> How often do schoolgirls roam the city, drawing hopscotch guides all over the place? My recollection from when I was a kid was that almost all hopscotch guides were drawn near the home of one of the participants, usually on the sidewalk in front of their house.
I lived in a house in a residential neighborhood for a while, and regularly found them on the sidewalk in front of my house and on my driveway.
> what he did was vandalism, whether or not it was about pink elephants, faeries, or a dumbass president.
Actually he was going around printing "first post!" on all the sidewalks in the neighborhood, and the authorities thought it was some kind of coded terrorist message.
> * Daddy's Roommate / Heather Has Two Mommies Well, need I say anything? These obviously don't belong in a school library. Six year old kids don't need to be learning about homosexuality anymore than they need to be learning about heterosexuality. Leave this stuff for the later years - like when they can at least tie their own shoes
I'm sure that last phrase is a euphemism for something, but I can't quite figure it out.
This site is Slash-dot It's news for ner-erds And stuff that mat-ters Or so they sa-ay If you don't read it You might get la-ayed This site was made for dorks like me!
Presumably you're setting up for a joke about which half is missing its idiot...
But seriously, I noticed the same think. The whole USA seems to be divided by a line that runs straight north from the most southerly point of Texas. Is that for real, or just an artifact of the image-making process?
Other interesting stuff:
Check out the lattice checking European Russia to the far east.
Check out the lighting along the lower (northerly) Nile.
On the small map, look how clearly the coastlines of Scandanavia are delineated. On the larger map, look at the coastlines of Italy, southern France, and Spain.
On the larger map, notice the rectangular lattice on the USAian plains and around Rio and Buenos Aires. (Possibly an artifact, but it doesn't show up in most other places with similar amounts of light.)
> Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible composite image of Eareth from space at night.
Actually it was Saturdays...
At any rate, if you click the link, click the resulting image to get a bigger one, and then resize it, it makes pretty nice wallpaper. Unfortunately the aspect ratio isn't fit for a desktop, so you'll have to trim it or let the aspect ratio change to get the whole thing.
> That's great in theory, but a little impractical. This system would require the teacher to re-read each student's previous paper (or maybe she has a really good memory), and then read the exam
Just write down an appropriate exam question for each student as you grade their papers.
> and then somehow maintain impartiality when grading.
That's tough no matter what you do.
> A better system would be to mandate severe penalties for cheating and make frequent examples of people. All too often I've seen people who cheat, get caught, and get a slap on the wrist (even in university).
And I've seen students get kicked out of a university over cheating, but all the studies indicate that it's still rampant.
I suspect that lots of cheaters (and criminals, spies, politicians, etc.) think they're too clever to get caught. Or perhaps don't ever think about the consequences at all.
> Then all you have to do is read and understand the the paper you bought.
Don't ask them to regurgitate a summary of the paper; ask them to motivate something they purportedly said in their paper.
> Seems like this would be a lot easier than reading the entire book and doing an original paper.
Yeah, I qualified it as a 90% fix because I know it isn't perfect. But if you're clever you should be able to fine-tune it until cheating and still passing is almost as much work as not cheating is.
Meanwhile, you've tricked them into learning something about the subject matter in spite of there worst intentions...
> That way, when it's 1:06am and I'm up grading papers and slacking off reading/., I can think back of Daisy saying, "I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything... Sophisticated -- God, I'm sophisticated!"
Just have the final exam include writing an impromptu essay about your class paper, and weight it enough that you'll fail the class if you don't understand your own paper.
> i cant think of too many things designed these days that would survive 60+ years of being exposed to the elements, especially buried in a sand bank underwater... and then would still work close to specifications...
FWIW, about a decade ago a fishing boat offshore from my home town drew up a honking big WWII bomb. The Coast Guard decided that popping it was the safest solution, which they did in an empty praire reachable by an inland waterway. Everyone for miles around felt their windows rattle, and no one knew what it was until the news carried the story later.
