Such is the power of Orwellian rewrites on the subconscious...Not only you, but the previous poster state:
"...Sure, Lucas can go back and revise history so Greedo shoots first..."
"...You know what really grinds my gears, though? The fact that after Lucas does his new cut, the old ones are never to see the light of day. Outside of bootlegs, we will never see Greedo shoot first on DVD..."
Han shot first originally, dammit! You currently see Greedo shoot first on the new DVDs.
" Ok: 1) Referring to the movie Gattica? Come on, can't we do better. How about not refer to a movie, or at least not one so lame."
I was about to reply with how we are moving toward a bleak world where genetic half-man half-kangaroo breeds are forced into a subculture like in "Tank Girl", but I guess Gattica might be more on topic...now I don't know what to think.
As someone who is just now finishing up my BSEE (returning to school after getting a BS in Physics 15 years ago) I can give a perspective...
My university is quickly shoving analog classes into the dusty corner, teaching and offering classes only the bare minimum to satisfy ABET cert requirements. All of the newer classes being developed, as well as the only ones with any new lab budgets or equipment, are all digital systems and HF communications. I have had several professors who never once used a transistor in the professional world, but I've been fortunate to have a few old guys who have crazy stories of designing power plants, transmitters, and weapon systems from the pre-digital days.
I like the artsiness of analog systems, they are fun to tinker and learn with, but the skills seem to be of limited desire by employers and college endowment fund folks that tend to influence curriculum.
Resources for digital are very powerful now, however. If I have to do anything even remotely complex with analog, it is far easier for me to do digital emulation of the circuit and burn it to a chip, than it is for me to fuss about with FETs, thermistors, or whatever.
I do feel that it is a different world now than just ten years or so ago for EE students.
I would bet that this (increased violence) is a product of our learning environment and your teacher's instructional method, and not of martial arts in particular. It sounds like you are in an intense, amped-up, aggro'd, hoowah, realistic-total-combat, type of class. This will encourage violence whether it is a martial-arts teacher, or a soccer coach, or a little league parent.
I bet I could even guess the style you train in within 5 tries.
I've been studying for about 12 years now, in my third style/school, and without exception the schools I've attended have decreased our (the students) tendency toward violence, anger, and aggression. I've seen some seriously emotionally angry and knee-jerk violent students come through, and leave with far better restraint and control of their emotions and attitude toward violence.
I suggest you take an objective look at your particular style and school if you truly feel that MA increases violent tendencies, and ask yourself if you are the product of a misguided or uncontrolled teaching environment.
There are some basic physics nits to pick, I'd recommend reading up on guys like Carnot, Boyle, etc. When A/C coils pass heat to the outside surroundings, they are *not* creating a net increase in overall heat, they are simply moving existing heat from one place to another. The heat you feel coming off the back of your fridge is simply the heat that was contained in the interior of the unit. Once cool, the A/C only has to work to maintain a temperature difference, pushing already existing energy back to the outside--it doesn't continually pump heat willy-nilly into the atmosphere or create it from nowhere.
If left at rest, your fridge or office building would gradually warm as the energy migrates back in through conduction and convection, until everything is at equilibrium. Using your argument, if everyone turned off their A/C at once, we would risk global cooling as all of that outside heat gets sucked back into the buildings!
The only net heat increase happening is due to mechanical and electrical inefficiencies in the motor and compression cycle. All mechanical systems do this.
Singling out the bad apples is key, and when done right, can be effective from the police's side as well.
A few years back here in Seattle, during the WTO riots/protests we had, police stationed "paintball snipers" at various points whose job it was to mark troublemakers with paint, which could then be picked out of the confusion for arrest. It arguably prevented more escalation from taking place.
It also sounded like the closest thing to a real guilt-free first person shooter you could get, "Hippie Tagging, 3D";-)
Good points, but the parent-post's view "...don't homeschool..." still has merit.
For example, I happen to work with two degreed engineers, both nice guys, but with some odd quirks stemming from their homeschooled background.
