Does anyone actually watch "Idol?" I never hear the annoying "loud plot synopsizer" guy at work loudly synopsizing it to his inexplicable host of lady friends all within earshot...
Motivation to go have a beer? When you're depressed? Yeah, that's just what you need, to sit in a smoke-filled room and ingest depressants with the other losers who think that spending too much on a mug full of fuel additive is good treatment for their depression.
Now, I don't claim to know what will definitely work for you, but I always feel great after doing something physical, so my suggestion would be to get a gym membership*, and a personal trainer to harass you when you don't show up (if depressed, it's really easy to lose he motivation to actually visit the gym, no matter how great you feel afterwards.)
*doesn't have to be a traditional gym. Climbing gym, or dojo, or any other physically straining activity that you actually find interesting will do. Hell, indoor skydiving probably counts until you develop the muscles and flexibility to do it effortlessly.
The point is to do something real. Video-game achievements just aren't a high-enough density feeling of accomplishment to really satisfy you for the rest of the day. They're robbing you of time you could be doing something that really helps you.
I think your argument would hold up a lot better if there banks weren't doing exactly that with credit card debt.
Further, that wasn't what I was suggesting at all. What I was suggesting was that someone at the end of their career, you give them the benefit you contraced with them. After all, they performed their end of the deal.
But your agreement with them shouldn't bind you to making the same deal with a new hire.
And further, for those in their mid-career, you ought to be able to pro-rate the benefit to the amount of service they've given and/or buy-out the benefit.
Of course, you might think it's better to just keep the bennies for everybody, until the entity that made the promises no longer exists to pay them, and no one gets anything. It's a helluva way to treat you constituents, though.
In hindsight, the original deals might have been valid: the first workers to get those bennies did only live to 68. The problem is that as health care and nutritional improvements increased the lifespan, they were unable to re-negotiate. With a union, everything gets ratcheted up. Things very, very, rarely get negotiated down.*
*partially because people don't seem to know that there is a good answer to the typical objection of "but what about all the people who were counting on those benefits." and that answer is, "pro rata." There's no reason why new people should get the benefits you can't afford just because you're committed to people who've spent their whole careers working for you.
The reason we pay CEO's so much is another kind of collusion.
Wealthy people can buy their way on to the boards of various companies, and they elect other wealthy people to the executive positions of the companies they're board-members on. And of course it's a quid-pro-quo: being an executive of one company doesn't preclude you from "serving" on the board of one or more other companies.
Do you really think that you need salaries in the millions, with benefits of even greater value to attract enough people capable of running a large company? Is the labor pool really as small as they'd like you to believe?
You're (teachers, in general) not doing a very good job getting the word out about the other methods of evaluation. Please describe some of them for us. Otherwise it just sounds like the standard politician's electioneering criticism, "I just think there are better ways to go about..." It's a very soft objection that apparently doesn't require the speaker to attach himself to any of the alternatives.
As an engineer, I can't imagine trying to run a dynamic system without feedback, but it seems like every time we talk about getting that feedback, there's always some obstacle to actually implementing it, whether it be tests (too arbitrary), teacher evaluations (too capricious / not objective enough), or what have you, when what's really needed is a comprehensive system with *all* of those elements, not the one true method.
When I was in high school, the only feedback metric that was actually used was "Years In." Which resulted in a very talented computer science teacher (with an actual degree in computer science) being bumped down to remedial math when a dilettante with a copy of "visual C++ for dummies" decided she could "learn with the class."
Just because a particular sample excludes a particular person from matching that sample, does not mean that the particular person was not at the scene. Only that that particular sample is from someone else.
I suppose if you could establish that a particular sample definitely came from the perpetrator of the crime, that it could exclude other suspects, but otherwise all you get are odds. Odds that the sample is a match (just how many markers did they get, etc.), and odds that the accused was at the scene, but left no evidence the police could find.
