Overall I think you are right, most people don't get it, and don't see the danger. However,
I do think that it's only a matter of time
before people start realizing what's been going on. Chances are things will get much worse before
they start to get better, but I think that the realization will happen eventually. I just wish
there was someway to give that sleeping majority
the foresight that we have, it would stop a lot
of this nonsense (like the MPAA and the RIAA) before anyone tried to start it, and it save a lot of people a lot of money.
Who is it that decides what it is that students should think? You? Me? A school board? Congress?
What's remarkable to me is how you fail to recognize how insidious your argument is.
Ok, go ahead and try your method.
What you will find is that you can teach someone
what to think, and you can teach them how to think, but if you can't teach them why they should think, they will do neither. If you don't engage
students in the learning process, and allow them
to make their own discoveries, they're going to
head right back to the Cliff's notes and memorize
as much as they can for the exam, and forget it
all a week later. All because you've told them what to think and how to think, but given them no reason to think for themselves.
You don't seem to think that teachers investigate their teaching methods before they implement them. That's an insult to teachers, in my opinion. Back in the day, they were the most respected branch of the public sector because of the leadership and influence they held over our children. They still do, in spite of what you're claiming.
No, they don't research new methods before implenting them. Do you know why? Because they don't implement new methods, nor are they given the time by the school administration to properly research new methods, anything new a teacher does is almost always on their own time. You have no idea how much inertia there is in the world of teaching. If you don't
believe me, I have a whole slew of former National
Science Foundation Teaching Scholars, who, upon entering their first year of teaching were chastised, written up, even fired for trying something new, something that educational researchers have shown to work! Insult or not,
that is the way things are. And the idiot parents
often lead the charge, because their kids aren't
being taught the same way they were!
I do agree with your last statement, but sometimes the teachers themselves and the system
they have to work in is their own worst enemy.
Yes, anyone can argue by anecdote, it's easier. There is a fair amount of hard data that backs this up, but my anecdote better illustrates what I was getting at.
I partially agree with you. But, I'm not advocating that each person must re-invent their own wheels. I am saying that there *is* a process
that must be learned here, the process of critical
thinking. I don't much care what content you teach, if the student doesn't gain critical thinking skills in the process, all you are doing
is filling their head with facts that they will forget sooner or later. I'm not saying that the
content isn't important, it is just as important,
but you must have both. Without one of the components, you get precisely the situation we have now, and it is precisely why the students would rather read the cliff's notes. Give the student the opportunity to inquire and explore
(with some guidance) and you wind up with a student that has a much better attitude towards learning, and will often go much further (and we have hard data to back that up). I would also argue that performing elementary experiments (when performed in the right way) are often the best way to illustrate
the process, and teach some basic concepts as well...concepts that will be needed later.
Ultimately what I dislike about your argument
is that it appears to completely disregard the creative component that's required for real progress. I don't want to teach someone what to
think, but how to evaluate various solutions/ideas/problems and be able to discard the bad ones, and concentrate on the ones that have merit. That's a trait that is just as important
to every scientist as it is to your fellow engineers at IBM, and it's a useful trait to have in everyday life as well. If more people
had this trait I don't think there would be so many psychic hotline commercials..among other things. You won't end the vicious cycle by trapping the student's mind in what we already know, you'll only extend it.
I don't think it follows that filling up a student's head with facts teaches them what to think. In fact, I have some anecdotal evidence
that it stops them from thinking at all.
Case in point, I work for a pre-service, math
and science teacher education program. One of the
things we have done is revamp our science courses
emphasizing quality math/science education over
quantity. In other words, the students may not
cover quite the quantity of content that you get
in a regular science class, but they get a much
deeper understanding of the material, and they
are required to demonstrate this understanding...
Now back to my point, we occaisionally get a few pre-med students in our classes, these students are masters of memorization, but when asked to apply what they've learned conceptually,
they scream to high heaven about it, not only do
they not think, they don't want to think,
as though it's something totally foreign to them!
Finally, I've been working in the education field for about 6 years now, and not once, ONCE, has anybody in our groups talked about communing with electrons. I'm still
trying figure out where this sort of blabber got
started, it's certainly not part of any teacher
training program I've ever been a part of, or have
heard of. I don't mean to flame, but I don't know
where this mindset has come from (although I do have a few suspicions), and, frankly, it really
ticks me off everytime I hear it!