Most astounding, is the odd gaps in their knowledge. On a frequent basis, they say things that reveal innocent ignorance that stuns me. One knew absolutely nothing on history of the 20th century, although able to quote pre-medeival history chapter and verse. He had never heard of the Berlin Wall, for example. He did not know that airplanes were a recent invention, and thought they had them during the American Revolution and Civil Wars. The other had never hear of the Cold War, and believed that there was only a single ultimate nuke, that the USA had sole possession of. When I told him that the ex-Soviet states, Isreal, Britain, India, et al all had nuclear weapons, I had to emphatically have a sit-down with him in front of Wikipedia for a couple of hours.
To his credit, he was quite eager to learn, just horribly sheltered and naive. Not his fault really.
Again, were it not for the regular frequency that these gaps showed in their knowledge, I'd cut slack, after all everyone has their weak spots. But these guys...unbelievable. I'd bet that their parents focused highly on the areas that they held the greatest competency, but seriously undervalued those areas which they themselves were weak in. As someone schooling their own kids, I don't believe that anyone is capable of the necessary objectivity and drive to "level load" a homeschool curriculum.
More subtle was their social behavior. They both, even though in their 30-40's, had a childlike deferral to authority and work situations. Picture how an 8 year old will fidget, saying "Awwwww, but Mommmmmm, jeeeezzzz", and you will see that same undercurrent in their tone of voice, posture, and behavior with coworkers. They also have a strange conspiratorial "Hope Mom doesn't catch us" sense of humor when they try and joke around with people.
I'm not condemning any of this, really, just pointing out that homeschooling leaves definite signs, and those of us that weren't homeschooled often are able to see the quirks of those that are, even if you aren't aware of the signals that you are sending yourself.
Regardless of what audio the manufacturer puts in the car, it will be marked up to twice of what a comparable retail deck would be. Don't take any audio, save yourself $500-$1000 off of the sticker price, then put your own kickass system in for half the price.
Even better if they aren't charging you for a standard cassette deck, negotiate them down on the car anyway with the excuse that they are shoveling obsolete tech on you. It really does work! Heck, I'd take a crank-wound gramophone in the car just for the negotiating power it would give me:-)
I disagree. At the point where someone is required to do the integral of x^3, for example, they will have already (if the teacher is even remotely competent) been through and tested on the fundamental theorem of calculus and will have already learned the algorithm behind cranking out the integral by hand via "limit as delta x approaches zero yadda yadda..." for which a calculator is useless.
I had a calculus teacher whose test were only about 50% calculation, the other half was abstract sketching, algorithmic expression, and description "Describe the process you'd use to look for discontinuities in the function x^3 / tan x" for example.
That is how you test to use calculators as a resource, instead of a crutch.
Additionally, in the real world the chances of you finding a tidy integral or differential equation that neatly fits the format that can be solved by hand is slim to none. I'd much rather employ an engineer who know how to hit the research tools or code a model in MATLAB than one who was never taught or allowed the usage of enabling tools in college.
My wife is finishing up her math degree, I already have a physics degree. We've both found calculators indispensible to learning math. Once you know the process and meaning of an integral, why waste pages of paper cranking out error-prone work by hand if you now have a resource to let you get past the repetitious bookkeeping of algebra and arithmetic? Especially in today's information age, the tired old "what if you're stranded on a desert island and have to calculate a ballistic trajectory using palm fronds" excuse is really wearing thin.
Being slashdot, I'll make an analogy. Restricting calculators from math tests or instruction would be like saying a CS student should be forced to code everything in assembly during exams, because usings high-level languages would inhibit the understanding of programming theory. C++ and Java are cute toys, but have no place in the classroom!
It's silly. Restricting calculators only exposes the limitations of the instructor and hampers the student.
Your post really shows the essence of the issue...people placing value judgements on activities or interests that result in a scorn or exclusion of folks who hold differing values.
