Most schools have this already, essentially. It's called a liberal arts degree, or a Board of Trustees degree, if they want it to sound official.
You pick courses that you want to take, take X amount of hours and are awarded a degree. In theory, students specialize in areas the school doesn't offer degrees in, to thereby personalize their education that much further.
In reality it is a junk degree awarded to D students and sports players who don't want to take anything above a 300 level course.
You do understand the concept of broad base of knowledge to operate from, correct? It's a liberal arts education; not all will be useful, some will be. They used to have a term for it; renaissance man (or woman, you know, whatever).
Both times I've done it, though, I used my phone to look up the generic number for the credit card company. Don't blindly trust anyone* and use their number on their card. God only knows where that's actually going.
If it's oiled wire, stored in oiled paper, it's actually meant for concrete work with re-bar, but is actually used most often to string low-charge electric fences. It is commonly used with horses in conjunction with white, vinyl warning fence. You get anywhere from 50-200 feet per spool.
Baling wire is substantially thicker, un-oiled, and comes in much larger spools; 500-1000 feet per spool.
The spools in oil paper are meant to be strung by hand and not intended to be used for tying anything long-term; hence the lighter gauge. In fact, it's meant to hold re-bar together long enough for the concrete to be poured, thereby securing the re-bar and negating the need for the wire. Baling wire is intended to be strung by machine, and exists mainly to tie things together for seasons (and hold together the entire Midwest's infrastructure). Square bales that use baling wire must be stored out of the elements, so the wire being un-oiled is not an issue.
To the GP: If you use baling twine, then your machinery sucks, sell that P.O.S. Oliver and buy something made in the last fifty years. I bet you run narrow base Allis-Chalmers too, don't you?
You would think that they would have known better than to try to bullshit such an intelligent userbase with some retard-obvious shit like that.
You're talking about slashdot, correct? Have you ever used that site and looked at the comments? I'll be surprised if half of the people even notice the page changed. As long as it's shiny, they'll be happy.
So all of those websites that you currently access for free then. They were around back in the early days of the internet? All of the free content you consume, it was available, too? All of the people who are currently connected, they've always been on-line then?
Like it or not, now that the entire world is connected, someone has to pay. Please note that I'm not saying I agree with the ad model we currently have, I'm just saying that your view is incredibly short-sighted and immature.
Couldn't we just etch everything into stone, then encapsulate it in concrete or other similarly hard medium, and put it into orbit around the moon? Wouldn't that last a while?
Oh, I'm quite sure they exist. Just as people who believe that throwing acid in a young girl's face is preferable to educating that girl. There's really no difference between the two.
Hyperbole is a terrible argumentative tool
Seriously, though, here are the arguments against what you said first, according to a highly educated young officer that I'm friends with:
They enforce laws against opiates. This jacks up the price, and driving addicts to commit crimes to get a fix. This also decreases the quality and consistancy of the supply, killing people.
"They don't have to do the drugs. An increased cost, and more danger would tell me that I should probably stop doing opiates. Addiction is no excuse for breaking the law. Also, saying that addicts HAVE to break the law to provide for their addiction is really only half of the argument. They have another option: getting clean."
They enforce laws against cocaine, turning people towards more easily obtained, yet far more harmful stimulants like meth.
"Those two things are VERY dissimilar in how they act in your body. That's a bad argument. Coke heads don't go to meth. They go to crack. Meth use and cocaine use are in entirely separate areas of the country at the micro-scale, and in entirely separate communities at the macro-scale."
The enforce laws against psychedelics, depriving most of the country from one of the most awe inspiring, and still incredibly safe experiences life has to offer.
"You could, you know, do something else awe inspiring. Ever seen the grand canyon? If your life is so boring that you MUST have psychedelics to enjoy it, you need to evaluate the choices you make."
Again, I'm the messenger for him, I just felt the need to rebut your argument from one of those "pants on head retarded" people you're talking about.
There are, and this may be hard to understand, people who genuinely believe that the only way to remove drugs from the streets - regardless of proof to the contrary - is to make them illegal and put people in jail for them. These people believe that personal responsibility should be enough to keep people from doing drugs, and that if we make them legal, the problem will only get worse.
