By that logic Seinfeld should be arrested because he was dating a 20/21 year old woman who was "not mature enough to understand the consequences of their decisions and avoid predation"
No, because my logic explicitly distinguishes between morals and rules. Your version of my logic is conflating them.
We arrest people because they break the law. You can still think people are immoral even if they aren't breaking the law, and hey if Jerry is a predator then maybe it applies. I personally think it applies to, say, the Girls Gone Wild guy -- who was arrested, but for tax evasion not the thing he was infamous for because that was legal.
And speaking of legal, we don't pick the arbitrary date based on the idea that nobody over that age is immature and capable of being preyed upon. It's the age at which we arbitrarily decided to stop caring so much if you are or not, and you have to start suffering the consequences for your poor choices. That doesn't mean thinking well of people who lead the naive to poor decisions. But the outrage is much quelled compared to a much younger victim. See?
If the universe is Googolplexs as opposed to billions of years old, it substantially increases the odds of that life could have started elsewhere and evolved over a much longer period time giving it LOT more time to spread throughout the universe reaching Earth as well as other planets. (Spores in meteorites etc..)
Panspermia is a possible origin for life on earth in either case. Sure, a ridiculously ancient universe means panspermia could have happened over larger areas, but why is that so significant? It's not like there's a lot of evidence that such a long time span is required for life to have arose and (if it didn't arise here) reach earth. We have no idea how common life is; it may have only had to travel a short distance. We've only just begun to be able to see exoplanets and we've already found hundreds, and found nearby earth-mass planets basically as soon as it was feasible for us to do so. And the universe as currently estimated is still pretty old, plenty of time for life to have crossed most of the galaxy. So what about abiogenesis is pointing to a ridiculously old universe?
The Big Bang is just religion masquerading as science and is full of holes. Refering to those who disagree with it as "crackpots" is making the same mistake that you are accusing the so called "crackpots" of making.
None of the actual educated and accomplished physicists -- i.e. the kind of person who every revolutionary in the history of physics was, and you crackpots aren't -- who disagree with the Big Bang theory think the Big Bang theory is "just religion". They know it's a valid scientific theory that yes has holes, but also has a lot of evidence, meaning experimentally verified predictions. They have their own well-crafted cosmologies that they prefer. But because these alternative cosmologies are well-crafted and based on an understanding of the evidence out there, they make many of the same predictions, they have their own holes and potential problems, and they can't yet experimentally test for the differences to definitively prove their version is right.
It's actually an exciting time in physics and cosmology. We know existing theories are flawed and need modification or replacement -- putting out to pasture the idea that it's "religion" -- but theoretical attempts to fix the problem are ahead of our ability to engineer devices to test them. But such devices are coming soon, and we'll be putting our theories to the test. Just like religion? Yeah, right.
There are competent physicists who disagree with the Big Bang theory, and then there are crackpots who claim it's all "religion" and in doing so prove their lack of understanding. Don't worry, I'm not the one making the mistake of conflating these two groups. Oh but just to make sure, please do tell me about your fantastic alternate cosmological theory, and how it's verifiably correct while big bang theory isn't. Lemme guess... plasmas and currents?
Yeah, I'm not sure he's "looking" for anything outside his own navel.:)
I do always love it when someone has a problem with existing theory because of "fudge factors" that help the theory fit experimental evidence, and their replacement is some ill-formed philosophy that is, essentially, one giant fudge factor with no experimental evidence or connection to reality. Because that's good science.
Hint to crackpots: Science, and especially physics, is prone to massive upheavals and revolutions. In every case, though, these upheavals come from people who are fully versed in the existing theory, and understand both its weakness and its extremely well verified successes. Since this doesn't describe you, you probably aren't the revolutionary you think you are.
No idea what that is... but you can see other similarly bright spots outside of the milky way, so whatever it is probably not unusual? Another galaxy maybe?
Would it be possible to use collaborative filtering, and meta data provided by xkcd to produce a "These xkcd strips may be obligatory for this article", for sites such as slashdot?
More importantly, why isn't there an xkcd comic about finding obligatory xkcd comics?
In other news, I objected to a wind farm cos I was worried about the flying saucers crashing into it...
