If there weren't someone around bigger and more powerful than they are, do you really think Monsanto wouldn't just fly over every field spraying Round Up and then come back the next day and sell you RU-resistant grain to replant?
If I were a farmer and Monsanto had my fields sprayed I'd be calling my lawyer as well as bringing out my firearms.
I think I prefer censorship, conducted under public scrutiny, to any idiot with an agenda being able to whip up chaos.
You don't fight bad speech by censoring it you fight it with good speech.
Not that the US doesn't have censorship - for all intents and purposes, if Walmart won't carry your work you've been censored.
Funny, I buy most of my books and magazines, the ones I don't subscribe to, at Barnes and Noble though I also order books from Amazon. And if B&N doesn't have it and won't order it, which I've never had them do, I can go to Borders or another store. I don't recall ever buying a book at Walmart. And as for the First Amendment, it only restricts government from censorship, not businesses.
eBay forcing PayPal in Australia, which was ruled a monopoly action but probably would have happened in the US
eBay could lose a lot of customers. Some sellers only accept certain forms of payment, like VISA. Amazon would love to take some of eBay's customers. As would Yahoo!. My sister both buys and sells on eBay and I bet she'd switch in a heart beat if she had to use a payment system she didn't want to use. Ah, competition.
Whose rights, whose laws, do we respect on the Internet? Should the rest of the world be forced to respect America's laws when America isn't willing to do the same?
You follow the laws of the country you're in when you connect, unless you're willing to pay the price.
The "private property" angle is no more than a backdoor for tyranny.
Private property leads to improvements and democracy not tyranny. When government controls all property then you have tyranny.
In the modern world, corporations have equivalent or greater power than government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards as government.
Thomas Jefferson foresaw this when he warned about the Corporate Aristocracy: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." The fact is is corporations were originally granted their Corporate Charter to improve the common, or public, good. The first corporation to be granted a charter was the Dutch East India Company and the second, two years later, the Honourable East India Company. Both were shipping companies trading goods between Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Shipping was a risky business, pirates could attack ships stealing the cargo and killing the crew or bad weather could cause ships to sink. When one of these happened the owner of the ship was held liable for the loss of cargo and lives. Even someone rich could loose everything they owned, so there weren't many people willing to take the risks. So the Dutch East India Company was granted a corporate charter to limit liability. The only thing someone who invested in East India could lose was the amount of money they invested. This enabled people to invest more in ships which increased trade, which was a common good. The problem, as Jefferson saw, was that corporations became too powerful and are no longer held accountable for improving the public good. If corporations faced the possibility of having their Corporate Charters revoked then they could be held responsible again.
I don't buy the notion that personal finance and retirement planning is so horrendously complicated that it justifies twelve to fourteen years of forced marches through math classes.
So, someone should be able to do a future, or present, value calculation without know algebra? Which BTW I was supposed to take in 7th grade, if I had then I could of take taken Calculus in high school. However I got bad info from a school counselor who said he couldn't let me take algebra because I didn't know how to do square roots. I didn't find out he was wrong until 10th grade when because of what the math teacher I had did. When class started he collected homework then held one paper up in front of class, mine, and ripped it up. I immediately went to my counselor there and told her what happened and I needed to be taken out of his class. Looking over my records she said I should be in algebra and when I told here I didn't know how to do square roots she told me that's where you learn them.
So while I agree it shouldn't take that many years for math, it's because I believe it should be taught faster than it is, not because it's not needed. You don't need math only if you're going to be a janitor. And even then you may still need it, for instance to make cleaning fluid by mixing a concentrate with water, you need to know how much of each. Yes, I used to work as a janitor, while in college.
As for financial issues, if that's the goal, then let's teach students about applied finance, instead of making them memorize random mathematical concepts with no application and hoping they somehow magically make the connection.
In a way I agree, students should be shown or taught the practical application of what they are being taught, but math, and science and art still should be taught.
That's the kind of stuff that ruins otherwise intelligent kids.
What I find really baffling is that when I was in second grade I had a brand new teacher, the previous year she had graduated, and she did things differently than any other teacher I had through high school. For certain subjects like arithmetic, reading, and vocabulary she had a bunch of teaching aids and she let us students go at our own pace. Those students who learned fast she encouraged to help the slower students. I think that actually helped solidify what we learned, helping others helps you to learn too. By the end of the year 3 of us, two friends and I were at the 6th grade level in those subjects.
