Back when environmentalism was called "conservationism", there were a lot of hunters and anglers who were big supporters of it. The Lefties took the movement over and kicked out everyone who disagreed with them. It's their own damned fault that there's not a serious pro-environment movement on the right, but if they couldn't control it, they didn't want it to exist.
... and hope there's a freeway entrance at it. Not a given with older roads or especially in urban areas - there are places you can get off the road but can't get back on in the same direction anywhere nearby.
You can think that all you like, but the reality is that Americans have an immensely negative view of atheists. Here, observe that Americans consider atheists more objectionable than blacks, women, Catholics, Hispanics, Jews, Mormons, gays, or Muslims for political office. And that study does not discriminate about which political party you're discussing!
Man, am I glad I dodged that bullet. Majored in chemistry. Re-thought the whole thing between junior and senior years and went to med school. I think the financial rewards of medicine are headed nowhere but down, but at least I have a steady job in an interesting field.
Even in the better high schools... you have to concentrate on being a disciplinarian instead of teaching.
This is why private schools can pay their teachers peanuts and still have them lining up for the job: if a student is a problem, you kick them out. There were more National Merit Semi-Finalists among the starting offensive linemen of the football team in my class of 86 people than there were in the entire local public school system, with over 3000 seniors.
The forums are still pretty good. I made the mistake of loading up the front page the other day, though... what a mess.
Incidentally, if you've been around that long, what are some good sites to check out? Don't skip any - even if they're well-known to you and everyone you know, they might be new to me. (I know reddit but would be interested in good sub-reddits, for that matter).
These are tests in which students have 25 minutes from start to finish. Sure, there are some 17-year-olds who can write perfectly succinct prose on a first edit in that time frame, but the vast majority of short answers are the result of running out of ideas.
A tiny fraction of people who write short essays are capable of producing succinct prose on the first edit in 25 minutes from concept to completion. But most people who write short essays in 25 minutes do so because they can't think of anything to write.
That's interesting in its own way, but a much more interesting comparison would be between the essays' lengths and the respective SAT Verbal scores of their writers. I would bet that they are also correlated quite closely.
News flash: when presented with an essay topic, smart people spend a few minutes planning and then proceed to write voluminously about the subject, because they are fluent writers. Dumb people start muddling along, lose track of where they are, and stop when they've stated (though not proved) their main point, because they're not. Fun game: ask a room full of people to write nonstop for five minutes on any topic(s) of their choosing, then compare word counts vs IQ/class grades/whatever.
If you're a HS student reading this (and I imagine there are a lot of you who are): practice writing. Practice writing. Practice writing. It's important. It's probably the most valuable skill you will ever acquire for dealing with people you don't meet with face-to-face. Bad writing is universally considered a sign of low intelligence. It takes a lot to overcome the negative impression that bad writing gives, and you often will not have the opportunity to try - when given a stack of 100 resumes for two positions, guess how the initial winnowing occurs? Toss anything on colored paper, anything written in a funny typeface, and anything with grammatical or spelling errors. I cringe today when I read some of the stuff that I wrote in HS, but it's grammatical and correctly spelled, even if the verbiage is ponderous (and occasionally verges on purple prose).
That has always been my attitude toward our "dependence on foreign oil". Use up the rest of the world's supply while it's cheap and save ours for when it really gets expensive.
It's hardware. Unless you put every single chip (not just samples) under a microscope, it doesn't matter what the software says. Unconvinced? See Stuxnet for an example of what software alone can do. Also: if I were in the PRC hierarchy, I wouldn't use any US-built stuff for sensitive projects. Of course all governments do this. So what?
There is a very good argument to be made that all remotely sensitive government IT projects should use domestically designed and built products, because electronics can do sneaky things that are almost completely undetectable (cf. Stuxnet). When you're talking about steel for bridges, not so much. Forced local supply (especially for raw materials) ends up being just another opportunity for regulatory capture.
Only if you pay for it. That's the whole point of these Wal-Mart or 7/11 lockers - you don't have to rent something in order to be able to get a package.
Meijer and Tops come to mind when I think of up there. Depends on where you are, of course. If you think a Publix is good, though, you really ought to see a Harris Teeter (NC/SC/GA, though it looks like they've expanded quite a bit since I lived in the area). Great stores.
Some people live closer to Wal-Mart than the post office. And more importantly, Wal-Mart is open 24/7, not 8 to 4 (and yes, I've had Postal Service employees refuse service to me at 4:00:30 PM).
Personally, I just have everything delivered to my work address - that way there's always someone to sign for it and to take responsibility for it until it gets into my hot little hands.
A plausible mechanism (though not necessarily a correct one - I am not a climate scientist) is: less sea ice -> more air exposed to water -> higher relative humidity -> heavier snowfall as moist air moves ashore -> more snowpack -> less sunlight absorbed on land.
