And that's how you know that the person pointing out scientific data is correct. They tell you to 'Shut the Fuck up" and call you an "ignorant asshole". You should always believe people who make their points that way.
It took me a total of 6 mouse clicks, typing the word "flash", and entering my password to get flash installed in Linux. I know you thought you were being funny, but that joke is just old. It's about as funny as cracking jokes about your walk to your outhouse.
For the same reason that those of us that don't have accidents would pay for your treatment. There is the argument that it is more efficient to have insurance only for catastrophe, and you can get that kind of insurance today. Most people don't. But if the argument is that it isn't right to take from the healthy to pay for the unhealthy, then we shouldn't have insurance at all. We should all just pay for our own medical care.
I would say that the birth control pill could be considered the greatest "miracle drug" ever made. Really, a pill that a woman takes each morning, and you can have sex all day every day, and not have to worry about a pregnancy?!?!?! Wow!
There are also things like vaccines and aspirin. The thing about "miracle drugs" is that if they work, and don't cause serious harm, they start to be considered commonplace and are no longer considered a miracle.
I'm not saying that you are completely wrong, as there are definitely more bad "miracle drugs" announced than good "miracle drugs", but I think saying that every "miracle drug" is bad is doing what we all tend to do, which is to forget just how amazing the ho-hum things around us really are.
Hey, we could do the same thing with breeding. Women could just stop taking THE pill and stop having sex. Telling people to do the stuff the don't like, and stop doing the stuff they do, is definitely the best route.
Not to mention, if we cut off buying oil from the middle east tomorrow, you would would be faced with total chaos as an entire region of the world saw a their only resource suddenly becoming worthless. You know all of those 'save the world' movies based around some super villain figuring out how to destroy the worlds economy by manufacturing gold or some such nonsense? Well, that is exactly how the middle east would see us. We would be taking a barrel of oil that has a value of over a hundred dollars, and reduce it's value to an amount that might not even cover the cost of shipping it. It would be like arming a small lumber town with military ordinance, and then shutting down the mill. People would get hurt.
I'm all for renewable, locally generated power, but thought has to be put into what will happen to the middle east if we cut off the flow of money overnight. Heck, we have to consider whether the results will be worse or not if we cut off the flow slowly.
That would be the US. The last time I drove through LA, about 3 years ago, I got pulled over for a bogus speeding ticket. The cops had me pull under the underpass, and then proceeded try and to incite me. Things like continuously pointing their hi power flashlight in the face of my sleeping infants face, and making sarcastic remarks every time I answered one of his questions. He kept insisting that I was 'acting nervous'. I wasn't nervous when he pulled me over, but after finding out why he pulled me over, realizing where he pulled me over, and his behaviour, I certainly was nervous by the time he left. At the end of the whole thing, he bragged about having the whole thing on tape. By the time it was all over, I definitely felt that the cop was looking for an excuse to drag me out of my car and do bad things to me.
Having just had a crime committed against me, I drove the the nearest police station I knew about, which was the weigh station on the grape vine. I reported the crime, and asked where I could get a copy of the tapes that the police made during stops. I was informed by the two officers on duty that it was common for officers to have their own equipment, that there were no official tape, and that there was basically no way for me to get a copy. Sure for anyone else that reads this, it is just some story told by someone they don't know, but for myself, I can reasonably call you a lier.
People love to paint law enforcement as some kind of maniacal, civil-rights violating machine
No, they paint them as humans that feel the law doesn't apply to them, and thus if you happen to be the random person that they decide to violate, you are screwed.
Outside the fantasy land of anti-establishment hippies, the response would be something like, "Oh why don't you save your batteries, there are already multiple recording devices active that, unlike yours, include the violation you are being stopped for."
And anything that might be incriminating will be "lost" when requested.
One (not the only) of the big problems with police in general is that they have developed a culture where they think that bad lying is as good as good lying. So when they commit crimes, they think that when they tell a bad lie with a huge smerk on their face, everyone is going to believe them. Of course, you could argue that the problem is with judges, and their willingness to believe bad lies.
If cops want to get more respect, they are need to start legitimately policing their own. In an ideal world, if someone starts swinging a sword around as a threat to the cop, it should work like the scene from Indian Jones. The problem is that on a day to day basis, cops are seen committing small crimes, and covering up for the small crimes of other cops, that they have lost peoples trust. Because in an ideal world, if a cop sees another cop driving 60 miles an hour down a residential road to get to his break at the coffee shop, he would write his fellow officer a speeding ticket. If police are willing to cover up the small stuff, there is no reason to believe that they are not willing to cover up the big stuff.
Another personal example, was a dozen years ago, my wife started waiting tables at a diner in town. A couple of cops came in and ordered coffee. No, problem, she served them, and everything was fine. After a little while, she gave the cops their check, and one of them told her that they shouldn't get a check. She told them that she doesn't know anything about that, but they order coffee, so, her you go. You see, she was young. She know that cops receiving 'gifts' for doing their job was illegal, yet had not yet figured out that cops committing crimes was pretty standard. The cop started yelling at her about it. She went and got the manager, because, that's what you do if someone starts actually yelling. The manager tore up the check, and after the cops left, told her that she wasn't supposed to charge cops. Over time, sh
I just got a 3G iPhone from work, and I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something, or if Apple just makes brain dead products. I don't see any way to sync my phone without plugging it into the computer.
