If it did find it's own mat for self charging, it is a shame that they did not advertise that. I have never heard of that feature, and have read reviews that complained that it didn't run very long before it had to be plugged in. A self charging feature could have made the difference on whether I would have considered buying one or not.
The one problem that I see with all of these pet replacement toys is that they not one of them can recharge themselves. If you have to pick it up and plug it into the wall, it is still just a toy. The obvious solution is to give these toys a 'bed'. Then use wireless induction to recharge the batteries. Plenty of people have real pets that sleep most of the day, so if it takes 8 hours of charging for 1 hour of action, there wouldn't be a problem. Pets are actually a pretty good place to introduce robots to the household, but as long as we have to manually plug them in, they will be toys, and not pets.
Not to mention that the areas that are assumed to suppress violent behavior, may not do that at all. We know very little about what actually happens in the brain. It is entirely plausible that the reason researchers think that region of the brain is used to suppress violence is because it become active during violent scenarios.
To pull an equally reasonable hypothesis out of my ass, maybe that region of the brain is used for the purpose of AVOIDING violence. As people are exposed to violent images in media, they start to become clearer and clearer on the difference between pretend and real violence, thus having the effect that we get less violent kids the more they are exposed to violent images in the media. Heck, the dropping rate of youth violence even supports this hypothesis.
That is brilliant! They just need to make sure that it is outside of town where no innocent bystanders will get hurt when the occasional accident happens. Heck, they could set up video cameras, and if the trucks keep coming, they can sell the footage to one of those 'real car wreck' programs. If they have the road posted as no trucks ahead of the 'bridge', they even get to fine the driver when they crash.
What are you talking about. Every time teacher salaries come up, I am consistently told that the reasons teachers salaries are low despite the data showing otherwise is because teacher are not being paid for the three months a year that they spend learning new teaching techniques, and making changes to their curriculum. How could his Calc prof possibly be backwards if he is spending a full quarter of his career keeping up to date?
Uh, you mean like the founding fathers did when they decided they couldn't 'fix' the English government, so they decided to leave it and make their own?
A very similar 'experiment' has actually happened. Between the Snes and the Playstation, "Secrets" was hip on video games. Basically, you could cheat if you could remember a long series of button presses. The ability of kids and young adults to memorize these strings of button presses was pretty surprising.
I still remember how funny I though it was that 'Filch' was on the SATs, and the only place I had previously ever seen it used was in Zork II: The Wizard of Froboz.
People definitely underestimate some kinds of entertainment as learning tools.
While I am a fan of the Colbert Report, I have really started to lose interest in the Daily show. I think they have lost their way. They used to be good satire, but recently, they lost the wit, and just started resorting to name calling. The last episode I saw was doing a 'satire' on a Fox news clip, and the only thing they had was making fun of the guys hair. Given how much material there is to do real satire, I can only assume that all of their good writer were moved to the Colbert Report.
It is actually not an analogy, as I am not asking you to think of something like it was a car. I am actually talking about car commercials. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a car is just a car.
It seem clear that your view of when commercial are deceptive is different than mine. There is one important fact that you are missing that makes you wrong. You are missing the fact that my shade of gray is better than your shade of gray.;)
I would like to thank you for making your toilet seat IP Open Source, so in the spirit of Open Source, I would like to submit a bug fix. In the next release of your toilet seat, put the exquisite cravings on the bottom of the seat. This will encourage your Windows using guests to 'lift' the seat, thus reducing the the amount of piss landing on the seat. This will also allow the top of the seat to be a smooth surface, making the user interface more comfortable for users when sitting, which is when the exquisite carvings would be obstructed from view anyways.
I eagerly await the official release of version 0.42 of Exquisite Toilet Seat.
This has been hitting my radar lately as well. It seems that any truth in advertising laws that may have ever existed, are out the window. Just this week, I saw a Comcast commercial that was going on about "On-Demand". In very clear audio, while showing the On-Demand menus on the screen, they stated multiple times that "On-Demand is free". At the bottom of the screen, there was small text that said "Content will impose additional charges." Now, I know what the text said because I saw the same commercial later on a 32" screen. When I originally watched the commercial on the 20" TV in my office, the text was simply unreadable. It was barely readable on the 32" screen.
The other one that always gets me is car commercials. 90% of all car commercials show the vehicle being used in an illegal manner with often unreadble text at the bottom stating "Closed course. Professional driver." Yes, they have the sometimes readable disclaimer, but clearly the commercials are specifically designed to show people how the vehicle is really great at doing illegal things. While usually it is a vehicle driving too fast on twisty mountain roads, there was actually one running for a while where a car was driving way too fast, through city streets with traffic cones chasing it. The commercial actually had a part showing a pedestrian jumping into a dumpster to avoid being run down! This doesn't seem any different than if a rat poison company was a running commercial showing a wife putting rat poison in her husbands dinner while talking about life insurance payout, but having sometimes readable small text stating "Imitation Poison. Professional Chef.".
Given the number of people that get killed using the vehicles exactly as advertised, I don't see how this has never been addressed.
You know, 8 years ago, I would have agreed that this would never be tested, and I don't think the FDA will, but 8 years ago, I would not have believed that bringing someone to the edge of drowning to force a confession or get information would be something the US government would openly admit to either. If the government is openly admitting to basically the same kind of actions that were condemned as atrocities committed by the witch hunters of early America, I don't see how there would be much issue for them to perform chemical experiments on secret prison inmates.
