The FISA court has been a whitewash since the Church Committee days. FISA rejects about one warrant per 3 year period (or 1 in 3000):
From 1979 through 2012, the court overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has rejected only 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance applications by the government, according to annual Justice Department reports to Congress.
You can't rationally call rubber stamping like that "oversight."
Or the people asking for the warrants know exactly what a judge needs to hear in order to approve the warrant. Whether the warrant information is truthful or not is another matter, and it is doubtful that any judge, anywhere, is in a position to investigate the veracity of a warrant's claims.
And that is the real problem: there is no way to prove that a CIA officer (or whoever is asking for the warrants) is telling the truth. And I can't think of a way that this can happen with transparency in the process, which is kinda counter to the idea of spying and secrecy. All the judges are doing is making sure that the right boxes are checked and filled out. Maybe members of congress (int. committee) could do a quarterly review of a sampling of warrants, like, actually investigate them, interview people, etc... I don't know.
I wonder if people who did no work would be viewed distastefully in a future world where 'work' was worth nothing?
By that, I mean, say anyone in this future world could build 1 robot. And that robot had the ability to extract resources right from the soil, crafting its own parts, repairing itself, and building other robots. And these robots could build anything, even a full working luxury car or mansion. And the robots were smarter or smarter than real people. They could code programs, do scientific research, work on wallstreet. etc..
So anyone person can essentially produce unlimited units of work. The only thing that would bottleneck them is naturally scarce things, like land/air/water/space, or artificial scarcities, like IP / copyright.
I wonder at that point, if the major land owners are essentially going to be Royalty, and anyone without land will be at their mercy. Back to some sort of Feudal society. Except the land owners do not need us... that'll be scary.
I guess it depends on how advanced of a fantasy world we are talking about?
For instance, what will the world be like when the average person can buy or build a robot. And that robot has the ability to build more robots, and repair itself by crafting parts built from basic elements (Like you have a forge robot that can extract metal from soil or something).
At that point, the only scarcities in the world economy will be either artificial scarcities (IP / Art), or natural scarcity like land, water, air, radio wave bands, etc..
Involvement of the parents - Parents are largest aspect to a child's education. If the parent doesn't care about the child education he will most likely not bother with education. Overall Environment - how safe the child feels. Does the environment encourage learning. Or is it about who is the toughest.
Involvement of the Parents and the Overall Environment are important. And I agree with your points, but I think you missed a big part: social support to help create a better environment and parental involvement.
For example, Finland's schools are considered the best (or very close to the best) in the world. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
And just to name a few things, Finland set their kids up for success by doing things like:
Three years paid maternity leave! Parents are given monthly money just for having kids. College is free (I think this one is huge.... it creates generations of educated parents).
And I bet I could find dozens more examples of how Finland creates a much better social environment for children and parents. Once you are comfortable, well fed, happy, you tend to be a better parent and spend more time with your kids. Living on the edge in poverty, stressed out, etc.. isn't a good environment.
There are a lot more factors to Finland's success.
3 year payed Maternity leave! Parents are given money yearly (or maybe monthly, I forget) for each child. Lots of other social programs / social help like the two above.
Teachers must have masters degrees or higher, and are paid very well. College is free, so it creates generations of educated people. Schools are allowed to be very creative when handling their particular student body.
I don't know which factors are the most important. Likely all of them. But one thing is for sure, meager social support and rigid schools (USA) doesn't work.
Having standardized tests is useful, as long as you don't take the results of those tests as the be all and end all. To use test results as the only way of judging schools is to fall prey to the MBA mentality - if there isn't a simplistic metric then it doesn't exist. Think of how that mentality has affected so many businesses.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
And we have an actual real world example of an education system that uses no standardized tests being the envy of the world: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
Are you advocating that people who have these means...sacrifice the lives of their children, send them for a poor education merely to prove a social "point"?
I don't know what the poster was advocating. But I know that no one in this debate about charter schools is suggesting the private education be abolished. We just want to make sure it doesn't make public schools worse, either directly or indirectly. The details of how to accomplish that are tricky and as always, up for debate.
This idea that every child should get exactly the same education is ludicrous
I don't think anyone is saying that, rather, they are saying all children should have the same opportunities to get the same education. And by 'same opportunities', that also implies an equaling of all external factors (to a reasonable extent) that influence the likelihood of an opportunity being used to its full advantage.
