Mine was tested in 3rd grade, public school to see who should be admitted to the gifted program that starts in 4th grade.
I wrongly assumed they still did it.
It helps by keeping teachers from having to invent creative ways to reach impossible goals. It helps because kids won't be forced to endure classes that are simply unattainable. Drop out rates are >60% in some inner city school districts. Trying to teach these kids a foreign languages, Algebra II, and how to recite Shakespeare is just stupid, when you know in advance that 2/3's will drop out. Instead, low-performing kids should be taught trade skills that they can reasonably grasp and use to find work. Moving kids with potential into more advanced classes will be better for those kids as well.
Patraeus is a public servant. The military and public servants agree to adhere to a higher standard of ethics when they take their jobs. Patraeus is said to have sent 20 to 30,000 pages of emails to this lady.. What on earth was he sending her?
While its probably a good idea to erase your personally incriminating emails that you wrote 6 or more months ago (or a week ago!), at some point we want our CIA personnel to not be acting like idiots.
No. Using race or socioeconomic factors is just trying to put a different criteria on the variance in IQ that makes educating everyone to the same level impossible. Why VA and FL decided to use race as the criterial, rather than IQ (which they test for in schools) is the big question mark.
At some point, the US needs to start spending money intelligently, rather than trying to force algebra on the bottom quartile of the IQ curve. We would have lower drop out rates if we taught to a students ability, rather than a government set bar for the entire country.
The less racist way would be to test children's IQ's and use the number to set a goal for achievement. It makes no sense to have the same goals for all kids no matter what their innate intelligence is. IQ is easily testable, and it is difficult to increase your IQ by more than a standard deviation through "study" or environment. Doing it based on self-identified "skin color" is a shortcut that will lead to underachievement by smart kids that are in a "dumbed down" category. Education is the most expensive budget item in every state, and yet we don't use technology to assess kids and create personalized lessons that are tailored to a kids ability. IQ is already tested for in schools, so it would not be difficult to integrate the number into the scores used to gauge educational progress.
This is violation of a business privacy as well. Sure, you might not be paying taxes and the tax collector might see you get business form rich yuppies.. but it could also tell a competitor business how well you are doing without getting off the couch. Seems like an unfair use of private data.
Who mentioned math exams? Coding talent is pretty easy to spot in a group. Superstar programmers are rarely the ones who have been employed the longest. Union membership is dropping each year in private enterprise because it is bad for business and ultimately bad for workers. Of course its rising in government sector jobs where unfunded pensions and spiked retirement entitlements are bankrupting entire municipalities.
Yeah, companies go up and down quickly in tech. If you have an opportunity to get your technology into the hands of pros who will pay you big money.. its a no brainer.. With cash in the bank, you'll be able to start a new business, relax about meeting payroll, and take time off to finish college or travel abroad.
#1 The Des Moines Register: Obamas Record On The Economy The Past Four Years Does Not Suggest He Would Lead In The Direction The Nation Must Go In The Next Four Years. Barack Obama rocketed to the presidency from relative obscurity with a theme of hope and change. A different reality has marked his presidency. His record on the economy the past four years does not suggest he would lead in the direction the nation must go in the next four years. Editorial, Mitt Romney Offers A Fresh Economic Vision, The Des Moines Register, 10/27/12)
The Des Moines Register: Obamas Best Efforts To Resuscitate The Stumbling Economy Have Fallen Short. Nothing Indicates It Would Change With A Second Term In The White House. The nation has struggled to recover from recession for the past 40 months. Still, the economy is growing at an unacceptably anemic rate of around 2 percent a year and could slip back into recession depending on what happens in the European Union and China. The workforce is still 4.5 million jobs short of the nearly 9 million that were lost in the recession. Longer term, looming deficits driven by Social Security and Medicare pose the single greatest threats to the nations economic security. The presidents best efforts to resuscitate the stumbling economy have fallen short. Nothing indicates it would change with a second term in the White House. (Editorial, Mitt Romney Offers A Fresh Economic Vision, The Des Moines Register, 10/27/12)
Before Endorsing Mitt Romney, The Des Moines Register Last Endorsed A Republican Presidential Candidate In 1972. (Editorial, Mitt Romney Offers A Fresh Economic Vision, The Des Moines Register, 10/27/12)
#2 Quad-City Times:Obamas Presidency Is Plagued With Flagging Leadership. [Health care reform is] just one example of flagging leadership on an issue that defines the Obama presidency. Sadly, others exist. (Editorial, Ready For Change, Quad-City Times, 10/28/12)
Quad-City Times: The Change That Wed Hoped Would Elevate Our Economy Wound Up Woefully Short. We invested heavily in hope back in 2008. Our 2012 endorsement of Mitt Romney comes with an imperative for change. The change that wed hoped would elevate our economy wound up woefully short. (Editorial, Ready For Change, Quad-City Times, 10/28/12)
Quad-City Times: The Presidential Gambit To Place Health-Care Reform Ahead Of Economic Recovery Jeopardized Both. The presidential gambit to place health-care reform ahead of economic recovery jeopardized both. President Barack Obama expended all of the presidential leadership on muscling through health care reform, leaving little for implementation and none for significant economic recovery. (Editorial, Ready For Change, Quad-City Times, 10/28/12)
I started my post by saying Nate was being overly optimistic. I didn't make ANY prediction as to who would win.
