I only started thinking about children once I had them:)
I'm just now looking into education matters, and I'm absolutely horrified at how unscientific it all is. "Best practices" in education are often just the fad philosophy of the day and educators rebel furiously against any attempt to objectively measure their performance. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm trying to do as much as I can locally.
Common Core seems to have some evidence-based philosophy behind it, but from what I can tell Everyday Math is a steaming pile of "theory" with a few smallish case-studies. From what I can tell, educators mostly hate Common Core because of the testing aspect - in other words, they don't like being objectively measured.
I have no idea whether the negotiated a lower price from Apple or not, but I will point out that $1.3 billion divided by 650,000 students is almost $2500 per student... the cost of the device is almost in the noise here.
This is common in education. You rarely see any kind of pilot project or scientifically valid feasibility work. Education as a field is mostly a philosophy-based practice and is only now starting to dabble in evidence-based decision making.
I think it is more about how many compression/decompression cycles an aluminum-skinned aircraft can handle before you end its service life. Inflate the aircraft to a higher pressure and it will cause more stress.
It was not clear from your initial comment - it sounded like you were agreeing with all of the parent's points and saying that the same situation was true in the US. In fact, nimbius was making exactly the opposite point - he was saying that they were trying to churn out uneducated "working man" soldiers. You are making the point that education was seen as essential to prevailing in the Cold War. I happen to think you are correct and nimbius is wrong. Or at least that nimbius's comments cannot be applied to Vietnam-era America.
Fair enough, but nimbus was using the term to describe why they needed so many conscripts from the Eastern Bloc satellite states. I'm claiming that there simply wasn't that kind of need for men. Same with Vietnam. Losses there were heavier, but there were still many, many men available for the draft. Most of the army was volunteer.
By whatever standard you want to use, it is hard to lump the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan into the "meat grinder" category. There are more highway deaths in half a year in the US than in the entire conflict.
It sounds like the Vietnam war because as nimbius describes it, students in the Soviet Union could get a good science and mathematics education, but the purpose of the education system was to provide soldiers for the war.
That's great, except that going to college was one way to have a good shot at dodging the draft. Heck, only about 1/4 of US troops were drafted. This just doesn't fit that narrative.
I don't know enough about how the Soviets manned their force in Afghanistan, but with so few losses it is hard to imagine that they needed troops so desperately. It certainly was not a "meat grinder".
I'm not sure either conflict counts as a "meat grinder". Total USSR losses were under 15,000 troops over a 9 year period. Total US losses in Vietnam were under 59,000 over 19 years (but almost all over a 7 year period). To put this in perspective, WW2 cost the Russians around 9-14 million troops, depending on who you ask. The US lost 400,000. WW1 cost Russia around 2 million troops and the US around 100,000 - and the US was only in that for around 6 months! Hell, even the Korean War managed to kill 36,000 in just 3 years.
I would have no qualms in learning a new keyboard layout if the QWERTY keyboard suddenly de-materialised all over the world.
I'm simply suggesting that you might also be willing to learn a new keyboard layout if it made you some magic number more productive. The magic number will be different for different people, obviously, but it exists for most people.
You may not remember the old world, but I can recall almost monthly some article somewhere talking about changing the layout or keypads on those old dumb phones to improve typing speeds.
I remember the articles, but the only company that I can recall actually following through was RIM. It obviously never took off, and I'm in agreement that simply shuffling around a keyboard will not be enough to make the masses shift - it would have to be more dramatic than that.
While the keypad was around for decades, people were only using it to enter text in rare circumstances - 1-800-MATTRESS and the like. Only with the advent of SMS did people need to start entering a lot of text. People did NOT have the letters memorized until after SMS came into being, and in fact the old touch tone pad lacks certain letters altogether. So you had people quickly memorizing the keypad in a short period of time, and in fact inventing an entire "texting" shorthand language - then completely changing behavior again with the invention of T9/iTap/etc.
Once you have kids firing off messages 3x as fast as other kids, whatever method would take over. Slightly changing the key layout will not be this event - it has to be more substantial.
