So, the more the PC gets treated like the mainframe, the more people look for a new PC. Go figure. Every time I hear an admin complain about how every last little thing should be locked down for the good of the network, I always get visions of frustrated '80 users setting up an Apple II in the corner so that they can get their work done because the mainframe isn't cutting it.
It basically comes down to the old adage: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." Much to the dismay of the new 'boss', they are being treated the same way that the old boss got treated, and if they do not manage the situation properly, they may end up seeing history repeat itself.
I guess the inability to design a user replaceable battery wouldn't be such a design failure on an unmanned mission to Mars.
More seriously, I don't completely buy the 'It wasn't designed for a 90 day mission' claim that keeps being thrown out there. It certainly was NOT just about managing expectations. The cost to build a device that will last 6 years in a harsh environment is going to be dramatically more expensive than one that is designed to last 90 days. If they really did design the rovers to last 6 years, then they did a phenomenal job in securing funding for the first 90 days.
== Rebates are always offered for volume in this industry. If a company like Dell is going to order 1M units total, then 1M from Intel should cost less per unit than buying 1/2M units from Intel (and 1/2M from AMD).==
The 1M in that quote was a variable. They just used 1M so that is sounded less like an equation. Changing the numbers to 2M and 1M does not change the original quote at all.
E.T. didn't have any effect on the mythical video game crash. There was no crash. Video games were doing just fine. The so called crash was because there was a platform shift. The 2600 had run it's course, and some big name companies didn't realize it. People were just shifting their game playing to the C-64, Apple, and other 'home computers'. Did too many E.T. games get produced? Sure. Were they produced for a platform that could only be described as 'last generation' at the time they were produced? Yep. Was it any worse that other 2600 titles that did just fine a few years earlier? No. It was a perfectly fine game that would have done just fine if the 2600 wasn't already a full generation behind it's competitors, and they didn't produce as many cartridges.
1983 was a big year for video games. How could you expect people to get excited about 2600 games when you had games like Ultima III being produced for the 64? Even people that didn't want to play RPGs could see that the 2600 was massively dated. I still remember having Moon Patrol for both the 2600 and the C64. The difference was enormous.
Your right. I just wish more people would call the "sound in public places is evil" crowd on it when they decide to take a nap in a crowded bus or plane without ear plugs, then complain because they can hear someone talking.
Install it on the outside of your house, and then get back to me. Thermostats designed to endure all-weather use are more expensive than the house variety, and they still fail far more often.
Sorry, but you are MASSIVELY overstating the cost and failure rate difference. These don't have to be ultra accurate sensors. I can make a thermostat from household items for a few dimes that will easily survive freezing weather. It isn't rocket science. No doubt someone more qualified than I could do a better job of it.
You'll have to pardon my disbelief that one day's electricity would offset the cost of building a sensor and heating unit into an LED bulb. Do you really think that it costs less than a dollar to put those components together?
Go ahead and disbelieve it if you want, but the point of the article is that LED lights don't have a resistance heater built in, and that has created a problem that wasn't there before because all of the old lights DID have a resistance heater built in. I certainly don't think that it costs more to build a resistance heater than it costs to build a resistance heater. So, yes. It would cost less than a dollar.
The problem is that liability with an incandescent bulb isn't the same as liability with your suggestion. If the sensor or heater fails, you won't know about it until the snow builds up on it. If a regular bulb goes out, it's very obvious that it needs to be replaced. And what exactly do you use for evidence of failure rates on heating units and sensors that don't even exist at this point? Considering that the LED bulb will need to be replaced if any of the three systems fails (sensor, heater or light), I propose that you don't have a clue how often they'll fail. Moreover, if either the sensor or heater fails to "on" it'll eat an astonishing amount of energy, and nobody will have any easy way of knowing that it's happening. This is why I suggested that upgrading LED bulbs to self-clear will require changing the housings. If the housing handles the sensing/clearing functions, the bulbs will last a long time, and the housing unit can handle monitoring and reporting failures, and can be built with modular parts so replacing a sensor, bulb or heater doesn't require replacing all three. The problem is that doing it this way will cost money, and currently it's more expensive than putting LED bulbs in regular signal housings and then paying a crew to check and clear the lights manually.
