I can best summarize your beliefs as "I can force people to spend money on teaching some of my beliefs, but not all. In the meanwhile, they cannot do the same to me, because I don't agree with their beliefs".
In my opinion, we should have either:
1: No forcing by anyone (ie, no publicly-funded education)
or
2: Complete choice in what people learn
Any other format leads to hypocrisy, with the majority forcing the minority to subsidize the majority's beliefs. This is hypocritical, unfair, and dangerous. Why are you so afraid of someone learning about Jesus or the Buddha or the Earth Goddess? I am much more afraid of people who think they know more than other people and therefore should control their right to choose. You are separating "religious" beliefs from all others and clearly treating them as lesser, inferior thoughts - as indicated by your call to ban them from public schools. The establishment clause bans their elevation. It does not require burying them.
As for my analogy, I will reverse it so perhaps you will get the point: Imagine that every time a liberal and a conservative get into an argument, the con gets paid $50 for every witty retort - to be paid for by a tax that everyone pays, of course. Is there still freedom of speech? Of course not. If one type is subsidized, and another is not, there is no longer a free choice. Likewise, we do not have a free choice between secular and religious educations.
The government should be indifferent to religion and not even define whether something is "religion" or not in the first place. You want the government to be openly hostile to certain religions, treating their beliefs as inferior to your own.
Indeed. If someone wants to learn some of the ways those "ought" questions can be answered, they're free to do so on their own time and at their own expense.
That's a bit ironic, given that you have some very strong opinions about what ought to be taught in schools and about who ought to be forced to pay for it against their will.
I don't want my public schools telling anyone what they ought to do.
Start by practicing what you preach.
Partially that's because I believe on principle that everyone should make up their own minds, but mainly it's because there can be no consensus.
Yes, everyone should be allowed to make up their own minds, rather than you deciding for them.
You'll find no agreement, however, on any but the simplest of "ought" statements.
There is wide agreement on a whole lot of them. You shouldn't murder, steal, or rape, for example.
I agree. As I'm sure you know, I've never said anyone doesn't have the right to learn whatever they want, nor have I interfered with their right to do so.
Taxing is "interfering" by any stretch of the imagination. If you think otherwise, imagine a $50/sentence tax on the expression of your political beliefs. Would that "interfere" with your right to free speech? Or can I claim "Hey, you still have a choice"?
Their right to learn about whatever religion they like, however, does not obligate me, or any other taxpayer, to pay for it - just as their right to bear arms doesn't mean I have to buy them a gun.
But you want a tax that buys YOU a gun but not them, because they do not want the same gun as you.
Maybe you should get your reading comprehension checked, then, because that sure isn't what I wrote. Whether I agree with the beliefs in question is irrelevant; there are plenty of beliefs I hold that shouldn't be taught as The Truth in school either.
There is something that you consider a lie but think the schools should teach? Or are you merely claiming you are only willing to force others to learn some of your beliefs, but not all?
A public good is one where unrelated people share substantial benefits. It is likely your education benefits you, your family, your customers, and your employer. These are not externalities.
Your education may have a minor impact on other unrelated people, but these externalities are so small that government intrusion is not likely to help the matter at all. Why? Because government action is almost always coupled with externalities of its own. The dead-weight losses resulting from the collection of the taxes to subsidize higher education are going to be far larger than the original problem, which is a tiny degree of under-consumption of education in the absence of government.
At the moment, I believe we have on many fronts a vast over-consumption of education, all thanks to government education subsidies. For example, in my own field (science) there is a massive glut of PhDs who cannot find regular jobs. The costs of over-education are just as real as the costs of under-education. I have no idea why you trust bureaucrats and congressmen to guess the correct balance.
I'd say your "factual relativism" disqualifies you just as well. In the real world, some things are factual, others are a matter of opinion, and it's rarely very hard to tell them apart.
I do not subscribe to relativism (I actually oppose it strongly). However, I am not so arrogant as to place my beliefs ahead of those of other people by force of law, as you are clearly are willing to do.
Algebra can be used to get useful answers in the real world
Again you use the word "useful". This word is opinion, not fact.
for example, "If we have X gallons of gasoline in the tank already, Chicago is Y miles away, our car gets Z miles per gallon, and gas costs an average of $W, how much will it cost us to drive to Chicago and back?
