While your idea has a nice sentimental appeal, I think that it fails for the same reason as some actual homeschooling: Many parents are completely unaware of the limitations of their education/abilities. They might THINK they know how to teach phonics or geography, but their kids may fail to pass the hypothetical Elementary School GED year after year after year. That leaves the government with some ugly options:
1. Start forcing low-achievement children (those who fail the various tests) to attend public education, resulting in the appearance of incredible discrimination (imagine all the children with uneducated parents getting hauled off in the school bus, while children of educated parents stay at home). That's not politically or socially viable.
2. Let children of uneducated parents continue to flounder as their parents "learn 'em whats they needs to know!" That'll be an economic disaster in under 20 years.
And of course, there's the generally tacit issue that schools are largely a public daycare service, allowing for more dual-income families (which is salvation to those struggling financially, and a convenience for many others). Side-bar: Repealing school taxes would never come close to the cost of daycare, so don't bother down that route.
FWIW, I'm glad my parents didn't have many options in this matter. My early public school experience was less than stellar (familiar with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area SD case? yeah, I went there), but my family would never have been able to offer me even the most basic public education resources: Knowledge of good children's authors or simple science labs (e.g. dissect an owl-pellet, build an electromagnet). OTOH, I would home-school my own children, as I can look back and recognize the utter idiocy of some of my teachers and emulate the better ones. Then again, if education improves since I graduated high-school, I could be depriving my own future-children out of sheer ignorance.
It's great that you brought up this point, however briefly. I have had a rather low opinion of home-schooling throughout most of my life. The home schoolers I knew seemed to have a rather vapid curriculum (mainly focused on passing yearly exams and requirements) in contrast to all of the cool activities I had a chance to take part in at public school (like physics & robotics clubs, advanced science & math courses, etc).
My opinion changed dramatically when I attended a small liberal arts college with a significant proportion of home-schooled students. Many of these students had excelled well beyond high school curriculum to college-level study in the course of their home-school education. They were deeply involved in their studies, often side-by-side with parents who shared their academic interests.
The moral of the story: Home-schooling is a double-edged sword. Some parents home-school because they can offer their children a richer education away from the time-wasting of the public education system, and they do so quite successfully. Other parents are home-schooling because they want to shield their children from the influences of their peers (or possibly everyone), and they generally rob their children of any education in the process. I haven't met a lot of folks in between.
Melbourne Beach is interesting because it's on a barrier island. So Melbourne is technically on the water, but its coast is a brackish lagoon called the Indian River. A huge causeway over the river connects Melbourne and Melbourne Beach.
Imagine there are 100 doors. You still pick only one (say, door 15). You have a 1/100 chance of being correct. Monty Hall throws open every door except Door 15 (your choice) and Door 72, and all open doors have goats. Will you stick with your choice or switch? This example makes it a bit more intuitive to see that while you still only had a 1/100 chance of being right, you had a 99/100 chance of being wrong, *and* (most importantly) if you are wrong then the car must be behind Door 72. Therefore Door 72 now has a 99/100 chance of being the car, while Door 15 only has 1/100.
Try that whole exercise again now, but with just three doors. You find that while your choice has only 1/3 probability of being correct, the remaining door will have 2/3 probability.
The irony of your reply is that a lot of the early work in animal color perception was done by psychologists. Operant conditioning experiments (with discriminative stimuli) reveal which colors an animal subject can effectively distinguish.
Mods - if you must agree with the parent, rank it "Funny" or at least "Insightful"... but there is nothing informative about it.
I'm not bloody paying $250 just to make more work for myself.
I don't imagine this would be an especially effective means of encouraging compliance either... "we'll tell you what to do for the low, low price of $250!!"
Maybe they should just distribute the literature for free to management-types and then start a rumor of a $250 opt-out fee! (rather like the phone-companies' approach to regional phonebooks)
This is like if a Janator asked "Should the office manager know about heavy duty plastic garbage bags? I mean, how many times must these thin bags tear open, and how often must I clean up the mess?". The anwser is shut your mouth and clean the shit up.