But when we started 3rd grade we were all stuck back in classes that didn't challenge me. The only other teachers I had through high school that pushed me were two science teachers I had, one for chemistry and the other for biology; two I had for English comp and American Lit, they were friends who were allowed to switch each other's classes; and the teacher I had for British Lit. In one way or another they all challenged me. For the rest I just coasted through, even though I sought out challenges. For instance though only a year of science, biology, was required to graduate I took more. Besides the bio I took another 1/2 year of marine biology, 1 1/2 years chemistry, and 1/2 year of ecology. Then I took 1/2 year data processing and 1/2 programming, this when homebrew computers started to become available. Because I wanted to start my own business I also took a business law class.
This is the kind of crap you had to go through to get the education that the rich native-born mostly white American kids got and let me tell you it was no fun.
I can see the rich but not the white part, I'm white and my dad was enlisted in and retired from the US Air Force, I was born in a USAF hospital. To help pay for college, my sisters and I were the first in the family to go to college, I first went into the US Army to save money to go to college as did my older sister.
Actually I'm Heize 57, mostly French Canadian with American Indian and others mixed in.
I remember when I was that young, we used Apple computers in school, which had a math flash-card type application. This concept isn't very new, however what IS new and interesting is that they're using the laptops to also completely replace books.
You know, well maybe you don't, laptops can be of immense help because they can replace textbooks. A number of years ago I read about how some nonprofits have helped African villages improve the education of children, and adults. Some of these villages were so remote and the costs of having books printed and delivered were high, so what these organizations would do is get some laptops and setup a dish for a network connection. One village had a bicycle setup by a team of engineers from the IEEE to recharge batteries in Thailand or Cambodia, villagers would just pedal the bike to recharge them. Maybe 15 minutes pedaling would give batteries a couple of hours of charge. Then with the laptops' wifi they could connect to the net and download the text and graphics for new book's. Or edited and revised books, misprints and plain errs in facts in books drive up costs of printing.
Not that the lessons went faster because you always have these noobs that should have never taken advanced math ("I don't understand it!", "Can you explain that again?" -teaher: "Again?!")
Sorry to break it to you, but some people actually have to --*gasp*-- ask questions to learn!
Some people may need more help but there are still people who shouldn't take specific classes, or major in specific majors. And there are others who shouldn't go to college, not without getting the help they need first. It seems like a life tyme ago but I used to tutor in algebra and chemistry. One student I tried to help in chemistry I couldn't at all. It didn't occur to me until the 3rd or 4th tyme I met her, I spent a day a week with her, the reason she had trouble learning was because she was almost always drunk. I figured it out when I saw her go to her car from which she grabbed a can of beer from a cooler and put the pieces together. After that I told the tutoring office I couldn't work with her anymore.
Yeah, try that again without using the words "adverb" or "adjective", or any words with similar meaning. My point was you can't teach grammar, even by "immersion" or other non-geeky means, without at least defining the basic terms for the student.
You didn't say "teach grammar" you said "It's hard to explain the difference between an adverb and an adjective", I was responding specifically to that so I included it. While explaining the difference may involve teaching grammar, grammar is much more than just that. As for explaining it without using them, one word modifies or qualifies some types of words while the other does that to different types of words.
You only need mathematics more advanced than this stuff if you're planning on going into a field which requires it, like architecture or physics or engineering.
When my sister was working on her BA in Accounting she had to come to me because she didn't understand some of the concepts in her calculus class, yes a calculus for business class was required for her degree. Fact is is math is more important than many admit or realize. Here's a problem anyone should be able to do by the tyme they are an adult, how much should you save for retirement starting today if you want to retire in 40 years with enough income so you can retire on a comfortable income? Algebra and the equation for Present Value will give you an answer once you know how much you will need later. Actually it along with Future Value and other formulas are used quite a bit in fields like accounting, economics, and finance.
True, but the same problem holds for the imperial units, is an area 2 ft^2 the same as 2 square feet? So now instead of 1 problem, there are 2 problems!
Ah so you agree with me. It's not necessarily the units of measurement that's the problem then. It may be a problem when converting from one measurement, Imperial (English) to Metrical, to another but that's not the same. I've known people who have trouble with one but not the other, they're fine with English measurements but bad with metrics and visa versa. Having mostly a science background I don't have trouble with metrics but I didn't have trouble with English either when I worked in construction or on engines, I've worked on car engines and rebuilt them, that used English measurements.
