I think the problem is that in middle school many students are not capable of intelligently handling critical thinking. I would compare it to math, where some concepts are presented early on, then once a student has sufficent grasp of mathematics those concepts are later proven. For example learning the area of a circle = pi*r^2. A student can understand how to use the answer long before the proof.
I wonder if they'll allow teachers of history and government classes to use laws like this as exercises in critical thought?
I actually would hope all teachers use this to foster critical thought instead of towing the "party line" on any subject. Why should we just blindy accept the Big Bang, evolution [through natural selection], Newtonian physics, the "greatness" of the US founding fathers, or any number of ideas which are taught without also presenting their issues. That's not to say that learning about the issues is aimed at causing a change in belief. I think even with it's issues natural selection is the best descriptor of the diversification of life as we have it today. But what it does is present avenues to spark curiosity, and encourage further understanding. Too much of education is focused on presenting answers rather than teaching how to ask questions and find answers. So we end up with conformance to pop thinking at all levels of education. People say "global warming is manmade," rather than asking the better question "how much of global warming is manmade?" or try to claim what the writers of the Constitution meant when clearly there were divisions about it at the time of its signing.
Because then we gain more pressure for social conformity. Once the diversity of the population decreases, those who do not choose to conform will be discriminated against. When having a certain skin color, height, or sexual orientation becomes a choice then there will be a greater argument against legal protections.
First define genetic defect, can being 5'6 be considered a genetic defect? Second, what if there are specific "defects" that have both positive and negative consequences. For example some mental disorders can help a person be more creative, the links between genius and social akwardness, or aggression & athleticism.
It doesn't even need to get to that level of involvement on specific issues. If people just did their homework on candidates, rather than voting for whoever was on TV more the whole money thing would be moot.
No a pardon requires the person be found guilty first, what Congress is granting is immunity from prosecution. Technically the party remains innocent, because guilt was not legally established.
I hear those Vietnamese were pretty bowled over by the US army. Just like the Iraqis.
To be fair the US army did bowl over the opposition, it's just that the mere existance of insurgency forces gives politically favorable results. Insurgencies are more akin to gang or organized crime violence, a matter of police rather than military action. The US military would do just as "poorly" in keeping order in violent neighborhoods of Detroit or LA. All the military can do is win every battle (which they are doing), there comes a point where politicians rather than soldiers must win a war.
If I make $100,000 working for a living. It is taxed at a higher rate and more other taxes are taken from it, than if I were to make $100,000 from bank interest or stocks.
That's not fair, is it?
Depends on what you consider "fair." The national economy grows more from bank interest or stock than from sombody getting a salary. The current system encourages saving and investment over spending.
While true, it still begs to be asked, "So... what's America's excuse?"
The dirtiest US cities have problems mostly with air quality, overall they are nowhere near the worst in the world. If you've travelled to third world countries, there are places that are far worse than anywhere in the US or Europe; not only do they have air quality problems, but massive contamination of water and soil, especially affecting the areas where people live.
It's all down to the priorities of the politicians. It must be noted though that it's a lot easier to get campaign funding from billionaire industrialists than from plants and trees...
Not really, it's down to priorities of the population, mass transit doesn't work well with low population density. People in the US want things like backyards, swimming pools, open spaces, and other advantages of suburban life.
Anyway, I live in one of the minor million-plus cities of Japan near Tokyo, and I just want to note that you can have a high-tech, high-quality lifestyle without destroying your environment.
The thing is the worst places typically aren't high-tech, high-quality life. They are industrial enough to attract large population concentrations, but not developed enough to have resources for mass transit, sanitation, and other health improvements.
I didn't say Singapore does retinal or fingerprint scan (Japan is the only other country than US where I've experienced it) - but they do thermal imaging which can be intimidating if you have a cold or other minor illness because it could mean you get quarantined.
Not just being treated like a criminal at the border, the US is going out of it's way to stop people from even obtaining visas to change planes at US airports. I think this is in accordance with the president's idea that if we stop tourists in other countries, we don't have to worry about stopping them at our borders.
Actually case law applying to searches at the border existed before 1904, specifically looking at customs searches for taxation and compliance purposes. And SCOTUS cites such border searches as a "traditional right" exercised by countries even before the formation of the US.
I completely trashed any plans I had for ever visiting the US when I heard from my friends that not only were they fingerprinted when they flew into the US, they also had their retinas photographed.
Same happens when you go Japan. If you travel to Hong Kong, Singapore, or other areas in SE asia also expect to have a thermal scan (to contain bird flu, SARS, etc). And Malaysia, they spray some stuff in the plane, I think to prevent disease spreading, and I'm assuming it's safe... who knows they really don't tell you. Canada and Finland are just as bad as the US in terms of interrogating people just transferring through the airport. Those are just the countries I've visited or passed through in my experience. I'm thinking air travel anywhere pretty much sucks in terms of privacy.
The problem is that otherwise ethical students are being taught to fudge their data in undergraduate labs. They are often told directly by their TAs to find out what the correct answer is and work backwards from there.
I think that interpretation is because undergraduate students don't have the experience to understand what is being asked of them. A good experiment should state assumptions, background theory, experiment design, data, and interpretation. Often undergraduates will modify the data rather than revisiting their assumptions. For example if you are running an experiment measuring the acceleration of an object due to Earth's gravity you will not get 9.8m/s^2; the problem is not with the data, it's with the assumptions. There are theories we know make incorrect assumptions, but too often undergraduates just take them as gospel and forget all the caveats involved. For example the ideal gas law makes false assumptions, yet undergrads running experiments would rather change the data to conform to the theory rather than understanding there are certain "fudge factors" which are needed to account for reality vs. theory.