Most people go through life, perfectly happily, without making such calculations. From where I have spent most of my life, it takes a tank of gas to get to Chicago for a normal car. Thirty bucks each way. No one needs to do calculations to determine whether it is actually $28.50 or $32.65 in order to make their decision.
You don't need to believe in any assumptions to see that work
You are making more metaphysical and mathematical assumptions than I care to list, including highly speculative assumptions about the value of being able to calculate something that does not need to be calculated accurately in order to make a decision.
Very simple: we have a definition of what a scientific theory is, and the theory of evolution--which, in my experience, only kooks call "Darwinism"--meets it. It's falsifiable, and it makes predictions (the details of which are off topic here, but you can easily find them yourself). In science class, we teach science.
Yes, I am quite familiar with science. I am a scientist, you know. I also understand its limitations - in particular, it cannot address imperative questions. It is what I consider to be a useful method of answering declarative questions - questions about what is, was, or will be. However, it is based on unfalsifiable assumptions just like any other philosophy, and is unable to address many of the most important questions, which are based on what we "ought" to do.
If you think everyone should learn the basic tenets of various religions, as a factual study in "this is what religion X teaches, this is what Y religion teaches", then go ahead and suggest a comparative religion or philosophy class. Don't expect to be able to teach them as The Truth, though.
If people want to learn either, then they should have every right to do so without interference from you.
They might, but they'd be wrong. The fact is it's not OK to use tax dollars to teach religion; it is OK to use tax dollars to teach other things. See how that works?
No, I don't. I just see you saying "It is alright to use tax dollars to teach my beliefs, but not those that I disagree with". Most disturbingly, this is because you do not belief your beliefs are beliefs. Even the most nutty wing-nuts I have ever encountered grant this much - which is why I do not fear them or their ideology. It is precisely why yours is far more dangerous.
Half the day or thereabouts should be core curriculum. The other have should be up to the school. If some kids want to study extra science, some music, some Satan worship - go ahead.
a public and private good, get back to us and we can have a real discussion.
For example, except in the case of communicable diseases, your health is a private matter. Benefits clearly flow to you and those you choose to share them with. This would be contrasted by something like defense. I cannot purchase or consume defense separately from you. Defense is a public good - one that is inherently shared by everyone.
Public goods should be in the realm of government, because individuals have no incentive to fund them adequately. Private goods, like health care or retirement insurance, have little or no externality and government intrusion is unnecessary.
There is no reason for government to fund higher education. If it does this anyway, it damned well better do it under strict conditions of political neutrality.
I was talking about real statistics with large sample sets. SAT have been shown to be close to impervious to coaching.
One argument I have always found odd is certain political groups will use the small coachability of the SAT against it (ie, it shouldnt be weighted heavily in admissions) when the primary alternative - grades - are FAR more coachable.
First, "belief" has nothing to do with it. A government-funded school's job is to teach factual information.
The attitude that you have the facts, and those that disagree with you are wrong, is the whole root of the problem and exactly why you shouldn't be in charge of determining who learns what.
For the fun of it, I will address some of your other points.
You don't have to believe in algebra
Actually, you do. Apparently you neither studied advanced mathematics or logic. Please "prove" algebra starting with no assumptions. I wish you luck.
it just works.
An even bigger logical mistake - you are switching from a declarative statements to imperatives (for the layman, "is" statements vs "ought" statements). If something "works", one means that it produces a good result. "Good" is clearly an opinion, not a fact. Perhaps you find algebra useful. That is nice. That clearly does not imply that everyone else will find it useful. I know some very happy people who have never studied nor performed algebra.
My tax dollars are not being used to teach people to love Jesus
Now how would this argument be any different than me saying "My tax dollars are not going to be used to teach Darwinism"? The only difference I see is the implied "Hey, I've got mine, buddy".
Second, no one is prevented from teaching whatever they want.
This argument and its variants are all have the same flaw. It should be clear if you think about it backwards - what if your kids were forced to go to a religious school or pay double to go to a private school? Couldn't the wing-nuts now use the argument you just used?
issue, and found (correctly) that it is not a problem. Church and state issues end as long as their is choice. You do not complain that when we build roads with government money, it allows people to get to church, now do you?
I am not particularly religious. However, I dislike the anti-religious sentiment often found on the political left, and in voucher opponents in particular. The establishment cause does not require purging religion from everything the state intrudes into, which is the interpretation far too many people seem to have taken. "It's all right for parents to choose, but not if they choose THAT" is clearly anti-religious, demoting such beliefs to an inferior second-tier. That is not "separation" of church and state, it is state VS church.
