I once used Civilization (3, perhaps?) as a supplement to teach sixth graders about the rise of civilizations. After talking a bit about how geography affected human development, just as tile placement affects what path you might take in the game, we came across an unprotected worker from another civilization in a square adjacent to our exploring warrior. To the question "Should be attack that worker or not? They're defenseless, and we have big clubs", several of the more vocal boys shouted "kill them!" All it took was a moment for me as the teacher to say, "Are you really willing to slaughter a person so easily? You're taking a human life. Are you really prepared to kill somebody's mother, father, or child?" Just thinking about what it represented for a second was enough to get a unanimous decision from the class to spare the worker's life, and several kids even offered help him with the farm he was building. I thought it was awesome.
Teachable moments are everywhere, and all it takes is somebody paying attention to make an "empathy-hindering" moment an empathy-teaching moment.
From the time I bought my TiVo until two years or so ago, I didn't hesitate to tell people how much I loved my TiVo and the service that comes with it. The company really seems to be intent on alienating me as a customer now, though, and I'm getting fed up with it. I am sick of all the bloat. I'm sick of software updates which make my box less user friendly and more sluggish. I am pissed that every time I pause a show or go to the TiVo Central screen I'm forced to look at an advertisement. The whole frigging point of this service was to get away from that. As a stockholder too, I appreciate their desire to find other sources of income from their product, but pissing off your user base does not seem like a wise move, in my mind.
I could care less about Blockbuster streaming. Netflix too. I just want my TiVo service to work as well, and as unobtrusively, as it did when I first bought the damn thing.
I'm a new parent learning more about vaccinations, and this gets toward the heart of the issue: Is vaccination pushed by the government and doctors because it's best for my child, or because it's best for public health policy? To the CDC, my child is a statistic, whereas to me, he's the only statistic.
If I could be convinced that sufficient double-blind studies had been done to know what risk factors there are for adverse reactions to immunizations, I'd be a lot more comfortable unhesitatingly saying, go ahead and shoot him up. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no faith the in the pharmaceutical industry's ethics, interest, or ability to run non-biased studies on their products. This idea that one size vaccination fits all seems absurd to me.
If our public school systems were even slightly intelligently designed, people would teach regardless of salary.
The problem with our schools is not financial, it's cultural.
It's kids telling teachers to fuckoff and getting a slap on their wrist from administrators. It's parents thinking it's ok for their kids to smoke pot daily. It's the dean of student telling students that he cheated in college, so they shouldn't cheat in high school. It's that there's even a question as to whether a student will be expelled after issuing death threats to teachers. It's trying to simultaneously attempting to serve the needs of everybody by catering to the lowest common denominator. It's parents who say, "I wasn't good at math, so neither is my kid." It's the kid who refuses to add without a calculator. It's the classroom in which over 2/3rds of the students miss more than 20 classes in one semester. It's kids who can't/won't bring books home, read them, study them, and do assignments. It's a bureaucracy that takes teachers out of the classroom, pays for them to drive to 30-100 miles to have a "manual" read word-by-word to them by a "professional" consultant, when they could have easily just mailed the damn thing. It's teachers giving more "extra" credit to their students than regular credit, so a kid can not do any real assignments, but can make a collage and still end up passing.
It's not the money.
This is from a 31 year old "retired" teacher who has taught at one of the best schools in the world (a private international school in Indonesia), and one of the worst schools in the world (a public charter school in North Carolina).
Searching though this database, I came across a few series of queries which I found to be quite sad, interesting, and moving. And here's a new type of narrative, search queries.
Until June 11th, I was a high school math teacher at a public charter school in North Carolina. When I decided to not renew by contact for next year, it had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with culture.
As a whole, our culture (or at least North Cakalaki's) does not value education. I don't need books, I don't need computers, I don't even need chairs. Give me some kids who come from families that value learning and education, and I'll help build an educated student. Give me a kid who won't even put in the effort to cheat on a a test or homework assignment, and there's jack shit I can do.
