That person doesn't disagree with me. They disagree with the voices in their head. The less time we take to "disagree" with them, the more time they have to spend pulling the listening devices out of their teeth. It's win/win.
And now I'll say for the third time that the difference is quite possibly parents that can and are taking extra steps to ensure their kids are learning.
And who picks the textbooks the teachers will use? Government.
Yeah. Go read a textbook. Any textbook. Assloads of information, most of it useful, I promise. Some better than others, but almost all good. Hardly any switch to Chinese in the middle, and those ones don't get picked very often, even with the evil, evil government doing the work.
Most of this is done locally rather than at the federal level
The local school board is trying to keep people dumb so they won't question invasions? I think you've landed on Occam's bad side.
But local governments can fubar things just as badly - look at the influence that Texas has over textbooks, or Kansas for example.
A large number of people being stupid does not always indicate a conspiracy. Stupid people are quite capable of creating complex results by acting stupidly alone.
Oh, for the love of God, would you shut up? "The government" doesn't teach. Teachers do. And most of them want kids to learn, and if the mandated lesson sucks, a hell of a lot of them will work around it. And even if that weren't the case, the government doesn't want stupid people. You're assuming that the people in charge think their ideas are stupid and only stupid people would agree with them. They don't think that. They think they're fucking brilliant, as everyone does, and brilliant people will agree with them.
You're right. Disposing of them altogether is definitely a bad idea, and it's possible keeping the expulsion rate at the current level would be a mistake. But at the least it would need to be limited to the violent, or the repetitively extremely disruptive kids that have failed to be corrected with less drastic measures. Or, really, any firm guidelines that aren't in the hands of people that would be inclined to pass the problem off on someone else.
And just for clarity, my "wealthy parents" wording wasn't meant to mean mansion owners. Just people that aren't saving up for bread. The parents tend to have time on their hands to spend being co-teachers, among the millions of other relevent benefits of being from a non-poor class.
First, they have to go somewhere. If you're going to do large-scale privatization of schools, you're not going to have backup public schools to send kids to. Second, the point of the experimental constraint of not being able to kick kids out is to find out if the private schools actually work because they're great at teaching or because they get the kids that would do well anywhere. There's an argument that it would be okay to have the bad kids fend for themselves, but the experimental value of not letting the school pick who stays seems pretty clear.
So there's absolutely no evidence that the success of non-public schooling has anything to do with the students being superior from the get-go.
That is very much not what I meant to say.
In both the cases of homeschooled and private school children, you have parents that obviously care quite a bit about the child's education, something that is the furthest thing from guaranteed with a public school kid. That can account for a humongous difference in performance. A large part of the rest (of course not discounting the fact that there are some excellent private schools and some very, very crappy public ones) can probably be attributed to getting the good kids the hell away from the psychotics, a feature of private schools that does not scale.
Of course that's just how it looks to me. I could be completely wrong. Let's get an experiment going with some good controls and see how that works out. Call your Congressfolk. (The "good controls" part is the important thing. I'm sure there's a lot of data available assuming the public school is allowed to become a Catholic school that can accept only the kids it likes, and that obviously won't work with a nationwide plan. Of course, if there's already applicable data, that would save a lot of time.)
If there is any area of superiority, it's in the choices the parents have made in ensuring that their child gets the best education possible.
The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools.
No, public school children show horrible results compared to private school children. The children of typically wealthy parents that care enough about their child's education to go to the effort of putting them in a private school perform better in school. Public schools could obviously be run better in many cases, but you sure as heck can't do a one-to-one comparison. Although I'm all for a test case, privatizing an existing, poorly-performing public school and forbidding an increase in expulsions (if you're going to do it on a large scale, you can't just send the less-exceptional kds off to public school to pad your "look how great the students that are still here do" numbers) and seeing how well things go. I'd absolutely love to see that data, 'cause I want there to be an easy fix. I just doubt there is one.
Students are rarely taught a solid foundation that they can grasp
Sure they are. They're taught until their teachers are blue in the face. But other than the 10% that are going to grow up to be the important people, the students just generally don't give a damn. You can't teach an interest in learning.
