Umm, your better test requires that you have, well, memorized enough of a language (english, or whatever you speak wherever you are) to be able to read the manual. You had to "memorize" fundamental concepts (like, "what is programming?", "what is a function?"), and so on.
I am not arguing that teaching rote memorization is better than teaching analytical skills. However, rote memorization is PART of analytical skills. You may change the set of things to be memorized by changing the emphasis of school from learning "facts" to learning "how to think", but you won't remove memorization from the process - you'll just be memorizing different things.
And, likely as not, 50 years later people will be complaining because noone knows anything without looking it up, and that schools need to provide more fundamental facts to back up analytical thinking....
My grandmother used to tell me that Nurses were always better at sticking you than doctors, because Nurses practiced on each other, and Doctors practiced on oranges.
My experiences have always borne out that nurses were quite good at it.
Well, except for that one at the Bloodmobile a few months back. She should have gotten a job at Abu Ghraib....
Once you have learned base 6, you don't need to convert mentally to base 10 to use the numbers. Most of us do, because learning two number systems is about as hard as learning two languages - easy to learn a language well enough to get by, hard to learn it well enough to think in it.
Difference is, that we don't have much excuse for learning multiple number systems as young children, when we should be learning these things. If we actually wanted people to use another number system interchangably with the one we use now, we should teach it in elementary school, and make sure it is used in RL.
Note, by the way, that I think we should push things like this (hex, binary, anyone?) and second/third languages and logic into early elementary school, along with reading/basic math. The rest of what we teach in elementary school (science, social studies, that sort of thing) can wait until middle school or later, when we have the analytical skills to do it right.
Looks kind of silly to me, but then I always wake up before my alarm goes off, bright and alert - no caffeine does that for you.
This looks disturbingly like a slight updating of something first used in 1960 ro so. More computers, but the same utopian look/feel.
I like the self-driving cars. Would be nice to be able to tell the car to go home, and catch a nap. Except for the work while you commute part. Frankly, I prefer to leave work for the hours I'm being paid - my commute would be me reading a good book.
I get so frustrated when I hear the words "No open book tests".
Not me. Keep in mind that you are assuming a vast knowledgebase you already possess. Such as how to program, how to analyse data, things like that. How to read and write, even. If you were not required to learn those things (which do, contrary to popular rumour, require you to memorize things), you would be incapable of doing them as needed. Just remember, what you "memorized" back in the day is what you "remember" how to do today.
Yah, I've just avoided flying for two years because I think the current system is so wonderful.
Suspecting a partisan political figure of doing something for partisan political gain is just so...absurd, after all, that noone could really believe it, could they?
Unless the figure were the opposing party, right?;-)
Depends on how many faces I could remember, I suppose. Or how many builds.
Hard to say, since I can count. On the other hand, I don't usually count things like that. Most likely, I would get it right if everyone was distinctive in some way, and wrong if they all looked basically alike.
T Kennedy? You mean his ticket wasn't issued to Edward M. Kennedy, to match any legal ID he might have? That's odd.
We can be fairly sure it didn't take a call to Ridge to get it cleared. That would have raised enough stink that we would have heard about nothing else for months.
I don't think the computer blocks issuing the pass, though. If that were so, there would be no reason to say "I can't tell you" when asked why. You'd just say "I don't know, the computer won't issue one".
By the by, note that I never said the clerk "should have just rolled over". I said that I would expect her to just roll over. Well, I never used roll over, but it does convey the thought.
I would, in general, expect that someone who looked like a famous person, had the appropriate ID of said famous person, and acted like said famous person (whether it was Ted Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, or Madonna - sorry, I'm not real up on famous entertainers right now, but Madonna used to be famous anyway) would get preferential treatment. I do not advocate preferential treatment for famous people (not till I'm famous, at least;-) ), but I have been in the world long enough to expect it.
Call him on it, and the newspapers play this as "he said, she said" for weeks. And the damage continues for every day it is on the front page in one form or another.
A quiet apology gets you a bit of (quickly forgotten) bad publicity, and you go about your life.
I guess, what I really have trouble with, is the notion that an airline clerk would recognize Kennedy, input the data into the computer, see the flag, and NOT call her supervisor immediately. The "refuse to issue a ticket", coupled with the "why?" and the "I can't tell you" looks too much like a setup.
Yes, quite so. And you are quite correct as to proper procedure. I do not have your belief that "proper procedure" is followed quite so blindly, though.