While culture may not be easy to change, it is the root of all our school's problems. Our schools are stupid enough, however, that, generally speaking, they don't attempt to either fix nor solve the problem. An essential clue that our systems are lacking is the shortage of math and science teachers. These people are, ideally, logical and rational people. Personally, the irrationality and lack of logic at the NC Department of Public Instruction was more than enough to cause me to leave the system. My only other alternative, would have been to sacrifice my standards and the quality of education.
And the fact that they've been totally shitty about getting new puzzles in the game doesn't make me very happy either. YPP has hemorraged long-time players for a few months now. Had I not been in on the beta deal ($50 for 2 years) You could bet your little ass that I'd have long ago cancelled my subscription. Sad too, because it was one of the few games that was able to hold my attention for an extended period of time. Guess that time has worn itself out finally.
First the battle between the Bloods and Crips takes over our cities and schools, and now we as geeks encourage its spread to the internet? When will the madness end!
The other day I got a call from a telemarketer who wanted me to change my phone service (for the low, low monthly price of $49.90/month). For some reason I felt compassion for this bloke who called, and I didn't tell him to go fuck himself outright (although it would have been well within my right, since my ass-cheeks had just landed on the toilet seat, and I was ready to unload.) Anyway, so I was nice, and feigned interest, and asked if they had DSL, and yada yada yada. And then asked all the questions that they're supposed to be legally bound to answer (their name, company's name, address, phone number, etc). Around this time, the guy starts to get annoyed, since it's been almost 60 seconds that we've been talking. He gives me his name and address, when I (honestly) realize I don't have a pen, so I ask him to hold on a second. Ten seconds later, I've got a pen and paper, and I copy down his name as well as the company's. When I ask for the address and his employee ID number, he gets all snotty, and taunts me with, "What are you going to do, come up here and arrest me? I'm in Vancouver." I explain, still politely, that he is the one that called me, and that as I understand the law, he is required to give me certain, specific information about himself and his company. When I start to ask for his address again, he get's all pissy, and abruptly hangs up.
Now, normally, I'd say fuck it, and go on with my day, but he taunted me with that "what are you going to do" attitude, so I say fuck him. A few googles for his company (RSVP Customer Care Centre) later, I find the website (after getting arond their silly spelling of "center"), and the name of his boss, the VP of Sales and Marketing. She was very kind and apologetic, and she seemed honestly surprised by Joe's reaction to me on the line; for four year he had been a model employee. And for Joe, fair enough, his job probably does suck with people giving him shit all the time; still, at the same time, there's a certain amount of professionalism that I expect from these guys. Maybe he was just rude because he knew he'd be out of a job when the DNC list goes into effect.
Anyway, my (elusive) point, call their bosses and bitch, especially if they're rude or unprofessional.
Forget the suburbs, coverage sucks downtown. I was staying with a friend a block away from Prudential, and while the phone would consistantly have four bars on its signal strength indicator, about 90% of the calls would get dropped.
On Long Island, the signal indicator jumped from zero to four bars at random, short intervals, and there was no chance of getting a call to go through. I must admit, however, that I was impressed that I had full and stable coverage while taking the ferry from Orient Point, Long Island to New London, CT.
Every time I log on to America's Army, There, any MMORPG, or even Slashdot, I'd say that I'm entering an alternate Matrix. If only I could disconnect from "reality" as easily as I can from slashdot. (go go gadget meditation!)
Why the fruck do You not feel like You're being screwed with XBox Live? Why are You paying for a service which should be included with the $50 You spent on the game in the first place.
Anybody who feels that $50/year (on top of broadband and game purchase costs) is acceptable for playing games online NEEDS to spend some time playing online PC games. For a taste, download America's Army (for free) and see what it's like to play against 32 people at once, without any stupid annual or monthly fee.
The only games I'd be willing to pay annual fees for are MMORPGs, and even then only if they were using those fees to create new and valuable content. XBox Live seems like nothing more than an unnecessary obstacle to online gaming with the XBox.