Having done the 'dirty work' of being a school custodian for two summers, I can say a good manager might not know about garbage bag quality, but when I ask him/her to order (or allow me to order) better bags for reasons X, Y, Z they manage appropriately and everybody is a little happier for it. (This as opposed to shutting my mouth and tracking garbage all of the building by using torn bags)
The automatic sliding doors in the store I used to work at would simply pop off their hinges and swing open in a power-down emergency (or any other time they were turned off). I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to have a similar system where the entire door frame could swing open from the inside in the event of a power failure.
heck, slap a generator on the revolving door (making it only slightly more difficult to turn) and GENERATE some electricity to help alleviate energy-loss when the cold air escapes
1) Find Al-Qaeda website 2) Post on Slashdot (include reference to breasts) 3) Allow nature to run its course (Slashdotting) 4) Servers become anti-terror weapons
1) Find Al-Qaeda website
2) Post on Slashdot (include reference to breasts)
3) Allow nature to run its course (Slashdotting)
4) Servers become anti-terror weapons
While none of my flights have ever measured up to LAX-SIN or even SFO-NRT, I can appreciate the value of having WiFi access in my layovers through Atlanta.
That said, my point is not that they should stop spending money on WiFi access (because it is reasonably inexpensive to supply), but rather avoid the very costly litigation process of fighting over territory so one side can turn a profit on access and the other offer it as a members' perk. That, IMHO is an irresponsible use of resources on the part of the airport/airline.
i'm sure you're right about the costs of WiFi being insignificant, but the real expenditures are on the litigation now. now THAT'S walkin' around money.
and yes, remember me as a karma-martyr!
how about using all this time and energy towards getting me from the ticket counter to the air in a reasonable amount of time, so i don't need WiFi access in the terminal
you are pretty far off base. the horizontal take-off and landing has been experimented before, but it's not about jets. IANARS (rocket scientist) but IAAAES (aerospace engineering student).
1. "jets" are air-breathing engines... they choke at high altitude, how much less operable in space. so one way or another, we end up talking about a rocket.
2. the velocity necessary to achieve LEO (low earth orbit) is so high that it is quite unlikely a jet engine or several (even supplied with an onboard oxygen source) could produce enough thrust (especially with all the added weight of an onboard oxygen source) to accelerate an entire spacecraft, crew, and cargo to the necessary velocity
My knowledge of all the technicalities is still limited and probably insufficient to address all of your points, but those're some basic concepts that should clear up your questions.
Slashdot Mirror
There are. All over the internet. Oh, you mean on the change.gov site? Absolutely not.
Exactly. You answered your own question.
"One modern day example may be a hard core communist who wouldn't be happy with anything but communism."
Mars, the RED planet! Problem solved.
While your idea has a nice sentimental appeal, I think that it fails for the same reason as some actual homeschooling: Many parents are completely unaware of the limitations of their education/abilities. They might THINK they know how to teach phonics or geography, but their kids may fail to pass the hypothetical Elementary School GED year after year after year. That leaves the government with some ugly options:
1. Start forcing low-achievement children (those who fail the various tests) to attend public education, resulting in the appearance of incredible discrimination (imagine all the children with uneducated parents getting hauled off in the school bus, while children of educated parents stay at home). That's not politically or socially viable.
2. Let children of uneducated parents continue to flounder as their parents "learn 'em whats they needs to know!" That'll be an economic disaster in under 20 years.
And of course, there's the generally tacit issue that schools are largely a public daycare service, allowing for more dual-income families (which is salvation to those struggling financially, and a convenience for many others). Side-bar: Repealing school taxes would never come close to the cost of daycare, so don't bother down that route.
FWIW, I'm glad my parents didn't have many options in this matter. My early public school experience was less than stellar (familiar with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area SD case? yeah, I went there), but my family would never have been able to offer me even the most basic public education resources: Knowledge of good children's authors or simple science labs (e.g. dissect an owl-pellet, build an electromagnet). OTOH, I would home-school my own children, as I can look back and recognize the utter idiocy of some of my teachers and emulate the better ones. Then again, if education improves since I graduated high-school, I could be depriving my own future-children out of sheer ignorance.
It's great that you brought up this point, however briefly. I have had a rather low opinion of home-schooling throughout most of my life. The home schoolers I knew seemed to have a rather vapid curriculum (mainly focused on passing yearly exams and requirements) in contrast to all of the cool activities I had a chance to take part in at public school (like physics & robotics clubs, advanced science & math courses, etc).
My opinion changed dramatically when I attended a small liberal arts college with a significant proportion of home-schooled students. Many of these students had excelled well beyond high school curriculum to college-level study in the course of their home-school education. They were deeply involved in their studies, often side-by-side with parents who shared their academic interests.
The moral of the story:
Home-schooling is a double-edged sword. Some parents home-school because they can offer their children a richer education away from the time-wasting of the public education system, and they do so quite successfully. Other parents are home-schooling because they want to shield their children from the influences of their peers (or possibly everyone), and they generally rob their children of any education in the process. I haven't met a lot of folks in between.
