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User: volmtech

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  1. Re:Anecdote, completely non-scientific on Can Students Have Too Much Tech? · · Score: 1

    I'm sure most commentators here have smart children. My oldest daughter started reading when she was three and now has an English PhD. My college junior son has his own Minecraft server and builds computers for his friends. The trouble is smart people do most teaching and we can't really empathize with the less intelligent. They have less need to know things, they just want entertainment.

  2. Check your facts on Blogger Who Revealed GOP Leader's KKK Ties Had Home Internet Lines Cut · · Score: 1
    Kenny Knight, a longtime political adviser to Duke, said Scalise spoke at a meeting of the Jefferson Heights Civic Association -- not affiliated with the European-American Unity and Rights conference that was held in the same Metairie hotel -- two-and-a-half hours before the white nationalist event started.

    Never let the truth get in the way if you are a Liberal.

  3. Re:Not so difficult on Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration · · Score: 1

    I do not believe American export man hours equal import man hours. Look at the disaster happening in North Dakota as fracking jobs disappear due to the sudden drop in oil prices. We mostly export raw materials or automated factory goods. Great for corporate profits but little value to the American worker. All the job growth is in service industries, where is the money coming from? Record number of people on food stamps and disability, eighteen trillion dollars of debt. Found it!

  4. Re:Lest we Forget.. on New Advance Confines GMOs To the Lab Instead of Living In the Wild · · Score: 1

    Who remembers the Alar scare? When the news broke panicked mothers rushed to schools to pull apples out of their child's lunch. The FDA had pulled Alar's registration but allowed all remaining stocks on hand to be used. Unfortunately most orchards had already been sprayed and with the panic no one was buying. Many farmers lost their orchards.

  5. Re:Stick cards in your spokes on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    Maybe I'm wrong but I though an internal combustion engine was basically an air pump. Getting the air in and out in an efficient manner produced more power. I flipped the air cleaner cover on my 68 327 Impala because it allowed more air to the air cleaner than the one and a quarter inch hole on the side snout. It had nothing to do with the sweet moan from the spread bore carburetor at full throttle.

    One of the best sounding exhaust I ever heard was on a ten wheel flat bed truck with a big block V-8. The owner had simply welded a three ft section of six inch black pipe to each exhaust pipe in place of a traditional muffler.

  6. Re:Why is lack of male nurses not an issue? on Fighting Tech's Diversity Issues Without Burning Down the System · · Score: 1

    My wife just started nursing school. Tonight she is going to practice doing a bed bath on me. I hope she wears her naughty nurse outfit ;)

    She has been helping take care of her invalid mother for almost ten years so she knows how. She just needs a male patient and figured I would enjoy it. Out of the fifteen students in her class, one is male.

  7. Re:The pendulum swings too far... on Why We Have To Kiss Off Big Carbon Now · · Score: 1

    Take your first sentence to it's logical conclusion. Ban all things pertaining to fossil fuels. Most people do nothing productive, they can all stay home. Many of those now unemployed can then start work on the all renewable infrastructure. It will require a North Korean style totalitarian government because the sacrifice and deprivation of a carbon free existence will be intolerable to all but a few of the population. Of course those few will gleefully man the guard towers and put aside their fear of guns.

  8. Re:math on Tesla To Produce 'a Few Million' Electric Cars a Year By 2025 · · Score: 1

    Sadly taxes are such a fact of modern life not paying one is now considered a subsidy, from Wikipedia, "Subsidies come in various forms including: direct (cash grants, interest-free loans) and indirect (tax breaks." Pay up sucker.

  9. Re:Just hire a CPA on Intuit Charges More For Previously Offered TurboTax Features, Users Livid · · Score: 1

    After years of my business breaking even, meaning no profit but no loses either, I had to sell some land to repay the loans I had been living off of. This triggered a large capital gains tax. I shifted expenses forward to cancel that out. The next year with less expenses I made a large paper profit and had to pay the Social Security and income tax on that profit that wouldn't have be due on the capital gains.

    The smart me thought me knew what he was doing and the lazy me didn't take the few minutes to figure it both ways the first time. This cost me $50,000 in penalties and interest when I couldn't pay it. A CPA would have saved me more than $25.

  10. Re:The Full List on Education Debate: Which Is More Important - Grit, Or Intelligence? · · Score: 1

    I have a straight A daughter who almost had a nervous break down trying to be perfect. I also have a mostly A and B son who confided to me he never bothered to study for a test until he started law school. Both now have successful careers so I guess they achieved balance.

  11. Re:Sorta related... the teletype machine on Ask Slashdot: Sounds We Don't Hear Any More? · · Score: 2

    Remember the nightly news with Walter Cronkite? There was always a teletype running in the background to let you know it was a news show.

  12. Re:Stop trying to win this politically on Michael Mann: Swiftboating Comes To Science · · Score: 1

    Until everyone gos to war against climate change nothing will happen. In 1941 the US was at war. There was a real threat of invasion yet there was still the need for a military draft because many men wouldn't volunteer to fight. Until everyone is forcibly drafted into the warming war, few are willing to suffer the consequences.

    There will be food rationing, travel restrictions, and many deaths, remember, this is war. Until the politicians declare war and institute the draft most will be conscientious objectors.