You, for example, place a higher value on 'tangible' material accomplishments than on social. That's ok (i.e. I'm not making a value judgement), but it doesn't mean that someone who values friends and relationships is less beneficial to society. Heck, even the root of the word 'society' implies interaction with the greater group of others.
Does creating that OLED contribute more for society? Or does coaching a little league team and making someone else's childhood a little better ultimately benefit society more?
Additionally, many of our most famous inventor geeks managed to also be rowdy socialites, Richard Feynman being the most notorious. Even Stephen Hawking cuts loose and guests on frivolous TV shows. Life doesn't have to be an either/or trade off.
IMO though (just the Buddhist in me), seeing life as a "zero sum game" where you measure the tally in the 'tangibles' column againt the ever shrinking 'seconds left in the lifetime' is a recipe for stress and unfulfillment.
My wife is an educator. In k-12 public school, it is often not the teacher's fault that they are handing out piles of insipid repetitious and formulaic homework. Many of the lesson plans (materials, assignments, homework, testing) is mandated and approved by the administration and state boards. The days of a teacher having any control over developing and tailoring their own curriculum are disappearing rapidly. THAT is what is crippling our teaching and classroom quality IMO.
I've seen several brilliant and excellent teachers frustrated by how much they are handcuffed by meeting the metrics and standards purely to pass the requisite state bubble-form tests and make the administration's charts look normal. Too often, a teacher will get a class that may contain especially brilliant kids, or kids that aren't and need focused extra attention, and are not able to provide extra tailoring or balance for either type of student.
"No Child Left Behind" and standard metrics may work well for the kids in the heap of the bell curve, but for you, or I, or many kids that fall outside of that one standard deviation from what the rigid curriculum is focused on, then they suffer.
Teacher's are having control taken from them, while simultaneously having fingers of blame pointed at them.
This is very important if you are traveling somewhere that your ID isn't immediately recognizable. I made the mistake of having "Ask for ID" on several of my cards. I was refused purchases many times while in China, and had problems even at mainstream hotels paying for rooms, especially when no one spoke English. I was able to literally write "Ask for ID" on receipt slips a couple of times though;)
Also, in Europe many hotels will retain your passport. What are you going to show for ID then when you go out? See if the bartender in a Dublin pub believes you when you try to convince him that your Minnesota driver's license is a valid ID and not some weird forgery! I had to beg my friends to pay for me once when a bar wouldn't accept my driver's license.
A natural consequence of aging is that the retina gradually receives less and less light, due to clouding of the cornea and the inner fluid. It affects nearly everyone. It affects night vision most dramatically, I'm in my mid 30's and really notice my night driving ability going to hell. I remember in my teens being able to drive effortlessly in moonless night rainstorms with poor wiper blades, now I struggle even on clear nights.
http://www.darksky.org/infoshts/is156.html
So, if it seems like everything was brighter when you were younger, it was, as far as the light that actually made it to your retina was concerned! But it wasn't necessarily because the universe outside of your eye was brighter.
I read an estimate (can't find the source) that by our 30's, our retina receives only 50% of the light as it did when we were a child. We don't notice it so much because the brain is remarkably good at compensating and interpolating.
Um, no. All of the information is referenced back to the original peer-reviewed published scientific sources. Talkorigins does have an agenda in that they are intended as a single-source collection of information about evolution theory in general and are often the first cited place to refute creationism claims about evolution, but I have not seen any misinformation or exaggeration.
Can you cite a specific example from talkorigins showing this misinformation or exagerration?
Not exactly, this may have been recently clarified (I graduated BS Physics/Astronomy in 1993), but in the older literature/textbooks, "planetary nebula" was a term used to categorize all sorts of Messier and NGC cataloged nebula, regardless of their origin. In the early astronomy days, the origins of nebula were only vaguely known or theorized.
It is simply a case of misleading legacy terminology, it was beaten into my head quite early by my astronomy profs however that "planetary" has nothing to do with planets (and was a common trick question on tests to see if you had been paying attention in class).
