McCain wanted to level the tax field by providing the same tax credit to plans purchased by individuals, but Obama lambasted him for proposing a 'tax increase.' McCain lost.
Are you on crack? Or do you just spend your time listening to liars without doing any fact-checking?
Insurance premiums for self-insurance are 100% tax deductible, provided you itemize your deductions and meet the minimum threshold (which is trivial considering how much insurance costs these days) -- they've been that way for decades.
That's ridiculous. We all know that Google is not purchasing an island to declare a nation with its own navy.
As a matter of fact, what we *DO* know is that Googol the Destroyer was accidentally summoned into this world and is currently planning on evoking the End of Days via the Rite of a Million Targeted Ads (ROAMTA). This is just another piece of that plan -- the ROAMTA requires a supercollider to be built on the polar opposite of the Large Hadron Collider, with the particles accelerated in the opposite direction of those in the LHC. This will create a bipolar quantum energy concundrum into which Googol can insert his data to give it special power before using it to target the Million Ads.
When last we saw our heroes, Gatus and Joba were busy converting developers to the cause, that of building the One True OS with Built-in Universal Search in order to thwart the plans of Googol the Destroyer. Stallmanx and his Beard Gnomes had been rebuffed in his efforts to trick Googol via legal wrangling in the license offered to Googol. Meanwhile, the Webcrawling Spiders of Doom were busy collecting data for Googol the Destroyer to devour with gobsmacking satisfaction.
Unbeknownst to our heroes, Googol has presented another vector by which he may be thwarted -- if Googol can be denied the massive energy required to build his particle accelerator, then his plan can be thwarted. Unfortunately, the only person with the know-how and stick-to-it-iveness to thwart Googol on this front is one T-Bone Pickings, a man of grandiose plans and few teeth. Sadly for our heroes, Pickings has had no contact with them.
So as Gatus continues to buy developers with his pit-of-bottomless cash, and Joba continues to use his powers of marketing to make the developers believe they will be uncool if they do not work on the One True OS with Global Search, and Stallmanx is slowly seeing the wisdom of joining forces with Gatus and Joba, Pickings works alone with only the sometimes merry, sometimes soulful, strumming of a banjo for accompaniment.
Will our heroes be able to team up with T-Bone Pickings? How can they work together to sabotage the Plans of Googol the Destroyer? Or will Googol the Destroyer succeed in his plans to wreak the End of Days and control all the data of the universe?
Tune in to next week's episode of Googol the Destroyer!
Personally I'm all up for it because the only people who benefit from the used game market are retailers who buy used games for a few dollars and resell them for close to the retail price. Quite why anyone pays such high prices for used games is beyond me.
Nonsense. Plenty of people buy & sell used games through other routes than mall stores. Amazon, EBay, sneakernet, etc.
I just wish there was a "stop polluting" demand option in the diplomacy screen; it would give a more evenhanded approach to solving the problem than trying to force green policy on the whole world via the UN (particularly when I can run a perfectly green economy without it myself).
I thought most people wanted realism?;) When was the last time real-world diplomacy included a stop-polluting-or-we'll-invade-your-ass clause?
1. This seems like a cost saving measure, and if so, is a bad idea. The only way this program would be beneficial is if you paid for those 2 years of CC. I wouldn't count on it.
Sending a kid to a CC is much cheaper than having them enrolled in the high school. Costs per student average about $10k in the US -- even states that spend the least spend more than $5k/yr. The average cost for community college in the US is roughly $2k. On a cash basis, the districts win.
4. It seems if we just paid High School teachers in Junior and Senior years more cash, so that their skill set isn't as huge of a gap, all students would be served better. Our HS technical teachers are usually paid 1/3 to 1/6th as much as their public sector counterparts, this is a huge problem.
Pay isn't the only issue, although it's a big one. (Ever try to get a school budget passed? That's a problem we aren't going to be able to fix without a huge cultural change.) But finding good teachers who also know the subject matter well is difficult. Good pay increases the pool of people who would be interested, but you'd still have the monumental task of winnowing the chaff to find the good teachers.
My nieces and nephews of school age definitely make use of tech for schoolwork a lot. And IMO very effectively.