Naw, he's oldschool. He obviously uses a spectrometer and a candle to get monochromatic light for his projects. Sure, it requires super-long exposure times, but it's pretty hard-core.
I'm pretty sure the "multiply connected spaces" idea was used in Prey several months before Portal came out. At least, that's what the demo lead me to believe, anyway...
IIRC, Prey also had a very interesting variable gravity-direction concept.
Seems like a shaky legal theory on both counts. Something about "due process" and right to be secure in your property and whatnot.
If we're going to take the car, then we ought to compensate the owner for its fair market value. If the fines happen to eat that up, though, then so be it, but the fines shouldn't be the car.
Round me it's pretty evenly distributed among vehicle type. I often see SUV's darting between traffic (how are they doing that, anyway... No wonder they get such crappy mileage. A four ton vehicle simply shouldn't be sprightly...)
Just today, I saw a tow truck (an old-style pull-type truck, not a flatbed) tailgating at 80mph*, while towing a car. Probably would've caught him (her?) weaving, too, if there was a gap to move into within my view.
*not me, fortunately. I was quick to get out of its way. I always give cops and other bad drivers a wide berth.
Yeah, the parents should realize that just because they didn't set up wifi, doesn't mean they're not "exposed" to it at home.
OTOH, what does a school need with wifi? School-wide wifi, I mean, not confined to the library and rooms. Is it really so hard to wire a school network?
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I'm not sure I'd want to stake my future on a country where justice is so swift they have to maintain 24 hour prosecutorial coverage...
Does anyone actually watch "Idol?" I never hear the annoying "loud plot synopsizer" guy at work loudly synopsizing it to his inexplicable host of lady friends all within earshot...
Motivation to go have a beer? When you're depressed? Yeah, that's just what you need, to sit in a smoke-filled room and ingest depressants with the other losers who think that spending too much on a mug full of fuel additive is good treatment for their depression.
Now, I don't claim to know what will definitely work for you, but I always feel great after doing something physical, so my suggestion would be to get a gym membership*, and a personal trainer to harass you when you don't show up (if depressed, it's really easy to lose he motivation to actually visit the gym, no matter how great you feel afterwards.)
*doesn't have to be a traditional gym. Climbing gym, or dojo, or any other physically straining activity that you actually find interesting will do. Hell, indoor skydiving probably counts until you develop the muscles and flexibility to do it effortlessly.
The point is to do something real. Video-game achievements just aren't a high-enough density feeling of accomplishment to really satisfy you for the rest of the day. They're robbing you of time you could be doing something that really helps you.
Shareholders are the owners. It was the executives that made the promises...
I think your argument would hold up a lot better if there banks weren't doing exactly that with credit card debt.
Further, that wasn't what I was suggesting at all. What I was suggesting was that someone at the end of their career, you give them the benefit you contraced with them. After all, they performed their end of the deal.
But your agreement with them shouldn't bind you to making the same deal with a new hire.
And further, for those in their mid-career, you ought to be able to pro-rate the benefit to the amount of service they've given and/or buy-out the benefit.
Of course, you might think it's better to just keep the bennies for everybody, until the entity that made the promises no longer exists to pay them, and no one gets anything. It's a helluva way to treat you constituents, though.
In hindsight, the original deals might have been valid: the first workers to get those bennies did only live to 68. The problem is that as health care and nutritional improvements increased the lifespan, they were unable to re-negotiate. With a union, everything gets ratcheted up. Things very, very, rarely get negotiated down.*
*partially because people don't seem to know that there is a good answer to the typical objection of "but what about all the people who were counting on those benefits." and that answer is, "pro rata." There's no reason why new people should get the benefits you can't afford just because you're committed to people who've spent their whole careers working for you.
The reason we pay CEO's so much is another kind of collusion.
Wealthy people can buy their way on to the boards of various companies, and they elect other wealthy people to the executive positions of the companies they're board-members on. And of course it's a quid-pro-quo: being an executive of one company doesn't preclude you from "serving" on the board of one or more other companies.