You are prohibited from waving a Kerry sign at a Bush campaign rally, please go to your out-of-sight designated opposing viewpoint cloister to exercise your freedom.
"...religion..."
Please note that it is for your own safety as a Muslim that we have placed you on the no-fly list.
"...assembly..."
Please apply for the proper demonstration permit before marching in opposition to the current war-of-the-month, or be detained.
"...press..."
No photos of dead or wounded soldiers allowed without prior approval by military review. Please do not attempt to count or report numbers of enemy civilian deaths on the public airwaves.
Very true. My wife is an educator at a local public middle school for a deaf and hard-of-hearing program. This is the only public school within a 2-hour drive with such a program, so all of the deaf kids come here. However, MCLB requires these kids (many of whom suffer other developmental disabilites as well, and can barely read or write) to test at the same level as everyone else, or else the school as a whole is denied funding.
The staff uses some very creative and debatable interpretations of the NCLB requirements to coach and assist these kids as they take their tests, which means doing everything except physically fill in the bubbles for the students themselves.
NCLB is a crock, as it assumes that all children are born and have equal ability and potential, which all children don't. So any inner city school (economically disadvanteaged) or school with special ed programs is going to be unfairly punished by the process.
Good schools will get progressively better, but poor or special schools can't compete and get locked into a spiral of decline.
NCLB is educational and social darwinism at its ugliest.
Um...so are they claiming that this clock has somehow been rendered miraculously exempt from those very same physical constant deviations that it is trying to measure?
A dimensionless physical constant applies to the *whole* freakin' universe, including the clock. The only result from the clock would be "same as it ever was...same as it ever was..."
I was ten years old living down in Vancouver, WA back in 1980. We had a pristine view of the mountain from our back yard and would constantly have "eruption barbeques" at the house.
During one of the many ash-falls that used to regularly dust us, my brother and I ran out one morning to play in the new ash before our parents woke up. There was about 1-2 inches coating everything, like new snow, and it had just rained making all of the ash into an interesting clay-like consistency.
Kids being kids, my little brother and I ran out to the driveway and started writing our names with our fingers into the ash covering my dad's brand new 1 day old VW Scirroco in the driveway. It started out with "Hi" and "Cool" and progressed to "Van Halen kicks ass" and "KISS rules" and liberal scrawlings of "dork", "shit", "Tony sucks dick", drawings of boobies and penises, you get the idea.
Well, we got into a hell of a lot of trouble when my dad saw the car when he had to wipe all of the ash off to drive to work. Our trouble later escalated when he discovered that, after going through a car wash to rinse off the rest, everything that we had written on his car was now premanently scratched into the paint and windows of his car, ash being a fine gritty silicate. Our dad's co-workers ribbed him endlessly about his "custom paint job" as it took him several weeks before he could get his car repainted and the windows replaced.
All told, a few thousand dollar "oops" for us kids;)
It is not that Physics is hard or challenging by default, my experience getting a degree was exactly the opposite. It's concepts were often intuitive and remarkably elegant. Physics suffers the reputation because *mathematics* as a subject is often made unnecessarily hard and difficult to learn. I'm getting a second degree in EE right now, and again I find the pattern repeating itself. The theoretical concepts are rather straightforward, but much of the mathematics foundations are taught with varying degrees of quality. If you aren't one of the lucky few students to have had a *good* mathematics education and instruction (and not just forced to grind through the weeding-out-oriented university courses like most others) then you will struggle with the mathematical sciences like physics and engineering.
I tutor in my spare time, and I can't tell you how many times I have seen students that *never* get instruction in the language and concepts of math, and are instead buried with proofs, derivations, lectures, and uninformative textbooks that fail to realize that their purpose in a university is to *teach* math, not to *validate and prove* it.
Slashdot Mirror
Such is the power of Orwellian rewrites on the subconscious...Not only you, but the previous poster state:
"...Sure, Lucas can go back and revise history so Greedo shoots first..."
"...You know what really grinds my gears, though? The fact that after Lucas does his new cut, the old ones are never to see the light of day. Outside of bootlegs, we will never see Greedo shoot first on DVD..."