I fully understand that under a true voucher system, some people will choose some pretty ignorant things. The alternative is to force everyone except the very wealthy to learn whatever the median voter believes (ie, the current system). Which do you think is more dangerous?
about. The US Supreme Court has already ruled (correctly, imho) on the church vs state matter.
I have pretty much given up on understanding the Florida Supreme Court. Their ruling in this case was more akin to "The state constitution requires school equality. Vouchers cannot achieve this. Therefore, vouchers are unconstitutional". Of course, this ignores the obvious argument that the current system is also unconstitutional under their own reasoning, and if anything, the voucher system is less so. How does letting children go from the worst schools in the current system to one that they believe is better make things less equal?
This group of people cannot possibly represent the best and brightest of Florida. I had some doubts about them after Bush vs Gore (whatever you think of that fiasco, a court ruling to change the rules in the middle of a game in order to get the "right" answer is neither a bright idea, nor within their power), but now I am completely convinced they are the dumbest state Supreme Court I have ever heard of.
Actually, you cannot change SAT scores very much with coaching. There is a beautiful plot of this I have seen but I do not remember where. Basically, the gain is a quickly decaying exponential. Here is an approximation of what I remember: A few hours of good prep gets you 10 points. A week gets you twenty. A month gets you thirty. A year gets you forty.
However, a kid who puts in ten hours a week for a year studying for the test probably really deserves the extra forty points. In any case, forty points is not a whole heck of a lot. In general, the SAT, and any other test that measures something close to IQ, is not very coachable. Large efforts are required to make modest gains, and these are generally not permanent.
Ignore the idiots and learn your material. If you are in IT, remember that you are going to be competing against foreigners who are willing to work for 1/3 of the going wage in the US. You had better be reading to produce three times the quality.
Once you start that logic, you wind up gutting the whole idea of vouchers. Yes, some parents will choose schools that some people don't like under a voucher system. However, that happens in the current system anyway, because a great many of us dislike the current public schools.
If we restrict vouchers to schools that a majority likes and are still under the thumb of unions, you would eliminate most of the competition and potential for reform.
It is a standard but silly political tactic to latch on to your opponent's idea, while keeping sure it gets implemented in a half-assed manner, dooming it to failure or irrelevance. For example, Bush's drug plan would fit this model. We don't need it here.
who died did not choose a risk - it came to them. Read what I wrote - I clearly said many of them did make heroic sacrifices. However, I doubt they were inherently any more heroic than the French. The Russians fought not because they were braver, but because they could. It takes much less courage to step up to an even-odds fight than to fight a battle you know you will lose. France surrendered because the alternative was annihilation. Russia did not face that choice.
I will give the Russians credit for playing a major role in defeating Germany. Have I ever denied this? However, I would not count them as contributing to any meaningful sort of "victory" for humanity - they were as bad as what they replaced. It was the United States and Britain who brought the most good out of WWII - and we have every right to be proud of it.
Either a direct choice to give something up, or an indirect choice to take the risk. I am sure a great many Russians made sacrifices, but not in direct proportion to deaths. Many of their deaths were civilians and conscripts, for example. On the other hand, virtually all of the American deaths would qualify as a sacrifice, as those men and women made the choice.
Yes, Russia was a critical element in WWII. However, I think you underestimate the importance of the US and Britain. It sure didn't sure Russia to have a large part of the Wehrmacht on the other side of the continent, bombs raining down in Germany, the Nazi naval power decimated, and Japan tied up on Russia's backside.
However, I don't give Russia much credit for their victory. One-slave master stealing from another is hardly something worth acknowledging.
People who use a "black accent" are far more likely to be poor than people who use a "white accent", both because blacks in general are poorer than whites, and because many middle and upper class blacks have mitigated or never had such accents. Could your prof imitate a "poor white trash" accent? I think that experiment would make the point much stronger because the race and class issues would be disentangled.
However, I don't doubt that your prof is right - there is racism in markets such as housing and lending.
is definitely not a measure of a nation's accomplishments, nor is it even a measure of sacrifice - it is only a measure of loss. I am sure many more Americans would have died if more than just Pearl Harbor and a few Alaskan islands were attacked (the ridiculous balloon attacks I am simply ignoring). Would such a scenario someone increase our right to claim our accomplishments?
