It's ok for some people to make some statements and not for others. If the statement had been made by a comedian or some serially rebellious organization, it would be outright funny and "edgy"-- but those things do not describe Kenneth Cole.
This situation is like your white uncle repeating jokes done by racy black stand-up comedians at work. It doesn't work and it would be inappropriate.
Well, some magic tricks are stupidly simple, yes. But others are extremely intricate and involve great deals of engineering and foresight. I'll use this as a simple example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewef620ptj4
Given the money involved in big acts, I still wouldn't be surprised.
From the article and summary: "'The potential is there for the worst kind of activity,' says Folsom Prison Warden Rick Hill"
Really? A prison warden is using a truism to invoke fear? Of course there is *potential* for the worst kind of activity. There's also *potential* for the *best* kind of activity... like calling your lawyer for consultation because you've been wrongly convicted. Say what you want about the likelihood of the cell phones being used for such things, but the point is that taken a prison warden's input on the danger of any prisoner activity is pretty silly.
Why don't we take a video game approach to this?
(1) Evaluate the bug exploit (2) Find out why people are exploiting the bug (3) Analyze current systems and check to see if official methods can be implemented to allow for controlled and sanctioned functions. (4) Implement such sanctioned functions. (5) Eliminate bug and institute severe penalties for those using a similar bug to a similar end.
Always analyze your own system first to see if you can prevent the need for crime/exploiting. Translated for the prison situations:
(1) People are smuggling in phones through orifices, mail, and corrupt delivery services. (2) Why do people want phones? To talk to family, friends and lawyers? To participate in crime? (3) Can additional phones and phone time be allowed? Would it be beneficial to rehabilitation (behavioral and addiction). Could there be exploits to this and how can they be prevented? (4) Implement workable ideas, measure results. (5) Severely punish anyone with a smuggled cell-phone.
Don't blame GPS. It's a system utilized by a device to show you where things likely are. If people die in blindly following GPS, that's on the user. That's a single point of failure in their survival plan that made for themselves.
Tip: If you're going out into the wild with a GPS device, also bring along a compass, a map of the area (topographical), and let people know when you're leaving and when you'll be back. Also tell them if you're not back by X date, call the authorities.
Hope for the best, but plan for the worst, people.
Right below the video, the author of the article states: "What strikes me immediately is that The Daily looks like a conventional news magazine. I don't know what I was expecting -- perhaps something new and more exciting -- but what I got was essentially a multimedia iPad version of Time."
(1) The conventional news magazine is a winning model proven by decades of profit. (2) The author had no specific idea what he wanted from the product. (3) The author, while have no specific idea what he wants, he knew he wanted to be excited by something new to him.
What that can even be, who knows? Not him, that's for sure. Maybe there should have been a radioactive badger. Maybe he wanted to see words immediately downloaded into his brain while being hugged by Steve Jobs who's chanting, "You're my number #1 friend, Apple iPad User 0011286453. You make me happy."
It sure looks like a multimedia Time, but isn't that the next step in evolution? News media has gone from word-of-mouth, to letters, to print, to print with carved images, to print with black and white photography, to print with color photography, to digital distribution, to digital distribution with video. The problem is that the last couple steps were cluttered with links to other revenue-producing products, thus stealing away from the focus on the news. That's why print has survived despite the digital revolution.
The Daily take the high quality, quick turn-over expectations of online news media and puts it into the less-noisy magazine format.
Now, I hate Murdoch and pretty much the entirety of News Corp as much as the next rational person, but this looks to be done in the right format. That's how I want to read my online magazine news when I finally get a tablet PC. Stick a high standard for journalistic integrity on something like The Daily, and I'll be a subscriber.
If you want something less anecdotal and more universal, I would like to refer you to federal minimum wage standards, health and safety standards, and the like. American have set standards for themselves and they've been made into law. Others have set further standards and those have been made into union policy.
And we're not all well-paid nerds. I'm a poorly paid nerd, but that's because I choose to work in education and educational systems are sapped by highly-paid and ineffectual administrations and a recent wave of education scapegoating.