This is what I have been saying since I heard the original outrageous price of $100 for the OLPC. I even went to the trouble of looking up what I could build a portable, hand crank computer for using one off retail pricing, and I came up with something like $70. I wasn't even going bottom of the barrel. I started with a C-64 in joystick. added a black and white battery operated camping TV, a keyboard, and a hand crank generator for recharging the batteries. If I could put together a rugged portable battery/hand crank powered portable computer for $70 bucks, there is no excuse for the OLPC's outrageous price, given their claimed goal. Or should I say their vague hand waiving of having a goal.
8-bit computers were plenty powerful enough to run businesses off of here in the US for a very long time. I'm not buying that third world countries have greater computing needs that 80's US businesses.
My education is fine. If you had read before, their pay is garnished so that they are paid year round, with a forced 3-month 'sabbatical'. They may not be around kids during the summer or billing hours, but they certainly aren't unemployed. They aren't pulling unemployment during the summer, and it's not like they can find employment elsewhere since all the schools are closed.
Dude, if you cannot figure out that being paid $17 and hour means that you are being paid $17 per hour WORKED, you are an idiot. The math is not debatable.
You just proved my point. If you bothered to look at that page you'd see those were bulk prices. Most of those cost a buck or two each. These aren't cancer drugs - someone is making money but not a killing. If you can't scrounge up $20 to get your kid vaccinated then the state will take care of it. As I said, once again:
Apparently, you are too stupid to understand that $20 is not pennies. It isn't by any stretch of the imagination. It costs more than $20 to get immunized, but even if it was $20 exactly, calling it pennies is at best a gross exaggeration. As for no one making a killing... The vaccine industry is an $11 BILLION a year industry that is expected to $20 BILLION a year by 2012.
... because I don't want your precious little snowflake giving my kid whooping cough doesn't make it a conspiracy.
Again, you say things that make you look stupid. Trying to imply that immunized kids are going to give your kid whooping cough is pretty dumb. That, and you keep saying 'conspiracy'. It is clear that you don't know what the word means.
Oh, and given how dumb you are and/or how much you tend to lie, I looked up the data on your quote:
No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work.
And according to Oregon School Board Association you are just plain wrong. They show that salaries in Oregon go up to $60,452. That's a full 30% more than the fake number you pulled out of your ass. They also show that 27% of Oregon teachers are making more than $50k a year. The average across the state is $50,937.92. Seriously. $50k a year is doing just fine.
Not $17 to $31 per hour ($34k-$62k per year), you need to do some math because those are WAY over what I said before.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that teachers make $100k or more? And we are talking about teachers here right, not professors at colleges? And part time work? Teachers work 8 hours a day, 180 days a year (in WA). A normal year is 250 but they aren't getting any pay for the other 70 days, contrary to popular belief. They get paid during that time but only because their paychecks were garnished during the year to pay them during the summer.
No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work. They start out just above the poverty line at 24k per year, and that's after 4 years of college.
180 days * 8 hours = 1440 hours. $24,000 / 1440 hours = $16.66666.... dollars per hour.
180 days * 8 hours = 1440 hours. $45,000 / 1440 hours = $31.25.... dollars per hour.
Perhaps if you had a better education you would be able to handle simple math problems.
Personally I agree with vaccines including the controversial HPV vaccine, but that doesn't mean that I am unaware that people are making money off of it.
Please, because I don't want your precious little snowflake giving my kid whooping cough doesn't make it a conspiracy.
The HPV one should not be required since that is not communicable in groups, that does seem like corruption.
"Kids that are *solely* taught one-on-one can easily not gain multiple perspectives on content. They easily get the idea that there is only one "right" way to solve particular problems, when there is usually more than one way to do it."
Of course, home schooling is rarely isolated to one on one. Home schoolers still get together. They also tend to do things like take field trips to learn. When my son ran across the word cavalry for the first time, I corrected his pronunciation on it, and explained what it was. We then made a point to go to the next Civil War reenactment that happened in the area. Thus he got to actually SEE cavalry, and see what they did. He also got to see cannons, period tents, period cooking equipment, and clothes. He got to learn about the Civil War, and talk to a dozen different people about the subject. That is just one example of how home schooling is done.
"Kids need the socialisation of peers. In public schools this also means that our kids have opportunities to mix with the kids we don't want them to. That's where parenting comes in."
And there we go. The old myth that home schooled kids are hermits. It is simply a myth. Home schooled kids have plenty of activities available to them. As well as the "socialisation" argument. When I first started looking into home schooling, I talked to a woman that owned a home schooling supply store. She made the comment to me that public schools were a not about education, but was a social program. A red flag went up in my head, and I filed the woman away as a kook. There is one in every crowd after all. What I have found is that public school advocates constantly use that as an argument for public schools. Are you seriously saying that you don't want to have some control over the people that your 7 year old is associating with? Really? That doesn't even get into the fact that putting people in a room full of other people exactly the same age is a terrible way to 'socialize' them for the rest of their lives. Seriously. When was the last time you were in a room full of people the exact same age as you?"
"I disagree with most of your other points, but support your right to say/believe them."
I am glad you support my right to say and believe my points, because I am fully aware that your views are in the majority by a wide margin. I also am always willing to debate the issue, as I am also fully aware that you can keep learning new things for your entire life, and that thing you believe to be true can be wrong. Heck, just recently, I found out right here on slashdot that the reason old windows are warped is not because they flowed down. After reading the various comments, I looked into some of the evidence presented, and low and behold, the "flowing" explanation that I had always been told, and believed did not hold up. In fact, the 1945 house I just moved into has a large window where the "flow" would have had to be at a 90 degree angle. There was evidence right here in my own home.
