I am a gamer, my wife (who is awesome!) is not I enjoy everything for Galaga, and Nethack to Diablo 3 and Call of Duty. For a while I have asked myself the same question, and maybe some of this will help folks. When my wife and I started dating she considered Arcades “One of the seven levels of Dante’s Inferno” I am still looking to find more games that she can enjoy with me, but we’ve found quite a few ways that we can have fun together playing games. Here’s a few of the things that have worked for us:
1) Find ways to play together as a team even if you are doing 1 player games (Find a way that you can switch off rapidly who is playing after one of you beats a level or gets stuck or looses a life and be affectionate as you’re playing – high fives and kisses as you switch the controller).
2) Recognize that your spouse my not have good reflexes and coordination that took you years to build (A lesson we learned playing minecraft, my wife found it frustrating because she could not react to monsters and she would die, so instead we put it on the no monster setting and just focused on building a house together)
3) Set a time limit on how long you are going to play and stick to it
4) Make gaming quality time, make sure you are interacting with your spouse both inside the game and outside random hugs and kisses after good or bad luck are always a good thing.
5) Mind your spouse’s tastes (my wife gets a bit creped out by zombies and the like, She’d play Resident Evil with me if I asked, but I’d be up all night hugging her as she was terrified to go to sleep)
6) Find something you both enjoy, ask your wife to keep you company and read or Facebook on the couch while you play one of your favorite games (My wife and I recently had a great time as she helped me design a new Skyrim character when she had only agreed to sit and read while I played for a while).
"I do agree that chip makers aren't thinking "big enough" with things like their Blade lines.. "
That's not a chip maker issue, that's more of a system supplier. The chips themselves are efficient, but what Google does, and what it would take to make these efficient farms is more of an issue with system design. He should be complaining to the HP's, IBM's, Sun Microsystems people of this world. Or like was pointed out, design your own blade server to supply your needs...
"The advice and truths given in the Bible are credible because they mirror the real personal stories and events that happen in the world around us."
That is why the Bible was compiled by the Catholic church in 325AD at the Council of Nicea, so that all the little Christian churches would have a common background and written account with stories talking about the life of Jesus that the Christian leaders at the time were in agreement was the inspired word of God. A good book to read on the history of the bible is by Rev. Henry G. Graham titled "Where we got the Bible"
"the catholic church and their instance that only the Pope can talk to God, which is in direct contradiction to the primary message of pretty much every book of the Bible..."
That is untrue, the Catholic Church believes everyone can talk to God - that is Prayer, it also believes that it is possible that God can talk to an individual (who is not the pope or even a priest)... Look up "Private Revelation" one of the more famous examples in recent times would be the children of Fatima. The only point that could be interpreted to mean what you say is that only the pope has the authority to decide what is "right" on issues of faith and morals, which we interpret as coming straight from the bible (John 20:23).
"I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it."
That is in fact what many Christians believe and is also a slightly different way to say what has been the Catholic Church's position on topic of evolution since the early 20th century.
You know what's also a great idea?
A Government-run universal OS... No more having to worry about choosing Windows XP, or Vista, or Ubuntu, or Debian, or OS X... just USA_OS. Think of the possibilities.
"... botnet, when they could have the real thing?"
Ahem, probably because they can't afford it. I mean the Air Force has a problem purchasing planes because a Democrat congress keeps cutting their funds.
You should be happy they're trying to find a way to do things with a limited number of resources instead of hiking your taxes.
It's curious how people can be so angry at this (which allows teachers to teach what every they want) because they can't be trusted. At the same time be angry with No Child Left Behind (which gave minimum standards for what teachers HAD to teach) because it doesn't give teachers flexibility. Sounds a bit hypocritical to me.
Should we also be "Open source" about our nuclear program?!?... A lot of countrires don't have the recourses precicely becouse the R&D is so expensive. Like it or not all this technology has military applications, and as such give one country an tactical advantage over another.
We do not want to be giving our rivals/competitors that advantage.
On top of that personally I make it a point to look away when people are typing their passwords on their computer just to make sure everyone knows I don't know any of them.
Do you take the same view about other leaders with no scientific background who speak on science and engineering topics at universities? Like the Dali Lama, Al Gore... to name a few.
