sub-standard teachers who should be teaching elementary-school english
Yeah, that's what we need: a bunch of bitter, pissed-off ex-university professors trying to shove "Gatsby" down some 9-year-old's throat. What, do you hate kids or something?
There's a difference between enjoying reading, and enjoying "The Great Gatsby" or "Ulysses" (now there's a author on drugs if there ever was one) or my personal most-hated book of all time, "The Scarlet Letter". One can enjoy reading, yet thoroughly despise the books that English professors think are 'classics'.
So long as people like you are in charge, this will undoubtedly be true. I'm just hoping that someday we identify the gene that makes folks like you tick, then unleash a retrovirus upon the population to remove it from the race permanently.
Perhaps then the point of life will be to live it, rather than work yourself to death because others insist that you do so and make it their business to see that you do whether you want to or not.
Unless you're getting a degree in Literature then a required course which insists that you read "The Great Gatsby" or "Ulysses" for a 'well-rounded education' is just another way for the university to soak money off of you while keeping otherwise useless staff on payroll. If I were a student today I wouldn't be terribly concerned about the ethics of the situation, since I'd see this as the university bending me over and giving me a good reaming while I was trying to learn the stuff that would actually be useful to me post-degree.
Although I always got A's on my papers. My failing was that I had a hang-up about the laughable ethics of selling papers, and so missed a prime opportunity to make a bundle selling my work to athletes and frat boys. If I could go back and do it again, you can bet I wouldn't miss that opportunity a second time.
Max
Re:Nice, but they've got it all wrong...
on
Linux Desktop Guide
·
· Score: 1
That's just fucking mean, and totally uncalled for. Don't be such a fucking asshole.
It happens to be true, unless you think an immortality drug is just around the corner. There's nothing "mean" about pointing out the obvious.
Max
Re:Concise guide to Linux on the deskop for non-te
on
Linux Desktop Guide
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Linux is NOT ready for non-technically inclined users to use as their desktop.
I see you've managed to completely ignore the posts about Suse and how easier to install than either Win2000 or WinXP. If the non-technically inclined can click on a few buttons, do the standard installation, and be surfing the web in a half hour or so, then I'd say that Suse is pretty fucking ready for them.
Linux is hard to setup the first time, especially if you're a new user
Apparently you've never tried Suse 9.0 or 9.1. It's easier to set up than either Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Max
Re:Nice, but they've got it all wrong...
on
Linux Desktop Guide
·
· Score: 1
My mother wouldn't run Linux even if Windows set her hair on fire once a week.
In twenty years your mother and her entire generation will pushing up daisies, and gone will be the generation of Americans who could never quite master the idea, much less the operation of, the personal computer.
So a manual targetting people under 30 - who grew up with computers and might just be sick and tired of Windows - is actually an awfully good idea. For those over 30 who'll never figure out Windows, much less Linux, time will take care of them.
All of Suse is like that now, starting with 9.0 (earlier, with a less intuitive system). It's incredibly simple to use and doesn't require you to go to rpmfind.net or anywhere else to find missing library files.
Suse will do the trick. Need updates? Suse will check for them when you get online, inform you of any updates, install them if you want them (you can pick and choose, if you like), and you'll need to do nothing more.
Very much like the Windows system in that regard, except that Suse updates have yet, in my experience, to break anything else on the system.
and people have a tendency to get greedy when lots of money is involved, and start to do unethical things.
You aren't talking about punishing people for breaking the law. You're talking about punishing them *just for being rich*.
Call it socialism, call it equality, call it anything you like - it's still just petty, jealous revenge by petty, jealous people. Your ideal society is nothing more than a dictatorship enforced by the majority against the minority *for being successful*.
I sure wouldn't want to live in the hell-hole you'd turn this country into.
But what about if one of them takes the pilot course, becomes a pilot, flies for a few years until he gets put on a route he can use and THEN flies the plane into a building?
And what's to stop any farmer in the country from mixing a bit of fertilizer and ammonia, driving his truck to the county courhouse, and blowing his local government to hell in a handbasket?
Um, nothing. Not even a police state could prevent something like this. *And it isn't worth the cost in freedom to try*.
The biggest deterrent to air terrorism has already taken place: 9/11. If a terrorist attempts to take over a plane now everyone is going to remember what happened to the Twin Towers and to the people on board those planes, and no matter what the terrorists say they're going to believe that they're the next barbecue up on the list.
I'd wager that any terrorist takeover attempt will last a few minutes at most, before the news travels the cabin and several hundred passengers mob the sons of bitches and do unto them before they can be done unto.
