The proper way to do this is not to refuse to serve the students whose intellectual or artistic gifts become special needs for out-of-mainstream education. Neglecting our brightest students is not a good way to drive America to the fore in the new century. To turn an old saw: the world needs physicists, research chemists and brain surgeons too.
The world does indeed need scientists, sure. The problem is, the world needs a scientifically literate public to recognize that it needs more scientists. We're not too hot on that part.
Gifted and intellectual students have something of a mixed bag of possibilities -- if they're in well-endowed school districts, they're well provided for. If they're not, they may take a back seat while the funding goes to having pizza parties for seniors who still can't read (harsh, I know -- still, that's how it was in my school district). "Not refusing" is the goal state -- first we need people who care about getting there. Right now, those who should frequently don't.
Nah, it would only increase the use of force. "The tazer didn't work, so we shot him in the head."
Bullet proof vests are only good if the bullet his your chest. It doesn't help in other areas.
In reality, "bullet proof" materials are only good at spreading the energy out. They're worthless against more focused forces. It may stop a 9mm (blunt tip), but it won't stop a.223 (sharp tip), and probably won't do much against the electrodes of a tazer, or a knife. That's why they make rifle plating to go into kevlar vests. They're heavy, but they'll help protect against more serious rounds. With serious rounds (like a.50 BMG), you can't carry enough armor to help you, and even if you did, it can only displace the energy so far. If it was able to prevent the round from piercing the armor, you'd simply be crushed by the force.
Best advice for not getting killed by bullets? Don't get yourself on the wrong end of a firearm. I've managed to be safe wearing regular t-shirts as protection for over 30 years, because I've never put myself in the way of a weapon.:)
Heh. Amen. Great advice.
IIRC, a lot of those vests had (still have?) another pronounced flaw -- the axillary region wasn't protected. Oh, the chest and back (and some of the sides) were covered, but the armholes themselves left a vulnerable space under each arm. The protective t-shirts might not be so hot with heavier rounds, but they'd be something there where previously there wasn't much at all.
After, of course, someone ends up on the wrong end of the firearm!
Got what he deserved "in the court of public opinion," sure, I'll go for that. In terms of legal implications regarding use of someone else's account, I severely doubt that's an adequate defense. [Insert hackneyed "just because I can doesn't mean I should" after school special moral here.]
Re:Sure, it's official
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The Apple Two
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Funny thing, however; if you go to send them a cashier's check/check of any kind, the document is to be made out to "Apple Computer, Inc."
The money, it would seem, is going to the same piggybank it always went to.
There are still "Medical Professionals", including doctors, thinking that getting blood in the eyes poses none of little risk for the contraction of HIV; and this aside from the third world. This happens in the high-developed countries.
Ambulanciers and doctors having the wrong thought of its infection vector causing dozens of extra victims with the HIV virus; only because of mis/insufficient information. Maybe aids-prevention should start with getting the right information at the right people whom should care...
Speaking as someone who used to handle untested blood donations... in leaky bags and tubes...
Academically, it's widely understood among those at risk that an exposure can transmit HIV. We had annual in-services and "homework assignments" to drive home the point. The problem is one of people not caring about their probability of handling a hot unit/patient/vector. Out of, say, 1500 units of blood to come through on a single collection day, maybe one would come back HIV positive. Maybe. On a rare occasion, two would come back HIV reactive. People generally assumed that HIV-positive patients would not bother going through the rigmarole of donating blood, and multiple coworkers would forgo things like face shields, gloves, and the like because the PPE made them uncomfortable for one reason or another ("The shield gets too hot," or "The gloves make my hands sweat," etc.). The problem wasn't limited to staff, either -- our "impermeable" lab coats were still in service well after their protective coating's operational lives, because management felt that replacing them with new, effective lab coats would be too much of an expenditure. It's as though the HIV lesson has been repeated so many times that people tune it out.
Granted, at the time, it was (and I hope still is) understood that a small, yet persistent population of donors would appear every so often to use blood donation as a free HIV test, because they don't want to go through the normal confirmatory process for reporting to the Department of Health. False names get used. False addresses get recorded. HIV positive blood gets pulled out of the system after my department processes it, but here again, no one in processing expects that they'll be the next lucky contestant to come up on the 1500-chamber game of Russian roulette.
I just finished taking a Medical First Responder course, and I can say that the information is out there -- in the form of, "Always use body substance isolation (BSI) measures." Asking a patient their HIV status straight out of the chute actually opens up legal liability if someone hears it who shouldn't -- God bless HIPAA. Instead, the guidance is to operate under Universal Precautions, and assume that every patient is carrying HIV. So long as people don't get complacent, it's no problem. They're protecting themselves automatically.
