That's been my experience, I spent a year using the metric system in China, and I came to realize fairly quickly that there was no particular advantage for every day life. Rather than buying my meat by the pound, I would buy it by the half kilo. Sure, it's not quite the same amount, but it's fairly close.
Temperatures took the longest to get intuitively as I had to live through the various weather patterns before I could feel it. But, even then there wasn't really any advantage to it as I was still comparing it to what I consider a comfortable temperature.
Driving, well, you don't generally think about the distances in terms of feet, or meters,you usually think of it in terms of miles and kilometers, and use the odometer heavily, so there wasn't much change there either.
For all the slamming of the US by foreigners over the issue, you'd think that the imperial system was incredibly hard to use. Which it's not, it just requires somewhat more work to learn in the first place. But, even then, not really as you're not using the numbers in most cases, you're comparing with your experience. I don't usually care if it's exactly right, I want to know if it's about what I want.
The problem is that you're operating in a system. The US has a ton of infrastructure and current use of imperial measures and our standard date. Converting to something else would be a Herculean tasks. Seriously, right now all construction is done using imperial measure materials, so you'd have this awkward period where you're trying to mix and match metric with imperial measure. Roads are constructed using imperial measures in the US. The metric measurements on the speed dial in a car are usually on the inside, which means that they aren't quite as accurate as the imperial measures are.
And when you consider how little there is to be gained by switching, I'd be surprised if we're using metric in my lifetime. The things where it makes sense to use metric, are already metric, I wouldn't expect much else to change as there just isn't any good reason to cause that much trouble.
The last car I saw that wasn't marked in both systems was the car my brother bought in Canada that only had metric marks on it. All the ones I've ever seen in the US were marked for both systems. Granted, the metric makers were a bit cramped, but it was there and functional.
Name one industrial nation the size of the US that's done it.
Yeah, I didn't think so.
The US has the 3rd largest population in the world and is the 3rd largest by land mass as well. The only nations comparable would be China and India, and they got to start largely from scratch as far as new infrastructure goes. I've been to China and their units of measure are a mess, you're never quite sure if you're going to be dealing in metric, imperial measure or the traditional units of measure that predate both.
But, what's more, there's basically nothing to be gained. Seriously, you don't go out side and think that it feels like it's 19 C, or 85 F, you compare it to whatever feels comfortable to you personally. When you're driving, a quarter mile isn't any less convenient to think about than 500m is, and the total time of the trip is just as easily calculated in one system as in the other.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. People who objected to the change could have ended the contract at that point and had the ETF waived. Anybody who stayed on after that would be considered to agree to the new ToS.
Which is really a moot point because there was never any informed consent for most customers at any point, they just signed the contract and assumed it wasn't too evil. Chances are good that they store they signed at didn't even have somebody qualified to explain all the fine print.
You can blame the courts for that. It astonishes me the complete and utter lack of common sense in the judiciary. We're not all rich enough to be able to afford an attorney every time somebody asks us to sign a contract. We don't have access to a law library to look up the precedence over whether or not they're allowed to call this a surcharge.
At the end of the day, the law needs to recognize that people can't sign away their rights. Especially in cases like this where the only competition also requires us to sign away our rights.
Expulsion was over the top, but there's a reason why there's a requirement that a professional be there supervising, it dramatically decreases the likelihood of there being any mistakes or injuries. Sure, it still might happen, but having a chemist there would be prudent.
That's not to say that you can't have some fun, I remember my high school chemistry teacher light soap bubbles filled with methane on fire in class. There were even scorch marks on the ceiling to prove it.
It's a world view that we value human life. There's no reason why the police need to report back on where they found the individual. Just reporting back that they were found safe and sound ought to be sufficient.
Without actually doing the search you have no way of knowing what happened.
And BTW, I don't speak or read French, so quoting TFA in French isn't going to help you make your case.
What precisely do you tell the families of people who wind up being found chopped to bits and buried in somebody's basement, that there wasn't sufficient evidence to take it seriously? There's no reason why the police need to report back where it is that they find these people, but they do have a responsibility to look into such things in case something has happened.
