Not quite, complex organic compounds are found throughout our solar system. For example, on Titan it literally rains organic compounds that, when mixed with water, form amino acids. It is a plausible hypothesis that a third party could have brought such compounds to earth but it is also equally likely that earth simply formed them on its own. If Earth could have formed them on its own it doesn't require the third party hypothesis.
"There does not seem to be sufficient short-term profit to motivate private industry. If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage" -Sagan
You spend all that money training people and changing the culture of your office to become more open minded and active learners with regard to technology only to switch back after you spent all the resources. Of course people are going to complain, change isn't always easy but if you facilitate the transition through training or knowledge management it eventually pays itself off.
I think that is a bit unfair. Plenty of anniversary editions for products are released with minimal to no changes from the original. Think about movie series or box sets. Sure you could have bought LOTRs individually when they came out but buying the box set costs way more and gives the buyer a slightly different feel for their product ("I have the whole set!"). What makes limited edition or anniversary products cost more is exactly that... they're limited. You can't buy the 25th anniversary edition of Zelda next year, you buy it now and after this year they stop making it.
It is my understanding that the drake equation wasn't meant to be a predictive tool for calculating the exact or even closely approximate amount of planets that harbor intelligent life. Rather, it was simply supposed to be a means to illuminate the incredibly likely event that intelligent life could possibly exist, given a big enough universe, under incredibly conservative and unstable estimates.
Candidly speaking, say the judge rules in favor of the plaintiff, what then? What possible outcome could occur such that PRC is forced to pay any or all of the suit?
If anyone is versed in international law (if that is what this is called), I am genuinely interested what the possible (albeit unlikely) outcomes could be.
I would disagree with some of the comments about the validity of social science but that is for another discussion.
There is an important assumption that you're making, "there are no exceptions relevant to someone in junior high." I whole-heartedly agree with that. But that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. I'm not suggesting in any way possible that Creationism is a relevant exception. But that is an assumption regardless, one that might not be pertinent to say, AP Bio students or students seeking college prep experience. But in a basic, run-of-the-mill science 101 class for most high school students (95% of all students), absolutely, evolution is the general truth.
Net neutrality is a government regulation insomuch as free speech is a regulation that speech is regulated to be free. Net neutrality is merely forcing the Internet to be free and unbiased. Politicians (both liberal and conservative) like to paint a picture of net neutrality as a regulation, which is as silly as the Internet as a bunch of tubes.
Perhaps I should clarify then. I agree that religion and pseudo-science should be kept out of schools entirely. Indeed. Creationism and IT are not science, hands down. However, it is the case that-at least in social science, from which I am trained-that most studied conclude with the limitations of their research so as to qualify or bound their findings. Skepticism is a routine part of science. The degree of skepticism you refer to, "tell the students that it all may not be true" is not what I am referring to. Evolution is pretty well grounded so an extreme statement like that is not acceptable. But students should be encouraged to find examples where it doesn't apply and use critical thinking skills to test when and why theories don't apply. Indeed, this might spur kids to think on their own and dive deeper into the science their teachers merely scratch the surface of. Imagine that.
It isn't anti-science to expose limitations of a theory. In fact, theories are bolstered only due to their ability to rule out alternative hypotheses (rejecting the null hypothesis).
However, it is anti-science to introduce an idea that is unfalsifiable and call it science. Unfalsifiability is one of the major tenants of science, the scientific process, and theory creation and development. In order for a proposition to become a theory it needs to be testable. Creationism is founded upon belief. I cannot tell a student to go find evidence for creationism. I can, however, tell someone to go find evidence either FOR or AGAINST evolution. However, evolution has so much evidence in favor of it, it is a generally accepted framework for the origin of species. It doesn't claim perfection, no scientific process does. Indeed, the rise of post-positivism as a major philosophical and scientific building block is a testament to this. Post-positivism claims that since humans are imperfect it is impossible to measure any phenomenon perfectly (measurement is asymptotic with Truth). Ultimately, the Bible provides merely circular reasoning for Creationism as a possible scientific explanation. There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God or any mechanisms that he might provide (creationism). Therefore, it is unfalsifiable and cannot be taught as an alternative explanation to any scientific principle, theory, or proposition since creationism ultimately reduces to faith.