Every municipality every day does thousands of things that produce liability. Heck, the point of the article is that they increased their liability by changing bulbs. Yes, the heater may fail, and produce the exact same results as burned out light. Just as you wouldn't find out that a regular bulb was out until someone reported that they couldn't see it, you wouldn't know the heater was out until someone reported it. The only difference is that in the middle of the summer the regular bulb has MORE liability due to the fact that it could fail, while the heater failing in the middle of summer doesn't matter. So, your claim of increased liability is simply invalid as it would only reduce the liability from your suggestion.
If the heater fails to on, you would eat up EXACTLY the same amount of energy that traditional bulbs which ARE resistance heaters do. I have never once in my life seen a single light bulb fail to on. I can say that I have seen thousands if not more than a million regular bulbs, so it isn't like I wouldn't have noticed if that were a real problem. How many light bulbs have you seen that have failed to an on position? The thermostats? Maybe, but it is unlikely, and a worst case scenario is using the amount of electricity that a traditional bulb uses.
I will concede that having it in the housing would be a better long term solution, but that might just never happen, and in the mean time, municipalities either have to pay the higher price of tradition bulbs, or increase their liability which is something you expressed as bad.
I'm talking about the physical keyboard. Yes, the iPhone soft keyboard is better. I think that Android is trying to do too much for the ~500mhz processor. A little larger screen would be better to. I have a MyTouch, and I would prefer a little larger screen. No doubt they figured that since Apple fanboys kept using the very poor "But that is the only way that they could make it so small, and being small is WAY more important than maintainability" excuse for the iPhone, they figured they would make it smaller yet.
I suspect that as they start putting faster processors and larger screens on the Androids, the soft keyboard will get better. Unfortunately, I don't think iPhones non-existent real keyboard will ever be resolved. I just hope that Android phones will keep being produced with real keyboards.
If they had the email address for a long time, it would be WORSE. AOL may be a joke now, but back in the AOL coaster days, they were strictly for those with decision making problems. During the AOL heyday, there were plenty of good quality alternatives, and it didn't take much effort to find them. People that had AOL were largely people who either were to dumb to understand what was going on around them, or so influenced by the chatter around them that all of the disks they got in the mail made them believe that AOL was a good choice. I wouldn't immediately toss a resume with an AOL address, but I would certainly look at it the same way as a gap in their work history. Depending on the job, it might require further explanation.
Well, I am like you. I put movies in my queue before they even are released to the theater. I see a commercial for them (Yes, I still see commercials), and they go in my queue. When they come in, they come in.
One of my favorites was when I was talking to a woman at a party once, and she insisted that we should not be using technology for farming. I had to ask..."So, we shouldn't use plows? Or even a sturdy stick to dig up the ground?" Apparently she had this idea that there were huge hydroponic farms growing our food, and that that was bad. She also clearly didn't know whet the word "technology" means.
Well, if you count homes schooling as being a nutty idea, then of course every home schooler you've met is nutty. I call shenanigans if you claim to live in California and every home schooler was a nutball. Either you are just out lying, you are selectively noticing the strange folk who are homeschoolers, and not noticing the normal ones, or you have just met so few home schoolers that you comment is useless. I say this having met many hundreds of home schoolers. Their reasons for home schooling are increadibly diverse. Some for as simple of a reason as their kid got sick. (Those nut balls with their bizarre willingness to catch disease!) Many of them also shift either from home schooling to public school, or from public school to home schooling. That means that the kids that are crazy home schoolers are frequently the perfectly normal kids that are in public school.
Now, there is some trending, but it falls into the 'correlation is not causation category'. For example, if you are the type that you don't want your child exposed to the more popular beliefs held in public schools, you would certainly be more likely to home school. On the other hand if you are the very common type who believes that attendance is more important than being able to do math and read, then you are very unlikely to home school. Most people think the first group are nut balls, and the second group are perfectly normal.
Sure, but "Denying science" is defined by many as not taking a popularly believed theory at face value even when there is evidence to the contrary. And "misinformation" is defined by many as any evidence or questions that don't fully support the theories they have taken as fact.
