I live in a state where teachers get automatic 4% cost-of-living raises every year, where they get automatic *substantial* raises for various certifications, at certain intervals in their career, etc. and where they're virtually bulletproof once they get tenure (pretty much a job for life after just a few years of service). That would certainly motivate me, promotion or not.
They're already past the 5-year traditional console lifespan (a tradition that's been sacrosanct since the Atari days). And with Playstation gaining ground every day, they're looking real long-in-the-tooth of late. PS3 has MMO's now, user-created content, games that don't have to span several discs (because of the blu-ray drive), blu-ray movie playing capability, etc. The 360 was in the lead for a long time (in the U.S. at least) and MS could have easily secured that lead if they had followed the 5-year lifecyle and bitch-slapped Sony with a next-gen console in Christmas 2010. Instead we got the Kinect, their Wii knockoff that came years after the Wii novelty had worn off (my Wii is sitting in my closet if anyone wants to buy it).
It's a real shame too. Call me a nationalist if you like, but MS was the first American company to compete in the console industry since Atari. And it was nice to not have to wait until a title had been released in Japan for several months to finally get it in the U.S. Sony and Nintendo always treated the west like they were doing us a favor by lowering themselves to even release a game outside of Japan. MS was the first company in a long time to treat the U.S. and Europe as a first-class market instead of an afterthought. And they actually gave us Western-centric games instead of just poorly-translated JRPG's to boot.
It's not that we don't know HOW to evaluate teachers, it's that you have to cut through miles of bullshit from teachers unions, state employee unions, and assorted political allies to actually DO IT and USE IT for anything. If you think that unions are about to negotiate away things like teacher seniority, tenure, automatic raises, etc. then you're high. They protect their own, and they have the emotional political/public appeal of the underpaid noble teacher to use if they need to (even though teachers are actually usually very WELL paid).
There are also real world issues that no one wants to talk about that effect teacher performance at the best and worst schools. Poor schools tend to be in shitty neighborhoods where teachers don't want to work, for example. Improving a school in a shitty neighborhood isn't as simple as "We need to get good teachers." You're NOT going to get the good teachers because the good teachers would be fucking crazy to teach at Gangbanger High when they could make more money and put up with less threats of physical violence if they go to the suburbs and teach at Whitey McRichkid High. So you're stuck with the worst teachers, the one's who had no choice but to come there. School stays shitty, vicious cycle continues.
Breaking that cycle requires real money to recruit better teachers, and the shitty schools usually have the LEAST money. If you want to get rid of the bad teachers in a crappy school, what are you going to do, fire everyone? Where are you going to get replacements? Some crappy schools are having to recruit overseas in places like the Philippines just to find teachers as it is.
This is approaching the problem the wrong way. In an ideal world, it would be great to evaluate teachers and pay/promote/fire based on performance. But in the real world, it doesn't work that way.
I bet you could easily whittle that down to less than 50 who effectively control just about everything in the first-world--when you factor in subsidiaries, companies they invest in or who invest in or depend on them, companies they partner with extensively, etc. Just look at the web of control that the major banking companies alone exert. When a handful of companies in a single industry are so powerful that if they fail, your ENTIRE ECONOMY (and that of many other countries) collapses, I would say they effectively own you. That's way more powerful than any mere group of individual citizens could ever hope to be.
With the U.S. government now controlling all the major credit card companies and banks, I guess they really are the world emperors and overlords. And I, for one, would like to welcome our new Yank overlords.
Assuming that every poor kid got that way because of their individual stupidity and laziness is every bit as dangerous as assuming that every rich kid got that way through their individual intelligence and drive. More often than not, it has more to do with the circumstances they were born into than their individual ability. Using your logic, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would have never made it past grade school (since they grew up working class) and Donald Trump (who inherited his fortune) would be the smartest man in the world.
Why is it the governments responsibility to pay those "with little to no money" way through college?
