>>It is those adopted babies that contributed the genes to our gene pool over the many generations. But make no mistake, the Neanderthals are extinct. We are not them and they are not us.
Contradiction of statements. If we hybridized with them, we had 50% Neanderthal, 50% h. sapiens babies running around. If these genes are still around, this means the offspring were successful and viable.
Think about it for a second. We're not either purely either.
To demonstrate the absurdity of your claim, let's turn it around:
If homo neanderthaliensis cross-bred with homo sapiens, wiped him out, and continued to be largely homo neanderthaliensis with no visible or dominant feature of homo sapiens, how could you call homo sapiens successful?
You could not, because it would be a failed branch of evolutionary tree that got assimilated and severed by an competitor without keeping any of the traits of the genus.
Let's flip your claim around. If wolves and coyotes crossbred and produced the modern dog and then went extinct, would you say that wolves or coyotes were failures?
Or to put it another way, if h. sapiens crossbred with h. neanderthalis to produce the modern h. sapiens, then it's a mistake to say that we were the ancient h. sapiens, when we're really the descendants of both.
Certain things like mitochondria are very very successful. How could you argue otherwise?
But I'm going off the premise that Neanderthals did indeed crossbreed with our branch of the homo family. If their genes survived in this fashion, then they were indeed successful.
>>Except that they're not around - they're extinct. The rules for declaring species extinct are very well honed and clear, and neanderthals are in fact extinct.
Evolution deals with survival of genotype, not phenotype.
If they crossbred with hoomans (as they were called back then) and their genes are present in the majority of the population of the dominant species, then they're winners.
>>Neanderthals are extinct. They were evolution's losers. QED.
No.
The whole point of this article is that they're still around. And not only are they still around, but they are still around in all the countries that are currently "winning" the global game of Civilization
Since Neanderthals left Africa first, and are currently still around in the Civs that have been teching the fastest, one could make the argument that their genes are superior.
>>explain to me why we need that much overlap? i understand the different roles that each branch fills.. but there is zero reason why each of them can't use the same data center.
How do you know Neanderthals were genetically inferior?
Yup, I got the joke initially, just felt the need to respond. My point was actually that the studies show that (statistically) they are only effective at treating LOWER back pain. Neck pain, upper back, shoulder pain, etc... they are less effective than traditional medicine. So even for most problems chiropractors are associated with they're not very effective.
Unrelated, but where do you train jiu-jitsu (and which style)? I picked up BJJ about 4 months ago and have been loving it so far.
If you have something knocked out of alignment, it seems to me that putting it back into alignment is really the best treatment. For other things, then yeah I guess traditional medicine would probably be as effective. But as I said, I tried painkillers and massage for my problem, but it looked like it was going to turn into a very painful, chronic condition before I saw the chiropractor, and he fixed the problem immediately. You really can feel when a vertebrae is out of alignment.
I started BJJ in 1997 in San Diego with a guy named Roy Harris (http://www.royharris.com/) who is a pretty chill, laid back kind of guy. I did it for about a year, then I got into Judo and Tae Kwon Do, which I did jointly through about 2005, when I moved to the Bay Area and took up BJJ again at Caesar Gracie's school there. Now I train at a Royce Gracie school. Royce comes out twice a year, and it's always fun to roll with them, though I kind of pissed him off the last time by holding him down for a minute, so he bloodied my mouth something fierce.
>>You need a license to drive a car on a PUBLIC ROAD.
You could probably build a 1000hp engine from the bodies of all of our founding fathers spinning in their graves.
The only reason we put up with the bullshit notion that the government can block you from moving freely about the country (which is a basic right in a free country) is because the roadblocks they set were pretty low - pretty much any 16 year old with at least one eye, one arm, and one leg can pass a Class C driver's license test.
But if the government starts abusing its power, and starts limiting freedom in a way abhorrent to the natural rights of man, they'll start running into trouble. The TSA has been pissing a lot of people off with its "We'll either grope you or photograph you naked" policy, and the fact that a federal judge found this to be apparently okay doesn't change the offensiveness of the scenario. Texas very nearly criminalized the TSA's actions, and the TSA itself has stated that what it does is sexual abuse (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/119102/tit-for-tatwoman-arrested-for-groping-tsa-agent/).
