culturally dependant knowledge belongs on an IQ test, it is part of learning... as does complex pattern matching. Do you even know what an IQ test is? Yes, but apparently you don't. IQ is a measure of cognitive ability, not of acquired knowledge. Five year olds can (and some do) have a higher IQ than a Ph.D, yet the Ph.D. will have vastly more acquired knowledge.
Spelling a long word only requires a decent memory. Almost anyone can do it with enough practice. That has nothing to do with intelligence. Spelling a long word you've never seen before is different though. A truly intelligent person, given some information about the word will be able to come much closer than your average "memorize the world" person.
Your idea that acquired knowledge belongs on an IQ test is as astoundingly stupid as giving a vision test with an eye chart filled with kanji. Such a test wouldn't really be testing vision, would it? How well would you do on that test? Would it tell you anything about how well you can see?
Its a test which measures general intellegence, and it is valid because it correlates strongly with another method of measuring intellegence (grades at school, or some other criteria). Oh, you mean you're one of the ignorants who believes that grades at school represent some measure of intelligence?
(US-centric warning)You can get A's and B's in most schools by doing little more than mindlessly regurgitating facts that you may or may not understand. It's even easier if you're doing it via multiple-choice question. If you see the height of human intelligence as the ability to vomit out memorized patterns, then I'm afraid to inform you that we've already been superseded by the evolutionary brilliance that is a DVD player. Let's not even talk about the omniscience contained within a Blu-Ray player.
You want to get a job using Prototype on LAMP. That's fine. I do that right now... as a hobby when I'm bored. Can you get good money doing that? Of course you can. Does that make you a prodigy? No.
You may not need to think about O() runtimes or probabilities when all you're doing is formatting a webpage, but the moment you start dealing with difficult problems, you're going to find that people who do have that knowledge are going to out-think you in a hurry. Things get quite a bit more complex when you need to read 16 GB of data, transform it and put it into a database. Suddenly, using a O(n*n) instead of O(ln n) becomes a fatal design flaw. I've had to differentiate between things like O(n * ln m) vs O(ln n * m) across a spectrum of values for n and m, trying to find the point where strategies should change. That takes an understanding of Calculus. I'm not going to set up an integral to do it, but I need to understand what's going on to see the solution.
If you want to deal with data sets that large (or deal with any data set with speed) caching strategies become important. Knowing when cache hits and misses occur as well as how often that will happen and how to select the strategy that incurs the least penalty takes some statistics and probability understanding.
If all you want to do is play around on the LAMP stack, that's fine. Don't expect me to worship you, though. If you don't care about calculus and statistics, then I guess it doesn't really matter, because we aren't really in the same market. When working with serious problems, you need to know the math to understand how things work and you need the background in problem solving Calculus gives you to quickly and efficiently find solutions to problems more complex than sequencing AJAX callback routines.
Yeah, it does suck to have to learn how to use your brain. What's the point of learning how to do stuff when all you really need is to learn how to use Google and copy someone who's already done it?
Now, I'm being overly harsh, but it gets the point across. I'm already in the industry and I can tell you now that I very rarely use any calculus or the Engineering-level statistics I learned. However, I can think of dozens of times when I've been forced to struggle through a conversation with another developer or IT worker who couldn't grasp the difference a normal and Poisson distribution, couldn't even come close to guessing the probability of an event, or glazed over (or worse: made bumbling guesses) while talking about O-notation of algorithms.
If you think the point of Calculus is to teach you how to calculate the length of wire between two telephone poles, then you're missing more than just integrals. Calculus is about solving problems. The way problems are solved in Calculus is the same way they are solved with computers. You don't need derivatives or any series equation, but the methodology is the same. Those math classes that you hate are trying to teach you how to use your brain.
I'm sorry they bring down your GPA, but if you can't see the link between math and computers, then perhaps you should take the lower GPA as a sign that you need to study a little more.
No. This is confirmation bias and a healthy dose of CNN-bias
Do the research.
Violence at schools has risen on a trend matching the population size of students at schools. The frequency of shootings, stabbings, and various other violent deaths among school-aged people hasn't been trending drastically up or down over the last century or so. The choice of weapon has shifted around somewhat but I hardly see how that matters.
The fact that you don't perceive this is due more to your lack of understanding of statistics and your failure to realize that you now see and hear much more of the world than you did when you were younger. People have been getting killed at schools for a long, long time, but until recently, you'd only hear about it if it was local. You're right in one way, something has changed, but it has nothing to do with your cuddly notion of "values" and everything to do with CNN and the internet spreading the latest news from every corner of the world to every other corner of the world at the speed of light.
Take a moment to really think about school violence. Consider just how many students are in school and realize that when you were in school, you'd be lucky if you heard about even 0.1% of the violence that occurred around the country. These days, if any person in the country walks into any school and kills a student it becomes national news. Of course, that's just shootings. The bulk of the violence that occurs in schools is no different than it was when you were younger, and it vastly outweighs the minuscule numbers of people who use a gun to release their aggression.
Over the past fifteen years, gun violence in schools has been declining, more or less. I have to qualify that simply because the numbers are so low that they don't really form any statistically relevant trend. However, the amount of time that CNN spends reporting it has been on the rise, so people who only look and don't think perceive that things are getting really bad and perpetuate this lie by claiming that "things were better when I was younger" and "kids these days just don't have good values" and how this would all be fixed if we could just return to those "good ole days" when everyone got along and kids spent their days practicing saluting the flag and memorizing the Bible.
If you think that the last few decades were the first time that poor people have become belligerent and violent then you must be learning your history from cartoons. Adolescents have always caused problems. The old have always complained about them. The poor have always wanted more (and so have the rich) and they have always blamed the rich for making it more difficult for them to get it (and often, they've been right). If you want to understand this, there is only one place to start:
Learn more history.
This situation is not unique. The last few decades have seen loads of drastic changes in human life, but not because adolescents are rebellious or poor people are resorting to violence. This suggests that you've been taught worthless "history indoctrination" whereby the current generation of middle-aged people portrays the time of their youth as perfect and ideal while the current state of affairs is headed toward Armageddon. Conservatives then sell this ideal to the populous, making them believe that there was a time when people didn't murder other people just because they had a few bucks or schillings or spare cowrie shells. People who actually have a clue about history have seen this pattern in every generation they have looked at, from today's Baby Boomers to the ancient Greeks and even early Egyptians. This same pattern can even be found in isolated jungle tribes which don't have any of the causes you might like to blame this on.