If only there were someexamples of everyone quickly learning how to interface with their phone in a new way...
Kids even mastered the horrendous "multi-tap" rather than use valuable minutes on their phones.
T9 dramatically improved upon multi-tap despite requiring a new usage pattern and some training time. If someone comes up with a similar improvement over the iPhone-style finger poke and Swype-style entry systems, people will adopt it.
I'll be happy to be proven wrong about this if you're up to the task.
I'm not going to do any original research, I'm afraid. Even if I had the time, I'm certain that I'd do a crappy job as it is not my area of expertise. If you are aware of any research supporting media bias in this regard, I'd certainly read it.
Certainly you are aware of the existence of confirmation bias? I don't trust myself to judge when something is over-reported without looking at some kind of objective data. I certainly don't trust your judgement. (No offense meant.)
Google can be a source of objective data, but like I said black-on-white police shootings are more rare than white-on-black police shootings... naturally the latter will be more common on Google.
I'm not dismissing your claim completely - it's certainly conceivable that mainstream media would have an agenda, or at least a narrative that draws viewers. But without data, it's just a claim.
I never took to Logo, but the Elsa version had my daughter's interest and it was introducing her to loops and such. It was just writing javascript, and you could click over and look at the source.
There are more white cops than black cops. Blacks are way overrepresented in high-crime areas that require a large police presence. Combine and you have the overwhelming likelihood that shootings are going to be white cop, black criminal/victim. There may be some degree of media fault, but the numbers are going to favor you hearing about far more white cop shooting black stories than the other way around, even if there was no police profiling at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I only started thinking about children once I had them :)
I'm just now looking into education matters, and I'm absolutely horrified at how unscientific it all is. "Best practices" in education are often just the fad philosophy of the day and educators rebel furiously against any attempt to objectively measure their performance. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm trying to do as much as I can locally.
Common Core seems to have some evidence-based philosophy behind it, but from what I can tell Everyday Math is a steaming pile of "theory" with a few smallish case-studies. From what I can tell, educators mostly hate Common Core because of the testing aspect - in other words, they don't like being objectively measured.
I made a typo? Sorry. Your number is accurate and mine was not.
I have no idea whether the negotiated a lower price from Apple or not, but I will point out that $1.3 billion divided by 650,000 students is almost $2500 per student... the cost of the device is almost in the noise here.
This is common in education. You rarely see any kind of pilot project or scientifically valid feasibility work. Education as a field is mostly a philosophy-based practice and is only now starting to dabble in evidence-based decision making.
I think it is more about how many compression/decompression cycles an aluminum-skinned aircraft can handle before you end its service life. Inflate the aircraft to a higher pressure and it will cause more stress.
My point wasn't that it was a meat grinder war.
It was not clear from your initial comment - it sounded like you were agreeing with all of the parent's points and saying that the same situation was true in the US. In fact, nimbius was making exactly the opposite point - he was saying that they were trying to churn out uneducated "working man" soldiers. You are making the point that education was seen as essential to prevailing in the Cold War. I happen to think you are correct and nimbius is wrong. Or at least that nimbius's comments cannot be applied to Vietnam-era America.
Fair enough, but nimbus was using the term to describe why they needed so many conscripts from the Eastern Bloc satellite states. I'm claiming that there simply wasn't that kind of need for men. Same with Vietnam. Losses there were heavier, but there were still many, many men available for the draft. Most of the army was volunteer.
By whatever standard you want to use, it is hard to lump the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan into the "meat grinder" category. There are more highway deaths in half a year in the US than in the entire conflict.
It sounds like the Vietnam war because as nimbius describes it, students in the Soviet Union could get a good science and mathematics education, but the purpose of the education system was to provide soldiers for the war.
That's great, except that going to college was one way to have a good shot at dodging the draft. Heck, only about 1/4 of US troops were drafted. This just doesn't fit that narrative.