Maybe people will continue to roll over on the bulldozing of their rights, but I expect pushback on these issues at some point.
>>IIRC, studies have shown that chiropractors are as effective as traditional medicine for treating lower back pain and have worse results for everything else. Based on that, why even bother seeing them?
Why would you see a chiro for anything but neck and back pain? But for the right sort of injuries, they're very very effective. When I had a vertebrae knocked out of alignment in jiujitsu back in April, traditional medicine just gave me anti-inflammatories. Three weeks of crazy pain, and I could barely stand to put my socks on. Saw my personal trainer's chiropractor, one twist and a pop, and the pain vanished.
Sample size of one, but research confirms that this is what they are good at treating. As you say, there's a lot of hippie shit surrounding them, which is of course nonsense.
But the joke I was making was that the AC said that "crazy people believe that Chiropractors are real", and, well, they *are* real. I've met them. =)
>>Just don't buy into the homeopathic or magnet crap they peddle.
I've been friends with one for a decade, and recently started seeing one myself for a back injury I got doing BJJ. Never seen them peddle any of that stuff, but I hear it happens.
Three weeks of debilitating pain, and he popped my vertebrae back into alignment - the pain went away immediately.
>>Wow. You should have gone all the way up and read the article. It's about a class in the Los Altos School District.
Please. This is Slashdot, we don't read the article.
But seriously - districts do trial programs all the time. There's a far cry from Los Altos (which is one of the best school districts in the state) running a pilot program to getting the California Teachers Union to accept it.
And I still don't know what the dick meant by uncritically accepting every statement Slashdot posters make. Besides, I know the guy I responded to - we've been to a BSG concert together in downtown LA.
Any teacher who can find enough time to pre-record a lecture can do this.
That allows the teacher to establish that his/her lectures implement the mandates. Shoot, you could run the (possibly scripted) lecture on the projector and then walk around and actually answer individual students' questions while it plays.
And, yeah, I'm sure some school districts would find some reason to try to get that stopped, too. But it's worth a try.
Another possibility is recording the lecture as given and putting it on-line immediately for students to review. That would not be as efficient in use of student time, but would be a lot harder for stupid, jealous, anti-education co-workers to try to block.
Lots of teachers record lectures. There's sometimes pushback from teacher's unions because, their rationale is, if you could just watch a video, you wouldn't need teachers any more. (Which goes back to TFA, but Khan sees this as a positive.)
Pretty much every teacher I've worked with in K-12, college, and postgraduate professional development all password-protect their videotaped lectures. I could probably dig up some publicly available ones, though, if you wanted.
>>AFAIK injury rates are much much higher for NFL or Rugby than they are for just about every other sport.
That's because having your face mashed into a pulp doesn't count as an "injury" in MMA. An injury is something so serious you can't fight any more.
Jason Von Flue, an acquaintance of mine, came back from a match with black eyes, a split lip and damage all over his body, but he didn't bitch about it once. Whereas a soccer player would fall over and cry on the pitch, rocking back and forth crying for his momma if someone even so much as shoved him the wrong way. No NFL player takes the kind of punishment a MMA fighter does without leaving the field.
Rugby, on the other hand, is another word for MMA in the UK.
If propagating lies isn't your aim, perhaps not uncritically adopting every premise slashdot commenters offer will help next time?
Knowing enough about California to recognize in what state you can find the Los Altos school district might be good, too, seeing as how you're in California and all.
And maybe, just maybe, you could put more effort into improving your district and less into sneering at it? That's generally how things get better. Just a thought.
What the fuck are you talking about? I went three levels up, I don't see the words Los Altos anywhere, numbnuts. And yeah, I know where it is, I have a friend in Mt. View.
I *do* put efforts into improving districts. I've spent a good part of the last 10 years teaching teachers how to do distance education, use technology in the classroom, and so forth. What have you done to make the world a better place, dickhead?
>>Honestly, the model seems pretty ideal for that topic. For a philosophy class, it wouldn't work nearly as well, but that's not where they're trying to use it.