This is human nature. Perhaps that's why people don't want to believe it. They hate being wrong. They hate growing old. They hate the idea that someone else's point of view might be worth as much as theirs.
I have no love for punks who hang around only to cause problems. However, everything I've seen and read suggests that the way to fix this is to treat the young/poor/insert-nogoodnick-group-here as humans rather than someone who is less important than you. In most cases, the reason they don't respect others because others don't respect them.
The fact that you call Creationism the "Creation Myth" just shows how bigoted yor[sic] views are to begin with. That's what my pastor called it. Is he a bigot too?
What should I call it? A fable? A story? It's not science. It's not history. Myth seems to accurately describe it. This is what I was taught when I went through confirmation and what I've heard from dozens of Jewish Rabbis.
A quick check through past statements by Huckabee shows that he's always qualified his support of Creationism with declarations that he'd never pass a law demanding it. However, he's vocal about supporting it and saying it should be done. I doubt anyone arguing to have such things removed from a science class will get any support at all from him.
However, he's made it part of his platform. He's stated that he wants the Creation Myth taught as an alternative to actual science.
There are only two explanations for this:
One: He is pandering to Evangelicals for votes. Two: He actually plans on forcing his religious views on the country even if they disagree with fact.
The first is worrisome, the second is frightening. As the Chief Executive, he has far too much power (as Bush has shown us) to implement his own personal agenda. Teaching Creationism in school only undermines the education of our children. I'm more worried about the damage he might do in his pursuit to Christianify the nation (and the Constitution, if he could).
For more verbose explanations, see my other responses above.
The issue isnt being a nice guy. Its using common sense with regard to administering a government, and in that regard, he tops all the other candidates.
I've had quite enough of Bush and his inflated Executive powers. The last thing I want right now is to pick a president based on the hope that he is going to rein in the whole government and make it do things his (or her) way. I want a president who works with Congress to get things done. To be honest, I don't know who that would be. I hope that it won't matter and that when Bush leaves Congress will see that the president is put back in its place as a diplomat and policy-setter instead of an Emperor.
Huckabee might be fine. But realistically, he's got as much of a shot at making the changes you suggest as Romney or McCain and it's not worth picking the "nice guy" if he's going to ram Creationism and Abstinance and Gay Restrictions down our throats in the process.
I agree, but he doesn't. From what I remember hearing him say, he is one of the people who have convinced themselves that the idea of evolution is just a guess that scientists are making because they can't think of any other explanation.
The Theory of Evolution doesn't care and neither do I. You don't get to choose whether you believe science. It's science. Science isn't an answer, it is the search for them. You can't say that you don't believe in the systematic search for truth.
The fact that he thinks that you can, simply illustrates the fact that he's willing to ignore facts and the work of millions of people far smarter than him and replace it with his own religious views.
I never said it was the only issue, however it is an issue for me.
In an age when everyone seems to be upset that the US is falling behind in scientific fields, I find it disappointing that so many people are so accepting of politicians who seek to teach Creation "Science". To many people this seems like a trifling thing, but if anyone ever suggested that schools teach Hindu Creation alongside Creationism and Biogenesis/Evolution there would be an outrage. If it's wrong to teach Hindu religion as a replacement for science, then its wrong to teach Christianity as a replacement for science. The fact that he's willing to do this sets up a disturbing precedent. Why shouldn't I be outraged that a candidate for president is willing to declare that his religious beliefs are more valid than a hundred years of science?
The bigger issue here is how willing it seems Huckabee would be to let his religion dictate national policy. While Evolution in School is just one small issue, it signals much more troubling trends for me. The AIDS crisis in Africa is in need of attention, but the most effective solutions are sex education (as in "safe sex education") and condoms not the "Abstinence is the only way" strategy that Evangelicals like. Likewise, I see gay rights as a human rights issue not a moral one. From what I've seen and heard, Huckabee isn't going to be able to think beyond the fact that his religion says that it's perfectly fine to deny rights to a person based on their choice of partner. When the next Supreme Court Justice is up for appointment, is Huckabee going to appoint a pro-life justice without any thoughts of the ramifications just because his religion tells him to? Will he be able to objectively handle diplomatic relationships with non-Christian nations? How can he help stabilize the Israeli-Palestinian situation when he will probably be seen as a Christian extremist?
As much as you seem to want to attack me, you'll find nothing much to target here. All of the candidates are a spectrum and my choice is based more on game theory than "Who doesn't have any of my pet peeves".
Huckabee seems like a nice guy, but I want a president who makes decisions based on logic, thought, and everyone's well being, not just Christians. Romney seems well qualified, though his love of privatization seems to go too far some times and I fear that his religion may cause too many problems with the Evangelicals for him to be truly effective. McCain is a politician and a known quantity, but his temperament isn't going to win friends overseas and his overly militaristic approach to diplomacy (along with a woeful misunderstanding of terrorism) isn't going to help the US's image at all.
Was that smug enough?
I don't like Huckabee because too many of his decisions are based in religion, not law or reason. His desire to have Creation Fiction taught as science is a telltale marker for that. In this current political race, yes, that is enough for me to favor someone else. In this case, I'm leaning toward Romney. I'll take an ineffective president over one who would have the power to force the Executive to implement his religious policies.
Yes, this comes from meeting both parents who home-schooled their children as well as the children they home schooled. Because people are under the stupid impression that all you need to be a teacher is the ability to read through a book, most parents who home school their children are actually tragically sub-standard teachers as far as true understanding of subject matter is concerned. This is less pronounced in subjects like Math and (frighteningly) more pronounced in subjects like History and Science.
Lacking any real knowledge of the origins of World War I or the Wave-Particle nature of light, most parent-teachers simply recite what some book says, making sure the student knows what to answer when canned questions are presented. This discards the more important lessons behind abstract topics, robbing children of a better education in an effort to see that they only pass the test.
And yes, public schools are increasingly just as guilty. That is what happens when you pass laws like 'No Child Left Behind' which make high standardized test scores the first and overwhelming priority in education. Things like actual understanding, enrichment, enjoyment and the use of abstract thought to understand new situations is something teachers are left to fit in between government mandated crap like "Constitution Day" and the weeks of testing.
Right... Evangelical Christians as a generally rule treat most people who are exactly like them as equals. The general trend is that they view anyone unlike them as anywhere between "wrong" and "an infidel".