I agree with you that education should have strong content and critical thinking components,
but I strongly disagree that we should be teaching
people what to think. That is not a road
I would recommend we follow, it's every bit as bad
as not thinking at all. The ability to think critically is enough for most people to be able to
wade through the crap that's constantly presented to them, the problem is that there aren't as many
people out there as there should be, that knows
how to do it.
Yeah, I have to agree. This isn't the first time
sengan has made silly comments like this. I think
he has an over-active mistrust of science/scientists. That's not to say that all scientists are saints, but more often than not,
scientists know thier own work better than anyone
else, and are often the harshest judges of it.
It's when other people (including other scientists) get involved with their
own personal agendas that things tend to go south.
The term 'discontinued operations' is a common legal and finance term used in these situations and should not raise concern about VistaSource's long term viability.
is a common marketing term called putting a good spin on bad news. Sheesh, I know this is what marketers do, but sometimes I'm still amazed at the crap these people can spew with a straight face.
I wouldn't be worried about posting this as an AC,
That's a really interesting idea. I'm not so sure
I buy the idea that you'll be able to get a usable
signal out of the scattered light, it's possible
I suppose, but I don't think it would be easy.
You're going to pick up a lot of noise
with that technique. Not to mention the loss of
signal strength, assuming you can detect the signal at all.
I'm afraid you haven't convinced me. Extinction may not be a problem between the sender
and the intended reciever, but for an interloper
such as us? When we're not exactly sure what is
we're looking for? When the pulse may be compressed into something unrecognizable? Not good. As for the IR, see my other post about
that. Yes, looking in the IR is a much better choice.
As for 2, that is not a major error, but I did not explicitly state my entire reasoning, so
let's think about it for a second. Yes, the beam
will spread, and as it spreads, you lose power.
Our ET's are going to want to use as little amount
of power as possible, hence the beam will more likely than not, be as focused as possible.
Unless they are sending an "is there anyone out
there" message, which I would put odds of 50-50
on that right there.
Finally, even if the beam width is larger than
the size of the solar system, is that really significant? I would argue that
it is not. Catching gamma bursts will be easier,
they are at least going to be more frequent...
Yeah, there will be some beam divergence, and,
as another poster pointed out, if you have a
large distance, the beam size can be pretty big.
But in astronomical terms, I don't think the beam
could get that big before extinction would
would completely absorb the beam, or reduce the
signal strength to such a level that it's pretty
near impossible to work with.
Alternatively, if you were to go down into the
IR, you'd at least have a better chance of the
signal getting through (less extinction in the IR), but you still have the problem with the beam size being pretty tight, as well as the need to be looking at the right place at the right milisecond.
While such a thing may be technically possible,
these guys seem to be glossing over some very big
problems.
1. Optical communication across interstellar distances is going to suffer from severe extinction (signal absorption by intervening dust). Even if you can generate a laser pulse
brighter than the sun, interstellar extinction is
a big problem to overcome.
2. A laser beam is very tightly confined, and
would have to be aimed very precisely in order to
"hit" it's target. The probabability that the Earth
would just happen to cross one of these "lines of
communication" is incredibly small.
So it seems to me that while optical commmunications could work in principal, radio is
going to be much easier to work with, since
you don't have to worry about extinction or pointing problems as much.
I think you're partially correct. Yes, there are
a number of succesful online communities still
around, even today.
The WELL was a little different in comparison to what we've got today, and your post shows exactly how it was different. The communities that you speak of are all pretty narrowly focused,
and specialized (and there's nothing wrong with that). The WELL, on the other hand, tended to be
a lot more diverse without the trolls and flames
of slashdot... You're post also alludes quite well to why it's almost impossible to have a
diverse forum today: too many people with agendas aside from just communicating with another person,
hence more and more people are gravitating to smaller forums so that they can leave the trolls behind.
That wasn't my point. The point is that water vapor can be damaging to environments just as well as gasoline. Granted, I don't like breathing partially oxidated hydrocarbons any more than the next guy, but to say that converting to pure hydrogen burning cars will not adversely affect the environment is equally dubious (and some people have made that claim). Imagine the size of
Texas' "tornado alley" expanding all the way across the southwest, and as far north as, say,
Chicago? Would that be a good thing?