Out of whack? Sounds like a self-correcting feedback loop to me. Too little sea ice -> colder temperatures -> more sea ice -> warmer temperatures. Or am I missing something else?
That is indeed the excellent case for Child Molester Island. Child Molester Island has provisions for tracking its residents, to make sure they don't try to escape to the mainland (and they are summarily executed if ever found off the Island). Otherwise it resembles any other first-world country, with the additional proviso that they get all the child porn they want to look at. Moving to Child Molester Island is not mandatory but does get you out of jail as soon as you are eligible for parole. If you voluntarily choose to move to Child Molester Island, you cannot ever leave, but your doing so will trigger a new one-year statute of limitations on reporting abuse: anyone whom you have abused is able to come forward at that time, so you can't use it to get out of impending charges. However, if you are a pedophile who has never acted out his desires, you will be able to watch all the child porn you want, and if you're a professional you will be permitted to keep your license in order to provide services for the residents of Child Molester Island - doctors, dentists, accountants, lawyers (even judges), etc.
They've actually gone down; the SAT was "re-centered" once in the '90s and I think again when they stopped calling them SAT and Achievement Tests and started calling them SAT-I and SAT-II. BTW, good luck designing those tests so that they work and can't be gamed by school districts.
No, more educated people commit less crime. Those are not the same statement.
As for cost of education, let's take a good school system - New Trier in the northern suburbs of Chicago. They spent $100M to educate about 4000 students, or $25k/student. That's over a quarter of a million per student. How about a bad one - DC? They spent over $28k per student. Wow. Well, maybe we could choose somewhere poor. The poor souls of McDowell County, WV, are spending over $10k per student for some of the worst results in the state. That's got total expenditure for a K-12 education down to around $130k, so if you can come out of there and succeed, you'll definitely benefit the government, but even then you have to worry about the time value of money - a huge investment over 13 years that takes 13 more years just to break even if you're successful. And you'd have to be really successful - the average working male in McDowell County only makes $26k, not $40k.
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Back when environmentalism was called "conservationism", there were a lot of hunters and anglers who were big supporters of it. The Lefties took the movement over and kicked out everyone who disagreed with them. It's their own damned fault that there's not a serious pro-environment movement on the right, but if they couldn't control it, they didn't want it to exist.
... and hope there's a freeway entrance at it. Not a given with older roads or especially in urban areas - there are places you can get off the road but can't get back on in the same direction anywhere nearby.
You can think that all you like, but the reality is that Americans have an immensely negative view of atheists. Here, observe that Americans consider atheists more objectionable than blacks, women, Catholics, Hispanics, Jews, Mormons, gays, or Muslims for political office. And that study does not discriminate about which political party you're discussing!
culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence
Then why are you an engineer instead of an artist? You've significantly weakened if not completely undercut your own argument.
Man, am I glad I dodged that bullet. Majored in chemistry. Re-thought the whole thing between junior and senior years and went to med school. I think the financial rewards of medicine are headed nowhere but down, but at least I have a steady job in an interesting field.
Even in the better high schools... you have to concentrate on being a disciplinarian instead of teaching.
This is why private schools can pay their teachers peanuts and still have them lining up for the job: if a student is a problem, you kick them out. There were more National Merit Semi-Finalists among the starting offensive linemen of the football team in my class of 86 people than there were in the entire local public school system, with over 3000 seniors.
No, but they're pretty well correlated. There are exceptions to every rule, but that doesn't make the rule generally wrong.
The forums are still pretty good. I made the mistake of loading up the front page the other day, though... what a mess.
Incidentally, if you've been around that long, what are some good sites to check out? Don't skip any - even if they're well-known to you and everyone you know, they might be new to me. (I know reddit but would be interested in good sub-reddits, for that matter).
These are tests in which students have 25 minutes from start to finish. Sure, there are some 17-year-olds who can write perfectly succinct prose on a first edit in that time frame, but the vast majority of short answers are the result of running out of ideas.
A tiny fraction of people who write short essays are capable of producing succinct prose on the first edit in 25 minutes from concept to completion. But most people who write short essays in 25 minutes do so because they can't think of anything to write.
That's interesting in its own way, but a much more interesting comparison would be between the essays' lengths and the respective SAT Verbal scores of their writers. I would bet that they are also correlated quite closely.
News flash: when presented with an essay topic, smart people spend a few minutes planning and then proceed to write voluminously about the subject, because they are fluent writers. Dumb people start muddling along, lose track of where they are, and stop when they've stated (though not proved) their main point, because they're not. Fun game: ask a room full of people to write nonstop for five minutes on any topic(s) of their choosing, then compare word counts vs IQ/class grades/whatever.