Still, failure to verbalize BSI precautions is a critical failure in a verbal exam regarding any MFR (or up!) procedure. And I can tell you, even after that introductory training course, more than one person failed because of BSI.
I went to the public schools, and I have to say I got a lot of my "public school" education by doing whatever I could to stay out of the rank and file offerings my school presented. I found great benefit in becoming a perennial pain in the ass any time some new program was starting, or a teacher had a course I wanted but wouldn't be able to take because of scheduling red tape. Most of the really memorable things I did in high school came from stepping off that beaten path.
I remember taking Anat&Phys independently, and when the instructor told me I should probably get around to doing a dissection before the end of the year, she sent me home with a specimen and a dissecting bucket. My kitchen table top sheep brain dissection stopped my sister from making a late night batch of macaroni and cheese.
I remember staying up late into the night to watch a videotape loaded with classes from KET's Humanities through the Arts course. My school had elected to offer these distance learning courses via satellite, but they didn't guarantee real-time attendance or scheduling. I didn't care -- every day I would swap a tape so I could spend the late night hours watching another few hours of class. I had a blast.
When the satellite was still new and my school strove to schedule students for its appropriate use (watching the class live and interacting via telephone audio bridge -- the tech people had not yet overcome their fear of telepresence and its earlier forms), I took two years of Japanese. The schedule ended up falling out such that I took English, Japanese, and French, all in a row. My teachers deferred when I explained that I wasn't thinking answers in the languages they wanted.
On the other hand, I remember a particular instance where a teacher did not want to provide the instruction he claimed he'd give. My junior high science teacher, a twit I could count on to spend most of the class period talking to his niece in the seat in front of mine, told me I could show him whatever odd items I wanted and do enrichment work on whatever interested me. One day I took in the Instructor's Manual for Star Trek: Federation Science and pointed out a few items that I wanted to do. He flipped through the book and handed it back -- he didn't support anything, and I didn't get to use any of his resources to do my exploring. I never bothered with him after that, and I don't remember anything he taught me, except what makes an ineffective teacher and what makes an ineffective teacher exponentially worse. Thankfully, the high school science teachers (my A&P teacher being one) were far superior. I owe a lot to them.
The upshot of this is that I derived more benefit from striving to go outside of the mainstream educational offerings when I was in school. What I could do, I did. I went to the math competition. I went to the library weekly. When I could, I visited the science center or natural history museum. I grokked Discovery and PBS the way other students thrived on teeny bopper crap and Sports Illustrated. Were I to rely strictly on what the school wanted to follow as the path of least resistance, I wouldn't have gained much of anything, and I'd be quite the drone now.
Maybe this is a way for people to get in touch with their inner dolphins... Heh. There's something for the furry crowd.
Dolphins have been said to receive sound through their jawbones -- albeit their lower jaws, which thin out to supposedly vibratory "panbones" -- for quite some time now. (It's not hard to find a source for this -- a lot of books (even through something like National Geographic) that talk about dolphin anatomy have a figure about echolocation, for which the jaw receiver system is thought to work.)
Teachers' unions end up being only a part of the problem. Teacher training in general can be sorely lacking, and that doesn't exactly heal spontaneously to give future elementary or high school students the best of pedagogical provision. I know of an instance in which education majors' Praxis scores were... selectively altered in a report sent to the state Department of Education. The academic department looked utterly brilliant, until the state got wind of the artificially inflated scores and audited the department. In the meantime, college students who couldn't so much as turn on computers were granted diplomas and classrooms of their own.
Education (particularly elementary education) really ends up being the major of last resort in a lot of universities. Fail out of the sciences? Go major in elementary ed. Fail out of history? Go to elementary ed. By the time I got through to my second year in university as an undergraduate majoring in Biology, over half of those I started with had bailed out of Biology to go to (primarily elementary) education. If such an appreciable chunk of the constituent population didn't go into that field because they actually had an interest in it, but rather did so to avoid having to join the workforce and miss out on years of beers (I lived with one such twerp, don't anyone try telling me it doesn't happen), what on earth do you expect will happen with the educational system?
See, when I think about myths regarding various things, I think of drugs, history, Greek heroes, and fisherman-eating orcas. Regarding Facebook and Twitter, however, I couldn't give a rat's patoot. Those who use the technologies have an understanding of how they work, and those who don't... don't. Those who don't may well make up a spiel to sound as though they know, much as applies to a lot of cases in life... including l'intarweb, mes amis. Mix a publicity scheme with an attempt to get the journalists to go online, shake in a little bit of fake discernment, and voila! A news experiment!
I'm curious as to what proportion of medical records were incorrect and what proportion of pharmacy claims were inaccurate. Just how useful could a database like this be, if its source data is prone to some really wacky error? Side effect misdiagnoses alone could make for a considerable slog through noise just to pick up an effect.