Plus, how do you know that somebody doesn't have unknown mental health issues? There's a lot more people out there with mental health diagnoses than you seem to realize and without access to those records you wouldn't necessarily know. Most of the time when people commit suicide, the do so when they seem to be on the uptick, rather than at the bottom.
The problem is that the translation was wrong. As you put it, it's a non-story, but as the summary puts it, it's something very strange and backwards minded. But yeah, if it's just getting people back in touch that have lost contact, as in grown apart or moved away, that's not something that the police should be dealing with.
It's the sudden unexplained disappearances that they will continue to investigate that they should be investigating.
That makes far more sense. I think the summary could have done a better job in explaining that.
I'm surprised that they did look for people that were missing in that fashion. Then again, after 2 world wars, I can see why they would have done so in the past. Although it does seem like a bit of a risk for stalkers.
Not really, there's a presumption that if somebody's been missing for more than a given amount of time that they're in danger, unless there's evidence to the contrary. Having a police report also means that if they're spotted by police that the police will likely make contact.
Facebook is something to augment efforts to locate somebody, not to replace the work of police officers. By the time you've determined that somebody isn't in danger, you've probably already located them anyways.
And yes, FB is probably a good start, but not everybody uses FB and it doesn't come with any particular powers as far as investigation goes.
Bottom line is that some radiation exposure is inevitable and that some more probably isn't going to kill you, the reality is that ionizing radiation is ionizing radiation and that you shouldn't just assume that you can add more just because you haven't been killed by the radiation in bananas.
What's more, it makes a huge difference if you're prepared for the exposure versus not expecting it. It's normal when working in a nuclear plant to be taking potassium iodide on a regular basis, which isn't something that the general populace is likely to be doing. It's also not typical for the general populace to be wearing protective gear either.
And lastly, it makes a huge difference what kind of radiation you're dealing with and what the duration of exposure is.
Options are a poor way of compensating employees. Just ask all the MS employees whose options are effectively worthless because the strike price is inappropriate for what the stock price will ever be. A better strategy would be to just do proper profit sharing or give them actual shares in the company.
That's more or less my thought. This is one of the few industries where the boss is expected to directly provide the snacks during the day.
As much as I am in favor of the employer taking care of the employees, that isn't what's going on here. And as you mention, in the long run it tends to exact a toll on the body. If the industry wants better work, it might make more sense to provide things that improve the work life balance and make it easier to stay for the long term.
Perhaps IT shouldn't be at college, it should be a vocational program the way that being an electrician or a plumber is a vocational matter rather than one that's taught at college.
But, it's not the level of the degree that determines that, it's whether it's focused on vocational training or on understanding things in a more broad way. Every time the topic comes up there's a bunch of luddites that comes to bash college because it's not laser focused on the job. Well, guess what, that's what college is. If a person wants the focus, then they should go with a technical certification. For those that want the context and some increased ability to move into other areas if need be, that's what college is for.
I meant a school that actually values education. I went to an in state college and I didn't have to deal with any of that crap. For the most part, the homework barely came into the equation at all. I can't recall the last time that homework accounted for more than 20% of the grade, if even that. Sure, in those cases you couldn't afford to completely ignore it, but in practice it wasn't ever a crushing workload.
I'm aware of that, I'm also aware that learning math to be better at art is complete and total rot.
Art is art, and while you might use some math and science in it, the reality is that it's not typically much and it's not worthwhile to spend years studying math in case it might actually be of some benefit artistically. You generally get better at art by studying and by practicing it. Math isn't really something which naturally fits with art. And in most cases trying to bring mathematics to solving artistic problems isn't going to work.
That was one of my thoughts, nothing in the article would lead a professor to change his or her practices as there's nothing in the article at all to go by. The students that do well in these MOOCs are probably already doing so well in normal classes that they don't really need a professor. The students that the professors are supposed to worry about are the lower achievers and the middle of the class. Those are the ones where the professor is likely to be able to make a difference.