Your post reminds me of the day a coworker came into my office with a look of deep thought on her face, asking why we need to use money. Not getting where she was going, I started explaining that money is just an accounting system. That didn't satisfy her, so I started to explain how it evolved from barter.
She stopped me, and saying that she understood that, followed by a but "Why can't we just go to work, and when we need something just go to the store and get it? Why do we need to keep track of it with money? That's what I think we should do."
At that point I got what she meant, and told her that theoretically we could. And said "What you are describing is communism." She then puffed up and angrily said "YOU are a communist." and stomped out.
You've made your point clear. You think genius is bad, and you too stupid to read with comprehensions. So much so as to take exact opposite meaning from simple sentences. You then get offended by these simple concepts that you cannot understand. I get it. You don't have to keep explaining your embracing of stupidity.
I don't have these gifts because I deserve them, they just are. The fact that other people do not possess them is similarly simply a fact. I used to scoff at the work that others had to put in to get to where I was. But the work deserves respect;
I can understand that. I usually say "The answer to whether it is genetic or environment is almost always, Yes."
1) No, I was just being a bit snippy. Sorry. The point is, there are plenty of places for kids to interact other than a public school.
2) I don't know what homeschooling websites you are reading. No doubt there are some that might say that, as homeschoolers are an incredibly diverse group, but the vast majority of them do not see 'lack of socialization' as existing much less it being a disadvantage. One of the big differences between many home schoolers and those who are anti-homeschooling is the often repeated comments about how kids need to learn to deal with people they don't like and whatnot. I'll say, there is a point that we all have to learn this, but they are suggesting that the best way to learn this is to send their 5 year old off to spend more time with just anybody than with their parents. They actually suggest that supervising a 5 year old is bad. It is becoming trendy to push the kids off to be unsupervised, or supervised by someone that may not give a crap about them at even younger ages.
Yes, it is like saying women can't drive. How many people do you discuss home schooling with? How many "normal" people do you discuss home schooling with? It is easy to point to someone that is eccentric and ask, "were you homeschooled?" When the answer is yes, you count it as proof, but when the answer is no, you just say they were strange. So, add together, the fact that you don't ask "normal" people if they were homeschooled with only counting the strange people who answer yes, and your comment makes complete sense.
Note: I only use the term 'anti-homeschool' for lack of a better term. Since huge portions of the public school parents don't really know about homeschooling, and many of them believe that they cannot afford to homeschool, homeschool vs. public school just doesn't seem right.
Somebody needs to change the oil in cars, and it is a perfectly respectable job.
syousef:
By the way there's nothing wrong with changing the oil in cars, you utter snob. That's what you're going to teach your kid? That if you don't do something world changing you're worthless. Fucking moron.
Some more choice pieces of the thread:
syousef:
Fucking moron.
syousef:
you utter snob
syousef:
I value education. I'm going to surround my children with all the knowledge I can. I did an Astronomy masters for fun (ie no intention of switching careers). Calling me anti-intellectual is just fucking hilarious.
syousef:
Do you really want your child to be a genius? Do you have any idea how hard life is for a prodigy? Why would any parent wish that upon their child?
You really have to trust yourself and your parenting skills.
That's funny. That's the exact same line that home schooling parents tell other parents when they think they are not qualified home school. You are fooling yourself if you think that pubic schools are some panacea of diversity. One of the primary focuses of public school is to homogenize the students while patting them on the back for being so open minded. Here is a hint. Just because the kid sitting in class with your kid has a little darker skin than your, it doesn't make the classroom 'diverse' in culture.
You have created a straw man. There are simply not that many home schoolers that are afraid of 'strange ideas' as you claim. There are even a bunch of them that travel the country in motor homes actually seeking out and experiencing those so called 'strange ideas' instead of sitting in their safe little homogenized community pointing to the kid next to them and saying 'see, he looks different than me and we are still friends. I'm enlightened!!!'.
As for the having raised your kids in California? Did you really? Because most kids in California spend less time under the care of their biological 'parents' than they do under the care of the state. So, while you can pat yourself on the back for having 'raised' your kids, if you are anything like the typical parent in the U.S., you are just taking credit for a job done by someone else.
Of course, the most ironic part of your whole post is that you are condemning a claiming to embrace different cultures and diversity in general, while at the same time condemning culture that doesn't match your own.
