"Wow, this top ramen and old CRT TV are good enough. I should stay on welfare / not bother to learn anything".
I've met some very smart (though quite obviously ignorant) people that not only have a similar attitude, but are openly hostile to the idea of education... like it is a curse. I don't think it can be solved by the school system - they seem to inherit this attitude, but much like racism it can probably be indoctrinated out over the generations. Remember that it is easier to demonize than educate. Making people who have an education, nice car, and big TV bad so that you can feel better about yourself is far easier than actually improving your own situation, so naturally people often take that route.
I also know smart, educated people who slum a bit and take a teaching or government job to get the lower hours and early retirement. Hell, half of my family has done this. Smart people, but very under-employed. I'm not suggesting that public service is the same as collecting welfare, but some of the same thought process is at work when you put your life on cruise control like that.
I think that is exactly the mentality that FatdogHaiku is complaining about.
I think the fact is that there are different classes of people. Some people (even very smart people) react very well to personal encouragement and these gimped sorts of fake competitions. Anyone with a child will tell you that the 2-year-old will not keep racing you if you don't let them win, and I suspect this tendency continues throughout life. On the other hand, some people really relish a challenge. There's a guy with one of those "brain teaser" trinkets on his desk. Some people will play with it for an hour until the figure it out and others will play with it for about 30 seconds and give up. Still others will force it apart - "cheating" - and feel just as much satisfaction as the guy who figured it out after an hour. Schools need to recognize that people all learn in different ways if they want to truly be accommodating. I think this is one place where private schools win: you can shop around to find a school that suits your child, something not possible in most public schools. My state has a (not ideally implemented) charter school program, and in general I support that idea because it lets public school parents do this same kind of shopping around.
How about the Japanese government [livescience.com]? "The murasoi fish â" similar to a rockfish â" was contaminated with 254,000 becquerels (Bq) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of radioactive cesium, according to a study released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the Daily Mail reports. "
And how is a fish caught off of Japan not a local, known problem? They have banned fishing in the effected region, and banned exports from same. When radioactive fish starts making Russians or Californians sick, then start talking about the UN.
found radioactive tuna chilling out in California
Did you read that study? The "radioactivity" was traces of cesium at a level of radiation measuring 40 times lower than the fish had from natural potassium. How in the world is that dangerous?
Oh, and you know, the disaster was awhile ago, so I'm sure radioactivity has dropped since then. Unless, you know, it increased 8 fold [asahi.com] instead...
I hope you are kidding. This story is about a serious, ongoing leak. I would assume that there would be high levels of radiation measured since it is, you know, leaking.
taking responsibility.
I'm pretty sure the Japanese people will be taking care of that, since they are currently the only people in the world affected by the tsunami and all of it's effects - they have quite the motivation to move back into their homes.
Where is this magic UN cleanup crew, anyway? Why haven't they ridden into Chernobyl? I'm sure the much poorer Ukraine would roll out the red carpet.
It would damage their eternal belief that Microsoft is on the brink of destruction.
They did just purchase the failing smartphone business from Nokia for 7 billion dollars. I mean, they could literally light the 7 billion on fire, but it would be less spectacular.
MS Office is pretty slick, minus the GUI. Excel is both made by and undone by VBA and really has no peer, but Keynote outclasses Powerpoint and Word is nothing special. Visual Studio is great - when you are working with MS's languages and targeting Windows. I'm not in love with Explorer on any level... not even in Windows 7, which added the crazy Libraries concept, but more power to you. PowerShell is cool - if you have to admin Windows machines. Windows/Office isn't horrible to work on day-to-day, but I'm amazed that it isn't further ahead given the cash these guys make with it. It seems like they completely lose years of development every once in a while, like "Longhorn" and Windows 8.
I think you pretty much have the gist of it - the speculation is that the weight replaced an instrument package or something else that was hanging there before. It was 5 lbs - less effect than an inch or two of a crewman's buttock on the rail.
That said, I'll remind you that rich "asshats" pretty much own all sports teams. NASCAR may have humble origins, but the teams are now owned by people who could just as well build a yacht.
Comcast (or whatever your cable company is) has such bad customer service that I would actually move to Verizon if they offered competitive internet. And that says a LOT, because I've cancelled Verizon after their shenanigans.
Yes, we had 500 phone-to-phone minutes and 750 "anytime" minutes, plus some night and weekend minutes. Each phone had its own balance, and you could call in to check the balance or you could look it up online. Until you couldn't. This is the dark ages.