"...Scientific theories are more than descriptions, they collectively form a 'model' of the observable world. As such, they may be used as predictive tools,..."
Anyone who has studied science or engineering for a while will tell you that all models of the universe are wrong on some level, the only question about them is wether they are useful in predicting events based on certain constraints. But that's the beauty - they are useful mathematical descriptions that help us understand HOW the world works.
"Religion, on the other hand, is descriptive of past events, and assigns causal relationships where there aren't any. Think of miracles - "
Absolutely not true, taking any theology out, Religion is an explanation for WHY the world works based on an internal belief and faith. With out faith no explanation is sufficient, and with faith no explanation is necesary.
Even with miracles, Religion does care about how they happen, or trying to reproduce them. That would be the point of Science - Religion only cares to explain that they do - call them lucky coincideces if you don't believe faith, but then you believe in luck... some people don't.
As an engineer and a scientist I can tell you there is no contradiction between the two. Science explains how we have bio-diversity and how we came to be the way we are - religion explains why... our purpose in life.
How about making it so that if a state has 4 seats in the house of representatives the person running for that office who gets the most votes gets 1, second place gets the next... and so on and so forth until all seats have been taken. That way you can't gerymander districts to ensure someone stays in office.
The reason "No Child Left Behind" diverts teachers from "teaching" and focuses them on teaching to standardized tests is that there is an alarming number of teachers who have no idea what they're doing. As part of her PhD thesis my mother studied the reading performance at several elementary schools. What she found was that there were a significant number of teachers whose students got worse at reading while in their classroom. There are an alarming number of kids leaving elementary school who can barely read. Why? Because you have teachers teaching the wrong things, weeks on papermache dinosaurs and finger painting flowers...
No Child Left Behind removes some of the freedom great teachers have, and it has a some issues. But it at least forces bad teachers to spend 2 hours a day on reading... which really should be part of any elementary school. For my part I was convinced that it was not such a bad thing after reading her thesis and seeing that on average yearly improvements in reading went up after the policy was implemented.
Well... that or take the $3000 for 30 kids and you can probably afford to construct a building,enough used books to teach them all the way through high school and enough left over that you might be able to pay for lunch for them as well for a year.
That's not so bad when you look at it a little closer. Both my parents have been teachers at some point, and while there are excellent teachers who work 8-9 hours a day... most work 6-7. Couple that they only work 190 days a year (compared to 232 for everyone else assuming 15 days vacation + 13 holidays) teachers make out pretty well.
The median salary turns out to be about $35.00 an hour for a teacher who works an 8 hour day... my experience for most teachers at my mom's elementary school they make $38-$39 an hour!... Compare that to an engineer who works 9 hour days (wouldn't that be nice!!!)... that's like 84K a year if s/he was salaried.
If we want better quality teachers, perhaps we should pay more... but we should also expect more from them. For example instead of giving them the whole summer off perhaps we should pay them to stay in the class room, prepare for the year, and attend classes themselves on how to be better teachers during that time.
This needs to be said, as a deeply religious person and an engineer I find both sides of this debate need to get some perspective. The way the article summary was being worded made it sound like the fact that this was an anti-creationist site had something to do with google de-listing it. That's just plain silly! They did something wrong and hopefully now they fixed it. People on both sides of this debate keep getting bent out of shape, thinking everyone is out to get them.
The role of science is to observe the world and draw conclusions from those observations. Both the big bang and evolution theories are wonderful examples that to the best of our understanding try to explain how the world began, and that is exactly where they should stay. At the same time religion or in my case Christianity answers the questions for why the universe began and what our purpose is for living in it.
There are a lot of misguided people out there that try to push ID as science, and I feel sorry for them. If someone is going to look towards ID they will find they are trying to use the supernatural world to study the natural world. Not something that fits.
At the same time any pseudo-scientist that tries to answer the questions of original causation of the universe (why did the universe start) or the immortality of the human soul is merely employing another cleverly disguised religion with it's own set of beliefs. The existence of God can not be proven with science, since by definition God exists outside of time and the natural world. Even the ardent denial of God's existence is a religious belief of its own requiring faith in something un-provable.
Our survival as a species has nothing to do with us colonizing other planets or technological advances... until we learn how to do two simple things our future will always be uncertain.
1) We need to treat everyone as we ourselves would like to be treated.
