Welcome to Modern Bureaucracy-Driven Education. We now try to teach to the highest common denominator. I have to teach Algebra 2, including matrices and determinants, polynomials, logarithmic and rational functions, series, etc. (i.e. college-prep curriculum) to kids who don't plan on going to college, and never plan on leaving the farm.
To more directly address the problem at hand, Guido van Robot is a fun, engaging, interesting intro to programming. And it is written in Python.
The "Jupiter" series of books were written for young people. They reminded me of Heinlein's "coming of age" stories, that he wrote for Boy's Life back in the day. They tell stories of young people, mostly teenagers, growing up in space in the future. Most were written by James Hogan or Charles Sheffield.
Speaking of Heinlein, those stories would be excellent choices as well.
> but after all, legal rulings are often called "opinions". Why does there need to be "interpretation"?
There is an excellent discussion of this point in the SF novel "Bug Park" by James Hogan. I don't have it here, so I can't point to pages, but the gist is that management and law are similar in that policies that are unclear at one level are booted up to the next level for a higher-level manager to decide on, and the resulting role of precedent in the law.
Worth reading the book for that discussion, plus it's an excellent story with a couple of kewl plot twists.
... publish an MPlayer EDL list for editing out naughty bits of a DVD?... when the DVD format was created, it was intended all along that the DVD player could apply edit codes to the video to alter the rating, supply alternate soundtracks, etc.
Is it possible [as in technically feasible] to provide such a list of codes for a given DVD? Then I could pay someone for a file containing the codes to clean up a video. Or is it something that would have to be copied onto the DVD itself, and thus run into similar problems?
> Things were bad in the late 80s, but dear god... the crap kids have to endure NOW from AuthoriNazi administrators is just over the top.
I'll accept that there are some AuthoriNazi admins out there, but by far the biggest force screwing up the schools is the combination of school boards and insurance companies that won't stand up to Nazi parents, who won't stand for their child having to follow all the same rules that the other kids have to follow.
The school district I worked in last year is being torn apart by that situation.
This might actually have some value, if it keeps the political back-and-forth editing in one venue, and just leaves the main wiki entries for information only. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
However, if it were to work, they could set up FlameWikis for different topics (e.g. religion, Wal-Mart, etc.) and again leave the main wiki open for basic research.
/snip/ Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said./snip/
There has to be some labor involved in stripping that information out of the raw data. Are my tax dollars filtering through NSA to the telco to do that, or are my phone bills directly paying for the telco to edit the data.
I read on the Baen Free Library site that the standard recording artist's contract was for seven albums, so a lot of the "good stuff" was locked in to a contract by the time the band became pretty well known.
IMHO, the music currently under contract may have to stay where it is, and let Sony et al just wither away, while new bands distribute their art through independent, Internet-intensive means. So it may be a generation or so before the king is dead.
"Companies of all stripes are using blogs to help shape public opinion."
I understand companies wanting to make people like them, but I'm confused as to how/why public opinion is the driving force behind everything that happens in America today.
[Begin slightly off topic] During an interview I saw this weekend, a very high ranking officer involved in the efforts in Iraq was asked, "Why do you think our strategy is good, but 67% of Americans think it's bad?" I can't believe that a serious journalist is proposing that something as important as military exercises should be run by counting noses, rather than letting people who have expertise in an area determine the best course of action. If I'm sick, I'm not going to poll my relatives and friends; I'm going to go to a doctor! [End slightly off topic]
While I don't agree with everything that President Bush has done, I respect that he tends to make a decision that he can support, and go with it. President Clinton mostly ran the administration via poll. [Sorry, NOW end slightly off topic]
Also, all spending/taxing comes from the Legislature, not the Executive, Branch. The President offers a suggested budget to the relevant House committee [Ways and Means, I think], but they are not required to do anything with it.
So Bush makes suggestions about NASA/science funding, but if they want to, the House and Senate can start a fire with it [metaphorically speaking].
While I haven't seen any of their output yet, I have browsed by some Star Trek fan flick sites. These seem to be people who care about what they are doing, making decent productions, and not mortgaging the house to do so.
If this is the wave of the future, I say, "Bring it on!"
Am I the only one who noticed that the article was written by:
Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com), and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize.