This is amnesty, not ex post facto. Like a witness receiving immunity for testimony, the telcos receive immunity for producing the paperwork from the President authorizing the program.
The existence of a monopoly has never been about *no* choices, but that the barrier to choice is too high. I.e. it is too difficult to choose another option regardless of the number of options.
At least for the home PC market that barrier really isn't that high. For the average user a Linux box or Mac does everything they want. If OSX was not an acceptable substitute for Windows then Apple would not be gaining marketshare.
Yet again we see proof that Microsoft has a monopoly. If there were real competition in the market, people would not be forced to bend over and pay more. There would be competition, Dell would have to offer it at the same price or another operating system would win.
This is not about a monopoly, it's about a mono-culture in the personal computer world. A monopoly would need that there are no substitutes - and pretty much everybody on/. can list a number of alternatives that are equivalent. The fact that Microsoft takes risks and spends on R&D to come out with new versions demonstrates it doesn't have monopoly power in the way you think.
Also, if there were competition, Microsoft would not have the economic ability to decide to drop a product that people wanted and force them into something they didn't.
This is more like the whole New Coke debacle. It wasn't that there were no alternatives in the market place, but that the culture was so tied to the specific product, that overwhelmingly consumer demand resisted change. If Microsoft had true monopoly power it could dictate Vista and nothing else. Maybe next year Microsoft will repackage XP as "Windows Classic (Original Code)"
Option based compensation is great as long as the company is growing. If they hit a growth wall, not only do you have the upper management retiring off their options, they can't replace them because of low base pay. Tech companies used to attract talent with options in the 90's, once that crashed engineers moved to more entrenched positions valuing base pay and job security over potential riches.
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I think the problem is that in middle school many students are not capable of intelligently handling critical thinking.
I would compare it to math, where some concepts are presented early on, then once a student has sufficent grasp of mathematics those concepts are later proven. For example learning the area of a circle = pi*r^2. A student can understand how to use the answer long before the proof.
I actually would hope all teachers use this to foster critical thought instead of towing the "party line" on any subject. Why should we just blindy accept the Big Bang, evolution [through natural selection], Newtonian physics, the "greatness" of the US founding fathers, or any number of ideas which are taught without also presenting their issues. That's not to say that learning about the issues is aimed at causing a change in belief. I think even with it's issues natural selection is the best descriptor of the diversification of life as we have it today. But what it does is present avenues to spark curiosity, and encourage further understanding.
Too much of education is focused on presenting answers rather than teaching how to ask questions and find answers. So we end up with conformance to pop thinking at all levels of education. People say "global warming is manmade," rather than asking the better question "how much of global warming is manmade?" or try to claim what the writers of the Constitution meant when clearly there were divisions about it at the time of its signing.
Because then we gain more pressure for social conformity. Once the diversity of the population decreases, those who do not choose to conform will be discriminated against. When having a certain skin color, height, or sexual orientation becomes a choice then there will be a greater argument against legal protections.
First define genetic defect, can being 5'6 be considered a genetic defect?
Second, what if there are specific "defects" that have both positive and negative consequences. For example some mental disorders can help a person be more creative, the links between genius and social akwardness, or aggression & athleticism.
There is, I've been grinding Internet Anonymous rep for the past 30 days. If I hand out just 200 more information flyers I will have dinged Step 8!
It doesn't even need to get to that level of involvement on specific issues. If people just did their homework on candidates, rather than voting for whoever was on TV more the whole money thing would be moot.
24x7 over a week sometimes. Then you have all the weekend "training" and related activities
People do the same thing with paintball, airsoft, or SCA.
No a pardon requires the person be found guilty first, what Congress is granting is immunity from prosecution. Technically the party remains innocent, because guilt was not legally established.
All the military can do is win every battle (which they are doing), there comes a point where politicians rather than soldiers must win a war.
If Iraq & Vietnam have taught anything, it's that you don't need to win battles to win politically.
I didn't say Singapore does retinal or fingerprint scan (Japan is the only other country than US where I've experienced it) - but they do thermal imaging which can be intimidating if you have a cold or other minor illness because it could mean you get quarantined.
Not just being treated like a criminal at the border, the US is going out of it's way to stop people from even obtaining visas to change planes at US airports.
I think this is in accordance with the president's idea that if we stop tourists in other countries, we don't have to worry about stopping them at our borders.
Actually case law applying to searches at the border existed before 1904, specifically looking at customs searches for taxation and compliance purposes. And SCOTUS cites such border searches as a "traditional right" exercised by countries even before the formation of the US.
I'm thinking air travel anywhere pretty much sucks in terms of privacy.
I guess Google is ahead of the curve, they just leave everything in beta to cover their ass
There are theories we know make incorrect assumptions, but too often undergraduates just take them as gospel and forget all the caveats involved. For example the ideal gas law makes false assumptions, yet undergrads running experiments would rather change the data to conform to the theory rather than understanding there are certain "fudge factors" which are needed to account for reality vs. theory.
This is amnesty, not ex post facto. Like a witness receiving immunity for testimony, the telcos receive immunity for producing the paperwork from the President authorizing the program.
This is more like the whole New Coke debacle. It wasn't that there were no alternatives in the market place, but that the culture was so tied to the specific product, that overwhelmingly consumer demand resisted change. If Microsoft had true monopoly power it could dictate Vista and nothing else.
Maybe next year Microsoft will repackage XP as "Windows Classic (Original Code)"
Option based compensation is great as long as the company is growing.
If they hit a growth wall, not only do you have the upper management retiring off their options, they can't replace them because of low base pay. Tech companies used to attract talent with options in the 90's, once that crashed engineers moved to more entrenched positions valuing base pay and job security over potential riches.