It is simple. We liberated half of Europe during WWII. One can debate, however, which jack-booted thugs we liberated it from. I fail to see how this makes a difference. On top of that, we liberated Japan from its own insane rulers and helped turn it into one of the most productive, peaceful nations on earth.
It isn't our fault Europe is ineffectual - it is theirs and no other's. It matters little. With their current social policies and attitude, they will breed themselves into total irrelevance in two generations.
Now you are being absurdly ahistorical. Please find me any scholar that would agree to such a claim. I am also confused at to which "Europeans" you are referring to. The Brits? Yes, they were in it with us. Surely not the French - they were busy spitting on our soldiers' graves. The Italians? They were incompetent regardless of whose side they were on. Swiss and Spanish? You could either give them credit for being smart enough to stay out of it, or cowards for turning a blind eye to Hitler's mania. In any case, Europe was not winning the war when we entered it, and we were helping from the beginning, so your statement is wrong twice over. I'll give some creds to all those in Northern and Eastern Europe who at least put up a fight before they got Panzered, but they weren't much of a factor in '44-45. At least they did better than the French.
Calling a dead man's sacrifice "chicken feed" is an insult, along with much of the remainder of your post.
It is worse than war, actually - China is setting out to commit cultural genocide.
Ironically, I recently got in an argument with a Chinese guy about our treatment of Native Americans. Tibet is much worse, though - it would be like everything that westerners did to Native Americans except:
1: Performed long after the rest of the world realized such behavior was wrong
2: Followed the actual military conquest with a determined effort to whipe the culture from the survivors.
At some point in 1944, we could have dropped out of the war and Russia would have been able to finish the war (and vice versa). I would guess this date was after June, however. Yes, this implies that our men who were dying late in the war were dying as much to prevent the spread of communism as they were dying to defeat Hitler. I fail to see how this denigrates their memory in any way, given the horrors that communism produced. Also, do you have any citations that the "hold back the Reds" mentality was playing a significant role in policy decisions as early as June '44? I cannot recall having seen such. It clearly played a role in '45, but not that big of one. With or without the communism issue, we were going to finish the job.
I admit I am not an expert on this matter. I have more interest in the Pacific theatre (for obvious reasons, if you care to do some research), though you are right that it was smaller (about a third of the deaths, mostly in China).
I do not normally give out my name on message boards. However, I have given you access to my job, my place of work, and the obvious fact that I am a native speaker of English. That narrows me down to about six people on earth - far fewer than "Stephen Ma" does.
What was our original point? Oh, that in your haste to insult America, you insulted vets, too - which I rightly noted that you wouldn't dare do to their faces.
That's how I do it - it works just fine. No need for fan-subbing or downloading. Also, companies can release full teaser episodes and get all the benefits of viral marketing without the negative effects.
As for these two series, I find it implausible that no execs at the normal anime distributors know of their existence. I therefore assume they feel the series will not turn a profit.
Fan-subbing is a form of viral marketing, which is a positive thing for the company. However, free downloads of an entire series can have the opposite effect and reduce sales by a "free-rider" effect. How do these effects stack up?
First, I would say it is a matter of scale. A small bit of viral marketing can go a long way. However, viral marketing does not scale. If you double the number of marketers, I don't think you get double the effect. You surely don't need 250,000 people downloading each new episode of Naruto in order to spread the word to the three anime fans that would have never heard of Naruto without fan-subs.
On the other hand, the "free-rider" problem scales the other way. When viral marketing is small scale, it usually occurs in the hands of people like you, who are hard-core enough to buy even after you receive the freebies. However, as the marketing spreads, it inevitably winds up in the hands of less fanatic and honest people - mostly free-riders.
Hence, I would argue that the positive effects of fan-subbing are sub-linear with scale, while the negative effects are super-linear with scale. Hence, at low-volumes, fan-subbing could be beneficial, while at high volumes, it is negative for the anime producers. This is what has changed in the last ten years. Fan-subs used to be small scale, pain-in-the-butt phenomena that due to their limited scale probably had positive effects (and definitely weren't worth fighting). However, on the massive scale the phenomena has grown to, the free-rider effect has probably outgrown the positive viral effect.
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I can best summarize your beliefs as "I can force people to spend money on teaching some of my beliefs, but not all. In the meanwhile, they cannot do the same to me, because I don't agree with their beliefs".