That's what hurt me so badly early on because I had learned enough math in China in first and second grade to last me until the 6th grade in the USA. I was bored out of my mind through 5th grade and pretty much flunked every math class because I was so bored by it and completely ignored the teacher
In a way I went through something like you. At the end of my 6th grade I met a counselor from the jr high I would go to for 7th grade and he said I should take algebra in 7th grade but he couldn't let me take it because I didn't know how to do square roots. So I went from 7th to 10th grade taking as advanced a math class without taking algebra without ever learning how to do square roots. A couple of months after 10th grade started for me my math teacher did something that caused me to loose my cool. Every day when the bell rang for the start of class all of the students had to be sitting down. Students in rows behind the front row then handed the homework to the front and he'd walk across the front row to collect it. Several weeks after the year started he did this, then he leafed through the homework papers and took one out. He held it in front of the class, it was mine, and proceeded to rip it up right there in front of class. I started yelling then grabbed my books and walked out of class. I went right to my counselor's office, I'm glad she was someone different than the first counselor, and told her what happened. I then told her I had to get out of that class. When she looked at my records she said I should be in algebra. I stammered I didn't know how to do square roots, then my stack blew again when she said you learn to do them in algebra. It was too late in the year so she didn't want to put me in algebra but she said a new class, pre-algebra was being offered so I agreed and she put me in it.
Mathematical multiplication tables have at most 100 items to memorize. Your mind is able to memorize a lot more than that.
There may of been 100 items on the multiplication table where you went the school but there was 144 where I went. We had to memorize 1X1 to 12X12, why I don't know when 10X10 will work. Like you say though most people are able to memorize a lot more data than that.
I always thought it was odd that my dad (and his generation - baby boomers) had Latin as a required course in public high school.
In high school I wanted to take both Latin and German but while my mom let me take German she refused to let me take Latin. Thing is is she wouldn't let me take it because she thought it would be too hard for me, it'd require hours of study every day and I wouldn't study enough.
Following your logic, we should all be hunting and gathering instead of shopping for food because now we can't feed ourselves, either.
No, just being able to garden can help a lot though if you're a meat eater you should hunt or fish and clean what you get at least once. Admittedly I haven't fished or hunted in years but I grew up doing both. I used to fish freshwater and saltwater. And for hunting I've used bow and arrow, firearms, and built and set traps. Some people have called me mixed up because I love and wanted to be a scientist but at the same tyme I love the Society for Creative Anachronism.
I loved British Lit in high school. I read some of my favorite books in that class, "Beowulf" and "A Tale of Two Cities" among them.
I got As in English up until 8th grade when they turned to literature. I got a great score on the English portion of the SAT, ACT, and GRE, even better than my math score. Yet I've gotten Cs or worse in every literature based class I've ever taken.
I did just as well in Lit as I did in composition, and I had more fun in Lit. In both American Lit and British Lit, which was an elective, we'd do different things. We'd memorize parts of a book, play, and then perform it. For one project we had to do in British Lit I baked and brought into class a cake in the image of one of the characters. Several others baked something as well so we ended up having a party during class.
It's hard to explain the difference between an adverb and an adjective
I don't think it's that hard to explain the difference between adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives modify or qualify an object, a noun, whereas an adverb can modify or qualify a verb, another adverb, or an adjective.
Are you saying that you have less chance understanding English sans idioms
Not at all, only that English has way more words than most people ever use. Chinese is the same. So learning one over the other to reach a conversational level of knowledge isn't any harder. The hard part is grammar, and for spoken languages is pronunciation. There's that saying "you say tomato and I say tomahto". Now Chinese can be difficult because although there's one written language with ideograms there are a number of different methods of romanticizing them. Then spoken there's different spoken words used. Cantonese is one way of speaking, and a major one at that though it has it's own dialects. MandarinMandarin, with it's own dialects, is another. Mandarin is the official language in both the Mainland China and on Taiwan. Orally there's also Fujianese and a number of other spoken Chinese languages.
To get by conversationally a speaker needs as many words in English as they do in Chinese.
So when did you learn the thousands apon thousands of Kunji required to read traditional Chinese?