Did you actually glean that from what I wrote? Do you know how unemployment works? Have you ever been unemployed and collected unemployment insurance?
Illegal immigrants don't collect unemployment. There are WAY too many safeguards and protections against collecting UI fraudulently as a citizen, let alone an illegal resident.
Also, people here illegally are not filling jobs that would otherwise be filled by citizens. If it weren't for the hordes of illegal workers in the farming industry, your fruits and vegetable picking would be done by expensive machines or even more costly unionized citizen labor-- that's if they're willing to travel with the crop seasons and risk being without work for long periods.
If you're down with mechanized farming, then you wouldn't mind the majority of farm land being owned and operated by corporations, would you? The private farmer, rare as he is already, would go extinct without hesitation. Once the corporate farms have full control, you may as well welcome further standardization of the American diet because, after all, it's cheaper to farm only one strain of one species of potato and corporations are ultimately beholden to the profit demands of their share-holders. Add that to the then-larger corporate farming lobby and you'll see a massive increase in subsidies to make the complete lack of competition more profitable.
What I'm for: (1) Deporting illegal immigrants who participate in violent or property crimes. Their deportation is cheaper than long-term imprisonment. (2) Fixing the immigration application process. (3) Creating an amnesty system giving illegal immigrants conditional legal status if they: -have been here for 3+ years -have no felonies -can prove that they've been working steadily for at least 66% of their time here
Amnesty would also be given to the businesses who had been employing these illegal immigrants. Children of illegal immigrants (born here or elsewhere) would have an entire other (complicated) system of allowances.
Once ALL of that has been done, then you can get draconian with business penalties/jail time, and frequent deportation. There would be a reliable system for applying for citizenship, a standard and expectation of work and education.
You can't put the cart before the horse and expect everything to be OK. You need to set a simple working system for legal immigration and the change to general compliance before you pull out the guns and cuffs.
It has nothing to do with political power/votes. It has to do with (1) the cost of sending them back, (2) the potential for them to add to the economy (even if illegally), and (3) the cost to the economy if they all suddenly disappeared.
If the taxpayer were to pay for the rounding up and deportation of everyone in the country illegally, we'd not only have a MASSIVE bill on our hands but a ton of businesses would fail in the following days.
As much as "DO SOMETHING NOW"-sayers like to scream, they just don't want to understand that the nation is built on the exploitation of people desperate to make a living for their children. Gardeners, janitors, textiles, builders, cooks, cleaners, harvesters, etc. -- the "dirty job" industry would quickly collapse, entire crops would rot until reliable, knowledgeable workers can be found and employed; the stock market would drop with it (thanks to interdependent investment); and we'd still have unemployment because there wouldn't be a system in place to give those open jobs to the willing-to-work unemployed.
You're right. It's not about race, but it's not about crime, either. It's about MONEY. And the biggest obstacle to getting a fix through Congress is the "DO SOMETHING NOW" types shooting down pragmatic approaches such as plans that would allow amnesty for select illegal immigrants... like some of the ones in the farming industry.
"NO!!! I want all-or-nothing!! ALL OR NOTHING! DO SOMETHING NOW!"
Note: Semi-automatic just means anything but a bolt/lever/pump action firearm. This can be a simple pistol.
I had a 7th grade math teacher that everyone hated (because he was excited about math). I was in his class reluctantly because I scored high on placement tests but hated being in the same class as all the rich kids. When I was in front of the class, I did my work just fine. When I was in the back of the class my scores crapped out.
The teacher, noticed the pattern and paid attention to me while I copied problems from the board for the daily quiz and saw that I was constantly squinting. I remember doing so, but thought it was normal and it was hard for anyone to see from the back of the class.
He contacted an optometrist buddy of his to hook me up with a free eye exam (my first ever) and I even got a pair of glasses out of it. I couldn't believe how clear the world was. I had no idea that's how I was supposed to see the world. There were even more starts in the sky... but they weren't as sparkly... just little pin-holes.
The stars are so much more wondrous with astigmatism.