And it gets complicated when you start taking all the factors into account. For instance, if a child's parents cannot or will not help with homework, get that child enough food, be supportive, etc..., that child, on average, is going to do worse in school. Through no fault of his own, that child will be less successful. This can go on for generations. Does society have a responsibility to help break that poverty cycle? If the answer is yes, which is what most people think, that is where we end up with different support mechanisms like free school lunch.
So in your case, I doubt anyone is suggesting that the Charter School accept students who are not yet ready for Algebra. Rather, people are saying that a student not ready for algebra by grade 9 was probably not afforded the same opportunities along their educational career. Probably starting as far back as Kindergarten.
For example, New York City, Seattle, Portland Oregon all have rich expensive downtown property.
When the situation is reversed, like in Detroit, it is usually due to a failed city. Something that once made the city rich collapsed, and all the wealthy left, leaving the downtown to rot.
Americans don't seem to think that non-Americans are people, therefore not deserving of rights
Actually, the US Gov. created laws and redefined terms that expanded the concept of war beyond State vs State, to State vs Enemy. Those killed in drone strikes are legally defined as enemy combatants killed in an official war. And as enemy combatants, they do have certain rights in certain circumstances, just like any soldier in any war.
Don't get me wrong, I think the above is complete crap and won't stand the test of time.
As long as we are talking about pie in the sky ideas...
Or ignore the term limit debate, and just get all money out of political elections. Public funding for any candidate that gets X signatures. Set amounts of free air time (radio, tv, etc..). Required Y number of debates for all candidates.
Strictly limit any outside spending, advertising, and repeal citizens united. Strengthen and expand libel and slander laws to become a serious threat for political news shows and advertising. Basically, organizations like Fox and MSNBC would be out of business.
Oh.. so you are one of the people responsible for flipping the control of the house and senate every so often and basically accomplishing nothing over time. I always wondered what the logical thinking could be by voting that way.
Vote third party instead, because that is what you'd ideally like to see in Congress.
There's a reason that polls indicate over half of Americans are in favor of firing EVERYONE in Congress.
It has got to be more than half of Americans. Congressional approval ratings have never, ever, been lower. Nine percent.... http://www.gallup.com/poll/165809/congressional-approval-sinks-record-low.aspx
Afghanistan hasn't been stable enough to have an election yet. Given it some time and they'll have elections just like Iraq did.
The majority of Egypt did elect Morsi. Then after they watched him work for a while, the majority of Egypt wanted him out. The military listened to the people when they ousted Morsi. Morsi was essentially working towards a complete takeover of Egyptian government with Muslim Brotherhood members. Lots of articles about this if you want to google it.
For the record, I did not support any of our overseas wars. But the Arab spring is a bit different. Real democracies are forming.
But the American body politik is also crazy conservative
Not according to polls. Gay marriage, legalizing pot, getting our troops home, single payer, etc... the American public has consistently polled more liberal than our government.
Blacks, Latinos, Women (mostly liberal) are an increasingly larger part of the voting pool, yet this has not been visible in the makeup of Congress.
Gerrymandering is to blame: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/the-great-gerrymander-of-2012.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
If Congress people were elected by total votes cast across their state (instead of by political party controlled districts), the US would be a much more liberal country.
The News is just as careless with all science reporting.
Why the special hate for climate change reporting? As always, if you want the truth, get it from the scientists. Or at least respected science oriented magazines.
Isn't the prius battery pack located towards the rear of the car, and the car is front wheel drive? I have a hard time seeing a prius driving better in the snow than other front wheel drive cars with their engines in the front (weight).
I'm mainly skeptical because here in Portland, I see a lot of stuck Prius cars each winter.
That means it is "provable"... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable". Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?
It is only special in that it correctly describes how science works. As a practical matter, scientists may consider a theory proven, but it never really is proven. It just happens to be the theory that matches the most observable evidence at this time. What science can conclusively do, though, is disprove a theory. If a theory does not match the observable evidence, it is false.
So what's good? Warm, cold, in-between? What's "natural?" 'Cause that seems to be extremely warm... unless you're talking about humans, then it's extremely cold. Or moderate.
Interesting post. However, it isn't really relevant if we are deciding whether action or no action is required to modify the current climate changes.
What is good are rates of change that are slow enough that it gives life time to adapt. Our current rate of change is going to be very difficult and costly for us humans to deal with, and likely impossible for other species to deal with, leading to a lot of extinctions.
Slashdot Mirror
The FISA court has been a whitewash since the Church Committee days. FISA rejects about one warrant per 3 year period (or 1 in 3000):
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324904004578535670310514616
You can't rationally call rubber stamping like that "oversight."