I'm extremely skeptical that people in general can learn at that sort of rate, there may be a few savants out there that can, but most people can't integrate knowledge that quickly and as a result, I would love to see how much of this they've actually retained after a period of time. My suspicion is that they won't have retained anywhere near as much of it as they would have had they spent more time going through the material and letting it sit.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be wonderful if it were possible for everybody, or even a significant minority, to learn this fast, I just have a lot of doubts about it.
Traditional college doesn't need to change. Most of the things people complain about are the result of the changes and reforms put into place over the last hundred years.
Things which are generally better at trade/tech schools are usually taught there for a reason. One of the big problems is that people don't seem to understand the difference between vocational certification and a college degree. The former is supposed to set you up for a specific job and the latter is supposed to set you up to think in an area of inquiry. They're both valuable, but if you go to the wrong one and don't know it, you're likely to be greatly disappointing.
I'd recommend going to a better school if that's your view of it. Because the better schools aren't like that.
The article itself is extremely light on the details and doesn't even cite anybody that thinks that it's somehow superior. What's more, I don't see anything in the article that professors can learn from that hasn't been known for decades.
And none of that is of much value apart from niches that are niches for a reason.
Don't get me wrong, I love math and science as well as the arts, but you're just fooling yourself if you think that math plays a significant role in the creation of art. Sure, you can make art that's surrounded by math and there's tons of things like paint drying that you can study, but in terms of composition, the education you get in math is going to be completely worthless.
What's more, math classes are generally not aimed at the people that are likely to be good at art. The extremely linear approach that's usually required by the undergraduate classes are not likely to go over well for creative folks.
Nobody is being forced to buy the most expensive insurance policies. They're being forced to buy a policy or to pay into the system. Assuming that they don't qualify for one of the numerous exemptions written into the law.
Had the GOP been voted in, it would have meant that nobody would have health insurance because the rates would continue to climb at 12-20% and more as they chose not to handle the crisis.
Slashdot Mirror
That's been my experience, I spent a year using the metric system in China, and I came to realize fairly quickly that there was no particular advantage for every day life. Rather than buying my meat by the pound, I would buy it by the half kilo. Sure, it's not quite the same amount, but it's fairly close.
Temperatures took the longest to get intuitively as I had to live through the various weather patterns before I could feel it. But, even then there wasn't really any advantage to it as I was still comparing it to what I consider a comfortable temperature.
Driving, well, you don't generally think about the distances in terms of feet, or meters,you usually think of it in terms of miles and kilometers, and use the odometer heavily, so there wasn't much change there either.
For all the slamming of the US by foreigners over the issue, you'd think that the imperial system was incredibly hard to use. Which it's not, it just requires somewhat more work to learn in the first place. But, even then, not really as you're not using the numbers in most cases, you're comparing with your experience. I don't usually care if it's exactly right, I want to know if it's about what I want.
The problem is that you're operating in a system. The US has a ton of infrastructure and current use of imperial measures and our standard date. Converting to something else would be a Herculean tasks. Seriously, right now all construction is done using imperial measure materials, so you'd have this awkward period where you're trying to mix and match metric with imperial measure. Roads are constructed using imperial measures in the US. The metric measurements on the speed dial in a car are usually on the inside, which means that they aren't quite as accurate as the imperial measures are.
And when you consider how little there is to be gained by switching, I'd be surprised if we're using metric in my lifetime. The things where it makes sense to use metric, are already metric, I wouldn't expect much else to change as there just isn't any good reason to cause that much trouble.
The last car I saw that wasn't marked in both systems was the car my brother bought in Canada that only had metric marks on it. All the ones I've ever seen in the US were marked for both systems. Granted, the metric makers were a bit cramped, but it was there and functional.
Name one industrial nation the size of the US that's done it.
Yeah, I didn't think so.
The US has the 3rd largest population in the world and is the 3rd largest by land mass as well. The only nations comparable would be China and India, and they got to start largely from scratch as far as new infrastructure goes. I've been to China and their units of measure are a mess, you're never quite sure if you're going to be dealing in metric, imperial measure or the traditional units of measure that predate both.