Do you mean kanji, which is a Japanese rendition? "Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms". As for how many are needed to understand written Chinese, though there are more the 60,000 ideograms which represent words or concepts the average Chinese gets by knowing only about 3000. To tell the truth though there's not many ideograms compared to the number of English words, I've got two dictionaries and the smaller one has more than 100,000 entries. The last tyme I looked the full edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary" had more than 20 printed volumes. Oops, here's one listing from Amazon of the OED with 20 volumes. And those aren't pocket dictionaries. Now, how many native English speakers know even 1% of the words?
Except for the fact that engineers rarely get outsourced...
That may be true now but I wouldn't bet that it stays that way, it wasn't too long ago when programming wasn't overseas outsourced for instance. I have a sister who's a Certified Public Accountant CPA, and they are seeing their jobs outsourced to India. However because of the economic boom in China there's a pretty good demand for accountants there, Chinese businesses will pay an accountant in the US pretty well to help them setup an accounting system, and teach accounting to them. Also knowing more than one language could lead to faster promotions.
My class covered both, I'm sure almost all of them will.
I've heard from some who use the Wade-Giles system of romanization instead of Pinyin. There are others in use but I don't know which it used most widely.
Now, years later, I still retain a fair ability to speak and understand, but little ability to read and essentially no ability to write.
I recall very little of any the languages, except English, I took classes in. My memory was seriously damaged in an accident I had years ago. I'd like to learn Portuguese, I want to go to Brazil as part of a study abroad program, however I don't know how hard it would be for me to learn a new language with the way my memory is now.
Your English vocabulary will get you quite far in French because of the number of cognates - this simply isn't the case with Arabic.
I don't know how hard it would be to learn one of the Arabic languages such as Farsi, which wiki says is Persian not Arabic. I did find French easier than German though. And that was in college, after taking a year of German in high school and spending 3 months in Germany.
Slashdot Mirror
If there weren't someone around bigger and more powerful than they are, do you really think Monsanto wouldn't just fly over every field spraying Round Up and then come back the next day and sell you RU-resistant grain to replant?
If I were a farmer and Monsanto had my fields sprayed I'd be calling my lawyer as well as bringing out my firearms.
Falcon
I think I prefer censorship, conducted under public scrutiny, to any idiot with an agenda being able to whip up chaos.
You don't fight bad speech by censoring it you fight it with good speech.
Not that the US doesn't have censorship - for all intents and purposes, if Walmart won't carry your work you've been censored.
Funny, I buy most of my books and magazines, the ones I don't subscribe to, at Barnes and Noble though I also order books from Amazon. And if B&N doesn't have it and won't order it, which I've never had them do, I can go to Borders or another store. I don't recall ever buying a book at Walmart. And as for the First Amendment, it only restricts government from censorship, not businesses.
eBay forcing PayPal in Australia, which was ruled a monopoly action but probably would have happened in the US
eBay could lose a lot of customers. Some sellers only accept certain forms of payment, like VISA. Amazon would love to take some of eBay's customers. As would Yahoo!. My sister both buys and sells on eBay and I bet she'd switch in a heart beat if she had to use a payment system she didn't want to use. Ah, competition.
Whose rights, whose laws, do we respect on the Internet? Should the rest of the world be forced to respect America's laws when America isn't willing to do the same?
You follow the laws of the country you're in when you connect, unless you're willing to pay the price.
Falcon
If they suck and censor stuff that doesn't make sense, they go out of business.
Citation needed. When has that ever happened.
eToys.
Falcon
The "private property" angle is no more than a backdoor for tyranny.
Private property leads to improvements and democracy not tyranny. When government controls all property then you have tyranny.
In the modern world, corporations have equivalent or greater power than government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards as government.
Thomas Jefferson foresaw this when he warned about the Corporate Aristocracy: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." The fact is is corporations were originally granted their Corporate Charter to improve the common, or public, good. The first corporation to be granted a charter was the Dutch East India Company and the second, two years later, the Honourable East India Company. Both were shipping companies trading goods between Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Shipping was a risky business, pirates could attack ships stealing the cargo and killing the crew or bad weather could cause ships to sink. When one of these happened the owner of the ship was held liable for the loss of cargo and lives. Even someone rich could loose everything they owned, so there weren't many people willing to take the risks. So the Dutch East India Company was granted a corporate charter to limit liability. The only thing someone who invested in East India could lose was the amount of money they invested. This enabled people to invest more in ships which increased trade, which was a common good. The problem, as Jefferson saw, was that corporations became too powerful and are no longer held accountable for improving the public good. If corporations faced the possibility of having their Corporate Charters revoked then they could be held responsible again.