I don't know enough about how the Soviets manned their force in Afghanistan, but with so few losses it is hard to imagine that they needed troops so desperately. It certainly was not a "meat grinder".
I'm not sure either conflict counts as a "meat grinder". Total USSR losses were under 15,000 troops over a 9 year period. Total US losses in Vietnam were under 59,000 over 19 years (but almost all over a 7 year period). To put this in perspective, WW2 cost the Russians around 9-14 million troops, depending on who you ask. The US lost 400,000. WW1 cost Russia around 2 million troops and the US around 100,000 - and the US was only in that for around 6 months! Hell, even the Korean War managed to kill 36,000 in just 3 years.
This sounds like the beginning of a movie about sentient robots.
Yes, I perhaps have the one computer in the office that no one even tries to use any longer. Even IT just leave irate sticky notes.
I would have no qualms in learning a new keyboard layout if the QWERTY keyboard suddenly de-materialised all over the world.
I'm simply suggesting that you might also be willing to learn a new keyboard layout if it made you some magic number more productive. The magic number will be different for different people, obviously, but it exists for most people.
You may not remember the old world, but I can recall almost monthly some article somewhere talking about changing the layout or keypads on those old dumb phones to improve typing speeds.
I remember the articles, but the only company that I can recall actually following through was RIM. It obviously never took off, and I'm in agreement that simply shuffling around a keyboard will not be enough to make the masses shift - it would have to be more dramatic than that.
While the keypad was around for decades, people were only using it to enter text in rare circumstances - 1-800-MATTRESS and the like. Only with the advent of SMS did people need to start entering a lot of text. People did NOT have the letters memorized until after SMS came into being, and in fact the old touch tone pad lacks certain letters altogether. So you had people quickly memorizing the keypad in a short period of time, and in fact inventing an entire "texting" shorthand language - then completely changing behavior again with the invention of T9/iTap/etc.
Once you have kids firing off messages 3x as fast as other kids, whatever method would take over. Slightly changing the key layout will not be this event - it has to be more substantial.
If only there were some examples of everyone quickly learning how to interface with their phone in a new way...
Kids even mastered the horrendous "multi-tap" rather than use valuable minutes on their phones.
T9 dramatically improved upon multi-tap despite requiring a new usage pattern and some training time. If someone comes up with a similar improvement over the iPhone-style finger poke and Swype-style entry systems, people will adopt it.
Who? I never met one?
Let me introduce myself...
Everyone makes fun of me, though.
I think all sixes would have been cooler :)
I'll be happy to be proven wrong about this if you're up to the task.
I'm not going to do any original research, I'm afraid. Even if I had the time, I'm certain that I'd do a crappy job as it is not my area of expertise. If you are aware of any research supporting media bias in this regard, I'd certainly read it.
Certainly you are aware of the existence of confirmation bias? I don't trust myself to judge when something is over-reported without looking at some kind of objective data. I certainly don't trust your judgement. (No offense meant.)
Google can be a source of objective data, but like I said black-on-white police shootings are more rare than white-on-black police shootings... naturally the latter will be more common on Google.
I'm not dismissing your claim completely - it's certainly conceivable that mainstream media would have an agenda, or at least a narrative that draws viewers. But without data, it's just a claim.
I haven't seen any data on that, but I'd be interested in seeing that if you have it.
I never took to Logo, but the Elsa version had my daughter's interest and it was introducing her to loops and such. It was just writing javascript, and you could click over and look at the source.
You can laugh at LOGO, but I've been having my 8-year-old daughter play with code.org, and it is mostly the same thing.
There are more white cops than black cops. Blacks are way overrepresented in high-crime areas that require a large police presence. Combine and you have the overwhelming likelihood that shootings are going to be white cop, black criminal/victim. There may be some degree of media fault, but the numbers are going to favor you hearing about far more white cop shooting black stories than the other way around, even if there was no police profiling at all.
Thank goodness it was a white on black action or we would not have even heard about it.
Short memory.
I remember when most of the Slashdot stories revolved around fire and the wheel.