Some citations..
Campaign Rally Numbers: Google them yourselves. Last night Biden drew 1000. Obama's Jay-Z PA event was half empty. Romney's events have had more people. I retract the 90%... but clearly the the thrill isn't what it was in 08.
Citation needed for broken promises? You're insane. Gitmo. $2500 reduction in healthcare costs. He'd be bi-partisan. Large deficits are "unpatriotic" and he'd cut the deficit in half. But I don't know many middle of the road democrats who are "fired up" like 08. The liberals, union workers, and welfare crowd will vote for him.. but the average hard working middle class American may not be as happy with Obama as you think. Some polls are showing 11% black vote going to Romney (which again, may just be an indicator of how wrong the polls can be.)
People lie to pollsters all the time. Almost everyone says they will vote, but we know that only 2/3's of the people actually do. Using 2008 as a metric to judge whether someone is a "likely" voter will skew the results--as 2008, Republican's were fed up after Bush, didn't like McCain, and Democrats were voting because they were really sick of Bush.
PA is in play. It might be a long shot with the Philly shenanigans (removing Republican poll watchers? Classy.), but its a statistical tie. Last time PA voted R in the presidential race was 1988, 24 years ago.
AC: Re: Astroturfing. Look around--there are millions of people on both sides who follow politics fanatically like its a sporting event. 30,000 people don't brave the cold weather of OH to watch a dozen people speak about a candidate they don't care about. I encourage you to check up on all of it rather than blindly throw out the BS and idiotic thought that Carl Rove is paying me $5.00 to post crap.
I'm a libertarian and I live in a solid blue state. But those in tossup states will have to make a choice between making a symbolic vote representing less than 1% of the vote.. or going with one of the major party candidates based on a number of libertarian issues: war spending, drug laws, business regulations, personal freedom, liberty, constitutional issues, and government spending.
I know programmers who work for my county that are unionized. Imagine a process where seniority and not coding ability determines who works on a project.
Imagine a union that helped get the best workers on a project and making the most. A union that helped weed out the lazy, the incompetent, and the criminals. That would be a union that most people would not oppose.. unfortunately the opposite is true: seniority rules, criminals are coddled, lawsuits are filed, work slowdowns are part of the union bag of tricks.
Unions have no place for the programming industry.. except in government where we expect cost overruns and shoddy results. To start a programming union would be to hasten the outsourcing of your job. Besides, programming jobs are one of the most in-demand careers out there. If you can't make good money without a union, you should bone up on your skills.
I disagree. There are several points that make Nate's prediction "optimistic":
Obama is not polling above 49.5% in many of the tossup races. Those races are likely to go to Romney, as incumbents rarely exceed their late term poll numbers--whereas the challenger can pick up a lot of last minute change votes.
Reagan Democrats: The polls extrapolate from 2008 results to predict 2012. But this year is looking more like 1980.
Romney voters have switched from "voting against Obama" to voting for Romney. The debates were a huge win for Romney in that regard.
Campaign Rally Sizes: Obama's crowd sizes are down 90% from 2008.
Golfer in Chief: Why did Obama get dragged away from the golf course on the day of the UBL raid? Strange disconnect in priorities. Same with lavish vacations to Aspen, HI, Africa, Spain... while claiming he won't rest until unemployment is down. (Unemployment rates are not down over 4 years.)
Independents favor Romney. Many polls split independents evenly, but by most accounts, Independents are 3:1 Romney.
States like PA that haven't voted a Republican in decades are statistically tied. That speaks volumes.