Nor does the evidence provided in the article support that it was. A supervisor was called, and by magic, a boarding pass was issued. Doesn't sound like there was much trouble getting that pass, does it?
Note also that the pass was initially denied (according to the HS people) as a result of a "similar name". Don't know about you, but my computer doesn't twig on "similar" when I do a db query. Exact matches only.
Nonsense! According to the article, in all three cases, a supervisor overrode the clerk, and got Kennedy on the plane. So obviously, it is a trivial matter to override the computer.
Let's see. Publicity in March, or closer to an election? Hmm, which would I choose, were I in his position? I think I would start making noise about it later than this - perhaps September, but COngress will be in recess then, I think. So now would be a good time.
Keep in mind we aren't talking about a neutral party here - Teddy is very much pro-Kerry, anti-Bush. He has a vested interest in publicity that is bad for Bush.
Seems to me that when a bunch or terrorists were caught at a time convenient to Bush and bad for Kerry (during the Convention), people had no trouble at all believing that it was a setup. Now, something bad for Bush appears, from a famous guy on the other side, at a convenient time, and it's "NO WAY COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN!"
This is entirely correct. Doesn't change the fact that people tend to be slack about following the rules when they recognize someone.
Sure, you're supposed to check the list for anyone who comes to the counter. Would you do it for your wife/husband, who you just had breakfast with two hours before? I think not. Your brother that you talked to last week? Unlikely there as well.
People are assuming that the ticket clerk has had expensive security training. That's unlikely as well. A bare minimum is likely, just so she knows to check the list.
And for those who say, "Well, a Senator could commit a crime too". Yah, Teddy has been accused once or twice, as I recall. In general, however, if a Senator is a criminal suspect, you'd know about from the Evening News and/or morning newspaper. You won't have to guess about it.
I expect that most would. Especially in Washington DC (where he's been for 42 years, since he was first elected to the Senate) and Boston (you remember, the main city of the state that has sent him to the Senate for 42 years now). His face is pretty distinctive, I expect the Senate ID he would use to prove his identity would give it away nicely, and his bodyguards, secretaries, other underlings should just confirm it.
For that matter, what is he doing flying commercial? Not like he's not more than rich enough to charter a jet!
Wasn't talking about "clump of eight people" go in, "clump of seven" come out. Was referring to eight people, one after the other going in, seven, one after the other, coming out. With no particular timing between "goes in" and "goes out"
Sounds like Ted was staging a publicity stunt to me.
It's not like the people in Washington or Boston would not recognize him as a Senator, and treat him as such. Hell, I don't even like him, and *I* would recognize him as a Senator, and treat him with the respect due the office.
And it's unlikely that a clerk at an airline counter is going to check some list of banned passengers when a Senator that (s)he recognizes stops at the counter in front of her. She'll issue the ticket without a second thought, unless she were a complete imbecile.
Interestingly enough, there is evidence that crows can count to 7. Test was done by having people enter a blind, then leave. Crow behaviour showed that with up to seven people involved, they knew when there was someone still in the blind. When eight+ people went in, and seven came out, they behaved as if the blind were empty.
Which makes them smarter than Hottentot tribesmen....
But if your license said "you can distribute my copyrighted work unless you're a negro, jap or beaner", I'm pretty sure it could be considered invalid.
I'm not sure what my point is... I guess it's simply that nothing is quite as simple as it seems.
Probably so. But then you'd invalidate the license, and NOONE could distribute my work. Until I issued it under a valid license.
But that shows another possibility: that the owners of the code could be ordered to choose a valid license of some sort, rather than simply having all the code revert to complete non-distributability
I don't think there is anything in Copyright law that requires copyrighted material to be distributed. Requiring a Copyright holder to choose a valid license (as opposed to simply saying, "that you can't distribute it at all) would be extremely unlikely, and eminently appealable.
Of course, the Copyright holders could, of their own volition, choose another license. But that's a great deal different than a judge ordering them to do so.
Increased temperatures lead to melting ice-caps, which lead to shutting down Ocean Conveyer, which leads to ice age, which locks up water in glaciers, which leads to more deserts, which leads to LESS things that aggravate your allergies.
That's another climate change scenario, that favours you. We won't know which one you have to endure until it happens. And if it never happens, we won't know whether climate change would have helped you or hurt you.
No way of telling, actually. Whether we undergo a rapid climate change now or not, we won't be able to definitively state that we are better/worse off as a result. Who knows what may have popped up under the alternate condition?