It seems journal editors have finally entered the technological age. Congrats. A similar idea they have yep to adopt (at least in social science) is a journal for null findings. The closet drawer problem still hasn't gone away. http://www.skepdic.com/filedrawer.html
To answer your initial question, a bit of both. I think Apple has some great products like the ipod and iphone, but their computers are garbage and so is the ipad. Why? Mostly because they're overpriced. The cheapest version of the iPad is 450, that's bare bones. If that price was cut in half, it would be worth what it costs. But people are willing to spend double because it's Apple, not because its useful or novel or anything. Tablets have been around for quite a while but what I especially hate about Apple's mindset is that they're lowering the average-user-bar to about nothing, and that is frustrating to watch (especially when Apple users think they know about their backend when they're just regurgitating what the Apple store bros tell them; e.g. no viruses, doesn't slow down, unhackable, etc. Apple literally is AOL 2.0. It made users ignore all the backend and look where that fad went.
I wholeheartedly agree. The iPad is one of the most ridiculously overpriced pieces of garbage out there. You're paying 450 dollars for what? An app store and a browser on a touchscreen. Sweet mother of baby jesus. Buy a laptop or a netbook. You get so much more for what you pay for. I have to hand it to Apple though, if they can brainwash their lemming customers to buy this useless piece of plastic, they can do anything, especially when you have full OS tablets out.
And that is what worries me. Users don't care and aren't interested in the backend of computers. They never were. That is why the app store idea is so popular. Google with their Chrominium OS and Apple's appstore idea are driving the next gen computer user-experience. No one cares what goes where, how things are installed, or how the backend is functioning. All they care about is that they can press a button and download Angry Birds or Bejeweled then press another button and play. Who cares where it went as long as I can find it. This is exactly the same kind of nonsense that spawned from iTunes users where they think their music is magically "inside" iTunes rather than being parsed as a library from a location on the hd. Common users don't care about understanding these core components of the computer experience. They want simple, dumbed down, minimalistic experiences, which provide lean options but also minimal options to fuck up their system.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that has got us into the mess we're into now.
Learning math is just as difficult as learning any other subject or content material. Deciphering poetry, learning programming, studying psychological theory, and learning calculus all involve concentration, study, and struggle from the learner. No one is born knowing any of those things, therefore they all must be learned. The entire point of the OP is to say that the way we go about teaching math is wrong and that people need to reconceptualize how they teach the information because it doesn't make sense to the learner. In the end, its all difficult to some degree. It's when you have that "A-Ha!" moment, it clicks, and you get it. But if you have some terrible algebra teacher who doesn't understand advanced math or someone who doesn't care that you learn, only that you can complete problems 1-50 in a mechanic fashion, then of course it's going to seem difficult (or more difficult than it should be).
Whats the problem with non-Net Neutrality? Think about this example...
You pay Comcast a monthly fee to have internet access. Say, for example, Comcast wanted to invest a lot into the movie rental business (moreso than they do now with their shitty watch instantly now). Without net neutrality, Comcast has the right to throttle or block any competing websites like Netflix, Hulu, or any other legit website that might compete with their new business plan. In many rural areas, they don't have the option to switch providers, they only have one broadband provider and they're lucky to have that. So what do they do? Nothing.
Net Neutrality is a modern day civil liberty: freedom of information. Information and information access is just as important as the right to assemble or speak openly, and should be protected as such. Right now, companies are working very hard to dismember this privileged that we've taken for granted and I give some huge kudos to the FCC for standing up to these greedy giants.
Before child pornography-blocking bills find their way to the US and ultimately give the government the power to censor the entire internet. o... wait...
While I generally agree with the comments posted above (e.g. no loitering), I find this an interesting analogy to compare to DDOS attacks - an analogy, btw, that isn't mine, I've just seen it repeated a few times recently from people who are not simply being mindless talking heads to the fact that Anon isn't some elite/super-secret hacker group but rather 4chan being 4chan.