Bradley Effect: This is where someone says to a pollster that they are voting for someone, but don't. Attributed to race, but this could be attributed to any number of Obama's qualities that annoy voters.
Broken promises: Obama had a golden opportunity to do the many great things he promised. He has let most liberals down. Most democrats are not voting because they like the job Obama is doing, but simply because they won't support Romney.
Nate Silver is getting a lot of attention because of his 2008 predictions. Past performance does not guarantee future performance. Nate is not an unbiased source.. he has a political and financial stake in an Obama win.
~25 major papers have switched their editorial support from Obama to Romney. That takes a major change of heart.
Only thing you can do is create hydrogen as a fuel using vast solar arrays.. Unfortunately the fuel tanks would need to be 4x bigger, cooled, and instead of leaking, will explode. This may qualify as the dumbest question on slashdot I've seen.
The Imam's would be better served to teach their followers how to live peacefully in their adopted countries.. and teach that their prophet cannot be "injured" by the actions of non-Muslims.. and that their culture and religion will be most injured by violence and poverty that their over-reactions create. If they want respect, they need to earn it by acting decently towards their fellow human beings. If they can't act peacefully, they should organize mass self-deportation to their Holy Land in the middle east.
People will start buying refrigerated two liter bottles, which cost less than two 16oz sodas.. Or the poor guys who've worked up a thirst after working their asses off all day will spend twice as much buying two 16oz drinks.
The liberal streets are paved with good intentions.
Can't tell if that is sarcasm or real. I can't imagine hiring someone dumb enough to list WOW on a resume. (Hint: employers want to hire people who want to WORK.)
I know a few people who are addicted to that game, play it at work and too much at home. Never played it myself.. How many hours does it take to become a level 85 orc assassin rogue?
The other question is, how many hours a day playing RPG games is is too many for a busy politician who I'll presume has a family...
Sorry that came out wrong. In retrospect, I should have just said, don't take up online poker.. its an easy transition from computer games and can be played with one hand.. but it is a bad idea. Wastes time. Wastes money. Bad idea and plenty of better things to do.
FYI, I too am married, with kids, own my own business.. and much older than you thought. Take care..
If you need to waste hours in front of a screen, try online poker.. Addictive possibly worse for you.
Or you could work on your tan, learn to ski, hike, swim, meet women, socialize.. maybe even work on job skills or start a business. (I really don't recommend the poker.)
Slashdot Mirror
Mine was tested in 3rd grade, public school to see who should be admitted to the gifted program that starts in 4th grade. I wrongly assumed they still did it.
It helps by keeping teachers from having to invent creative ways to reach impossible goals. It helps because kids won't be forced to endure classes that are simply unattainable. Drop out rates are >60% in some inner city school districts. Trying to teach these kids a foreign languages, Algebra II, and how to recite Shakespeare is just stupid, when you know in advance that 2/3's will drop out. Instead, low-performing kids should be taught trade skills that they can reasonably grasp and use to find work. Moving kids with potential into more advanced classes will be better for those kids as well.
While its probably a good idea to erase your personally incriminating emails that you wrote 6 or more months ago (or a week ago!), at some point we want our CIA personnel to not be acting like idiots.
No. Using race or socioeconomic factors is just trying to put a different criteria on the variance in IQ that makes educating everyone to the same level impossible. Why VA and FL decided to use race as the criterial, rather than IQ (which they test for in schools) is the big question mark. At some point, the US needs to start spending money intelligently, rather than trying to force algebra on the bottom quartile of the IQ curve. We would have lower drop out rates if we taught to a students ability, rather than a government set bar for the entire country.
The less racist way would be to test children's IQ's and use the number to set a goal for achievement. It makes no sense to have the same goals for all kids no matter what their innate intelligence is. IQ is easily testable, and it is difficult to increase your IQ by more than a standard deviation through "study" or environment. Doing it based on self-identified "skin color" is a shortcut that will lead to underachievement by smart kids that are in a "dumbed down" category. Education is the most expensive budget item in every state, and yet we don't use technology to assess kids and create personalized lessons that are tailored to a kids ability. IQ is already tested for in schools, so it would not be difficult to integrate the number into the scores used to gauge educational progress.
This is violation of a business privacy as well. Sure, you might not be paying taxes and the tax collector might see you get business form rich yuppies.. but it could also tell a competitor business how well you are doing without getting off the couch. Seems like an unfair use of private data.
I agree. What have you been doing the last 3 years? Hopefully building some useful software for someone..