Falcon
I don't buy the notion that personal finance and retirement planning is so horrendously complicated that it justifies twelve to fourteen years of forced marches through math classes.
So, someone should be able to do a future, or present, value calculation without know algebra? Which BTW I was supposed to take in 7th grade, if I had then I could of take taken Calculus in high school. However I got bad info from a school counselor who said he couldn't let me take algebra because I didn't know how to do square roots. I didn't find out he was wrong until 10th grade when because of what the math teacher I had did. When class started he collected homework then held one paper up in front of class, mine, and ripped it up. I immediately went to my counselor there and told her what happened and I needed to be taken out of his class. Looking over my records she said I should be in algebra and when I told here I didn't know how to do square roots she told me that's where you learn them.
So while I agree it shouldn't take that many years for math, it's because I believe it should be taught faster than it is, not because it's not needed. You don't need math only if you're going to be a janitor. And even then you may still need it, for instance to make cleaning fluid by mixing a concentrate with water, you need to know how much of each. Yes, I used to work as a janitor, while in college.
As for financial issues, if that's the goal, then let's teach students about applied finance, instead of making them memorize random mathematical concepts with no application and hoping they somehow magically make the connection.
In a way I agree, students should be shown or taught the practical application of what they are being taught, but math, and science and art still should be taught.
Falcon
That's the kind of stuff that ruins otherwise intelligent kids.
What I find really baffling is that when I was in second grade I had a brand new teacher, the previous year she had graduated, and she did things differently than any other teacher I had through high school. For certain subjects like arithmetic, reading, and vocabulary she had a bunch of teaching aids and she let us students go at our own pace. Those students who learned fast she encouraged to help the slower students. I think that actually helped solidify what we learned, helping others helps you to learn too. By the end of the year 3 of us, two friends and I were at the 6th grade level in those subjects.
But when we started 3rd grade we were all stuck back in classes that didn't challenge me. The only other teachers I had through high school that pushed me were two science teachers I had, one for chemistry and the other for biology; two I had for English comp and American Lit, they were friends who were allowed to switch each other's classes; and the teacher I had for British Lit. In one way or another they all challenged me. For the rest I just coasted through, even though I sought out challenges. For instance though only a year of science, biology, was required to graduate I took more. Besides the bio I took another 1/2 year of marine biology, 1 1/2 years chemistry, and 1/2 year of ecology. Then I took 1/2 year data processing and 1/2 programming, this when homebrew computers started to become available. Because I wanted to start my own business I also took a business law class.
This is the kind of crap you had to go through to get the education that the rich native-born mostly white American kids got and let me tell you it was no fun.
I can see the rich but not the white part, I'm white and my dad was enlisted in and retired from the US Air Force, I was born in a USAF hospital. To help pay for college, my sisters and I were the first in the family to go to college, I first went into the US Army to save money to go to college as did my older sister.
Actually I'm Heize 57, mostly French Canadian with American Indian and others mixed in.
Falcon
I remember when I was that young, we used Apple computers in school, which had a math flash-card type application. This concept isn't very new, however what IS new and interesting is that they're using the laptops to also completely replace books.
You know, well maybe you don't, laptops can be of immense help because they can replace textbooks. A number of years ago I read about how some nonprofits have helped African villages improve the education of children, and adults. Some of these villages were so remote and the costs of having books printed and delivered were high, so what these organizations would do is get some laptops and setup a dish for a network connection. One village had a bicycle setup by a team of engineers from the IEEE to recharge batteries in Thailand or Cambodia, villagers would just pedal the bike to recharge them. Maybe 15 minutes pedaling would give batteries a couple of hours of charge. Then with the laptops' wifi they could connect to the net and download the text and graphics for new book's. Or edited and revised books, misprints and plain errs in facts in books drive up costs of printing.
This is a reason I originally supported the OLPC's XO laptop.
Falcon
Not that the lessons went faster because you always have these noobs that should have never taken advanced math ("I don't understand it!", "Can you explain that again?" -teaher: "Again?!")
Sorry to break it to you, but some people actually have to --*gasp*-- ask questions to learn!
Some people may need more help but there are still people who shouldn't take specific classes, or major in specific majors. And there are others who shouldn't go to college, not without getting the help they need first. It seems like a life tyme ago but I used to tutor in algebra and chemistry. One student I tried to help in chemistry I couldn't at all. It didn't occur to me until the 3rd or 4th tyme I met her, I spent a day a week with her, the reason she had trouble learning was because she was almost always drunk. I figured it out when I saw her go to her car from which she grabbed a can of beer from a cooler and put the pieces together. After that I told the tutoring office I couldn't work with her anymore.