I recently saw an article that stated that CO2 levels were higher than they had been in the last 420,000 years. Which implies that they may have been higher than now as recently as 420,000 years ago. Which also implies that most hominid evolution took place in conditions more extreme than are current.
Note however, that it is generally accepted that civilization came into being during a time when the climate (where various civilizations appeared, at least) that was almost ideal. It was worse before, and has been getting worse since. It is likely to continue so, whether we undergo a sudden climate shift or no.
Now, this may seems a bit academic becuase even the most absured royal families never had more than 9 full siblings (that is a TON).
Well, no. As I recall, one of my great-grandfather's had 11 full siblings. It is not terribly common now, but as recently as early this century, it was relatively common in rural areas.
Note that large numbers of full siblings only rarely all reached adulthood - childhood mortality was quite high. But it did happen, now and then.
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I am not arguing that teaching rote memorization is better than teaching analytical skills. However, rote memorization is PART of analytical skills. You may change the set of things to be memorized by changing the emphasis of school from learning "facts" to learning "how to think", but you won't remove memorization from the process - you'll just be memorizing different things.
And, likely as not, 50 years later people will be complaining because noone knows anything without looking it up, and that schools need to provide more fundamental facts to back up analytical thinking....
Hmm, I'm driving the same car I was in 1994. SO is my wife.
Haven't seen anything to beat that one yet.
My experiences have always borne out that nurses were quite good at it.
Well, except for that one at the Bloodmobile a few months back. She should have gotten a job at Abu Ghraib....
But...there's always a but.
Once you have learned base 6, you don't need to convert mentally to base 10 to use the numbers. Most of us do, because learning two number systems is about as hard as learning two languages - easy to learn a language well enough to get by, hard to learn it well enough to think in it.
Difference is, that we don't have much excuse for learning multiple number systems as young children, when we should be learning these things. If we actually wanted people to use another number system interchangably with the one we use now, we should teach it in elementary school, and make sure it is used in RL.
Note, by the way, that I think we should push things like this (hex, binary, anyone?) and second/third languages and logic into early elementary school, along with reading/basic math. The rest of what we teach in elementary school (science, social studies, that sort of thing) can wait until middle school or later, when we have the analytical skills to do it right.
Looks kind of silly to me, but then I always wake up before my alarm goes off, bright and alert - no caffeine does that for you.
This looks disturbingly like a slight updating of something first used in 1960 ro so. More computers, but the same utopian look/feel.
I like the self-driving cars. Would be nice to be able to tell the car to go home, and catch a nap. Except for the work while you commute part. Frankly, I prefer to leave work for the hours I'm being paid - my commute would be me reading a good book.
I get so frustrated when I hear the words "No open book tests".
Not me. Keep in mind that you are assuming a vast knowledgebase you already possess. Such as how to program, how to analyse data, things like that. How to read and write, even. If you were not required to learn those things (which do, contrary to popular rumour, require you to memorize things), you would be incapable of doing them as needed. Just remember, what you "memorized" back in the day is what you "remember" how to do today.
Suspecting a partisan political figure of doing something for partisan political gain is just so...absurd, after all, that noone could really believe it, could they?
Unless the figure were the opposing party, right? ;-)
Hard to say, since I can count. On the other hand, I don't usually count things like that. Most likely, I would get it right if everyone was distinctive in some way, and wrong if they all looked basically alike.
Hmm, the Left has said it is true, therefore it must be true? Show me something from a reasonably impartial source, if you wish to convince me.
We can be fairly sure it didn't take a call to Ridge to get it cleared. That would have raised enough stink that we would have heard about nothing else for months.
I don't think the computer blocks issuing the pass, though. If that were so, there would be no reason to say "I can't tell you" when asked why. You'd just say "I don't know, the computer won't issue one".
By the by, note that I never said the clerk "should have just rolled over". I said that I would expect her to just roll over. Well, I never used roll over, but it does convey the thought.
I would, in general, expect that someone who looked like a famous person, had the appropriate ID of said famous person, and acted like said famous person (whether it was Ted Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, or Madonna - sorry, I'm not real up on famous entertainers right now, but Madonna used to be famous anyway) would get preferential treatment. I do not advocate preferential treatment for famous people (not till I'm famous, at least ;-) ), but I have been in the world long enough to expect it.
Call him on it, and the newspapers play this as "he said, she said" for weeks. And the damage continues for every day it is on the front page in one form or another.