Oh, and if you think that all public school education in the US is governed by local school boards, you don't know enough about the public school system to really be intelligently involved in the discussion.
I agree with most of what you say. Although, part of the problem also is the automatic assumption that being smart means that you have deficiencies in other social aspects. Public schools are fine for the bulk of the kids in the middle of the bell curve, but it fails for those that fall outside of it.
I can say that, yes, we have consistently addressed how to deal with people that are not smart. Some of it has included explaining that while they might be able to understand how to play chess, they would be happy to play kick ball, or tag. Some of it involves explaining and helping him find peers in particular subjects whether they are the same age or not. Some of it is directly explaining that people won't want to play with you if you make them feel bad about themselves.
There are many more ways that you avoid creating a self absorbed ass, but some of the most important are making sure that he knows the difference between being right, and saying that he is right. This is a subtle but important concept that MOST people miss. Do I always want to be right? Of course I do. Do I want to be wrong? No. So, the only rational thing to do when faced with being wrong is to accept it, change your stance and start being right.
Showing him that it is ok to not have all of the answers. Since it is impossible to know everything, we all run across things we don't have the answers to. In our home, we make sure it is ok for any of use to say, "I don't know" which is usually followed up with, "Lets find out". We also make sure he knows what we do know the answers to, what we don't know the answers to, and what we THINK we know the answer to, but are not sure.
The biggest thing though, is not focusing on smart as the one dimensional aspect of life. For some reason, many people can accept that being good at sports is cool, but isn't the only thing that matters in life, then falter when asked to look the same way at intellect. Of course, there are plenty of people that can't see any value in a person beyond their athletic ability also, but in our anti-intellectual society, being a ass about athletic ability is not frowned upon the way that intellectual ability is.
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So, the more the PC gets treated like the mainframe, the more people look for a new PC. Go figure. Every time I hear an admin complain about how every last little thing should be locked down for the good of the network, I always get visions of frustrated '80 users setting up an Apple II in the corner so that they can get their work done because the mainframe isn't cutting it.
It basically comes down to the old adage: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." Much to the dismay of the new 'boss', they are being treated the same way that the old boss got treated, and if they do not manage the situation properly, they may end up seeing history repeat itself.
I guess the inability to design a user replaceable battery wouldn't be such a design failure on an unmanned mission to Mars.
More seriously, I don't completely buy the 'It wasn't designed for a 90 day mission' claim that keeps being thrown out there. It certainly was NOT just about managing expectations. The cost to build a device that will last 6 years in a harsh environment is going to be dramatically more expensive than one that is designed to last 90 days. If they really did design the rovers to last 6 years, then they did a phenomenal job in securing funding for the first 90 days.
Of course, if that is important, this study shows that you should not be allowed out of the house without a chaperon. It's for your safety after all.
Now I understand! This is the 'socialization' that the home schooled kids are missing!
Ok, I'll make that distinction for you:
== Rebates are always offered for volume in this industry. If a company like Dell is going to order 1M units total, then 1M from Intel should cost less per unit than buying 1/2M units from Intel (and 1/2M from AMD).==
The 1M in that quote was a variable. They just used 1M so that is sounded less like an equation. Changing the numbers to 2M and 1M does not change the original quote at all.
E.T. didn't have any effect on the mythical video game crash. There was no crash. Video games were doing just fine. The so called crash was because there was a platform shift. The 2600 had run it's course, and some big name companies didn't realize it. People were just shifting their game playing to the C-64, Apple, and other 'home computers'. Did too many E.T. games get produced? Sure. Were they produced for a platform that could only be described as 'last generation' at the time they were produced? Yep. Was it any worse that other 2600 titles that did just fine a few years earlier? No. It was a perfectly fine game that would have done just fine if the 2600 wasn't already a full generation behind it's competitors, and they didn't produce as many cartridges.
1983 was a big year for video games. How could you expect people to get excited about 2600 games when you had games like Ultima III being produced for the 64? Even people that didn't want to play RPGs could see that the 2600 was massively dated. I still remember having Moon Patrol for both the 2600 and the C64. The difference was enormous.