A friend says when he was a kid a fisherman / WWII vet had another big bomb hanging in his garage across the street from where he lived, right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Never figured out whether it was live or not...
> Ironically, this was hailed as a proof of Einstein's relativity in the early 20th century, since the angle of deflection observed is much closer to the relativistic prediction, than to the Newtonian prediction.
Pedantic note: this sort of thing doesn't "prove" a theory right; it merely shows that the competition is wrong. We take the theory that passes such a test as "provisionally correct", but no number of 'confirming' observations will actually prove it.
> BTW: I'm sure that somewhere in this discussion, someone is going to bring up the idea that the Inuit (Eskimos) have some huge number of words for snow. That claim almost always gets trotted out in this kind of context. This is a kind of academic urban legend that just won't die. The linguist Geoff Pullum thoroughly debunked this whole fable some time back, and traced the series of misunderstandings and exaggerations which had given rise to it. In fact, it appears that Inuktitut has just two words for snow.
Yeah, but I'll bet English has at least 25 words for {thing, thang, wang, yang, dong, prick, weeny, pecker, johnson,...}.
> This reminds me of a Heinlein story, the name of which escapes me, about a group that had invented a new language. It had a much higher information density than any natural language, and the idea was that since you could say more in less time, you would learn to think faster.
As an unfortunate side effect, these übergeeks only got laid half as often.
> I'm surprised nobody's made the "reduced language = reduced ability to form mental concepts" link with Orwell's '1984'. This seems like some strong evidence that it might actually work.
When politicians try spin control via calling something what it ain't, does it ever convince anyone who didn't already want to be convinced?
Slashdot Mirror
> For those who don't know what this is all about...
Darn. I clicked it in hopes of seeing pix from the International Olympic Committee Contortionist Competition.
> It's all about how to obfuscate baby!
Was the article text one of the contest entries?
> Let's all send him messages like, "ONE WAY" and "RIGHT TURN ONLY"
"No clothes allowed beyond this point"
> How often do schoolgirls roam the city, drawing hopscotch guides all over the place? My recollection from when I was a kid was that almost all hopscotch guides were drawn near the home of one of the participants, usually on the sidewalk in front of their house.
I lived in a house in a residential neighborhood for a while, and regularly found them on the sidewalk in front of my house and on my driveway.
Never called the cops over it, though.
> IANAL, but writing stuff all over the sidewalk (over an extended area) - even in chalk - has to be against some local laws.
I wonder how often they bust schoolgirls for drawing hopscotch guides on public sidewalks.
> what he did was vandalism, whether or not it was about pink elephants, faeries, or a dumbass president.
Actually he was going around printing "first post!" on all the sidewalks in the neighborhood, and the authorities thought it was some kind of coded terrorist message.
> * Daddy's Roommate / Heather Has Two Mommies
Well, need I say anything? These obviously don't belong in a school library. Six year old kids don't need to be learning about homosexuality anymore than they need to be learning about heterosexuality. Leave this stuff for the later years - like when they can at least tie their own shoes
I'm sure that last phrase is a euphemism for something, but I can't quite figure it out.
I always said size didn't matter, but 4" ???
Now we can use it for the
If he wants free-as-in-speech contributions, he should dole out some free-as-in-beer. Everyone knows that beer looseneth the tongue.
> ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool
I used to know a girl who had a couple of those.
> Why is half of Texas so dim?
Presumably you're setting up for a joke about which half is missing its idiot...
But seriously, I noticed the same think. The whole USA seems to be divided by a line that runs straight north from the most southerly point of Texas. Is that for real, or just an artifact of the image-making process?
Other interesting stuff:
> Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible composite image of Eareth from space at night.
Actually it was Saturdays...
At any rate, if you click the link, click the resulting image to get a bigger one, and then resize it, it makes pretty nice wallpaper. Unfortunately the aspect ratio isn't fit for a desktop, so you'll have to trim it or let the aspect ratio change to get the whole thing.