Each alternative has a consequence, and it's important to realize what they are. I'm all for a switch to hydrogen, but it's important to note that such a switch does have it's own potential problems.
Yes and no. Of course hydrogen is flammable, but it is not as flammable as gasoline though. I've seen a hydrogen canister pierced by a bullet
and the tank didn't explode. Try and do that with
a gas tank.
Another draw-back to hydrogen powered cars is,
in fact, water. Consider this: If you've got
100,000 cars burning hydrogen in your local city, you're putting an awful lot of water vapor into the air, enough that you could affect the climate... You could produce some really nasty thunderstorms if you pass a cold front through some nice humid air (just like what happens in the
spring and fall in central Texas).
Well, I think the problem with these unpublished
blacklists comes down to a "who watches the watchers problem." I think the lists are
likely to block "fundamentalist" materials depending on who the people are that make up
the lists.
The thing to remember is that just about any particular person is likely to be offended by
just about anything. And that's why these lists
need to published (whether you agree with the
filters or not) just to make sure that someone
has put a bunch of wacky stuff in there that
simply doesn't make sense, like blocking the
sun-worshipping dog launchers website.
That's an interesting idea. The first question I
have though is do such heavy metal currents exist in the first place? I'm just curious what kind
of mechanism would cause such a thing. Exposure
of an ore rich deposit to water? It's seems to
me that normal diffusion would probably be high
enough that the concentration of said metals wouldn't
be significantly higher than in normal sea water, but that's just little more than a guess.
I agree with you by and large, one can over look bad costuming, sets, and FX, but only up to a point. When the bad stuff starts to become a distraction, it *does* take away from the story.
Personally, I found the silly hats, and much
of the costuming distracting, and those things
did take away from my enjoyment of the series.
...not a software empire like Microsoft or anything of that magnitude.
Statements like this one always burn me up. RedHat has said several times, that it is not trying to be another M$. So why are there so many people who seem to be expecting it to become so?
Nobody I know hates Halton Arp. Most people in
the astronomical community have a great deal of
respect for him and his work.
However, the
evidence that supports his interpretation of redshifts is, quite frankly, weak. Most, if
not all, of his "showstopper" examples are quite
possibly a consequence of a selection effect, nothing more. And the whole idea of "tired light"
has no basis in any physics that we currently know
about. In other words, some very big discoveries,
would need to be made and a couple of Nobel prizes would have to be given out before most astronomers would accept Arp's interpretation. Current evidence just doesn't point in that direction.
And his theories are definitely not a linux thing any more than any other
endeavor that requires a high degree of precision,
a whole a lot of sweat, and a great deal of ability to solve nearly intractable problems. The similarity ends there, no matter how much you want
to root for an "underdog."
The other problem with the article is that it
seems to be based on the premiss that you only
have two choices. The districting idea may still
be valid with multiple choices, but I'm pretty
sure the method used for districting becomes
*much* more complicated, perhaps intractable.
And since my biggest problem is with the two
choices we were given, the article really needs
to take into account 3rd party choices before
I would buy into it.
Slashdot Mirror
Overall I think you are right, most people don't get it, and don't see the danger. However, I do think that it's only a matter of time before people start realizing what's been going on. Chances are things will get much worse before they start to get better, but I think that the realization will happen eventually. I just wish there was someway to give that sleeping majority the foresight that we have, it would stop a lot of this nonsense (like the MPAA and the RIAA) before anyone tried to start it, and it save a lot of people a lot of money.
Ah, yes, of course. Science has been progressing by revelation for a couple of hundred years!
Alright, now you really are trolling
Ok, go ahead and try your method. What you will find is that you can teach someone what to think, and you can teach them how to think, but if you can't teach them why they should think, they will do neither. If you don't engage students in the learning process, and allow them to make their own discoveries, they're going to head right back to the Cliff's notes and memorize as much as they can for the exam, and forget it all a week later. All because you've told them what to think and how to think, but given them no reason to think for themselves.