Sure, but lectures on iTunesU do actually do a good job teaching history. I think history is just a weakness on KA.
iTunesU actually has a lot of benefits that KA lacks, such as being able to download long, full length audio or video lectures. I drive a lot, and have burned through a number of hours listening to Merriman at Yale and Osgood at Stanford, among others. Though it does seem more targeted at a college audience, whereas KA focuses on high school, the lectures seem of much better quality.
>>The problem here is that you're assuming that instruction must consist of a teacher lecturing while students sit silently in their seats
Precisely. When I lecture, I am constantly engaging the people I'm talking to, not just checking to see if they're paying attention, but honestly asking their opinions about the problems I pose. And the problems I do pose tend to be more open-ended, with no one particular right or wrong answer. ("How would you change energy policy in America?" "Do you think recycling is a good idea?" "How do you try to convey ideas using technology?")
Canned lectures, as you say, offer none of that.
That said, I'd rather be able to watch a video of my old Mandarin professors teaching class than, well, not be able to get any Mandarin lectures at all where I live (they only offer 1st Semester Mandarin here). IIRC, Khan Academy was written for people in just that situation - people that want to learn, but have no access to learning.
I've mainly watched the history lectures on KA, and, as you say, a lot of them aren't very good. I've heard the math ones are better, though.
>>I hope this catches on with public schools. It may be one of the most important shifts in education since... well, ever. Finally, technology in the classroom means something.
Heya Phrosty,
I see K-12 teachers (who I work with) and districts giving up control of the classroom from their cold, dead hands.
In particular, school teachers have mandates that control a lot of what they do in the classroom nowadays. Pacing guides... hell, a lot of elementary school teachers are handed a script that they're supposed to read to their kids as their "lesson" for math for the day.
I could see a charter school doing something like this, maybe, or maybe a small district that is willing to try such a radical restructuring of the classroom... but not our monolithic educational establishment here in California.
Realistically speaking, I could see it being most useful as a way for kids who are out sick to learn the material they missed in class - a teacher could post a link to a Khan lecture on their Moodle site - or to clarify something that they didn't understand in class. Sometimes you need to listen to something explained a different way before it makes sense to you.
But given how shallow a lot of the content is on KA (I'm most familiar with their history lectures), I don't think it's ready to replace a teacher for the primary teaching of a subject in that field, at least.
>>How exactly were you forced? Was a court order involved? Or did the psych force pills down your daughter's throat? Or what?
A female friend of mine was told she'd have to drug her "energetic" boy or have him booted out of school.
One lawsuit later, and the school decided that the principal had misspoken when he said that. Kid is doing fine, too.
Over-prescription is definitely a problem. That said, not every prescription is in error. I have several friends for whom their psych meds are lifesavers.
>>DRM free games are a pipe dream, unless you don't mind only playing ancient games from GOG.com, or freeware, open source crap
Ooh... shouldn't have gone there on Slashdot. =)
Even though it's kind of weird to say it, console games are more "free" (as in protection of first sale doctrine rights, not as in beer) than PC games these days. For a long time now, retail copies of PC games come with a one-time code to register it online, and once you've registered your copy of, say, Diablo II, nobody else can use that copy of the game, even if you give away your installation disks.
By comparison, console games can be handed to your friends, fully functional. Only recently have console manufacturers been doing evil shit like in TFA, but it is doubtful they will ever go so far as on the PC, where transferring a game is effectively prohibited (unless you pirate the game, of course).
It's effectively the same as Steam hypothetically charging a $10 fee to transfer a game from one account to another.
Same games publisher to avoid. Ubisoft has been the very worst in the industry when it comes to things like invasive DRM, requiring always-on internet connections and the like. If you get a burp in your connectivity (hope you're not playing on wi-fi), the game dies. Hope you saved.
They don't even disable their evil DRM on Steam, which itself is pretty good.
Shame, too. Some of their games look fun. But when I see that Ubisoft is the publisher of a game, I refuse to buy it.
Slashdot Mirror
>>It is those adopted babies that contributed the genes to our gene pool over the many generations. But make no mistake, the Neanderthals are extinct. We are not them and they are not us.
Contradiction of statements. If we hybridized with them, we had 50% Neanderthal, 50% h. sapiens babies running around. If these genes are still around, this means the offspring were successful and viable.