"Have you ever considered that home-schooling puts up better numbers because the only people who do it are rich, well-educated families who can afford to have someone sat at home all day earning nothing educating the kids?"
Sure, then I met families that home school and found that they are not all wealthy. Most are middle class, and some are down right poor. Yes, many of them are well educated, but I have met several who are not. This did not prevent them from offering their kids a superior education. Why? Because most of what you get in the K-12 curriculum is not material that is considered to define someone as 'well educated'. Unless you are using a different definition that virtually every person I have ever met, 'well educated' means college educated, and college is outside of the public school discussion. So, even those who are not 'well educated' are generally at least as educated as what you get in a public school.
"Are you seriously trying to tell me that teachers make $100k or more? And we are talking about teachers here right, not professors at colleges? And part time work? Teachers work 8 hours a day, 180 days a year (in WA). A normal year is 250 but they aren't getting any pay for the other 70 days, contrary to popular belief. They get paid during that time but only because their paychecks were garnished during the year to pay them during the summer."
No, I am not saying that teachers make $100k or more. You said that YOU do. Based on the fact that you claim you would have to take a 70% pay cut to be a teacher. YOU would have to be making huge amounts of money, and thus are being totally unrealistic as to what it costs to live, as many of the wealthy do. Not everybody makes as much as you, and not everybody ever will. Your level of income is not required to live a happy healthy life.
"Based on the information here you have about 6.5 million students costing $60 billion. That's about $9200 per student. Figuring a student-teacher ratio of 30:1 that's about $276k per teacher. Ah, but we need buses, administration, bookkeeping, books, and facilities. That all costs money and eats away at the $276k. If spending less was possible then they'd be doing it. $9200 per student per year is a bargain."
It is not a bargain, and you just listed more people that that make money from the public school industry. Heavy overhead in administration is one of the areas that eat up a bunch of money. And, no, if spending less was possible, they wound not be doing it. Who goes out and asks for less money for their department in any industry?
"No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work. They start out just above the poverty line at 24k per year, and that's after 4 years of college."
So in Oregon, they start out slightly below the average wage of $763 at $667 a week, and top out well above average at $1250 per week OF WORK. As I said. They may not be getting rich doing it, but they are doing just fine. You seem to think that $17 to $31/hour is an unlivable wage. I say that there are a lot of people that would LOVE to make that much money because they are supporting their families on far less.
"Welfare is a different issue, but pharmaceuticals and pediatricians? Oh I get it, you're a conspiracy nutcase."
So, listing people who make money from the schools system makes someone a conspiracy nutcase? The fact is that schools state that they require certain medical procedures to attend public school. (At least here in California, it is not really required, but that doesn't stop them from telling parents that it is.) Whether you agree with vaccines or not, pediatricians and pharmaceuticals, make money from the school systems requirements. Personally I agree with vaccines including the controversial HPV vaccine, but that doesn't mean that I am unaware that people are making money off of it. (I don't approve of the chicken pox vaccine for prepubescent kids, but that is another debate entirely) So, no, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, but your accusation is ironic.
"Then she's telling you as much bullshit as you are spouting off here."
For Oregon, your wage amount sounds about what she was saying, so no. Neither she nor I am spouting off bs here.
"No, he was saying they tend to be better educated. I can see that your home schooling background has provided you with excellent literacy and comprehension skills. (ducks for cover)"
Ok, now that I've put the chair back down...;) I think you are wrong. Go back and read the post. The whole point of his post was to try and say that home schoolers were NOT getting a better education, but were coming from a better class of family.
The "why not consider getting into teaching?" is kind of a cop out. As a parent, my first responsibility is to my child. Everyone agrees that smaller classrooms give a better education. Well, my classroom has 1 student. If I were to go in to teaching, I would first have to sabotage my child by putting him in classrooms that are lucky if they have 10 times that ratio. Then, I would have to trade a teacher that is willing do literally die for my child, with a hodge podge of teachers that range from only very interested to actively hostile. Then I would have to work in an environment where I was consistently sabotaged by those who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.
So, should I sabotage my child's education in a vain attempt to fight a system that is massively funded, and has political and public support? For me, the answer is simple.
"it's badly paid and unappreciated."
This is just untrue. On an hourly basis, teachers make decent money. My wife worked for years in lending, and has seen enough W-2s to know that the "badly paid" teacher is a myth. No, your not going to become rich as a teacher, but you are paid a fair wage. As for unappreciated, that is just a straight out lie. I can't count the number of times I have heard teachers described as "The most important job in the world". I can count the number of times I've heard that description applied to sanitation workers. 0. How about truck drivers? Or the person who stocks shelves at the supermarket? None of these jobs are given as much appreciation as teachers. In fact, most people I have met, assume first that teachers are an important asset doing a fabulous job, and only change their mind if overwhelming evidence to the contrary is given to them. How many careers offer that kind of appreciation? Complaining about lack of appreciation seems a bit spoiled. It is great that you find your career rewarding. I hope you continue to do so, but perhaps you should look at how little appreciation other careers get before starting a pity party over the fact that people don't tell you how great you are every day.
"If you have home-schooled your kids then you obviously don't need the money"
This is also a cop out. Home schoolers are not some elite class of the ultra rich. They range for wealthy to poor. What they do have in common is that most of them are willing to lower their financial quality of life to give their kids a better education.
