California is such a huge automobile market that many car companies manufacture to the state's standards, then market those cars nationwide.
No. That would never fly nationwide. It would lead to an ugly mess of boycotts and TPB for the major car companies, who are all located in Northeast America.
One big problem with science education is that it tends to be taught as THE TRUTH...
+1
I remember a few years ago there was a test, can't remember if it was national or in one particular state. The purpose of the test was to gauge scientific literacy. One of the questions asked if the reader believed that the universe was formed in a giant explosion billions of years ago. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of the question.)
I thought that was a ridiculous way to test scientific literacy. I don't believe in the Big Bang, or evolution, or Newtonian mechanics. I accept that certain theories are supported by the overwhelming majority of evidence, and therefore probably best describe the way the universe works. The moment you start believing in something, you've got religion, not science.
Students should be encouraged to question established theories, to gather evidence and think critically about how things work. Unfortunately, whenever someone asks people to question a particular theory, it's usually because they want to push a particular truth.
/That/ is why there are so many, as you put it, 'gee whiz' features in new versions - it's the only thing most people will ever see.
I'd say it's the difference between the initial "Wow, those new window borders look sooo kewl!" and "I wish those bloody window borders didn't take up half my screen." later on. The eye candy gets the box out the door and the cash in hand. After the novelty wears off, people want something that works.
But when a company relies on selling a product rather than providing a service, that initial wow factor is more important than continued functionality.
...especially as ash clouds can affect more than just the source state, though this may not be the case given the size of Alaska...
Given the number of significant active volcanoes in Alaska, and the fact that ash can spread around the world (remember Pinatubo, St. Helens), volcano monitoring in Alaska certainly isn't single-state pork. It's more like global pork--which would bring out the argument by some lawmakers of why they should do anything to benefit the rest of the world instead of keeping the money in the USofA.
You had such a great snake metaphor going... and then you stuck a 'weasel' in it.
That's because Jimmy the Snake and Frankie the Weasel are the senior liaison officers for Choruss.
Actually, the name of the group reminded me of a typical show chorus: It's always there making the same annoying background noise, distracting you from what you're trying to listen to.
Obligatory obscure quote...
Oh, we're the boys in the chorus,
We hope you like our show,
We know you're rooting for us,
But now we have to go!
Isn't the the whole point of having a channel dedicated to one subject--to go after people interested in that subject?
No. The point of having a channel is to maximize profits by creating low-cost thematic content that appeals to the majority of the viewing public. That means "reality shows". Why pay a premium for talented actors when the viewers would rather have a vicarious experience through people just like them(1) who are placed in extraordinary circumstances?
So this name change is our first step toward the final name, which will be The Survivor Network. In fact, every channel will be The Survivor Network, airing 24/7 'episodes' chronicling the lives of ordinary people(2) as they try to avoid being voted out of island paradises, deserts, glaciers, inner city slums, corporate boardrooms, and Catholic girls' schools. In fact, there will be 273 Survivor Networks, each with its own theme.
And to make sure viewers will be pinned to their seats for every minute of breathtaking(3) action, commercials will be replaced with product placement for everything from beer to carpet cleaning services(4), all delivered by the new company that will come from the merger of FedEx, eBay, and the Home Shopping Network.
There will still be a few whiners who want 'quality' TV, but remember that at Ford, quality was Job 1, and where are they now? The few 'niche geeks' that resist the coming assimilation--I mean, program harmonization, will be pacified through subliminal messages we've started hiding in every YouTube video(5).
Once this brave new world of entertainment has pacified--I mean satisfied the masses, the government can pursue the agenda it has sought all along, and has been denied the opportunity to do in the light of public scrutiny. That's right... they can move in to Disneyland!(6)
___
(1)Actually not quite like them. Much prettier, thinner, less pimply. And smarter. Stronger too. But otherwise just like them.
(2)Not completely ordinary... see above.
(3)Not completely breathtaking. More mind-numbing, actually, but that's what we like in an audience.
(4)Which will be necessary because the beer-buzzed masses will be too entranced by our breathtaking content (yes, I know, see above) to leave their seats.
(5)You didn't take "Do no evil" seriously, did you?
(6)Well what did you think? Seriously, what is the point of unrivaled political power anyway? Another triple bypass like Cheney? Eternal ridicule like Bush? Give me Disneyland any day!
You're worried about the worm/caterpillar when there's a *stapler* underneath?
So that's why the second icon showed up as a broken image, viewing the page from here in Vancouver. We've had a serious crack-down on those dangerous weapons around here recently.
Coming up next, on Catherine's Kitchen, our chef will demonstrate the proper technique for chopping vegetables using children's safety scissors.