A number of sources have begun describing DDOS attacks not as cyber-attacks but rather as digital sit-ins that are completely legal. A DDOS (Note the Distributed) is basically a ton of people visiting the site at once so that others can't. In essence, the unknowing visitor to mastercard.com is also contributing to the DDOS by merely visiting the already flooded site (albiet in a small way) just as an unknowing visitor to a bank is contributing to a sit-in by disrupting the flow of work. Their mere presence is making the work more difficult. However, there is nothing illegal about one person visiting a bank and standing there, just like there isn't anything illegal with a number of people going to a bank... at the same time. Ultimately, the question isn't "has progess been made" to stop DDOS attacks, but SHOULD there be progress to stop them? Sounds like an easy question to answer but in the case of freedom of expression, it makes the waters a bit more muddied.
Sure more females are using the Internet and now with Facebook, every game seems like something novel when in fact it isn't. Simply because new gamers are entering the population doesn't mean they ARE the population. We see paradigm struggles even today with more veteran gamers. Blizzard is pushing for a more difficult version of WoW with their new expansion and you have games like Super Meat boy introducing extreme levels of difficulty into gameplay that goes well beyond the mentality of catering to the casuals. More casual gamers are merely being exposed to games. We saw people play Farmville because they didn't know what video game grinding was, so it seemed new and exciting, or games like Bejeweled or Angry Birds. These are old ideas, repackaged in new mediums. If anything, games like Minecraft and Meat Boy are a breath of fresh air with sandbox games and/or extreme difficulty games becoming more popular. While it may be true that casual games are gaining momentum, I wouldn't bet on that shifting the entirety of gaming. Rest a sure, we haven't seen the last of video games that blow up aliens or cherish WWII heroism. Another point to keep in mind is that casual players may not have the same retention or activity rate as more hardcore gamers, which is more important when you have games that introduce micro transactions rather than subs.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite, complex organic compounds are found throughout our solar system. For example, on Titan it literally rains organic compounds that, when mixed with water, form amino acids. It is a plausible hypothesis that a third party could have brought such compounds to earth but it is also equally likely that earth simply formed them on its own. If Earth could have formed them on its own it doesn't require the third party hypothesis.
"There does not seem to be sufficient short-term profit to motivate private industry. If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage" -Sagan
You spend all that money training people and changing the culture of your office to become more open minded and active learners with regard to technology only to switch back after you spent all the resources. Of course people are going to complain, change isn't always easy but if you facilitate the transition through training or knowledge management it eventually pays itself off.
I think that is a bit unfair. Plenty of anniversary editions for products are released with minimal to no changes from the original. Think about movie series or box sets. Sure you could have bought LOTRs individually when they came out but buying the box set costs way more and gives the buyer a slightly different feel for their product ("I have the whole set!"). What makes limited edition or anniversary products cost more is exactly that... they're limited. You can't buy the 25th anniversary edition of Zelda next year, you buy it now and after this year they stop making it.
I'm sure Hotz appreciates your generous donation. I hope one day we all will appreciate it through an open and free country.
It is my understanding that the drake equation wasn't meant to be a predictive tool for calculating the exact or even closely approximate amount of planets that harbor intelligent life. Rather, it was simply supposed to be a means to illuminate the incredibly likely event that intelligent life could possibly exist, given a big enough universe, under incredibly conservative and unstable estimates.
Candidly speaking, say the judge rules in favor of the plaintiff, what then? What possible outcome could occur such that PRC is forced to pay any or all of the suit?
If anyone is versed in international law (if that is what this is called), I am genuinely interested what the possible (albeit unlikely) outcomes could be.
I would disagree with some of the comments about the validity of social science but that is for another discussion.
There is an important assumption that you're making, "there are no exceptions relevant to someone in junior high." I whole-heartedly agree with that. But that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. I'm not suggesting in any way possible that Creationism is a relevant exception. But that is an assumption regardless, one that might not be pertinent to say, AP Bio students or students seeking college prep experience. But in a basic, run-of-the-mill science 101 class for most high school students (95% of all students), absolutely, evolution is the general truth.