Falcon
Yeah, try that again without using the words "adverb" or "adjective", or any words with similar meaning. My point was you can't teach grammar, even by "immersion" or other non-geeky means, without at least defining the basic terms for the student.
You didn't say "teach grammar" you said "It's hard to explain the difference between an adverb and an adjective", I was responding specifically to that so I included it. While explaining the difference may involve teaching grammar, grammar is much more than just that. As for explaining it without using them, one word modifies or qualifies some types of words while the other does that to different types of words.
Falcon
You only need mathematics more advanced than this stuff if you're planning on going into a field which requires it, like architecture or physics or engineering.
When my sister was working on her BA in Accounting she had to come to me because she didn't understand some of the concepts in her calculus class, yes a calculus for business class was required for her degree. Fact is is math is more important than many admit or realize. Here's a problem anyone should be able to do by the tyme they are an adult, how much should you save for retirement starting today if you want to retire in 40 years with enough income so you can retire on a comfortable income? Algebra and the equation for Present Value will give you an answer once you know how much you will need later. Actually it along with Future Value and other formulas are used quite a bit in fields like accounting, economics, and finance.
Falcon
If I wanted some fine furniture making, I would want a cabinet maker and not a carpenter. Totally different jobs.
Perhaps GP used the wrong profession, try this, would you rather a competent carpenter or someone who can use a nailgun building your home?
Falcon
True, but the same problem holds for the imperial units, is an area 2 ft^2 the same as 2 square feet? So now instead of 1 problem, there are 2 problems!
Ah so you agree with me. It's not necessarily the units of measurement that's the problem then. It may be a problem when converting from one measurement, Imperial (English) to Metrical, to another but that's not the same. I've known people who have trouble with one but not the other, they're fine with English measurements but bad with metrics and visa versa. Having mostly a science background I don't have trouble with metrics but I didn't have trouble with English either when I worked in construction or on engines, I've worked on car engines and rebuilt them, that used English measurements.
Falcon
That's what hurt me so badly early on because I had learned enough math in China in first and second grade to last me until the 6th grade in the USA. I was bored out of my mind through 5th grade and pretty much flunked every math class because I was so bored by it and completely ignored the teacher
In a way I went through something like you. At the end of my 6th grade I met a counselor from the jr high I would go to for 7th grade and he said I should take algebra in 7th grade but he couldn't let me take it because I didn't know how to do square roots. So I went from 7th to 10th grade taking as advanced a math class without taking algebra without ever learning how to do square roots. A couple of months after 10th grade started for me my math teacher did something that caused me to loose my cool. Every day when the bell rang for the start of class all of the students had to be sitting down. Students in rows behind the front row then handed the homework to the front and he'd walk across the front row to collect it. Several weeks after the year started he did this, then he leafed through the homework papers and took one out. He held it in front of the class, it was mine, and proceeded to rip it up right there in front of class. I started yelling then grabbed my books and walked out of class. I went right to my counselor's office, I'm glad she was someone different than the first counselor, and told her what happened. I then told her I had to get out of that class. When she looked at my records she said I should be in algebra. I stammered I didn't know how to do square roots, then my stack blew again when she said you learn to do them in algebra. It was too late in the year so she didn't want to put me in algebra but she said a new class, pre-algebra was being offered so I agreed and she put me in it.
Falcon
Mathematical multiplication tables have at most 100 items to memorize. Your mind is able to memorize a lot more than that.
There may of been 100 items on the multiplication table where you went the school but there was 144 where I went. We had to memorize 1X1 to 12X12, why I don't know when 10X10 will work. Like you say though most people are able to memorize a lot more data than that.
Falcon
which carpet is more expensive, $1.95/square foot or $39.99/square yard?
Maybe if you used a decent measuring, say, ohhh, like metric, you wouldn't need to worry about problems like that.
Okay try this, I knew people who had trouble with problems like it, is an area 2 m^2 the same as 2 square meters?
Falcon
I always thought it was odd that my dad (and his generation - baby boomers) had Latin as a required course in public high school.
In high school I wanted to take both Latin and German but while my mom let me take German she refused to let me take Latin. Thing is is she wouldn't let me take it because she thought it would be too hard for me, it'd require hours of study every day and I wouldn't study enough.
