Exactly. The problem is, administration hears "make it experiential!", and SOMEHOW decides that means "make it all word problems!", and not, say... I don't know, "make it all lab-based!"
Why would that be? Oh! Right! Because labs are EXPENSIVE, both in money and in time - and if there's one thing more vicious than a burnt-out teacher, it's a penny-pinching administrator. Not that they have any choice in the matter.
You know, I should really clarify my previous statement - I never meant to imply that teachers (or administrators, in this case) were DELIBERATELY vicious or sadistic. But when you throw them into the public education system, and then give them all the ridiculous rules we've piled on top of it, and refuse to allow them to fix the actual underlying problems, they only have three choices - go insane, burn out, or turn vicious. None of these choices is any good for the kids.
Math and science *ARE* kid-friendly, and kids ARE science and math friendly. Inherently. You ever seen a six month old exploring her world, seeing what things feel like, taste like, what she can do with her hands? That's the seed of science, right there.
The problem is, science *TEACHERS* are not kid-friendly. Most of them, no matter how compassionate and pro-children they believe they are, are inherently vicious and sadistic people. They can't recognize this fact, of course, and neither can any of the other adults - but just ask an 8 year old sometime.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age?
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Clearly, the entire environmental issue is full of more opinions than facts, due to potential dire consequences and a lack of proper experimental evidence.
I propose the following solution:
1. We need to build 100 identical Earths, all at the current tectonic and biospheric age.
2. We need to seed each Earth with a population of between 100 million and 20 billion
3. We need to allow each Earth a different level of industrialization.
Until we do this, or at least do something similar, I don't see how any of us are going to be able to reasonably discuss this issue.
Umm... Tycho Crater actually isn't nearly as big as Copernicus crater, and even that didn't "crack" anything more than the moon's outer surface. The moon is really, REALLY big - at the size of planets and moons, anything big enough to deform its general shape won't leave a "crater" so much as just mush the moon into two or more smaller objects, that will each collapse into spheres under their own gravity. So if you're seeing a crater on something the size of a planet, it was WAY too small to actually break it.
Likewise, the earth's orbit hasn't shifted significantly since the moon was formed - which was at least 3 billion years ago. Anything else big enough to shift the earth's orbit would have made another moon. Remember, at these scales, the concept of solididity doesn't work exactly the way you'd think it would.
The whole Cuba/JFK/LBJ thing is its own can of worms, and I wanted to keep the two 'tinfoil sects' seperate - taken as a whole, the amount of shit the US government has pulled in the past is too mind-boggling for anyone to comprehend.
Whether we're still pulling that shit or not is, as always, above your security clearance, Citizen.
Heh. The funny thing is, most actual tinfoilers don't even know what 'Operation Paperclip' or 'MK-ULTRA' WERE, even as they rail about 'Nazi Mind Control Rays'. From the mouth of babes, as it were.
Also note that PARTIAL regulation biases towards the big businesses as well, by providing more subtle barriers to entry, and DEregulation after a sufficient period of regulation biases towards the big businesses as well, by opening up new niches to said big businesses immediately after the regulative die-off. In general, once regulation of any kind is imposed, the people are going to be screwed for a long time to come.
Of course, in a complete laizzes faire system, dirty tricks and irrational consumer choices means the people are eventually screwed anyway. Power corrupts, people - even the power to stop corruption.
Re:Too much coffee: Caffeine overdose and drowning
on
Death by Coffee?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
PeRSoNALLy I doNTSEeHOWitCOULDbe a PRoBlEM I dRINk 75 CuPS a DAY fOr 10 YeArS aNdTHEREs NOTHING WrONgWITHME thAt I cAN SEE OMG LOOK AT THAT BRB!!!
Damn. Thanks to my twitchy mousewheel, I just accidentally moderated this -1 Flamebait instead of +1 Funny. Replying now to cancel the moderation, and my sincere apologies.
If it's that or kick me out of your house where I make all my money, and there aren't that many people asking for the thousand, yeah, actually, it's no problem.
If I have nothing to lose by NOT giving you the thousand, than why am I talking to a pleb?
You do have a problem to overcome, though. Despite the 70,000 foot head start you will be trying to obtain orbital velocity (17,000 mph) from a standstill.