Net neutrality is a government regulation insomuch as free speech is a regulation that speech is regulated to be free. Net neutrality is merely forcing the Internet to be free and unbiased. Politicians (both liberal and conservative) like to paint a picture of net neutrality as a regulation, which is as silly as the Internet as a bunch of tubes.
Perhaps I should clarify then. I agree that religion and pseudo-science should be kept out of schools entirely. Indeed. Creationism and IT are not science, hands down. However, it is the case that-at least in social science, from which I am trained-that most studied conclude with the limitations of their research so as to qualify or bound their findings. Skepticism is a routine part of science. The degree of skepticism you refer to, "tell the students that it all may not be true" is not what I am referring to. Evolution is pretty well grounded so an extreme statement like that is not acceptable. But students should be encouraged to find examples where it doesn't apply and use critical thinking skills to test when and why theories don't apply. Indeed, this might spur kids to think on their own and dive deeper into the science their teachers merely scratch the surface of. Imagine that.
It isn't anti-science to expose limitations of a theory. In fact, theories are bolstered only due to their ability to rule out alternative hypotheses (rejecting the null hypothesis).
However, it is anti-science to introduce an idea that is unfalsifiable and call it science. Unfalsifiability is one of the major tenants of science, the scientific process, and theory creation and development. In order for a proposition to become a theory it needs to be testable. Creationism is founded upon belief. I cannot tell a student to go find evidence for creationism. I can, however, tell someone to go find evidence either FOR or AGAINST evolution. However, evolution has so much evidence in favor of it, it is a generally accepted framework for the origin of species. It doesn't claim perfection, no scientific process does. Indeed, the rise of post-positivism as a major philosophical and scientific building block is a testament to this. Post-positivism claims that since humans are imperfect it is impossible to measure any phenomenon perfectly (measurement is asymptotic with Truth). Ultimately, the Bible provides merely circular reasoning for Creationism as a possible scientific explanation. There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God or any mechanisms that he might provide (creationism). Therefore, it is unfalsifiable and cannot be taught as an alternative explanation to any scientific principle, theory, or proposition since creationism ultimately reduces to faith.
A little piece of me dies inside every time I read a news article that refers to Anonymous as a hacker group.
It seems journal editors have finally entered the technological age. Congrats. A similar idea they have yep to adopt (at least in social science) is a journal for null findings. The closet drawer problem still hasn't gone away.
http://www.skepdic.com/filedrawer.html
To answer your initial question, a bit of both. I think Apple has some great products like the ipod and iphone, but their computers are garbage and so is the ipad. Why? Mostly because they're overpriced. The cheapest version of the iPad is 450, that's bare bones. If that price was cut in half, it would be worth what it costs. But people are willing to spend double because it's Apple, not because its useful or novel or anything. Tablets have been around for quite a while but what I especially hate about Apple's mindset is that they're lowering the average-user-bar to about nothing, and that is frustrating to watch (especially when Apple users think they know about their backend when they're just regurgitating what the Apple store bros tell them; e.g. no viruses, doesn't slow down, unhackable, etc. Apple literally is AOL 2.0. It made users ignore all the backend and look where that fad went.
Yes, and I think the point is, they are equally ridiculous, not equally intelligent.
THANK YOU GOOD SIR.
I wholeheartedly agree. The iPad is one of the most ridiculously overpriced pieces of garbage out there. You're paying 450 dollars for what? An app store and a browser on a touchscreen. Sweet mother of baby jesus. Buy a laptop or a netbook. You get so much more for what you pay for. I have to hand it to Apple though, if they can brainwash their lemming customers to buy this useless piece of plastic, they can do anything, especially when you have full OS tablets out.
And that is what worries me. Users don't care and aren't interested in the backend of computers. They never were. That is why the app store idea is so popular. Google with their Chrominium OS and Apple's appstore idea are driving the next gen computer user-experience. No one cares what goes where, how things are installed, or how the backend is functioning. All they care about is that they can press a button and download Angry Birds or Bejeweled then press another button and play. Who cares where it went as long as I can find it. This is exactly the same kind of nonsense that spawned from iTunes users where they think their music is magically "inside" iTunes rather than being parsed as a library from a location on the hd. Common users don't care about understanding these core components of the computer experience. They want simple, dumbed down, minimalistic experiences, which provide lean options but also minimal options to fuck up their system.
