Ender's Game *was* required reading in my freshman english class. A very good book I might add, though I wasn't too fond of the ending. Other than that, it seems like it's all the classics. Why? Because the people who assign the books don't understand them, so they *must* be good.
Even if they are well-written pieces of literature, you're completely right on the fact that not all highschool students are university bound. If I weren't already a fairly avid reader, I'm sure Great Expectations would have completely turned me off to reading. And the 4th-grade-level drivel I've seen in some highschool english classes isn't good either. Something in the middle, please? Readable, but not insulting to the intellect?
I didn't mean that I ruined the keyboard with the pants. I ruined the pants with the cheetos... but you probably knew that. At any rate, cheeto dust seems to have great power to wreak havoc upon all forms of valuable things. And by the looks of it, it's probably radioactive, too.
I'm generally pretty careful with the machine... but I have been known to ruin a keyboard or two (or a mouse or two...) with cheeto crumbs. And a pair of pants, but that's not really hardware.
I haven't checked my sources, but I read somewhere that women actually have a higher capacity when it comes to mathematical ability, at the very least. (Not sure about mechanical engineering and the like... spatial things tend to land on the male side of the table.) There's a lot of factors working against mathematically minded females... one of them being the generalization that it's not an attractive position to be in. Which is not true. While the majority of guys that are attracted to a math geek will be geeks, there are many attractive and quite superior options out there.
How do I know? I'm a female. I'm enrolled in advanced calculus (and I'll bet you everything that I'll ace that class). We're not terribly prevalent, but man, it rocks to be us.:-)
I'm still amazed at the ability to work on delays like that. I get a little frusterated when remote controlled cars don't turn quite as fast as I expect them to. Think of all the planning involved... and be thankful that we haven't found any life on other planets/moons, cause that would really screw things up. Would the probe just smack into anything it came across? I certainly hope not. If so, I think some sort of technology that allowed some independent operation on the part of the probe might be a valuable investment for the next go-round.
Scientific American is the best science magazine I've found thus far. I also subscribe to Discover, but I'm about to drop that since it doesn't really go into too much detail. And it has way too much biology (I'd much rather have some good chemistry or physics, thankye...).
That may be a "duh" issue for me or you, but for some people, turning on a computer is a taxing enough task. Especially for those who don't have AOL and must either download or purchase filtering tools, it can be a little rough. Then again, you could argue that it's really not that hard to ask the 7-year-old next door to help you find the Preferences bar.
If I'm not mistaken, COPA also had an effect on other areas of web use. Porn is a big chunk of it (and, in all likelihood, the big reason it came about), but I thought it restricted registering for certain services (message boards, chat clients) for children under a certain age. And if I remember correctly, these restrictions were also pretty ridiculous. I'm all about keeping the children off porn sites, but I wish the article mentioned more about other implications of the legislation.
There are many things I'd give for the sake of convenience... but this is going a bit too far. I'll take my privacy, thank you very much. Who exactly is going to be able to view this information? And how far does this "restricted government data" extend? It's one thing when it's a trained government officer making sure I'm not toting a shoe bomb. It's another thing when the steward has access to all my records.
Excellent point. Take, for example, one of the best plays I've seen lately... the Last 5 Years. The chronology is a bit disheveled... one character starts out at the beginning of the relationship, the other at the end. I'm guessing the guy who wrote the whole thing probably wrote it all in order, then rearranged the pieces to add to the drama. Even if he/she did intend to mix them up from the day he/she started writing.
In the world of writing, revision is king. You're never stuck with a beginning, or a middle, or an end.
Slashdot Mirror
Ender's Game *was* required reading in my freshman english class. A very good book I might add, though I wasn't too fond of the ending. Other than that, it seems like it's all the classics. Why? Because the people who assign the books don't understand them, so they *must* be good.
Even if they are well-written pieces of literature, you're completely right on the fact that not all highschool students are university bound. If I weren't already a fairly avid reader, I'm sure Great Expectations would have completely turned me off to reading. And the 4th-grade-level drivel I've seen in some highschool english classes isn't good either. Something in the middle, please? Readable, but not insulting to the intellect?
I didn't mean that I ruined the keyboard with the pants. I ruined the pants with the cheetos... but you probably knew that. At any rate, cheeto dust seems to have great power to wreak havoc upon all forms of valuable things. And by the looks of it, it's probably radioactive, too.
I'm generally pretty careful with the machine... but I have been known to ruin a keyboard or two (or a mouse or two...) with cheeto crumbs. And a pair of pants, but that's not really hardware.
I haven't checked my sources, but I read somewhere that women actually have a higher capacity when it comes to mathematical ability, at the very least. (Not sure about mechanical engineering and the like... spatial things tend to land on the male side of the table.) There's a lot of factors working against mathematically minded females... one of them being the generalization that it's not an attractive position to be in. Which is not true. While the majority of guys that are attracted to a math geek will be geeks, there are many attractive and quite superior options out there.
:-)
How do I know? I'm a female. I'm enrolled in advanced calculus (and I'll bet you everything that I'll ace that class). We're not terribly prevalent, but man, it rocks to be us.
I'm still amazed at the ability to work on delays like that. I get a little frusterated when remote controlled cars don't turn quite as fast as I expect them to. Think of all the planning involved... and be thankful that we haven't found any life on other planets/moons, cause that would really screw things up. Would the probe just smack into anything it came across? I certainly hope not. If so, I think some sort of technology that allowed some independent operation on the part of the probe might be a valuable investment for the next go-round.
Scientific American is the best science magazine I've found thus far. I also subscribe to Discover, but I'm about to drop that since it doesn't really go into too much detail. And it has way too much biology (I'd much rather have some good chemistry or physics, thankye...).
Science geekiness is the stuff.
That may be a "duh" issue for me or you, but for some people, turning on a computer is a taxing enough task. Especially for those who don't have AOL and must either download or purchase filtering tools, it can be a little rough. Then again, you could argue that it's really not that hard to ask the 7-year-old next door to help you find the Preferences bar.
If I'm not mistaken, COPA also had an effect on other areas of web use. Porn is a big chunk of it (and, in all likelihood, the big reason it came about), but I thought it restricted registering for certain services (message boards, chat clients) for children under a certain age. And if I remember correctly, these restrictions were also pretty ridiculous. I'm all about keeping the children off porn sites, but I wish the article mentioned more about other implications of the legislation.
There are many things I'd give for the sake of convenience... but this is going a bit too far. I'll take my privacy, thank you very much. Who exactly is going to be able to view this information? And how far does this "restricted government data" extend? It's one thing when it's a trained government officer making sure I'm not toting a shoe bomb. It's another thing when the steward has access to all my records.
Excellent point. Take, for example, one of the best plays I've seen lately... the Last 5 Years. The chronology is a bit disheveled... one character starts out at the beginning of the relationship, the other at the end. I'm guessing the guy who wrote the whole thing probably wrote it all in order, then rearranged the pieces to add to the drama. Even if he/she did intend to mix them up from the day he/she started writing.
In the world of writing, revision is king. You're never stuck with a beginning, or a middle, or an end.