2) We must strive to develop a sustainable society.
... all that junk about colonizing other planets, or limiting our population growth will not do anything except postpone what everyoine fears.
We're being foolish trying to get their economies on par with ours. We're not talking big tractors - what we should be working on is getting their technology and economy to where we were about 200-300 years ago. That would be a good start - you don't start teaching calculus with out first teaching someone how to add. If we use our expertice maybe we can help them get to where we are now in 50-100 years... but first lets teach them how to use, build and FIX simple farming equipment. Don't worry about phones, light, all that stuff... start with the basics (food and water) and work up from there.
1) New Mexico tried offering teachers a substantial raise a few years ago in exchange for them working 5 days more a year to do training. You know what happened, they refused. I won't speculate here, but if you look at statistics for standardized test scores on average the highest go to people in Engineering and Science... the lowest, Teachers and Business. A higher salary would help, and so would dissolving the unions so you could fire teachers who refuse to meet with the requirements for a higher salary... wait, that's what No Child Left behind is trying to do... yet most people seem to oppose that... hmm.
2) Religion has the same place in education as Philosophy. It belongs in public schools. In many cases they are indistinguishable, take Buddhism for example... is it a philosophy or a religion? Or is it both? What does not belong is ignorant hatred and bigotry. I agree with you that Theology belongs in private schools, and seminaries. But as we become integrated as a multi-cultural world we should spend some time teaching kids about the beliefs other people hold.
One of the best classes I took during my undergraduate was World Religions, where the teacher covered everything from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism, and even a few of the Native American traditions in the US. We never knew what his personal beliefs were because he treated all of them with equal dignity...
3) I will also point out that although I do not support local communities teaching "intelligent" curriculum. Everything in science should be taught as something that the students need to question, not as FACT ENGRAVED IN STONE as 'main stream' curriculum states. Things like that lead to people believing the world is flat and we should not question that regardless. Schools need to teach students to question to seek new answers... that was one of the strongest beliefs of what I think we could all agree was one of the greatest teachers so far: Richard Feynman.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a gamer, my wife (who is awesome!) is not I enjoy everything for Galaga, and Nethack to Diablo 3 and Call of Duty. For a while I have asked myself the same question, and maybe some of this will help folks. When my wife and I started dating she considered Arcades “One of the seven levels of Dante’s Inferno” I am still looking to find more games that she can enjoy with me, but we’ve found quite a few ways that we can have fun together playing games. Here’s a few of the things that have worked for us: 1) Find ways to play together as a team even if you are doing 1 player games (Find a way that you can switch off rapidly who is playing after one of you beats a level or gets stuck or looses a life and be affectionate as you’re playing – high fives and kisses as you switch the controller). 2) Recognize that your spouse my not have good reflexes and coordination that took you years to build (A lesson we learned playing minecraft, my wife found it frustrating because she could not react to monsters and she would die, so instead we put it on the no monster setting and just focused on building a house together) 3) Set a time limit on how long you are going to play and stick to it 4) Make gaming quality time, make sure you are interacting with your spouse both inside the game and outside random hugs and kisses after good or bad luck are always a good thing. 5) Mind your spouse’s tastes (my wife gets a bit creped out by zombies and the like, She’d play Resident Evil with me if I asked, but I’d be up all night hugging her as she was terrified to go to sleep) 6) Find something you both enjoy, ask your wife to keep you company and read or Facebook on the couch while you play one of your favorite games (My wife and I recently had a great time as she helped me design a new Skyrim character when she had only agreed to sit and read while I played for a while).
"I do agree that chip makers aren't thinking "big enough" with things like their Blade lines.. "
That's not a chip maker issue, that's more of a system supplier. The chips themselves are efficient, but what Google does, and what it would take to make these efficient farms is more of an issue with system design. He should be complaining to the HP's, IBM's, Sun Microsystems people of this world. Or like was pointed out, design your own blade server to supply your needs...
"The advice and truths given in the Bible are credible because they mirror the real personal stories and events that happen in the world around us."
That is why the Bible was compiled by the Catholic church in 325AD at the Council of Nicea, so that all the little Christian churches would have a common background and written account with stories talking about the life of Jesus that the Christian leaders at the time were in agreement was the inspired word of God. A good book to read on the history of the bible is by Rev. Henry G. Graham titled "Where we got the Bible"
"the catholic church and their instance that only the Pope can talk to God, which is in direct contradiction to the primary message of pretty much every book of the Bible..."