Han shot first originally, dammit! You currently see Greedo shoot first on the new DVDs.
" Ok: 1) Referring to the movie Gattica? Come on, can't we do better. How about not refer to a movie, or at least not one so lame."
I was about to reply with how we are moving toward a bleak world where genetic half-man half-kangaroo breeds are forced into a subculture like in "Tank Girl", but I guess Gattica might be more on topic...now I don't know what to think.
As someone who is just now finishing up my BSEE (returning to school after getting a BS in Physics 15 years ago) I can give a perspective...
My university is quickly shoving analog classes into the dusty corner, teaching and offering classes only the bare minimum to satisfy ABET cert requirements. All of the newer classes being developed, as well as the only ones with any new lab budgets or equipment, are all digital systems and HF communications. I have had several professors who never once used a transistor in the professional world, but I've been fortunate to have a few old guys who have crazy stories of designing power plants, transmitters, and weapon systems from the pre-digital days.
I like the artsiness of analog systems, they are fun to tinker and learn with, but the skills seem to be of limited desire by employers and college endowment fund folks that tend to influence curriculum.
Resources for digital are very powerful now, however. If I have to do anything even remotely complex with analog, it is far easier for me to do digital emulation of the circuit and burn it to a chip, than it is for me to fuss about with FETs, thermistors, or whatever.
I do feel that it is a different world now than just ten years or so ago for EE students.
"Broken by The Nibbler" Nope, they aren't safe either...
I would bet that this (increased violence) is a product of our learning environment and your teacher's instructional method, and not of martial arts in particular. It sounds like you are in an intense, amped-up, aggro'd, hoowah, realistic-total-combat, type of class. This will encourage violence whether it is a martial-arts teacher, or a soccer coach, or a little league parent.
I bet I could even guess the style you train in within 5 tries.
I've been studying for about 12 years now, in my third style/school, and without exception the schools I've attended have decreased our (the students) tendency toward violence, anger, and aggression. I've seen some seriously emotionally angry and knee-jerk violent students come through, and leave with far better restraint and control of their emotions and attitude toward violence.
I suggest you take an objective look at your particular style and school if you truly feel that MA increases violent tendencies, and ask yourself if you are the product of a misguided or uncontrolled teaching environment.
"...I welcome any contrary evidence..."
There are some basic physics nits to pick, I'd recommend reading up on guys like Carnot, Boyle, etc. When A/C coils pass heat to the outside surroundings, they are *not* creating a net increase in overall heat, they are simply moving existing heat from one place to another. The heat you feel coming off the back of your fridge is simply the heat that was contained in the interior of the unit. Once cool, the A/C only has to work to maintain a temperature difference, pushing already existing energy back to the outside--it doesn't continually pump heat willy-nilly into the atmosphere or create it from nowhere.
If left at rest, your fridge or office building would gradually warm as the energy migrates back in through conduction and convection, until everything is at equilibrium. Using your argument, if everyone turned off their A/C at once, we would risk global cooling as all of that outside heat gets sucked back into the buildings!
The only net heat increase happening is due to mechanical and electrical inefficiencies in the motor and compression cycle. All mechanical systems do this.
Singling out the bad apples is key, and when done right, can be effective from the police's side as well.
;-)
A few years back here in Seattle, during the WTO riots/protests we had, police stationed "paintball snipers" at various points whose job it was to mark troublemakers with paint, which could then be picked out of the confusion for arrest. It arguably prevented more escalation from taking place.
It also sounded like the closest thing to a real guilt-free first person shooter you could get, "Hippie Tagging, 3D"
"...or risk getting megatively modded..."
+1x10^6 Insightful
Good points, but the parent-post's view "...don't homeschool..." still has merit.
For example, I happen to work with two degreed engineers, both nice guys, but with some odd quirks stemming from their homeschooled background.