For proof of the fact that these people exist, and that they do not agree with your undergraduate statistics and crime course arguments, please consult anyone labeled 'officer'.
You do understand that the DEA enforces more than just marijuana laws, correct? This is a terrible argument, and it's modded insightful. For shame,/.. For Shame.
What that means is that a cop can go into a hospital, flash his badge, and copy all your medical records if he feels like it, without violating HIPAA. Individual hospitals may have different policies, but nothing in HIPAA prevents that.
A badge does not equal a court order, court-ordered warrant or subvpoena. Hyperbole is not an effective argument tool, stop it.
The issue is that it's not a governmental idea. It's an idea forwarded through the government by private industry and international interests like the IMF and World Bank. But yes, that is the exact outcome, I just argue that the idea is from the very beginning to lock wealth away with the wealthiest people, and our government and its representatives are either too inept to figure it out, or in collusion with the folks pushing this agenda.
No, austerity means that we don't know how to fix the economy, but we believe that cutting governmental spending is the best way to do it. I've said it here before, I'll say it again. Big players got a taste of bigger money in the 70's, 80's and 90's in places like South Africa, South America, Poland, and Greece. They use a specific form of economic theory based on what is termed as "Shock Economics" spearheaded by many faculty and graduates of the University of Chicago School of Business.
These people got a taste of this big money in poor countries, and really, genuinely want to take a big-ass bite out of where the money is in the US and other 1st world countries: military, employee benefits and to a much, much smaller degree, education.
We've already seen the mass privatization of the military, through contracts and hired security forces. We're getting tastes of what's to come with all the talk of cutting government pensions (I pay into one, they're not as great as what mainstream media would have you believe - 50% of my salary average for the last 6 years I'm working, and the earliest I can retire without a penalty is 67). Private companies gamble with public pensions, lose the money, then lobby and purchase the media to make it seem as if it is the government's own fault.
Look for a wider and deeper call for privatization of education in the next 5 years. Look for harder pushes for vouchers and the complete dissolving of teacher's unions power.
Look for you to pay a private company directly to teach your kids using minimum-wage, unskilled workers as teachers reading from a prescribed electronic curriculum.
I say 20 years we have a completely private school system with an absolutely ridiculous gap between the have's and have-not's (more than we currently do).
I think you're confusing big-box stores with retail in general. Big box stores carry more of high profit margin items, and rarely, if ever, of low-profit/low-demand items. That is correct.
Where you go wrong, though, is that all stores are like this. For example, a local hardware store had everything (and I mean everything) I needed to remodel my basement. From the hammer and nails to the specialty trim. They didn't have a lot of each thing, and I paid a little more for convenience, but they had it. The local computer parts store carries everything from 50'+ HDMI cables to 2-pin adapters, from power supplies to charging pads for remote controlled helicopters. They might only have one or two of each thing, but their prices are competitive with on-line, and they do good business.
In other words, retail is more than just big box stores. There are countless small shops just like the two I mention.
The illusion that "it's all so easy" has really gotten buried too deep in someone's head somewhere.
I think it's because PC's are the new 'old car'. In my youth, when men were bored, they would go tinker around with their cars. This tinkering began and ended at home, simply because there was no translation to the workplace. Today, though, with all the gee-gaws and doohickeys that are on modern cars, men have less to tinker with. What we do have, though, is a home PC. We can tinker, we can figure, we can play with the home PC and not really screw stuff up. SO, to people like that, it really is a simple transition between home PC tinkering, and systems design.
Or, it could be because most people HAVE to have say in what goes on around them, regardless of skills or knowledge.
Having worked in both the private and public sector, I have to say that this stereotype is no longer true. It is just as damned near impossible to fire a long-term employee in both sectors. Also, the same type of spineless management exist in both, allowing new employees to fuck off quite a bit. This 'government jobs are super cushy' meme needs to go away. It might be true, but it's no more true (in this one person's experience) than in the private sector.
Like most things, it boils down to who you work for, not where you work.
(And private sector employees don't have their friends and family scrutinizing everything they do because "my taxes pay you". . . . . . So there's that)
Slashdot Mirror
You pick courses that you want to take, take X amount of hours and are awarded a degree. In theory, students specialize in areas the school doesn't offer degrees in, to thereby personalize their education that much further.