"Wait, who's making money? The teachers? Barely. The administrators? Nope. Are the schools filled with top-end equipment and supplies and built to be functional and beautiful? Nope.
The fact is that John Q. Public DOES NOT FUND SCHOOLS. People complain about how the system sucks but won't support bonds to build more schools or replace/remodel existing schools that are so run down that they are a detriment to education. They think teachers get paid way too much and get paid for a 3 month vacation. They think that they should be able to send there kid off to school and they should come home smart without having to do anything."
You don't know what your talking about K-12 education is the single largest spending line item in the state of California. (I suspect that it is the same in other states) Higher Education is the second largest spending line item. Together they use up over 50% of the entire state's general fund and over 40% of the states total budget. We are talking about 60 BILLION dollars here. That isn't counting all of the money collected through booster clubs and fund raisers. How can you say that no one is making money when there is 60 BILLION spent?
Teachers do just fine pay wise. Maybe if YOU could get out our YOUR ivory tower, you might find that not everyone is making $100k to $200k for part time work. Yes, if you are counting yearly salaries, then teachers get a 3 month vacation. If you count hourly pay, they do even better. My wife worked in a lending institution. She has seen literally thousands of W-2s from teachers. They do just fine.
So, who is making money? Everybody involved with schools. (except the kids) Parents who get to shift the cost of day care to those without kids in school. Teachers who make a decent living working part time. Teachers Unions. School administrators, who have built a huge bureaucracy with far more people getting paid than necessary. Pharmaceuticals that make sure that their products get sold. Pediatricians that make sure their services are used. Restaurants and food service companies that the supply food for the ubiquitous school welfare programs. And, politicians all the way up the chain who keep their positions by pushing doing feel good, do nothing initiatives, or smearing their opponents if they try to cut the huge costs. Yes, there is plenty of money moving around the public school industry. Where do YOU think the 60 BILLION goes?
So, your saying that it isn't that home schooled kids do better because they are getting better educations, but they are doing better because on average, the parents of kids who are home schooled are better than the parents who send their kids to public school? I'm not going to argue whether the home schooling parents are really better or not, but I can just imagine the hatred that would be spewed if that had come from a home schooling parent.
"Yes, some kids do well at home school - they are the exception, not the rule"
Some? You mean MOST. Home schooled kid regularly out pace public schooled kids. It may be unpleasant for the majority of people to accept that they are not giving their kids the best education possible, but that doesn't change the reality of it.
"They also need to be informed what is going on at school, and they need to care about that. They have to avoid at all costs giving the impression that school is something to be endured until they can leave - kids that learn *that* lesson from home rarely discover their potential."
No parent that is really informed about what is going on at school is going to be able to NOT teach their kids that they will have to endure at least large parts of it. A kid that goes through public school is under the care of somewhere around 45 different teachers by the time they are done. Contrary to what some people believe, getting a job in education does not magically make you a good person. Even being unrealistically generous and the kid being really lucky, a kid is going to have half a dozen to a dozen crappy people who have control of them for large chunks of time.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it. Asking how to fix the current system is the same question as asking how we can fix corporate America to start putting the customers before profit. There certainly are ways, but you can forget about it happening. Not enough people really care to make it happen. We have become a orphanage state. Most kids start getting shuttle off to state or semi-private institution between 1 and 3 years old. By the time they are five or six, most of them spend more waking hours under the care of the state than they do their parents. It is not uncommon for half of all meals a kid eats to be supplied by the state. The numbers look even worse if you don't add together the number of hours mom and dad care for their child. Then when the kid is under the parents care, they are supposed to spend a significant portion of that time, doing work that they were instructed to do by the state.
Quite simply, what we call parents, have been relegated to the role that used to be supplied by the absentee divorced father. The state is most kids primary care giver. So, the question becomes, how do you fix a system where 98% of youth are raised in an orphanage?
Your right, they might be genetically equal at math. They might not, or they might be better. Who knows. Until we have a culture that doesn't make it perfectly clear from birth that a girl can get all the things she wants easier by screwing than by being smart, we will not see women as a group compete on a level playing field. This isn't a jab against women. If boys were brought up being told that they could screw their way to a level or two from the top, they wouldn't try so hard either.
Seriously, if faced with the choice of work real hard to learn a lot of stuff so that you can become wealthy, or have lots of sex so that you can become wealthy, how many men here would choose the work real hard option? Every day, women are lured by the dark side. Every day they must make the choice, either consciously or subconsciously, as whether they keep working hard to be smart and successful, or to just start dating to achieve their goals. It is any surprise that a very large quantity of them choose sex over work?
If women want to become equal in business and the sciences, all they have to do is stop dating, sleeping with, and marrying men who are more successful than them. Start picking their mates based off of looks, and whether or not they put out. This will both reduce the pool of smart men that they have to compete with, as well as change the perception of little girls that they can expect sex to pay their way through life.
I would have to completely disagree. Right after my son's 2nd birthday, I was in one of these kinds of discussions, and decided to do a little experiment. So, I formatted my son's hard drive, gave him an Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) disk, and told him to go install his computer. He did it with no problems. Now if a two year old who cannot read yet can install the OS, I think that it is unfair to say that it is not properly ready for the masses.
