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User: garyisabusyguy

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  1. Re:This is going to go over well. on Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yep, AC had me at, 'as important as have a good understanding'...

    FWIW, I learned as much about economics from 'The System of the World' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_the_World_%28novel%29) as I did an MBA program

    Interjecting knowledge transfer into entertainment, instead of foisting ridiculous misunderstandings and bullshit, would go a long way to bettering our society

  2. Re:Nuclear Wessels... in Alamida on Cetaceans Able To Focus Sound For Echolocation · · Score: 2

    Nope, but I get big laughs by picking up the mouse and trying to dictate into it

  3. Re:Oh the humanity! on Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Many colleges have a Philosophy degree in the Computer Science department
    https://www.cis.ksu.edu/phd

    I learned logic from NAND gates and RPN in my first year of an EE program, ymmv

  4. Re:Oh the humanity! on Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All I know is that I tested out of all of my humanities credits when working towards a degree

    My daughter is going to college to become an English teacher.
    I think that it is to spite me, but I bet that she'll be working as a tech trainer before long

    To be honest, the sheer mass of the US student body pretty much guarantees that even the hardest push towards STEM education will only result in a small percentage of students really moving in that direction.

    I only wish that most of the HR and Sales types that I gather requirements from had some baseline exposure to logic :/

  5. Why is this even news? on Cetaceans Able To Focus Sound For Echolocation · · Score: 1

    What did they do, look up the wikipedia article?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

    Or maybe this Encarta article from 2000
    "The echolocation sounds of toothed whales, produced in their nasal passages, are focused into a narrow beam as they pass through the melon, a waxy, lens-shaped body in the forehead. The echoes are received by the lower jaw and pass through oil-filled sinuses to the inner ear, which is insulated from the skull by a foamlike pad that cuts out irrelevant noise. Upon closing in on their prey, both sperm whales and killer whales can produce pulses strong enough to stun their prey."
    http://autocww.colorado.edu/~f...

    Stories about using it to stun fish have been around for over a decade
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

    Maybe the real news is that /. fell into a wormhole during the last outage and is reposting stories from 1999

  6. Re:No they don't on Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space · · Score: 1

    I must have put too much sugar in my coffee, I missed the subtle taste of irony

  7. Re:News for nerds on Attempted Breach of NSA HQ Checkpoint; One Shot Dead · · Score: 4, Funny

    FTA
    " An NSA police officer shot one of the people dead dead and seriously injured the second."

    Apparently the culprit was shot double-dead
    Nerds love zombie stories, hence it is on /.

  8. Re:No they don't on Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space · · Score: 1

    It is still easier to place solar panel farms a few hundred miles from Beijing and build transmission lines than to put them in orbit or the stratosphere

  9. Re:And why not? on Nation's Biggest Nuclear Firm Makes a Play For Carbon Credit Cash · · Score: 1

    So, if Green Peace is fighting against the to primary providers of baseline power, no wait, they are also fighting against hydroelectric dams, so if Green Peace is fighting against the three primary providers of baseline power, where exactly do they think that the power is going to come from?

    Are they suggesting that we are going to reduce the amount of power the individuals use?
    Do they think that we are going to reduce the number of individuals?

  10. Re:And why not? on Nation's Biggest Nuclear Firm Makes a Play For Carbon Credit Cash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Suspicion just requires that I see things that make me suspicious

    Greenpeace claims to advocate for the environment
    CO2 presents a huge threat to the environment
    Nuclear power offers a way to maintain a baseline power supply without creating CO2
    Greenpeace constantly works against the building of nuclear power plants
    When one of the founders of Greenpeace spoke out about the advantages of nuclear power not creating CO2, they removed him from the organization
    Nuclear power represents a threat to the fossil fuel industry's position as the primary baseline power supplier
    By fighting nuclear power through lawsuits, Greenpeace makes it more likely that we will continue to use fossil fuels, even though they are causing damage to the environment by releasing CO2

    There is nothing slanderous about stating the facts that present themselves
    If I want to say that it makes me suspicious, then that is my right

  11. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 1

    I find your definitions to be very insightful, and have found myself in the liberal end of the pool based on the groups that you have defined

    I think that the current conservatives have co-opted the definition to line their pockets and I find that to be unfortunate because I come from a long line of decent conservatives who did not value money over people

  12. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 1

    Our current health care system is profit based, and has seen larger increases in cost than nationalized healthcare systems like Britain, Canada, Spain, Taiwan or Australia

    How is promoting a healthcare system that is not cost effective fiscally conservative?

  13. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 1

    I will have to say that we have a fundamentally different views on how the economy works

    A recession is great for people who have cash on hand to buy up assets at foreclosure rates, it is horrible for everybody else who has debt against their assets, needs jobs or has their money in the stock market

    The primary way to end a recession was demonstrated by FDR as he applied Keynesian economics to put cash into the economy at the consumer level, by hiring them to create infrastructure. This ignites markets by creating demand, and prolongs the recovery by creating resources for those markets to use and grow larger.