It's worth a shot. You can fail to attempt and you can fail to succeed. I'd rather fail to succeed than simply defeat myself in battle.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's a very popular phenomenon that everyone thinks everyone else is an idiot.
We can't have intelligent humor in movies and television because no one will understand it... except for me. Everyone is an idiot on the road... except for me. No one cares about the true state of the political system... except for me.
1) Bolster national production, create jobs, increase personal spending, more taxes coming in -- all good things.
2) Decrease the amount of pollution being polluted by drivers. -- Also, good.
I don't understand what we're doing with all these cars that people stop using. I know my GF gave up her Ford Explorer to get a Mazda in the Cash for Clunkers deal... but where did it go? Are the metals being recycled so that we can produce this new generation of eco-friendly vehicles in the most green way possible? Or maybe to cut costs?
Or is it crushed somewhere... rusting? Maybe it was shipped over-seas to be scrapped and its parts to be melted down and recycled under horrible working conditions.
I think that part... the origins of the resources for building these newer electric cars and the after-story of our throw-away cars is more important than getting more than getting X miles per Y tons of carbon per year.
The graph doesn't accurately represent the data. Note the Y-Axis. It's values are as follows: - - - - - - - - - 3000 2800 2600 2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 - - - - - - - - -
Without taking the axis all the way down to ZERO, the graph gives the impression of greater disparity than there actually is. You see this frequently with tech review sites where they start a bar graph at "140fps" so that a difference of 3fps looks epic and the shelling out of $40 more on one video card is suggested.
I'm not calling teachers wimpy, but they have very little to fight for anymore. They *are* going to fold on their curriculum if there's enough public pressure (read: further threat of job security). Often they quit teaching altogether.
Here are some example of topics that teachers just won't teach in California:
1) All 4-6 grade students in California have to learn about the Spanish Catholic missions built throughout the state and how much the natives welcomed the religion and the establishment of permanent cities. Except that's not how it happened, teachers know it, and they teach it because it's part of the California standards. If they say, "The Catholics came to the west coast, enslaved natives, forced their religion on them, and killed those that tried to keep their own religions.," they'd be tossed out on their asses.
2) No president chopped down a cherry tree and then ratted himself out to his father.
3) Many of the founding fathers owned slaves.
4) Slavery was popular and the entirety of the initial financial success of the states was built on the backs of kidnapped, raped, beaten, and worked black people.
5) The Civil War still produces some animosity throughout the South.
6) The "first Thanksgiving" may have happened, but it was cautious and tenuous at best. The pilgrims soon saw the natives not as temporary saviors, but as savages who needed to go away or be purged. Even if they changed to Puritan Christianity, they would have still been seen and treated as beings just above animals and far below humans.
7) The US is *not* a meritocracy. That was the plan, but classes carried over from Europe and further developed here. That's a myth perpetuated by people who want *you* to work hard for *their* benefits.
8) No, not everyone can be president. Not anymore. You need to have a saintly background and/or a TON of money.... the list goes on and on. Essentially, anything that forces children to confront tradition is sharply argued against and often the source of bad reviews. Call it the "snowflake" or "hover-parent" phenomenon if you wish, I call it the "litigation scare".
I remember watching North Korea take the field in this most recent World Cup. The crowd was cheering. North Korea, a great annoyance to the world, was being cheered on. The players were crying.
Why?
Because they have rarely, if ever, been out of their country. They could not have expected such love and acceptance from the world they have been taught to hate. And got this experience by playing a game.
I was so disappointed that they didn't move on past the first round. I was convinced that the longer they stayed in the tournament, the more likely that people in North Korea would be allowed to hear about the general acceptance of North Korea on the *people's* world stage.
It was as if the world was yelling, "It's alright, NK, come out and play!" but then they had to go inside for their tea. =\
In every war, it's been a major tactics to cut off your enemy's ability to communicate with outside resources. There has been no change.
Killing messengers Destroying railroads Severing telegraph lines Destroying printing shops Severing phone lines Destroying radio towers Putting noise out on all channels And now... turning off Twitter (OMGLOL!) and using Facebook for propaganda.