I also think that the genie is out of the bottle, so if this line does get crossed, I don't think it will be limited to only one party or the other.
Clearly you don't get my point. Bluntly. No, not everyone can learn ANY subject. Your mistaking the human mind for a magic artifact. You are also telling any that doesn't understand something that it is because of their character flaw. We don't have 6 million dollar man style bionic arms, and we don't have bionic brains. So, even with steroids and narcotics, he is unlikely to ever bench 800 pounds. There are simply physical limits to the human body. Besides, if you understand that the human body has limits without artificial advancements, why can you not accept that the human brain does too. It is just another part of the body.
Really, are you jumping to religion and claiming that humans are somehow fundamentally different than all other animals on the planet, or do you propose that any animal can learn ANY subject if they are willing to put in the effort?
Of course, when the boss hates you (in this case the President), and isn't too bright, you can't count on good reasoning with employee retention. After all, these are exactly the kinds of guys the president was referring to when he talked about 'The nerd patrol', and he didn't say it as a term of endearment.
Maybe I have it all wrong, but when I was learning to read in the 70's, we heard nothing of Phonics. We were learning to read by rote, which means to just memorize the words. It wasn't until I was 10, that I first heard about phonics as a teaching method. It was in '81, and in my school they asked for volunteers from the 5th and 6th graders to watch the kindergarten and 1st grade classes during lunch. I was shocked to see school books and posters with things like "kat" and "fon" in them. This was the big phonics push. Whole learning actually gained favor after phonics was found to have failed.
I think you have it half right. Schools don't teach much to kids. You are right in that spelling IS a matter of rote. There is nothing to be done about that. The part that I disagree on is that phonics is useless. The use that phonics has is that it helps in reading, and reading will get you looking at the correct spelling of words. Looking at the correct spelling of words will help you memorize the spelling of those words by rote. The problem with phonics is that a large group of 'educators' got it in their heads that it was some kind of silver bullet, when in fact it is basically a trick to help you learn the language by rote. Phonics isn't the the end, but a means to get more access to memorization.
Your advice is VERY good. I particularly think that "Allow your children to engage you in intellectual conversations." is both one of the most important, and one of the thing generally not done. We are all familiar with the old saying "Children should be seen and not heard."
I would also add:
- Don't hide information that your kids are not yet capable of understanding. We learn through both through building on previous work AND simple memorization. Just as your kid can tell you the color of the walls in his room because just being in his room because he cannot help but notice and file away in his head the color, he will remember all sorts of things by just having them in his environment. When the time comes that he can understand it, many of the terms and ideas will already be familiar.
- Make learning fun. I don't mean that you should try to make a formal game out of any subject you want your kid to learn. I mean that if you can find something your kid wants to do that requires the knowledge you want them to learn, they are WAY more likely to learn it. For example if you wanted your kid to learn how to press a bunch of colored dots in a pattern, you would have a very hard time teaching them that in an "education" environment. Why you would want your kid to learn this, I don't know, but we teach kids all sorts of strange things. Now, if you show them Guitar Hero's, your going to have to put effort into stopping them from spending too much time learning how to press those colored dots.
- Don't be a know it all. Go ahead and let your kids know that you don't know everything. This will give you the opportunity to learn with your kids, and to show them that learning is a life long activity that is enjoyable. It will also allow them to quiz you on subjects. When my son was learning to read, we had flash cards up on the wall. While we would quiz him on what the words were, we would also let him quiz us. This had the effect that he would figure out the word in his head before we would say it, so that he was ready to tell us if we got it right or not.
- If your kids want to do something, instead of telling them no, get them into an environment that will allow them to try it. For example, every kid is going to blow into a juice pack. Inside the house or car, this leads to a huge mess, and is a problem. The first time your kid tries it, instead of just telling them no, tell them not to do it in the house because it will make a mess. Tell them that you and they can do the experiment outside to see what happens. Finally, actually do the experiment. If it is night, go out the next day. If your eating lunch, go out right after you finish eating. Do the experiment and let your kid see what happens. This will encourage them to discover the world around them. It will help them understand that there are appropriate times and places for things. It will also give them a better feeling about learning. Instead of telling them that they should learn, and that learning can be fun, you will be telling them that the fun things they are already doing IS learning. Often kids get in trouble for trying to learn. The parents just see a mess or broken property. It also leads to kids hiding their experiments. I know as a kid, we would blow things up to see what would happen. Because we had to hide it, we did not use proper safety procedures. If your kid wants to drive fast, get them to a race track instead of sending them out on the road to kill someone, because one way or the other, they will drive fast if that is what they want to do.