Oh geeze, not this FUD again... Look, yes, flying saucer crashes were a problem with some older, ill-conceived wind farms. But with a little planning, and modern designs, this is essentially a non-issue for the wind farms of today. The most important thing is not to put cattle, sheep, or drunken hillbillies underneath the windfarms so the aliens aren't attracted to them. Next is the design itself. The old scaffolding ones didn't look like anything important to the aliens. The new single-pole ones were designed to look like an alien arm raised up. And a raised arm with all three digits spinning in a circle is a very rude gesture and it's traditional to ignore the offender. So the problem solves itself.
It has, but there's a wait for the procedure. About 65 million years.
Ah, I see. "Take one meteor impact, call me next epoch"?
Sounds like Earth has an HMO. I wonder if its reached its out of pocket limit for the eon? I hope not or it might start going to get a lot more treatment.
And I always suspect most posts like that translate to "Other people dare to deviate from my perfect, genius opinions, dammit, and therefore humanity has no intelligence!"
"Which is itself a stupid way of thinking, ergo I'm not an example of an intelligent human either."
To be fair, teaching to the test is an OK thing to do.... assuming the test is any good.
For more fairness, the various tests pretty much suck, so your point is valid (and I don't have a windmill in my beard)
No, it's a fair point, it's just that a national standardized multiple-choice test, combined with a proverbial Sword of Damocles over the entire school for failing to meet test standards, is not an environment where teaching to the test is going to result in a healthy education.
Uh, you do realize that Spore is as creationist as you can get? It's intelligent design (well, mostly semi-intelligent), because you're doing the designing yourself.
True, but that's just the games's mechanics. Philosophically though it's a game about evolution. The thing is, while I personally find watching computer-generated simulations of evolution randomly trying out solutions to problems without my interference to be fascinating, I don't think that makes for much of a game. So instead of having random mutations and forcing you to accept crippling ones, they let you pick ones you think are cool. That doesn't mean the game is "creationist". I mean, they also let you directly control the creatures in the game, when really it should be an AI. That doesn't mean the game endorses the school of thought that we are all puppets, not of an omnipotent deity, but of a bunch of ugly bags of mostly water*. Rather, both of these design features are intended to make it fun and interactive.
And you can teach important aspects of evolution in a game like that, such as: Survival of the Fittest. The linchpin of evolution. The answer to the question "How can random changes that can just as easily result in death by cancer or worse result in the amazingly complex and efficient systems we see in all of biology?" Regardless of the mechanism behind genetic changes, the only organisms that pass on their genes are those that are able to survive and reproduce. Lose the level? Get eaten by the boss monster? Sorry, "designed" or not your species doesn't continue on. Choose a different option and try again -- random or not, eventually you'll get it right.
Not that Spore is really the greatest educational game ever, or any of the evolution-themed games I've played (Cubivore... some SNES side-scroller... some crobots-like thing...). I'd like to see something where the choices of upgrades represented significant developments in real biology, and their tradeoffs. Like... Four-chambered heart and warm blooded gives you a fast metabolism so you can be really active, but you have to eat all the time. No more eating one big meal and being able to just chill for a month during famines. That kind of thing.
Okay I'm not quitting my day job to go write it. But I think evolution-based games can be educational so someone should go do that.:)
* [voice type="WoW human female"]Do you ever feel like you're not in charge of your own destiny, like...you're being controlled by an invisible hand?[/voice]
Really? Is that money more than the cost of all the illnesses and deaths [1] wrought by the toxic dumping, plus the present-discounted value of future fish and sea resources? If not, they haven't been made whole after what's been done to them.
Oh, is that how it works? There's a big ticker somewhere labeled "Cost to Somalia" that goes down every time a ransom is paid, and once it hits zero they'll have been "made whole"? Someone should let the pirates know, lest they fail to contribute their profits to to the "Heal Somalia" fund! Also make sure to tell them when it hits zero so they'll know to stop pirating! =D
Moral calculus is well and good, but I highly doubt that has anything to do with their motivation. Yes they care about bringing money in to benefit their hurting families and villages but no I don't think they're trying to directly compensate for all the "cost" of what others have done to them. No, they care only about their own family and village, not the one ten miles down the coast, and they're trying to make as much money for themselves as possible, and whether that's more or less than the hypothetical cost of dumping and overfishing is entirely besides the point.