Last week I discovered that Road Runner had blocked all incoming mail traffic from my workplace's domain. When we called RR to seek an explanation, since we have our relays secured and don't spam, they told us that it wasn't just our IPs that were blocked, it was ALL of the IPs that our ISP, Allegiance, owned. Apparently one person had sent enough spam to annoy RR, but instead of blocking just one IP or a small range, they decided to boycott ALL mail from the owner of the IP. Very annoying, and unprofessional, if You ask me.
Please, please, stop beating it! (the horse, that is).
While I loved playing the first few games in this franchise, I personally think it's time for the madness to stop. Buying this game will only encourage EA to come out with more $50 retooled clones of old games. __
> Let's hope Senators Hollings and Berman are paying attention.
Of course, if You really cared about this issue, You'd not sit only at home and hope that politicians listen, but You'd get out there and support those who are fighting for You by joining the EFF.
As long as the publishing industry has the deep pockets to pay well, many of those lawyers who are rooting for Lessig will loose some of their youthful enthusiasm and they'll end up fighting on behalf of the industry.
If we really believe that Lessig's arguement is just, we need to support him (and the EFF) financially.
What percentage of/.ers have given money to the EFF? I'd be interested to see some numbers; I'd certainly hope they are high.
Considering the bredth of slashdot's userbase, we should be able to come up with a ton of cash to compliment the posts, ideas, thoughts, humor, and time we spend here.
Slashdot Mirror
I once used Civilization (3, perhaps?) as a supplement to teach sixth graders about the rise of civilizations. After talking a bit about how geography affected human development, just as tile placement affects what path you might take in the game, we came across an unprotected worker from another civilization in a square adjacent to our exploring warrior. To the question "Should be attack that worker or not? They're defenseless, and we have big clubs", several of the more vocal boys shouted "kill them!" All it took was a moment for me as the teacher to say, "Are you really willing to slaughter a person so easily? You're taking a human life. Are you really prepared to kill somebody's mother, father, or child?" Just thinking about what it represented for a second was enough to get a unanimous decision from the class to spare the worker's life, and several kids even offered help him with the farm he was building. I thought it was awesome.
Teachable moments are everywhere, and all it takes is somebody paying attention to make an "empathy-hindering" moment an empathy-teaching moment.
From the time I bought my TiVo until two years or so ago, I didn't hesitate to tell people how much I loved my TiVo and the service that comes with it. The company really seems to be intent on alienating me as a customer now, though, and I'm getting fed up with it. I am sick of all the bloat. I'm sick of software updates which make my box less user friendly and more sluggish. I am pissed that every time I pause a show or go to the TiVo Central screen I'm forced to look at an advertisement. The whole frigging point of this service was to get away from that. As a stockholder too, I appreciate their desire to find other sources of income from their product, but pissing off your user base does not seem like a wise move, in my mind.
I could care less about Blockbuster streaming. Netflix too. I just want my TiVo service to work as well, and as unobtrusively, as it did when I first bought the damn thing.
If you're the 1 in x thousand that had an adverse reaction to a vaccine, you don't care what the ratios are.
I'm a new parent learning more about vaccinations, and this gets toward the heart of the issue: Is vaccination pushed by the government and doctors because it's best for my child, or because it's best for public health policy? To the CDC, my child is a statistic, whereas to me, he's the only statistic.
If I could be convinced that sufficient double-blind studies had been done to know what risk factors there are for adverse reactions to immunizations, I'd be a lot more comfortable unhesitatingly saying, go ahead and shoot him up. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no faith the in the pharmaceutical industry's ethics, interest, or ability to run non-biased studies on their products. This idea that one size vaccination fits all seems absurd to me.
Newhour with Jim Leher on PBS is the only tv news worth watching.
If our public school systems were even slightly intelligently designed, people would teach regardless of salary.
The problem with our schools is not financial, it's cultural.