- Understand that just as adults sometimes need to walk away from a particularly difficult problem, so do kids. They are human after all. When faced with a very difficult intellectual problem, walking away from it, and coming back later will often give you a different perspective on things. It will also reduce the stress involved, which might be blocking your ability to see the solution. The same principals apply to kids. Th
The current culture of 'trying is what matters' is just as bad as the culture of 'you have what your born with'. When you tell a kid that is failing at algebra that "you need to work harder at math", and they are already working their ass off, you are doing just as much harm as if they think that they just don't have the brains for it. It reminds me of the 80's anti-cocaine commercial with the guy walking in circles. He was repeating over and over. "I do more cocaine so that I can work harder. I work harder so I can earn more money. I earn more money so that I can buy more cocaine. I do more cocaine so I can work harder...." Over and over. How bad do you think a kid feels when they are simply incapable of doing something, and they are told over and over that it is because of a lack of character. That is what you are telling them, whether you realize it or not. You are telling your kid that their inability to understand Applied Statistics coursework or multi-dimensional algebra in their head is because they just didn't try hard enough. It also reminds me of the debate I had as a kid with my father. He was never happy with my performance because he always felt I could do better just by trying harder. He felt that the most important thing was to try hard. (Well, actually, he was just an ass, and that was his excuse, but anyway.) I still remember him telling me that employers want people that will try hard. Which would always be countered with the question: "Would you rather have a heart surgeon that performs your surgery effortlessly, or one that has to try real hard?"
This is a classic debate of nature vs. nurture. Well, the answer to the question of which defines your intellect, nature or nurture, is "Yes". I consistently tell my kid that if he keeps practicing, he will get better at things, but I will never want him to believe that the only reason he failed at something is that he just didn't try hard enough. His inability to bench press 800 pounds at 3 years old has nothing to do with not trying hard enough. No matter how hard he tries, he is not going to do it. As a matter of fact, it is likely that if his sole focus for the rest of his life was to spend every last bit of effort in him to bench press 800 pounds, he would still never be able to do it. Even though others have. Of course being able to bench press 250 pounds as an adult will likely be a matter of how much effort he puts into getting there.
Even when we rule out the extremes of human achievement, we need to look at the fact that we are not immortal timeless beings. We have a limited amount of time. The time we have is divided up into various tasks that we put effort into. If our kids put more effort into playing baseball, they will have less time available to put effort into playing piano. This is just a physical limitation of the universe we live in. So, when you tell your kid to try harder in one subject (not limited to school studies), you are telling them not to put that effort into another subject. The real key is to guide their time and effort into subjects that will achieve both the greatest results, as well as be the most useful.
Lets take a kid with the genes to easily understand music and poor genes to understand algebra. Neither of these skills are used by most people on a day to day basis, so neglecting either one is not going to prevent someone from being successful. If this hypothetical kid spends a years worth of effort into learning music instead of algebra, he will end up smarter.
The key is to make sure your kid is competent in all areas that they need with enough leeway that they are not just scraping by, and then to enhance the areas that will give the greatest effect. Obviously that is a gross over simplification, but the principal is there.
Oh, I definitely wasn't disagreeing in the specific instance with the GP. Only with the over simplification of the specific statement about force and voluntary trade. Of course there is also the possibility that the GP only put it that way to be brief, and doesn't disagree with me either.
Your point about the French culture is interesting in that I was recently having an off line debate about culture. That's right, I actually talked to someone off line.;) It was a debate between the merits of rural culture and city culture. For the record, I have lived in cities all my life, but none of the 'international' cities like NY, or SF. The 'city person' that I was talking to, was trying to convince me that there was MORE culture in cities than in rural areas. My stance was that since a culture is the way people behave and think in a particular area, you could not have more culture in one area than in another by definition. Only different. Their example was that in the city, you might run into people from 10 different cultures in an average day. My stance was that each of those people do not hold the entirety of the culture they came from, but just a piece, and once you put them all in the same place, those pieces come together to be a single, new, unique culture of their own.
This loss of their old culture being slowly evolved into a new culture is what you are referring to in your post. Although I would disagree with calling it stasis, as small pieces, sometimes imperceptible pieces, will slowly evaporate away. Like a cup of sugar water left in the sun, the water slowly disappears, and if new water is not added, you end up with something entirely different than what you started. It may take a very very long time, but eventually you won't have water anymore.
Later, while pondering my debate, I was thinking about how one could retain a culture while in contact with other culture. I pretty much came to the conclusion that culture the only way to rally have a different culture is through isolation. Much like new breeds of animals come from isolation of groups of animals, after enough mutation happens that they are no longer the same breed, the same can be said of cultures. Much like breeding animals, both good and bad traits come from this isolation. Without it, you get less variety. I would say that our planet is far too small in this day and age for us to try the cultural isolation route, so until we get off the planet as a species, we are on an inevitable drive towards a single culture.
I totally agree with you in this case, but you do need to keep in mind that the difference is not black and white. It is definitly gray. If enough people eat at that McDonalds, they could drive other restaurants out of business, and thus when the bomber is giving a push (as in a small amount of force) to eat at the McDonalds. If McDonalds did well enough, they could start pushing out bakeries, butchers, and many more restaurants. Do not get me wrong. I in no way believe that McDonalds could successfully drive out enough of the competition that one would not have any other choices, but they could make the choice less, and far less convenient. I use McDonalds in the US to come to this conclusion. If McDonalds cannot drive away all competion in the US, I doubt they will be able to wipe out all competition in France.