A quiet apology gets you a bit of (quickly forgotten) bad publicity, and you go about your life.
I guess, what I really have trouble with, is the notion that an airline clerk would recognize Kennedy, input the data into the computer, see the flag, and NOT call her supervisor immediately. The "refuse to issue a ticket", coupled with the "why?" and the "I can't tell you" looks too much like a setup.
Yes, quite so. And you are quite correct as to proper procedure. I do not have your belief that "proper procedure" is followed quite so blindly, though.
Nor does the evidence provided in the article support that it was. A supervisor was called, and by magic, a boarding pass was issued. Doesn't sound like there was much trouble getting that pass, does it?
Note also that the pass was initially denied (according to the HS people) as a result of a "similar name". Don't know about you, but my computer doesn't twig on "similar" when I do a db query. Exact matches only.
Nonsense! According to the article, in all three cases, a supervisor overrode the clerk, and got Kennedy on the plane. So obviously, it is a trivial matter to override the computer.
Keep in mind we aren't talking about a neutral party here - Teddy is very much pro-Kerry, anti-Bush. He has a vested interest in publicity that is bad for Bush.
Seems to me that when a bunch or terrorists were caught at a time convenient to Bush and bad for Kerry (during the Convention), people had no trouble at all believing that it was a setup. Now, something bad for Bush appears, from a famous guy on the other side, at a convenient time, and it's "NO WAY COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN!"
Sure, you're supposed to check the list for anyone who comes to the counter. Would you do it for your wife/husband, who you just had breakfast with two hours before? I think not. Your brother that you talked to last week? Unlikely there as well.
People are assuming that the ticket clerk has had expensive security training. That's unlikely as well. A bare minimum is likely, just so she knows to check the list.
And for those who say, "Well, a Senator could commit a crime too". Yah, Teddy has been accused once or twice, as I recall. In general, however, if a Senator is a criminal suspect, you'd know about from the Evening News and/or morning newspaper. You won't have to guess about it.
The quote is about the First Amendment. Which I consider important enough to fight for.
The quote probably originated with Voltaire, but is of uncertain provenance, so I put it in quotes, and did not attribute it.
For that matter, what is he doing flying commercial? Not like he's not more than rich enough to charter a jet!
Wasn't talking about "clump of eight people" go in, "clump of seven" come out. Was referring to eight people, one after the other going in, seven, one after the other, coming out. With no particular timing between "goes in" and "goes out"
It's not like the people in Washington or Boston would not recognize him as a Senator, and treat him as such. Hell, I don't even like him, and *I* would recognize him as a Senator, and treat him with the respect due the office.
And it's unlikely that a clerk at an airline counter is going to check some list of banned passengers when a Senator that (s)he recognizes stops at the counter in front of her. She'll issue the ticket without a second thought, unless she were a complete imbecile.
Which makes them smarter than Hottentot tribesmen....
I'm not sure what my point is... I guess it's simply that nothing is quite as simple as it seems.
Probably so. But then you'd invalidate the license, and NOONE could distribute my work. Until I issued it under a valid license.
I don't think there is anything in Copyright law that requires copyrighted material to be distributed. Requiring a Copyright holder to choose a valid license (as opposed to simply saying, "that you can't distribute it at all) would be extremely unlikely, and eminently appealable.
Of course, the Copyright holders could, of their own volition, choose another license. But that's a great deal different than a judge ordering them to do so.
Increased temperatures lead to melting ice-caps, which lead to shutting down Ocean Conveyer, which leads to ice age, which locks up water in glaciers, which leads to more deserts, which leads to LESS things that aggravate your allergies.
That's another climate change scenario, that favours you. We won't know which one you have to endure until it happens. And if it never happens, we won't know whether climate change would have helped you or hurt you.
I recently saw an article that stated that CO2 levels were higher than they had been in the last 420,000 years. Which implies that they may have been higher than now as recently as 420,000 years ago. Which also implies that most hominid evolution took place in conditions more extreme than are current.
Note however, that it is generally accepted that civilization came into being during a time when the climate (where various civilizations appeared, at least) that was almost ideal. It was worse before, and has been getting worse since. It is likely to continue so, whether we undergo a sudden climate shift or no.
Well, no. As I recall, one of my great-grandfather's had 11 full siblings. It is not terribly common now, but as recently as early this century, it was relatively common in rural areas.
Note that large numbers of full siblings only rarely all reached adulthood - childhood mortality was quite high. But it did happen, now and then.