It's kids telling teachers to fuckoff and getting a slap on their wrist from administrators. It's parents thinking it's ok for their kids to smoke pot daily. It's the dean of student telling students that he cheated in college, so they shouldn't cheat in high school. It's that there's even a question as to whether a student will be expelled after issuing death threats to teachers. It's trying to simultaneously attempting to serve the needs of everybody by catering to the lowest common denominator. It's parents who say, "I wasn't good at math, so neither is my kid." It's the kid who refuses to add without a calculator. It's the classroom in which over 2/3rds of the students miss more than 20 classes in one semester. It's kids who can't/won't bring books home, read them, study them, and do assignments. It's a bureaucracy that takes teachers out of the classroom, pays for them to drive to 30-100 miles to have a "manual" read word-by-word to them by a "professional" consultant, when they could have easily just mailed the damn thing. It's teachers giving more "extra" credit to their students than regular credit, so a kid can not do any real assignments, but can make a collage and still end up passing.
It's not the money.
This is from a 31 year old "retired" teacher who has taught at one of the best schools in the world (a private international school in Indonesia), and one of the worst schools in the world (a public charter school in North Carolina).
The numerical value is not attached to "intelligence" or "education", it's attached to "ability and willingness to jump through hoops".
Searching though this database, I came across a few series of queries which I found to be quite sad, interesting, and moving. And here's a new type of narrative, search queries.
A few examples...
http://www.aolstalker.com/user.php?uid=672368
http://www.aolstalker.com/user.php?uid=154448
A few pages about the people from whom Stevens has been taking bribes.
1 News Corp $47,250
2 Boeing Co $41,900
3 Verizon Communications $36,550
4 Veco Corp $31,750
5 Viacom Inc $23,000
6 AT&T Inc $22,500
7 General Electric $20,000
7 Walt Disney Co $20,000
9 BAE Systems $19,000
10 Northrop Grumman $18,000
11 Cubic Corp $17,250
12 Mantech International $16,500
13 Intergraph Corp $15,600
14 Cassidy & Assoc/Interpublic Group $15,569
15 General Dynamics $15,000
15 Lockheed Martin $15,000
15 Northern Lights PAC $15,000
15 Teamsters Union $15,000
19 Science Applications International Corp $14,500
19 Sprint Nextel $14,500
Has all this corruption and ineptitude in our government caused anybody else to come to the conclusion that gun control is a bad idea?
Until June 11th, I was a high school math teacher at a public charter school in North Carolina. When I decided to not renew by contact for next year, it had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with culture.
As a whole, our culture (or at least North Cakalaki's) does not value education. I don't need books, I don't need computers, I don't even need chairs. Give me some kids who come from families that value learning and education, and I'll help build an educated student. Give me a kid who won't even put in the effort to cheat on a a test or homework assignment, and there's jack shit I can do.
While culture may not be easy to change, it is the root of all our school's problems. Our schools are stupid enough, however, that, generally speaking, they don't attempt to either fix nor solve the problem. An essential clue that our systems are lacking is the shortage of math and science teachers. These people are, ideally, logical and rational people. Personally, the irrationality and lack of logic at the NC Department of Public Instruction was more than enough to cause me to leave the system. My only other alternative, would have been to sacrifice my standards and the quality of education.
And the fact that they've been totally shitty about getting new puzzles in the game doesn't make me very happy either. YPP has hemorraged long-time players for a few months now. Had I not been in on the beta deal ($50 for 2 years) You could bet your little ass that I'd have long ago cancelled my subscription. Sad too, because it was one of the few games that was able to hold my attention for an extended period of time. Guess that time has worn itself out finally.
First the battle between the Bloods and Crips takes over our cities and schools, and now we as geeks encourage its spread to the internet? When will the madness end!
The other day I got a call from a telemarketer who wanted me to change my phone service (for the low, low monthly price of $49.90/month). For some reason I felt compassion for this bloke who called, and I didn't tell him to go fuck himself outright (although it would have been well within my right, since my ass-cheeks had just landed on the toilet seat, and I was ready to unload.) Anyway, so I was nice, and feigned interest, and asked if they had DSL, and yada yada yada. And then asked all the questions that they're supposed to be legally bound to answer (their name, company's name, address, phone number, etc). Around this time, the guy starts to get annoyed, since it's been almost 60 seconds that we've been talking. He gives me his name and address, when I (honestly) realize I don't have a pen, so I ask him to hold on a second. Ten seconds later, I've got a pen and paper, and I copy down his name as well as the company's. When I ask for the address and his employee ID number, he gets all snotty, and taunts me with, "What are you going to do, come up here and arrest me? I'm in Vancouver." I explain, still politely, that he is the one that called me, and that as I understand the law, he is required to give me certain, specific information about himself and his company. When I start to ask for his address again, he get's all pissy, and abruptly hangs up.