Your right. I just wish more people would call the "sound in public places is evil" crowd on it when they decide to take a nap in a crowded bus or plane without ear plugs, then complain because they can hear someone talking.
It doesn't help that doctors will tell people that they will still be over weight if they get to 0% body fat.
Install it on the outside of your house, and then get back to me. Thermostats designed to endure all-weather use are more expensive than the house variety, and they still fail far more often.
Sorry, but you are MASSIVELY overstating the cost and failure rate difference. These don't have to be ultra accurate sensors. I can make a thermostat from household items for a few dimes that will easily survive freezing weather. It isn't rocket science. No doubt someone more qualified than I could do a better job of it.
You'll have to pardon my disbelief that one day's electricity would offset the cost of building a sensor and heating unit into an LED bulb. Do you really think that it costs less than a dollar to put those components together?
Go ahead and disbelieve it if you want, but the point of the article is that LED lights don't have a resistance heater built in, and that has created a problem that wasn't there before because all of the old lights DID have a resistance heater built in. I certainly don't think that it costs more to build a resistance heater than it costs to build a resistance heater. So, yes. It would cost less than a dollar.
The problem is that liability with an incandescent bulb isn't the same as liability with your suggestion. If the sensor or heater fails, you won't know about it until the snow builds up on it. If a regular bulb goes out, it's very obvious that it needs to be replaced. And what exactly do you use for evidence of failure rates on heating units and sensors that don't even exist at this point? Considering that the LED bulb will need to be replaced if any of the three systems fails (sensor, heater or light), I propose that you don't have a clue how often they'll fail. Moreover, if either the sensor or heater fails to "on" it'll eat an astonishing amount of energy, and nobody will have any easy way of knowing that it's happening. This is why I suggested that upgrading LED bulbs to self-clear will require changing the housings. If the housing handles the sensing/clearing functions, the bulbs will last a long time, and the housing unit can handle monitoring and reporting failures, and can be built with modular parts so replacing a sensor, bulb or heater doesn't require replacing all three. The problem is that doing it this way will cost money, and currently it's more expensive than putting LED bulbs in regular signal housings and then paying a crew to check and clear the lights manually.
Every municipality every day does thousands of things that produce liability. Heck, the point of the article is that they increased their liability by changing bulbs. Yes, the heater may fail, and produce the exact same results as burned out light. Just as you wouldn't find out that a regular bulb was out until someone reported that they couldn't see it, you wouldn't know the heater was out until someone reported it. The only difference is that in the middle of the summer the regular bulb has MORE liability due to the fact that it could fail, while the heater failing in the middle of summer doesn't matter. So, your claim of increased liability is simply invalid as it would only reduce the liability from your suggestion.
If the heater fails to on, you would eat up EXACTLY the same amount of energy that traditional bulbs which ARE resistance heaters do. I have never once in my life seen a single light bulb fail to on. I can say that I have seen thousands if not more than a million regular bulbs, so it isn't like I wouldn't have noticed if that were a real problem. How many light bulbs have you seen that have failed to an on position? The thermostats? Maybe, but it is unlikely, and a worst case scenario is using the amount of electricity that a traditional bulb uses.
I will concede that having it in the housing would be a better long term solution, but that might just never happen, and in the mean time, municipalities either have to pay the higher price of tradition bulbs, or increase their liability which is something you expressed as bad.
I'm talking about the physical keyboard. Yes, the iPhone soft keyboard is better. I think that Android is trying to do too much for the ~500mhz processor. A little larger screen would be better to. I have a MyTouch, and I would prefer a little larger screen. No doubt they figured that since Apple fanboys kept using the very poor "But that is the only way that they could make it so small, and being small is WAY more important than maintainability" excuse for the iPhone, they figured they would make it smaller yet.
I suspect that as they start putting faster processors and larger screens on the Androids, the soft keyboard will get better. Unfortunately, I don't think iPhones non-existent real keyboard will ever be resolved. I just hope that Android phones will keep being produced with real keyboards.