I keep thinking that looking for pulsars could've just as easily been something that someone with a hankering for SETI@home's animus could've farmed out to a grid. What's so beautiful about this is that the PSC gets work done for astrophysics at the same time that it adds something to science education. (Too bad more schools couldn't have access to these kinds of things. It may be educational natural selection, but it's still a downer.)
Jon Newton of p2pnet.net attributes the Justice Department's 'oversights' to the 'eye-popping number of people [in its employ] who worked for, and/or are directly connected with, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music's RIAA.'
"I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences." --Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Cardassians"
I had a similar experience. A number of my college friends with whom I used to play lived a few hours away, making the weekly, in-person game impractical. Eventually we just got together for a weekend and put together character sheets and the like in hopes of playing over Skype or whatever else was handy thereafter, but that ultimately went by the wayside when the proposed DM got her first positive test for a pregnancy. (She married another D'n'D player we both knew, and they wanted to have kids... but I digress entirely too much.)
It really depends on whether or not you have a group of people anywhere you can play with. If it's a matter of geographic separation from the rest of your gaming group, alternative means of playing do indeed exist. If you don't have anyone nearby, it's not so easy.
Something that I've always found interesting is the whole social structure that permeates different internet projects. In particular -- and I qualify this with nothing but my own paltry observations -- it's exceedingly difficult to break into anything that involves skill (particularly the programming sort) because not only is the existing structure built on skill, but it is also built on familiarity. If, say, Bob is well known for doing 'foo,' and you step in one day after cobbling around your own for a while and demonstrate that you're not half bad at 'foo' yourself, there's an exceedingly good chance that you'll fade into the noise unless Bob (or someone who speaks to Bob quite a bit about 'foo') notices what you've done and says something about it.
At that point (absent of any response), the prospective developer has a few choices -- keep cobbling and work up some more 'foo,' and bring that into the light once it develops, seek out Bob to talk shop that he might let you in on some of the nuances that you may not have seen in development wishlists/buglists/etc., start clamoring over what he/she's already done in (erroneous) hope of getting recognition, or move on to developing 'bar.'
Granted, I haven't done any Linux development yet, but that's what I've been seeing in other things. That whole breaking in process is difficult because those insecurities about people responding underwhelmingly (or negatively) to your work don't really go away, whether you're coding or doing scientific research. It may well benefit the Linux development community only to work with those who have the drive to continue despite those discouraging possibilities, but it won't necessarily be a huge recruitment tool to get people into developing in the first place.
Do you really question the assertion that adding the whole of the Scouring would've worked on the end of a nearly 4-hour film?
Sure, it's vital for the book, but it would've been suicide for the narrative for the movie. After the destruction of the Ring, the narrative should wind down, because the primary aim of the conflict in the movie has been met.
We don't need a litmus test for the maturity of the hobbits in the film, because we get to see it firsthand. (Unless, of course, the contrast of singing on tables at The Green Dragon versus the looks all around after the Quest doesn't indicate such a change. The Scouring "proves" it! Can't just communicate it all in a vignette with the hobbits in the pub -- rally the Tooks!)
Saruman has closure, and while it isn't what Tolkien did originally, his story now finally has its finish. Onward we go to the rest of the movie.
Yes, book and movie are considerably different. No kidding. How's about taking a few to think about just how those inherent differences in media might, just might, make the Scouring's take-home lessons show up elsewhere in the narrative? You know, before you treat the possibility that some folks might not be so worried about the Scouring as anathema in need of reeducation?
From The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, page 823 of the one-volume edition of Lord of the Rings, paragraph 3, accents omitted because/.'s way of editing them out pissed me off, bold emphasis added:
Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'
I would indicate that the change from "No living man am I!" to "I am no man!" is rather slight. At the very least, the idea for such a statement on Eowyn's part is pure Tolkien.
I think LotR ended up being rather fortunate, actually, considering just what could have happened. Had New Line wanted a more "traditional" approach to filmmaking, there would be considerably more to nitpick over, and worse.
TV series, depending on who all is involved in making them, oftentimes end up suffering from costs. A movie under the aegis of a large studio comes with a more healthy budget, and a lot of TV series nowadays don't come with nearly the funding the movies do. (In the past, many did or at least did rather well with what they had available, but nowadays? Hah. Sure. Let's rewind that tape of The Reagans...)
I don't imagine there would be much of what all was possible in a film version of LotR that would also come to bear in a television version.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this will get snarked in some manner, but as far as looking for appropriate activities, why not put forward a survey of students? Stick your heads into a few classes and explain what kinds of tech ideas you find cool (and, perhaps, relatively doable on whatever scale you want to describe), and see what kind of response you get. Let them give you some idea of what they want.