In my opinion, we should have either:
1: No forcing by anyone (ie, no publicly-funded education)
or
2: Complete choice in what people learn
Any other format leads to hypocrisy, with the majority forcing the minority to subsidize the majority's beliefs. This is hypocritical, unfair, and dangerous. Why are you so afraid of someone learning about Jesus or the Buddha or the Earth Goddess? I am much more afraid of people who think they know more than other people and therefore should control their right to choose. You are separating "religious" beliefs from all others and clearly treating them as lesser, inferior thoughts - as indicated by your call to ban them from public schools. The establishment clause bans their elevation. It does not require burying them.
As for my analogy, I will reverse it so perhaps you will get the point: Imagine that every time a liberal and a conservative get into an argument, the con gets paid $50 for every witty retort - to be paid for by a tax that everyone pays, of course. Is there still freedom of speech? Of course not. If one type is subsidized, and another is not, there is no longer a free choice. Likewise, we do not have a free choice between secular and religious educations.
The government has no place supporting religion.
The government should be indifferent to religion and not even define whether something is "religion" or not in the first place. You want the government to be openly hostile to certain religions, treating their beliefs as inferior to your own.
Indeed. If someone wants to learn some of the ways those "ought" questions can be answered, they're free to do so on their own time and at their own expense.
That's a bit ironic, given that you have some very strong opinions about what ought to be taught in schools and about who ought to be forced to pay for it against their will.
I don't want my public schools telling anyone what they ought to do.
Start by practicing what you preach.
Partially that's because I believe on principle that everyone should make up their own minds, but mainly it's because there can be no consensus.
Yes, everyone should be allowed to make up their own minds, rather than you deciding for them.
You'll find no agreement, however, on any but the simplest of "ought" statements.
There is wide agreement on a whole lot of them. You shouldn't murder, steal, or rape, for example.
I agree. As I'm sure you know, I've never said anyone doesn't have the right to learn whatever they want, nor have I interfered with their right to do so.
Taxing is "interfering" by any stretch of the imagination. If you think otherwise, imagine a $50/sentence tax on the expression of your political beliefs. Would that "interfere" with your right to free speech? Or can I claim "Hey, you still have a choice"?
Their right to learn about whatever religion they like, however, does not obligate me, or any other taxpayer, to pay for it - just as their right to bear arms doesn't mean I have to buy them a gun.
But you want a tax that buys YOU a gun but not them, because they do not want the same gun as you.
Maybe you should get your reading comprehension checked, then, because that sure isn't what I wrote. Whether I agree with the beliefs in question is irrelevant; there are plenty of beliefs I hold that shouldn't be taught as The Truth in school either.
There is something that you consider a lie but think the schools should teach? Or are you merely claiming you are only willing to force others to learn some of your beliefs, but not all?
A public good is one where unrelated people share substantial benefits. It is likely your education benefits you, your family, your customers, and your employer. These are not externalities. Your education may have a minor impact on other unrelated people, but these externalities are so small that government intrusion is not likely to help the matter at all. Why? Because government action is almost always coupled with externalities of its own. The dead-weight losses resulting from the collection of the taxes to subsidize higher education are going to be far larger than the original problem, which is a tiny degree of under-consumption of education in the absence of government.
At the moment, I believe we have on many fronts a vast over-consumption of education, all thanks to government education subsidies. For example, in my own field (science) there is a massive glut of PhDs who cannot find regular jobs. The costs of over-education are just as real as the costs of under-education. I have no idea why you trust bureaucrats and congressmen to guess the correct balance.
I'd say your "factual relativism" disqualifies you just as well. In the real world, some things are factual, others are a matter of opinion, and it's rarely very hard to tell them apart.
I do not subscribe to relativism (I actually oppose it strongly). However, I am not so arrogant as to place my beliefs ahead of those of other people by force of law, as you are clearly are willing to do.
Algebra can be used to get useful answers in the real world
Again you use the word "useful". This word is opinion, not fact.
for example, "If we have X gallons of gasoline in the tank already, Chicago is Y miles away, our car gets Z miles per gallon, and gas costs an average of $W, how much will it cost us to drive to Chicago and back?
Most people go through life, perfectly happily, without making such calculations. From where I have spent most of my life, it takes a tank of gas to get to Chicago for a normal car. Thirty bucks each way. No one needs to do calculations to determine whether it is actually $28.50 or $32.65 in order to make their decision.
