think Bobby Rubin came from (and returned to afterword)?
If you have a specific rebuttal I'd love to hear it, but vague "you should probably review a little bit of your history" remarks are barely worth it.