But you're right that Microsoft's stuff won't help much.
Several times. It was a good show, though I've gotten tired of it.
and do you know anything of the Civil War and American history in general?
I know the highlights.
Firefly has absolutely no racist content. It does use the post-Civil War South as the setting, but it uses it the way it uses spaceships as horses. They're slightly different. The sci-fi version of the Civil War is a libertarian vs. authoritarian fight with the obvious parallels filling in mythology gaps. The genesis of the backdrop is not "I wish the south had won", it's "no one is ever 100% right".
One of the consequences of the Civil War, while obviously doing some fantastic things for human rights, was a reduction in states' rights. And that is the part taken for the show. In the US case, it was a trade worth making. In the show's case, what is exchanged for the elimination of states' rights is never made clear, so it's assumed to be something unworthy.
But again, there is no racism in the show. You need to learn what "sci-fi/fantasy" means, and not judge a guy based on a story that doesn't say what you've decided it probably says. If the setting had been based on the War of 1812 and starred guys with British accents, would you assume they hated America?
It goes without saying that I didn't read the article, but it sounds like they remove the bad stuff and then show the page anyway. Why? Why not just show a page that says, "These f***ing scumbags just tried to f*** up your computer. Quit going there, and punch them in the mouth if you meet them. In the mean time, find a less dangerous source of porn."
By my estimation, you only need to repeat that three or four more times before that goes from mostly irrelevent semi-truth to super-convincing argument. You want to actually do it, or should we just save some time and pretend like you did?
I'm not sure I get it. I've seen the video. I don't remember the guy yelling. He seems pretty bored, as I recall. Is there some version I've missed with that huge increase in enthusiasm for those last two words?
According to the Holy Bible, humans are made "in the image of God" (Gen. 1:27). All other creatures are not.
I'm told I kind of look like Ben Afleck. I'm not sure there's any grand implications of that.
Whoever kills an animal is to make restitution [to the owner] for it, but whoever kills a person is to be put to death. - Leviticus 24:21
If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; also everything that she sits on shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.
And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness. - Leviticus 15:19 - 21, 29 - 30
I don't have a point, there, Leviticus just entertains the crap out of me.
I'm not pro-choice, pro-life (I'm pro-"hell if I know"), or an "animal rights person", but it always strikes me how pro-lifers don't get that a cow is a hell of a lot more aware of what's going on than a human embryo. And if you sympathize with a monkey, you'd tend to look at a monkey-killer the way you'd look at a murder, and most people wouldn't hesitate too long about giving some hurt to a murderer.
These guys are jerks and need to be locked up, but it's not like it's hard to understand where these people are coming from.
For certain applications. It's my understanding that usually the synthetic muscle stuff isn't particularly speedy in changing shape. My first question is how many flips per second can you get? Are we aiming for TVs or variable paintings? My second question is about power requirements. 300 volts, sure, but are we talking amps or microamps?
Neat, as most science is, but possibly not terribly useful.
All true, and if you eliminate idiots from the equation, the numbers are going to change. Unfortunately, the difference is going to be reduced somewhat by the fact that the idiot in the other car can still take you with him. But you're still right, there is additional safety to be had by not being a moron.
But in any case, the point was that driving is considered safe enough to do all the time with very little precaution, and even a hugely safe driver is still not going to get somewhere alive than someone hopping on a plane. Obviously that has questionable implications for lowered security or anything because the security is built in to that number, but it does make it a little insane to spend any time at all worrying about dying on a plane unless you have a gigantic panic attack every time you eat something with cholesterol in it.
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That person doesn't disagree with me. They disagree with the voices in their head. The less time we take to "disagree" with them, the more time they have to spend pulling the listening devices out of their teeth. It's win/win.
And now I'll say for the third time that the difference is quite possibly parents that can and are taking extra steps to ensure their kids are learning.
And who picks the textbooks the teachers will use? Government.