It's not their responsibility, it's their INVESTMENT. It's in the government's interest to have a well-educated, well-trained populace for the same reasons it's in their interest to build roads and power lines--because it attracts good industry and economic development. What do you think would happen to Silicon Valley if only the rich could afford to become engineers/programmers? I tell you what would happen. All of those high-tech companies would relocate to Europe or China, or some other country that actually invests in an educated populace. The U.S. would slowly sink into 2nd-world status.
I suspect the "AmigaOS" will just be a slightly customized version of Android, ChromeOS, or some other non-Windows OS. They're just trying to wring some nostalgia value out of the name. Some company was doing this with the Commodore 64 a few years ago, selling a "Commodore 64" that was nothing more than a custom case around a conventional Windows computer.
Coincidentally, 98.6% of these were subjects who had been testing for more than 40 days in a row. 40...that's also the number of pounds I would say you've put on since you first came here.
Then I wondered why this was news in 2011. Then I wondered "Whatever happened to Postal 3, anyway?". Then I got kind of sleepy. Then back to wondering about Postal 3.
Now I play some DDO and an old-school MUD and am looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. With a very small, friends and family only guild. Fuck being the largest or first to do X crap. I want to have fun with friends and socialize while killing those scum in the Republic.
I too am looking forward to killing Republic scum. Who wants to be the boring good guys?
I second that emotion. I've tried to get into MMO's, but every side mission is basically "go fetch me 10 wolf pelts" or some variation. I played MUD's back in the day, and they never seemed like this kind of grind. So I'm killing 10 wolves in WoW, mining some asteroid in EVE, or whatever, OVER AND OVER AGAIN. About the only MMO that I have liked so far was Guild Wars, not only because it was free and easy server-changing made it easy to play with friends, but because it was one of the few MMO's I've seen with an actual epic *story* behind it.
But it will be a very politely worded "No," to make it look like the administration actually read it and gave it serious consideration. That way the petitioner can tell himself "Wow, the President really cares what I have to say," completely oblivious to the fact that the response was actually written by a low-level staffer who skimmed over the petition for less than a minute before writing a canned response.
Can you cite some of the nutballs that are suggesting the entire east coast of the US is going to be underwater by 2050? No competent scientist makes this claim.
Harold Wanlass, Jonathan Gregory, Philippe Huybrechts, Sarah Raper, all Ph.D.'s in climate science (except Wanlass, who is a Ph.D. in geology). I think they qualify as "competent scientists" and all of them have made this claim.
No, I'm just someone who despises causeniks in general. Anyone who is thumping some cause in my face with wild eyes is greeted by me with instant skepticism. I don't buy into some wild-eyed Jesus-freak preaching a fire-and-brimstone end if we don't stop sinning. And I don't by into some wild-eyed enviro-wacko preaching a fire-and-brimstone end if we don't stop using petroleum. Ditto for muslims, free-market libertarians, politicians, and pretty much everyone else who uses emotion, fear-mongering, media-whoring, etc. instead of reason to make their arguments for some fucking pet cause.
I guess that makes me a contrarian, if you can call me anything. In truth I am generally distrustful of anyone with wild-eyes. Makes me think their cause has become a religion to them. And religions make people fucking dangerous.
Careful what you wish for. If they ran out tomorrow, you would almost certainly see WWIII begin in the middle east, the economies of West Virginia and Kentucky collapse, and a worldwide financial crisis--all of which would lead to millions of deaths and worldwide suffering. That's what I mean when I say that we have to approach weening ourselves of oil and coal in a way that causes minimal hardship and avoids unintended consequences. You're not going to quit cold turkey without hurting a LOT of people.
If find it quite amusing that you seem to think I'm a Republican, as if my skepticism is just some political cover for my love of all that is rich and bible-thumping. If you knew me, you would realize how funny that charge really was. As I said, I'm very skeptical of BOTH sides, and have no doubt that were you to put me in a roomful of Republicans, they would soon become equally convinced that I was one of them thar' liberal eco-hippies--for refusing to blindly accept their "Big oil and the free market will save us all and bring back Jesus" horseshit.