Not if you can get into the jet stream. Pick your launch point right and you could be sailing along pretty fast.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Regarding your.sig [and on-topic with the original post]: I've tried to explain what's wrong to everyone I know, occasionally going so far as to solicit people on the street. All that's done is piss people off, label me 'unpatriotic', and generally made things publically. uncomfortable. I've voted every time a candidate or position has come available that I believe in, yet somehow the popular opinion is completely ignored - my state has passed medical marijuana laws that its own police force refuses to honor, for example. I am routinely refused access to jury duty [of the 3 times I've been called in the past 11 years] because I show too much tendency to actually think about the issues, and not just be swayed by the lawyers' emotional arguments. How long should I keep trying before armed revolt is viable?
K-12 institutions receive lots of donated hardware. How do you make, for example, a donated scanner work with GNU/Linux if SANE lists it as unsupported? Do you reserve a Windows box just for that scanner and a few other donated peripherals that the community hasn't yet figured out how to get to work with a Free operating system?
back when I was in highschool, it was exactly this sort of situation that would lead to insane amounts of extra credit from my computer science teacher, actual monetary compensation from the school via the 'work experience' program, or both. Of course, I was doing software and hardware hacks to get TRS-80's talking to Apple IIe's over a hacked-together RS232-based token ring, but same basic idea.
I STRONGLY disagree. Psychology is a social science, and is hardly exact. Most of psychology is normative - which means that conditions and diagnoses exist to describe deviations from the social norm *AS IT EXISTS NOW*, not as it was 20, 30 or 50 years ago.
I'd hold off on such claims until we have a better-defined sense of what 'sane' and 'normal' means.
Look at it this way: Corporate interests will continue to fight to ensure that THEIR data is private and OURS is public; why shouldn't we do our best to fight for the opposite?
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. The problem is, administration hears "make it experiential!", and SOMEHOW decides that means "make it all word problems!", and not, say... I don't know, "make it all lab-based!"
Why would that be? Oh! Right! Because labs are EXPENSIVE, both in money and in time - and if there's one thing more vicious than a burnt-out teacher, it's a penny-pinching administrator. Not that they have any choice in the matter.
You know, I should really clarify my previous statement - I never meant to imply that teachers (or administrators, in this case) were DELIBERATELY vicious or sadistic. But when you throw them into the public education system, and then give them all the ridiculous rules we've piled on top of it, and refuse to allow them to fix the actual underlying problems, they only have three choices - go insane, burn out, or turn vicious. None of these choices is any good for the kids.
That isn't the problem, to be honest.
Math and science *ARE* kid-friendly, and kids ARE science and math friendly. Inherently. You ever seen a six month old exploring her world, seeing what things feel like, taste like, what she can do with her hands? That's the seed of science, right there.
The problem is, science *TEACHERS* are not kid-friendly. Most of them, no matter how compassionate and pro-children they believe they are, are inherently vicious and sadistic people. They can't recognize this fact, of course, and neither can any of the other adults - but just ask an 8 year old sometime.
Clearly, the entire environmental issue is full of more opinions than facts, due to potential dire consequences and a lack of proper experimental evidence.
I propose the following solution:
1. We need to build 100 identical Earths, all at the current tectonic and biospheric age.
2. We need to seed each Earth with a population of between 100 million and 20 billion
3. We need to allow each Earth a different level of industrialization.
Until we do this, or at least do something similar, I don't see how any of us are going to be able to reasonably discuss this issue.
Unless they need to make an example of someone, and decide that grandma is the easiest target because any REAL spammers left have lawyers.
New Zealand gets it worse, chummer. There's really nowhere you want to be if the shit really goes down.
Umm... Tycho Crater actually isn't nearly as big as Copernicus crater, and even that didn't "crack" anything more than the moon's outer surface. The moon is really, REALLY big - at the size of planets and moons, anything big enough to deform its general shape won't leave a "crater" so much as just mush the moon into two or more smaller objects, that will each collapse into spheres under their own gravity. So if you're seeing a crater on something the size of a planet, it was WAY too small to actually break it.
Likewise, the earth's orbit hasn't shifted significantly since the moon was formed - which was at least 3 billion years ago. Anything else big enough to shift the earth's orbit would have made another moon. Remember, at these scales, the concept of solididity doesn't work exactly the way you'd think it would.