Sorry, I'd prefer a candidate who actually, you know... believed in science.
I'd be just fine if he was Christian and seemed to show any respect for any other faith, but he has repeatedly stated that he's all for Christianifying the nation because that's what he sees as right. I don't care if the majority is Christian. Mandating Christianity as "the one way" is a horrible idea.
I find it odd when McCain talks about how much he dislikes pork projects and spending riders. He has done his fair share in the past, including delaying or killing emergency aid packages based on partisan politics.
Right. I'm sure he's going to do a lot to change how Washington works.
Usually home schooled students fall into two categories: Those who are receiving professional-grade tutors and those who are being taught by amateur hacks who think they know how to teach. In either case, you're likely to see higher test scores. I have no doubt that personal tutors make for great teachers, but unless you've got a load of them, no tutor is going to be an excellent teacher for Physics, US History and English. This is even less likely when the "tutor" is some parent who thinks they know enough to teach.
Ignoring cases of high priced tutors (unless you want to support individual tutors for the poor), most parents or other amateur teachers "teach to the test", ie: They teach students what they need to score high on standardized tests.
This would be spectacular if the world was a standardized test, but it's not. I don't spend my day filling in bubbles asking me what the definition of "I/O bound" is. I have to actually think and analyze problems. Reciting book knowledge doesn't help at all with that.
Please burn this into your mind: High standardized test scores do not equal high intelligence or quality education.
When I look at the page you supplied, I see different statistics. The way I see it, the median wage of the highest paid section of all k-12 teachers is $41K. That's not first year teachers, that all teachers. Of course, that's with a two month block of time off, sure, but no vacation outside of it.
The actual median wage for a first year teacher (again, according to the page you supplied) is $33K. And that's across all types of teachers. Your comparison to $8/hour work at B&N is somewhat insulting. Remember that all teachers are required to have bachelors degrees. That puts you in a manager position at a retail store, not as Billy-Bob Bookshelver.
However, a manager at B&N can easily pull off a 2% raise every year and they don't have to deal with a community and government which blames them for their children's problems.
Yes, teachers pick their careers. And lots of people decide not to pick teaching simply because of the crappy payscale and abuse they receive. While you were perfectly comfortable comparing teachers to construction workers, you seem to forget that a teacher supposedly already has gone to school to get that specialized training. Why not look up statistics and see what happens when you look at salaries per year of education? Considering that its common for teachers to have the equivalent of eight or more years of post-secondary education, you tell me if they're undervalued or not.
Firing a teacher means that their performance or behavior was so bad that they are unsuitable for employment. I think a lot of people are stuck in this corporate mentality where its okay to be fired because you made a bad decision or because you said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
In this area, a teacher who is fired is essentially blacklisted in six (or more) states. Employment simply won't happen.
The point here is that some people want to fire teachers because their students have low scores, or because they said something insensitive to their child, or (much more commonly) because they didn't bend over backwards to make little Jimmy's life easier. At least in this area, the main purpose of the union is to protect teachers against that sort of stupidity.
However, the reality of the situation is that the grand majority of requests by parents to get rid of teachers are based on selfish, prejudiced, and stupid ideas of the parents and not any actual misconduct or lack of ability.
To toss out some anecdotal evidence: I know probably around a dozen educators and on average they've probably been involved in a dozen lawsuits each. About half of these are seeking to get a teacher fired (occasionally by assigning a punishment which requires termination). None of them worked, but all of them required union lawyers to help protect the teachers. One might suggest that I only know crappy teachers, but the fact that all of these cases were dropped or dismissed by a judge seems to show their actual merit. Under that barrage of distrust and lack of respect, I would hope that the teachers unions would work hard to defend the teachers. At the very least, you can see why the union needs to exist. Even on my salary, I'd quit any job that required me to pay for an attorney to defend me every couple years. It's just not worth that sort of abuse.
Ironically, it's the schools who usually know who the bad teachers are, but history has repeatedly shown that people can't stand the idea of giving schools the ability to control their own staff. Perhaps if there were less frivolous complaints and lawsuits by parents, it would be easier to take the real complaints seriously.
That's right. Blame the unions! They are the reason why bad teachers exist. How dare they look after the rights of fellow teachers! They just keep asking for more money (despite the fact that they have some of the lowest salaries for any job which requires a university degree and a clean history). They act like they are constantly besieged with demands that [insert teacher here] be fired because Johnny got a B in Math. I mean, what world are they living in? Parents would never do that.
Now, let's remember that all sorts of people suck at their jobs. And that the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'. And that in your case, the one thing all these teachers have in common is that they were hired by your school district. Being close to school districts and workers for quite some time, I can say that I've seen quite a few bad teachers "let go".
Some common sense is needed here. You must understand what it means to truly fire a teacher. If Joe programmer joins ABC Megacorp and writes substandard code for a year or two, ABC fires him. After a week of drinking, Joe polishes his resume and starts looking for a new job where he might have to sweat a little as he explains why he decided to part ways with ABC Megacorp.
If a school district actually fires a teacher (as in: gives a specific reason for dismissal), it is almost a career ending thing. No nearby schools will pick them up. In general the teacher has two options: Find another school farther away who is desperate for a teacher (and almost always paying even less) or start working for the local Barnes & Noble (which probably pays more than a teaching job).
The finality and seriousness of this is the problem. It's not the unions who cause the problems, it's the parents of the school district. People hate hearing this. No one likes being told they are the problem. Schools are so beleaguered by complaints and threats and litigation that it's hard to sort out which teacher is really bad from the one's who aren't willing to give Jill Protestant an A because her parents are very influential at City Hall. By default, union attorneys will protect all of them (just as a corporate attorney would, but let's not get into the habit of treating teachers like ordinary people).
In the crossfire of legal threats and backstabbing, I've seen maybe a dozen or so teachers get fired. Of them, at most half of them were bad. The others were fired simply because they angered the wrong parent. Did anyone from the community speak up for those wrongly fired? No. They whined because the union made it so hard to fire them in the first place. Damn union. It should be easier to end someone's career just because they didn't give my son enough play time on the football field.
Here's an idea: Support good teachers. Help them. Pay them well. Speak up for them when others say that teachers are dumb, talentless, useless, and bitter.
Maybe if the community actually gave teachers some support, the unions wouldn't need to be so protective.
I hope they weren't trying to claim that it was cutting edge. I had professors in college using that six years ago.