Now, normally, I'd say fuck it, and go on with my day, but he taunted me with that "what are you going to do" attitude, so I say fuck him. A few googles for his company (RSVP Customer Care Centre) later, I find the website (after getting arond their silly spelling of "center"), and the name of his boss, the VP of Sales and Marketing. She was very kind and apologetic, and she seemed honestly surprised by Joe's reaction to me on the line; for four year he had been a model employee. And for Joe, fair enough, his job probably does suck with people giving him shit all the time; still, at the same time, there's a certain amount of professionalism that I expect from these guys. Maybe he was just rude because he knew he'd be out of a job when the DNC list goes into effect.
Anyway, my (elusive) point, call their bosses and bitch, especially if they're rude or unprofessional.
Forget the suburbs, coverage sucks downtown. I was staying with a friend a block away from Prudential, and while the phone would consistantly have four bars on its signal strength indicator, about 90% of the calls would get dropped.
On Long Island, the signal indicator jumped from zero to four bars at random, short intervals, and there was no chance of getting a call to go through. I must admit, however, that I was impressed that I had full and stable coverage while taking the ferry from Orient Point, Long Island to New London, CT.
Sprint PCS = Positively Crappy Service
Every time I log on to America's Army, There, any MMORPG, or even Slashdot, I'd say that I'm entering an alternate Matrix. If only I could disconnect from "reality" as easily as I can from slashdot. (go go gadget meditation!)
"Sounds like a pretty good deal."
Why the fruck do You not feel like You're being screwed with XBox Live? Why are You paying for a service which should be included with the $50 You spent on the game in the first place.
Anybody who feels that $50/year (on top of broadband and game purchase costs) is acceptable for playing games online NEEDS to spend some time playing online PC games. For a taste, download America's Army (for free) and see what it's like to play against 32 people at once, without any stupid annual or monthly fee.
The only games I'd be willing to pay annual fees for are MMORPGs, and even then only if they were using those fees to create new and valuable content. XBox Live seems like nothing more than an unnecessary obstacle to online gaming with the XBox.
Last week I discovered that Road Runner had blocked all incoming mail traffic from my workplace's domain. When we called RR to seek an explanation, since we have our relays secured and don't spam, they told us that it wasn't just our IPs that were blocked, it was ALL of the IPs that our ISP, Allegiance, owned. Apparently one person had sent enough spam to annoy RR, but instead of blocking just one IP or a small range, they decided to boycott ALL mail from the owner of the IP. Very annoying, and unprofessional, if You ask me.
Please, please, stop beating it! (the horse, that is).
While I loved playing the first few games in this franchise, I personally think it's time for the madness to stop. Buying this game will only encourage EA to come out with more $50 retooled clones of old games.
__
> I never thought I'd want to leave a place where
;)
> hot women grab my crotch as I'm walking down the
> street
Uhh, are You sure they were women? Thai Shemales can be quite convincing.
Of course, if You really cared about this issue, You'd not sit only at home and hope that politicians listen, but You'd get out there and support those who are fighting for You by joining the EFF.
Fight back!
As long as the publishing industry has the deep pockets to pay well, many of those lawyers who are rooting for Lessig will loose some of their youthful enthusiasm and they'll end up fighting on behalf of the industry.
/.ers have given money to the EFF? I'd be interested to see some numbers; I'd certainly hope they are high.
If we really believe that Lessig's arguement is just, we need to support him (and the EFF) financially.
What percentage of
Considering the bredth of slashdot's userbase, we should be able to come up with a ton of cash to compliment the posts, ideas, thoughts, humor, and time we spend here.
C
__
Sounds like Kenny Lay and the Enron boys found new jobs!