The 9/11 terrorists did more for airline security than the government ever could, or can: by forcing the passengers to realize that if *they* don't end the threat then death will almost certainly follow.
You certainly don't have a clue. The margin for those living off of government grants is a) reputation, and b) *the ability to get future grants*. It can be very dangerous to do a study which contradicts government policy; it might be impossible from that point on to get any funding at all.
My wife is a scientist, living off of government grants. I have an insider's view on the process (not to mention my own time with government) and it isn't the clean, unbiased pursuit of science that you seem to claim.
Back in the good 'ol days" (1920), the Prohibition Act came into being after more than 27 years of concerted grassroots political effort. Congress didn't just up and decide to enact Prohibition.
And it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that grass roots activism can be just as fucked in the head as bought-and-paid-for lawmaking.
"The people" don't have rights. Individuals have rights. You cannot do good things for "the people" while simultaneously fucking the individual up the ass.
Yes, the current copyright scheme is evil. But advocating two brands of law - one for "the people", whoever the hell they are - and one for folks that you personally don't happen to like, is even more despicable.
rich people...do not need or deserve the same degree of protection from the law
Ah, yes. In the land of the free, where being rich is a punishable offense...at least in the minds of little socialist idiots who aren't themselves rich, and are jealous of those who are.
Actually yes. Unfortunately it isn't the original study, but a second which was done later during the same year. I cannot find a copy of the original study online.
The second study was published in the August 1, 2001 edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology. The primary scientist of record is Dr. Ralitza V. Gueorguieva from Yale University.
Here's an excerpt from the summary of this study, reported in an August 8, 2001 Yahoo news article:
"The report notes that while children of teen moms are significantly more likely to have educational disabilities overall, they are no more likely to have problems when the mother's education, marital status, income and race are taken into account.
In fact, these youngsters may be less likely to have physical handicaps and academic problems than children of older moms, the researchers report.
``Children of teenage mothers are at higher risk for disabilities in kindergarten, but this increased risk appears to be due not to a biological effect of the young age of the mother per se, but to the confounding influences of associated sociodemographic and/or environmental factors,'' according to Dr. Ralitza V. Gueorguieva from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues.
To investigate whether young maternal age increased the risk of academic difficulties, the investigators examined the school records of more than 339,000 children who entered a kindergarten class in Florida between 1992 and 1994.
Children of teenage mothers were significantly more likely to have lower IQ scores and more academic problems, the report indicates. But when social and economic factors were accounted for, teenage motherhood appeared to be protective in certain ways.
For instance, children of mothers aged 11 to 17 had a significantly lower risk of academic problems and children of 18- and 19-year-old mothers also had a lower risk of learning disabilities. On the other hand, children whose mothers were age 36 or older were more likely to be physically impaired or have academic problems, when social and environmental factors were considered.
According to the report, a mother's education had the greatest impact on a child's educational achievement. A mother's marital status, income and race also influenced the child's academic abilities.
``There is some evidence that a large number of children of teenage mothers show disabilities or academic problems not because of the effect of having a teenage mother per se but because of the confounding influences of other factors,'' Gueorguieva and colleagues write."
Why do I call this the second study, supporting the first (which I can't find online)? Because:
"The findings support previous research suggesting that some of the negative consequences of teen motherhood may be mediated by social and economic factors."
The study here doesn't specifically address pre-natal care, whereas the original did. The authors of the original study had some trouble trying to account for a lack of control over prenatal care in the '80's study they disputed when it's been well known since the early 70's that prenatal care is one of THE most important factors in determining the health of a baby. You just don't 'forget' to account for prenatal care.
Don't believe me? Type in "prenatal care" and "teen pregnancy" into Yahoo or Google and watch the web sites and papers pop up, all telling you just how vital prenatal care is and how critical it is to the health of your baby. A scientist doing research on the subject is about as likely to 'overlook' prenatal care as a mechanic looking to solve car trouble is going to miss the fact that the car has four flats.
I wish I could find a link to the original study I was speaking of, but I can't, at least not in the 15 or so minutes I spent searching. I did find this, however, and this study was done just months after the one I was speaking of (which is why they refer to the study in their summary).
And there's plenty more to come. It's only a matter of time.
But he hasn't turned the U.S. into a theocracy...yet.
That may be why I'm voting for that douchebag Kerry. Not because I think he's any better than Bush (I don't), but because the democrats and republicans are so much like immature frat boys that I think the government will deadlock for four years with him in charge.
That's what I'm hoping for anyway. An ineffectual, deadlocked government. I think it's the best I can get under the current system.
c) what personal agenda they may or may not be pushing.