As an aside, I followed up with having him try to install WindowsXP. He was unsuccessful. I attribute this to the fact that WindowsXP required reading to get through the install.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's how you know that the person pointing out scientific data is correct. They tell you to 'Shut the Fuck up" and call you an "ignorant asshole". You should always believe people who make their points that way.
It took me a total of 6 mouse clicks, typing the word "flash", and entering my password to get flash installed in Linux. I know you thought you were being funny, but that joke is just old. It's about as funny as cracking jokes about your walk to your outhouse.
For the same reason that those of us that don't have accidents would pay for your treatment. There is the argument that it is more efficient to have insurance only for catastrophe, and you can get that kind of insurance today. Most people don't. But if the argument is that it isn't right to take from the healthy to pay for the unhealthy, then we shouldn't have insurance at all. We should all just pay for our own medical care.
Oh, and... HAIL SATAN'S ADVOCATE!!!
I believe you are thinking of My Favorite Martian.
I would say that the birth control pill could be considered the greatest "miracle drug" ever made. Really, a pill that a woman takes each morning, and you can have sex all day every day, and not have to worry about a pregnancy?!?!?! Wow!
There are also things like vaccines and aspirin. The thing about "miracle drugs" is that if they work, and don't cause serious harm, they start to be considered commonplace and are no longer considered a miracle.
I'm not saying that you are completely wrong, as there are definitely more bad "miracle drugs" announced than good "miracle drugs", but I think saying that every "miracle drug" is bad is doing what we all tend to do, which is to forget just how amazing the ho-hum things around us really are.
Hey, we could do the same thing with breeding. Women could just stop taking THE pill and stop having sex. Telling people to do the stuff the don't like, and stop doing the stuff they do, is definitely the best route.
it was people paying too much for properties they bought...
Speculation that property prices would continue rising
Also known as People choosing to try and live beyond their means.
Not to mention, if we cut off buying oil from the middle east tomorrow, you would would be faced with total chaos as an entire region of the world saw a their only resource suddenly becoming worthless. You know all of those 'save the world' movies based around some super villain figuring out how to destroy the worlds economy by manufacturing gold or some such nonsense? Well, that is exactly how the middle east would see us. We would be taking a barrel of oil that has a value of over a hundred dollars, and reduce it's value to an amount that might not even cover the cost of shipping it. It would be like arming a small lumber town with military ordinance, and then shutting down the mill. People would get hurt.
I'm all for renewable, locally generated power, but thought has to be put into what will happen to the middle east if we cut off the flow of money overnight. Heck, we have to consider whether the results will be worse or not if we cut off the flow slowly.
Having just had a crime committed against me, I drove the the nearest police station I knew about, which was the weigh station on the grape vine. I reported the crime, and asked where I could get a copy of the tapes that the police made during stops. I was informed by the two officers on duty that it was common for officers to have their own equipment, that there were no official tape, and that there was basically no way for me to get a copy. Sure for anyone else that reads this, it is just some story told by someone they don't know, but for myself, I can reasonably call you a lier.
People love to paint law enforcement as some kind of maniacal, civil-rights violating machine
No, they paint them as humans that feel the law doesn't apply to them, and thus if you happen to be the random person that they decide to violate, you are screwed.
Outside the fantasy land of anti-establishment hippies, the response would be something like, "Oh why don't you save your batteries, there are already multiple recording devices active that, unlike yours, include the violation you are being stopped for."
And anything that might be incriminating will be "lost" when requested.
One (not the only) of the big problems with police in general is that they have developed a culture where they think that bad lying is as good as good lying. So when they commit crimes, they think that when they tell a bad lie with a huge smerk on their face, everyone is going to believe them. Of course, you could argue that the problem is with judges, and their willingness to believe bad lies.
If cops want to get more respect, they are need to start legitimately policing their own. In an ideal world, if someone starts swinging a sword around as a threat to the cop, it should work like the scene from Indian Jones. The problem is that on a day to day basis, cops are seen committing small crimes, and covering up for the small crimes of other cops, that they have lost peoples trust. Because in an ideal world, if a cop sees another cop driving 60 miles an hour down a residential road to get to his break at the coffee shop, he would write his fellow officer a speeding ticket. If police are willing to cover up the small stuff, there is no reason to believe that they are not willing to cover up the big stuff.
Another personal example, was a dozen years ago, my wife started waiting tables at a diner in town. A couple of cops came in and ordered coffee. No, problem, she served them, and everything was fine. After a little while, she gave the cops their check, and one of them told her that they shouldn't get a check. She told them that she doesn't know anything about that, but they order coffee, so, her you go. You see, she was young. She know that cops receiving 'gifts' for doing their job was illegal, yet had not yet figured out that cops committing crimes was pretty standard. The cop started yelling at her about it. She went and got the manager, because, that's what you do if someone starts actually yelling. The manager tore up the check, and after the cops left, told her that she wasn't supposed to charge cops. Over time, sh
I just got a 3G iPhone from work, and I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something, or if Apple just makes brain dead products. I don't see any way to sync my phone without plugging it into the computer.
Exactly.
This is what I have been saying since I heard the original outrageous price of $100 for the OLPC. I even went to the trouble of looking up what I could build a portable, hand crank computer for using one off retail pricing, and I came up with something like $70. I wasn't even going bottom of the barrel. I started with a C-64 in joystick. added a black and white battery operated camping TV, a keyboard, and a hand crank generator for recharging the batteries. If I could put together a rugged portable battery/hand crank powered portable computer for $70 bucks, there is no excuse for the OLPC's outrageous price, given their claimed goal. Or should I say their vague hand waiving of having a goal.