What you're describing is the (trademarked, I believe) SmartBoard or something just like it. It worked by using radio triangulation to pinpoint a market on a real board, I believe. It works, mostly. There were a number of drawbacks to this, as you pointed out. Yes, they are expensive to replace, but even more common was having them simply be inaccurate. You had to re-calibrate more than the salespeaple claimed and they always felt slightly off, even when they were set up perfectly.
A good SmartBoard system is (from reports I get) less pleasant to use and more expensive than the laptop/tablet/projector setup the schools here are using. The projectors are standard LCD projectors. Instead of sensors and odd markers, you use a bluetooth drawing tablet. You get as many colors as you want, more natural usage, and vastly greater durability without all of the fiddling with sensors.
Short story: Technology is already advanced way beyond what you saw (or at least, we've found better ways of using it). Realistically, I'd say you could get the laptop/tablet/projector setup for $1500 or so and have a system that worked in any room you can put a projector in. And it would be completely mobile.
Standing in front of a blackboard and addressing the students orally is an excellent method of education.
And interactive, for that matter.
You'd make a horrible teacher.
Oh, sure, you could do fine in a University. Students there are expected to mostly teach themselves. However, primary and secondary schools are usually not that harsh. And don't give me the "If they don't want to learn they shouldn't be in school anyway" speech. Children are in school because, as adults, we know that they need to at least understand some basic things to function in society, even if they don't realize it yet.
Blackboards are great for one type of learning. Modern teachers, who know much more about how to teach people than you obviously do, try to teach to as many different types of students as possible. See, the point is to actually get them all to learn, not just the ones who learn quickly by lecture.
I'll hope that you said this as a joke. Even if you didn't, there are plenty of serious responses who agree with you. For all of you who thought this was insightful: The next time you wonder who to blame for any (perceived) lack in quality of education, look in the mirror.
(I've seen this kind of technology being prototyped by GE during a business tour, its expensive but easily done)
How long ago was that? As I noted in another comment, this sort of thing has been in (limited but growing) use in classrooms in this area for a few years. It's not even that expensive. It's about the cost of two desktop computers (and the setup comes with a laptop).
They're excellent at what they do. However, that doesn't make them the end of the line.
What if (...I should patent this...) you could make a computer program that acted like a blackboard? Then, if you only had some device that would be able to take a computer screen and make it show up on the wall, you could make a sort of "virtual blackboard" And then, if only we had a way for you to use some pen-like device on something that was flat so you could still write normally. Wouldn't that be cool?
Right. You think a blackboard is great? Laptop/Tablet/Projector systems do everything they do, but give you the ability to display and manipulate real images, save everything you write so that it can be repeated/retrieved later, and provide a more interactive experience for all those students who don't learn as well just by listening to someone talk while writing on a blackboard.
Here's the best part: The schools out here (Northern VA) are already using them. And they're not even purchased with tax money. Private donations from local grocery stores pay the bills. No bureaucrat mandated their use. No stupid "No Child Left Without A Smartboard" law was passed to make the school obey rules written by someone with no educational experience whatsoever. This is being done by the teachers. Guess what? The teachers coming out of college right now are tech savvy. Of course, many of them who really excel at it choose not to be teachers. You've got to really love what you do to sign up for a profession where morons from across the country get to insult and punish you because they had this one teacher who was a jerk to them in fourth grade.
Back on topic, my point is this: Schools are already trying to get rid of "Old Schooling" but stupid politicians and the people who continue to think that education hasn't changed at all in thirty years are doing a pretty good job of holding them back. Urban areas have the money to battle this. Who knows when everyone out in hickville will see any of these changes. Maybe if they stopped treating teachers like they're one step above grocery baggers they'll have a chance. I know, we should pass another law requiring teachers to use technology intelligently. We'll make them attend classes in their spare time. But not pay them a cent more. In fact, we'll pay them less. Tech instructors don't work for free, you know.
Look people, it's just the max. You get that number by summing the maximum sentences of each individual crime the person commits. Let's look at an example (I-Am-Not-A-Lawyer):
Guy kills another guy in a car accident. It's not murder, just manslaughter, so he has (for example) a maximum of 35 years in prison. Maybe we add drunk driving (5 years). Now he's got a max sentence of 40 years in prison. Pretty bad.
Second guy steals a valve-stem cover. It's barely theft and its just a misdemeanor. It's got a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail, however, he's done it 800 times. 800 counts of misdemeanor theft, at a month a piece is about 66 years.
Does this mean the second guy is worse than the first? Stealing a valve-stem cover is hardly worse than manslaughter. It's not even close to drunk driving. Why does he get the bigger sentence? In truth, he doesn't. No judge is going to sentence someone to 66 years for something that petty. Criminals rarely serve consecutive sentences for large numbers of similar crimes. They rarely serve consecutive sentences for large numbers of any crimes. Judges aren't stupid. Beyond cherry-picked examples, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and people convicted of manslaughter generally get much longer sentences than people convicted of multiple counts of minor crimes. This guy won't be serving the max on each and every charge and he'll probably have his sentences served concurrently. It's just stupid to do things any other way.
That said, I doubt even 5 years of prison will be enjoyable for this guy.
Sorry, but I doubt that. Despite all efforts, no one has found any gene or set of genes that causes criminal behavior. The best we can really say is that prisons seem to have a greater concentration of XYY males, however, the difference is much smaller than early reports claimed and the number of XYY males is still a small minority of inmates.
Perhaps you were just making generalizations. Let's be specific. If you look at a criminal and see that their parents were criminals, as were their grandparents, it's silly to claim that criminality is genetic. There is something much stronger that all of them share: They were raised by their parents. Being a criminal tends to put one in a situation where their children will not have receive the same social teaching as the rest of the world. Most criminals are not financially stable, and thus their children tend to be similarly financially unstable. Until anyone is able to find any sort of real correlation between any genotype and increased criminality, claiming that there is a genetic component is nothing more than an attempt to avoid the problem.
The point here: I think your "7/10th genetic" is actually "7/10th socio-economic". Of course, many people hate hearing that because it means that there are things that can be done to help. If it's genetic, you can just shrug and walk away. If it's socio-economic, it means that it can be fixed if you're willing to give up on a small portion of your greed. Better funding for police helps, but not as much as better funding for the public schools (which rich people everywhere hate... why invest in something that can't turn a profit?), public libraries, parks, art programs. That is your smart pill. It already exists, but its something that rich people have to be willing to pay for.