Here's an example of c) in action. Back in the '80's a group of scientists used a very in-depth, well-funded study to 'prove' that women in their 20's had healthier babies than women in their teens, and therefore teen pregnancy was a Bad Thing(TM). Not for any 'moral' reason, mind you, but because it was clear that becoming pregnant as a teenager put your child at unnecessary risk, when you could wait until your 20's and avoid that risk.
This research was so well-received by both the left and the right that it held for nearly two decades without being disputed. In fact, it wasn't disproven until last year.
You see, it turns out that the researchers in this case had a strong interest in proving that teen pregnancy was a bad thing, because they personally thought that teen girls having sex was morally reprehensible. In order to cook their results they decided not to control for one very important factor: pre-natal care. That's right, they deliberately did not control for pre-natal care. It's a well-known fact that women in their twenties are far more likely to plan their pregnancies than women in their teens, and so tend to have much better pre-natal care, so this action wasn't accidental but deliberate.
What happens when you control for pre-natal care? What happens is that you piss off a lot of morally conservative people, because controlling for pre-natal care shows that the healthiest babies in the world are born to women between the ages of *13 and 17*. Not exactly something you want to advertise if you're one of the folks screaming about the 'evils' of teen sex.
Needless to say the study was blasted. Not the science of it, which was solid, but on 'moral' grounds, with people claiming it should never have been done in the first place.
So you not only have to ask "who paid for the research" and "who do the researchers work for", but also "do they have a personal agenda they're trying to foist on others using pseudo-science"?
Bush is undoubtedly a christian nutbag, but so far he hasn't managed to set up himself up as Uber-Dictator, enforce prayer in schools and the workplace, or disband the Supreme Court and replace it with a band of bishops.
So while our leader may be a religious nutcase, our country is not.
I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit. While there are, indeed, a bunch of fucking idiots who go around blathering about 'freedom' with the GPL, they more often than not don't include those who actually CODE under the GPL.
We code under the GPL for our own reasons. If you don't like those reasons, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. It isn't up to you to tell us that we have to use a different license than the one we prefer.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot speak convincingly of something that you did not write.
Politicians do it all the time.
Max
sub-standard teachers who should be teaching elementary-school english
Yeah, that's what we need: a bunch of bitter, pissed-off ex-university professors trying to shove "Gatsby" down some 9-year-old's throat. What, do you hate kids or something?
Max
I actually enjoy reading
There's a difference between enjoying reading, and enjoying "The Great Gatsby" or "Ulysses" (now there's a author on drugs if there ever was one) or my personal most-hated book of all time, "The Scarlet Letter". One can enjoy reading, yet thoroughly despise the books that English professors think are 'classics'.
Max
You. will. always. have. bullshit. work.
So long as people like you are in charge, this will undoubtedly be true. I'm just hoping that someday we identify the gene that makes folks like you tick, then unleash a retrovirus upon the population to remove it from the race permanently.
Perhaps then the point of life will be to live it, rather than work yourself to death because others insist that you do so and make it their business to see that you do whether you want to or not.
Max
Unless you're getting a degree in Literature then a required course which insists that you read "The Great Gatsby" or "Ulysses" for a 'well-rounded education' is just another way for the university to soak money off of you while keeping otherwise useless staff on payroll. If I were a student today I wouldn't be terribly concerned about the ethics of the situation, since I'd see this as the university bending me over and giving me a good reaming while I was trying to learn the stuff that would actually be useful to me post-degree.
Although I always got A's on my papers. My failing was that I had a hang-up about the laughable ethics of selling papers, and so missed a prime opportunity to make a bundle selling my work to athletes and frat boys. If I could go back and do it again, you can bet I wouldn't miss that opportunity a second time.
Max
That's just fucking mean, and totally uncalled for. Don't be such a fucking asshole.
It happens to be true, unless you think an immortality drug is just around the corner. There's nothing "mean" about pointing out the obvious.
Max
Linux is NOT ready for non-technically inclined users to use as their desktop.
I see you've managed to completely ignore the posts about Suse and how easier to install than either Win2000 or WinXP. If the non-technically inclined can click on a few buttons, do the standard installation, and be surfing the web in a half hour or so, then I'd say that Suse is pretty fucking ready for them.
The only thing easier is having it pre-installed.
Max
Linux is hard to setup the first time, especially if you're a new user
Apparently you've never tried Suse 9.0 or 9.1. It's easier to set up than either Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Max
My mother wouldn't run Linux even if Windows set her hair on fire once a week.