My oldest nephew recently had a unit on biomes. It was a six-seek unit based on self-study using multi-media presentations and materials on computers at the school. Quick students mastered the basic stuff in the first two weeks -- then they were able to dig deeper and study more in-depth over the last month. Slower students may have taken almost the full time to complete the basic materials, but the nice thing is that they didn't hold back the quick students. The unit culminated in presentations the students gave utilizing the media they worked with in class, and outside media that was approved by the teacher. Presentations were live, but the kids used projectors in their presentations... it was awesome.
When I saw my nephew's presentation in December, I recalled when I studied the same stuff in grade school, and there was no comparison. His experience was richer and deeper than mine -- he learned more, and he enjoyed it more. And the whole unit was dependent on use of technology.
Yes, it's anecdotal, and I'm aware that many (most?) schools don't provide that kind of experience. But it's amazing to me how far we've come where we're doing it right.
Did you want to place your cities close together to maximize usage the tiles within your territory but forcing cities to compete with each other over resources, or space your cities out so that each city got as many resources as possible even though that would mean some areas in between wouldn't be exploited at all?
Why not have the best of both worlds?
Place your cities too close together, so what when they are small, you make best use of your land (and have lower corruption). As you get more advanced (~renaissance tech levels), kill off the smaller cities (via settler -- add to your big cities or fuel an age of expansion for your civ) so the big ones can maximize their trade (and thus the benefit of their enhancement buildings). You'll need to plan for this from the get-go... but it also alleviates the problem of too many cities causing unhappy citizens, which I have a problem with during the renaissance period.
It does; Civilization 5 splits strength into attack and defense values; both are modified by terrain, promotions, experience, etc...
Umm... every Civ has split strength into attack and defense, modified by terrain and promotions (even if CivI had only noob-veteran promotion status).
I think OP is looking for something a little more complex in terms of gameplay (e.g., tactical play).
To me, the great thing about Civ games is that tactics are not so important. It's a strategy game, not a tactics game. Though tactics are slightly involved, and unrealistic, to me the game is about empire building and management.
I would rather that the tactics not get any more complicated (though more realistic, maybe). The strategic part of the game is where Civ dominates... if I wanted tactics, I'd play an RTS.
Ugh. This means I'll finally have to go and upgrade my rig.
Lately I've been mucking around with the FreeCiv beta... looks like I'll only have about 6-9 months between release of FreeCiv and Civ5. I guess I'd better get all my home projects done this spring and summer.
Thanks for the insight -- I'm surprised it's targeted at kids who do not likely wish to go on to a traditional 4-year college.
This makes a lot more sense... it's kind of like siphoning off the trade-school kids so they can focus on what will really prepare them for the world of work. Better for them, and better for the students who remain in the AP track.
My only concern is, are kids at 15-16 really able to make that kind of decision that will affect them for the rest of their life? Sure, some are... but I hope they have adequate resources in place to help kids and their parents make that decision.
I had 33 college credits under my belt (from AP classes & night classes at the local community college) when I finished my sophomore year of high school. But there was no way I was emotionally ready for college. Yes, I could do all the work. Yes, I could force myself to study when I'd rather be playing. Because I'd been in classes with older kids for several years, because I had four older siblings, I think I was pretty mature for my age. But I still wasn't ready.
What there should be are more programs like Simon's Rock of Bard College. A transition program for kids academically ready for college, but not quite there emotionally, psychologically, etc.
One note on this proposal that I find abhorrent -- community college is not the place for these kids to take coursework if they leave high school early. Not that there's anything wrong with community college for a lot of people (I did my time there for money & scheduling reasons)... but the best and brightest should be surrounded by the best and brightest. Let them be challenged by their peers, not held back.
This was a fundamental problem with the trial acceleration program I took part in. Yes, I went to high school for math & science classes as a seventh-grader... but I took those classes with the regular college prep kids, not with the honors college prep kids. This held me back; I learned some bad habits, and I wasn't challenged by the pace of the coursework nor by my peers in the class. Nor did I get the benefit of the best teachers, who taught HCP classes only.
As for your final issue:
I guarantee that if this gets passed there will be an outcry of "my child shouldn't be discriminated against. (S)he should be able to head to college too at this grade!" They're going to have to be ready for that.
That's exactly what happened in my school system. When I was a senior in high school (I couldn't graduate early because of the required 16 quarters of gym class per state law in NJ), my AP classes were filled with sophomores who weren't ready for them. The success of those of us in the trial run led the system to offer early AP classes to all students... they actually made AP classes a requirement for graduation for college prep kids. This killed the quality of those classes... AP Bio, AP English, AP European History were killed by the fact that 90% of the kids in the class didn't have the foundation to learn collegiate level material.