There was also a radiocative fish [huffingtonpost.com] caught near California, but it wasn't deemed dangerous
That's the kind of report I was talking about. The fish caught away from Japan haven't registered above background radiation, depending on where you live. The cessium radiation in the fish referrenced from that HuffPost article was 40 times lower than the natural level of radiation present in the fish from natural potassium. Of course, HuffPost would never mention that little tidbit, let alone link back to the source document.:)
what's going on in the ocean is going to wind up killing many millions slowly and over a long time frame.
I don't know where you are getting your information from, but I'd love to see your source. The ocean is so big that you could probably drop the whole goddamn plant in the middle of it and have only local effects. A few million gallons of radioactive water with decades-long half lives is only going to affect Japanese fishermen and no one else. And since the risk is known, the chances of someone actually dying are almost nil.
We're already finding radiation-poisoned fish washing up in Hawaii, South Korea, California, Alaska, and as the radiation plume spreads out, it's eventually going to circle the globe.
No you aren't, you are finding fish with something like twice the normal level those fish would have, which is still well below background radiation on much of the planet. Do you have a citation for a single dangerous fish being caught outside of that part of Japan?
In the early 2000s I had a two Sprint phones on a family plan. For a year, I checked our usage almost daily on their website. One day, it stopped working. The first-line idiot said that it still worked the same way it did when he was hired 6 months ago. I asked him whether he thought I was crazy and he said, "Well, I guess I don't know." I spoke to his manager - same line: you have never been able to do this from our website. Either guy could have at least pretended to believe me, but that's customer service gone right and they were all about getting it wrong. How hard could a bug report be? I cancelled my service on the spot.
Had I been able to buy a Tweet at the time, I might have. Complete incompetence.
Because one has killed over 100,000 people and seems to be escalating towards massacre while the other might have killed a person or two and could go on to... possibly prevent people from moving back in to a small city for a while - all effects localized in a single country.
Scale. If Japanese radiation starts affecting Russian food safety or something, then you might go to the UN to let more monkeys in to fuck the football.
You are talking past one another. You are both right. He's correct that more than enough money is already being spent on education. By any measure we spend more on education than almost any other country, yet our outcomes are middling. He probably won't recognize that at least part of the problem is how the funding is disbursed... poor districts full of troubled kids get fewer dollars than rich districts full of kids who would be fine even if you didn't provide them with public education, but that should be obvious. You might not like his critique of the current teaching establishment, but most of us living through it see just how dysfunctional it really is. Most of us want our kid to learn how to read and write, hopefully in a safe environment with some culture and civics thrown in for good measure. Instead we get admin overload, thanks in some part to overbearing state and federal mandates, ridiculous union-admin fighting and the complete inability to fire people universally regarded as not suitable for the job. We are currently fighting over a principal who, as a result of some weight-related health issues, cannot effectively run the school. Can she be replaced? No, they fear a ADA lawsuit. So our kids have to get a poorer education in a school setting that lacks discipline because this lady is in a federally protected class of people. Great. I won't even get into the ridiculousness that is "state test season". At least our school district has managed to hang on to gym every other day and some music and art.
Are you in one of those countries throwing bananas at black people? Or one of the ones that bans parapets on mosques? Or maybe you live in a country with a blanket ban on genetic engineering in crops? We all have our embarrassing vices.
He also throws out 2 data points to make the curve!
He jumps to the conclusion that a car with 400 mile range will require $10,000 in batteries in 2017. Fair enough. He goes on to say that means there will be no reason to own a gasoline car if electric continues to cost 0.03 $/mile and gasoline 0.20 $/mile. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but that $10,000 premium still buys you almost 60,000 miles worth of gas! For my city driver that is over 12 years payback period, for my minivan it is around 6 years, but I haven't seen an electric minivan yet. If, God forbid, you have to replace the pack, you start all over again.
Of course if you already happen to have an extra rocket laying around that might be bigger than what you need, the extra fuel and mass might not be that big of a deal compared with hauling everything down to Florida.
Slashdot Mirror
"Wow, this top ramen and old CRT TV are good enough. I should stay on welfare / not bother to learn anything".
I've met some very smart (though quite obviously ignorant) people that not only have a similar attitude, but are openly hostile to the idea of education... like it is a curse. I don't think it can be solved by the school system - they seem to inherit this attitude, but much like racism it can probably be indoctrinated out over the generations. Remember that it is easier to demonize than educate. Making people who have an education, nice car, and big TV bad so that you can feel better about yourself is far easier than actually improving your own situation, so naturally people often take that route.