Now, to be sure, a contingent of students will blow off the whole thing. That happens. Not all of them will, though. You may end up with some "closet geeks" -- folks who think the graphics in their video games are pretty cool, but don't want to say too much about them, for fear of the "geek" stereotype -- in addition to the alpha geeks.
Come to think of it, that may be the absolute best thing you could do. Get people who are on the fence about science and tech to look at an aspect of either or each that's interesting to them, and to get them to use the language where they wouldn't do so before. Get the alpha geeks talking to the people on the fence. Give them something in common.
What would fit that bill might be something of a quandary in and of itself, so you may want to include in your survey some things in addition to general interests, such as, "What kinds of tech stuff have you done? Have you replaced parts in a computer? Built a robot? Coded programs?" That may seem overly focused, but having an activity that alpha geeks may regard as "been-there-done-that" and therefore an opportunity to demonstrate supremacy could put a hole in the bucket. That's not what you want for any activity, be it tech nor not. It makes gym class miserable for students who don't play sports, and it will ruin the inspiration aspect of what you want to do. Tread ye therefore with caution.
Depending on how deeply involved you want your overall program to be (and this is me just thinking as I post, so I apologize for the stream-of-consciousness aspect), you could do something like a program for on-the-fence people and something for the alpha geeks. Teach the on-the-fence people all kinds of cool things that got you to take on tech (I can't think of another way to put it), and challenge the alpha geeks. Encourage them to set off on their own -- have an art student? Teach them GIMP and let them develop their artwork through that, independently of what you may show them for the purposes of orienting them to GIMP.
Add another element to the overall program in that you give each contingent the opportunity to learn how to present what they've done to the others -- not necessarily just to say, "Hey, look what I did," but also to share with each other the programming, machinery, and creativity that you shared with them to get them to achieve their feats of developing technical prowess, on both sides. Get it to the point where it's self-propagating.
Now, how you could deal with each group in the beginning while trying to maintain the interest of the alpha geeks and to spark the involvement of the students on-the-fence, all the while bringing together all of them to get them talking and respecting each other would be a challenge to the whole thing. I can't think of necessarily the best way to go about it as I'm sitting here writing this, outside of having a few from each group sit in with the other, maybe by having signups for everyone for each project (probably need that anyway, considering parts, equipment, etc.), but I don't really have any specifics to offer you.
I would, however, emphasize that getting the students talking should be a paramount goal, because very often, they normally don't... or perhaps they don't do so in a way that advances either point of view constructively. When I was in high school (grad. 1999), geeks were a horrific minority, because the tech situation was, despite the superintendent's bragging to the contrary, somewhat pitiful. Seven students out of the whole senior class (itself small, to be fair) took programming, and that was taught by
Once a union has formed, firing anyone who strikes also is problematic, since many union activities are protected.
That would depend very much on just how that "firing" is done. Locally, I've seen two companies (Sani-Dairy and Bethlehem Steel) that employed large sections of the population fire the same for striking. No one ever sued and won, as far as I know.
Why?
Both companies decided that they would close their Johnstown plants after the conclusions of the strikes. The strikes were long and the companies didn't seem all that willing to negotiate, but when they finally settled the contracts, the companies had work to do that they felt could be done away from Johnstown.
So it's entirely possible to bypass that particular protection, so long as the "official" reason is "moving factories" or "outsourcing" or...
No one said they should. They might want to try to make the best of things though. Because what's the alternative? Not trying to make the best of things? What if one of them could "get over it" and make a good life for himself? Would you tell him not to?
Given the nature and number of the injuries involved, would you mind doing a considerably better job of explaining how a survivor of the Bhopal incident would go about "making the best of things though[sic]?" Just how would this person "get over it?"
I just think trying to make the best of things is better than living in the past because something bad happened to you in the past.
If we were talking about something like a home invasion or an armed robbery, sure. We're not. We're talking about a toxic release that killed thousands and injured far more. The injuries weren't exactly paper cuts -- don't trivialize them into something people can just "get over."
Have you given much thought to the possibility that the population affected by the Bhopal emission may have been in a bad way to begin with, after which something this major happened? Were they well off at the outset? I mean, if all they really had to worry about was this toxic cloud...
I do care about people. I want them to be better off. I don't want them to stay mired in their victimhood until the court judgement arrives and the lawyers get paid.
So these people's resources are pretty much in the crapper because UC didn't want to build a plant of that particular type on American soil at the time (though I understand there is currently one running in West Virginia), but they should still "get over it," "make the best of things," and keep themselves from being "mired in their victimhood" because, well, the American justice system sucks?
Your reasoning applies to more localized (perhaps individualized) cases, but trying to wedge something extreme like Bhopal into it makes the whole thing read like some truly arrogant asshatry. Sorry, but it does. Your "caring about people" would do far more good if you took the time to understand their situations and history before dispensing your pearls of wisdom.