8-bit computers were plenty powerful enough to run businesses off of here in the US for a very long time. I'm not buying that third world countries have greater computing needs that 80's US businesses.
My education is fine. If you had read before, their pay is garnished so that they are paid year round, with a forced 3-month 'sabbatical'. They may not be around kids during the summer or billing hours, but they certainly aren't unemployed. They aren't pulling unemployment during the summer, and it's not like they can find employment elsewhere since all the schools are closed.
Dude, if you cannot figure out that being paid $17 and hour means that you are being paid $17 per hour WORKED, you are an idiot. The math is not debatable.
You just proved my point. If you bothered to look at that page you'd see those were bulk prices. Most of those cost a buck or two each. These aren't cancer drugs - someone is making money but not a killing. If you can't scrounge up $20 to get your kid vaccinated then the state will take care of it. As I said, once again:
Apparently, you are too stupid to understand that $20 is not pennies. It isn't by any stretch of the imagination. It costs more than $20 to get immunized, but even if it was $20 exactly, calling it pennies is at best a gross exaggeration. As for no one making a killing... The vaccine industry is an $11 BILLION a year industry that is expected to $20 BILLION a year by 2012.
... because I don't want your precious little snowflake giving my kid whooping cough doesn't make it a conspiracy.
Again, you say things that make you look stupid. Trying to imply that immunized kids are going to give your kid whooping cough is pretty dumb. That, and you keep saying 'conspiracy'. It is clear that you don't know what the word means.
Oh, and given how dumb you are and/or how much you tend to lie, I looked up the data on your quote:
No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work.
And according to Oregon School Board Association you are just plain wrong. They show that salaries in Oregon go up to $60,452. That's a full 30% more than the fake number you pulled out of your ass. They also show that 27% of Oregon teachers are making more than $50k a year. The average across the state is $50,937.92. Seriously. $50k a year is doing just fine.
Not $17 to $31 per hour ($34k-$62k per year), you need to do some math because those are WAY over what I said before.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that teachers make $100k or more? And we are talking about teachers here right, not professors at colleges? And part time work? Teachers work 8 hours a day, 180 days a year (in WA). A normal year is 250 but they aren't getting any pay for the other 70 days, contrary to popular belief. They get paid during that time but only because their paychecks were garnished during the year to pay them during the summer. No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work. They start out just above the poverty line at 24k per year, and that's after 4 years of college.
180 days * 8 hours = 1440 hours. $24,000 / 1440 hours = $16.66666.... dollars per hour.
180 days * 8 hours = 1440 hours. $45,000 / 1440 hours = $31.25.... dollars per hour.
Perhaps if you had a better education you would be able to handle simple math problems.
Personally I agree with vaccines including the controversial HPV vaccine, but that doesn't mean that I am unaware that people are making money off of it.
Please, because I don't want your precious little snowflake giving my kid whooping cough doesn't make it a conspiracy.
The HPV one should not be required since that is not communicable in groups, that does seem like corruption.
Really?
You purposely inflated numbers to make your point
Vaccines cost pennies
Vaccine price list
That or he would know how good his school football team did that year.
"Kids that are *solely* taught one-on-one can easily not gain multiple perspectives on content. They easily get the idea that there is only one "right" way to solve particular problems, when there is usually more than one way to do it."
Of course, home schooling is rarely isolated to one on one. Home schoolers still get together. They also tend to do things like take field trips to learn. When my son ran across the word cavalry for the first time, I corrected his pronunciation on it, and explained what it was. We then made a point to go to the next Civil War reenactment that happened in the area. Thus he got to actually SEE cavalry, and see what they did. He also got to see cannons, period tents, period cooking equipment, and clothes. He got to learn about the Civil War, and talk to a dozen different people about the subject. That is just one example of how home schooling is done.
"Kids need the socialisation of peers. In public schools this also means that our kids have opportunities to mix with the kids we don't want them to. That's where parenting comes in."
And there we go. The old myth that home schooled kids are hermits. It is simply a myth. Home schooled kids have plenty of activities available to them. As well as the "socialisation" argument. When I first started looking into home schooling, I talked to a woman that owned a home schooling supply store. She made the comment to me that public schools were a not about education, but was a social program. A red flag went up in my head, and I filed the woman away as a kook. There is one in every crowd after all. What I have found is that public school advocates constantly use that as an argument for public schools. Are you seriously saying that you don't want to have some control over the people that your 7 year old is associating with? Really? That doesn't even get into the fact that putting people in a room full of other people exactly the same age is a terrible way to 'socialize' them for the rest of their lives. Seriously. When was the last time you were in a room full of people the exact same age as you?"
"I disagree with most of your other points, but support your right to say/believe them."
I am glad you support my right to say and believe my points, because I am fully aware that your views are in the majority by a wide margin. I also am always willing to debate the issue, as I am also fully aware that you can keep learning new things for your entire life, and that thing you believe to be true can be wrong. Heck, just recently, I found out right here on slashdot that the reason old windows are warped is not because they flowed down. After reading the various comments, I looked into some of the evidence presented, and low and behold, the "flowing" explanation that I had always been told, and believed did not hold up. In fact, the 1945 house I just moved into has a large window where the "flow" would have had to be at a 90 degree angle. There was evidence right here in my own home.