Or the people asking for the warrants know exactly what a judge needs to hear in order to approve the warrant. Whether the warrant information is truthful or not is another matter, and it is doubtful that any judge, anywhere, is in a position to investigate the veracity of a warrant's claims.
And that is the real problem: there is no way to prove that a CIA officer (or whoever is asking for the warrants) is telling the truth. And I can't think of a way that this can happen with transparency in the process, which is kinda counter to the idea of spying and secrecy. All the judges are doing is making sure that the right boxes are checked and filled out. Maybe members of congress (int. committee) could do a quarterly review of a sampling of warrants, like, actually investigate them, interview people, etc... I don't know.
The capabilities of man + machine will always be greater than the capabilities of a machine by itself
In a billion years?
I wonder if people who did no work would be viewed distastefully in a future world where 'work' was worth nothing?
By that, I mean, say anyone in this future world could build 1 robot. And that robot had the ability to extract resources right from the soil, crafting its own parts, repairing itself, and building other robots. And these robots could build anything, even a full working luxury car or mansion. And the robots were smarter or smarter than real people. They could code programs, do scientific research, work on wallstreet. etc..
So anyone person can essentially produce unlimited units of work. The only thing that would bottleneck them is naturally scarce things, like land/air/water/space, or artificial scarcities, like IP / copyright.
I wonder at that point, if the major land owners are essentially going to be Royalty, and anyone without land will be at their mercy. Back to some sort of Feudal society. Except the land owners do not need us... that'll be scary.
I guess it depends on how advanced of a fantasy world we are talking about?
For instance, what will the world be like when the average person can buy or build a robot. And that robot has the ability to build more robots, and repair itself by crafting parts built from basic elements (Like you have a forge robot that can extract metal from soil or something).
At that point, the only scarcities in the world economy will be either artificial scarcities (IP / Art), or natural scarcity like land, water, air, radio wave bands, etc..
Involvement of the parents - Parents are largest aspect to a child's education. If the parent doesn't care about the child education he will most likely not bother with education.
Overall Environment - how safe the child feels. Does the environment encourage learning. Or is it about who is the toughest.
Involvement of the Parents and the Overall Environment are important. And I agree with your points, but I think you missed a big part: social support to help create a better environment and parental involvement.
For example, Finland's schools are considered the best (or very close to the best) in the world. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
And just to name a few things, Finland set their kids up for success by doing things like:
Three years paid maternity leave!
Parents are given monthly money just for having kids.
College is free (I think this one is huge.... it creates generations of educated parents).
And I bet I could find dozens more examples of how Finland creates a much better social environment for children and parents. Once you are comfortable, well fed, happy, you tend to be a better parent and spend more time with your kids. Living on the edge in poverty, stressed out, etc.. isn't a good environment.
There are a lot more factors to Finland's success.
3 year payed Maternity leave!
Parents are given money yearly (or maybe monthly, I forget) for each child.
Lots of other social programs / social help like the two above.
Teachers must have masters degrees or higher, and are paid very well.
College is free, so it creates generations of educated people.
Schools are allowed to be very creative when handling their particular student body.
I don't know which factors are the most important. Likely all of them. But one thing is for sure, meager social support and rigid schools (USA) doesn't work.
What else is there to grade schools on?
Having standardized tests is useful, as long as you don't take the results of those tests as the be all and end all. To use test results as the only way of judging schools is to fall prey to the MBA mentality - if there isn't a simplistic metric then it doesn't exist. Think of how that mentality has affected so many businesses.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
And we have an actual real world example of an education system that uses no standardized tests being the envy of the world:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
Are you advocating that people who have these means...sacrifice the lives of their children, send them for a poor education merely to prove a social "point"?
I don't know what the poster was advocating. But I know that no one in this debate about charter schools is suggesting the private education be abolished. We just want to make sure it doesn't make public schools worse, either directly or indirectly. The details of how to accomplish that are tricky and as always, up for debate.
This idea that every child should get exactly the same education is ludicrous
I don't think anyone is saying that, rather, they are saying all children should have the same opportunities to get the same education. And by 'same opportunities', that also implies an equaling of all external factors (to a reasonable extent) that influence the likelihood of an opportunity being used to its full advantage.
And it gets complicated when you start taking all the factors into account. For instance, if a child's parents cannot or will not help with homework, get that child enough food, be supportive, etc..., that child, on average, is going to do worse in school. Through no fault of his own, that child will be less successful. This can go on for generations. Does society have a responsibility to help break that poverty cycle? If the answer is yes, which is what most people think, that is where we end up with different support mechanisms like free school lunch.