You don't need to believe in any assumptions to see that work
You are making more metaphysical and mathematical assumptions than I care to list, including highly speculative assumptions about the value of being able to calculate something that does not need to be calculated accurately in order to make a decision.
Very simple: we have a definition of what a scientific theory is, and the theory of evolution--which, in my experience, only kooks call "Darwinism"--meets it. It's falsifiable, and it makes predictions (the details of which are off topic here, but you can easily find them yourself). In science class, we teach science.
Yes, I am quite familiar with science. I am a scientist, you know. I also understand its limitations - in particular, it cannot address imperative questions. It is what I consider to be a useful method of answering declarative questions - questions about what is, was, or will be. However, it is based on unfalsifiable assumptions just like any other philosophy, and is unable to address many of the most important questions, which are based on what we "ought" to do.
If you think everyone should learn the basic tenets of various religions, as a factual study in "this is what religion X teaches, this is what Y religion teaches", then go ahead and suggest a comparative religion or philosophy class. Don't expect to be able to teach them as The Truth, though.
If people want to learn either, then they should have every right to do so without interference from you.
They might, but they'd be wrong. The fact is it's not OK to use tax dollars to teach religion; it is OK to use tax dollars to teach other things. See how that works?
No, I don't. I just see you saying "It is alright to use tax dollars to teach my beliefs, but not those that I disagree with". Most disturbingly, this is because you do not belief your beliefs are beliefs. Even the most nutty wing-nuts I have ever encountered grant this much - which is why I do not fear them or their ideology. It is precisely why yours is far more dangerous.
Half the day or thereabouts should be core curriculum. The other have should be up to the school. If some kids want to study extra science, some music, some Satan worship - go ahead.
a public and private good, get back to us and we can have a real discussion.
For example, except in the case of communicable diseases, your health is a private matter. Benefits clearly flow to you and those you choose to share them with. This would be contrasted by something like defense. I cannot purchase or consume defense separately from you. Defense is a public good - one that is inherently shared by everyone.
Public goods should be in the realm of government, because individuals have no incentive to fund them adequately. Private goods, like health care or retirement insurance, have little or no externality and government intrusion is unnecessary.
There is no reason for government to fund higher education. If it does this anyway, it damned well better do it under strict conditions of political neutrality.
I was talking about real statistics with large sample sets. SAT have been shown to be close to impervious to coaching.
One argument I have always found odd is certain political groups will use the small coachability of the SAT against it (ie, it shouldnt be weighted heavily in admissions) when the primary alternative - grades - are FAR more coachable.
Go figure.
First, "belief" has nothing to do with it. A government-funded school's job is to teach factual information.
The attitude that you have the facts, and those that disagree with you are wrong, is the whole root of the problem and exactly why you shouldn't be in charge of determining who learns what.
For the fun of it, I will address some of your other points.
You don't have to believe in algebra
Actually, you do. Apparently you neither studied advanced mathematics or logic. Please "prove" algebra starting with no assumptions. I wish you luck.
it just works.
An even bigger logical mistake - you are switching from a declarative statements to imperatives (for the layman, "is" statements vs "ought" statements). If something "works", one means that it produces a good result. "Good" is clearly an opinion, not a fact. Perhaps you find algebra useful. That is nice. That clearly does not imply that everyone else will find it useful. I know some very happy people who have never studied nor performed algebra.
My tax dollars are not being used to teach people to love Jesus
Now how would this argument be any different than me saying "My tax dollars are not going to be used to teach Darwinism"? The only difference I see is the implied "Hey, I've got mine, buddy".
Second, no one is prevented from teaching whatever they want.
This argument and its variants are all have the same flaw. It should be clear if you think about it backwards - what if your kids were forced to go to a religious school or pay double to go to a private school? Couldn't the wing-nuts now use the argument you just used?
issue, and found (correctly) that it is not a problem. Church and state issues end as long as their is choice. You do not complain that when we build roads with government money, it allows people to get to church, now do you?
I am not particularly religious. However, I dislike the anti-religious sentiment often found on the political left, and in voucher opponents in particular. The establishment cause does not require purging religion from everything the state intrudes into, which is the interpretation far too many people seem to have taken. "It's all right for parents to choose, but not if they choose THAT" is clearly anti-religious, demoting such beliefs to an inferior second-tier. That is not "separation" of church and state, it is state VS church.