But first, the news: Today the House passed the Banning Beastly Blades Act, with an amendment that will extend the ban to children's safety scissors. More at eleven.
Welcome to Cooking with Catherine. Umm... If you cook your vegetables whole I guess you could cut them with a spoon...
So, if there is any correlation, it's a negative one: more video games, less knife crime.
That makes perfect sense. Who wants to stab some stranger once with a boring hunting knife when you can hack up your friends day after day with a +3 Sword of OMGWTFBBQPWNage?
...the kids buying video games are probably not the ones going around stabbing folks.
Exactly. Let's use the violent video game taxes to fight the kind of crimes that actually result from them, like littering the ground with various types of weapons, ammunition, and medical kits.
It's like asking "Can we make a healthy Big Mac?" Yeah, and by the time you're done removing everything that's bad about that burger, you're left with nothing but lettuce and sesame seeds.
Um, I hate to tell you this, but the variety of iceberg lettuce McDonald's uses has basically no nutritional value, and the pesticides sprayed on the sesame seeds, due to their small volume in relation to their surface area, make them more harmful than healthy.
So really, you've got nothing left. Except for the exercise if you walk there. Actually, scratch that; the benefit of the walk is negated by the ground-level automotive pollution in the commercial area of your city.
Science is advancing more all the time and if there was ever a time for optimism based on a scientific society, NOW is it.
Please give me directions to the world you live in, because it doesn't sound a lot like mine, where scientific discovery is telling me that the chlorinated organic chemicals we've been spewing out for the last half century are polluting most of our dwindling supply of fresh water, resulting in the next generation of people having shorter life expectancies than their parents for the first time, where advances in genetics are used by giant companies to patent life forms to use to engineer pesticide-resistant crops for the main purpose of encouraging industrialized farmers to use more pesticide (produced by those same companies) and to introduce terminator genes into agricultural crops so farmers will be forced to buy seed every year instead of replanting, where the rapid advances in computer technology encourage users to buy new computers and cell phones at least once a year, generating huge amounts of electronic waste that end up clogging landfills or causing dangerous levels of air pollution in the third world, and where the biggest proponent of climate science has half the world convinced that an incremental increase in global temperature is the worst thing we have to worry about.
I'd really like to live in a world where science gives people a real reason to be optimistic, because it seems to be doing the opposite in this world.
Slashdot Mirror
Like the neighbor to the #1 supplier of oil to the US?
Hey, you said it; I didn't...
Ahafuhack?
No worries about that. The USA is too big to fail!
Just sayin'...
+1
I remember a few years ago there was a test, can't remember if it was national or in one particular state. The purpose of the test was to gauge scientific literacy. One of the questions asked if the reader believed that the universe was formed in a giant explosion billions of years ago. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of the question.)
I thought that was a ridiculous way to test scientific literacy. I don't believe in the Big Bang, or evolution, or Newtonian mechanics. I accept that certain theories are supported by the overwhelming majority of evidence, and therefore probably best describe the way the universe works. The moment you start believing in something, you've got religion, not science.
Students should be encouraged to question established theories, to gather evidence and think critically about how things work. Unfortunately, whenever someone asks people to question a particular theory, it's usually because they want to push a particular truth.
Unless you're Google. Then the beta is the shipping product. ;)
I'd say it's the difference between the initial "Wow, those new window borders look sooo kewl!" and "I wish those bloody window borders didn't take up half my screen." later on. The eye candy gets the box out the door and the cash in hand. After the novelty wears off, people want something that works.
But when a company relies on selling a product rather than providing a service, that initial wow factor is more important than continued functionality.
Yum, my arteries went "clang" browsing that site. :)
What, you mean Eastern and Western Samoa?
Or did you mean s'mores?
Better yet:
"What's the matter, Colonel Sanders? Chicken?"
More geek appeal. :P
...because it's a much more suitable unit for this distance.
No, no, no! I keep telling you, the universal capacity unit is libraries of Congress!
Just don't confuse LoC with Congress itself when you're talking about capacity for hot gases; Congress has an infinite capacity for hot air.
Given the number of significant active volcanoes in Alaska, and the fact that ash can spread around the world (remember Pinatubo, St. Helens), volcano monitoring in Alaska certainly isn't single-state pork. It's more like global pork--which would bring out the argument by some lawmakers of why they should do anything to benefit the rest of the world instead of keeping the money in the USofA.
But happiness is never having to say you're Tory.
Pay us or we'll force you to listen to gangsta rap?
That's because Jimmy the Snake and Frankie the Weasel are the senior liaison officers for Choruss.