Anyway, I'm rambling. But you're absolutely right that the no-child-allowed-to-excel-if-my-child-doesn't-qualify people are going to cause big problems for these states and districts.
Bonus: Not only does the class action include the 1,800 students, but all their family members.
That school district is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked
You mean the taxpayers in that school district are fuuuuucked.
But I sure hope anyone who had a hand in it is canned.
That said... the laptops were provided by the school. Just like my employer, I'm sure the school made it clear that use of the laptops would be monitored, non-official use is verboten, etc. Turning the webcams on definitely crossed the line in terms of monitoring, IMO. What if some kid was doing their homework in their underwear, or naked? That's using the laptop for sanctioned purposes.
it's the equivalent of marie antoinette saying "let them eat cake" when told starving parisians don't have bread: the guy is so clueless as to real world labor, he actually and sincerely believes that not being paid for writing a song 23 years ago places him in the same category as modern slavery
FWIW -- that quote is misattributed to Antoinette. It was written by Jean-Jacques Russeau, and it is unknown whether it is an actual quote or a fabrication by Russeau. Many historians believe it was uttered by the wife of Loius XIV (a hundred years prior), not by Marie Antoinette. At any rate, Rousseau used the phrase in a letter some 18 years prior to Marie Antoinette's birth.
Not that this is on-topic or anything... but it's ironic to me that a post referencing the cluelessness of someone has such an error.
Meh. If you're going to refer to a site that heightens photoshop to an art form, you should link to worth1000.
Most of Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday is a kindergartner scribbling in the margins compared to what is regularly posted by top competitors on worth1000.
False. Disproved by direct observation. Stand on a pier sometime and look at the waves. The spot where a maximal low is does not become the maximal high; instead a spot in front of it is the maximal high. There is, indeed, a rolling forward effect.
Disproved by direct observation. Go into any store and you'll see microwaves in various sizes. The perfect microwave doesn't have "hot spots".
Just because there are microwaves of different size does not mean that none of them were designed to produce heat lines. It's about multiples of the wavelength, not absolute size, anyway. Ever wonder why we can see many buildings that express the golden ratio, but they are not all the same size?
Slashdot Mirror
Are you on crack? Or do you just spend your time listening to liars without doing any fact-checking?
Insurance premiums for self-insurance are 100% tax deductible, provided you itemize your deductions and meet the minimum threshold (which is trivial considering how much insurance costs these days) -- they've been that way for decades.
I disagree 100%. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from socializing (and collaborating) in college.
True. But if you don't, then you miss out on a lot of experience that can help you down the road.
Things like getting along with people from different backgrounds. Things like working effectively in collaborative efforts.
Hell, even just basic interpersonal skills that are key to being most effective in the workplace.
If you think college is only about studying, and you went to college -- then you wasted a good portion of your money.
That's ridiculous. We all know that Google is not purchasing an island to declare a nation with its own navy.
As a matter of fact, what we *DO* know is that Googol the Destroyer was accidentally summoned into this world and is currently planning on evoking the End of Days via the Rite of a Million Targeted Ads (ROAMTA). This is just another piece of that plan -- the ROAMTA requires a supercollider to be built on the polar opposite of the Large Hadron Collider, with the particles accelerated in the opposite direction of those in the LHC. This will create a bipolar quantum energy concundrum into which Googol can insert his data to give it special power before using it to target the Million Ads.
When last we saw our heroes, Gatus and Joba were busy converting developers to the cause, that of building the One True OS with Built-in Universal Search in order to thwart the plans of Googol the Destroyer. Stallmanx and his Beard Gnomes had been rebuffed in his efforts to trick Googol via legal wrangling in the license offered to Googol. Meanwhile, the Webcrawling Spiders of Doom were busy collecting data for Googol the Destroyer to devour with gobsmacking satisfaction.
Unbeknownst to our heroes, Googol has presented another vector by which he may be thwarted -- if Googol can be denied the massive energy required to build his particle accelerator, then his plan can be thwarted. Unfortunately, the only person with the know-how and stick-to-it-iveness to thwart Googol on this front is one T-Bone Pickings, a man of grandiose plans and few teeth. Sadly for our heroes, Pickings has had no contact with them.