No, they don't research new methods before implenting them. Do you know why? Because they don't implement new methods, nor are they given the time by the school administration to properly research new methods, anything new a teacher does is almost always on their own time. You have no idea how much inertia there is in the world of teaching. If you don't believe me, I have a whole slew of former National Science Foundation Teaching Scholars, who, upon entering their first year of teaching were chastised, written up, even fired for trying something new, something that educational researchers have shown to work! Insult or not, that is the way things are. And the idiot parents often lead the charge, because their kids aren't being taught the same way they were!
I do agree with your last statement, but sometimes the teachers themselves and the system they have to work in is their own worst enemy.
I partially agree with you. But, I'm not advocating that each person must re-invent their own wheels. I am saying that there *is* a process that must be learned here, the process of critical thinking. I don't much care what content you teach, if the student doesn't gain critical thinking skills in the process, all you are doing is filling their head with facts that they will forget sooner or later. I'm not saying that the content isn't important, it is just as important, but you must have both. Without one of the components, you get precisely the situation we have now, and it is precisely why the students would rather read the cliff's notes. Give the student the opportunity to inquire and explore (with some guidance) and you wind up with a student that has a much better attitude towards learning, and will often go much further (and we have hard data to back that up). I would also argue that performing elementary experiments (when performed in the right way) are often the best way to illustrate the process, and teach some basic concepts as well...concepts that will be needed later.
Ultimately what I dislike about your argument is that it appears to completely disregard the creative component that's required for real progress. I don't want to teach someone what to think, but how to evaluate various solutions/ideas/problems and be able to discard the bad ones, and concentrate on the ones that have merit. That's a trait that is just as important to every scientist as it is to your fellow engineers at IBM, and it's a useful trait to have in everyday life as well. If more people had this trait I don't think there would be so many psychic hotline commercials..among other things. You won't end the vicious cycle by trapping the student's mind in what we already know, you'll only extend it.
If you're serious? Well, to paraphrase Londo Molari, "Arrogance and stupidity, all in one nice package. How efficient of you!"
I don't think it follows that filling up a student's head with facts teaches them what to think. In fact, I have some anecdotal evidence that it stops them from thinking at all.
Case in point, I work for a pre-service, math and science teacher education program. One of the things we have done is revamp our science courses emphasizing quality math/science education over quantity. In other words, the students may not cover quite the quantity of content that you get in a regular science class, but they get a much deeper understanding of the material, and they are required to demonstrate this understanding...
Now back to my point, we occaisionally get a few pre-med students in our classes, these students are masters of memorization, but when asked to apply what they've learned conceptually, they scream to high heaven about it, not only do they not think, they don't want to think, as though it's something totally foreign to them!
Finally, I've been working in the education field for about 6 years now, and not once, ONCE, has anybody in our groups talked about communing with electrons. I'm still trying figure out where this sort of blabber got started, it's certainly not part of any teacher training program I've ever been a part of, or have heard of. I don't mean to flame, but I don't know where this mindset has come from (although I do have a few suspicions), and, frankly, it really ticks me off everytime I hear it!
I agree with you that education should have strong content and critical thinking components, but I strongly disagree that we should be teaching people what to think. That is not a road I would recommend we follow, it's every bit as bad as not thinking at all. The ability to think critically is enough for most people to be able to wade through the crap that's constantly presented to them, the problem is that there aren't as many people out there as there should be, that knows how to do it.
Alright, I'll stop rambling...
It's when other people (including other scientists) get involved with their own personal agendas that things tend to go south.
The sentence:
The term 'discontinued operations' is a common legal and finance term used in these situations and should not raise concern about VistaSource's long term viability.
is a common marketing term called putting a good spin on bad news. Sheesh, I know this is what marketers do, but sometimes I'm still amazed at the crap these people can spew with a straight face.
You're going to pick up a lot of noise with that technique. Not to mention the loss of signal strength, assuming you can detect the signal at all.
I'm afraid you haven't convinced me. Extinction may not be a problem between the sender and the intended reciever, but for an interloper such as us? When we're not exactly sure what is we're looking for? When the pulse may be compressed into something unrecognizable? Not good. As for the IR, see my other post about that. Yes, looking in the IR is a much better choice.