"Have you ever considered that home-schooling puts up better numbers because the only people who do it are rich, well-educated families who can afford to have someone sat at home all day earning nothing educating the kids?"
Sure, then I met families that home school and found that they are not all wealthy. Most are middle class, and some are down right poor. Yes, many of them are well educated, but I have met several who are not. This did not prevent them from offering their kids a superior education. Why? Because most of what you get in the K-12 curriculum is not material that is considered to define someone as 'well educated'. Unless you are using a different definition that virtually every person I have ever met, 'well educated' means college educated, and college is outside of the public school discussion. So, even those who are not 'well educated' are generally at least as educated as what you get in a public school.
"Are you seriously trying to tell me that teachers make $100k or more? And we are talking about teachers here right, not professors at colleges? And part time work? Teachers work 8 hours a day, 180 days a year (in WA). A normal year is 250 but they aren't getting any pay for the other 70 days, contrary to popular belief. They get paid during that time but only because their paychecks were garnished during the year to pay them during the summer."
No, I am not saying that teachers make $100k or more. You said that YOU do. Based on the fact that you claim you would have to take a 70% pay cut to be a teacher. YOU would have to be making huge amounts of money, and thus are being totally unrealistic as to what it costs to live, as many of the wealthy do. Not everybody makes as much as you, and not everybody ever will. Your level of income is not required to live a happy healthy life.
"Based on the information here you have about 6.5 million students costing $60 billion. That's about $9200 per student. Figuring a student-teacher ratio of 30:1 that's about $276k per teacher. Ah, but we need buses, administration, bookkeeping, books, and facilities. That all costs money and eats away at the $276k. If spending less was possible then they'd be doing it. $9200 per student per year is a bargain."
It is not a bargain, and you just listed more people that that make money from the public school industry. Heavy overhead in administration is one of the areas that eat up a bunch of money. And, no, if spending less was possible, they wound not be doing it. Who goes out and asks for less money for their department in any industry?
"No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work. They start out just above the poverty line at 24k per year, and that's after 4 years of college."
So in Oregon, they start out slightly below the average wage of $763 at $667 a week, and top out well above average at $1250 per week OF WORK. As I said. They may not be getting rich doing it, but they are doing just fine. You seem to think that $17 to $31/hour is an unlivable wage. I say that there are a lot of people that would LOVE to make that much money because they are supporting their families on far less.
"Welfare is a different issue, but pharmaceuticals and pediatricians? Oh I get it, you're a conspiracy nutcase."
So, listing people who make money from the schools system makes someone a conspiracy nutcase? The fact is that schools state that they require certain medical procedures to attend public school. (At least here in California, it is not really required, but that doesn't stop them from telling parents that it is.) Whether you agree with vaccines or not, pediatricians and pharmaceuticals, make money from the school systems requirements. Personally I agree with vaccines including the controversial HPV vaccine, but that doesn't mean that I am unaware that people are making money off of it. (I don't approve of the chicken pox vaccine for prepubescent kids, but that is another debate entirely) So, no, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, but your accusation is ironic.
"Then she's telling you as much bullshit as you are spouting off here."
For Oregon, your wage amount sounds about what she was saying, so no. Neither she nor I am spouting off bs here.
"No, he was saying they tend to be better educated. I can see that your home schooling background has provided you with excellent literacy and comprehension skills. (ducks for cover)"
;) I think you are wrong. Go back and read the post. The whole point of his post was to try and say that home schoolers were NOT getting a better education, but were coming from a better class of family.
Ok, now that I've put the chair back down...
The "why not consider getting into teaching?" is kind of a cop out. As a parent, my first responsibility is to my child. Everyone agrees that smaller classrooms give a better education. Well, my classroom has 1 student. If I were to go in to teaching, I would first have to sabotage my child by putting him in classrooms that are lucky if they have 10 times that ratio. Then, I would have to trade a teacher that is willing do literally die for my child, with a hodge podge of teachers that range from only very interested to actively hostile. Then I would have to work in an environment where I was consistently sabotaged by those who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.
So, should I sabotage my child's education in a vain attempt to fight a system that is massively funded, and has political and public support? For me, the answer is simple.
"it's badly paid and unappreciated."
This is just untrue. On an hourly basis, teachers make decent money. My wife worked for years in lending, and has seen enough W-2s to know that the "badly paid" teacher is a myth. No, your not going to become rich as a teacher, but you are paid a fair wage. As for unappreciated, that is just a straight out lie. I can't count the number of times I have heard teachers described as "The most important job in the world". I can count the number of times I've heard that description applied to sanitation workers. 0. How about truck drivers? Or the person who stocks shelves at the supermarket? None of these jobs are given as much appreciation as teachers. In fact, most people I have met, assume first that teachers are an important asset doing a fabulous job, and only change their mind if overwhelming evidence to the contrary is given to them. How many careers offer that kind of appreciation? Complaining about lack of appreciation seems a bit spoiled. It is great that you find your career rewarding. I hope you continue to do so, but perhaps you should look at how little appreciation other careers get before starting a pity party over the fact that people don't tell you how great you are every day.
"If you have home-schooled your kids then you obviously don't need the money"
This is also a cop out. Home schoolers are not some elite class of the ultra rich. They range for wealthy to poor. What they do have in common is that most of them are willing to lower their financial quality of life to give their kids a better education.
"Wait, who's making money? The teachers? Barely. The administrators? Nope. Are the schools filled with top-end equipment and supplies and built to be functional and beautiful? Nope.