If you could magically clean up the oceans, replace all the fish, and force the fishing boats to respect their coasts, the piracy would continue. Why? Because it makes way more money than fishing! They've found themselves a new career. They might have started because they were desperate and saw no other option. They'll keep doing it because it's crazy-fat money like they've never seen before, right up until the navies of affected countries make it untenable.
This is the fate of every cause that results in profit. It doesn't take long before the original cause is sidelined and profit becomes the real cost. There's a real good reason everything rightly considered a charity is also a non-profit. This is normal, I don't know why you consider it so offensive to consider.
Again, I want to make absolutely clear that I don't think piracy is the right response.
And I want to make it absolutely clear that I think piracy probably was the right response, from their perspective. Though I'm not using "right" in the sense of morality, or in the sense of balancing the "wrongs" done to them because who cares. I mean in terms of rational correctness. So many countries throughout history simply take what they want from those weaker than them, why can't they take a turn? Oh, it's wrong? Who cares? Good, bad... they're the guys with the RPG.
They should have sent clan representatives to international bodies (UN, Arab League, EU, international sea organizations, etc.) to ask for respect for their coastal right before any large-scale violence.
Please, they aren't fucking Greenpeace! They began pirating in response to the violation of their rights, but it wasn't some kind of protest or resistance movement -- it was a cash grab, taking what they thought should (or could) be theirs! They aren't targeting fishing vessels from offending nations, they're targeting anything they think they can get a decent ransom from. They aren't capturing ships and publicly declaring that they will not release them until their rights are respected, they're holding the ships until the owner/insurer quietly pays them off! Oh yeah, they're raising awareness, not raising their personal net worth. Sure.
And seriously, send representatives to the U.N.? Oh yeah, that would have been real useful. Most of us still probably would have never heard of them if that was their course of action. And what would it have done? It wouldn't have magically cleaned up their water, or put the fish back, so they'd still be out of jobs. Whatever pittance of aid the U.N. tried to give them, assuming it even reached the affected communities, would be nothing compared to their "self help" program.
But just the same, the poor motives of many of the pirates doesn't detract f
This is the legacy of No Child Left Behind... We've dumbed education down to the lowest common denominator. There are fewer and fewer gifted programs. Everyone's straight-jacketed into the same curriculum at the same pace
No, it's much worse than that. We always had essentially the same curriculum for everyone if your school couldn't afford "gifted" courses, and most schools couldn't for more than maybe a couple subjects -- e.g one elementary school I went to had "advanced" math, but not science, history, english or anything else, so if your "gift" involved something other than math, tough luck!
The problem with No Child Left Behind is that the curriculum now revolves entirely, 100%, around passing the stupid tests. Teachers don't teach anymore, they train and coach in how to pass tests. They don't teach things the test doesn't cover. They don't teach the principles, they teach the technique needed to pass the test. Because they can't afford to do anything else or they'll risk losing money and then whatever few interesting programs they have left will be gone.
It'd be one thing if it was an actual education based on the lowest common denominator. But it's not even that good. Ever cram for an exam where you didn't care at all about the subject, you only cared about passing the exam, because if you didn't pass the exam your GPA would drop and you'd lose your financial aid? Was that the best learning experience? Now imagine your professor had exactly the same motivation. That's what No Child Left Behind has done to our education.
Why not? Lots of 14-year-olds have sex with their boyfriends or girlfriends every day.
Way to delete the part about it involving an older person. In particular those in positions of authority. Two tweens deciding to have sex, even if it's a mistake because they aren't ready, is just a mistake. A tween having sex with a forty year old when they aren't ready isn't just a mistake, it's predation.
You see numbers are arbitrary.
More or less, yes, but the underlying moral analysis that leads to assigning an arbitrary number is not itself arbitrary. That arbitrary number may fail for any particular case, because the underlying code of "it is immoral to take advantage of someone who is not mature enough to understand the consequences of their decisions and avoid predation" may not apply in that particular case because the youth is mature enough. That means the rule is arbitrary, but the morality behind it is not. Which was the GP's point.
This doesn't justify piracy, but it does give lie to the notion that they lack a legitimate grievance and are simply out for money, and it helps to explain why they enjoy such support from Somalians.