Actually, the name of the group reminded me of a typical show chorus: It's always there making the same annoying background noise, distracting you from what you're trying to listen to.
Obligatory obscure quote...
Oh, we're the boys in the chorus,
We hope you like our show,
We know you're rooting for us,
But now we have to go!
No. The point of having a channel is to maximize profits by creating low-cost thematic content that appeals to the majority of the viewing public. That means "reality shows". Why pay a premium for talented actors when the viewers would rather have a vicarious experience through people just like them(1) who are placed in extraordinary circumstances?
So this name change is our first step toward the final name, which will be The Survivor Network. In fact, every channel will be The Survivor Network, airing 24/7 'episodes' chronicling the lives of ordinary people(2) as they try to avoid being voted out of island paradises, deserts, glaciers, inner city slums, corporate boardrooms, and Catholic girls' schools. In fact, there will be 273 Survivor Networks, each with its own theme.
And to make sure viewers will be pinned to their seats for every minute of breathtaking(3) action, commercials will be replaced with product placement for everything from beer to carpet cleaning services(4), all delivered by the new company that will come from the merger of FedEx, eBay, and the Home Shopping Network.
There will still be a few whiners who want 'quality' TV, but remember that at Ford, quality was Job 1, and where are they now? The few 'niche geeks' that resist the coming assimilation--I mean, program harmonization, will be pacified through subliminal messages we've started hiding in every YouTube video(5).
Once this brave new world of entertainment has pacified--I mean satisfied the masses, the government can pursue the agenda it has sought all along, and has been denied the opportunity to do in the light of public scrutiny. That's right... they can move in to Disneyland!(6)
___
(1)Actually not quite like them. Much prettier, thinner, less pimply. And smarter. Stronger too. But otherwise just like them.
(2)Not completely ordinary... see above.
(3)Not completely breathtaking. More mind-numbing, actually, but that's what we like in an audience.
(4)Which will be necessary because the beer-buzzed masses will be too entranced by our breathtaking content (yes, I know, see above) to leave their seats.
(5)You didn't take "Do no evil" seriously, did you?
(6)Well what did you think? Seriously, what is the point of unrivaled political power anyway? Another triple bypass like Cheney? Eternal ridicule like Bush? Give me Disneyland any day!
...which will lead to the new adjective to describe the channel: SyFy-lus.
Must... reach... brain bleach!
So that's why the second icon showed up as a broken image, viewing the page from here in Vancouver. We've had a serious crack-down on those dangerous weapons around here recently.
And of course that was right after the stick-wielding cavemen unsuccessfully lobbied to ban rocks.
Coming up next, on Catherine's Kitchen, our chef will demonstrate the proper technique for chopping vegetables using children's safety scissors.
But first, the news: Today the House passed the Banning Beastly Blades Act, with an amendment that will extend the ban to children's safety scissors. More at eleven.
Welcome to Cooking with Catherine. Umm... If you cook your vegetables whole I guess you could cut them with a spoon...
That makes perfect sense. Who wants to stab some stranger once with a boring hunting knife when you can hack up your friends day after day with a +3 Sword of OMGWTFBBQPWNage?
Exactly. Let's use the violent video game taxes to fight the kind of crimes that actually result from them, like littering the ground with various types of weapons, ammunition, and medical kits.
Right after I find the BFG, of course. ;)
Um, I hate to tell you this, but the variety of iceberg lettuce McDonald's uses has basically no nutritional value, and the pesticides sprayed on the sesame seeds, due to their small volume in relation to their surface area, make them more harmful than healthy.
So really, you've got nothing left. Except for the exercise if you walk there. Actually, scratch that; the benefit of the walk is negated by the ground-level automotive pollution in the commercial area of your city.
Please give me directions to the world you live in, because it doesn't sound a lot like mine, where scientific discovery is telling me that the chlorinated organic chemicals we've been spewing out for the last half century are polluting most of our dwindling supply of fresh water, resulting in the next generation of people having shorter life expectancies than their parents for the first time, where advances in genetics are used by giant companies to patent life forms to use to engineer pesticide-resistant crops for the main purpose of encouraging industrialized farmers to use more pesticide (produced by those same companies) and to introduce terminator genes into agricultural crops so farmers will be forced to buy seed every year instead of replanting, where the rapid advances in computer technology encourage users to buy new computers and cell phones at least once a year, generating huge amounts of electronic waste that end up clogging landfills or causing dangerous levels of air pollution in the third world, and where the biggest proponent of climate science has half the world convinced that an incremental increase in global temperature is the worst thing we have to worry about.
I'd really like to live in a world where science gives people a real reason to be optimistic, because it seems to be doing the opposite in this world.