So as Gatus continues to buy developers with his pit-of-bottomless cash, and Joba continues to use his powers of marketing to make the developers believe they will be uncool if they do not work on the One True OS with Global Search, and Stallmanx is slowly seeing the wisdom of joining forces with Gatus and Joba, Pickings works alone with only the sometimes merry, sometimes soulful, strumming of a banjo for accompaniment.
Will our heroes be able to team up with T-Bone Pickings? How can they work together to sabotage the Plans of Googol the Destroyer? Or will Googol the Destroyer succeed in his plans to wreak the End of Days and control all the data of the universe?
Tune in to next week's episode of Googol the Destroyer!
Nonsense. Plenty of people buy & sell used games through other routes than mall stores. Amazon, EBay, sneakernet, etc.
I thought most people wanted realism? ;) When was the last time real-world diplomacy included a stop-polluting-or-we'll-invade-your-ass clause?
Sending a kid to a CC is much cheaper than having them enrolled in the high school. Costs per student average about $10k in the US -- even states that spend the least spend more than $5k/yr. The average cost for community college in the US is roughly $2k. On a cash basis, the districts win.
Pay isn't the only issue, although it's a big one. (Ever try to get a school budget passed? That's a problem we aren't going to be able to fix without a huge cultural change.) But finding good teachers who also know the subject matter well is difficult. Good pay increases the pool of people who would be interested, but you'd still have the monumental task of winnowing the chaff to find the good teachers.
My nieces and nephews of school age definitely make use of tech for schoolwork a lot. And IMO very effectively.
My oldest nephew recently had a unit on biomes. It was a six-seek unit based on self-study using multi-media presentations and materials on computers at the school. Quick students mastered the basic stuff in the first two weeks -- then they were able to dig deeper and study more in-depth over the last month. Slower students may have taken almost the full time to complete the basic materials, but the nice thing is that they didn't hold back the quick students. The unit culminated in presentations the students gave utilizing the media they worked with in class, and outside media that was approved by the teacher. Presentations were live, but the kids used projectors in their presentations... it was awesome.
When I saw my nephew's presentation in December, I recalled when I studied the same stuff in grade school, and there was no comparison. His experience was richer and deeper than mine -- he learned more, and he enjoyed it more. And the whole unit was dependent on use of technology.
Yes, it's anecdotal, and I'm aware that many (most?) schools don't provide that kind of experience. But it's amazing to me how far we've come where we're doing it right.
So you give them the technology to build anti-pollution improvements.
Yes, it's annoying to give your competitors some technology. But if it's the only way to keep your production up...
Why not have the best of both worlds?
Place your cities too close together, so what when they are small, you make best use of your land (and have lower corruption). As you get more advanced (~renaissance tech levels), kill off the smaller cities (via settler -- add to your big cities or fuel an age of expansion for your civ) so the big ones can maximize their trade (and thus the benefit of their enhancement buildings). You'll need to plan for this from the get-go... but it also alleviates the problem of too many cities causing unhappy citizens, which I have a problem with during the renaissance period.
Umm... every Civ has split strength into attack and defense, modified by terrain and promotions (even if CivI had only noob-veteran promotion status).
I think OP is looking for something a little more complex in terms of gameplay (e.g., tactical play).
To me, the great thing about Civ games is that tactics are not so important. It's a strategy game, not a tactics game. Though tactics are slightly involved, and unrealistic, to me the game is about empire building and management.
I would rather that the tactics not get any more complicated (though more realistic, maybe). The strategic part of the game is where Civ dominates... if I wanted tactics, I'd play an RTS.
Who in the hell still uses the internet for porn?
By the time I get through the first few petabytes of my collection, I can go back to the beginning and it's like I've never seen it before.
Ugh. This means I'll finally have to go and upgrade my rig.
Lately I've been mucking around with the FreeCiv beta... looks like I'll only have about 6-9 months between release of FreeCiv and Civ5. I guess I'd better get all my home projects done this spring and summer.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
Let's just say that the previous mention of duct tape, WD-40, and vice grips only describes the half of it.
Thanks for the insight -- I'm surprised it's targeted at kids who do not likely wish to go on to a traditional 4-year college.
This makes a lot more sense... it's kind of like siphoning off the trade-school kids so they can focus on what will really prepare them for the world of work. Better for them, and better for the students who remain in the AP track.