If they had the email address for a long time, it would be WORSE. AOL may be a joke now, but back in the AOL coaster days, they were strictly for those with decision making problems. During the AOL heyday, there were plenty of good quality alternatives, and it didn't take much effort to find them. People that had AOL were largely people who either were to dumb to understand what was going on around them, or so influenced by the chatter around them that all of the disks they got in the mail made them believe that AOL was a good choice. I wouldn't immediately toss a resume with an AOL address, but I would certainly look at it the same way as a gap in their work history. Depending on the job, it might require further explanation.
The Android keyboard was marginal. The HTC keyboard was better.
And yet, they are both infinitly better than the iPhone's keyboard.
Sorry, I am feeling snarky this morning...
Well, I am like you. I put movies in my queue before they even are released to the theater. I see a commercial for them (Yes, I still see commercials), and they go in my queue. When they come in, they come in.
One of my favorites was when I was talking to a woman at a party once, and she insisted that we should not be using technology for farming. I had to ask..."So, we shouldn't use plows? Or even a sturdy stick to dig up the ground?" Apparently she had this idea that there were huge hydroponic farms growing our food, and that that was bad. She also clearly didn't know whet the word "technology" means.
Well, if you count homes schooling as being a nutty idea, then of course every home schooler you've met is nutty. I call shenanigans if you claim to live in California and every home schooler was a nutball. Either you are just out lying, you are selectively noticing the strange folk who are homeschoolers, and not noticing the normal ones, or you have just met so few home schoolers that you comment is useless. I say this having met many hundreds of home schoolers. Their reasons for home schooling are increadibly diverse. Some for as simple of a reason as their kid got sick. (Those nut balls with their bizarre willingness to catch disease!) Many of them also shift either from home schooling to public school, or from public school to home schooling. That means that the kids that are crazy home schoolers are frequently the perfectly normal kids that are in public school.
Now, there is some trending, but it falls into the 'correlation is not causation category'. For example, if you are the type that you don't want your child exposed to the more popular beliefs held in public schools, you would certainly be more likely to home school. On the other hand if you are the very common type who believes that attendance is more important than being able to do math and read, then you are very unlikely to home school. Most people think the first group are nut balls, and the second group are perfectly normal.
At that point I'm not sure she would have understood what that meant.
Sure, but "Denying science" is defined by many as not taking a popularly believed theory at face value even when there is evidence to the contrary. And "misinformation" is defined by many as any evidence or questions that don't fully support the theories they have taken as fact.
Continuing off topic...
Your post reminds me of the day a coworker came into my office with a look of deep thought on her face, asking why we need to use money. Not getting where she was going, I started explaining that money is just an accounting system. That didn't satisfy her, so I started to explain how it evolved from barter.
She stopped me, and saying that she understood that, followed by a but "Why can't we just go to work, and when we need something just go to the store and get it? Why do we need to keep track of it with money? That's what I think we should do."
At that point I got what she meant, and told her that theoretically we could. And said "What you are describing is communism." She then puffed up and angrily said "YOU are a communist." and stomped out.
Ahhh... Irony... Funny isn't it?
You've made your point clear. You think genius is bad, and you too stupid to read with comprehensions. So much so as to take exact opposite meaning from simple sentences. You then get offended by these simple concepts that you cannot understand. I get it. You don't have to keep explaining your embracing of stupidity.
I don't have these gifts because I deserve them, they just are. The fact that other people do not possess them is similarly simply a fact. I used to scoff at the work that others had to put in to get to where I was. But the work deserves respect;
I can understand that. I usually say "The answer to whether it is genetic or environment is almost always, Yes."
1) No, I was just being a bit snippy. Sorry. The point is, there are plenty of places for kids to interact other than a public school.
2) I don't know what homeschooling websites you are reading. No doubt there are some that might say that, as homeschoolers are an incredibly diverse group, but the vast majority of them do not see 'lack of socialization' as existing much less it being a disadvantage. One of the big differences between many home schoolers and those who are anti-homeschooling is the often repeated comments about how kids need to learn to deal with people they don't like and whatnot. I'll say, there is a point that we all have to learn this, but they are suggesting that the best way to learn this is to send their 5 year old off to spend more time with just anybody than with their parents. They actually suggest that supervising a 5 year old is bad. It is becoming trendy to push the kids off to be unsupervised, or supervised by someone that may not give a crap about them at even younger ages.