In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.
(1) Give children sufficient information to make them better (as people and citizens of communities, cities, states, nations, and the world) than the prior generation.
(2) Give children the information required to enter the job market.
Education, and the children and teachers within, are not nor have they ever been tasked with shouldering the burden of the most in-debt and luxury-addicted nation in the world. They way education is being sold today, and now solidified by a president who's desperate to get support from the money-minded, is that we can create a Uber-WorkForce by hyper-educating, hyper-tracking, and hyper-testing our children.
"Invest in the most profitable areas of education now and we'll be rich in the future! MONEY!!!! LUXURY!!!"
This is genuinely impossible. Education cannot be treated as a competition ("Race to the Top", "Pay According to Results") and be expected to stay honest. Without honesty, we can't tell if new ideas are working. Moreover, children will eventually become normal, ordinary people with interests in love, humor, entertainment, politics, history, music, and so on... their K-12 over-education in science, technology, engineering, and math will not change them into a new generation of work-slaves.
Putting the pressure, money, and focus on such a goal will be a complete waste. Focus on making them good *people* first and foremost (education in *real* history, philosophy [including religion], sociology) while also educating them in the various ways they can earn sufficient money to live their happy lives and the rest takes care of itself.
And for the sake of cutting off some argument at the pass, I'm not advocating the cutting of STEM funding-- I'm saying that STEM subjects should not be over-invested... particularly at the cost of the education that is there to create a better society. Maybe one that doesn't allow itself to get into the mess we're in right now.
The goal of education is make good people who can be productive in the job market, not workers who are passable human beings.
Slashdot Mirror
It's ok for some people to make some statements and not for others. If the statement had been made by a comedian or some serially rebellious organization, it would be outright funny and "edgy"-- but those things do not describe Kenneth Cole.
This situation is like your white uncle repeating jokes done by racy black stand-up comedians at work. It doesn't work and it would be inappropriate.
Well, some magic tricks are stupidly simple, yes. But others are extremely intricate and involve great deals of engineering and foresight. I'll use this as a simple example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewef620ptj4
Given the money involved in big acts, I still wouldn't be surprised.
From the article and summary: "'The potential is there for the worst kind of activity,' says Folsom Prison Warden Rick Hill"
Really? A prison warden is using a truism to invoke fear? Of course there is *potential* for the worst kind of activity. There's also *potential* for the *best* kind of activity... like calling your lawyer for consultation because you've been wrongly convicted. Say what you want about the likelihood of the cell phones being used for such things, but the point is that taken a prison warden's input on the danger of any prisoner activity is pretty silly.
Why don't we take a video game approach to this?
(1) Evaluate the bug exploit
(2) Find out why people are exploiting the bug
(3) Analyze current systems and check to see if official methods can be implemented to allow for controlled and sanctioned functions.
(4) Implement such sanctioned functions.
(5) Eliminate bug and institute severe penalties for those using a similar bug to a similar end.
Always analyze your own system first to see if you can prevent the need for crime/exploiting. Translated for the prison situations:
(1) People are smuggling in phones through orifices, mail, and corrupt delivery services.
(2) Why do people want phones? To talk to family, friends and lawyers? To participate in crime?
(3) Can additional phones and phone time be allowed? Would it be beneficial to rehabilitation (behavioral and addiction). Could there be exploits to this and how can they be prevented?
(4) Implement workable ideas, measure results.
(5) Severely punish anyone with a smuggled cell-phone.
Am I the only one who's thinking that this technology will most quickly adapted for stage magician acts?
Don't blame GPS. It's a system utilized by a device to show you where things likely are. If people die in blindly following GPS, that's on the user. That's a single point of failure in their survival plan that made for themselves.
Tip: If you're going out into the wild with a GPS device, also bring along a compass, a map of the area (topographical), and let people know when you're leaving and when you'll be back. Also tell them if you're not back by X date, call the authorities.
Hope for the best, but plan for the worst, people.
Misery loves company.