Well, it means they had a grievance that lead them away from fishing. But once the crazy piracy $$ started rolling in (many times more than they ever made in the best of times fishing), it became all about the money.
At one point, the reporter who was accompanying her went to ask a homeless guy sitting under the bridge what he thought. "Is that a Stradivarius?", he asked straight out. Turned out the guy was from Stradivari's home town of Cremona and would've known the sound of a Strad anywhere.
Joke the First: What the article doesn't mention is that when he asked that he was pointing at a pigeon.
Joke the Second: That was "Stradivarius Joe", and he always asks that.
On a different but related note I have a relative who, when he inspected a house he was buying would hide items which he wanted to own, then retrieve them after taking the place over.
I tried that once, but I couldn't find a place to stuff the kids where they wouldn't hear them cry but they'd also be able to breathe....
I deleted my initial response to this as I took a rather insulting tone towards his EE degrees. I'm having enough problems with him thinking I'm insulting his intelligence.
Heh. I am most certainly insulting his intelligence, I just see no need to insult his degree in order to do so.:)
For two systems transmitting the same amount of real power, the system with the lower power factor will have higher circulating currents due to energy that returns to the source from energy storage in the load. These higher currents in a practical system may produce higher losses and reduce overall transmission efficiency.
Yes, it's the "energy storage" and return that he doesn't seem to comprehend. He seems to think all power in a circuit is "burned", based on a very naive EE101 view that everything is a resistive load.
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By that logic Seinfeld should be arrested because he was dating a 20/21 year old woman who was "not mature enough to understand the consequences of their decisions and avoid predation"
No, because my logic explicitly distinguishes between morals and rules. Your version of my logic is conflating them.
We arrest people because they break the law. You can still think people are immoral even if they aren't breaking the law, and hey if Jerry is a predator then maybe it applies. I personally think it applies to, say, the Girls Gone Wild guy -- who was arrested, but for tax evasion not the thing he was infamous for because that was legal.
And speaking of legal, we don't pick the arbitrary date based on the idea that nobody over that age is immature and capable of being preyed upon. It's the age at which we arbitrarily decided to stop caring so much if you are or not, and you have to start suffering the consequences for your poor choices. That doesn't mean thinking well of people who lead the naive to poor decisions. But the outrage is much quelled compared to a much younger victim. See?
If the universe is Googolplexs as opposed to billions of years old, it substantially increases the odds of that life could have started elsewhere and evolved over a much longer period time giving it LOT more time to spread throughout the universe reaching Earth as well as other planets. (Spores in meteorites etc..)
Panspermia is a possible origin for life on earth in either case. Sure, a ridiculously ancient universe means panspermia could have happened over larger areas, but why is that so significant? It's not like there's a lot of evidence that such a long time span is required for life to have arose and (if it didn't arise here) reach earth. We have no idea how common life is; it may have only had to travel a short distance. We've only just begun to be able to see exoplanets and we've already found hundreds, and found nearby earth-mass planets basically as soon as it was feasible for us to do so. And the universe as currently estimated is still pretty old, plenty of time for life to have crossed most of the galaxy. So what about abiogenesis is pointing to a ridiculously old universe?
The Big Bang is just religion masquerading as science and is full of holes. Refering to those who disagree with it as "crackpots" is making the same mistake that you are accusing the so called "crackpots" of making.
None of the actual educated and accomplished physicists -- i.e. the kind of person who every revolutionary in the history of physics was, and you crackpots aren't -- who disagree with the Big Bang theory think the Big Bang theory is "just religion". They know it's a valid scientific theory that yes has holes, but also has a lot of evidence, meaning experimentally verified predictions. They have their own well-crafted cosmologies that they prefer. But because these alternative cosmologies are well-crafted and based on an understanding of the evidence out there, they make many of the same predictions, they have their own holes and potential problems, and they can't yet experimentally test for the differences to definitively prove their version is right.
It's actually an exciting time in physics and cosmology. We know existing theories are flawed and need modification or replacement -- putting out to pasture the idea that it's "religion" -- but theoretical attempts to fix the problem are ahead of our ability to engineer devices to test them. But such devices are coming soon, and we'll be putting our theories to the test. Just like religion? Yeah, right.