In twenty years your mother and her entire generation will pushing up daisies, and gone will be the generation of Americans who could never quite master the idea, much less the operation of, the personal computer.
So a manual targetting people under 30 - who grew up with computers and might just be sick and tired of Windows - is actually an awfully good idea. For those over 30 who'll never figure out Windows, much less Linux, time will take care of them.
Max
All of Suse is like that now, starting with 9.0 (earlier, with a less intuitive system). It's incredibly simple to use and doesn't require you to go to rpmfind.net or anywhere else to find missing library files.
Max
Suse will do the trick. Need updates? Suse will check for them when you get online, inform you of any updates, install them if you want them (you can pick and choose, if you like), and you'll need to do nothing more.
Very much like the Windows system in that regard, except that Suse updates have yet, in my experience, to break anything else on the system.
Max
Nothing wrong with socialism.. Unless you're a rich, in-power type of person who doesn't like the idea of being equal with others.
And your idea of 'equality' is to forcibly steal the property of those who are successful simply because you aren't. We have a word for that: thief.
Max
and people have a tendency to get greedy when lots of money is involved, and start to do unethical things.
You aren't talking about punishing people for breaking the law. You're talking about punishing them *just for being rich*.
Call it socialism, call it equality, call it anything you like - it's still just petty, jealous revenge by petty, jealous people. Your ideal society is nothing more than a dictatorship enforced by the majority against the minority *for being successful*.
I sure wouldn't want to live in the hell-hole you'd turn this country into.
Max
But what about if one of them takes the pilot course, becomes a pilot, flies for a few years until he gets put on a route he can use and THEN flies the plane into a building?
And what's to stop any farmer in the country from mixing a bit of fertilizer and ammonia, driving his truck to the county courhouse, and blowing his local government to hell in a handbasket?
Um, nothing. Not even a police state could prevent something like this. *And it isn't worth the cost in freedom to try*.
Max
The biggest deterrent to air terrorism has already taken place: 9/11. If a terrorist attempts to take over a plane now everyone is going to remember what happened to the Twin Towers and to the people on board those planes, and no matter what the terrorists say they're going to believe that they're the next barbecue up on the list.
I'd wager that any terrorist takeover attempt will last a few minutes at most, before the news travels the cabin and several hundred passengers mob the sons of bitches and do unto them before they can be done unto.
The 9/11 terrorists did more for airline security than the government ever could, or can: by forcing the passengers to realize that if *they* don't end the threat then death will almost certainly follow.
Max
Science is not a popularity contest.
Except that this isn't science. It's marketing masquerading as science.
Max
No -- because there's no margin in it.
You certainly don't have a clue. The margin for those living off of government grants is a) reputation, and b) *the ability to get future grants*. It can be very dangerous to do a study which contradicts government policy; it might be impossible from that point on to get any funding at all.
My wife is a scientist, living off of government grants. I have an insider's view on the process (not to mention my own time with government) and it isn't the clean, unbiased pursuit of science that you seem to claim.
Max
Back in the good 'ol days" (1920), the Prohibition Act came into being after more than 27 years of concerted grassroots political effort. Congress didn't just up and decide to enact Prohibition.
And it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that grass roots activism can be just as fucked in the head as bought-and-paid-for lawmaking.
Max
"The people" don't have rights. Individuals have rights. You cannot do good things for "the people" while simultaneously fucking the individual up the ass.
Yes, the current copyright scheme is evil. But advocating two brands of law - one for "the people", whoever the hell they are - and one for folks that you personally don't happen to like, is even more despicable.
Max
rich people...do not need or deserve the same degree of protection from the law
Ah, yes. In the land of the free, where being rich is a punishable offense...at least in the minds of little socialist idiots who aren't themselves rich, and are jealous of those who are.
Max
Actually yes. Unfortunately it isn't the original study, but a second which was done later during the same year. I cannot find a copy of the original study online.
The second study was published in the August 1, 2001 edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology. The primary scientist of record is Dr. Ralitza V. Gueorguieva from Yale University.
Here's an excerpt from the summary of this study, reported in an August 8, 2001 Yahoo news article:
"The report notes that while children of teen moms are significantly more likely to have educational disabilities overall, they are no more likely to have problems when the mother's education, marital status, income and race are taken into account.
In fact, these youngsters may be less likely to have physical handicaps and academic problems than children of older moms, the researchers report.
``Children of teenage mothers are at higher risk for disabilities in kindergarten, but this increased risk appears to be due not to a biological effect of the young age of the mother per se, but to the confounding influences of associated sociodemographic and/or environmental factors,'' according to Dr. Ralitza V. Gueorguieva from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues.