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The proper way to do this is not to refuse to serve the students whose intellectual or artistic gifts become special needs for out-of-mainstream education. Neglecting our brightest students is not a good way to drive America to the fore in the new century. To turn an old saw: the world needs physicists, research chemists and brain surgeons too.
The world does indeed need scientists, sure. The problem is, the world needs a scientifically literate public to recognize that it needs more scientists. We're not too hot on that part.
Gifted and intellectual students have something of a mixed bag of possibilities -- if they're in well-endowed school districts, they're well provided for. If they're not, they may take a back seat while the funding goes to having pizza parties for seniors who still can't read (harsh, I know -- still, that's how it was in my school district). "Not refusing" is the goal state -- first we need people who care about getting there. Right now, those who should frequently don't.
Nah, it would only increase the use of force. "The tazer didn't work, so we shot him in the head."
Bullet proof vests are only good if the bullet his your chest. It doesn't help in other areas.
In reality, "bullet proof" materials are only good at spreading the energy out. They're worthless against more focused forces. It may stop a 9mm (blunt tip), but it won't stop a .223 (sharp tip), and probably won't do much against the electrodes of a tazer, or a knife. That's why they make rifle plating to go into kevlar vests. They're heavy, but they'll help protect against more serious rounds. With serious rounds (like a .50 BMG), you can't carry enough armor to help you, and even if you did, it can only displace the energy so far. If it was able to prevent the round from piercing the armor, you'd simply be crushed by the force.
Best advice for not getting killed by bullets? Don't get yourself on the wrong end of a firearm. I've managed to be safe wearing regular t-shirts as protection for over 30 years, because I've never put myself in the way of a weapon. :)
Heh. Amen. Great advice.
IIRC, a lot of those vests had (still have?) another pronounced flaw -- the axillary region wasn't protected. Oh, the chest and back (and some of the sides) were covered, but the armholes themselves left a vulnerable space under each arm. The protective t-shirts might not be so hot with heavier rounds, but they'd be something there where previously there wasn't much at all.
After, of course, someone ends up on the wrong end of the firearm!
Primarily because you can't step in the same hexagon twice.
Got what he deserved "in the court of public opinion," sure, I'll go for that. In terms of legal implications regarding use of someone else's account, I severely doubt that's an adequate defense. [Insert hackneyed "just because I can doesn't mean I should" after school special moral here.]
Funny thing, however; if you go to send them a cashier's check/check of any kind, the document is to be made out to "Apple Computer, Inc."
The money, it would seem, is going to the same piggybank it always went to.
There are still "Medical Professionals", including doctors, thinking that getting blood in the eyes poses none of little risk for the contraction of HIV; and this aside from the third world. This happens in the high-developed countries.
Ambulanciers and doctors having the wrong thought of its infection vector causing dozens of extra victims with the HIV virus; only because of mis/insufficient information. Maybe aids-prevention should start with getting the right information at the right people whom should care...
Speaking as someone who used to handle untested blood donations... in leaky bags and tubes...
Academically, it's widely understood among those at risk that an exposure can transmit HIV. We had annual in-services and "homework assignments" to drive home the point. The problem is one of people not caring about their probability of handling a hot unit/patient/vector. Out of, say, 1500 units of blood to come through on a single collection day, maybe one would come back HIV positive. Maybe. On a rare occasion, two would come back HIV reactive. People generally assumed that HIV-positive patients would not bother going through the rigmarole of donating blood, and multiple coworkers would forgo things like face shields, gloves, and the like because the PPE made them uncomfortable for one reason or another ("The shield gets too hot," or "The gloves make my hands sweat," etc.). The problem wasn't limited to staff, either -- our "impermeable" lab coats were still in service well after their protective coating's operational lives, because management felt that replacing them with new, effective lab coats would be too much of an expenditure. It's as though the HIV lesson has been repeated so many times that people tune it out.
Granted, at the time, it was (and I hope still is) understood that a small, yet persistent population of donors would appear every so often to use blood donation as a free HIV test, because they don't want to go through the normal confirmatory process for reporting to the Department of Health. False names get used. False addresses get recorded. HIV positive blood gets pulled out of the system after my department processes it, but here again, no one in processing expects that they'll be the next lucky contestant to come up on the 1500-chamber game of Russian roulette.
I just finished taking a Medical First Responder course, and I can say that the information is out there -- in the form of, "Always use body substance isolation (BSI) measures." Asking a patient their HIV status straight out of the chute actually opens up legal liability if someone hears it who shouldn't -- God bless HIPAA. Instead, the guidance is to operate under Universal Precautions, and assume that every patient is carrying HIV. So long as people don't get complacent, it's no problem. They're protecting themselves automatically.