There are competent physicists who disagree with the Big Bang theory, and then there are crackpots who claim it's all "religion" and in doing so prove their lack of understanding. Don't worry, I'm not the one making the mistake of conflating these two groups. Oh but just to make sure, please do tell me about your fantastic alternate cosmological theory, and how it's verifiably correct while big bang theory isn't. Lemme guess... plasmas and currents?
Protip - what you're looking for is abiogenesis.
Yeah, I'm not sure he's "looking" for anything outside his own navel. :)
I do always love it when someone has a problem with existing theory because of "fudge factors" that help the theory fit experimental evidence, and their replacement is some ill-formed philosophy that is, essentially, one giant fudge factor with no experimental evidence or connection to reality. Because that's good science.
Hint to crackpots: Science, and especially physics, is prone to massive upheavals and revolutions. In every case, though, these upheavals come from people who are fully versed in the existing theory, and understand both its weakness and its extremely well verified successes. Since this doesn't describe you, you probably aren't the revolutionary you think you are.
No idea what that is... but you can see other similarly bright spots outside of the milky way, so whatever it is probably not unusual? Another galaxy maybe?
Ignore??? What planet are you from? That's when they come in with ray-guns ablazing.
No, no, that's the response to a completely different gesture... Wait... You didn't design your windmill to rotate counter-clockwise, did you?
Oh my god. You fool, you've doomed us all!
Would it be possible to use collaborative filtering, and meta data provided by xkcd to produce a "These xkcd strips may be obligatory for this article",
for sites such as slashdot?
More importantly, why isn't there an xkcd comic about finding obligatory xkcd comics?
In other news, I objected to a wind farm cos I was worried about the flying saucers crashing into it...
Oh geeze, not this FUD again... Look, yes, flying saucer crashes were a problem with some older, ill-conceived wind farms. But with a little planning, and modern designs, this is essentially a non-issue for the wind farms of today. The most important thing is not to put cattle, sheep, or drunken hillbillies underneath the windfarms so the aliens aren't attracted to them. Next is the design itself. The old scaffolding ones didn't look like anything important to the aliens. The new single-pole ones were designed to look like an alien arm raised up. And a raised arm with all three digits spinning in a circle is a very rude gesture and it's traditional to ignore the offender. So the problem solves itself.
His crop is already being irradiated...BY THE SUN. Idiots. Sheesh.
Yeah, and that radiation makes his crops grow to many times their original size! Exactly as 60s sci-fi predicts! So now who's the idiot, huh?
Space Travel is just like the internet. All you need to do is navigate a bunch of tubes.
Yeah, and you can get it for free as long as you're okay with it being slow.
Now we just need to find the Space Travel equivalent of your neighbor's unsecured wireless router, and we can even solve that problem!
Crap, I need a car analogy; can someone help me out here?
"That's like trying to have a debate about whether EMACS or vi is a superior editor on a car!"
You're welcome.
It has, but there's a wait for the procedure. About 65 million years.
Ah, I see. "Take one meteor impact, call me next epoch"?
Sounds like Earth has an HMO. I wonder if its reached its out of pocket limit for the eon? I hope not or it might start going to get a lot more treatment.
And I always suspect most posts like that translate to "Other people dare to deviate from my perfect, genius opinions, dammit, and therefore humanity has no intelligence!"
"Which is itself a stupid way of thinking, ergo I'm not an example of an intelligent human either."
It all checks out! :)
What's the difference between an English image and a French image?
The French images are red-shifted.
If you're talking about the image that shows the strip of sky Plank observed superimposed on a visible light picture, then that's the Milky Way.
If you're talking about the other images, then I'm not sure which patch we're talking about, since there's a number of bright-ish patches.
To be fair, teaching to the test is an OK thing to do.... assuming the test is any good.
For more fairness, the various tests pretty much suck, so your point is valid (and I don't have a windmill in my beard)
No, it's a fair point, it's just that a national standardized multiple-choice test, combined with a proverbial Sword of Damocles over the entire school for failing to meet test standards, is not an environment where teaching to the test is going to result in a healthy education.
Uh, you do realize that Spore is as creationist as you can get? It's intelligent design (well, mostly semi-intelligent), because you're doing the designing yourself.