An example of where Voluntary trade is closer to force, is what I am currently experiancing with ATM cards. I refuse to have a 'check card'. They are a security nightmare, as they allow money to be withdrawn from your account with absolutly no identification. Access to the card IS access to all of the money in the account. Now, when they were first introduced you could tell your bank that you did not want one. Unfortunatly, as the banks pushed these more and more on the customers, it became harder and harder to keep your secure ATM access. Recently I've been looking, and most banks will simply not let you have a secure ATM anymore. The choice is gone. Now, I understand that you can go into the bank, but bank hours can make that very difficult, and the ability to have access to your money is cutting you off from taking part in society.
Now, take it one step farther and look at someone that doesn't want to take part in 'volentary trade' with oil companies. That might just not be possible.
We should get back to the good old days when instead of fragging a guy in a video game, kids would go outside... and... physcially act out the act of cutting each others scalps from their heads. They would physically act out burning each other at the stake, and physically act out shooting each other with realistic guns that often had small powder caps to get a simulated gun sound. Obviously it is the games that kids are playing today that has turned every last one of them into a powder keg just waiting to go off.
"If an hour to an hour and a half a day worth of breaks is excessive, then a great many office people are given excessive breaks."
Right in your first paragraph you lose credibility. I never said that an hour and a half is excessive. You are trying to use a strawman argument, and show that you know you are being dishonest. In fact, most office jobs have exactly an hour and a half. Of course, most office workers are not paid for the hour they spend eating lunch. If you feel that the amount of time given for lunch is unreasonable, perhaps you should check your ethics, and start speaking up for the students who are limited to that amount of time for their lunch also. I'm sure that you can direct me to old posts where you decried the horrid treatment of students for their short lunch breaks right?
"A "teacher's aide" isn't typically a student, either."
Here you lose credibility again. While there certainly are professional aids, at least up until recently, schools regularly gave students class credit for helping teachers with their work. I will concede that teachers unions might have negotiated this away in an attempt to get a wider spot at the education money trough, as it has been 4 or 5 years since I have been around any jr high, and high school students in quantity, so cannot say that I have heard any talking about it recently.
"If you know of a middle school or high school class that doesn't have essay questions and topic papers that need grading by a teacher, then that teacher's not doing what they should."
More credibility lose. Your actually claiming that PE teachers and Algebra teachers are not doing there jobs if they don't assign essay questions? Get real. Besides that, your arguing that teachers are being abused with low wages even though you claim they are not doing what they should.
"You can bet the figures for yearly pay in the reported data include the pay in the averages, though. After all, that's part of the teacher's contracted work for which their taxes would be reported."
Yet again credibility lose. No, you can not bet on this. That is the statement of a person that is just making stuff up to try to support his case. The stats on teacher pay is generally not going to include second jobs, which is what summer school is. A summer job as an EMT would show up on taxes too, but that certainly isn't going to be included in the reports.
"Yes, lots of jobs are crappy. Most government jobs that require a Bachelor's or Master's degree are not particularly crappy."
Now, we are getting to the crux of things. There is obviously some sour grapes that teachers are not getting as sweet a spot at the government money trough.
"I don't think of kids in general as "pukes", but enough public school students are complete little anti-social twits that all the teachers have to deal with those kids in addition to the decent ones. You deal with jerks everywhere, but nowhere other than the public schools do you see the type of intimidation of adults by kids as when spoiled brats threaten to have mommy talk to the school board, which includes daddy."
Unless you are in some tiny backwater village, this is going to be a minor problem. There are just going to be too many teachers for for the few kids that are related to the school board to have a major impact. Besides that, let me just say, welcome to the real world. Kids get jobs at their daddy's companies too. Guess what, same problem. You again lose credibility by complaining about the reality of life, like teachers are somehow singled out when they have to deal with the same crap that other people do. Of course, you could be showing your disrespect for minors by implying that they somehow should be judged by a different set of ethics than adults. This of course makes you lose more credibility. I have yet to see teachers complaining about having one school per district. This would alleviate them of the problem, as most of them would not even have a
Absolute BS. Just because the they are not taught something, doesn't mean they can't learn. The people that tell you a kid can't learn to read until they are 6 or 7, are the same ones that will tell you that the entire world population became retarded in just a few generations. That somehow an age that could build nations, raise families, fight wars, negotiate piece, run nations, run farms, run businesses, and do all of the things that adults do, are somehow now too feeble minded to handle even the most basic of adult responsibilities. That they are now 'children'.
Unfortunately, I have not heard of any municipalities that have implemented this, and I'm not sure that there are not other... 'factors' that would keep it from being implemented even if it turned out to be the obvious answer. No doubt planning would be needed, and the idea would need to be fleshed out, but my thought would be that the conduit would be along the lines of our storm drain systems. Many of these are large enough for a grown man to walk in if he haunches over, and they have access every 300 feet or so. Add a 3" or 4" off shoot that terminates at the residence property line, and you have your basic system laid out. If storm drains can be kept clear, cables could be pulled through a similar system. Heck, if it were not for the debris getting tangled in the lines, I would suggest that municipalities use the existing storm drain system.
Basically, most cities already have 3 conduit systems that they manage just fine. Sewer, water, and storm drains. While a forth conduit system is handled by the gas company. Having one more conduit system that does not involve moving water or feces around just cannot be that hard, and it certainly could handle greater leakage than the fresh water or gas lines.