I also know smart, educated people who slum a bit and take a teaching or government job to get the lower hours and early retirement. Hell, half of my family has done this. Smart people, but very under-employed. I'm not suggesting that public service is the same as collecting welfare, but some of the same thought process is at work when you put your life on cruise control like that.
I think that is exactly the mentality that FatdogHaiku is complaining about.
I think the fact is that there are different classes of people. Some people (even very smart people) react very well to personal encouragement and these gimped sorts of fake competitions. Anyone with a child will tell you that the 2-year-old will not keep racing you if you don't let them win, and I suspect this tendency continues throughout life. On the other hand, some people really relish a challenge. There's a guy with one of those "brain teaser" trinkets on his desk. Some people will play with it for an hour until the figure it out and others will play with it for about 30 seconds and give up. Still others will force it apart - "cheating" - and feel just as much satisfaction as the guy who figured it out after an hour. Schools need to recognize that people all learn in different ways if they want to truly be accommodating. I think this is one place where private schools win: you can shop around to find a school that suits your child, something not possible in most public schools. My state has a (not ideally implemented) charter school program, and in general I support that idea because it lets public school parents do this same kind of shopping around.
Do you really need CAT6 in your house?
No, but this way I don't have to run cable twice. It's not substantially more expensive compared to the time spent dragging it through walls.
Pining for the days of Dennis Conner, are we?
I still can't "leapfrog" wireless in my house. Running CAT6 all over the damn place.
The irony is that a NASCAR team has a lot more in common with an Americas Cup team than with anything poor, trashy, or stupid.
So the UN would do what with those fuel rods exactly?
How about the Japanese government [livescience.com]? "The murasoi fish â" similar to a rockfish â" was contaminated with 254,000 becquerels (Bq) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of radioactive cesium, according to a study released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the Daily Mail reports. "
And how is a fish caught off of Japan not a local, known problem? They have banned fishing in the effected region, and banned exports from same. When radioactive fish starts making Russians or Californians sick, then start talking about the UN.
found radioactive tuna chilling out in California
Did you read that study? The "radioactivity" was traces of cesium at a level of radiation measuring 40 times lower than the fish had from natural potassium. How in the world is that dangerous?
Oh, and you know, the disaster was awhile ago, so I'm sure radioactivity has dropped since then. Unless, you know, it increased 8 fold [asahi.com] instead...
I hope you are kidding. This story is about a serious, ongoing leak. I would assume that there would be high levels of radiation measured since it is, you know, leaking.
taking responsibility.
I'm pretty sure the Japanese people will be taking care of that, since they are currently the only people in the world affected by the tsunami and all of it's effects - they have quite the motivation to move back into their homes.
Where is this magic UN cleanup crew, anyway? Why haven't they ridden into Chernobyl? I'm sure the much poorer Ukraine would roll out the red carpet.
Them Kiwis can sail!
It would damage their eternal belief that Microsoft is on the brink of destruction.
They did just purchase the failing smartphone business from Nokia for 7 billion dollars. I mean, they could literally light the 7 billion on fire, but it would be less spectacular.
MS Office is pretty slick, minus the GUI. Excel is both made by and undone by VBA and really has no peer, but Keynote outclasses Powerpoint and Word is nothing special. Visual Studio is great - when you are working with MS's languages and targeting Windows. I'm not in love with Explorer on any level... not even in Windows 7, which added the crazy Libraries concept, but more power to you. PowerShell is cool - if you have to admin Windows machines. Windows/Office isn't horrible to work on day-to-day, but I'm amazed that it isn't further ahead given the cash these guys make with it. It seems like they completely lose years of development every once in a while, like "Longhorn" and Windows 8.
I think you pretty much have the gist of it - the speculation is that the weight replaced an instrument package or something else that was hanging there before. It was 5 lbs - less effect than an inch or two of a crewman's buttock on the rail.
That said, I'll remind you that rich "asshats" pretty much own all sports teams. NASCAR may have humble origins, but the teams are now owned by people who could just as well build a yacht.
Given that NASCAR brings in people by the hundreds of thousands, I think that lack of popularity does not necessarily detract from the Americas Cup.
I can't wait for the 64-bit ARMs. If they can do ECC RAM, I'll be a happy camper.
Comcast (or whatever your cable company is) has such bad customer service that I would actually move to Verizon if they offered competitive internet. And that says a LOT, because I've cancelled Verizon after their shenanigans.