True, but that's just the games's mechanics. Philosophically though it's a game about evolution. The thing is, while I personally find watching computer-generated simulations of evolution randomly trying out solutions to problems without my interference to be fascinating, I don't think that makes for much of a game. So instead of having random mutations and forcing you to accept crippling ones, they let you pick ones you think are cool. That doesn't mean the game is "creationist". I mean, they also let you directly control the creatures in the game, when really it should be an AI. That doesn't mean the game endorses the school of thought that we are all puppets, not of an omnipotent deity, but of a bunch of ugly bags of mostly water*. Rather, both of these design features are intended to make it fun and interactive.
And you can teach important aspects of evolution in a game like that, such as: Survival of the Fittest. The linchpin of evolution. The answer to the question "How can random changes that can just as easily result in death by cancer or worse result in the amazingly complex and efficient systems we see in all of biology?" Regardless of the mechanism behind genetic changes, the only organisms that pass on their genes are those that are able to survive and reproduce. Lose the level? Get eaten by the boss monster? Sorry, "designed" or not your species doesn't continue on. Choose a different option and try again -- random or not, eventually you'll get it right.
Not that Spore is really the greatest educational game ever, or any of the evolution-themed games I've played (Cubivore... some SNES side-scroller... some crobots-like thing...). I'd like to see something where the choices of upgrades represented significant developments in real biology, and their tradeoffs. Like... Four-chambered heart and warm blooded gives you a fast metabolism so you can be really active, but you have to eat all the time. No more eating one big meal and being able to just chill for a month during famines. That kind of thing.
Okay I'm not quitting my day job to go write it. But I think evolution-based games can be educational so someone should go do that. :)
* [voice type="WoW human female"]Do you ever feel like you're not in charge of your own destiny, like...you're being controlled by an invisible hand?[/voice]
You'd rather prove you have no stones than prove you have no clue.
Yeah, that's what I thought, bitch.
Really? Is that money more than the cost of all the illnesses and deaths [1] wrought by the toxic dumping, plus the present-discounted value of future fish and sea resources? If not, they haven't been made whole after what's been done to them.
Oh, is that how it works? There's a big ticker somewhere labeled "Cost to Somalia" that goes down every time a ransom is paid, and once it hits zero they'll have been "made whole"? Someone should let the pirates know, lest they fail to contribute their profits to to the "Heal Somalia" fund! Also make sure to tell them when it hits zero so they'll know to stop pirating! =D
Moral calculus is well and good, but I highly doubt that has anything to do with their motivation. Yes they care about bringing money in to benefit their hurting families and villages but no I don't think they're trying to directly compensate for all the "cost" of what others have done to them. No, they care only about their own family and village, not the one ten miles down the coast, and they're trying to make as much money for themselves as possible, and whether that's more or less than the hypothetical cost of dumping and overfishing is entirely besides the point.
If you could magically clean up the oceans, replace all the fish, and force the fishing boats to respect their coasts, the piracy would continue. Why? Because it makes way more money than fishing! They've found themselves a new career. They might have started because they were desperate and saw no other option. They'll keep doing it because it's crazy-fat money like they've never seen before, right up until the navies of affected countries make it untenable.
This is the fate of every cause that results in profit. It doesn't take long before the original cause is sidelined and profit becomes the real cost. There's a real good reason everything rightly considered a charity is also a non-profit. This is normal, I don't know why you consider it so offensive to consider.
Again, I want to make absolutely clear that I don't think piracy is the right response.
And I want to make it absolutely clear that I think piracy probably was the right response, from their perspective. Though I'm not using "right" in the sense of morality, or in the sense of balancing the "wrongs" done to them because who cares. I mean in terms of rational correctness. So many countries throughout history simply take what they want from those weaker than them, why can't they take a turn? Oh, it's wrong? Who cares? Good, bad... they're the guys with the RPG.
They should have sent clan representatives to international bodies (UN, Arab League, EU, international sea organizations, etc.) to ask for respect for their coastal right before any large-scale violence.
Please, they aren't fucking Greenpeace! They began pirating in response to the violation of their rights, but it wasn't some kind of protest or resistance movement -- it was a cash grab, taking what they thought should (or could) be theirs! They aren't targeting fishing vessels from offending nations, they're targeting anything they think they can get a decent ransom from. They aren't capturing ships and publicly declaring that they will not release them until their rights are respected, they're holding the ships until the owner/insurer quietly pays them off! Oh yeah, they're raising awareness, not raising their personal net worth. Sure.