I would argue that decreasing oil and coal consumption are worthy goals for MANY reasons (not the least of which is the fact that we will eventually run out of them). The only real question in my mind is how we go about it in such a way that causes as minimal hardship as possible and avoids unintended consequences.
Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late. Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been). The real issue that people are talking about when they say "global warming" is the question of how much influence human activities have had on the normal warming/cooling cycles, if this is a negative influence, and, if so, what can humans do within reason to mitigate any negative influences. And *those* questions are a helluva lot harder to answer than "Has there been a general warming trend over the last 100 years?".
I'm not sure pure science is up to answering those questions. And it doesn't help that the issue has become hopelessly politicized--to the point where I've grown very skeptical of BOTH sides and their respective penchants for self-serving hyperbole and increasingly shrill fear-mongering.
Of course, there is also the question of DEGREE of warming, an issue where it's getting harder and harder to distinguish between mainstream science and Chicken Little fear-mongering. IIRC, initial models were showing a 1-2 degree increase over the next 100 years, something that clearly needs to be addressed but not something that's GOING TO KILL US ALL TOMORROW!!!!!. Somewhere along the way this kept getting more and more ramped-up to the point now where I hear advocates claiming that the entire east coast of the U.S. is going to be underwater by 2050. I can no longer tell where the truth begins and the humbug ends.
Of course, I'm going to be criticized here for even daring to question the accepted narrative.
Actually, that's not including the taxes, FICA, etc. that would come out of your paycheck (cutting into your take-home significantly). Realistically, you're looking at more like 60-70 hours a week at minimum wage. And that's also not including all the stuff that isn't included in your student board (toiletries, gas, car maintenance, clothing, etc.). So you can probably make that more like 80 hours a week.
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Wow, with that attitude, your dick must be *so* big.
I live in a state where teachers get automatic 4% cost-of-living raises every year, where they get automatic *substantial* raises for various certifications, at certain intervals in their career, etc. and where they're virtually bulletproof once they get tenure (pretty much a job for life after just a few years of service). That would certainly motivate me, promotion or not.
They're already past the 5-year traditional console lifespan (a tradition that's been sacrosanct since the Atari days). And with Playstation gaining ground every day, they're looking real long-in-the-tooth of late. PS3 has MMO's now, user-created content, games that don't have to span several discs (because of the blu-ray drive), blu-ray movie playing capability, etc. The 360 was in the lead for a long time (in the U.S. at least) and MS could have easily secured that lead if they had followed the 5-year lifecyle and bitch-slapped Sony with a next-gen console in Christmas 2010. Instead we got the Kinect, their Wii knockoff that came years after the Wii novelty had worn off (my Wii is sitting in my closet if anyone wants to buy it).
It's a real shame too. Call me a nationalist if you like, but MS was the first American company to compete in the console industry since Atari. And it was nice to not have to wait until a title had been released in Japan for several months to finally get it in the U.S. Sony and Nintendo always treated the west like they were doing us a favor by lowering themselves to even release a game outside of Japan. MS was the first company in a long time to treat the U.S. and Europe as a first-class market instead of an afterthought. And they actually gave us Western-centric games instead of just poorly-translated JRPG's to boot.
It's not that we don't know HOW to evaluate teachers, it's that you have to cut through miles of bullshit from teachers unions, state employee unions, and assorted political allies to actually DO IT and USE IT for anything. If you think that unions are about to negotiate away things like teacher seniority, tenure, automatic raises, etc. then you're high. They protect their own, and they have the emotional political/public appeal of the underpaid noble teacher to use if they need to (even though teachers are actually usually very WELL paid).