Yeah. Go read a textbook. Any textbook. Assloads of information, most of it useful, I promise. Some better than others, but almost all good. Hardly any switch to Chinese in the middle, and those ones don't get picked very often, even with the evil, evil government doing the work.
Most of this is done locally rather than at the federal level
The local school board is trying to keep people dumb so they won't question invasions? I think you've landed on Occam's bad side.
But local governments can fubar things just as badly - look at the influence that Texas has over textbooks, or Kansas for example.
A large number of people being stupid does not always indicate a conspiracy. Stupid people are quite capable of creating complex results by acting stupidly alone.
Oh, for the love of God, would you shut up? "The government" doesn't teach. Teachers do. And most of them want kids to learn, and if the mandated lesson sucks, a hell of a lot of them will work around it. And even if that weren't the case, the government doesn't want stupid people. You're assuming that the people in charge think their ideas are stupid and only stupid people would agree with them. They don't think that. They think they're fucking brilliant, as everyone does, and brilliant people will agree with them.
You're right. Disposing of them altogether is definitely a bad idea, and it's possible keeping the expulsion rate at the current level would be a mistake. But at the least it would need to be limited to the violent, or the repetitively extremely disruptive kids that have failed to be corrected with less drastic measures. Or, really, any firm guidelines that aren't in the hands of people that would be inclined to pass the problem off on someone else.
You're entirely right.
And just for clarity, my "wealthy parents" wording wasn't meant to mean mansion owners. Just people that aren't saving up for bread. The parents tend to have time on their hands to spend being co-teachers, among the millions of other relevent benefits of being from a non-poor class.
First, they have to go somewhere. If you're going to do large-scale privatization of schools, you're not going to have backup public schools to send kids to. Second, the point of the experimental constraint of not being able to kick kids out is to find out if the private schools actually work because they're great at teaching or because they get the kids that would do well anywhere. There's an argument that it would be okay to have the bad kids fend for themselves, but the experimental value of not letting the school pick who stays seems pretty clear.
So there's absolutely no evidence that the success of non-public schooling has anything to do with the students being superior from the get-go.
That is very much not what I meant to say.
In both the cases of homeschooled and private school children, you have parents that obviously care quite a bit about the child's education, something that is the furthest thing from guaranteed with a public school kid. That can account for a humongous difference in performance. A large part of the rest (of course not discounting the fact that there are some excellent private schools and some very, very crappy public ones) can probably be attributed to getting the good kids the hell away from the psychotics, a feature of private schools that does not scale.
Of course that's just how it looks to me. I could be completely wrong. Let's get an experiment going with some good controls and see how that works out. Call your Congressfolk. (The "good controls" part is the important thing. I'm sure there's a lot of data available assuming the public school is allowed to become a Catholic school that can accept only the kids it likes, and that obviously won't work with a nationwide plan. Of course, if there's already applicable data, that would save a lot of time.)
If there is any area of superiority, it's in the choices the parents have made in ensuring that their child gets the best education possible.
Yup.
What you're saying isn't entirely meritless, but
The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools.
No, public school children show horrible results compared to private school children. The children of typically wealthy parents that care enough about their child's education to go to the effort of putting them in a private school perform better in school. Public schools could obviously be run better in many cases, but you sure as heck can't do a one-to-one comparison. Although I'm all for a test case, privatizing an existing, poorly-performing public school and forbidding an increase in expulsions (if you're going to do it on a large scale, you can't just send the less-exceptional kds off to public school to pad your "look how great the students that are still here do" numbers) and seeing how well things go. I'd absolutely love to see that data, 'cause I want there to be an easy fix. I just doubt there is one.
Students are rarely taught a solid foundation that they can grasp
Sure they are. They're taught until their teachers are blue in the face. But other than the 10% that are going to grow up to be the important people, the students just generally don't give a damn. You can't teach an interest in learning.
But you're right that Microsoft's stuff won't help much.
Have you seen the show
Several times. It was a good show, though I've gotten tired of it.
and do you know anything of the Civil War and American history in general?
I know the highlights.