Still, failure to verbalize BSI precautions is a critical failure in a verbal exam regarding any MFR (or up!) procedure. And I can tell you, even after that introductory training course, more than one person failed because of BSI.
b) enough affluence that the person a) above doesn't have to work at walmart instead.
Yahtzee.
I went to the public schools, and I have to say I got a lot of my "public school" education by doing whatever I could to stay out of the rank and file offerings my school presented. I found great benefit in becoming a perennial pain in the ass any time some new program was starting, or a teacher had a course I wanted but wouldn't be able to take because of scheduling red tape. Most of the really memorable things I did in high school came from stepping off that beaten path.
I remember taking Anat&Phys independently, and when the instructor told me I should probably get around to doing a dissection before the end of the year, she sent me home with a specimen and a dissecting bucket. My kitchen table top sheep brain dissection stopped my sister from making a late night batch of macaroni and cheese.
I remember staying up late into the night to watch a videotape loaded with classes from KET's Humanities through the Arts course. My school had elected to offer these distance learning courses via satellite, but they didn't guarantee real-time attendance or scheduling. I didn't care -- every day I would swap a tape so I could spend the late night hours watching another few hours of class. I had a blast.
When the satellite was still new and my school strove to schedule students for its appropriate use (watching the class live and interacting via telephone audio bridge -- the tech people had not yet overcome their fear of telepresence and its earlier forms), I took two years of Japanese. The schedule ended up falling out such that I took English, Japanese, and French, all in a row. My teachers deferred when I explained that I wasn't thinking answers in the languages they wanted.
On the other hand, I remember a particular instance where a teacher did not want to provide the instruction he claimed he'd give. My junior high science teacher, a twit I could count on to spend most of the class period talking to his niece in the seat in front of mine, told me I could show him whatever odd items I wanted and do enrichment work on whatever interested me. One day I took in the Instructor's Manual for Star Trek: Federation Science and pointed out a few items that I wanted to do. He flipped through the book and handed it back -- he didn't support anything, and I didn't get to use any of his resources to do my exploring. I never bothered with him after that, and I don't remember anything he taught me, except what makes an ineffective teacher and what makes an ineffective teacher exponentially worse. Thankfully, the high school science teachers (my A&P teacher being one) were far superior. I owe a lot to them.
The upshot of this is that I derived more benefit from striving to go outside of the mainstream educational offerings when I was in school. What I could do, I did. I went to the math competition. I went to the library weekly. When I could, I visited the science center or natural history museum. I grokked Discovery and PBS the way other students thrived on teeny bopper crap and Sports Illustrated. Were I to rely strictly on what the school wanted to follow as the path of least resistance, I wouldn't have gained much of anything, and I'd be quite the drone now.
Maybe this is a way for people to get in touch with their inner dolphins... Heh. There's something for the furry crowd.
Dolphins have been said to receive sound through their jawbones -- albeit their lower jaws, which thin out to supposedly vibratory "panbones" -- for quite some time now. (It's not hard to find a source for this -- a lot of books (even through something like National Geographic) that talk about dolphin anatomy have a figure about echolocation, for which the jaw receiver system is thought to work.)
Teachers' unions end up being only a part of the problem. Teacher training in general can be sorely lacking, and that doesn't exactly heal spontaneously to give future elementary or high school students the best of pedagogical provision. I know of an instance in which education majors' Praxis scores were... selectively altered in a report sent to the state Department of Education. The academic department looked utterly brilliant, until the state got wind of the artificially inflated scores and audited the department. In the meantime, college students who couldn't so much as turn on computers were granted diplomas and classrooms of their own.
Education (particularly elementary education) really ends up being the major of last resort in a lot of universities. Fail out of the sciences? Go major in elementary ed. Fail out of history? Go to elementary ed. By the time I got through to my second year in university as an undergraduate majoring in Biology, over half of those I started with had bailed out of Biology to go to (primarily elementary) education. If such an appreciable chunk of the constituent population didn't go into that field because they actually had an interest in it, but rather did so to avoid having to join the workforce and miss out on years of beers (I lived with one such twerp, don't anyone try telling me it doesn't happen), what on earth do you expect will happen with the educational system?
See, when I think about myths regarding various things, I think of drugs, history, Greek heroes, and fisherman-eating orcas. Regarding Facebook and Twitter, however, I couldn't give a rat's patoot. Those who use the technologies have an understanding of how they work, and those who don't... don't. Those who don't may well make up a spiel to sound as though they know, much as applies to a lot of cases in life... including l'intarweb, mes amis. Mix a publicity scheme with an attempt to get the journalists to go online, shake in a little bit of fake discernment, and voila! A news experiment!
I'm curious as to what proportion of medical records were incorrect and what proportion of pharmacy claims were inaccurate. Just how useful could a database like this be, if its source data is prone to some really wacky error? Side effect misdiagnoses alone could make for a considerable slog through noise just to pick up an effect.