  13. Re:We already know something about long-term expos on Short-Term Exposure To Diesel Fumes Causes Changes In Gene Expression · · Score: 1

    I was a maintenance tech at a produce packing plant where we received bulk semi loads of potatoes. We weighed the trucks in and out to calculate the delivery weight. One guy was HUGE! I made sure I watched the digital scale readout as he got out of his truck to get his scale ticket. He was over 600 lbs. He took his papers and then climbed the stairs to the second story office.

  14. Re:Tell that to Alaskans who get BI of US$1000+/ye on Cryptocurrency Based Basic Income Program Started In Finland · · Score: 1

    As a mental exercise two years ago I took the time to calculate what my investment would have been worth if my yearly SS contribution was put in the stock market starting with my first paycheck in 1970. Most of my life I made less then forty thousand a year. It would have been six-hundred and fifty thousand. For gold it would have been the same. I calculated Apple stock and almost got sick. Most people probably use up that much in Medicare but that is another discussion.

  15. Re:Why stop with rides? on Over 30 Uber Cars Impounded In Cape Town · · Score: 1

    Are restaurant licenses limited? Do they cost a million dollars each? Would you be happy if your town decided that five restaurants was enough? Or if one of them had to be in the part of town that wasn't safe after dark? Would prices be cheaper if the wait time was always two hours? Nothing wrong with safety regulations. I don't think social engineering and guaranteed profits are right.

  16. Re:Mentally, though I feel worse. on Being Colder May Be Good For Your Health · · Score: 1

    You may be suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Short winter days mean less sunlight. Look up light therapy. I suffer from the opposite problem. On long summer days it gets dark so late I can't get enough sleep before it gets bright again. I tried blacking out the windows but them my wife gets depressed.

  17. Re:The real issue on Boston Elementary, Middle Schools To Get a Longer Day · · Score: 2

    The real world need for sponges is far greater than the need for people who have been taught how to learn but can't prove it. If you're teaching someone how to learn how can you know if you have succeeded? How does someone prove that they can learn without actually answering any questions? How can a student prove he can retain knowledge without retaining any?

  18. Re:The real issue on Boston Elementary, Middle Schools To Get a Longer Day · · Score: 2

    My first day at school was in 1958. With pop quizzes and weekly progress tests in all 5 classes I imagine we spent a cumulative 1 hour a day in testing. Without testing how do you know if a child is learning? I took a semester of college classes in 1997. Each class was four hours a week with the fourth hour spent in testing.

    My exposure to today's education system is a daughter who teaches college English and a son in his junior year of college. From what I see even though actual education spending has doubled or even tripled over the last fifty years the education system in more about teachers pay and students rights with little thought given to actually educating the average student.

    It seems like the US education system is following the US police and military systems in being totally out of control, self serving, and doing more harm than good while also being hideously expensive. The end of the world might not be televised but it will be online, I'll be watching.

  19. Re:Just let them test out! on Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices · · Score: 1

    It was the teachers first computer class and she wasn't prepared. After the first semester I dropped out and went back to my old job. But I felt validated in that I could do college work. I taught my 23 year old son, he builds his own gaming rigs and I'm tech support for my wife. Full time job.

  20. Re:Just let them test out! on Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices · · Score: 1

    In 1997 at the age of 45 I decided to take C++ programing classes at my local community collage. This neck beard kid comes in and kicks everyone's ass. It was a prerequisite class for his major. The teacher hated my programs. They worked but weren't fancy enough. His had animations and sounds when the exercise was only to add a column of numbers. I never did figure how to make a recursive function work.

    In all fairness I had been using and programing my own computer since 1981 so I lorded over the kids in the fundamentals of computing class.

  21. Re:They can go bite a donkey on French Publishers Prepare Lawsuit Against Adblock Plus · · Score: 1

    My wife would type www.google.com into the address bar. I showed her how to use the Firefox search bar. Now she types google.com into the search bar. (face palm).

  22. Re: Diversity is good, especially in SciFi on Overly Familiar Sci-Fi · · Score: 1

    Oh great, another plot line to add to my collection. At 18 children have to pass stringent tests to be allowed to live and enter society, at least those who were not eliminated at 5 in the first culling. Some who don't think they can pass the test escape into the wastelands and part of the entrance test is capturing escapees. Of course the whole thing is televised. No, it's nothing like The Hunger Games.

    Of course there are the parents of doomed 5 year olds who hide their children and then all the escaped undesirables who have grown up and are trying to fight the system, oh my, a trilogy. Excuse me, I have some best sellers to write. Movie rights are extra. I also claim copyright.

  23. Re: Are they really that scared? on Why Elon Musk's Batteries Frighten Electric Companies · · Score: 1

    45 years ago my parents moved to a farm 3 miles from the end of electrical and phone service. The power company ran power to the house we built and to the three irrigation wells that had been using gasoline powered pumps for no charge. On the other hand the phone company charged us $3000 to extend the phone line and we had to pay $50 a month for the next ten years. With inflation that was almost $80,000 to go 3 miles.

  24. Regulated and safe on A Backhanded Defense of Las Vegas' Taxi Regulation · · Score: 2

    Let's expand the medallion limited business model. Food stores, restaurants, clothing stores, plumbers, electricians, programers. Union hiring halls can do the same thing for common laborers. Consumers will be assured that everything they can afford to buy will be the best.

  25. Genetic defect? on Ability To Consume Alcohol May Have Shaped Human Evolution · · Score: 0

    Alcohol has no effect on me aside from feeling like I'm wearing three overcoats. I had no friends who drank and didn't take my first drink until I was 30. That and it tastes nasty so no, none for me thanks.