I fully understand that under a true voucher system, some people will choose some pretty ignorant things. The alternative is to force everyone except the very wealthy to learn whatever the median voter believes (ie, the current system). Which do you think is more dangerous?
about. The US Supreme Court has already ruled (correctly, imho) on the church vs state matter.
I have pretty much given up on understanding the Florida Supreme Court. Their ruling in this case was more akin to "The state constitution requires school equality. Vouchers cannot achieve this. Therefore, vouchers are unconstitutional". Of course, this ignores the obvious argument that the current system is also unconstitutional under their own reasoning, and if anything, the voucher system is less so. How does letting children go from the worst schools in the current system to one that they believe is better make things less equal?
This group of people cannot possibly represent the best and brightest of Florida. I had some doubts about them after Bush vs Gore (whatever you think of that fiasco, a court ruling to change the rules in the middle of a game in order to get the "right" answer is neither a bright idea, nor within their power), but now I am completely convinced they are the dumbest state Supreme Court I have ever heard of.
Actually, you cannot change SAT scores very much with coaching. There is a beautiful plot of this I have seen but I do not remember where. Basically, the gain is a quickly decaying exponential. Here is an approximation of what I remember: A few hours of good prep gets you 10 points. A week gets you twenty. A month gets you thirty. A year gets you forty.
However, a kid who puts in ten hours a week for a year studying for the test probably really deserves the extra forty points. In any case, forty points is not a whole heck of a lot. In general, the SAT, and any other test that measures something close to IQ, is not very coachable. Large efforts are required to make modest gains, and these are generally not permanent.
That will get you the basics of the information you want.
Ignore the idiots and learn your material. If you are in IT, remember that you are going to be competing against foreigners who are willing to work for 1/3 of the going wage in the US. You had better be reading to produce three times the quality.
Once you start that logic, you wind up gutting the whole idea of vouchers. Yes, some parents will choose schools that some people don't like under a voucher system. However, that happens in the current system anyway, because a great many of us dislike the current public schools.
If we restrict vouchers to schools that a majority likes and are still under the thumb of unions, you would eliminate most of the competition and potential for reform.
It is a standard but silly political tactic to latch on to your opponent's idea, while keeping sure it gets implemented in a half-assed manner, dooming it to failure or irrelevance. For example, Bush's drug plan would fit this model. We don't need it here.
who died did not choose a risk - it came to them. Read what I wrote - I clearly said many of them did make heroic sacrifices. However, I doubt they were inherently any more heroic than the French. The Russians fought not because they were braver, but because they could. It takes much less courage to step up to an even-odds fight than to fight a battle you know you will lose. France surrendered because the alternative was annihilation. Russia did not face that choice.
I will give the Russians credit for playing a major role in defeating Germany. Have I ever denied this? However, I would not count them as contributing to any meaningful sort of "victory" for humanity - they were as bad as what they replaced. It was the United States and Britain who brought the most good out of WWII - and we have every right to be proud of it.
Either a direct choice to give something up, or an indirect choice to take the risk. I am sure a great many Russians made sacrifices, but not in direct proportion to deaths. Many of their deaths were civilians and conscripts, for example. On the other hand, virtually all of the American deaths would qualify as a sacrifice, as those men and women made the choice.
Yes, Russia was a critical element in WWII. However, I think you underestimate the importance of the US and Britain. It sure didn't sure Russia to have a large part of the Wehrmacht on the other side of the continent, bombs raining down in Germany, the Nazi naval power decimated, and Japan tied up on Russia's backside.
However, I don't give Russia much credit for their victory. One-slave master stealing from another is hardly something worth acknowledging.
People who use a "black accent" are far more likely to be poor than people who use a "white accent", both because blacks in general are poorer than whites, and because many middle and upper class blacks have mitigated or never had such accents. Could your prof imitate a "poor white trash" accent? I think that experiment would make the point much stronger because the race and class issues would be disentangled.
However, I don't doubt that your prof is right - there is racism in markets such as housing and lending.
is definitely not a measure of a nation's accomplishments, nor is it even a measure of sacrifice - it is only a measure of loss. I am sure many more Americans would have died if more than just Pearl Harbor and a few Alaskan islands were attacked (the ridiculous balloon attacks I am simply ignoring). Would such a scenario someone increase our right to claim our accomplishments?