Melbourne Beach is interesting because it's on a barrier island. So Melbourne is technically on the water, but its coast is a brackish lagoon called the Indian River. A huge causeway over the river connects Melbourne and Melbourne Beach.
Maybe cost-prohibitive, but not impossible. It's called the town of Melbourne Beach.
Imagine there are 100 doors. You still pick only one (say, door 15). You have a 1/100 chance of being correct. Monty Hall throws open every door except Door 15 (your choice) and Door 72, and all open doors have goats. Will you stick with your choice or switch? This example makes it a bit more intuitive to see that while you still only had a 1/100 chance of being right, you had a 99/100 chance of being wrong, *and* (most importantly) if you are wrong then the car must be behind Door 72. Therefore Door 72 now has a 99/100 chance of being the car, while Door 15 only has 1/100.
Try that whole exercise again now, but with just three doors. You find that while your choice has only 1/3 probability of being correct, the remaining door will have 2/3 probability.
USA: aha! We can blow up your satellites too!!
More like:
China: you see, we can blow up your satellites!!
USA: aha! We can blow up our satellites too!!
Mods - if you must agree with the parent, rank it "Funny" or at least "Insightful"... but there is nothing informative about it.
contrary to previous reports, the gunshot wounds were not in the head and chest. he actually shot himself in the back 14 times.
Interesting comment. Can you cite some of those verifiable sources please? I'd like to read them myself.
I don't imagine this would be an especially effective means of encouraging compliance either... "we'll tell you what to do for the low, low price of $250!!"
Maybe they should just distribute the literature for free to management-types and then start a rumor of a $250 opt-out fee! (rather like the phone-companies' approach to regional phonebooks)
Having done the 'dirty work' of being a school custodian for two summers, I can say a good manager might not know about garbage bag quality, but when I ask him/her to order (or allow me to order) better bags for reasons X, Y, Z they manage appropriately and everybody is a little happier for it. (This as opposed to shutting my mouth and tracking garbage all of the building by using torn bags)
No, no... those will be used at the ticketing gates.
The automatic sliding doors in the store I used to work at would simply pop off their hinges and swing open in a power-down emergency (or any other time they were turned off). I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to have a similar system where the entire door frame could swing open from the inside in the event of a power failure.
heck, slap a generator on the revolving door (making it only slightly more difficult to turn) and GENERATE some electricity to help alleviate energy-loss when the cold air escapes
The submitter's sarcasm detector looks like it's woefully inadequate.
The parent's sarcasm detector looks like it's woefully inadequate.
Submitter was clearly applying a generous second-layer of sweet sarcastic icing. IMHO a dry delivery is the tastiest accent to a solid joke.
no prob. keep it up. trolling is a small price to pay for respitory health. (and your proint was a good one...)
touche.
1) Find Al-Qaeda website
2) Post on Slashdot (include reference to breasts)
3) Allow nature to run its course (Slashdotting)
4) Servers become anti-terror weapons
1) Find Al-Qaeda website 2) Post on Slashdot (include reference to breasts) 3) Allow nature to run its course (Slashdotting) 4) Servers become anti-terror weapons
While none of my flights have ever measured up to LAX-SIN or even SFO-NRT, I can appreciate the value of having WiFi access in my layovers through Atlanta.
That said, my point is not that they should stop spending money on WiFi access (because it is reasonably inexpensive to supply), but rather avoid the very costly litigation process of fighting over territory so one side can turn a profit on access and the other offer it as a members' perk. That, IMHO is an irresponsible use of resources on the part of the airport/airline.
i'm sure you're right about the costs of WiFi being insignificant, but the real expenditures are on the litigation now. now THAT'S walkin' around money. and yes, remember me as a karma-martyr!
how about using all this time and energy towards getting me from the ticket counter to the air in a reasonable amount of time, so i don't need WiFi access in the terminal
1. "jets" are air-breathing engines... they choke at high altitude, how much less operable in space. so one way or another, we end up talking about a rocket.
2. the velocity necessary to achieve LEO (low earth orbit) is so high that it is quite unlikely a jet engine or several (even supplied with an onboard oxygen source) could produce enough thrust (especially with all the added weight of an onboard oxygen source) to accelerate an entire spacecraft, crew, and cargo to the necessary velocity
My knowledge of all the technicalities is still limited and probably insufficient to address all of your points, but those're some basic concepts that should clear up your questions.