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If it did find it's own mat for self charging, it is a shame that they did not advertise that. I have never heard of that feature, and have read reviews that complained that it didn't run very long before it had to be plugged in. A self charging feature could have made the difference on whether I would have considered buying one or not.
The one problem that I see with all of these pet replacement toys is that they not one of them can recharge themselves. If you have to pick it up and plug it into the wall, it is still just a toy. The obvious solution is to give these toys a 'bed'. Then use wireless induction to recharge the batteries. Plenty of people have real pets that sleep most of the day, so if it takes 8 hours of charging for 1 hour of action, there wouldn't be a problem. Pets are actually a pretty good place to introduce robots to the household, but as long as we have to manually plug them in, they will be toys, and not pets.
Not to mention that the areas that are assumed to suppress violent behavior, may not do that at all. We know very little about what actually happens in the brain. It is entirely plausible that the reason researchers think that region of the brain is used to suppress violence is because it become active during violent scenarios.
To pull an equally reasonable hypothesis out of my ass, maybe that region of the brain is used for the purpose of AVOIDING violence. As people are exposed to violent images in media, they start to become clearer and clearer on the difference between pretend and real violence, thus having the effect that we get less violent kids the more they are exposed to violent images in the media. Heck, the dropping rate of youth violence even supports this hypothesis.
That is brilliant! They just need to make sure that it is outside of town where no innocent bystanders will get hurt when the occasional accident happens. Heck, they could set up video cameras, and if the trucks keep coming, they can sell the footage to one of those 'real car wreck' programs. If they have the road posted as no trucks ahead of the 'bridge', they even get to fine the driver when they crash.
What are you talking about. Every time teacher salaries come up, I am consistently told that the reasons teachers salaries are low despite the data showing otherwise is because teacher are not being paid for the three months a year that they spend learning new teaching techniques, and making changes to their curriculum. How could his Calc prof possibly be backwards if he is spending a full quarter of his career keeping up to date?
And neither is the US. On paper we are a Republic, and in practice, we are something else yet. Definitely not a democracy.
Uh, you mean like the founding fathers did when they decided they couldn't 'fix' the English government, so they decided to leave it and make their own?
A very similar 'experiment' has actually happened. Between the Snes and the Playstation, "Secrets" was hip on video games. Basically, you could cheat if you could remember a long series of button presses. The ability of kids and young adults to memorize these strings of button presses was pretty surprising.
I still remember how funny I though it was that 'Filch' was on the SATs, and the only place I had previously ever seen it used was in Zork II: The Wizard of Froboz. People definitely underestimate some kinds of entertainment as learning tools.
While I am a fan of the Colbert Report, I have really started to lose interest in the Daily show. I think they have lost their way. They used to be good satire, but recently, they lost the wit, and just started resorting to name calling. The last episode I saw was doing a 'satire' on a Fox news clip, and the only thing they had was making fun of the guys hair. Given how much material there is to do real satire, I can only assume that all of their good writer were moved to the Colbert Report.
It is actually not an analogy, as I am not asking you to think of something like it was a car. I am actually talking about car commercials. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a car is just a car.
;)
It seem clear that your view of when commercial are deceptive is different than mine. There is one important fact that you are missing that makes you wrong. You are missing the fact that my shade of gray is better than your shade of gray.
I would like to thank you for making your toilet seat IP Open Source, so in the spirit of Open Source, I would like to submit a bug fix. In the next release of your toilet seat, put the exquisite cravings on the bottom of the seat. This will encourage your Windows using guests to 'lift' the seat, thus reducing the the amount of piss landing on the seat. This will also allow the top of the seat to be a smooth surface, making the user interface more comfortable for users when sitting, which is when the exquisite carvings would be obstructed from view anyways.
I eagerly await the official release of version 0.42 of Exquisite Toilet Seat.
This has been hitting my radar lately as well. It seems that any truth in advertising laws that may have ever existed, are out the window. Just this week, I saw a Comcast commercial that was going on about "On-Demand". In very clear audio, while showing the On-Demand menus on the screen, they stated multiple times that "On-Demand is free". At the bottom of the screen, there was small text that said "Content will impose additional charges." Now, I know what the text said because I saw the same commercial later on a 32" screen. When I originally watched the commercial on the 20" TV in my office, the text was simply unreadable. It was barely readable on the 32" screen.
The other one that always gets me is car commercials. 90% of all car commercials show the vehicle being used in an illegal manner with often unreadble text at the bottom stating "Closed course. Professional driver." Yes, they have the sometimes readable disclaimer, but clearly the commercials are specifically designed to show people how the vehicle is really great at doing illegal things. While usually it is a vehicle driving too fast on twisty mountain roads, there was actually one running for a while where a car was driving way too fast, through city streets with traffic cones chasing it. The commercial actually had a part showing a pedestrian jumping into a dumpster to avoid being run down! This doesn't seem any different than if a rat poison company was a running commercial showing a wife putting rat poison in her husbands dinner while talking about life insurance payout, but having sometimes readable small text stating "Imitation Poison. Professional Chef.".
Given the number of people that get killed using the vehicles exactly as advertised, I don't see how this has never been addressed.