Rare earth materials are actually quite common, despite their name. Some of them are actually more common than lead or nitrogen.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that has got us into the mess we're into now.
Learning math is just as difficult as learning any other subject or content material. Deciphering poetry, learning programming, studying psychological theory, and learning calculus all involve concentration, study, and struggle from the learner. No one is born knowing any of those things, therefore they all must be learned. The entire point of the OP is to say that the way we go about teaching math is wrong and that people need to reconceptualize how they teach the information because it doesn't make sense to the learner. In the end, its all difficult to some degree. It's when you have that "A-Ha!" moment, it clicks, and you get it. But if you have some terrible algebra teacher who doesn't understand advanced math or someone who doesn't care that you learn, only that you can complete problems 1-50 in a mechanic fashion, then of course it's going to seem difficult (or more difficult than it should be).
Whats the problem with non-Net Neutrality? Think about this example... You pay Comcast a monthly fee to have internet access. Say, for example, Comcast wanted to invest a lot into the movie rental business (moreso than they do now with their shitty watch instantly now). Without net neutrality, Comcast has the right to throttle or block any competing websites like Netflix, Hulu, or any other legit website that might compete with their new business plan. In many rural areas, they don't have the option to switch providers, they only have one broadband provider and they're lucky to have that. So what do they do? Nothing. Net Neutrality is a modern day civil liberty: freedom of information. Information and information access is just as important as the right to assemble or speak openly, and should be protected as such. Right now, companies are working very hard to dismember this privileged that we've taken for granted and I give some huge kudos to the FCC for standing up to these greedy giants.
Before child pornography-blocking bills find their way to the US and ultimately give the government the power to censor the entire internet. o... wait...
While I generally agree with the comments posted above (e.g. no loitering), I find this an interesting analogy to compare to DDOS attacks - an analogy, btw, that isn't mine, I've just seen it repeated a few times recently from people who are not simply being mindless talking heads to the fact that Anon isn't some elite/super-secret hacker group but rather 4chan being 4chan.
A number of sources have begun describing DDOS attacks not as cyber-attacks but rather as digital sit-ins that are completely legal. A DDOS (Note the Distributed) is basically a ton of people visiting the site at once so that others can't. In essence, the unknowing visitor to mastercard.com is also contributing to the DDOS by merely visiting the already flooded site (albiet in a small way) just as an unknowing visitor to a bank is contributing to a sit-in by disrupting the flow of work. Their mere presence is making the work more difficult. However, there is nothing illegal about one person visiting a bank and standing there, just like there isn't anything illegal with a number of people going to a bank... at the same time. Ultimately, the question isn't "has progess been made" to stop DDOS attacks, but SHOULD there be progress to stop them? Sounds like an easy question to answer but in the case of freedom of expression, it makes the waters a bit more muddied.
Sure more females are using the Internet and now with Facebook, every game seems like something novel when in fact it isn't. Simply because new gamers are entering the population doesn't mean they ARE the population. We see paradigm struggles even today with more veteran gamers. Blizzard is pushing for a more difficult version of WoW with their new expansion and you have games like Super Meat boy introducing extreme levels of difficulty into gameplay that goes well beyond the mentality of catering to the casuals. More casual gamers are merely being exposed to games. We saw people play Farmville because they didn't know what video game grinding was, so it seemed new and exciting, or games like Bejeweled or Angry Birds. These are old ideas, repackaged in new mediums. If anything, games like Minecraft and Meat Boy are a breath of fresh air with sandbox games and/or extreme difficulty games becoming more popular. While it may be true that casual games are gaining momentum, I wouldn't bet on that shifting the entirety of gaming. Rest a sure, we haven't seen the last of video games that blow up aliens or cherish WWII heroism. Another point to keep in mind is that casual players may not have the same retention or activity rate as more hardcore gamers, which is more important when you have games that introduce micro transactions rather than subs.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
It probably has to do with the recent discovery of oxygen on Saturn's moon Rhea.
Why would NASA announce something that has already been announced? Kinda defeats the purpose of an announcement.