    This continued growth was demonstrated over the following three decades as the American economy, and middle class grew at phenomenal rates

    Some people do not believe in Keynesian economics. They call their version supply side economics and believe that you need to 'give' money to the corporations (via tax breaks and corporate welfare), and that it will somehow trickle down to the consumers. This has not been demonstrated to work out very well for the American economy (makes it prone to boom bust cycles) or the American middle class, which has been reduced by these policies.

    I only see President Obama's shortcomings to be that he paid heed to supply side demands by including tax breaks in the stimulus and failing to spend more money on infrastructure build outs

    As far as your claims of inflation, I find those to be spurious, much like the cries about hyperinflation resulting from the initial stimulus

  14. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 1

    Obama is living with the structural deficits placed on him by the prior admin and Congress, recognized war debt and the need to pull the country out of the recession.

    The prior administration received a country with a positive position to reduce the national debt and ran it into the ditch with tax breaks to the wealthy and unfunded mandates, much like Reagan did before

    I am continually taken aback at how the gop talks up the need to be tight with the purse strings, but continually drives more debt up, while the last two dem administrations have shown more economical savvy

    The last time around, with Clinton, the gop claimed that he received a lagged positive effect from the prior admin, I doubt that anybody will believe that bull this time around

  15. Re:And why not? on Nation's Biggest Nuclear Firm Makes a Play For Carbon Credit Cash · · Score: 1

    Greenpeace has made too much money off of an anti-nuclear stance. I suspect that they get more money from the koch bros, coal mines and big oil than most gop candidates

  16. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While I agree with you that Libertarian =/= Anarchy, you will probably get a lot of arguments that 'getting government to operate withing budget' =/= Libertarian either.

    In my mind 'getting government to operate withing budget' == Fiscal Conservative, which is why I cannot vote for the 'modern' GOP which thinks that it's roles is to play world police while cutting taxes for the wealthy and putting the country into deep debt.

    I find it odd that the most fiscally conservative national figure these days is President Obama, whose tight-fisted use of stimulus and reduction of the deficit during he recover would have probably pissed off FDR.

    President Obama could pull off a really good Goldwater impersonation if he was only more willing to nuke some third world countries, he already manages to pull off most of the positive traits of Nixon.

  17. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 1

    To be honest, I was going for funny...

    You should take a minute and read the article in Reason because the mental acrobats that the author goes through are stunning.
    I lost a lot of respect for the publication as a result

  18. Re:So she can do to the US... on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Near Launching Presidential Bid · · Score: 1

    Reason.com has a story about how Somalia has done really well without a functioning government, so maybe she will let the warlords take over America and turn it into _another_ libertarian paradise

    Here is her pitch to the small government crowd:
    "A wide range of scholarship and commentary on Somalia, most with no ideological ax to grind, tells an interesting and even somewhat encouraging story—one about a society with an unusual and robust clan-based system of dispute resolution and goods provision that has managed to keep daily life moving along even without a "Somali government.""
    http://reason.com/archives/201...

  19. Re:Spinning Rust will never be toppled on Toshiba Announces 3D Flash With 48 Layers · · Score: 1

    Isn't this a duplicate from yesterday?
    http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

    Oh yeah, that piece of astro-turf was about Intel and micron

    Wouldn't it be nice if we could just get a company neutral submission about the technology and not the branding?

  20. Re:Sure on How Professional Russian Trolls Operate · · Score: 1

    Wrap yourself in the flag much?
    Playing the patriot does not make you right

  21. Re:Who needs astroturfing on How Professional Russian Trolls Operate · · Score: 1

    I have wondered if there was a market for unused accounts with low UIDs, whether from the site owner or or just people skilled at social engineering

  22. Re:Oh, you want a job? on How Professional Russian Trolls Operate · · Score: 1

    This ^ mod 5 informative

  23. Re:Parent Post Semantic Content: Null on How Professional Russian Trolls Operate · · Score: 1

    Yeah, if I had a dime for every time some mouth breather who was lauding snowden whilst posting dick pics to 4chan called me a shill for pointing out their idiocy...

    sorry to ruin your fantasy, but the US government does not need to pay people just to be honest in discussion forums

  24. What do you mean not providing a service? on Ordnance Survey Releases Mapping Tools · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here is the web browser based mapping service:
    http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.u...

    I mean, sure you can order the data sets to use in your own application also, but claiming that they do not provide a mapping viewer of their own kinda misses the mark

  25. Re: Do It, it worked in AZ on Gen Con Threatens To Leave Indianapolis Over Religious Freedom Bill · · Score: 1

    As a matter of fact they have, Phoenix has gained two Super Bowls and a constant stream of conferences

    Arizona got the Super Bowl XXX after Super Bowl XXVII was pulled due to regressive laws
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

    And then it got another Super Bowl after a similar set of laws to those being considered by Indiana went by the wayside
    http://www.abc15.com/sports/sp...

    In addition that Phoenix Conference Center has increased its floor space many-fold and has a constant stream of conferences in the winter months when Phoenix presents a pleasant climate, Just this year both a global Scrum and PMI conference will be featured here