Who mentioned math exams? Coding talent is pretty easy to spot in a group. Superstar programmers are rarely the ones who have been employed the longest. Union membership is dropping each year in private enterprise because it is bad for business and ultimately bad for workers. Of course its rising in government sector jobs where unfunded pensions and spiked retirement entitlements are bankrupting entire municipalities.
Yeah, companies go up and down quickly in tech. If you have an opportunity to get your technology into the hands of pros who will pay you big money.. its a no brainer.. With cash in the bank, you'll be able to start a new business, relax about meeting payroll, and take time off to finish college or travel abroad.
#1 The Des Moines Register: Obamas Record On The Economy The Past Four Years Does Not Suggest He Would Lead In The Direction The Nation Must Go In The Next Four Years. Barack Obama rocketed to the presidency from relative obscurity with a theme of hope and change. A different reality has marked his presidency. His record on the economy the past four years does not suggest he would lead in the direction the nation must go in the next four years. Editorial, Mitt Romney Offers A Fresh Economic Vision, The Des Moines Register , 10/27/12)
#2 Quad-City Times: Obamas Presidency Is Plagued With Flagging Leadership. [Health care reform is] just one example of flagging leadership on an issue that defines the Obama presidency. Sadly, others exist. (Editorial, Ready For Change, Quad-City Times , 10/28/12)
Some citations..
http://www.redstate.com/2012/10/26/swingometer-gallup-party-id-figures-predict-solid-romney-win/#
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2012/11/05/Why-the-Polls-are-Wrong-Poll-Shows-Electorate-is-R-6
You may think its a cakewalk for Obama.. but I wouldn't bet your life savings.
I am over 40... I write and sell software. I don't work for anyone. But I know that if I needed to, I could get a job pretty easily doing tech work.
I'm a libertarian and I live in a solid blue state. But those in tossup states will have to make a choice between making a symbolic vote representing less than 1% of the vote.. or going with one of the major party candidates based on a number of libertarian issues: war spending, drug laws, business regulations, personal freedom, liberty, constitutional issues, and government spending.
I know programmers who work for my county that are unionized. Imagine a process where seniority and not coding ability determines who works on a project.
Imagine a union that helped get the best workers on a project and making the most. A union that helped weed out the lazy, the incompetent, and the criminals. That would be a union that most people would not oppose.. unfortunately the opposite is true: seniority rules, criminals are coddled, lawsuits are filed, work slowdowns are part of the union bag of tricks.
Unions have no place for the programming industry.. except in government where we expect cost overruns and shoddy results. To start a programming union would be to hasten the outsourcing of your job. Besides, programming jobs are one of the most in-demand careers out there. If you can't make good money without a union, you should bone up on your skills.
Only thing you can do is create hydrogen as a fuel using vast solar arrays.. Unfortunately the fuel tanks would need to be 4x bigger, cooled, and instead of leaking, will explode. This may qualify as the dumbest question on slashdot I've seen.
They showed this extraction method on The Unit. Season 2, episode 1 "Change of Station".
The Imam's would be better served to teach their followers how to live peacefully in their adopted countries.. and teach that their prophet cannot be "injured" by the actions of non-Muslims.. and that their culture and religion will be most injured by violence and poverty that their over-reactions create. If they want respect, they need to earn it by acting decently towards their fellow human beings. If they can't act peacefully, they should organize mass self-deportation to their Holy Land in the middle east.
The liberal streets are paved with good intentions.
Can't tell if that is sarcasm or real. I can't imagine hiring someone dumb enough to list WOW on a resume. (Hint: employers want to hire people who want to WORK.)
I know a few people who are addicted to that game, play it at work and too much at home. Never played it myself.. How many hours does it take to become a level 85 orc assassin rogue? The other question is, how many hours a day playing RPG games is is too many for a busy politician who I'll presume has a family...
At least the nitwits got US made F-5 fighters in the backdrop... Unfortunately, they belonged to the Turkish Air Force...
Sorry that came out wrong. In retrospect, I should have just said, don't take up online poker.. its an easy transition from computer games and can be played with one hand.. but it is a bad idea. Wastes time. Wastes money. Bad idea and plenty of better things to do. FYI, I too am married, with kids, own my own business.. and much older than you thought. Take care..
If you need to waste hours in front of a screen, try online poker.. Addictive possibly worse for you. Or you could work on your tan, learn to ski, hike, swim, meet women, socialize.. maybe even work on job skills or start a business. (I really don't recommend the poker.)