Slashdot Mirror
Spelling a long word only requires a decent memory. Almost anyone can do it with enough practice. That has nothing to do with intelligence. Spelling a long word you've never seen before is different though. A truly intelligent person, given some information about the word will be able to come much closer than your average "memorize the world" person.
Your idea that acquired knowledge belongs on an IQ test is as astoundingly stupid as giving a vision test with an eye chart filled with kanji. Such a test wouldn't really be testing vision, would it? How well would you do on that test? Would it tell you anything about how well you can see? Its a test which measures general intellegence, and it is valid because it correlates strongly with another method of measuring intellegence (grades at school, or some other criteria). Oh, you mean you're one of the ignorants who believes that grades at school represent some measure of intelligence?
(US-centric warning)You can get A's and B's in most schools by doing little more than mindlessly regurgitating facts that you may or may not understand. It's even easier if you're doing it via multiple-choice question. If you see the height of human intelligence as the ability to vomit out memorized patterns, then I'm afraid to inform you that we've already been superseded by the evolutionary brilliance that is a DVD player. Let's not even talk about the omniscience contained within a Blu-Ray player.
Well, it's pretty safe to assume that anyone smart is from the US and just spoofing their IP, right?
Er...right?
I mean... the president made it very clear that he knows more than any "forners" and I damn well know that I'm smarter than that moron.
You want to get a job using Prototype on LAMP. That's fine. I do that right now... as a hobby when I'm bored. Can you get good money doing that? Of course you can. Does that make you a prodigy? No.
You may not need to think about O() runtimes or probabilities when all you're doing is formatting a webpage, but the moment you start dealing with difficult problems, you're going to find that people who do have that knowledge are going to out-think you in a hurry. Things get quite a bit more complex when you need to read 16 GB of data, transform it and put it into a database. Suddenly, using a O(n*n) instead of O(ln n) becomes a fatal design flaw. I've had to differentiate between things like O(n * ln m) vs O(ln n * m) across a spectrum of values for n and m, trying to find the point where strategies should change. That takes an understanding of Calculus. I'm not going to set up an integral to do it, but I need to understand what's going on to see the solution.
If you want to deal with data sets that large (or deal with any data set with speed) caching strategies become important. Knowing when cache hits and misses occur as well as how often that will happen and how to select the strategy that incurs the least penalty takes some statistics and probability understanding.
If all you want to do is play around on the LAMP stack, that's fine. Don't expect me to worship you, though. If you don't care about calculus and statistics, then I guess it doesn't really matter, because we aren't really in the same market. When working with serious problems, you need to know the math to understand how things work and you need the background in problem solving Calculus gives you to quickly and efficiently find solutions to problems more complex than sequencing AJAX callback routines.
Yeah, it does suck to have to learn how to use your brain. What's the point of learning how to do stuff when all you really need is to learn how to use Google and copy someone who's already done it?
Now, I'm being overly harsh, but it gets the point across. I'm already in the industry and I can tell you now that I very rarely use any calculus or the Engineering-level statistics I learned. However, I can think of dozens of times when I've been forced to struggle through a conversation with another developer or IT worker who couldn't grasp the difference a normal and Poisson distribution, couldn't even come close to guessing the probability of an event, or glazed over (or worse: made bumbling guesses) while talking about O-notation of algorithms.
If you think the point of Calculus is to teach you how to calculate the length of wire between two telephone poles, then you're missing more than just integrals. Calculus is about solving problems. The way problems are solved in Calculus is the same way they are solved with computers. You don't need derivatives or any series equation, but the methodology is the same. Those math classes that you hate are trying to teach you how to use your brain.
I'm sorry they bring down your GPA, but if you can't see the link between math and computers, then perhaps you should take the lower GPA as a sign that you need to study a little more.
No. This is confirmation bias and a healthy dose of CNN-bias
Do the research.
Violence at schools has risen on a trend matching the population size of students at schools. The frequency of shootings, stabbings, and various other violent deaths among school-aged people hasn't been trending drastically up or down over the last century or so. The choice of weapon has shifted around somewhat but I hardly see how that matters.
The fact that you don't perceive this is due more to your lack of understanding of statistics and your failure to realize that you now see and hear much more of the world than you did when you were younger. People have been getting killed at schools for a long, long time, but until recently, you'd only hear about it if it was local. You're right in one way, something has changed, but it has nothing to do with your cuddly notion of "values" and everything to do with CNN and the internet spreading the latest news from every corner of the world to every other corner of the world at the speed of light.
Take a moment to really think about school violence. Consider just how many students are in school and realize that when you were in school, you'd be lucky if you heard about even 0.1% of the violence that occurred around the country. These days, if any person in the country walks into any school and kills a student it becomes national news. Of course, that's just shootings. The bulk of the violence that occurs in schools is no different than it was when you were younger, and it vastly outweighs the minuscule numbers of people who use a gun to release their aggression.
Over the past fifteen years, gun violence in schools has been declining, more or less. I have to qualify that simply because the numbers are so low that they don't really form any statistically relevant trend. However, the amount of time that CNN spends reporting it has been on the rise, so people who only look and don't think perceive that things are getting really bad and perpetuate this lie by claiming that "things were better when I was younger" and "kids these days just don't have good values" and how this would all be fixed if we could just return to those "good ole days" when everyone got along and kids spent their days practicing saluting the flag and memorizing the Bible.
If you think that the last few decades were the first time that poor people have become belligerent and violent then you must be learning your history from cartoons. Adolescents have always caused problems. The old have always complained about them. The poor have always wanted more (and so have the rich) and they have always blamed the rich for making it more difficult for them to get it (and often, they've been right). If you want to understand this, there is only one place to start:
Learn more history.
This situation is not unique. The last few decades have seen loads of drastic changes in human life, but not because adolescents are rebellious or poor people are resorting to violence. This suggests that you've been taught worthless "history indoctrination" whereby the current generation of middle-aged people portrays the time of their youth as perfect and ideal while the current state of affairs is headed toward Armageddon. Conservatives then sell this ideal to the populous, making them believe that there was a time when people didn't murder other people just because they had a few bucks or schillings or spare cowrie shells. People who actually have a clue about history have seen this pattern in every generation they have looked at, from today's Baby Boomers to the ancient Greeks and even early Egyptians. This same pattern can even be found in isolated jungle tribes which don't have any of the causes you might like to blame this on.