Still makes pretty nice wallpaper, though.
> That's great in theory, but a little impractical. This system would require the teacher to re-read each student's previous paper (or maybe she has a really good memory), and then read the exam
Just write down an appropriate exam question for each student as you grade their papers.
> and then somehow maintain impartiality when grading.
That's tough no matter what you do.
> A better system would be to mandate severe penalties for cheating and make frequent examples of people. All too often I've seen people who cheat, get caught, and get a slap on the wrist (even in university).
And I've seen students get kicked out of a university over cheating, but all the studies indicate that it's still rampant.
I suspect that lots of cheaters (and criminals, spies, politicians, etc.) think they're too clever to get caught. Or perhaps don't ever think about the consequences at all.
> Then all you have to do is read and understand the the paper you bought.
Don't ask them to regurgitate a summary of the paper; ask them to motivate something they purportedly said in their paper.
> Seems like this would be a lot easier than reading the entire book and doing an original paper.
Yeah, I qualified it as a 90% fix because I know it isn't perfect. But if you're clever you should be able to fine-tune it until cheating and still passing is almost as much work as not cheating is.
Meanwhile, you've tricked them into learning something about the subject matter in spite of there worst intentions...
> That way, when it's 1:06am and I'm up grading papers and slacking off reading
"slacking" off?
Just have the final exam include writing an impromptu essay about your class paper, and weight it enough that you'll fail the class if you don't understand your own paper.
> i cant think of too many things designed these days that would survive 60+ years of being exposed to the elements, especially buried in a sand bank underwater... and then would still work close to specifications...
FWIW, about a decade ago a fishing boat offshore from my home town drew up a honking big WWII bomb. The Coast Guard decided that popping it was the safest solution, which they did in an empty praire reachable by an inland waterway. Everyone for miles around felt their windows rattle, and no one knew what it was until the news carried the story later.
A friend says when he was a kid a fisherman / WWII vet had another big bomb hanging in his garage across the street from where he lived, right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Never figured out whether it was live or not...
> Ironically, this was hailed as a proof of Einstein's relativity in the early 20th century, since the angle of deflection observed is much closer to the relativistic prediction, than to the Newtonian prediction.
Pedantic note: this sort of thing doesn't "prove" a theory right; it merely shows that the competition is wrong. We take the theory that passes such a test as "provisionally correct", but no number of 'confirming' observations will actually prove it.
> Perhaps they theorize that the anomoly is caused by Adam Smith's invisible hand of economics?
More likely choirboys wanking in the basement.
> Why is this being carried in the Economist? Shouldn't it be picked up by New Scientist or some other scientific (or pseudo-scientific) publication?
FWIW, this is really old news. The others have probably already covered it.
> Funny how a democratic senator is blacklisted after speaking at the DNC. Coincidence?
Maybe he's in trouble because the DNC wasn't held in an approved Free Speech Zone.
> BTW: I'm sure that somewhere in this discussion, someone is going to bring up the idea that the Inuit (Eskimos) have some huge number of words for snow. That claim almost always gets trotted out in this kind of context. This is a kind of academic urban legend that just won't die. The linguist Geoff Pullum thoroughly debunked this whole fable some time back, and traced the series of misunderstandings and exaggerations which had given rise to it. In fact, it appears that Inuktitut has just two words for snow.
Yeah, but I'll bet English has at least 25 words for {thing, thang, wang, yang, dong, prick, weeny, pecker, johnson,
> This reminds me of a Heinlein story, the name of which escapes me, about a group that had invented a new language. It had a much higher information density than any natural language, and the idea was that since you could say more in less time, you would learn to think faster.
As an unfortunate side effect, these übergeeks only got laid half as often.
> I'm surprised nobody's made the "reduced language = reduced ability to form mental concepts" link with Orwell's '1984'. This seems like some strong evidence that it might actually work.
When politicians try spin control via calling something what it ain't, does it ever convince anyone who didn't already want to be convinced?