There are also real world issues that no one wants to talk about that effect teacher performance at the best and worst schools. Poor schools tend to be in shitty neighborhoods where teachers don't want to work, for example. Improving a school in a shitty neighborhood isn't as simple as "We need to get good teachers." You're NOT going to get the good teachers because the good teachers would be fucking crazy to teach at Gangbanger High when they could make more money and put up with less threats of physical violence if they go to the suburbs and teach at Whitey McRichkid High. So you're stuck with the worst teachers, the one's who had no choice but to come there. School stays shitty, vicious cycle continues.
Breaking that cycle requires real money to recruit better teachers, and the shitty schools usually have the LEAST money. If you want to get rid of the bad teachers in a crappy school, what are you going to do, fire everyone? Where are you going to get replacements? Some crappy schools are having to recruit overseas in places like the Philippines just to find teachers as it is.
This is approaching the problem the wrong way. In an ideal world, it would be great to evaluate teachers and pay/promote/fire based on performance. But in the real world, it doesn't work that way.
I bet you could easily whittle that down to less than 50 who effectively control just about everything in the first-world--when you factor in subsidiaries, companies they invest in or who invest in or depend on them, companies they partner with extensively, etc. Just look at the web of control that the major banking companies alone exert. When a handful of companies in a single industry are so powerful that if they fail, your ENTIRE ECONOMY (and that of many other countries) collapses, I would say they effectively own you. That's way more powerful than any mere group of individual citizens could ever hope to be.
With the U.S. government now controlling all the major credit card companies and banks, I guess they really are the world emperors and overlords. And I, for one, would like to welcome our new Yank overlords.
Assuming that every poor kid got that way because of their individual stupidity and laziness is every bit as dangerous as assuming that every rich kid got that way through their individual intelligence and drive. More often than not, it has more to do with the circumstances they were born into than their individual ability. Using your logic, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would have never made it past grade school (since they grew up working class) and Donald Trump (who inherited his fortune) would be the smartest man in the world.
Why is it the governments responsibility to pay those "with little to no money" way through college?
It's not their responsibility, it's their INVESTMENT. It's in the government's interest to have a well-educated, well-trained populace for the same reasons it's in their interest to build roads and power lines--because it attracts good industry and economic development. What do you think would happen to Silicon Valley if only the rich could afford to become engineers/programmers? I tell you what would happen. All of those high-tech companies would relocate to Europe or China, or some other country that actually invests in an educated populace. The U.S. would slowly sink into 2nd-world status.
I suspect the "AmigaOS" will just be a slightly customized version of Android, ChromeOS, or some other non-Windows OS. They're just trying to wring some nostalgia value out of the name. Some company was doing this with the Commodore 64 a few years ago, selling a "Commodore 64" that was nothing more than a custom case around a conventional Windows computer.
38.2% of all test subjects clicked Yes
Coincidentally, 98.6% of these were subjects who had been testing for more than 40 days in a row. 40...that's also the number of pounds I would say you've put on since you first came here.
Then I wondered why this was news in 2011. Then I wondered "Whatever happened to Postal 3, anyway?". Then I got kind of sleepy. Then back to wondering about Postal 3.
Now I play some DDO and an old-school MUD and am looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. With a very small, friends and family only guild. Fuck being the largest or first to do X crap. I want to have fun with friends and socialize while killing those scum in the Republic.
I too am looking forward to killing Republic scum. Who wants to be the boring good guys?
I second that emotion. I've tried to get into MMO's, but every side mission is basically "go fetch me 10 wolf pelts" or some variation. I played MUD's back in the day, and they never seemed like this kind of grind. So I'm killing 10 wolves in WoW, mining some asteroid in EVE, or whatever, OVER AND OVER AGAIN. About the only MMO that I have liked so far was Guild Wars, not only because it was free and easy server-changing made it easy to play with friends, but because it was one of the few MMO's I've seen with an actual epic *story* behind it.
But it will be a very politely worded "No," to make it look like the administration actually read it and gave it serious consideration. That way the petitioner can tell himself "Wow, the President really cares what I have to say," completely oblivious to the fact that the response was actually written by a low-level staffer who skimmed over the petition for less than a minute before writing a canned response.