Think about it for a second. We're not either purely either.
>>Also, modern dog is not a crossbreed
I understand that, as should be obvious from the "...and then the wolf and coyote go extinct" bits.
>>h. sapiens as species has remained largely the same
You know this because?
It's quite possible that hybriding with Neanderthals was a critical step in our species' development.
In re: to the success of mitochondria, they're successful because they're so widespread, not because they hybridized.
>>You mean China and India?
China and India are pop booming, America is trying to go for a tech/conquest victory. the EU is going the culture route.
So I'd say the Sons of the Neanderthals are doing pretty well as a clan.
To demonstrate the absurdity of your claim, let's turn it around:
If homo neanderthaliensis cross-bred with homo sapiens, wiped him out, and continued to be largely homo neanderthaliensis with no visible or dominant feature of homo sapiens, how could you call homo sapiens successful?
You could not, because it would be a failed branch of evolutionary tree that got assimilated and severed by an competitor without keeping any of the traits of the genus.
Let's flip your claim around. If wolves and coyotes crossbred and produced the modern dog and then went extinct, would you say that wolves or coyotes were failures?
Or to put it another way, if h. sapiens crossbred with h. neanderthalis to produce the modern h. sapiens, then it's a mistake to say that we were the ancient h. sapiens, when we're really the descendants of both.
Certain things like mitochondria are very very successful. How could you argue otherwise?
But I'm going off the premise that Neanderthals did indeed crossbreed with our branch of the homo family. If their genes survived in this fashion, then they were indeed successful.
>>Except that they're not around - they're extinct. The rules for declaring species extinct are very well honed and clear, and neanderthals are in fact extinct.
Evolution deals with survival of genotype, not phenotype.
If they crossbred with hoomans (as they were called back then) and their genes are present in the majority of the population of the dominant species, then they're winners.
>>Neanderthals are extinct. They were evolution's losers. QED.
No.
The whole point of this article is that they're still around. And not only are they still around, but they are still around in all the countries that are currently "winning" the global game of Civilization
Since Neanderthals left Africa first, and are currently still around in the Civs that have been teching the fastest, one could make the argument that their genes are superior.
>>explain to me why we need that much overlap? i understand the different roles that each branch fills.. but there is zero reason why each of them can't use the same data center.
How do you know Neanderthals were genetically inferior?
Yup, I got the joke initially, just felt the need to respond. My point was actually that the studies show that (statistically) they are only effective at treating LOWER back pain. Neck pain, upper back, shoulder pain, etc... they are less effective than traditional medicine. So even for most problems chiropractors are associated with they're not very effective.
Unrelated, but where do you train jiu-jitsu (and which style)? I picked up BJJ about 4 months ago and have been loving it so far.
If you have something knocked out of alignment, it seems to me that putting it back into alignment is really the best treatment. For other things, then yeah I guess traditional medicine would probably be as effective. But as I said, I tried painkillers and massage for my problem, but it looked like it was going to turn into a very painful, chronic condition before I saw the chiropractor, and he fixed the problem immediately. You really can feel when a vertebrae is out of alignment.
I started BJJ in 1997 in San Diego with a guy named Roy Harris (http://www.royharris.com/) who is a pretty chill, laid back kind of guy. I did it for about a year, then I got into Judo and Tae Kwon Do, which I did jointly through about 2005, when I moved to the Bay Area and took up BJJ again at Caesar Gracie's school there. Now I train at a Royce Gracie school. Royce comes out twice a year, and it's always fun to roll with them, though I kind of pissed him off the last time by holding him down for a minute, so he bloodied my mouth something fierce.
>>You need a license to drive a car on a PUBLIC ROAD.
You could probably build a 1000hp engine from the bodies of all of our founding fathers spinning in their graves.
The only reason we put up with the bullshit notion that the government can block you from moving freely about the country (which is a basic right in a free country) is because the roadblocks they set were pretty low - pretty much any 16 year old with at least one eye, one arm, and one leg can pass a Class C driver's license test.