That is untrue, the Catholic Church believes everyone can talk to God - that is Prayer, it also believes that it is possible that God can talk to an individual (who is not the pope or even a priest)... Look up "Private Revelation" one of the more famous examples in recent times would be the children of Fatima. The only point that could be interpreted to mean what you say is that only the pope has the authority to decide what is "right" on issues of faith and morals, which we interpret as coming straight from the bible (John 20:23).
"I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it."
That is in fact what many Christians believe and is also a slightly different way to say what has been the Catholic Church's position on topic of evolution since the early 20th century.
You know what's also a great idea? A Government-run universal OS ... No more having to worry about choosing Windows XP, or Vista, or Ubuntu, or Debian, or OS X ... just USA_OS. Think of the possibilities.
"... botnet, when they could have the real thing?" Ahem, probably because they can't afford it. I mean the Air Force has a problem purchasing planes because a Democrat congress keeps cutting their funds. You should be happy they're trying to find a way to do things with a limited number of resources instead of hiking your taxes.
Nicely put...
It's curious how people can be so angry at this (which allows teachers to teach what every they want) because they can't be trusted. At the same time be angry with No Child Left Behind (which gave minimum standards for what teachers HAD to teach) because it doesn't give teachers flexibility. Sounds a bit hypocritical to me.
Should we also be "Open source" about our nuclear program?!? ... A lot of countrires don't have the recourses precicely becouse the R&D is so expensive. Like it or not all this technology has military applications, and as such give one country an tactical advantage over another.
We do not want to be giving our rivals/competitors that advantage.
On top of that personally I make it a point to look away when people are typing their passwords on their computer just to make sure everyone knows I don't know any of them.
Do you take the same view about other leaders with no scientific background who speak on science and engineering topics at universities? Like the Dali Lama, Al Gore... to name a few.
"...Scientific theories are more than descriptions, they collectively form a 'model' of the observable world. As such, they may be used as predictive tools, ..."
Anyone who has studied science or engineering for a while will tell you that all models of the universe are wrong on some level, the only question about them is wether they are useful in predicting events based on certain constraints. But that's the beauty - they are useful mathematical descriptions that help us understand HOW the world works.
"Religion, on the other hand, is descriptive of past events, and assigns causal relationships where there aren't any. Think of miracles - "
Absolutely not true, taking any theology out, Religion is an explanation for WHY the world works based on an internal belief and faith. With out faith no explanation is sufficient, and with faith no explanation is necesary.
Even with miracles, Religion does care about how they happen, or trying to reproduce them. That would be the point of Science - Religion only cares to explain that they do - call them lucky coincideces if you don't believe faith, but then you believe in luck... some people don't.
As an engineer and a scientist I can tell you there is no contradiction between the two. Science explains how we have bio-diversity and how we came to be the way we are - religion explains why... our purpose in life.
How about making it so that if a state has 4 seats in the house of representatives the person running for that office who gets the most votes gets 1, second place gets the next... and so on and so forth until all seats have been taken. That way you can't gerymander districts to ensure someone stays in office.
Ok, sorry I need to rant...
The reason "No Child Left Behind" diverts teachers from "teaching" and focuses them on teaching to standardized tests is that there is an alarming number of teachers who have no idea what they're doing. As part of her PhD thesis my mother studied the reading performance at several elementary schools. What she found was that there were a significant number of teachers whose students got worse at reading while in their classroom. There are an alarming number of kids leaving elementary school who can barely read. Why? Because you have teachers teaching the wrong things, weeks on papermache dinosaurs and finger painting flowers...
No Child Left Behind removes some of the freedom great teachers have, and it has a some issues. But it at least forces bad teachers to spend 2 hours a day on reading... which really should be part of any elementary school. For my part I was convinced that it was not such a bad thing after reading her thesis and seeing that on average yearly improvements in reading went up after the policy was implemented.
Well ... that or take the $3000 for 30 kids and you can probably afford to construct a building,enough used books to teach them all the way through high school and enough left over that you might be able to pay for lunch for them as well for a year.