It is simple. We liberated half of Europe during WWII. One can debate, however, which jack-booted thugs we liberated it from. I fail to see how this makes a difference. On top of that, we liberated Japan from its own insane rulers and helped turn it into one of the most productive, peaceful nations on earth.
It isn't our fault Europe is ineffectual - it is theirs and no other's. It matters little. With their current social policies and attitude, they will breed themselves into total irrelevance in two generations.
Now you are being absurdly ahistorical. Please find me any scholar that would agree to such a claim. I am also confused at to which "Europeans" you are referring to. The Brits? Yes, they were in it with us. Surely not the French - they were busy spitting on our soldiers' graves. The Italians? They were incompetent regardless of whose side they were on. Swiss and Spanish? You could either give them credit for being smart enough to stay out of it, or cowards for turning a blind eye to Hitler's mania. In any case, Europe was not winning the war when we entered it, and we were helping from the beginning, so your statement is wrong twice over. I'll give some creds to all those in Northern and Eastern Europe who at least put up a fight before they got Panzered, but they weren't much of a factor in '44-45. At least they did better than the French.
Calling a dead man's sacrifice "chicken feed" is an insult, along with much of the remainder of your post.
China's actions in Tibet exclude it from the club.
Where is the US engaged in number 2? I sure can't think of any situation that even remotely qualifies.
It is worse than war, actually - China is setting out to commit cultural genocide.
Ironically, I recently got in an argument with a Chinese guy about our treatment of Native Americans. Tibet is much worse, though - it would be like everything that westerners did to Native Americans except:
1: Performed long after the rest of the world realized such behavior was wrong 2: Followed the actual military conquest with a determined effort to whipe the culture from the survivors.
China has no moral high ground on this matter.
nuclear attack? It'll probably just be the filthy Jews vs the towel-heads.
Let's just get back to playing WoW some more, dude! You got your MegaSwordOfDoom yet?
At some point in 1944, we could have dropped out of the war and Russia would have been able to finish the war (and vice versa). I would guess this date was after June, however. Yes, this implies that our men who were dying late in the war were dying as much to prevent the spread of communism as they were dying to defeat Hitler. I fail to see how this denigrates their memory in any way, given the horrors that communism produced. Also, do you have any citations that the "hold back the Reds" mentality was playing a significant role in policy decisions as early as June '44? I cannot recall having seen such. It clearly played a role in '45, but not that big of one. With or without the communism issue, we were going to finish the job.
I admit I am not an expert on this matter. I have more interest in the Pacific theatre (for obvious reasons, if you care to do some research), though you are right that it was smaller (about a third of the deaths, mostly in China).
I do not normally give out my name on message boards. However, I have given you access to my job, my place of work, and the obvious fact that I am a native speaker of English. That narrows me down to about six people on earth - far fewer than "Stephen Ma" does.
What was our original point? Oh, that in your haste to insult America, you insulted vets, too - which I rightly noted that you wouldn't dare do to their faces.
That's how I do it - it works just fine. No need for fan-subbing or downloading. Also, companies can release full teaser episodes and get all the benefits of viral marketing without the negative effects.
As for these two series, I find it implausible that no execs at the normal anime distributors know of their existence. I therefore assume they feel the series will not turn a profit.
Fan-subbing is a form of viral marketing, which is a positive thing for the company. However, free downloads of an entire series can have the opposite effect and reduce sales by a "free-rider" effect. How do these effects stack up?
First, I would say it is a matter of scale. A small bit of viral marketing can go a long way. However, viral marketing does not scale. If you double the number of marketers, I don't think you get double the effect. You surely don't need 250,000 people downloading each new episode of Naruto in order to spread the word to the three anime fans that would have never heard of Naruto without fan-subs.
On the other hand, the "free-rider" problem scales the other way. When viral marketing is small scale, it usually occurs in the hands of people like you, who are hard-core enough to buy even after you receive the freebies. However, as the marketing spreads, it inevitably winds up in the hands of less fanatic and honest people - mostly free-riders.
Hence, I would argue that the positive effects of fan-subbing are sub-linear with scale, while the negative effects are super-linear with scale. Hence, at low-volumes, fan-subbing could be beneficial, while at high volumes, it is negative for the anime producers. This is what has changed in the last ten years. Fan-subs used to be small scale, pain-in-the-butt phenomena that due to their limited scale probably had positive effects (and definitely weren't worth fighting). However, on the massive scale the phenomena has grown to, the free-rider effect has probably outgrown the positive viral effect.