But if the government starts abusing its power, and starts limiting freedom in a way abhorrent to the natural rights of man, they'll start running into trouble. The TSA has been pissing a lot of people off with its "We'll either grope you or photograph you naked" policy, and the fact that a federal judge found this to be apparently okay doesn't change the offensiveness of the scenario. Texas very nearly criminalized the TSA's actions, and the TSA itself has stated that what it does is sexual abuse (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/119102/tit-for-tatwoman-arrested-for-groping-tsa-agent/).
Maybe people will continue to roll over on the bulldozing of their rights, but I expect pushback on these issues at some point.
"Automated justice is not justice."
Somebody should put that into the constitution.
Red Light Cameras, Speeding Cameras, etc., and now semi-accurate license revoking are all travesties of justice.
>>IIRC, studies have shown that chiropractors are as effective as traditional medicine for treating lower back pain and have worse results for everything else. Based on that, why even bother seeing them?
Why would you see a chiro for anything but neck and back pain? But for the right sort of injuries, they're very very effective. When I had a vertebrae knocked out of alignment in jiujitsu back in April, traditional medicine just gave me anti-inflammatories. Three weeks of crazy pain, and I could barely stand to put my socks on. Saw my personal trainer's chiropractor, one twist and a pop, and the pain vanished.
Sample size of one, but research confirms that this is what they are good at treating. As you say, there's a lot of hippie shit surrounding them, which is of course nonsense.
But the joke I was making was that the AC said that "crazy people believe that Chiropractors are real", and, well, they *are* real. I've met them. =)
>>Just don't buy into the homeopathic or magnet crap they peddle.
I've been friends with one for a decade, and recently started seeing one myself for a back injury I got doing BJJ. Never seen them peddle any of that stuff, but I hear it happens.
Three weeks of debilitating pain, and he popped my vertebrae back into alignment - the pain went away immediately.
>>Wow. You should have gone all the way up and read the article. It's about a class in the Los Altos School District.
Please. This is Slashdot, we don't read the article.
But seriously - districts do trial programs all the time. There's a far cry from Los Altos (which is one of the best school districts in the state) running a pilot program to getting the California Teachers Union to accept it.
And I still don't know what the dick meant by uncritically accepting every statement Slashdot posters make. Besides, I know the guy I responded to - we've been to a BSG concert together in downtown LA.
Chiropractic doctors *are* real. I've even met one.
Hell, they're even good at fixing neck and back pain.
Lots of teachers record lectures. There's sometimes pushback from teacher's unions because, their rationale is, if you could just watch a video, you wouldn't need teachers any more. (Which goes back to TFA, but Khan sees this as a positive.)
Pretty much every teacher I've worked with in K-12, college, and postgraduate professional development all password-protect their videotaped lectures. I could probably dig up some publicly available ones, though, if you wanted.
>>AFAIK injury rates are much much higher for NFL or Rugby than they are for just about every other sport.
That's because having your face mashed into a pulp doesn't count as an "injury" in MMA. An injury is something so serious you can't fight any more.
Jason Von Flue, an acquaintance of mine, came back from a match with black eyes, a split lip and damage all over his body, but he didn't bitch about it once. Whereas a soccer player would fall over and cry on the pitch, rocking back and forth crying for his momma if someone even so much as shoved him the wrong way. No NFL player takes the kind of punishment a MMA fighter does without leaving the field.
Rugby, on the other hand, is another word for MMA in the UK.
>>Granted, it's hard to justify, why exactly swimming would give you an advantage in natural selection.
All of evolutionary psychology is hard to justify.
EPers confuse "making shit up" with "doing science".
If propagating lies isn't your aim, perhaps not uncritically adopting every premise slashdot commenters offer will help next time?
Knowing enough about California to recognize in what state you can find the Los Altos school district might be good, too, seeing as how you're in California and all.
And maybe, just maybe, you could put more effort into improving your district and less into sneering at it? That's generally how things get better. Just a thought.
What the fuck are you talking about? I went three levels up, I don't see the words Los Altos anywhere, numbnuts. And yeah, I know where it is, I have a friend in Mt. View.
I *do* put efforts into improving districts. I've spent a good part of the last 10 years teaching teachers how to do distance education, use technology in the classroom, and so forth. What have you done to make the world a better place, dickhead?