This is human nature. Perhaps that's why people don't want to believe it. They hate being wrong. They hate growing old. They hate the idea that someone else's point of view might be worth as much as theirs.
I have no love for punks who hang around only to cause problems. However, everything I've seen and read suggests that the way to fix this is to treat the young/poor/insert-nogoodnick-group-here as humans rather than someone who is less important than you. In most cases, the reason they don't respect others because others don't respect them.
What should I call it? A fable? A story? It's not science. It's not history. Myth seems to accurately describe it. This is what I was taught when I went through confirmation and what I've heard from dozens of Jewish Rabbis.
A quick check through past statements by Huckabee shows that he's always qualified his support of Creationism with declarations that he'd never pass a law demanding it. However, he's vocal about supporting it and saying it should be done. I doubt anyone arguing to have such things removed from a science class will get any support at all from him.
They shouldn't be.
However, he's made it part of his platform. He's stated that he wants the Creation Myth taught as an alternative to actual science.
There are only two explanations for this:
One: He is pandering to Evangelicals for votes.
Two: He actually plans on forcing his religious views on the country even if they disagree with fact.
The first is worrisome, the second is frightening. As the Chief Executive, he has far too much power (as Bush has shown us) to implement his own personal agenda. Teaching Creationism in school only undermines the education of our children. I'm more worried about the damage he might do in his pursuit to Christianify the nation (and the Constitution, if he could).
For more verbose explanations, see my other responses above.
A joke from SNL: Jesus Horses
The issue isnt being a nice guy. Its using common sense with regard to administering a government, and in that regard, he tops all the other candidates.I've had quite enough of Bush and his inflated Executive powers. The last thing I want right now is to pick a president based on the hope that he is going to rein in the whole government and make it do things his (or her) way. I want a president who works with Congress to get things done. To be honest, I don't know who that would be. I hope that it won't matter and that when Bush leaves Congress will see that the president is put back in its place as a diplomat and policy-setter instead of an Emperor.
Huckabee might be fine. But realistically, he's got as much of a shot at making the changes you suggest as Romney or McCain and it's not worth picking the "nice guy" if he's going to ram Creationism and Abstinance and Gay Restrictions down our throats in the process.
I agree, but he doesn't. From what I remember hearing him say, he is one of the people who have convinced themselves that the idea of evolution is just a guess that scientists are making because they can't think of any other explanation.
The Theory of Evolution doesn't care and neither do I. You don't get to choose whether you believe science. It's science. Science isn't an answer, it is the search for them. You can't say that you don't believe in the systematic search for truth.
The fact that he thinks that you can, simply illustrates the fact that he's willing to ignore facts and the work of millions of people far smarter than him and replace it with his own religious views.
You're putting words in my mouth.
I never said it was the only issue, however it is an issue for me.
In an age when everyone seems to be upset that the US is falling behind in scientific fields, I find it disappointing that so many people are so accepting of politicians who seek to teach Creation "Science". To many people this seems like a trifling thing, but if anyone ever suggested that schools teach Hindu Creation alongside Creationism and Biogenesis/Evolution there would be an outrage. If it's wrong to teach Hindu religion as a replacement for science, then its wrong to teach Christianity as a replacement for science. The fact that he's willing to do this sets up a disturbing precedent. Why shouldn't I be outraged that a candidate for president is willing to declare that his religious beliefs are more valid than a hundred years of science?
The bigger issue here is how willing it seems Huckabee would be to let his religion dictate national policy. While Evolution in School is just one small issue, it signals much more troubling trends for me. The AIDS crisis in Africa is in need of attention, but the most effective solutions are sex education (as in "safe sex education") and condoms not the "Abstinence is the only way" strategy that Evangelicals like. Likewise, I see gay rights as a human rights issue not a moral one. From what I've seen and heard, Huckabee isn't going to be able to think beyond the fact that his religion says that it's perfectly fine to deny rights to a person based on their choice of partner. When the next Supreme Court Justice is up for appointment, is Huckabee going to appoint a pro-life justice without any thoughts of the ramifications just because his religion tells him to? Will he be able to objectively handle diplomatic relationships with non-Christian nations? How can he help stabilize the Israeli-Palestinian situation when he will probably be seen as a Christian extremist?
As much as you seem to want to attack me, you'll find nothing much to target here. All of the candidates are a spectrum and my choice is based more on game theory than "Who doesn't have any of my pet peeves".
Huckabee seems like a nice guy, but I want a president who makes decisions based on logic, thought, and everyone's well being, not just Christians. Romney seems well qualified, though his love of privatization seems to go too far some times and I fear that his religion may cause too many problems with the Evangelicals for him to be truly effective. McCain is a politician and a known quantity, but his temperament isn't going to win friends overseas and his overly militaristic approach to diplomacy (along with a woeful misunderstanding of terrorism) isn't going to help the US's image at all.
Was that smug enough?
I don't like Huckabee because too many of his decisions are based in religion, not law or reason. His desire to have Creation Fiction taught as science is a telltale marker for that. In this current political race, yes, that is enough for me to favor someone else. In this case, I'm leaning toward Romney. I'll take an ineffective president over one who would have the power to force the Executive to implement his religious policies.
Yes, this comes from meeting both parents who home-schooled their children as well as the children they home schooled. Because people are under the stupid impression that all you need to be a teacher is the ability to read through a book, most parents who home school their children are actually tragically sub-standard teachers as far as true understanding of subject matter is concerned. This is less pronounced in subjects like Math and (frighteningly) more pronounced in subjects like History and Science.
Lacking any real knowledge of the origins of World War I or the Wave-Particle nature of light, most parent-teachers simply recite what some book says, making sure the student knows what to answer when canned questions are presented. This discards the more important lessons behind abstract topics, robbing children of a better education in an effort to see that they only pass the test.
And yes, public schools are increasingly just as guilty. That is what happens when you pass laws like 'No Child Left Behind' which make high standardized test scores the first and overwhelming priority in education. Things like actual understanding, enrichment, enjoyment and the use of abstract thought to understand new situations is something teachers are left to fit in between government mandated crap like "Constitution Day" and the weeks of testing.
Does he believe in evolution?
He might be a nice guy, but I want a president with views from this century, please (or even halfway through the last one...)
Right... Evangelical Christians as a generally rule treat most people who are exactly like them as equals. The general trend is that they view anyone unlike them as anywhere between "wrong" and "an infidel".