And seriously, send representatives to the U.N.? Oh yeah, that would have been real useful. Most of us still probably would have never heard of them if that was their course of action. And what would it have done? It wouldn't have magically cleaned up their water, or put the fish back, so they'd still be out of jobs. Whatever pittance of aid the U.N. tried to give them, assuming it even reached the affected communities, would be nothing compared to their "self help" program.
But just the same, the poor motives of many of the pirates doesn't detract f
This is the legacy of No Child Left Behind... We've dumbed education down to the lowest common denominator. There are fewer and fewer gifted programs. Everyone's straight-jacketed into the same curriculum at the same pace
No, it's much worse than that. We always had essentially the same curriculum for everyone if your school couldn't afford "gifted" courses, and most schools couldn't for more than maybe a couple subjects -- e.g one elementary school I went to had "advanced" math, but not science, history, english or anything else, so if your "gift" involved something other than math, tough luck!
The problem with No Child Left Behind is that the curriculum now revolves entirely, 100%, around passing the stupid tests. Teachers don't teach anymore, they train and coach in how to pass tests. They don't teach things the test doesn't cover. They don't teach the principles, they teach the technique needed to pass the test. Because they can't afford to do anything else or they'll risk losing money and then whatever few interesting programs they have left will be gone.
It'd be one thing if it was an actual education based on the lowest common denominator. But it's not even that good. Ever cram for an exam where you didn't care at all about the subject, you only cared about passing the exam, because if you didn't pass the exam your GPA would drop and you'd lose your financial aid? Was that the best learning experience? Now imagine your professor had exactly the same motivation. That's what No Child Left Behind has done to our education.
Why not? Lots of 14-year-olds have sex with their boyfriends or girlfriends every day.
Way to delete the part about it involving an older person. In particular those in positions of authority. Two tweens deciding to have sex, even if it's a mistake because they aren't ready, is just a mistake. A tween having sex with a forty year old when they aren't ready isn't just a mistake, it's predation.
You see numbers are arbitrary.
More or less, yes, but the underlying moral analysis that leads to assigning an arbitrary number is not itself arbitrary. That arbitrary number may fail for any particular case, because the underlying code of "it is immoral to take advantage of someone who is not mature enough to understand the consequences of their decisions and avoid predation" may not apply in that particular case because the youth is mature enough. That means the rule is arbitrary, but the morality behind it is not. Which was the GP's point.
This doesn't justify piracy, but it does give lie to the notion that they lack a legitimate grievance and are simply out for money, and it helps to explain why they enjoy such support from Somalians.
Well, it means they had a grievance that lead them away from fishing. But once the crazy piracy $$ started rolling in (many times more than they ever made in the best of times fishing), it became all about the money.
At one point, the reporter who was accompanying her went to ask a homeless guy sitting under the bridge what he thought. "Is that a Stradivarius?", he asked straight out. Turned out the guy was from Stradivari's home town of Cremona and would've known the sound of a Strad anywhere.
Joke the First: What the article doesn't mention is that when he asked that he was pointing at a pigeon.
Joke the Second: That was "Stradivarius Joe", and he always asks that.
nobody cries if you spill beer into your fiddle
I do. Wasted beer!
*sob* No! Give it here, I can still drink what's left out of the fiddle!
On a different but related note I have a relative who, when he inspected a house he was buying would hide items which he wanted to own, then retrieve them after taking the place over.
I tried that once, but I couldn't find a place to stuff the kids where they wouldn't hear them cry but they'd also be able to breathe. ...
Damn I just creeped myself out. >_
I deleted my initial response to this as I took a rather insulting tone towards his EE degrees. I'm having enough problems with him thinking I'm insulting his intelligence.
Heh. I am most certainly insulting his intelligence, I just see no need to insult his degree in order to do so. :)
For two systems transmitting the same amount of real power, the system with the lower power factor will have higher circulating currents due to energy that returns to the source from energy storage in the load. These higher currents in a practical system may produce higher losses and reduce overall transmission efficiency.
Yes, it's the "energy storage" and return that he doesn't seem to comprehend. He seems to think all power in a circuit is "burned", based on a very naive EE101 view that everything is a resistive load.