You know, 8 years ago, I would have agreed that this would never be tested, and I don't think the FDA will, but 8 years ago, I would not have believed that bringing someone to the edge of drowning to force a confession or get information would be something the US government would openly admit to either. If the government is openly admitting to basically the same kind of actions that were condemned as atrocities committed by the witch hunters of early America, I don't see how there would be much issue for them to perform chemical experiments on secret prison inmates.
I also think that the genie is out of the bottle, so if this line does get crossed, I don't think it will be limited to only one party or the other.
Clearly you don't get my point. Bluntly. No, not everyone can learn ANY subject. Your mistaking the human mind for a magic artifact. You are also telling any that doesn't understand something that it is because of their character flaw. We don't have 6 million dollar man style bionic arms, and we don't have bionic brains. So, even with steroids and narcotics, he is unlikely to ever bench 800 pounds. There are simply physical limits to the human body. Besides, if you understand that the human body has limits without artificial advancements, why can you not accept that the human brain does too. It is just another part of the body.
Really, are you jumping to religion and claiming that humans are somehow fundamentally different than all other animals on the planet, or do you propose that any animal can learn ANY subject if they are willing to put in the effort?
Of course, when the boss hates you (in this case the President), and isn't too bright, you can't count on good reasoning with employee retention. After all, these are exactly the kinds of guys the president was referring to when he talked about 'The nerd patrol', and he didn't say it as a term of endearment.
Maybe I have it all wrong, but when I was learning to read in the 70's, we heard nothing of Phonics. We were learning to read by rote, which means to just memorize the words. It wasn't until I was 10, that I first heard about phonics as a teaching method. It was in '81, and in my school they asked for volunteers from the 5th and 6th graders to watch the kindergarten and 1st grade classes during lunch. I was shocked to see school books and posters with things like "kat" and "fon" in them. This was the big phonics push. Whole learning actually gained favor after phonics was found to have failed.
I think you have it half right. Schools don't teach much to kids. You are right in that spelling IS a matter of rote. There is nothing to be done about that. The part that I disagree on is that phonics is useless. The use that phonics has is that it helps in reading, and reading will get you looking at the correct spelling of words. Looking at the correct spelling of words will help you memorize the spelling of those words by rote. The problem with phonics is that a large group of 'educators' got it in their heads that it was some kind of silver bullet, when in fact it is basically a trick to help you learn the language by rote. Phonics isn't the the end, but a means to get more access to memorization.
Your advice is VERY good. I particularly think that "Allow your children to engage you in intellectual conversations." is both one of the most important, and one of the thing generally not done. We are all familiar with the old saying "Children should be seen and not heard."
I would also add:
- Don't hide information that your kids are not yet capable of understanding. We learn through both through building on previous work AND simple memorization. Just as your kid can tell you the color of the walls in his room because just being in his room because he cannot help but notice and file away in his head the color, he will remember all sorts of things by just having them in his environment. When the time comes that he can understand it, many of the terms and ideas will already be familiar.
- Make learning fun. I don't mean that you should try to make a formal game out of any subject you want your kid to learn. I mean that if you can find something your kid wants to do that requires the knowledge you want them to learn, they are WAY more likely to learn it. For example if you wanted your kid to learn how to press a bunch of colored dots in a pattern, you would have a very hard time teaching them that in an "education" environment. Why you would want your kid to learn this, I don't know, but we teach kids all sorts of strange things. Now, if you show them Guitar Hero's, your going to have to put effort into stopping them from spending too much time learning how to press those colored dots.
- Don't be a know it all. Go ahead and let your kids know that you don't know everything. This will give you the opportunity to learn with your kids, and to show them that learning is a life long activity that is enjoyable. It will also allow them to quiz you on subjects. When my son was learning to read, we had flash cards up on the wall. While we would quiz him on what the words were, we would also let him quiz us. This had the effect that he would figure out the word in his head before we would say it, so that he was ready to tell us if we got it right or not.
- If your kids want to do something, instead of telling them no, get them into an environment that will allow them to try it. For example, every kid is going to blow into a juice pack. Inside the house or car, this leads to a huge mess, and is a problem. The first time your kid tries it, instead of just telling them no, tell them not to do it in the house because it will make a mess. Tell them that you and they can do the experiment outside to see what happens. Finally, actually do the experiment. If it is night, go out the next day. If your eating lunch, go out right after you finish eating. Do the experiment and let your kid see what happens. This will encourage them to discover the world around them. It will help them understand that there are appropriate times and places for things. It will also give them a better feeling about learning. Instead of telling them that they should learn, and that learning can be fun, you will be telling them that the fun things they are already doing IS learning. Often kids get in trouble for trying to learn. The parents just see a mess or broken property. It also leads to kids hiding their experiments. I know as a kid, we would blow things up to see what would happen. Because we had to hide it, we did not use proper safety procedures. If your kid wants to drive fast, get them to a race track instead of sending them out on the road to kill someone, because one way or the other, they will drive fast if that is what they want to do.