Most astounding, is the odd gaps in their knowledge. On a frequent basis, they say things that reveal innocent ignorance that stuns me. One knew absolutely nothing on history of the 20th century, although able to quote pre-medeival history chapter and verse. He had never heard of the Berlin Wall, for example. He did not know that airplanes were a recent invention, and thought they had them during the American Revolution and Civil Wars. The other had never hear of the Cold War, and believed that there was only a single ultimate nuke, that the USA had sole possession of. When I told him that the ex-Soviet states, Isreal, Britain, India, et al all had nuclear weapons, I had to emphatically have a sit-down with him in front of Wikipedia for a couple of hours.
To his credit, he was quite eager to learn, just horribly sheltered and naive. Not his fault really.
Again, were it not for the regular frequency that these gaps showed in their knowledge, I'd cut slack, after all everyone has their weak spots. But these guys...unbelievable. I'd bet that their parents focused highly on the areas that they held the greatest competency, but seriously undervalued those areas which they themselves were weak in. As someone schooling their own kids, I don't believe that anyone is capable of the necessary objectivity and drive to "level load" a homeschool curriculum.
More subtle was their social behavior. They both, even though in their 30-40's, had a childlike deferral to authority and work situations. Picture how an 8 year old will fidget, saying "Awwwww, but Mommmmmm, jeeeezzzz", and you will see that same undercurrent in their tone of voice, posture, and behavior with coworkers. They also have a strange conspiratorial "Hope Mom doesn't catch us" sense of humor when they try and joke around with people.
I'm not condemning any of this, really, just pointing out that homeschooling leaves definite signs, and those of us that weren't homeschooled often are able to see the quirks of those that are, even if you aren't aware of the signals that you are sending yourself.
To follow on with this with more analogies...
Is it also immoral to hang a "No Solicitors" sign on your door at home? Or say "No Thanks" and shut the door to the salesman?
Or do you claim that you are being immoral by robbing the company of its supposed right to force its way into your personal space?
Regardless of what audio the manufacturer puts in the car, it will be marked up to twice of what a comparable retail deck would be. Don't take any audio, save yourself $500-$1000 off of the sticker price, then put your own kickass system in for half the price.
:-)
Even better if they aren't charging you for a standard cassette deck, negotiate them down on the car anyway with the excuse that they are shoveling obsolete tech on you. It really does work! Heck, I'd take a crank-wound gramophone in the car just for the negotiating power it would give me
I disagree. At the point where someone is required to do the integral of x^3, for example, they will have already (if the teacher is even remotely competent) been through and tested on the fundamental theorem of calculus and will have already learned the algorithm behind cranking out the integral by hand via "limit as delta x approaches zero yadda yadda..." for which a calculator is useless.
I had a calculus teacher whose test were only about 50% calculation, the other half was abstract sketching, algorithmic expression, and description "Describe the process you'd use to look for discontinuities in the function x^3 / tan x" for example.
That is how you test to use calculators as a resource, instead of a crutch.
Additionally, in the real world the chances of you finding a tidy integral or differential equation that neatly fits the format that can be solved by hand is slim to none. I'd much rather employ an engineer who know how to hit the research tools or code a model in MATLAB than one who was never taught or allowed the usage of enabling tools in college.
My wife is finishing up her math degree, I already have a physics degree. We've both found calculators indispensible to learning math. Once you know the process and meaning of an integral, why waste pages of paper cranking out error-prone work by hand if you now have a resource to let you get past the repetitious bookkeeping of algebra and arithmetic? Especially in today's information age, the tired old "what if you're stranded on a desert island and have to calculate a ballistic trajectory using palm fronds" excuse is really wearing thin.
Being slashdot, I'll make an analogy. Restricting calculators from math tests or instruction would be like saying a CS student should be forced to code everything in assembly during exams, because usings high-level languages would inhibit the understanding of programming theory. C++ and Java are cute toys, but have no place in the classroom!
It's silly. Restricting calculators only exposes the limitations of the instructor and hampers the student.
Your post really shows the essence of the issue...people placing value judgements on activities or interests that result in a scorn or exclusion of folks who hold differing values.