I keep thinking that looking for pulsars could've just as easily been something that someone with a hankering for SETI@home's animus could've farmed out to a grid. What's so beautiful about this is that the PSC gets work done for astrophysics at the same time that it adds something to science education. (Too bad more schools couldn't have access to these kinds of things. It may be educational natural selection, but it's still a downer.)
That might have less to do with video games than it does with robotics. (I imagine Mr. Universe would agree.)
Jon Newton of p2pnet.net attributes the Justice Department's 'oversights' to the 'eye-popping number of people [in its employ] who worked for, and/or are directly connected with, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music's RIAA.'
"I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."
--Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Cardassians"
I had a similar experience. A number of my college friends with whom I used to play lived a few hours away, making the weekly, in-person game impractical. Eventually we just got together for a weekend and put together character sheets and the like in hopes of playing over Skype or whatever else was handy thereafter, but that ultimately went by the wayside when the proposed DM got her first positive test for a pregnancy. (She married another D'n'D player we both knew, and they wanted to have kids... but I digress entirely too much.)
It really depends on whether or not you have a group of people anywhere you can play with. If it's a matter of geographic separation from the rest of your gaming group, alternative means of playing do indeed exist. If you don't have anyone nearby, it's not so easy.
Something that I've always found interesting is the whole social structure that permeates different internet projects. In particular -- and I qualify this with nothing but my own paltry observations -- it's exceedingly difficult to break into anything that involves skill (particularly the programming sort) because not only is the existing structure built on skill, but it is also built on familiarity. If, say, Bob is well known for doing 'foo,' and you step in one day after cobbling around your own for a while and demonstrate that you're not half bad at 'foo' yourself, there's an exceedingly good chance that you'll fade into the noise unless Bob (or someone who speaks to Bob quite a bit about 'foo') notices what you've done and says something about it.
At that point (absent of any response), the prospective developer has a few choices -- keep cobbling and work up some more 'foo,' and bring that into the light once it develops, seek out Bob to talk shop that he might let you in on some of the nuances that you may not have seen in development wishlists/buglists/etc., start clamoring over what he/she's already done in (erroneous) hope of getting recognition, or move on to developing 'bar.'
Granted, I haven't done any Linux development yet, but that's what I've been seeing in other things. That whole breaking in process is difficult because those insecurities about people responding underwhelmingly (or negatively) to your work don't really go away, whether you're coding or doing scientific research. It may well benefit the Linux development community only to work with those who have the drive to continue despite those discouraging possibilities, but it won't necessarily be a huge recruitment tool to get people into developing in the first place.
Do you really question the assertion that adding the whole of the Scouring would've worked on the end of a nearly 4-hour film?
Sure, it's vital for the book, but it would've been suicide for the narrative for the movie. After the destruction of the Ring, the narrative should wind down, because the primary aim of the conflict in the movie has been met.
We don't need a litmus test for the maturity of the hobbits in the film, because we get to see it firsthand. (Unless, of course, the contrast of singing on tables at The Green Dragon versus the looks all around after the Quest doesn't indicate such a change. The Scouring "proves" it! Can't just communicate it all in a vignette with the hobbits in the pub -- rally the Tooks!)
Saruman has closure, and while it isn't what Tolkien did originally, his story now finally has its finish. Onward we go to the rest of the movie.
Yes, book and movie are considerably different. No kidding. How's about taking a few to think about just how those inherent differences in media might, just might, make the Scouring's take-home lessons show up elsewhere in the narrative? You know, before you treat the possibility that some folks might not be so worried about the Scouring as anathema in need of reeducation?
What was that about trolling?
Or correctly for the medium involved.
I would indicate that the change from "No living man am I!" to "I am no man!" is rather slight. At the very least, the idea for such a statement on Eowyn's part is pure Tolkien.
I think LotR ended up being rather fortunate, actually, considering just what could have happened. Had New Line wanted a more "traditional" approach to filmmaking, there would be considerably more to nitpick over, and worse.
TV series, depending on who all is involved in making them, oftentimes end up suffering from costs. A movie under the aegis of a large studio comes with a more healthy budget, and a lot of TV series nowadays don't come with nearly the funding the movies do. (In the past, many did or at least did rather well with what they had available, but nowadays? Hah. Sure. Let's rewind that tape of The Reagans...)
I don't imagine there would be much of what all was possible in a film version of LotR that would also come to bear in a television version.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this will get snarked in some manner, but as far as looking for appropriate activities, why not put forward a survey of students? Stick your heads into a few classes and explain what kinds of tech ideas you find cool (and, perhaps, relatively doable on whatever scale you want to describe), and see what kind of response you get. Let them give you some idea of what they want.