- Understand that just as adults sometimes need to walk away from a particularly difficult problem, so do kids. They are human after all. When faced with a very difficult intellectual problem, walking away from it, and coming back later will often give you a different perspective on things. It will also reduce the stress involved, which might be blocking your ability to see the solution. The same principals apply to kids. Th
The current culture of 'trying is what matters' is just as bad as the culture of 'you have what your born with'. When you tell a kid that is failing at algebra that "you need to work harder at math", and they are already working their ass off, you are doing just as much harm as if they think that they just don't have the brains for it. It reminds me of the 80's anti-cocaine commercial with the guy walking in circles. He was repeating over and over. "I do more cocaine so that I can work harder. I work harder so I can earn more money. I earn more money so that I can buy more cocaine. I do more cocaine so I can work harder...." Over and over. How bad do you think a kid feels when they are simply incapable of doing something, and they are told over and over that it is because of a lack of character. That is what you are telling them, whether you realize it or not. You are telling your kid that their inability to understand Applied Statistics coursework or multi-dimensional algebra in their head is because they just didn't try hard enough. It also reminds me of the debate I had as a kid with my father. He was never happy with my performance because he always felt I could do better just by trying harder. He felt that the most important thing was to try hard. (Well, actually, he was just an ass, and that was his excuse, but anyway.) I still remember him telling me that employers want people that will try hard. Which would always be countered with the question: "Would you rather have a heart surgeon that performs your surgery effortlessly, or one that has to try real hard?"
This is a classic debate of nature vs. nurture. Well, the answer to the question of which defines your intellect, nature or nurture, is "Yes". I consistently tell my kid that if he keeps practicing, he will get better at things, but I will never want him to believe that the only reason he failed at something is that he just didn't try hard enough. His inability to bench press 800 pounds at 3 years old has nothing to do with not trying hard enough. No matter how hard he tries, he is not going to do it. As a matter of fact, it is likely that if his sole focus for the rest of his life was to spend every last bit of effort in him to bench press 800 pounds, he would still never be able to do it. Even though others have. Of course being able to bench press 250 pounds as an adult will likely be a matter of how much effort he puts into getting there.
Even when we rule out the extremes of human achievement, we need to look at the fact that we are not immortal timeless beings. We have a limited amount of time. The time we have is divided up into various tasks that we put effort into. If our kids put more effort into playing baseball, they will have less time available to put effort into playing piano. This is just a physical limitation of the universe we live in. So, when you tell your kid to try harder in one subject (not limited to school studies), you are telling them not to put that effort into another subject. The real key is to guide their time and effort into subjects that will achieve both the greatest results, as well as be the most useful.
Lets take a kid with the genes to easily understand music and poor genes to understand algebra. Neither of these skills are used by most people on a day to day basis, so neglecting either one is not going to prevent someone from being successful. If this hypothetical kid spends a years worth of effort into learning music instead of algebra, he will end up smarter.
The key is to make sure your kid is competent in all areas that they need with enough leeway that they are not just scraping by, and then to enhance the areas that will give the greatest effect. Obviously that is a gross over simplification, but the principal is there.
Oh, I definitely wasn't disagreeing in the specific instance with the GP. Only with the over simplification of the specific statement about force and voluntary trade. Of course there is also the possibility that the GP only put it that way to be brief, and doesn't disagree with me either.
;) It was a debate between the merits of rural culture and city culture. For the record, I have lived in cities all my life, but none of the 'international' cities like NY, or SF. The 'city person' that I was talking to, was trying to convince me that there was MORE culture in cities than in rural areas. My stance was that since a culture is the way people behave and think in a particular area, you could not have more culture in one area than in another by definition. Only different. Their example was that in the city, you might run into people from 10 different cultures in an average day. My stance was that each of those people do not hold the entirety of the culture they came from, but just a piece, and once you put them all in the same place, those pieces come together to be a single, new, unique culture of their own.
This loss of their old culture being slowly evolved into a new culture is what you are referring to in your post. Although I would disagree with calling it stasis, as small pieces, sometimes imperceptible pieces, will slowly evaporate away. Like a cup of sugar water left in the sun, the water slowly disappears, and if new water is not added, you end up with something entirely different than what you started. It may take a very very long time, but eventually you won't have water anymore.
Your point about the French culture is interesting in that I was recently having an off line debate about culture. That's right, I actually talked to someone off line.
Later, while pondering my debate, I was thinking about how one could retain a culture while in contact with other culture. I pretty much came to the conclusion that culture the only way to rally have a different culture is through isolation. Much like new breeds of animals come from isolation of groups of animals, after enough mutation happens that they are no longer the same breed, the same can be said of cultures. Much like breeding animals, both good and bad traits come from this isolation. Without it, you get less variety. I would say that our planet is far too small in this day and age for us to try the cultural isolation route, so until we get off the planet as a species, we are on an inevitable drive towards a single culture.
I totally agree with you in this case, but you do need to keep in mind that the difference is not black and white. It is definitly gray. If enough people eat at that McDonalds, they could drive other restaurants out of business, and thus when the bomber is giving a push (as in a small amount of force) to eat at the McDonalds. If McDonalds did well enough, they could start pushing out bakeries, butchers, and many more restaurants. Do not get me wrong. I in no way believe that McDonalds could successfully drive out enough of the competition that one would not have any other choices, but they could make the choice less, and far less convenient. I use McDonalds in the US to come to this conclusion. If McDonalds cannot drive away all competion in the US, I doubt they will be able to wipe out all competition in France.