That's not so bad when you look at it a little closer. Both my parents have been teachers at some point, and while there are excellent teachers who work 8-9 hours a day... most work 6-7. Couple that they only work 190 days a year (compared to 232 for everyone else assuming 15 days vacation + 13 holidays) teachers make out pretty well.
... Compare that to an engineer who works 9 hour days (wouldn't that be nice!!!) ... that's like 84K a year if s/he was salaried.
The median salary turns out to be about $35.00 an hour for a teacher who works an 8 hour day... my experience for most teachers at my mom's elementary school they make $38-$39 an hour!
If we want better quality teachers, perhaps we should pay more... but we should also expect more from them. For example instead of giving them the whole summer off perhaps we should pay them to stay in the class room, prepare for the year, and attend classes themselves on how to be better teachers during that time.
America != Baxter Healthcare
Saying otherwise is just silly...
This needs to be said, as a deeply religious person and an engineer I find both sides of this debate need to get some perspective. The way the article summary was being worded made it sound like the fact that this was an anti-creationist site had something to do with google de-listing it. That's just plain silly! They did something wrong and hopefully now they fixed it. People on both sides of this debate keep getting bent out of shape, thinking everyone is out to get them.
The role of science is to observe the world and draw conclusions from those observations. Both the big bang and evolution theories are wonderful examples that to the best of our understanding try to explain how the world began, and that is exactly where they should stay. At the same time religion or in my case Christianity answers the questions for why the universe began and what our purpose is for living in it.
There are a lot of misguided people out there that try to push ID as science, and I feel sorry for them. If someone is going to look towards ID they will find they are trying to use the supernatural world to study the natural world. Not something that fits.
At the same time any pseudo-scientist that tries to answer the questions of original causation of the universe (why did the universe start) or the immortality of the human soul is merely employing another cleverly disguised religion with it's own set of beliefs. The existence of God can not be proven with science, since by definition God exists outside of time and the natural world. Even the ardent denial of God's existence is a religious belief of its own requiring faith in something un-provable.
Just remember Al Capone, in the end they got him for tax evasion...
Our survival as a species has nothing to do with us colonizing other planets or technological advances... until we learn how to do two simple things our future will always be uncertain.
... all that junk about colonizing other planets, or limiting our population growth will not do anything except postpone what everyoine fears.
1) We need to treat everyone as we ourselves would like to be treated.
2) We must strive to develop a sustainable society.
We're being foolish trying to get their economies on par with ours. We're not talking big tractors - what we should be working on is getting their technology and economy to where we were about 200-300 years ago. That would be a good start - you don't start teaching calculus with out first teaching someone how to add. If we use our expertice maybe we can help them get to where we are now in 50-100 years... but first lets teach them how to use, build and FIX simple farming equipment. Don't worry about phones, light, all that stuff... start with the basics (food and water) and work up from there.
I disagree with several of your points.
... the lowest, Teachers and Business. A higher salary would help, and so would dissolving the unions so you could fire teachers who refuse to meet with the requirements for a higher salary... wait, that's what No Child Left behind is trying to do... yet most people seem to oppose that... hmm.
... is it a philosophy or a religion? Or is it both? What does not belong is ignorant hatred and bigotry. I agree with you that Theology belongs in private schools, and seminaries. But as we become integrated as a multi-cultural world we should spend some time teaching kids about the beliefs other people hold.
1) New Mexico tried offering teachers a substantial raise a few years ago in exchange for them working 5 days more a year to do training. You know what happened, they refused. I won't speculate here, but if you look at statistics for standardized test scores on average the highest go to people in Engineering and Science
2) Religion has the same place in education as Philosophy. It belongs in public schools. In many cases they are indistinguishable, take Buddhism for example
One of the best classes I took during my undergraduate was World Religions, where the teacher covered everything from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism, and even a few of the Native American traditions in the US. We never knew what his personal beliefs were because he treated all of them with equal dignity...
3) I will also point out that although I do not support local communities teaching "intelligent" curriculum. Everything in science should be taught as something that the students need to question, not as FACT ENGRAVED IN STONE as 'main stream' curriculum states. Things like that lead to people believing the world is flat and we should not question that regardless. Schools need to teach students to question to seek new answers... that was one of the strongest beliefs of what I think we could all agree was one of the greatest teachers so far: Richard Feynman.