Falcon
Following your logic, we should all be hunting and gathering instead of shopping for food because now we can't feed ourselves, either.
No, just being able to garden can help a lot though if you're a meat eater you should hunt or fish and clean what you get at least once. Admittedly I haven't fished or hunted in years but I grew up doing both. I used to fish freshwater and saltwater. And for hunting I've used bow and arrow, firearms, and built and set traps. Some people have called me mixed up because I love and wanted to be a scientist but at the same tyme I love the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Falcon
I loved British Lit in high school. I read some of my favorite books in that class, "Beowulf" and "A Tale of Two Cities" among them.
I got As in English up until 8th grade when they turned to literature. I got a great score on the English portion of the SAT, ACT, and GRE, even better than my math score. Yet I've gotten Cs or worse in every literature based class I've ever taken.
I did just as well in Lit as I did in composition, and I had more fun in Lit. In both American Lit and British Lit, which was an elective, we'd do different things. We'd memorize parts of a book, play, and then perform it. For one project we had to do in British Lit I baked and brought into class a cake in the image of one of the characters. Several others baked something as well so we ended up having a party during class.
Falcon
It's hard to explain the difference between an adverb and an adjective
I don't think it's that hard to explain the difference between adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives modify or qualify an object, a noun, whereas an adverb can modify or qualify a verb, another adverb, or an adjective.
Falcon
Are you saying that you have less chance understanding English sans idioms
Not at all, only that English has way more words than most people ever use. Chinese is the same. So learning one over the other to reach a conversational level of knowledge isn't any harder. The hard part is grammar, and for spoken languages is pronunciation. There's that saying "you say tomato and I say tomahto". Now Chinese can be difficult because although there's one written language with ideograms there are a number of different methods of romanticizing them. Then spoken there's different spoken words used. Cantonese is one way of speaking, and a major one at that though it has it's own dialects. MandarinMandarin, with it's own dialects, is another. Mandarin is the official language in both the Mainland China and on Taiwan. Orally there's also Fujianese and a number of other spoken Chinese languages.
To get by conversationally a speaker needs as many words in English as they do in Chinese.
Falcon
So when did you learn the thousands apon thousands of Kunji required to read traditional Chinese?
Do you mean kanji, which is a Japanese rendition? "Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms". As for how many are needed to understand written Chinese, though there are more the 60,000 ideograms which represent words or concepts the average Chinese gets by knowing only about 3000. To tell the truth though there's not many ideograms compared to the number of English words, I've got two dictionaries and the smaller one has more than 100,000 entries. The last tyme I looked the full edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary" had more than 20 printed volumes. Oops, here's one listing from Amazon of the OED with 20 volumes. And those aren't pocket dictionaries. Now, how many native English speakers know even 1% of the words?
Falcon
You're right, Farsi is not an Arabic language. It's not even in the same language group as Arabic - Farsi is an Indo-European language
I thought the Quran was written in Farsi, it appears I was wrong, it was written in a Classical Arabic language.
Falcon
Except for the fact that engineers rarely get outsourced...
That may be true now but I wouldn't bet that it stays that way, it wasn't too long ago when programming wasn't overseas outsourced for instance. I have a sister who's a Certified Public Accountant CPA, and they are seeing their jobs outsourced to India. However because of the economic boom in China there's a pretty good demand for accountants there, Chinese businesses will pay an accountant in the US pretty well to help them setup an accounting system, and teach accounting to them. Also knowing more than one language could lead to faster promotions.
Falcon
My class covered both, I'm sure almost all of them will.
I've heard from some who use the Wade-Giles system of romanization instead of Pinyin. There are others in use but I don't know which it used most widely.
Now, years later, I still retain a fair ability to speak and understand, but little ability to read and essentially no ability to write.
I recall very little of any the languages, except English, I took classes in. My memory was seriously damaged in an accident I had years ago. I'd like to learn Portuguese, I want to go to Brazil as part of a study abroad program, however I don't know how hard it would be for me to learn a new language with the way my memory is now.
Falcon
Your English vocabulary will get you quite far in French because of the number of cognates - this simply isn't the case with Arabic.
I don't know how hard it would be to learn one of the Arabic languages such as Farsi, which wiki says is Persian not Arabic. I did find French easier than German though. And that was in college, after taking a year of German in high school and spending 3 months in Germany.
Falcon