Now, to be sure, a contingent of students will blow off the whole thing. That happens. Not all of them will, though. You may end up with some "closet geeks" -- folks who think the graphics in their video games are pretty cool, but don't want to say too much about them, for fear of the "geek" stereotype -- in addition to the alpha geeks.
Come to think of it, that may be the absolute best thing you could do. Get people who are on the fence about science and tech to look at an aspect of either or each that's interesting to them, and to get them to use the language where they wouldn't do so before. Get the alpha geeks talking to the people on the fence. Give them something in common.
What would fit that bill might be something of a quandary in and of itself, so you may want to include in your survey some things in addition to general interests, such as, "What kinds of tech stuff have you done? Have you replaced parts in a computer? Built a robot? Coded programs?" That may seem overly focused, but having an activity that alpha geeks may regard as "been-there-done-that" and therefore an opportunity to demonstrate supremacy could put a hole in the bucket. That's not what you want for any activity, be it tech nor not. It makes gym class miserable for students who don't play sports, and it will ruin the inspiration aspect of what you want to do. Tread ye therefore with caution.
Depending on how deeply involved you want your overall program to be (and this is me just thinking as I post, so I apologize for the stream-of-consciousness aspect), you could do something like a program for on-the-fence people and something for the alpha geeks. Teach the on-the-fence people all kinds of cool things that got you to take on tech (I can't think of another way to put it), and challenge the alpha geeks. Encourage them to set off on their own -- have an art student? Teach them GIMP and let them develop their artwork through that, independently of what you may show them for the purposes of orienting them to GIMP.
Add another element to the overall program in that you give each contingent the opportunity to learn how to present what they've done to the others -- not necessarily just to say, "Hey, look what I did," but also to share with each other the programming, machinery, and creativity that you shared with them to get them to achieve their feats of developing technical prowess, on both sides. Get it to the point where it's self-propagating.
Now, how you could deal with each group in the beginning while trying to maintain the interest of the alpha geeks and to spark the involvement of the students on-the-fence, all the while bringing together all of them to get them talking and respecting each other would be a challenge to the whole thing. I can't think of necessarily the best way to go about it as I'm sitting here writing this, outside of having a few from each group sit in with the other, maybe by having signups for everyone for each project (probably need that anyway, considering parts, equipment, etc.), but I don't really have any specifics to offer you.
I would, however, emphasize that getting the students talking should be a paramount goal, because very often, they normally don't... or perhaps they don't do so in a way that advances either point of view constructively. When I was in high school (grad. 1999), geeks were a horrific minority, because the tech situation was, despite the superintendent's bragging to the contrary, somewhat pitiful. Seven students out of the whole senior class (itself small, to be fair) took programming, and that was taught by
Once a union has formed, firing anyone who strikes also is problematic, since many union activities are protected.
That would depend very much on just how that "firing" is done. Locally, I've seen two companies (Sani-Dairy and Bethlehem Steel) that employed large sections of the population fire the same for striking. No one ever sued and won, as far as I know.
Why?
Both companies decided that they would close their Johnstown plants after the conclusions of the strikes. The strikes were long and the companies didn't seem all that willing to negotiate, but when they finally settled the contracts, the companies had work to do that they felt could be done away from Johnstown.
So it's entirely possible to bypass that particular protection, so long as the "official" reason is "moving factories" or "outsourcing" or...
No one said they should. They might want to try to make the best of things though. Because what's the alternative? Not trying to make the best of things? What if one of them could "get over it" and make a good life for himself? Would you tell him not to?
Given the nature and number of the injuries involved, would you mind doing a considerably better job of explaining how a survivor of the Bhopal incident would go about "making the best of things though[sic]?" Just how would this person "get over it?"
I just think trying to make the best of things is better than living in the past because something bad happened to you in the past.
If we were talking about something like a home invasion or an armed robbery, sure. We're not. We're talking about a toxic release that killed thousands and injured far more. The injuries weren't exactly paper cuts -- don't trivialize them into something people can just "get over."
Have you given much thought to the possibility that the population affected by the Bhopal emission may have been in a bad way to begin with, after which something this major happened? Were they well off at the outset? I mean, if all they really had to worry about was this toxic cloud...
I do care about people. I want them to be better off. I don't want them to stay mired in their victimhood until the court judgement arrives and the lawyers get paid.
So these people's resources are pretty much in the crapper because UC didn't want to build a plant of that particular type on American soil at the time (though I understand there is currently one running in West Virginia), but they should still "get over it," "make the best of things," and keep themselves from being "mired in their victimhood" because, well, the American justice system sucks?
Your reasoning applies to more localized (perhaps individualized) cases, but trying to wedge something extreme like Bhopal into it makes the whole thing read like some truly arrogant asshatry. Sorry, but it does. Your "caring about people" would do far more good if you took the time to understand their situations and history before dispensing your pearls of wisdom.