What happens to their income stream when you don't SPEND money on gas? With people switching to hybrids and plain old charge electricals, the gas tax doesn't work as well anymore. They aren't interested in you driving more efficient cars... they are interested in the revenue stream. Efficient cars threaten that. Thus, new taxes.
Oh and if they can track your every move, you know... to protect the kids, then more power to them! Think about all those child molesters out there driving around that must be monitored! Oh and all the soccer mom terrorists! Track those bastages!
Oh! and think of the revenue stream on all of the tickets that will be issued for speeding! Just had a thought... that puts a lot of police out of business. But wait, they are unionized! Can't really let those people go....
K-12 math is bad. I'm a product of that system. Until 5th grade my parents were told that I was "slow" when it came to math. In 5th grade I had a wonderful teacher that saw me nodding my head during math class one day while working on a problem. She asked me what I was doing. I said I was "matching" the pattern in my head. It turns out I don't work math like most western people.. I don't memorize. I visualize patterns of 5 and 10, the 5 looks like the 5 on a pair of dice, the 10 looks like two rows of 5's laid out. She, luckily, was learned enough to realize that I naturally mimicked the eastern way of solving lower level math problems. She gave my parents literature and pointed them in the correct direction, even though she will still bound to teach memorization type math in class which never made sense to me.
Well I ended up becoming an Engineer. I can solve most math problems in my head that make people cry just thinking about them. I can usually add the grocery bill up faster at the checkout than the machine can... and add in the tax. I add in my head left to right, I use the "close enough" principal, all the stuff that drives teachers here nuts because its "wrong". Never mind I was always better at the math and faster than the teachers themselves.
I have three daughters. The first one started struggling with math in first grade. She did not understand why teachers kept making her use a numberline to add objects. It was hell working with her night after night with the idiotic numberline. We had fights about it every night. One night I kicked myself when I realized she might have the same issue I had... and was pissed since I should be one of the first to recognize it. I grabbed a bowl of dry cheerios and asked her to use them to work the problem. I removed the numberline. Sure enough, she geometrically laid them out. It was a different layout than I use, but none the less It was the same pattern like solving that I use. I almost cried.
I looked around and attended a few learning centers to see if any of them would teach differently. All of them were the same idiotic system until I found Kumon. If there is one in your area I highly suggest you go check it out. Its not for everyone because the learning is based on eastern principals... and some people jsut don't think that way. My wife for instance just shakes her head at it.
I guess the moral here is that you can't shoehorn everyone into the same system. Mathematics in its truest form is more an extension of logic than it is about numbers. K-12 teachers keep pounding the number thing into kids heads over an over. Memorize Memorize! My daughter is now going into third grade next year and can add and subtract multiple digit numbers in her head. She is able to divide in her head and get "close enough" by spitting out fractions or remainders, even though she has no idea how to do long division by hand. Quite honestly I don't think *I* remember how to do long division by hand since it never made sense to me. Sure, I understand the principal of it, it just seemed like a backwards way of doing it. Thats the thing... why do it if it seems wrong when there is a perfectly good way of doing it another way?
The reason is, as was explained to me, that the way I do it doesn't work for standardized testing. Well it works for the right answer but since you are doing the bulk of it in your head there is no "work" to write down. And when there is written on say adding two large numbers the work doesn't make any sense to the grader. There is ALOT of money riding on those standardized tests. So in the end it all boils down to money:(
Its simply the best. Its definately NOT the fastest. Its also comercial and $200. Bladeenc is faster, but at 192k and higher its not even close. LAME is the best free encoder. Check out LAME's web page as to why lame is better than bladeenc (sound samples) and why the FhG encoder is still the best.
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What happens to their income stream when you don't SPEND money on gas? With people switching to hybrids and plain old charge electricals, the gas tax doesn't work as well anymore. They aren't interested in you driving more efficient cars... they are interested in the revenue stream. Efficient cars threaten that. Thus, new taxes.
Oh and if they can track your every move, you know... to protect the kids, then more power to them! Think about all those child molesters out there driving around that must be monitored! Oh and all the soccer mom terrorists! Track those bastages!
Oh! and think of the revenue stream on all of the tickets that will be issued for speeding! Just had a thought... that puts a lot of police out of business. But wait, they are unionized! Can't really let those people go....
Change you can believe in!
Oh... Wait....
K-12 math is bad. I'm a product of that system. Until 5th grade my parents were told that I was "slow" when it came to math. In 5th grade I had a wonderful teacher that saw me nodding my head during math class one day while working on a problem. She asked me what I was doing. I said I was "matching" the pattern in my head. It turns out I don't work math like most western people.. I don't memorize. I visualize patterns of 5 and 10, the 5 looks like the 5 on a pair of dice, the 10 looks like two rows of 5's laid out. She, luckily, was learned enough to realize that I naturally mimicked the eastern way of solving lower level math problems. She gave my parents literature and pointed them in the correct direction, even though she will still bound to teach memorization type math in class which never made sense to me.
Well I ended up becoming an Engineer. I can solve most math problems in my head that make people cry just thinking about them. I can usually add the grocery bill up faster at the checkout than the machine can... and add in the tax. I add in my head left to right, I use the "close enough" principal, all the stuff that drives teachers here nuts because its "wrong". Never mind I was always better at the math and faster than the teachers themselves.
I have three daughters. The first one started struggling with math in first grade. She did not understand why teachers kept making her use a numberline to add objects. It was hell working with her night after night with the idiotic numberline. We had fights about it every night. One night I kicked myself when I realized she might have the same issue I had... and was pissed since I should be one of the first to recognize it. I grabbed a bowl of dry cheerios and asked her to use them to work the problem. I removed the numberline. Sure enough, she geometrically laid them out. It was a different layout than I use, but none the less It was the same pattern like solving that I use. I almost cried.
I looked around and attended a few learning centers to see if any of them would teach differently. All of them were the same idiotic system until I found Kumon. If there is one in your area I highly suggest you go check it out. Its not for everyone because the learning is based on eastern principals... and some people jsut don't think that way. My wife for instance just shakes her head at it.
I guess the moral here is that you can't shoehorn everyone into the same system. Mathematics in its truest form is more an extension of logic than it is about numbers. K-12 teachers keep pounding the number thing into kids heads over an over. Memorize Memorize! My daughter is now going into third grade next year and can add and subtract multiple digit numbers in her head. She is able to divide in her head and get "close enough" by spitting out fractions or remainders, even though she has no idea how to do long division by hand. Quite honestly I don't think *I* remember how to do long division by hand since it never made sense to me. Sure, I understand the principal of it, it just seemed like a backwards way of doing it. Thats the thing... why do it if it seems wrong when there is a perfectly good way of doing it another way?
The reason is, as was explained to me, that the way I do it doesn't work for standardized testing. Well it works for the right answer but since you are doing the bulk of it in your head there is no "work" to write down. And when there is written on say adding two large numbers the work doesn't make any sense to the grader. There is ALOT of money riding on those standardized tests. So in the end it all boils down to money :(
Its simply the best. Its definately NOT the fastest. Its also comercial and $200. Bladeenc is faster, but at 192k and higher its not even close. LAME is the best free encoder. Check out LAME's web page as to why lame is better than bladeenc (sound samples) and why the FhG encoder is still the best.