But, what's more, there's basically nothing to be gained. Seriously, you don't go out side and think that it feels like it's 19 C, or 85 F, you compare it to whatever feels comfortable to you personally. When you're driving, a quarter mile isn't any less convenient to think about than 500m is, and the total time of the trip is just as easily calculated in one system as in the other.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. People who objected to the change could have ended the contract at that point and had the ETF waived. Anybody who stayed on after that would be considered to agree to the new ToS.
Which is really a moot point because there was never any informed consent for most customers at any point, they just signed the contract and assumed it wasn't too evil. Chances are good that they store they signed at didn't even have somebody qualified to explain all the fine print.
You can blame the courts for that. It astonishes me the complete and utter lack of common sense in the judiciary. We're not all rich enough to be able to afford an attorney every time somebody asks us to sign a contract. We don't have access to a law library to look up the precedence over whether or not they're allowed to call this a surcharge.
At the end of the day, the law needs to recognize that people can't sign away their rights. Especially in cases like this where the only competition also requires us to sign away our rights.
Just out of curiosity, which of the other 3 providers isn't evil? Seriously, I'm really curious.
Was that during a trial period or were you trying to game the system?
Expulsion was over the top, but there's a reason why there's a requirement that a professional be there supervising, it dramatically decreases the likelihood of there being any mistakes or injuries. Sure, it still might happen, but having a chemist there would be prudent.
That's not to say that you can't have some fun, I remember my high school chemistry teacher light soap bubbles filled with methane on fire in class. There were even scorch marks on the ceiling to prove it.
It's a world view that we value human life. There's no reason why the police need to report back on where they found the individual. Just reporting back that they were found safe and sound ought to be sufficient.
Without actually doing the search you have no way of knowing what happened.
And BTW, I don't speak or read French, so quoting TFA in French isn't going to help you make your case.
It's not a bad presumption at all.
What precisely do you tell the families of people who wind up being found chopped to bits and buried in somebody's basement, that there wasn't sufficient evidence to take it seriously? There's no reason why the police need to report back where it is that they find these people, but they do have a responsibility to look into such things in case something has happened.
Plus, how do you know that somebody doesn't have unknown mental health issues? There's a lot more people out there with mental health diagnoses than you seem to realize and without access to those records you wouldn't necessarily know. Most of the time when people commit suicide, the do so when they seem to be on the uptick, rather than at the bottom.
The problem is that the translation was wrong. As you put it, it's a non-story, but as the summary puts it, it's something very strange and backwards minded. But yeah, if it's just getting people back in touch that have lost contact, as in grown apart or moved away, that's not something that the police should be dealing with.
It's the sudden unexplained disappearances that they will continue to investigate that they should be investigating.
That makes far more sense. I think the summary could have done a better job in explaining that.
I'm surprised that they did look for people that were missing in that fashion. Then again, after 2 world wars, I can see why they would have done so in the past. Although it does seem like a bit of a risk for stalkers.
Not really, there's a presumption that if somebody's been missing for more than a given amount of time that they're in danger, unless there's evidence to the contrary. Having a police report also means that if they're spotted by police that the police will likely make contact.
Facebook is something to augment efforts to locate somebody, not to replace the work of police officers. By the time you've determined that somebody isn't in danger, you've probably already located them anyways.
And yes, FB is probably a good start, but not everybody uses FB and it doesn't come with any particular powers as far as investigation goes.
No, it's not an indication of any such thing.
Bottom line is that some radiation exposure is inevitable and that some more probably isn't going to kill you, the reality is that ionizing radiation is ionizing radiation and that you shouldn't just assume that you can add more just because you haven't been killed by the radiation in bananas.
What's more, it makes a huge difference if you're prepared for the exposure versus not expecting it. It's normal when working in a nuclear plant to be taking potassium iodide on a regular basis, which isn't something that the general populace is likely to be doing. It's also not typical for the general populace to be wearing protective gear either.
And lastly, it makes a huge difference what kind of radiation you're dealing with and what the duration of exposure is.