Do you really think that you need salaries in the millions, with benefits of even greater value to attract enough people capable of running a large company? Is the labor pool really as small as they'd like you to believe?
You're (teachers, in general) not doing a very good job getting the word out about the other methods of evaluation. Please describe some of them for us. Otherwise it just sounds like the standard politician's electioneering criticism, "I just think there are better ways to go about..." It's a very soft objection that apparently doesn't require the speaker to attach himself to any of the alternatives.
As an engineer, I can't imagine trying to run a dynamic system without feedback, but it seems like every time we talk about getting that feedback, there's always some obstacle to actually implementing it, whether it be tests (too arbitrary), teacher evaluations (too capricious / not objective enough), or what have you, when what's really needed is a comprehensive system with *all* of those elements, not the one true method.
When I was in high school, the only feedback metric that was actually used was "Years In." Which resulted in a very talented computer science teacher (with an actual degree in computer science) being bumped down to remedial math when a dilettante with a copy of "visual C++ for dummies" decided she could "learn with the class."
No, you can also get less than what you pay for. Indeed, that is the whole point of collusion: to make the customer get less than what he pays for.
Unions are a kind of collusion....
Price is not a reliable indicator of quality.
Only sort-of.
Just because a particular sample excludes a particular person from matching that sample, does not mean that the particular person was not at the scene. Only that that particular sample is from someone else.
I suppose if you could establish that a particular sample definitely came from the perpetrator of the crime, that it could exclude other suspects, but otherwise all you get are odds. Odds that the sample is a match (just how many markers did they get, etc.), and odds that the accused was at the scene, but left no evidence the police could find.
Naw, he's oldschool. He obviously uses a spectrometer and a candle to get monochromatic light for his projects. Sure, it requires super-long exposure times, but it's pretty hard-core.
Actually.. IIRC, multiply connected spaces existed in Duke Nukem 3D several years before that, but you couldn't change the connections on the fly.
I'm pretty sure the "multiply connected spaces" idea was used in Prey several months before Portal came out. At least, that's what the demo lead me to believe, anyway...
IIRC, Prey also had a very interesting variable gravity-direction concept.
It was also free for a weekend when they came out with the Mac version of steam a few months ago...
Seems like a shaky legal theory on both counts. Something about "due process" and right to be secure in your property and whatnot.
If we're going to take the car, then we ought to compensate the owner for its fair market value. If the fines happen to eat that up, though, then so be it, but the fines shouldn't be the car.
Whatever it looks for can be faked. It's not like your breath uses cryptography...
Surely eschewing ownership of a vehicle would also satisfy the requirements....
It may be a fallacy, but it's also a strategy that works very well....
Round me it's pretty evenly distributed among vehicle type. I often see SUV's darting between traffic (how are they doing that, anyway... No wonder they get such crappy mileage. A four ton vehicle simply shouldn't be sprightly...)
Just today, I saw a tow truck (an old-style pull-type truck, not a flatbed) tailgating at 80mph*, while towing a car. Probably would've caught him (her?) weaving, too, if there was a gap to move into within my view.
*not me, fortunately. I was quick to get out of its way. I always give cops and other bad drivers a wide berth.
Because if they're drunk why is it letting them drive the car at all.
True that. I fill all my tires with a low-grade nitrogen mix (only about 20% impurities.)
It does make sense. My road bike uses even less gas than your mountain bike.
If you have computers in all classrooms, school-wide wifi makes sense.
Until you realize that they tend to all have drop ceilings with tons of pretty easily accessible space for cable runs, that is.
Yes, I suppose $85 is like $50. Clearly, they're both in the same units, for instance.
Yeah, the parents should realize that just because they didn't set up wifi, doesn't mean they're not "exposed" to it at home.
OTOH, what does a school need with wifi? School-wide wifi, I mean, not confined to the library and rooms. Is it really so hard to wire a school network?