Sorry, I'd prefer a candidate who actually, you know... believed in science.
I'd be just fine if he was Christian and seemed to show any respect for any other faith, but he has repeatedly stated that he's all for Christianifying the nation because that's what he sees as right. I don't care if the majority is Christian. Mandating Christianity as "the one way" is a horrible idea.
I find it odd when McCain talks about how much he dislikes pork projects and spending riders. He has done his fair share in the past, including delaying or killing emergency aid packages based on partisan politics.
Right. I'm sure he's going to do a lot to change how Washington works.
That's a sign of the problem, not the solution.
Usually home schooled students fall into two categories: Those who are receiving professional-grade tutors and those who are being taught by amateur hacks who think they know how to teach. In either case, you're likely to see higher test scores. I have no doubt that personal tutors make for great teachers, but unless you've got a load of them, no tutor is going to be an excellent teacher for Physics, US History and English. This is even less likely when the "tutor" is some parent who thinks they know enough to teach.
Ignoring cases of high priced tutors (unless you want to support individual tutors for the poor), most parents or other amateur teachers "teach to the test", ie: They teach students what they need to score high on standardized tests.
This would be spectacular if the world was a standardized test, but it's not. I don't spend my day filling in bubbles asking me what the definition of "I/O bound" is. I have to actually think and analyze problems. Reciting book knowledge doesn't help at all with that.
Please burn this into your mind: High standardized test scores do not equal high intelligence or quality education.
A few quick notes:
When I look at the page you supplied, I see different statistics. The way I see it, the median wage of the highest paid section of all k-12 teachers is $41K. That's not first year teachers, that all teachers. Of course, that's with a two month block of time off, sure, but no vacation outside of it.
The actual median wage for a first year teacher (again, according to the page you supplied) is $33K. And that's across all types of teachers. Your comparison to $8/hour work at B&N is somewhat insulting. Remember that all teachers are required to have bachelors degrees. That puts you in a manager position at a retail store, not as Billy-Bob Bookshelver.
However, a manager at B&N can easily pull off a 2% raise every year and they don't have to deal with a community and government which blames them for their children's problems.
Yes, teachers pick their careers. And lots of people decide not to pick teaching simply because of the crappy payscale and abuse they receive. While you were perfectly comfortable comparing teachers to construction workers, you seem to forget that a teacher supposedly already has gone to school to get that specialized training. Why not look up statistics and see what happens when you look at salaries per year of education? Considering that its common for teachers to have the equivalent of eight or more years of post-secondary education, you tell me if they're undervalued or not.
Precisely.
Firing a teacher means that their performance or behavior was so bad that they are unsuitable for employment. I think a lot of people are stuck in this corporate mentality where its okay to be fired because you made a bad decision or because you said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
In this area, a teacher who is fired is essentially blacklisted in six (or more) states. Employment simply won't happen.
The point here is that some people want to fire teachers because their students have low scores, or because they said something insensitive to their child, or (much more commonly) because they didn't bend over backwards to make little Jimmy's life easier. At least in this area, the main purpose of the union is to protect teachers against that sort of stupidity.
However, the reality of the situation is that the grand majority of requests by parents to get rid of teachers are based on selfish, prejudiced, and stupid ideas of the parents and not any actual misconduct or lack of ability.
To toss out some anecdotal evidence: I know probably around a dozen educators and on average they've probably been involved in a dozen lawsuits each. About half of these are seeking to get a teacher fired (occasionally by assigning a punishment which requires termination). None of them worked, but all of them required union lawyers to help protect the teachers. One might suggest that I only know crappy teachers, but the fact that all of these cases were dropped or dismissed by a judge seems to show their actual merit. Under that barrage of distrust and lack of respect, I would hope that the teachers unions would work hard to defend the teachers. At the very least, you can see why the union needs to exist. Even on my salary, I'd quit any job that required me to pay for an attorney to defend me every couple years. It's just not worth that sort of abuse.
Ironically, it's the schools who usually know who the bad teachers are, but history has repeatedly shown that people can't stand the idea of giving schools the ability to control their own staff. Perhaps if there were less frivolous complaints and lawsuits by parents, it would be easier to take the real complaints seriously.
That's right. Blame the unions! They are the reason why bad teachers exist. How dare they look after the rights of fellow teachers! They just keep asking for more money (despite the fact that they have some of the lowest salaries for any job which requires a university degree and a clean history). They act like they are constantly besieged with demands that [insert teacher here] be fired because Johnny got a B in Math. I mean, what world are they living in? Parents would never do that.
Now, let's remember that all sorts of people suck at their jobs. And that the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'. And that in your case, the one thing all these teachers have in common is that they were hired by your school district. Being close to school districts and workers for quite some time, I can say that I've seen quite a few bad teachers "let go".
Some common sense is needed here. You must understand what it means to truly fire a teacher. If Joe programmer joins ABC Megacorp and writes substandard code for a year or two, ABC fires him. After a week of drinking, Joe polishes his resume and starts looking for a new job where he might have to sweat a little as he explains why he decided to part ways with ABC Megacorp.
If a school district actually fires a teacher (as in: gives a specific reason for dismissal), it is almost a career ending thing. No nearby schools will pick them up. In general the teacher has two options: Find another school farther away who is desperate for a teacher (and almost always paying even less) or start working for the local Barnes & Noble (which probably pays more than a teaching job).
The finality and seriousness of this is the problem. It's not the unions who cause the problems, it's the parents of the school district. People hate hearing this. No one likes being told they are the problem. Schools are so beleaguered by complaints and threats and litigation that it's hard to sort out which teacher is really bad from the one's who aren't willing to give Jill Protestant an A because her parents are very influential at City Hall. By default, union attorneys will protect all of them (just as a corporate attorney would, but let's not get into the habit of treating teachers like ordinary people).
In the crossfire of legal threats and backstabbing, I've seen maybe a dozen or so teachers get fired. Of them, at most half of them were bad. The others were fired simply because they angered the wrong parent. Did anyone from the community speak up for those wrongly fired? No. They whined because the union made it so hard to fire them in the first place. Damn union. It should be easier to end someone's career just because they didn't give my son enough play time on the football field.
Here's an idea: Support good teachers. Help them. Pay them well. Speak up for them when others say that teachers are dumb, talentless, useless, and bitter.
Maybe if the community actually gave teachers some support, the unions wouldn't need to be so protective.