You, for example, place a higher value on 'tangible' material accomplishments than on social. That's ok (i.e. I'm not making a value judgement), but it doesn't mean that someone who values friends and relationships is less beneficial to society. Heck, even the root of the word 'society' implies interaction with the greater group of others.
Does creating that OLED contribute more for society? Or does coaching a little league team and making someone else's childhood a little better ultimately benefit society more?
Additionally, many of our most famous inventor geeks managed to also be rowdy socialites, Richard Feynman being the most notorious. Even Stephen Hawking cuts loose and guests on frivolous TV shows. Life doesn't have to be an either/or trade off.
IMO though (just the Buddhist in me), seeing life as a "zero sum game" where you measure the tally in the 'tangibles' column againt the ever shrinking 'seconds left in the lifetime' is a recipe for stress and unfulfillment.
My wife is an educator. In k-12 public school, it is often not the teacher's fault that they are handing out piles of insipid repetitious and formulaic homework. Many of the lesson plans (materials, assignments, homework, testing) is mandated and approved by the administration and state boards. The days of a teacher having any control over developing and tailoring their own curriculum are disappearing rapidly. THAT is what is crippling our teaching and classroom quality IMO.
I've seen several brilliant and excellent teachers frustrated by how much they are handcuffed by meeting the metrics and standards purely to pass the requisite state bubble-form tests and make the administration's charts look normal. Too often, a teacher will get a class that may contain especially brilliant kids, or kids that aren't and need focused extra attention, and are not able to provide extra tailoring or balance for either type of student.
"No Child Left Behind" and standard metrics may work well for the kids in the heap of the bell curve, but for you, or I, or many kids that fall outside of that one standard deviation from what the rigid curriculum is focused on, then they suffer.
Teacher's are having control taken from them, while simultaneously having fingers of blame pointed at them.
Sad state of affairs in the USA.
This is very important if you are traveling somewhere that your ID isn't immediately recognizable. I made the mistake of having "Ask for ID" on several of my cards. I was refused purchases many times while in China, and had problems even at mainstream hotels paying for rooms, especially when no one spoke English. I was able to literally write "Ask for ID" on receipt slips a couple of times though ;)
Also, in Europe many hotels will retain your passport. What are you going to show for ID then when you go out? See if the bartender in a Dublin pub believes you when you try to convince him that your Minnesota driver's license is a valid ID and not some weird forgery! I had to beg my friends to pay for me once when a bar wouldn't accept my driver's license.
A natural consequence of aging is that the retina gradually receives less and less light, due to clouding of the cornea and the inner fluid. It affects nearly everyone. It affects night vision most dramatically, I'm in my mid 30's and really notice my night driving ability going to hell. I remember in my teens being able to drive effortlessly in moonless night rainstorms with poor wiper blades, now I struggle even on clear nights. http://www.darksky.org/infoshts/is156.html So, if it seems like everything was brighter when you were younger, it was, as far as the light that actually made it to your retina was concerned! But it wasn't necessarily because the universe outside of your eye was brighter. I read an estimate (can't find the source) that by our 30's, our retina receives only 50% of the light as it did when we were a child. We don't notice it so much because the brain is remarkably good at compensating and interpolating.
Um, no. All of the information is referenced back to the original peer-reviewed published scientific sources. Talkorigins does have an agenda in that they are intended as a single-source collection of information about evolution theory in general and are often the first cited place to refute creationism claims about evolution, but I have not seen any misinformation or exaggeration. Can you cite a specific example from talkorigins showing this misinformation or exagerration?
Not exactly, this may have been recently clarified (I graduated BS Physics/Astronomy in 1993), but in the older literature/textbooks, "planetary nebula" was a term used to categorize all sorts of Messier and NGC cataloged nebula, regardless of their origin. In the early astronomy days, the origins of nebula were only vaguely known or theorized.