The whole Cuba/JFK/LBJ thing is its own can of worms, and I wanted to keep the two 'tinfoil sects' seperate - taken as a whole, the amount of shit the US government has pulled in the past is too mind-boggling for anyone to comprehend.
Whether we're still pulling that shit or not is, as always, above your security clearance, Citizen.
Heh. The funny thing is, most actual tinfoilers don't even know what 'Operation Paperclip' or 'MK-ULTRA' WERE, even as they rail about 'Nazi Mind Control Rays'. From the mouth of babes, as it were.
Heh. As if there was no such thing as an academic vested interest.
Go find out how research grants and tenure actually work, some time.
Also note that PARTIAL regulation biases towards the big businesses as well, by providing more subtle barriers to entry, and DEregulation after a sufficient period of regulation biases towards the big businesses as well, by opening up new niches to said big businesses immediately after the regulative die-off. In general, once regulation of any kind is imposed, the people are going to be screwed for a long time to come.
Of course, in a complete laizzes faire system, dirty tricks and irrational consumer choices means the people are eventually screwed anyway. Power corrupts, people - even the power to stop corruption.
PeRSoNALLy I doNTSEeHOWitCOULDbe a PRoBlEM I dRINk 75 CuPS a DAY fOr 10 YeArS aNdTHEREs NOTHING WrONgWITHME thAt I cAN SEE OMG LOOK AT THAT BRB!!!
You know, though, this would KICK ASS as part of a Wacom tablet. I would LOVE to be able to use Photoshop or Gimp effects on actual, bona-fide paper.
Damn. Thanks to my twitchy mousewheel, I just accidentally moderated this -1 Flamebait instead of +1 Funny. Replying now to cancel the moderation, and my sincere apologies.
If it's that or kick me out of your house where I make all my money, and there aren't that many people asking for the thousand, yeah, actually, it's no problem.
If I have nothing to lose by NOT giving you the thousand, than why am I talking to a pleb?
You do have a problem to overcome, though. Despite the 70,000 foot head start you will be trying to obtain orbital velocity (17,000 mph) from a standstill.
Not if you can get into the jet stream. Pick your launch point right and you could be sailing along pretty fast.
Point. Away I go, tail between my legs, unable to provide you a +1 Informative because I already posted.
Ah, Prisoner's Dilemna strikes again. Damn you, Nash!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
.sig [and on-topic with the original post]: I've tried to explain what's wrong to everyone I know, occasionally going so far as to solicit people on the street. All that's done is piss people off, label me 'unpatriotic', and generally made things publically. uncomfortable. I've voted every time a candidate or position has come available that I believe in, yet somehow the popular opinion is completely ignored - my state has passed medical marijuana laws that its own police force refuses to honor, for example. I am routinely refused access to jury duty [of the 3 times I've been called in the past 11 years] because I show too much tendency to actually think about the issues, and not just be swayed by the lawyers' emotional arguments. How long should I keep trying before armed revolt is viable?
Regarding your
K-12 institutions receive lots of donated hardware. How do you make, for example, a donated scanner work with GNU/Linux if SANE lists it as unsupported? Do you reserve a Windows box just for that scanner and a few other donated peripherals that the community hasn't yet figured out how to get to work with a Free operating system?
back when I was in highschool, it was exactly this sort of situation that would lead to insane amounts of extra credit from my computer science teacher, actual monetary compensation from the school via the 'work experience' program, or both. Of course, I was doing software and hardware hacks to get TRS-80's talking to Apple IIe's over a hacked-together RS232-based token ring, but same basic idea.
THERE IS NO GOD!!!!
I STRONGLY disagree. Psychology is a social science, and is hardly exact. Most of psychology is normative - which means that conditions and diagnoses exist to describe deviations from the social norm *AS IT EXISTS NOW*, not as it was 20, 30 or 50 years ago.
I'd hold off on such claims until we have a better-defined sense of what 'sane' and 'normal' means.
Maybe because /. itself is the Blog to End All Blogs, and they don't like competition?
... My girlfriend hasn't bought me one of these yet.
THESE THINGS EXIST, AND MY GIRLFRIEND HASN'T BOUGHT ME ONE YET.
I'm going to have a talk with that girl.
"Hail Skroob!"
"I told you never to call me on this wall!"
Look at it this way: Corporate interests will continue to fight to ensure that THEIR data is private and OURS is public; why shouldn't we do our best to fight for the opposite?