So in your case, I doubt anyone is suggesting that the Charter School accept students who are not yet ready for Algebra. Rather, people are saying that a student not ready for algebra by grade 9 was probably not afforded the same opportunities along their educational career. Probably starting as far back as Kindergarten.
20 miles away
Or even 200 miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara_people#Athletic_prowess
Or vote for people that are willing to implement some sort of rent control.
It depends on the city.
For example, New York City, Seattle, Portland Oregon all have rich expensive downtown property.
When the situation is reversed, like in Detroit, it is usually due to a failed city. Something that once made the city rich collapsed, and all the wealthy left, leaving the downtown to rot.
Then national outrage will lead to mass bans on such weapons.
Just like the last 20 school shootings have led to dozens of gun bans and restrictions.
Americans don't seem to think that non-Americans are people, therefore not deserving of rights
Actually, the US Gov. created laws and redefined terms that expanded the concept of war beyond State vs State, to State vs Enemy. Those killed in drone strikes are legally defined as enemy combatants killed in an official war. And as enemy combatants, they do have certain rights in certain circumstances, just like any soldier in any war.
Don't get me wrong, I think the above is complete crap and won't stand the test of time.
As long as we are talking about pie in the sky ideas...
Or ignore the term limit debate, and just get all money out of political elections. Public funding for any candidate that gets X signatures. Set amounts of free air time (radio, tv, etc..). Required Y number of debates for all candidates.
Strictly limit any outside spending, advertising, and repeal citizens united. Strengthen and expand libel and slander laws to become a serious threat for political news shows and advertising. Basically, organizations like Fox and MSNBC would be out of business.
Oh.. so you are one of the people responsible for flipping the control of the house and senate every so often and basically accomplishing nothing over time. I always wondered what the logical thinking could be by voting that way.
Vote third party instead, because that is what you'd ideally like to see in Congress.
There's a reason that polls indicate over half of Americans are in favor of firing EVERYONE in Congress.
It has got to be more than half of Americans. Congressional approval ratings have never, ever, been lower. Nine percent.... http://www.gallup.com/poll/165809/congressional-approval-sinks-record-low.aspx
Afghanistan hasn't been stable enough to have an election yet. Given it some time and they'll have elections just like Iraq did.
The majority of Egypt did elect Morsi. Then after they watched him work for a while, the majority of Egypt wanted him out. The military listened to the people when they ousted Morsi. Morsi was essentially working towards a complete takeover of Egyptian government with Muslim Brotherhood members. Lots of articles about this if you want to google it.
For the record, I did not support any of our overseas wars. But the Arab spring is a bit different. Real democracies are forming.
But the American body politik is also crazy conservative
Not according to polls. Gay marriage, legalizing pot, getting our troops home, single payer, etc... the American public has consistently polled more liberal than our government.
Blacks, Latinos, Women (mostly liberal) are an increasingly larger part of the voting pool, yet this has not been visible in the makeup of Congress.
Gerrymandering is to blame: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/the-great-gerrymander-of-2012.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
If Congress people were elected by total votes cast across their state (instead of by political party controlled districts), the US would be a much more liberal country.
And it has been 4 years of a Republican controlled House. They have not proposed or passed a single law related to the economy.
The News is just as careless with all science reporting.
Why the special hate for climate change reporting? As always, if you want the truth, get it from the scientists. Or at least respected science oriented magazines.
Isn't the prius battery pack located towards the rear of the car, and the car is front wheel drive? I have a hard time seeing a prius driving better in the snow than other front wheel drive cars with their engines in the front (weight).
I'm mainly skeptical because here in Portland, I see a lot of stuck Prius cars each winter.
That means it is "provable" ... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable". Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?
It is only special in that it correctly describes how science works. As a practical matter, scientists may consider a theory proven, but it never really is proven. It just happens to be the theory that matches the most observable evidence at this time. What science can conclusively do, though, is disprove a theory. If a theory does not match the observable evidence, it is false.
So what's good? Warm, cold, in-between? What's "natural?" 'Cause that seems to be extremely warm... unless you're talking about humans, then it's extremely cold. Or moderate.
Interesting post. However, it isn't really relevant if we are deciding whether action or no action is required to modify the current climate changes.
What is good are rates of change that are slow enough that it gives life time to adapt. Our current rate of change is going to be very difficult and costly for us humans to deal with, and likely impossible for other species to deal with, leading to a lot of extinctions.
a. Admit it.
b. Deny it then get caught lying about it.
This isn't a binary situation. They are under no obligation to respond.
c. say nothing.