To investigate whether young maternal age increased the risk of academic difficulties, the investigators examined the school records of more than 339,000 children who entered a kindergarten class in Florida between 1992 and 1994.
Children of teenage mothers were significantly more likely to have lower IQ scores and more academic problems, the report indicates. But when social and economic factors were accounted for, teenage motherhood appeared to be protective in certain ways.
For instance, children of mothers aged 11 to 17 had a significantly lower risk of academic problems and children of 18- and 19-year-old mothers also had a lower risk of learning disabilities. On the other hand, children whose mothers were age 36 or older were more likely to be physically impaired or have academic problems, when social and environmental factors were considered.
According to the report, a mother's education had the greatest impact on a child's educational achievement. A mother's marital status, income and race also influenced the child's academic abilities.
``There is some evidence that a large number of children of teenage mothers show disabilities or academic problems not because of the effect of having a teenage mother per se but because of the confounding influences of other factors,'' Gueorguieva and colleagues write."
Why do I call this the second study, supporting the first (which I can't find online)? Because:
"The findings support previous research suggesting that some of the negative consequences of teen motherhood may be mediated by social and economic factors."
The study here doesn't specifically address pre-natal care, whereas the original did. The authors of the original study had some trouble trying to account for a lack of control over prenatal care in the '80's study they disputed when it's been well known since the early 70's that prenatal care is one of THE most important factors in determining the health of a baby. You just don't 'forget' to account for prenatal care.
Don't believe me? Type in "prenatal care" and "teen pregnancy" into Yahoo or Google and watch the web sites and papers pop up, all telling you just how vital prenatal care is and how critical it is to the health of your baby. A scientist doing research on the subject is about as likely to 'overlook' prenatal care as a mechanic looking to solve car trouble is going to miss the fact that the car has four flats.
I wish I could find a link to the original study I was speaking of, but I can't, at least not in the 15 or so minutes I spent searching. I did find this, however, and this study was done just months after the one I was speaking of (which is why they refer to the study in their summary).
Max
And there's plenty more to come. It's only a matter of time.
But he hasn't turned the U.S. into a theocracy...yet.
That may be why I'm voting for that douchebag Kerry. Not because I think he's any better than Bush (I don't), but because the democrats and republicans are so much like immature frat boys that I think the government will deadlock for four years with him in charge.
That's what I'm hoping for anyway. An ineffectual, deadlocked government. I think it's the best I can get under the current system.
Max
Let's not forget:
c) what personal agenda they may or may not be pushing.
Here's an example of c) in action. Back in the '80's a group of scientists used a very in-depth, well-funded study to 'prove' that women in their 20's had healthier babies than women in their teens, and therefore teen pregnancy was a Bad Thing(TM). Not for any 'moral' reason, mind you, but because it was clear that becoming pregnant as a teenager put your child at unnecessary risk, when you could wait until your 20's and avoid that risk.
This research was so well-received by both the left and the right that it held for nearly two decades without being disputed. In fact, it wasn't disproven until last year.
You see, it turns out that the researchers in this case had a strong interest in proving that teen pregnancy was a bad thing, because they personally thought that teen girls having sex was morally reprehensible. In order to cook their results they decided not to control for one very important factor: pre-natal care. That's right, they deliberately did not control for pre-natal care. It's a well-known fact that women in their twenties are far more likely to plan their pregnancies than women in their teens, and so tend to have much better pre-natal care, so this action wasn't accidental but deliberate.
What happens when you control for pre-natal care? What happens is that you piss off a lot of morally conservative people, because controlling for pre-natal care shows that the healthiest babies in the world are born to women between the ages of *13 and 17*. Not exactly something you want to advertise if you're one of the folks screaming about the 'evils' of teen sex.
Needless to say the study was blasted. Not the science of it, which was solid, but on 'moral' grounds, with people claiming it should never have been done in the first place.
So you not only have to ask "who paid for the research" and "who do the researchers work for", but also "do they have a personal agenda they're trying to foist on others using pseudo-science"?
Max
Bush is undoubtedly a christian nutbag, but so far he hasn't managed to set up himself up as Uber-Dictator, enforce prayer in schools and the workplace, or disband the Supreme Court and replace it with a band of bishops.
So while our leader may be a religious nutcase, our country is not.
Max
I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit. While there are, indeed, a bunch of fucking idiots who go around blathering about 'freedom' with the GPL, they more often than not don't include those who actually CODE under the GPL.
We code under the GPL for our own reasons. If you don't like those reasons, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. It isn't up to you to tell us that we have to use a different license than the one we prefer.
Get it now?
Max