It is simply a case of misleading legacy terminology, it was beaten into my head quite early by my astronomy profs however that "planetary" has nothing to do with planets (and was a common trick question on tests to see if you had been paying attention in class).
"...the human rights of freedom of speech..."
You are prohibited from waving a Kerry sign at a Bush campaign rally, please go to your out-of-sight designated opposing viewpoint cloister to exercise your freedom.
"...religion..."
Please note that it is for your own safety as a Muslim that we have placed you on the no-fly list.
"...assembly..."
Please apply for the proper demonstration permit before marching in opposition to the current war-of-the-month, or be detained.
"...press..."
No photos of dead or wounded soldiers allowed without prior approval by military review. Please do not attempt to count or report numbers of enemy civilian deaths on the public airwaves.
Just sayin'....
Very true. My wife is an educator at a local public middle school for a deaf and hard-of-hearing program. This is the only public school within a 2-hour drive with such a program, so all of the deaf kids come here. However, MCLB requires these kids (many of whom suffer other developmental disabilites as well, and can barely read or write) to test at the same level as everyone else, or else the school as a whole is denied funding.
The staff uses some very creative and debatable interpretations of the NCLB requirements to coach and assist these kids as they take their tests, which means doing everything except physically fill in the bubbles for the students themselves.
NCLB is a crock, as it assumes that all children are born and have equal ability and potential, which all children don't. So any inner city school (economically disadvanteaged) or school with special ed programs is going to be unfairly punished by the process.
Good schools will get progressively better, but poor or special schools can't compete and get locked into a spiral of decline.
NCLB is educational and social darwinism at its ugliest.
Um...so are they claiming that this clock has somehow been rendered miraculously exempt from those very same physical constant deviations that it is trying to measure? A dimensionless physical constant applies to the *whole* freakin' universe, including the clock. The only result from the clock would be "same as it ever was...same as it ever was..."
The Seether is Louise. We don't know which one's Pink, however.
I was ten years old living down in Vancouver, WA back in 1980. We had a pristine view of the mountain from our back yard and would constantly have "eruption barbeques" at the house.
;)
During one of the many ash-falls that used to regularly dust us, my brother and I ran out one morning to play in the new ash before our parents woke up. There was about 1-2 inches coating everything, like new snow, and it had just rained making all of the ash into an interesting clay-like consistency.
Kids being kids, my little brother and I ran out to the driveway and started writing our names with our fingers into the ash covering my dad's brand new 1 day old VW Scirroco in the driveway. It started out with "Hi" and "Cool" and progressed to "Van Halen kicks ass" and "KISS rules" and liberal scrawlings of "dork", "shit", "Tony sucks dick", drawings of boobies and penises, you get the idea.
Well, we got into a hell of a lot of trouble when my dad saw the car when he had to wipe all of the ash off to drive to work. Our trouble later escalated when he discovered that, after going through a car wash to rinse off the rest, everything that we had written on his car was now premanently scratched into the paint and windows of his car, ash being a fine gritty silicate. Our dad's co-workers ribbed him endlessly about his "custom paint job" as it took him several weeks before he could get his car repainted and the windows replaced.
All told, a few thousand dollar "oops" for us kids
It is not that Physics is hard or challenging by default, my experience getting a degree was exactly the opposite. It's concepts were often intuitive and remarkably elegant. Physics suffers the reputation because *mathematics* as a subject is often made unnecessarily hard and difficult to learn. I'm getting a second degree in EE right now, and again I find the pattern repeating itself. The theoretical concepts are rather straightforward, but much of the mathematics foundations are taught with varying degrees of quality. If you aren't one of the lucky few students to have had a *good* mathematics education and instruction (and not just forced to grind through the weeding-out-oriented university courses like most others) then you will struggle with the mathematical sciences like physics and engineering.
I tutor in my spare time, and I can't tell you how many times I have seen students that *never* get instruction in the language and concepts of math, and are instead buried with proofs, derivations, lectures, and uninformative textbooks that fail to realize that their purpose in a university is to *teach* math, not to *validate and prove* it.