In reality it is a junk degree awarded to D students and sports players who don't want to take anything above a 300 level course.
What's the quote; specialization is for insects.
It turns out that spying on Europe is perfectly legal in the US after this law passes, and that spying on the US is perfectly legal in Europe. . . .
Lucky for everyone's citizens, no European country and the US are incredibly close allies.
Both times I've done it, though, I used my phone to look up the generic number for the credit card company. Don't blindly trust anyone* and use their number on their card. God only knows where that's actually going.
* Except Google, apparently. . . . Yikes.
I am woefully out of touch with culture, but you get the idea.
If it's oiled wire, stored in oiled paper, it's actually meant for concrete work with re-bar, but is actually used most often to string low-charge electric fences. It is commonly used with horses in conjunction with white, vinyl warning fence. You get anywhere from 50-200 feet per spool.
Baling wire is substantially thicker, un-oiled, and comes in much larger spools; 500-1000 feet per spool.
The spools in oil paper are meant to be strung by hand and not intended to be used for tying anything long-term; hence the lighter gauge. In fact, it's meant to hold re-bar together long enough for the concrete to be poured, thereby securing the re-bar and negating the need for the wire. Baling wire is intended to be strung by machine, and exists mainly to tie things together for seasons (and hold together the entire Midwest's infrastructure). Square bales that use baling wire must be stored out of the elements, so the wire being un-oiled is not an issue.
To the GP: If you use baling twine, then your machinery sucks, sell that P.O.S. Oliver and buy something made in the last fifty years. I bet you run narrow base Allis-Chalmers too, don't you?
It's easier to lug around $100 than it is to lug around six chickens and a goat.
So, I assume you propose a barter system then?
Be less ridiculous.
All that will remain is a box full of bad smells and no life.
So, your mom's basement, then?
You would think that they would have known better than to try to bullshit such an intelligent userbase with some retard-obvious shit like that.
You're talking about slashdot, correct? Have you ever used that site and looked at the comments? I'll be surprised if half of the people even notice the page changed. As long as it's shiny, they'll be happy.
So all of those websites that you currently access for free then. They were around back in the early days of the internet? All of the free content you consume, it was available, too? All of the people who are currently connected, they've always been on-line then?
Like it or not, now that the entire world is connected, someone has to pay. Please note that I'm not saying I agree with the ad model we currently have, I'm just saying that your view is incredibly short-sighted and immature.
Couldn't we just etch everything into stone, then encapsulate it in concrete or other similarly hard medium, and put it into orbit around the moon? Wouldn't that last a while?
Semicolon; damnit; why don;t people use that one more often; I find it can replace all other punctuation;
Oh, I'm quite sure they exist. Just as people who believe that throwing acid in a young girl's face is preferable to educating that girl. There's really no difference between the two.
Hyperbole is a terrible argumentative tool
Seriously, though, here are the arguments against what you said first, according to a highly educated young officer that I'm friends with:
They enforce laws against opiates. This jacks up the price, and driving addicts to commit crimes to get a fix. This also decreases the quality and consistancy of the supply, killing people.
"They don't have to do the drugs. An increased cost, and more danger would tell me that I should probably stop doing opiates. Addiction is no excuse for breaking the law. Also, saying that addicts HAVE to break the law to provide for their addiction is really only half of the argument. They have another option: getting clean."
They enforce laws against cocaine, turning people towards more easily obtained, yet far more harmful stimulants like meth.
"Those two things are VERY dissimilar in how they act in your body. That's a bad argument. Coke heads don't go to meth. They go to crack. Meth use and cocaine use are in entirely separate areas of the country at the micro-scale, and in entirely separate communities at the macro-scale."
The enforce laws against psychedelics, depriving most of the country from one of the most awe inspiring, and still incredibly safe experiences life has to offer.
"You could, you know, do something else awe inspiring. Ever seen the grand canyon? If your life is so boring that you MUST have psychedelics to enjoy it, you need to evaluate the choices you make."
Again, I'm the messenger for him, I just felt the need to rebut your argument from one of those "pants on head retarded" people you're talking about.