Right below the video, the author of the article states: "What strikes me immediately is that The Daily looks like a conventional news magazine. I don't know what I was expecting -- perhaps something new and more exciting -- but what I got was essentially a multimedia iPad version of Time."
(1) The conventional news magazine is a winning model proven by decades of profit.
(2) The author had no specific idea what he wanted from the product.
(3) The author, while have no specific idea what he wants, he knew he wanted to be excited by something new to him.
What that can even be, who knows? Not him, that's for sure. Maybe there should have been a radioactive badger. Maybe he wanted to see words immediately downloaded into his brain while being hugged by Steve Jobs who's chanting, "You're my number #1 friend, Apple iPad User 0011286453. You make me happy."
It sure looks like a multimedia Time, but isn't that the next step in evolution? News media has gone from word-of-mouth, to letters, to print, to print with carved images, to print with black and white photography, to print with color photography, to digital distribution, to digital distribution with video. The problem is that the last couple steps were cluttered with links to other revenue-producing products, thus stealing away from the focus on the news. That's why print has survived despite the digital revolution.
The Daily take the high quality, quick turn-over expectations of online news media and puts it into the less-noisy magazine format.
Now, I hate Murdoch and pretty much the entirety of News Corp as much as the next rational person, but this looks to be done in the right format. That's how I want to read my online magazine news when I finally get a tablet PC. Stick a high standard for journalistic integrity on something like The Daily, and I'll be a subscriber.
Damn it!
I'm with you! Anonymously!
I'd also like the source of that statement because I sure didn't type it.
But since you bring it up, here's a fun anecdotal source of the theory: http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/news/economy/farm_worker_jobs/index.htm
If you want something less anecdotal and more universal, I would like to refer you to federal minimum wage standards, health and safety standards, and the like. American have set standards for themselves and they've been made into law. Others have set further standards and those have been made into union policy.
And we're not all well-paid nerds. I'm a poorly paid nerd, but that's because I choose to work in education and educational systems are sapped by highly-paid and ineffectual administrations and a recent wave of education scapegoating.
Did you actually glean that from what I wrote? Do you know how unemployment works? Have you ever been unemployed and collected unemployment insurance?
Illegal immigrants don't collect unemployment. There are WAY too many safeguards and protections against collecting UI fraudulently as a citizen, let alone an illegal resident.
Also, people here illegally are not filling jobs that would otherwise be filled by citizens. If it weren't for the hordes of illegal workers in the farming industry, your fruits and vegetable picking would be done by expensive machines or even more costly unionized citizen labor-- that's if they're willing to travel with the crop seasons and risk being without work for long periods.
If you're down with mechanized farming, then you wouldn't mind the majority of farm land being owned and operated by corporations, would you? The private farmer, rare as he is already, would go extinct without hesitation. Once the corporate farms have full control, you may as well welcome further standardization of the American diet because, after all, it's cheaper to farm only one strain of one species of potato and corporations are ultimately beholden to the profit demands of their share-holders. Add that to the then-larger corporate farming lobby and you'll see a massive increase in subsidies to make the complete lack of competition more profitable.
What I'm for:
(1) Deporting illegal immigrants who participate in violent or property crimes. Their deportation is cheaper than long-term imprisonment.
(2) Fixing the immigration application process.
(3) Creating an amnesty system giving illegal immigrants conditional legal status if they:
-have been here for 3+ years
-have no felonies
-can prove that they've been working steadily for at least 66% of their time here
Amnesty would also be given to the businesses who had been employing these illegal immigrants. Children of illegal immigrants (born here or elsewhere) would have an entire other (complicated) system of allowances.
Once ALL of that has been done, then you can get draconian with business penalties/jail time, and frequent deportation. There would be a reliable system for applying for citizenship, a standard and expectation of work and education.
You can't put the cart before the horse and expect everything to be OK. You need to set a simple working system for legal immigration and the change to general compliance before you pull out the guns and cuffs.
It has nothing to do with political power/votes. It has to do with (1) the cost of sending them back, (2) the potential for them to add to the economy (even if illegally), and (3) the cost to the economy if they all suddenly disappeared.