The fact is that John Q. Public DOES NOT FUND SCHOOLS. People complain about how the system sucks but won't support bonds to build more schools or replace/remodel existing schools that are so run down that they are a detriment to education. They think teachers get paid way too much and get paid for a 3 month vacation. They think that they should be able to send there kid off to school and they should come home smart without having to do anything."
You don't know what your talking about K-12 education is the single largest spending line item in the state of California. (I suspect that it is the same in other states) Higher Education is the second largest spending line item. Together they use up over 50% of the entire state's general fund and over 40% of the states total budget. We are talking about 60 BILLION dollars here. That isn't counting all of the money collected through booster clubs and fund raisers. How can you say that no one is making money when there is 60 BILLION spent?
Teachers do just fine pay wise. Maybe if YOU could get out our YOUR ivory tower, you might find that not everyone is making $100k to $200k for part time work. Yes, if you are counting yearly salaries, then teachers get a 3 month vacation. If you count hourly pay, they do even better. My wife worked in a lending institution. She has seen literally thousands of W-2s from teachers. They do just fine.
So, who is making money? Everybody involved with schools. (except the kids) Parents who get to shift the cost of day care to those without kids in school. Teachers who make a decent living working part time. Teachers Unions. School administrators, who have built a huge bureaucracy with far more people getting paid than necessary. Pharmaceuticals that make sure that their products get sold. Pediatricians that make sure their services are used. Restaurants and food service companies that the supply food for the ubiquitous school welfare programs. And, politicians all the way up the chain who keep their positions by pushing doing feel good, do nothing initiatives, or smearing their opponents if they try to cut the huge costs. Yes, there is plenty of money moving around the public school industry. Where do YOU think the 60 BILLION goes?
So, your saying that it isn't that home schooled kids do better because they are getting better educations, but they are doing better because on average, the parents of kids who are home schooled are better than the parents who send their kids to public school? I'm not going to argue whether the home schooling parents are really better or not, but I can just imagine the hatred that would be spewed if that had come from a home schooling parent.
Sadly, for the many people, your jest falls into the 'it's funny because it's true' category.
"Yes, some kids do well at home school - they are the exception, not the rule"
Some? You mean MOST. Home schooled kid regularly out pace public schooled kids. It may be unpleasant for the majority of people to accept that they are not giving their kids the best education possible, but that doesn't change the reality of it.
"They also need to be informed what is going on at school, and they need to care about that. They have to avoid at all costs giving the impression that school is something to be endured until they can leave - kids that learn *that* lesson from home rarely discover their potential."
No parent that is really informed about what is going on at school is going to be able to NOT teach their kids that they will have to endure at least large parts of it. A kid that goes through public school is under the care of somewhere around 45 different teachers by the time they are done. Contrary to what some people believe, getting a job in education does not magically make you a good person. Even being unrealistically generous and the kid being really lucky, a kid is going to have half a dozen to a dozen crappy people who have control of them for large chunks of time.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it. Asking how to fix the current system is the same question as asking how we can fix corporate America to start putting the customers before profit. There certainly are ways, but you can forget about it happening. Not enough people really care to make it happen. We have become a orphanage state. Most kids start getting shuttle off to state or semi-private institution between 1 and 3 years old. By the time they are five or six, most of them spend more waking hours under the care of the state than they do their parents. It is not uncommon for half of all meals a kid eats to be supplied by the state. The numbers look even worse if you don't add together the number of hours mom and dad care for their child. Then when the kid is under the parents care, they are supposed to spend a significant portion of that time, doing work that they were instructed to do by the state.
Quite simply, what we call parents, have been relegated to the role that used to be supplied by the absentee divorced father. The state is most kids primary care giver. So, the question becomes, how do you fix a system where 98% of youth are raised in an orphanage?
"The martial arts are primarily a means of defense, not attack, and are said to be quite handy against guns, knives and indeed rocks."
Are you seriously going to go with this? Really?
Your right, they might be genetically equal at math. They might not, or they might be better. Who knows. Until we have a culture that doesn't make it perfectly clear from birth that a girl can get all the things she wants easier by screwing than by being smart, we will not see women as a group compete on a level playing field. This isn't a jab against women. If boys were brought up being told that they could screw their way to a level or two from the top, they wouldn't try so hard either.
Seriously, if faced with the choice of work real hard to learn a lot of stuff so that you can become wealthy, or have lots of sex so that you can become wealthy, how many men here would choose the work real hard option? Every day, women are lured by the dark side. Every day they must make the choice, either consciously or subconsciously, as whether they keep working hard to be smart and successful, or to just start dating to achieve their goals. It is any surprise that a very large quantity of them choose sex over work?
If women want to become equal in business and the sciences, all they have to do is stop dating, sleeping with, and marrying men who are more successful than them. Start picking their mates based off of looks, and whether or not they put out. This will both reduce the pool of smart men that they have to compete with, as well as change the perception of little girls that they can expect sex to pay their way through life.
I would have to completely disagree. Right after my son's 2nd birthday, I was in one of these kinds of discussions, and decided to do a little experiment. So, I formatted my son's hard drive, gave him an Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) disk, and told him to go install his computer. He did it with no problems. Now if a two year old who cannot read yet can install the OS, I think that it is unfair to say that it is not properly ready for the masses.
As an aside, I followed up with having him try to install WindowsXP. He was unsuccessful. I attribute this to the fact that WindowsXP required reading to get through the install.