My only concern is, are kids at 15-16 really able to make that kind of decision that will affect them for the rest of their life? Sure, some are... but I hope they have adequate resources in place to help kids and their parents make that decision.
I had 33 college credits under my belt (from AP classes & night classes at the local community college) when I finished my sophomore year of high school. But there was no way I was emotionally ready for college. Yes, I could do all the work. Yes, I could force myself to study when I'd rather be playing. Because I'd been in classes with older kids for several years, because I had four older siblings, I think I was pretty mature for my age. But I still wasn't ready.
What there should be are more programs like Simon's Rock of Bard College. A transition program for kids academically ready for college, but not quite there emotionally, psychologically, etc.
One note on this proposal that I find abhorrent -- community college is not the place for these kids to take coursework if they leave high school early. Not that there's anything wrong with community college for a lot of people (I did my time there for money & scheduling reasons)... but the best and brightest should be surrounded by the best and brightest. Let them be challenged by their peers, not held back.
This was a fundamental problem with the trial acceleration program I took part in. Yes, I went to high school for math & science classes as a seventh-grader... but I took those classes with the regular college prep kids, not with the honors college prep kids. This held me back; I learned some bad habits, and I wasn't challenged by the pace of the coursework nor by my peers in the class. Nor did I get the benefit of the best teachers, who taught HCP classes only.
As for your final issue:
That's exactly what happened in my school system. When I was a senior in high school (I couldn't graduate early because of the required 16 quarters of gym class per state law in NJ), my AP classes were filled with sophomores who weren't ready for them. The success of those of us in the trial run led the system to offer early AP classes to all students... they actually made AP classes a requirement for graduation for college prep kids. This killed the quality of those classes... AP Bio, AP English, AP European History were killed by the fact that 90% of the kids in the class didn't have the foundation to learn collegiate level material.
Anyway, I'm rambling. But you're absolutely right that the no-child-allowed-to-excel-if-my-child-doesn't-qualify people are going to cause big problems for these states and districts.
You've never seen the way I do it.*
*Unless you have remote access to my webcams.
You mean the taxpayers in that school district are fuuuuucked.
But I sure hope anyone who had a hand in it is canned.
That said... the laptops were provided by the school. Just like my employer, I'm sure the school made it clear that use of the laptops would be monitored, non-official use is verboten, etc. Turning the webcams on definitely crossed the line in terms of monitoring, IMO. What if some kid was doing their homework in their underwear, or naked? That's using the laptop for sanctioned purposes.
FWIW -- that quote is misattributed to Antoinette. It was written by Jean-Jacques Russeau, and it is unknown whether it is an actual quote or a fabrication by Russeau. Many historians believe it was uttered by the wife of Loius XIV (a hundred years prior), not by Marie Antoinette. At any rate, Rousseau used the phrase in a letter some 18 years prior to Marie Antoinette's birth.
Not that this is on-topic or anything... but it's ironic to me that a post referencing the cluelessness of someone has such an error.
Meh. If you're going to refer to a site that heightens photoshop to an art form, you should link to worth1000.
Most of Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday is a kindergartner scribbling in the margins compared to what is regularly posted by top competitors on worth1000.
False. Disproved by direct observation. Stand on a pier sometime and look at the waves. The spot where a maximal low is does not become the maximal high; instead a spot in front of it is the maximal high. There is, indeed, a rolling forward effect.
Just because there are microwaves of different size does not mean that none of them were designed to produce heat lines. It's about multiples of the wavelength, not absolute size, anyway. Ever wonder why we can see many buildings that express the golden ratio, but they are not all the same size?
Far better is "Pandora's Wormy Can".
Because the visuals associated with the term are so much more... disturbing.
Damn slashdot for eating unicode arrows. That should be NaHCO3 + H+ --> Na+ + CO2 + H2O
Pancakes are great tools for teaching math. Fractions, geometry, trigonometry...
They are good for teaching some chemistry (NaHCO3 + H+ Na+ + CO2 + H2O).
But what they are best at, in terms of science, is proving the universal truths of bacon and maple syrup supremacy.
If a microwave, chocolate, and performing an experiment make you horny...
Let's just hope you never learn what fondue is.
You could make a brooch, a pterodactyl...
I was taking the piss with that line. Nice to see someone bothered to RTFA.