>>Honestly, the model seems pretty ideal for that topic. For a philosophy class, it wouldn't work nearly as well, but that's not where they're trying to use it.
Sure, but lectures on iTunesU do actually do a good job teaching history. I think history is just a weakness on KA.
iTunesU actually has a lot of benefits that KA lacks, such as being able to download long, full length audio or video lectures. I drive a lot, and have burned through a number of hours listening to Merriman at Yale and Osgood at Stanford, among others. Though it does seem more targeted at a college audience, whereas KA focuses on high school, the lectures seem of much better quality.
>>The problem here is that you're assuming that instruction must consist of a teacher lecturing while students sit silently in their seats
Precisely. When I lecture, I am constantly engaging the people I'm talking to, not just checking to see if they're paying attention, but honestly asking their opinions about the problems I pose. And the problems I do pose tend to be more open-ended, with no one particular right or wrong answer. ("How would you change energy policy in America?" "Do you think recycling is a good idea?" "How do you try to convey ideas using technology?")
Canned lectures, as you say, offer none of that.
That said, I'd rather be able to watch a video of my old Mandarin professors teaching class than, well, not be able to get any Mandarin lectures at all where I live (they only offer 1st Semester Mandarin here). IIRC, Khan Academy was written for people in just that situation - people that want to learn, but have no access to learning.
I've mainly watched the history lectures on KA, and, as you say, a lot of them aren't very good. I've heard the math ones are better, though.
>>I hope this catches on with public schools. It may be one of the most important shifts in education since... well, ever. Finally, technology in the classroom means something.
Heya Phrosty,
I see K-12 teachers (who I work with) and districts giving up control of the classroom from their cold, dead hands.
In particular, school teachers have mandates that control a lot of what they do in the classroom nowadays. Pacing guides... hell, a lot of elementary school teachers are handed a script that they're supposed to read to their kids as their "lesson" for math for the day.
I could see a charter school doing something like this, maybe, or maybe a small district that is willing to try such a radical restructuring of the classroom... but not our monolithic educational establishment here in California.
Realistically speaking, I could see it being most useful as a way for kids who are out sick to learn the material they missed in class - a teacher could post a link to a Khan lecture on their Moodle site - or to clarify something that they didn't understand in class. Sometimes you need to listen to something explained a different way before it makes sense to you.
But given how shallow a lot of the content is on KA (I'm most familiar with their history lectures), I don't think it's ready to replace a teacher for the primary teaching of a subject in that field, at least.
>>How exactly were you forced? Was a court order involved? Or did the psych force pills down your daughter's throat? Or what?
A female friend of mine was told she'd have to drug her "energetic" boy or have him booted out of school.
One lawsuit later, and the school decided that the principal had misspoken when he said that. Kid is doing fine, too.
Over-prescription is definitely a problem. That said, not every prescription is in error. I have several friends for whom their psych meds are lifesavers.
>>DRM free games are a pipe dream, unless you don't mind only playing ancient games from GOG.com, or freeware, open source crap
Ooh... shouldn't have gone there on Slashdot. =)
Even though it's kind of weird to say it, console games are more "free" (as in protection of first sale doctrine rights, not as in beer) than PC games these days. For a long time now, retail copies of PC games come with a one-time code to register it online, and once you've registered your copy of, say, Diablo II, nobody else can use that copy of the game, even if you give away your installation disks.
By comparison, console games can be handed to your friends, fully functional. Only recently have console manufacturers been doing evil shit like in TFA, but it is doubtful they will ever go so far as on the PC, where transferring a game is effectively prohibited (unless you pirate the game, of course).
It's effectively the same as Steam hypothetically charging a $10 fee to transfer a game from one account to another.
>>Another games publisher to avoid.
Same games publisher to avoid. Ubisoft has been the very worst in the industry when it comes to things like invasive DRM, requiring always-on internet connections and the like. If you get a burp in your connectivity (hope you're not playing on wi-fi), the game dies. Hope you saved.
They don't even disable their evil DRM on Steam, which itself is pretty good.
Shame, too. Some of their games look fun. But when I see that Ubisoft is the publisher of a game, I refuse to buy it.