Firefly has absolutely no racist content. It does use the post-Civil War South as the setting, but it uses it the way it uses spaceships as horses. They're slightly different. The sci-fi version of the Civil War is a libertarian vs. authoritarian fight with the obvious parallels filling in mythology gaps. The genesis of the backdrop is not "I wish the south had won", it's "no one is ever 100% right".
One of the consequences of the Civil War, while obviously doing some fantastic things for human rights, was a reduction in states' rights. And that is the part taken for the show. In the US case, it was a trade worth making. In the show's case, what is exchanged for the elimination of states' rights is never made clear, so it's assumed to be something unworthy.
But again, there is no racism in the show. You need to learn what "sci-fi/fantasy" means, and not judge a guy based on a story that doesn't say what you've decided it probably says. If the setting had been based on the War of 1812 and starred guys with British accents, would you assume they hated America?
It goes without saying that I didn't read the article, but it sounds like they remove the bad stuff and then show the page anyway. Why? Why not just show a page that says, "These f***ing scumbags just tried to f*** up your computer. Quit going there, and punch them in the mouth if you meet them. In the mean time, find a less dangerous source of porn."
By my estimation, you only need to repeat that three or four more times before that goes from mostly irrelevent semi-truth to super-convincing argument. You want to actually do it, or should we just save some time and pretend like you did?
An adult ferret is a hell of a lot more aware of what's going on than a human infant...so what's your point?
And the number of pro-choicers that would hurt an infant is insignificantly low, so what's yours?
And OJ walks the streets. Truly puzzling.
I'm not sure I get it. I've seen the video. I don't remember the guy yelling. He seems pretty bored, as I recall. Is there some version I've missed with that huge increase in enthusiasm for those last two words?
According to the Holy Bible, humans are made "in the image of God" (Gen. 1:27). All other creatures are not.
I'm told I kind of look like Ben Afleck. I'm not sure there's any grand implications of that.
Whoever kills an animal is to make restitution [to the owner] for it, but whoever kills a person is to be put to death. - Leviticus 24:21
If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; also everything that she sits on shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.
And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness. - Leviticus 15:19 - 21, 29 - 30
I don't have a point, there, Leviticus just entertains the crap out of me.
That's all that matters.
Why?
I'm not pro-choice, pro-life (I'm pro-"hell if I know"), or an "animal rights person", but it always strikes me how pro-lifers don't get that a cow is a hell of a lot more aware of what's going on than a human embryo. And if you sympathize with a monkey, you'd tend to look at a monkey-killer the way you'd look at a murder, and most people wouldn't hesitate too long about giving some hurt to a murderer.
These guys are jerks and need to be locked up, but it's not like it's hard to understand where these people are coming from.
I never claimed I was bright. At least not recently.
I was drunk, a'ight? Anyway, I usually just go by "155360".
I enjoyed the part where he tells people he's smarter than them, then says, "for all intensive purposes" in the middle of several grammar mistakes.
The sad part is that one day he'll be president.
I just checked. The brooms are still in there.
For certain applications. It's my understanding that usually the synthetic muscle stuff isn't particularly speedy in changing shape. My first question is how many flips per second can you get? Are we aiming for TVs or variable paintings? My second question is about power requirements. 300 volts, sure, but are we talking amps or microamps?
Neat, as most science is, but possibly not terribly useful.
As long as we're nitpicking the submission, I particularly liked:
Americans are the least likely (except for Turkish respondents)
So, second least likely, then? Or do the Turks not count as people?
Good God. If you understand any of that gibberish I just typed, you're a better man than I.
All true, and if you eliminate idiots from the equation, the numbers are going to change. Unfortunately, the difference is going to be reduced somewhat by the fact that the idiot in the other car can still take you with him. But you're still right, there is additional safety to be had by not being a moron.
But in any case, the point was that driving is considered safe enough to do all the time with very little precaution, and even a hugely safe driver is still not going to get somewhere alive than someone hopping on a plane. Obviously that has questionable implications for lowered security or anything because the security is built in to that number, but it does make it a little insane to spend any time at all worrying about dying on a plane unless you have a gigantic panic attack every time you eat something with cholesterol in it.