Yes, it is like saying women can't drive. How many people do you discuss home schooling with? How many "normal" people do you discuss home schooling with? It is easy to point to someone that is eccentric and ask, "were you homeschooled?" When the answer is yes, you count it as proof, but when the answer is no, you just say they were strange. So, add together, the fact that you don't ask "normal" people if they were homeschooled with only counting the strange people who answer yes, and your comment makes complete sense.
Note: I only use the term 'anti-homeschool' for lack of a better term. Since huge portions of the public school parents don't really know about homeschooling, and many of them believe that they cannot afford to homeschool, homeschool vs. public school just doesn't seem right.
Somebody needs to change the oil in cars, and it is a perfectly respectable job.
syousef:
By the way there's nothing wrong with changing the oil in cars, you utter snob. That's what you're going to teach your kid? That if you don't do something world changing you're worthless. Fucking moron.
Some more choice pieces of the thread:
syousef:
Fucking moron.
syousef:
you utter snob
syousef:
I value education. I'm going to surround my children with all the knowledge I can. I did an Astronomy masters for fun (ie no intention of switching careers). Calling me anti-intellectual is just fucking hilarious.
syousef:
Do you really want your child to be a genius? Do you have any idea how hard life is for a prodigy? Why would any parent wish that upon their child?
You make your position absolutly clear.
You really have to trust yourself and your parenting skills.
That's funny. That's the exact same line that home schooling parents tell other parents when they think they are not qualified home school. You are fooling yourself if you think that pubic schools are some panacea of diversity. One of the primary focuses of public school is to homogenize the students while patting them on the back for being so open minded. Here is a hint. Just because the kid sitting in class with your kid has a little darker skin than your, it doesn't make the classroom 'diverse' in culture.
You have created a straw man. There are simply not that many home schoolers that are afraid of 'strange ideas' as you claim. There are even a bunch of them that travel the country in motor homes actually seeking out and experiencing those so called 'strange ideas' instead of sitting in their safe little homogenized community pointing to the kid next to them and saying 'see, he looks different than me and we are still friends. I'm enlightened!!!'.
As for the having raised your kids in California? Did you really? Because most kids in California spend less time under the care of their biological 'parents' than they do under the care of the state. So, while you can pat yourself on the back for having 'raised' your kids, if you are anything like the typical parent in the U.S., you are just taking credit for a job done by someone else.
Of course, the most ironic part of your whole post is that you are condemning a claiming to embrace different cultures and diversity in general, while at the same time condemning culture that doesn't match your own.
Oh, and if you think that all public school education in the US is governed by local school boards, you don't know enough about the public school system to really be intelligently involved in the discussion.
I agree with most of what you say. Although, part of the problem also is the automatic assumption that being smart means that you have deficiencies in other social aspects. Public schools are fine for the bulk of the kids in the middle of the bell curve, but it fails for those that fall outside of it.
I can say that, yes, we have consistently addressed how to deal with people that are not smart. Some of it has included explaining that while they might be able to understand how to play chess, they would be happy to play kick ball, or tag. Some of it involves explaining and helping him find peers in particular subjects whether they are the same age or not. Some of it is directly explaining that people won't want to play with you if you make them feel bad about themselves.
There are many more ways that you avoid creating a self absorbed ass, but some of the most important are making sure that he knows the difference between being right, and saying that he is right. This is a subtle but important concept that MOST people miss. Do I always want to be right? Of course I do. Do I want to be wrong? No. So, the only rational thing to do when faced with being wrong is to accept it, change your stance and start being right.
Showing him that it is ok to not have all of the answers. Since it is impossible to know everything, we all run across things we don't have the answers to. In our home, we make sure it is ok for any of use to say, "I don't know" which is usually followed up with, "Lets find out". We also make sure he knows what we do know the answers to, what we don't know the answers to, and what we THINK we know the answer to, but are not sure.
The biggest thing though, is not focusing on smart as the one dimensional aspect of life. For some reason, many people can accept that being good at sports is cool, but isn't the only thing that matters in life, then falter when asked to look the same way at intellect. Of course, there are plenty of people that can't see any value in a person beyond their athletic ability also, but in our anti-intellectual society, being a ass about athletic ability is not frowned upon the way that intellectual ability is.