I also hear that it will not stop.
Can you cite some of the nutballs that are suggesting the entire east coast of the US is going to be underwater by 2050? No competent scientist makes this claim.
Harold Wanlass, Jonathan Gregory, Philippe Huybrechts, Sarah Raper, all Ph.D.'s in climate science (except Wanlass, who is a Ph.D. in geology). I think they qualify as "competent scientists" and all of them have made this claim.
No, I'm just someone who despises causeniks in general. Anyone who is thumping some cause in my face with wild eyes is greeted by me with instant skepticism. I don't buy into some wild-eyed Jesus-freak preaching a fire-and-brimstone end if we don't stop sinning. And I don't by into some wild-eyed enviro-wacko preaching a fire-and-brimstone end if we don't stop using petroleum. Ditto for muslims, free-market libertarians, politicians, and pretty much everyone else who uses emotion, fear-mongering, media-whoring, etc. instead of reason to make their arguments for some fucking pet cause.
I guess that makes me a contrarian, if you can call me anything. In truth I am generally distrustful of anyone with wild-eyes. Makes me think their cause has become a religion to them. And religions make people fucking dangerous.
Careful what you wish for. If they ran out tomorrow, you would almost certainly see WWIII begin in the middle east, the economies of West Virginia and Kentucky collapse, and a worldwide financial crisis--all of which would lead to millions of deaths and worldwide suffering. That's what I mean when I say that we have to approach weening ourselves of oil and coal in a way that causes minimal hardship and avoids unintended consequences. You're not going to quit cold turkey without hurting a LOT of people.
If find it quite amusing that you seem to think I'm a Republican, as if my skepticism is just some political cover for my love of all that is rich and bible-thumping. If you knew me, you would realize how funny that charge really was. As I said, I'm very skeptical of BOTH sides, and have no doubt that were you to put me in a roomful of Republicans, they would soon become equally convinced that I was one of them thar' liberal eco-hippies--for refusing to blindly accept their "Big oil and the free market will save us all and bring back Jesus" horseshit.
I would argue that decreasing oil and coal consumption are worthy goals for MANY reasons (not the least of which is the fact that we will eventually run out of them). The only real question in my mind is how we go about it in such a way that causes as minimal hardship as possible and avoids unintended consequences.
Lighten up, Francis.
Are you saying that they must prove that ManBearPig does not exist?
Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late. Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been). The real issue that people are talking about when they say "global warming" is the question of how much influence human activities have had on the normal warming/cooling cycles, if this is a negative influence, and, if so, what can humans do within reason to mitigate any negative influences. And *those* questions are a helluva lot harder to answer than "Has there been a general warming trend over the last 100 years?".
I'm not sure pure science is up to answering those questions. And it doesn't help that the issue has become hopelessly politicized--to the point where I've grown very skeptical of BOTH sides and their respective penchants for self-serving hyperbole and increasingly shrill fear-mongering.
Of course, there is also the question of DEGREE of warming, an issue where it's getting harder and harder to distinguish between mainstream science and Chicken Little fear-mongering. IIRC, initial models were showing a 1-2 degree increase over the next 100 years, something that clearly needs to be addressed but not something that's GOING TO KILL US ALL TOMORROW!!!!!. Somewhere along the way this kept getting more and more ramped-up to the point now where I hear advocates claiming that the entire east coast of the U.S. is going to be underwater by 2050. I can no longer tell where the truth begins and the humbug ends.
Of course, I'm going to be criticized here for even daring to question the accepted narrative.
And where are they?
Actually, that's not including the taxes, FICA, etc. that would come out of your paycheck (cutting into your take-home significantly). Realistically, you're looking at more like 60-70 hours a week at minimum wage. And that's also not including all the stuff that isn't included in your student board (toiletries, gas, car maintenance, clothing, etc.). So you can probably make that more like 80 hours a week.