If the taxpayer were to pay for the rounding up and deportation of everyone in the country illegally, we'd not only have a MASSIVE bill on our hands but a ton of businesses would fail in the following days.
As much as "DO SOMETHING NOW"-sayers like to scream, they just don't want to understand that the nation is built on the exploitation of people desperate to make a living for their children. Gardeners, janitors, textiles, builders, cooks, cleaners, harvesters, etc. -- the "dirty job" industry would quickly collapse, entire crops would rot until reliable, knowledgeable workers can be found and employed; the stock market would drop with it (thanks to interdependent investment); and we'd still have unemployment because there wouldn't be a system in place to give those open jobs to the willing-to-work unemployed.
You're right. It's not about race, but it's not about crime, either. It's about MONEY. And the biggest obstacle to getting a fix through Congress is the "DO SOMETHING NOW" types shooting down pragmatic approaches such as plans that would allow amnesty for select illegal immigrants... like some of the ones in the farming industry.
"NO!!! I want all-or-nothing!! ALL OR NOTHING! DO SOMETHING NOW!"
Note: Semi-automatic just means anything but a bolt/lever/pump action firearm. This can be a simple pistol.
I had a 7th grade math teacher that everyone hated (because he was excited about math). I was in his class reluctantly because I scored high on placement tests but hated being in the same class as all the rich kids. When I was in front of the class, I did my work just fine. When I was in the back of the class my scores crapped out.
The teacher, noticed the pattern and paid attention to me while I copied problems from the board for the daily quiz and saw that I was constantly squinting. I remember doing so, but thought it was normal and it was hard for anyone to see from the back of the class.
He contacted an optometrist buddy of his to hook me up with a free eye exam (my first ever) and I even got a pair of glasses out of it. I couldn't believe how clear the world was. I had no idea that's how I was supposed to see the world. There were even more starts in the sky... but they weren't as sparkly... just little pin-holes.
The stars are so much more wondrous with astigmatism.
It's worth a shot. You can fail to attempt and you can fail to succeed. I'd rather fail to succeed than simply defeat myself in battle.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's a very popular phenomenon that everyone thinks everyone else is an idiot.
We can't have intelligent humor in movies and television because no one will understand it... except for me.
Everyone is an idiot on the road... except for me.
No one cares about the true state of the political system... except for me.
Standard, yes... but still bad. It amplifies what could be negligible differences... mountains and mole hills, etc.
I understand why Obama wants this:
1) Bolster national production, create jobs, increase personal spending, more taxes coming in -- all good things.
2) Decrease the amount of pollution being polluted by drivers. -- Also, good.
I don't understand what we're doing with all these cars that people stop using. I know my GF gave up her Ford Explorer to get a Mazda in the Cash for Clunkers deal... but where did it go? Are the metals being recycled so that we can produce this new generation of eco-friendly vehicles in the most green way possible? Or maybe to cut costs?
Or is it crushed somewhere... rusting? Maybe it was shipped over-seas to be scrapped and its parts to be melted down and recycled under horrible working conditions.
I think that part... the origins of the resources for building these newer electric cars and the after-story of our throw-away cars is more important than getting more than getting X miles per Y tons of carbon per year.
NUMBERS, damn it. >.
The graph doesn't accurately represent the data. Note the Y-Axis. It's values are as follows:
- - - - - - - - -
3000
2800
2600
2400
2200
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
- - - - - - - - -
Without taking the axis all the way down to ZERO, the graph gives the impression of greater disparity than there actually is. You see this frequently with tech review sites where they start a bar graph at "140fps" so that a difference of 3fps looks epic and the shelling out of $40 more on one video card is suggested.
I'm not calling teachers wimpy, but they have very little to fight for anymore. They *are* going to fold on their curriculum if there's enough public pressure (read: further threat of job security). Often they quit teaching altogether.