There are, and this may be hard to understand, people who genuinely believe that the only way to remove drugs from the streets - regardless of proof to the contrary - is to make them illegal and put people in jail for them. These people believe that personal responsibility should be enough to keep people from doing drugs, and that if we make them legal, the problem will only get worse.
For proof of the fact that these people exist, and that they do not agree with your undergraduate statistics and crime course arguments, please consult anyone labeled 'officer'.
You do understand that the DEA enforces more than just marijuana laws, correct? This is a terrible argument, and it's modded insightful. For shame, /.. For Shame.
What that means is that a cop can go into a hospital, flash his badge, and copy all your medical records if he feels like it, without violating HIPAA. Individual hospitals may have different policies, but nothing in HIPAA prevents that.
A badge does not equal a court order, court-ordered warrant or subvpoena. Hyperbole is not an effective argument tool, stop it.
Define "they" please.
The issue is that it's not a governmental idea. It's an idea forwarded through the government by private industry and international interests like the IMF and World Bank. But yes, that is the exact outcome, I just argue that the idea is from the very beginning to lock wealth away with the wealthiest people, and our government and its representatives are either too inept to figure it out, or in collusion with the folks pushing this agenda.
No, austerity means that we don't know how to fix the economy, but we believe that cutting governmental spending is the best way to do it. I've said it here before, I'll say it again. Big players got a taste of bigger money in the 70's, 80's and 90's in places like South Africa, South America, Poland, and Greece. They use a specific form of economic theory based on what is termed as "Shock Economics" spearheaded by many faculty and graduates of the University of Chicago School of Business.
These people got a taste of this big money in poor countries, and really, genuinely want to take a big-ass bite out of where the money is in the US and other 1st world countries: military, employee benefits and to a much, much smaller degree, education.
We've already seen the mass privatization of the military, through contracts and hired security forces. We're getting tastes of what's to come with all the talk of cutting government pensions (I pay into one, they're not as great as what mainstream media would have you believe - 50% of my salary average for the last 6 years I'm working, and the earliest I can retire without a penalty is 67). Private companies gamble with public pensions, lose the money, then lobby and purchase the media to make it seem as if it is the government's own fault.
Look for a wider and deeper call for privatization of education in the next 5 years. Look for harder pushes for vouchers and the complete dissolving of teacher's unions power.
Look for you to pay a private company directly to teach your kids using minimum-wage, unskilled workers as teachers reading from a prescribed electronic curriculum.
I say 20 years we have a completely private school system with an absolutely ridiculous gap between the have's and have-not's (more than we currently do).
That's actually exactly what austerity means.
Since when do we need a specific reason to do science? You never know what you'll find out once you've done the research.
Since we started implementing austerity measures.
I think you're confusing big-box stores with retail in general. Big box stores carry more of high profit margin items, and rarely, if ever, of low-profit/low-demand items. That is correct.
Where you go wrong, though, is that all stores are like this. For example, a local hardware store had everything (and I mean everything) I needed to remodel my basement. From the hammer and nails to the specialty trim. They didn't have a lot of each thing, and I paid a little more for convenience, but they had it. The local computer parts store carries everything from 50'+ HDMI cables to 2-pin adapters, from power supplies to charging pads for remote controlled helicopters. They might only have one or two of each thing, but their prices are competitive with on-line, and they do good business.
In other words, retail is more than just big box stores. There are countless small shops just like the two I mention.
The illusion that "it's all so easy" has really gotten buried too deep in someone's head somewhere.
I think it's because PC's are the new 'old car'. In my youth, when men were bored, they would go tinker around with their cars. This tinkering began and ended at home, simply because there was no translation to the workplace. Today, though, with all the gee-gaws and doohickeys that are on modern cars, men have less to tinker with. What we do have, though, is a home PC. We can tinker, we can figure, we can play with the home PC and not really screw stuff up. SO, to people like that, it really is a simple transition between home PC tinkering, and systems design.
Or, it could be because most people HAVE to have say in what goes on around them, regardless of skills or knowledge.
One of those two things.
Like most things, it boils down to who you work for, not where you work.
(And private sector employees don't have their friends and family scrutinizing everything they do because "my taxes pay you". . . . . . So there's that)