I hope they weren't trying to claim that it was cutting edge. I had professors in college using that six years ago.
What you're describing is the (trademarked, I believe) SmartBoard or something just like it. It worked by using radio triangulation to pinpoint a market on a real board, I believe. It works, mostly. There were a number of drawbacks to this, as you pointed out. Yes, they are expensive to replace, but even more common was having them simply be inaccurate. You had to re-calibrate more than the salespeaple claimed and they always felt slightly off, even when they were set up perfectly.
A good SmartBoard system is (from reports I get) less pleasant to use and more expensive than the laptop/tablet/projector setup the schools here are using. The projectors are standard LCD projectors. Instead of sensors and odd markers, you use a bluetooth drawing tablet. You get as many colors as you want, more natural usage, and vastly greater durability without all of the fiddling with sensors.
Short story: Technology is already advanced way beyond what you saw (or at least, we've found better ways of using it). Realistically, I'd say you could get the laptop/tablet/projector setup for $1500 or so and have a system that worked in any room you can put a projector in. And it would be completely mobile.
You'd make a horrible teacher.
Oh, sure, you could do fine in a University. Students there are expected to mostly teach themselves. However, primary and secondary schools are usually not that harsh. And don't give me the "If they don't want to learn they shouldn't be in school anyway" speech. Children are in school because, as adults, we know that they need to at least understand some basic things to function in society, even if they don't realize it yet.
Blackboards are great for one type of learning. Modern teachers, who know much more about how to teach people than you obviously do, try to teach to as many different types of students as possible. See, the point is to actually get them all to learn, not just the ones who learn quickly by lecture.
I'll hope that you said this as a joke. Even if you didn't, there are plenty of serious responses who agree with you. For all of you who thought this was insightful: The next time you wonder who to blame for any (perceived) lack in quality of education, look in the mirror.
How long ago was that? As I noted in another comment, this sort of thing has been in (limited but growing) use in classrooms in this area for a few years. It's not even that expensive. It's about the cost of two desktop computers (and the setup comes with a laptop).
They're excellent at what they do. However, that doesn't make them the end of the line.
What if (...I should patent this...) you could make a computer program that acted like a blackboard? Then, if you only had some device that would be able to take a computer screen and make it show up on the wall, you could make a sort of "virtual blackboard" And then, if only we had a way for you to use some pen-like device on something that was flat so you could still write normally. Wouldn't that be cool?
Right. You think a blackboard is great? Laptop/Tablet/Projector systems do everything they do, but give you the ability to display and manipulate real images, save everything you write so that it can be repeated/retrieved later, and provide a more interactive experience for all those students who don't learn as well just by listening to someone talk while writing on a blackboard.
Here's the best part: The schools out here (Northern VA) are already using them. And they're not even purchased with tax money. Private donations from local grocery stores pay the bills. No bureaucrat mandated their use. No stupid "No Child Left Without A Smartboard" law was passed to make the school obey rules written by someone with no educational experience whatsoever. This is being done by the teachers. Guess what? The teachers coming out of college right now are tech savvy. Of course, many of them who really excel at it choose not to be teachers. You've got to really love what you do to sign up for a profession where morons from across the country get to insult and punish you because they had this one teacher who was a jerk to them in fourth grade.
Back on topic, my point is this: Schools are already trying to get rid of "Old Schooling" but stupid politicians and the people who continue to think that education hasn't changed at all in thirty years are doing a pretty good job of holding them back. Urban areas have the money to battle this. Who knows when everyone out in hickville will see any of these changes. Maybe if they stopped treating teachers like they're one step above grocery baggers they'll have a chance. I know, we should pass another law requiring teachers to use technology intelligently. We'll make them attend classes in their spare time. But not pay them a cent more. In fact, we'll pay them less. Tech instructors don't work for free, you know.
If he actually gets that, yes.
Look people, it's just the max. You get that number by summing the maximum sentences of each individual crime the person commits. Let's look at an example (I-Am-Not-A-Lawyer):
Guy kills another guy in a car accident. It's not murder, just manslaughter, so he has (for example) a maximum of 35 years in prison. Maybe we add drunk driving (5 years). Now he's got a max sentence of 40 years in prison. Pretty bad.
Second guy steals a valve-stem cover. It's barely theft and its just a misdemeanor. It's got a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail, however, he's done it 800 times. 800 counts of misdemeanor theft, at a month a piece is about 66 years.
Does this mean the second guy is worse than the first? Stealing a valve-stem cover is hardly worse than manslaughter. It's not even close to drunk driving. Why does he get the bigger sentence? In truth, he doesn't. No judge is going to sentence someone to 66 years for something that petty. Criminals rarely serve consecutive sentences for large numbers of similar crimes. They rarely serve consecutive sentences for large numbers of any crimes. Judges aren't stupid. Beyond cherry-picked examples, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and people convicted of manslaughter generally get much longer sentences than people convicted of multiple counts of minor crimes. This guy won't be serving the max on each and every charge and he'll probably have his sentences served concurrently. It's just stupid to do things any other way.
That said, I doubt even 5 years of prison will be enjoyable for this guy.
Sorry, but I doubt that. Despite all efforts, no one has found any gene or set of genes that causes criminal behavior. The best we can really say is that prisons seem to have a greater concentration of XYY males, however, the difference is much smaller than early reports claimed and the number of XYY males is still a small minority of inmates.
Perhaps you were just making generalizations. Let's be specific. If you look at a criminal and see that their parents were criminals, as were their grandparents, it's silly to claim that criminality is genetic. There is something much stronger that all of them share: They were raised by their parents. Being a criminal tends to put one in a situation where their children will not have receive the same social teaching as the rest of the world. Most criminals are not financially stable, and thus their children tend to be similarly financially unstable. Until anyone is able to find any sort of real correlation between any genotype and increased criminality, claiming that there is a genetic component is nothing more than an attempt to avoid the problem.
The point here: I think your "7/10th genetic" is actually "7/10th socio-economic". Of course, many people hate hearing that because it means that there are things that can be done to help. If it's genetic, you can just shrug and walk away. If it's socio-economic, it means that it can be fixed if you're willing to give up on a small portion of your greed. Better funding for police helps, but not as much as better funding for the public schools (which rich people everywhere hate... why invest in something that can't turn a profit?), public libraries, parks, art programs. That is your smart pill. It already exists, but its something that rich people have to be willing to pay for.