Here are some example of topics that teachers just won't teach in California:
1) All 4-6 grade students in California have to learn about the Spanish Catholic missions built throughout the state and how much the natives welcomed the religion and the establishment of permanent cities. Except that's not how it happened, teachers know it, and they teach it because it's part of the California standards. If they say, "The Catholics came to the west coast, enslaved natives, forced their religion on them, and killed those that tried to keep their own religions.," they'd be tossed out on their asses.
2) No president chopped down a cherry tree and then ratted himself out to his father.
3) Many of the founding fathers owned slaves.
4) Slavery was popular and the entirety of the initial financial success of the states was built on the backs of kidnapped, raped, beaten, and worked black people.
5) The Civil War still produces some animosity throughout the South.
6) The "first Thanksgiving" may have happened, but it was cautious and tenuous at best. The pilgrims soon saw the natives not as temporary saviors, but as savages who needed to go away or be purged. Even if they changed to Puritan Christianity, they would have still been seen and treated as beings just above animals and far below humans.
7) The US is *not* a meritocracy. That was the plan, but classes carried over from Europe and further developed here. That's a myth perpetuated by people who want *you* to work hard for *their* benefits.
8) No, not everyone can be president. Not anymore. You need to have a saintly background and/or a TON of money. ... the list goes on and on. Essentially, anything that forces children to confront tradition is sharply argued against and often the source of bad reviews. Call it the "snowflake" or "hover-parent" phenomenon if you wish, I call it the "litigation scare".
I remember watching North Korea take the field in this most recent World Cup. The crowd was cheering. North Korea, a great annoyance to the world, was being cheered on. The players were crying.
Why?
Because they have rarely, if ever, been out of their country. They could not have expected such love and acceptance from the world they have been taught to hate. And got this experience by playing a game.
I was so disappointed that they didn't move on past the first round. I was convinced that the longer they stayed in the tournament, the more likely that people in North Korea would be allowed to hear about the general acceptance of North Korea on the *people's* world stage.
It was as if the world was yelling, "It's alright, NK, come out and play!" but then they had to go inside for their tea. =\
In every war, it's been a major tactics to cut off your enemy's ability to communicate with outside resources. There has been no change.
Killing messengers
Destroying railroads
Severing telegraph lines
Destroying printing shops
Severing phone lines
Destroying radio towers
Putting noise out on all channels
And now... turning off Twitter (OMGLOL!) and using Facebook for propaganda.
http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html/
In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.
Education has two functions:
(1) Give children sufficient information to make them better (as people and citizens of communities, cities, states, nations, and the world) than the prior generation.
(2) Give children the information required to enter the job market.
Education, and the children and teachers within, are not nor have they ever been tasked with shouldering the burden of the most in-debt and luxury-addicted nation in the world. They way education is being sold today, and now solidified by a president who's desperate to get support from the money-minded, is that we can create a Uber-WorkForce by hyper-educating, hyper-tracking, and hyper-testing our children.
"Invest in the most profitable areas of education now and we'll be rich in the future! MONEY!!!! LUXURY!!!"
This is genuinely impossible. Education cannot be treated as a competition ("Race to the Top", "Pay According to Results") and be expected to stay honest. Without honesty, we can't tell if new ideas are working. Moreover, children will eventually become normal, ordinary people with interests in love, humor, entertainment, politics, history, music, and so on... their K-12 over-education in science, technology, engineering, and math will not change them into a new generation of work-slaves.
Putting the pressure, money, and focus on such a goal will be a complete waste. Focus on making them good *people* first and foremost (education in *real* history, philosophy [including religion], sociology) while also educating them in the various ways they can earn sufficient money to live their happy lives and the rest takes care of itself.
And for the sake of cutting off some argument at the pass, I'm not advocating the cutting of STEM funding-- I'm saying that STEM subjects should not be over-invested... particularly at the cost of the education that is there to create a better society. Maybe one that doesn't allow itself to get into the mess we're in right now.
The goal of education is make good people who can be productive in the job market, not workers who are passable human beings.
And that puts you in the "enthusiast" group if you're throwing down $1000 on a monitor alone.
It's spelled "e-e-p-o-k".