If you're a HS student reading this (and I imagine there are a lot of you who are): practice writing. Practice writing. Practice writing. It's important. It's probably the most valuable skill you will ever acquire for dealing with people you don't meet with face-to-face. Bad writing is universally considered a sign of low intelligence. It takes a lot to overcome the negative impression that bad writing gives, and you often will not have the opportunity to try - when given a stack of 100 resumes for two positions, guess how the initial winnowing occurs? Toss anything on colored paper, anything written in a funny typeface, and anything with grammatical or spelling errors. I cringe today when I read some of the stuff that I wrote in HS, but it's grammatical and correctly spelled, even if the verbiage is ponderous (and occasionally verges on purple prose).
That has always been my attitude toward our "dependence on foreign oil". Use up the rest of the world's supply while it's cheap and save ours for when it really gets expensive.
It's hardware. Unless you put every single chip (not just samples) under a microscope, it doesn't matter what the software says. Unconvinced? See Stuxnet for an example of what software alone can do. Also: if I were in the PRC hierarchy, I wouldn't use any US-built stuff for sensitive projects. Of course all governments do this. So what?
No, no, no. No. This is a terrible idea.
There is a very good argument to be made that all remotely sensitive government IT projects should use domestically designed and built products, because electronics can do sneaky things that are almost completely undetectable (cf. Stuxnet). When you're talking about steel for bridges, not so much. Forced local supply (especially for raw materials) ends up being just another opportunity for regulatory capture.
The first thing I'd do is call Bashir Assad and ask him how it works.
Only if you pay for it. That's the whole point of these Wal-Mart or 7/11 lockers - you don't have to rent something in order to be able to get a package.
Meijer and Tops come to mind when I think of up there. Depends on where you are, of course. If you think a Publix is good, though, you really ought to see a Harris Teeter (NC/SC/GA, though it looks like they've expanded quite a bit since I lived in the area). Great stores.
Some people live closer to Wal-Mart than the post office. And more importantly, Wal-Mart is open 24/7, not 8 to 4 (and yes, I've had Postal Service employees refuse service to me at 4:00:30 PM).
Personally, I just have everything delivered to my work address - that way there's always someone to sign for it and to take responsibility for it until it gets into my hot little hands.
George W. Bush signed a law
In fairness, Congress had to pass that law first. And there are an awful lot of underfunded government pensions out there.
A plausible mechanism (though not necessarily a correct one - I am not a climate scientist) is: less sea ice -> more air exposed to water -> higher relative humidity -> heavier snowfall as moist air moves ashore -> more snowpack -> less sunlight absorbed on land.
Or you could just buy a phone with a removable battery.
Out of whack? Sounds like a self-correcting feedback loop to me. Too little sea ice -> colder temperatures -> more sea ice -> warmer temperatures. Or am I missing something else?
That is indeed the excellent case for Child Molester Island. Child Molester Island has provisions for tracking its residents, to make sure they don't try to escape to the mainland (and they are summarily executed if ever found off the Island). Otherwise it resembles any other first-world country, with the additional proviso that they get all the child porn they want to look at. Moving to Child Molester Island is not mandatory but does get you out of jail as soon as you are eligible for parole. If you voluntarily choose to move to Child Molester Island, you cannot ever leave, but your doing so will trigger a new one-year statute of limitations on reporting abuse: anyone whom you have abused is able to come forward at that time, so you can't use it to get out of impending charges. However, if you are a pedophile who has never acted out his desires, you will be able to watch all the child porn you want, and if you're a professional you will be permitted to keep your license in order to provide services for the residents of Child Molester Island - doctors, dentists, accountants, lawyers (even judges), etc.
They've actually gone down; the SAT was "re-centered" once in the '90s and I think again when they stopped calling them SAT and Achievement Tests and started calling them SAT-I and SAT-II. BTW, good luck designing those tests so that they work and can't be gamed by school districts.
Increased education lowers crime.
No, more educated people commit less crime. Those are not the same statement.
As for cost of education, let's take a good school system - New Trier in the northern suburbs of Chicago. They spent $100M to educate about 4000 students, or $25k/student. That's over a quarter of a million per student. How about a bad one - DC? They spent over $28k per student. Wow. Well, maybe we could choose somewhere poor. The poor souls of McDowell County, WV, are spending over $10k per student for some of the worst results in the state. That's got total expenditure for a K-12 education down to around $130k, so if you can come out of there and succeed, you'll definitely benefit the government, but even then you have to worry about the time value of money - a huge investment over 13 years that takes 13 more years just to break even if you're successful. And you'd have to be really successful - the average working male in McDowell County only makes $26k, not $40k.