Yes, we had 500 phone-to-phone minutes and 750 "anytime" minutes, plus some night and weekend minutes. Each phone had its own balance, and you could call in to check the balance or you could look it up online. Until you couldn't. This is the dark ages.
There was also a radiocative fish [huffingtonpost.com] caught near California, but it wasn't deemed dangerous
That's the kind of report I was talking about. The fish caught away from Japan haven't registered above background radiation, depending on where you live. The cessium radiation in the fish referrenced from that HuffPost article was 40 times lower than the natural level of radiation present in the fish from natural potassium. Of course, HuffPost would never mention that little tidbit, let alone link back to the source document. :)
what's going on in the ocean is going to wind up killing many millions slowly and over a long time frame.
I don't know where you are getting your information from, but I'd love to see your source. The ocean is so big that you could probably drop the whole goddamn plant in the middle of it and have only local effects. A few million gallons of radioactive water with decades-long half lives is only going to affect Japanese fishermen and no one else. And since the risk is known, the chances of someone actually dying are almost nil.
We're already finding radiation-poisoned fish washing up in Hawaii, South Korea, California, Alaska, and as the radiation plume spreads out, it's eventually going to circle the globe.
No you aren't, you are finding fish with something like twice the normal level those fish would have, which is still well below background radiation on much of the planet. Do you have a citation for a single dangerous fish being caught outside of that part of Japan?
I'm less than outraged? Why should you be allowed to trespass?
Yes, and Hasan Syed appears to be a subject of the Crown, so he's probably in trouble.
In the early 2000s I had a two Sprint phones on a family plan. For a year, I checked our usage almost daily on their website. One day, it stopped working. The first-line idiot said that it still worked the same way it did when he was hired 6 months ago. I asked him whether he thought I was crazy and he said, "Well, I guess I don't know." I spoke to his manager - same line: you have never been able to do this from our website. Either guy could have at least pretended to believe me, but that's customer service gone right and they were all about getting it wrong. How hard could a bug report be? I cancelled my service on the spot.
Had I been able to buy a Tweet at the time, I might have. Complete incompetence.
Because one has killed over 100,000 people and seems to be escalating towards massacre while the other might have killed a person or two and could go on to... possibly prevent people from moving back in to a small city for a while - all effects localized in a single country.
Scale. If Japanese radiation starts affecting Russian food safety or something, then you might go to the UN to let more monkeys in to fuck the football.
You are talking past one another. You are both right. He's correct that more than enough money is already being spent on education. By any measure we spend more on education than almost any other country, yet our outcomes are middling. He probably won't recognize that at least part of the problem is how the funding is disbursed... poor districts full of troubled kids get fewer dollars than rich districts full of kids who would be fine even if you didn't provide them with public education, but that should be obvious. You might not like his critique of the current teaching establishment, but most of us living through it see just how dysfunctional it really is. Most of us want our kid to learn how to read and write, hopefully in a safe environment with some culture and civics thrown in for good measure. Instead we get admin overload, thanks in some part to overbearing state and federal mandates, ridiculous union-admin fighting and the complete inability to fire people universally regarded as not suitable for the job. We are currently fighting over a principal who, as a result of some weight-related health issues, cannot effectively run the school. Can she be replaced? No, they fear a ADA lawsuit. So our kids have to get a poorer education in a school setting that lacks discipline because this lady is in a federally protected class of people. Great. I won't even get into the ridiculousness that is "state test season". At least our school district has managed to hang on to gym every other day and some music and art.
Are you in one of those countries throwing bananas at black people? Or one of the ones that bans parapets on mosques? Or maybe you live in a country with a blanket ban on genetic engineering in crops? We all have our embarrassing vices.
He also throws out 2 data points to make the curve!
He jumps to the conclusion that a car with 400 mile range will require $10,000 in batteries in 2017. Fair enough. He goes on to say that means there will be no reason to own a gasoline car if electric continues to cost 0.03 $/mile and gasoline 0.20 $/mile. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but that $10,000 premium still buys you almost 60,000 miles worth of gas! For my city driver that is over 12 years payback period, for my minivan it is around 6 years, but I haven't seen an electric minivan yet. If, God forbid, you have to replace the pack, you start all over again.
Of course if you already happen to have an extra rocket laying around that might be bigger than what you need, the extra fuel and mass might not be that big of a deal compared with hauling everything down to Florida.