As for 2, that is not a major error, but I did not explicitly state my entire reasoning, so let's think about it for a second. Yes, the beam will spread, and as it spreads, you lose power. Our ET's are going to want to use as little amount of power as possible, hence the beam will more likely than not, be as focused as possible. Unless they are sending an "is there anyone out there" message, which I would put odds of 50-50 on that right there.
Finally, even if the beam width is larger than the size of the solar system, is that really significant? I would argue that it is not. Catching gamma bursts will be easier, they are at least going to be more frequent...
Alternatively, if you were to go down into the IR, you'd at least have a better chance of the signal getting through (less extinction in the IR), but you still have the problem with the beam size being pretty tight, as well as the need to be looking at the right place at the right milisecond.
While such a thing may be technically possible, these guys seem to be glossing over some very big problems.
1. Optical communication across interstellar distances is going to suffer from severe extinction (signal absorption by intervening dust). Even if you can generate a laser pulse brighter than the sun, interstellar extinction is a big problem to overcome.
2. A laser beam is very tightly confined, and would have to be aimed very precisely in order to "hit" it's target. The probabability that the Earth would just happen to cross one of these "lines of communication" is incredibly small.
So it seems to me that while optical commmunications could work in principal, radio is going to be much easier to work with, since you don't have to worry about extinction or pointing problems as much.
The WELL was a little different in comparison to what we've got today, and your post shows exactly how it was different. The communities that you speak of are all pretty narrowly focused, and specialized (and there's nothing wrong with that). The WELL, on the other hand, tended to be a lot more diverse without the trolls and flames of slashdot... You're post also alludes quite well to why it's almost impossible to have a diverse forum today: too many people with agendas aside from just communicating with another person, hence more and more people are gravitating to smaller forums so that they can leave the trolls behind.
If you want to dismiss my points, feel free to, but you're going to have to do a better job than merely telling me I'm on crack.
Each alternative has a consequence, and it's important to realize what they are. I'm all for a switch to hydrogen, but it's important to note that such a switch does have it's own potential problems.
Another draw-back to hydrogen powered cars is, in fact, water. Consider this: If you've got 100,000 cars burning hydrogen in your local city, you're putting an awful lot of water vapor into the air, enough that you could affect the climate... You could produce some really nasty thunderstorms if you pass a cold front through some nice humid air (just like what happens in the spring and fall in central Texas).
it would explain Dizzy Gillespie! ;)
The thing to remember is that just about any particular person is likely to be offended by just about anything. And that's why these lists need to published (whether you agree with the filters or not) just to make sure that someone has put a bunch of wacky stuff in there that simply doesn't make sense, like blocking the sun-worshipping dog launchers website.
That's an interesting idea. The first question I have though is do such heavy metal currents exist in the first place? I'm just curious what kind of mechanism would cause such a thing. Exposure of an ore rich deposit to water? It's seems to me that normal diffusion would probably be high enough that the concentration of said metals wouldn't be significantly higher than in normal sea water, but that's just little more than a guess.
Personally, I found the silly hats, and much of the costuming distracting, and those things did take away from my enjoyment of the series.
Statements like this one always burn me up. RedHat has said several times, that it is not trying to be another M$. So why are there so many people who seem to be expecting it to become so?
Ugh! I really think it's time we get MathML working. Trying to parse carrots and underscores is getting increasingly irritating. :)
Nobody I know hates Halton Arp. Most people in the astronomical community have a great deal of respect for him and his work.
However, the evidence that supports his interpretation of redshifts is, quite frankly, weak. Most, if not all, of his "showstopper" examples are quite possibly a consequence of a selection effect, nothing more. And the whole idea of "tired light" has no basis in any physics that we currently know about. In other words, some very big discoveries, would need to be made and a couple of Nobel prizes would have to be given out before most astronomers would accept Arp's interpretation. Current evidence just doesn't point in that direction.
And his theories are definitely not a linux thing any more than any other endeavor that requires a high degree of precision, a whole a lot of sweat, and a great deal of ability to solve nearly intractable problems. The similarity ends there, no matter how much you want to root for an "underdog."
The other problem with the article is that it seems to be based on the premiss that you only have two choices. The districting idea may still be valid with multiple choices, but I'm pretty sure the method used for districting becomes *much* more complicated, perhaps intractable. And since my biggest problem is with the two choices we were given, the article really needs to take into account 3rd party choices before I would buy into it.