Options are a poor way of compensating employees. Just ask all the MS employees whose options are effectively worthless because the strike price is inappropriate for what the stock price will ever be. A better strategy would be to just do proper profit sharing or give them actual shares in the company.
That's more or less my thought. This is one of the few industries where the boss is expected to directly provide the snacks during the day.
As much as I am in favor of the employer taking care of the employees, that isn't what's going on here. And as you mention, in the long run it tends to exact a toll on the body. If the industry wants better work, it might make more sense to provide things that improve the work life balance and make it easier to stay for the long term.
Perhaps IT shouldn't be at college, it should be a vocational program the way that being an electrician or a plumber is a vocational matter rather than one that's taught at college.
But, it's not the level of the degree that determines that, it's whether it's focused on vocational training or on understanding things in a more broad way. Every time the topic comes up there's a bunch of luddites that comes to bash college because it's not laser focused on the job. Well, guess what, that's what college is. If a person wants the focus, then they should go with a technical certification. For those that want the context and some increased ability to move into other areas if need be, that's what college is for.
I meant a school that actually values education. I went to an in state college and I didn't have to deal with any of that crap. For the most part, the homework barely came into the equation at all. I can't recall the last time that homework accounted for more than 20% of the grade, if even that. Sure, in those cases you couldn't afford to completely ignore it, but in practice it wasn't ever a crushing workload.
I'm aware of that, I'm also aware that learning math to be better at art is complete and total rot.
Art is art, and while you might use some math and science in it, the reality is that it's not typically much and it's not worthwhile to spend years studying math in case it might actually be of some benefit artistically. You generally get better at art by studying and by practicing it. Math isn't really something which naturally fits with art. And in most cases trying to bring mathematics to solving artistic problems isn't going to work.
That was one of my thoughts, nothing in the article would lead a professor to change his or her practices as there's nothing in the article at all to go by. The students that do well in these MOOCs are probably already doing so well in normal classes that they don't really need a professor. The students that the professors are supposed to worry about are the lower achievers and the middle of the class. Those are the ones where the professor is likely to be able to make a difference.
I'm extremely skeptical that people in general can learn at that sort of rate, there may be a few savants out there that can, but most people can't integrate knowledge that quickly and as a result, I would love to see how much of this they've actually retained after a period of time. My suspicion is that they won't have retained anywhere near as much of it as they would have had they spent more time going through the material and letting it sit.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be wonderful if it were possible for everybody, or even a significant minority, to learn this fast, I just have a lot of doubts about it.
Traditional college doesn't need to change. Most of the things people complain about are the result of the changes and reforms put into place over the last hundred years.
Things which are generally better at trade/tech schools are usually taught there for a reason. One of the big problems is that people don't seem to understand the difference between vocational certification and a college degree. The former is supposed to set you up for a specific job and the latter is supposed to set you up to think in an area of inquiry. They're both valuable, but if you go to the wrong one and don't know it, you're likely to be greatly disappointing.
I'd recommend going to a better school if that's your view of it. Because the better schools aren't like that.
The article itself is extremely light on the details and doesn't even cite anybody that thinks that it's somehow superior. What's more, I don't see anything in the article that professors can learn from that hasn't been known for decades.
And none of that is of much value apart from niches that are niches for a reason.
Don't get me wrong, I love math and science as well as the arts, but you're just fooling yourself if you think that math plays a significant role in the creation of art. Sure, you can make art that's surrounded by math and there's tons of things like paint drying that you can study, but in terms of composition, the education you get in math is going to be completely worthless.
What's more, math classes are generally not aimed at the people that are likely to be good at art. The extremely linear approach that's usually required by the undergraduate classes are not likely to go over well for creative folks.
Nobody is being forced to buy the most expensive insurance policies. They're being forced to buy a policy or to pay into the system. Assuming that they don't qualify for one of the numerous exemptions written into the law.
Had the GOP been voted in, it would have meant that nobody would have health insurance because the rates would continue to climb at 12-20% and more as they chose not to handle the crisis.