An example of where Voluntary trade is closer to force, is what I am currently experiancing with ATM cards. I refuse to have a 'check card'. They are a security nightmare, as they allow money to be withdrawn from your account with absolutly no identification. Access to the card IS access to all of the money in the account. Now, when they were first introduced you could tell your bank that you did not want one. Unfortunatly, as the banks pushed these more and more on the customers, it became harder and harder to keep your secure ATM access. Recently I've been looking, and most banks will simply not let you have a secure ATM anymore. The choice is gone. Now, I understand that you can go into the bank, but bank hours can make that very difficult, and the ability to have access to your money is cutting you off from taking part in society.
Now, take it one step farther and look at someone that doesn't want to take part in 'volentary trade' with oil companies. That might just not be possible.
We should get back to the good old days when instead of fragging a guy in a video game, kids would go outside... and... physcially act out the act of cutting each others scalps from their heads. They would physically act out burning each other at the stake, and physically act out shooting each other with realistic guns that often had small powder caps to get a simulated gun sound. Obviously it is the games that kids are playing today that has turned every last one of them into a powder keg just waiting to go off.
"If an hour to an hour and a half a day worth of breaks is excessive, then a great many office people are given excessive breaks."
Right in your first paragraph you lose credibility. I never said that an hour and a half is excessive. You are trying to use a strawman argument, and show that you know you are being dishonest. In fact, most office jobs have exactly an hour and a half. Of course, most office workers are not paid for the hour they spend eating lunch. If you feel that the amount of time given for lunch is unreasonable, perhaps you should check your ethics, and start speaking up for the students who are limited to that amount of time for their lunch also. I'm sure that you can direct me to old posts where you decried the horrid treatment of students for their short lunch breaks right?
"A "teacher's aide" isn't typically a student, either."
Here you lose credibility again. While there certainly are professional aids, at least up until recently, schools regularly gave students class credit for helping teachers with their work. I will concede that teachers unions might have negotiated this away in an attempt to get a wider spot at the education money trough, as it has been 4 or 5 years since I have been around any jr high, and high school students in quantity, so cannot say that I have heard any talking about it recently.
"If you know of a middle school or high school class that doesn't have essay questions and topic papers that need grading by a teacher, then that teacher's not doing what they should."
More credibility lose. Your actually claiming that PE teachers and Algebra teachers are not doing there jobs if they don't assign essay questions? Get real. Besides that, your arguing that teachers are being abused with low wages even though you claim they are not doing what they should.
"You can bet the figures for yearly pay in the reported data include the pay in the averages, though. After all, that's part of the teacher's contracted work for which their taxes would be reported."
Yet again credibility lose. No, you can not bet on this. That is the statement of a person that is just making stuff up to try to support his case. The stats on teacher pay is generally not going to include second jobs, which is what summer school is. A summer job as an EMT would show up on taxes too, but that certainly isn't going to be included in the reports.
"Yes, lots of jobs are crappy. Most government jobs that require a Bachelor's or Master's degree are not particularly crappy."
Now, we are getting to the crux of things. There is obviously some sour grapes that teachers are not getting as sweet a spot at the government money trough.
"I don't think of kids in general as "pukes", but enough public school students are complete little anti-social twits that all the teachers have to deal with those kids in addition to the decent ones. You deal with jerks everywhere, but nowhere other than the public schools do you see the type of intimidation of adults by kids as when spoiled brats threaten to have mommy talk to the school board, which includes daddy."
Unless you are in some tiny backwater village, this is going to be a minor problem. There are just going to be too many teachers for for the few kids that are related to the school board to have a major impact. Besides that, let me just say, welcome to the real world. Kids get jobs at their daddy's companies too. Guess what, same problem. You again lose credibility by complaining about the reality of life, like teachers are somehow singled out when they have to deal with the same crap that other people do. Of course, you could be showing your disrespect for minors by implying that they somehow should be judged by a different set of ethics than adults. This of course makes you lose more credibility. I have yet to see teachers complaining about having one school per district. This would alleviate them of the problem, as most of them would not even have a
Absolute BS. Just because the they are not taught something, doesn't mean they can't learn. The people that tell you a kid can't learn to read until they are 6 or 7, are the same ones that will tell you that the entire world population became retarded in just a few generations. That somehow an age that could build nations, raise families, fight wars, negotiate piece, run nations, run farms, run businesses, and do all of the things that adults do, are somehow now too feeble minded to handle even the most basic of adult responsibilities. That they are now 'children'.
These are symptoms of environment, not genetics.
Unfortunately, I have not heard of any municipalities that have implemented this, and I'm not sure that there are not other... 'factors' that would keep it from being implemented even if it turned out to be the obvious answer. No doubt planning would be needed, and the idea would need to be fleshed out, but my thought would be that the conduit would be along the lines of our storm drain systems. Many of these are large enough for a grown man to walk in if he haunches over, and they have access every 300 feet or so. Add a 3" or 4" off shoot that terminates at the residence property line, and you have your basic system laid out. If storm drains can be kept clear, cables could be pulled through a similar system. Heck, if it were not for the debris getting tangled in the lines, I would suggest that municipalities use the existing storm drain system.
Basically, most cities already have 3 conduit systems that they manage just fine. Sewer, water, and storm drains. While a forth conduit system is handled by the gas company. Having one more conduit system that does not involve moving water or feces around just cannot be that hard, and it certainly could handle greater leakage than the fresh water or gas lines.