Some of the other articles linked on the left are suspicious as well.
I agree with the conclusions of the article, but I question the research.
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to Modern Bureaucracy-Driven Education. We now try to teach to the highest common denominator. I have to teach Algebra 2, including matrices and determinants, polynomials, logarithmic and rational functions, series, etc. (i.e. college-prep curriculum) to kids who don't plan on going to college, and never plan on leaving the farm. To more directly address the problem at hand, Guido van Robot is a fun, engaging, interesting intro to programming. And it is written in Python.
Sorry, it was "Technical Error" by Clarke.
I thought it was "Mirror Image" by Arthur Clarke.
The "Jupiter" series of books were written for young people. They reminded me of Heinlein's "coming of age" stories, that he wrote for Boy's Life back in the day. They tell stories of young people, mostly teenagers, growing up in space in the future. Most were written by James Hogan or Charles Sheffield.
Speaking of Heinlein, those stories would be excellent choices as well.
I wonder if there is a non-competition clause in the recent agreement.
> but after all, legal rulings are often called "opinions". Why does there need to be "interpretation"?
There is an excellent discussion of this point in the SF novel "Bug Park" by James Hogan. I don't have it here, so I can't point to pages, but the gist is that management and law are similar in that policies that are unclear at one level are booted up to the next level for a higher-level manager to decide on, and the resulting role of precedent in the law.
Worth reading the book for that discussion, plus it's an excellent story with a couple of kewl plot twists.
The education field is much the worst, IMHO and IME.
... publish an MPlayer EDL list for editing out naughty bits of a DVD? ... when the DVD format was created, it was intended all along that the DVD player could apply edit codes to the video to alter the rating, supply alternate soundtracks, etc.
Is it possible [as in technically feasible] to provide such a list of codes for a given DVD? Then I could pay someone for a file containing the codes to clean up a video. Or is it something that would have to be copied onto the DVD itself, and thus run into similar problems?
> Things were bad in the late 80s, but dear god... the crap kids have to endure NOW from AuthoriNazi administrators is just over the top.
I'll accept that there are some AuthoriNazi admins out there, but by far the biggest force screwing up the schools is the combination of school boards and insurance companies that won't stand up to Nazi parents, who won't stand for their child having to follow all the same rules that the other kids have to follow.
The school district I worked in last year is being torn apart by that situation.
This might actually have some value, if it keeps the political back-and-forth editing in one venue, and just leaves the main wiki entries for information only. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
However, if it were to work, they could set up FlameWikis for different topics (e.g. religion, Wal-Mart, etc.) and again leave the main wiki open for basic research.
There has to be some labor involved in stripping that information out of the raw data. Are my tax dollars filtering through NSA to the telco to do that, or are my phone bills directly paying for the telco to edit the data.
I read on the Baen Free Library site that the standard recording artist's contract was for seven albums, so a lot of the "good stuff" was locked in to a contract by the time the band became pretty well known.
IMHO, the music currently under contract may have to stay where it is, and let Sony et al just wither away, while new bands distribute their art through independent, Internet-intensive means. So it may be a generation or so before the king is dead.
"Companies of all stripes are using blogs to help shape public opinion."
I understand companies wanting to make people like them, but I'm confused as to how/why public opinion is the driving force behind everything that happens in America today.
[Begin slightly off topic]
During an interview I saw this weekend, a very high ranking officer involved in the efforts in Iraq was asked, "Why do you think our strategy is good, but 67% of Americans think it's bad?" I can't believe that a serious journalist is proposing that something as important as military exercises should be run by counting noses, rather than letting people who have expertise in an area determine the best course of action. If I'm sick, I'm not going to poll my relatives and friends; I'm going to go to a doctor!
[End slightly off topic]
While I don't agree with everything that President Bush has done, I respect that he tends to make a decision that he can support, and go with it. President Clinton mostly ran the administration via poll.
[Sorry, NOW end slightly off topic]
Also, all spending/taxing comes from the Legislature, not the Executive, Branch. The President offers a suggested budget to the relevant House committee [Ways and Means, I think], but they are not required to do anything with it.
So Bush makes suggestions about NASA/science funding, but if they want to, the House and Senate can start a fire with it [metaphorically speaking].
John
While I haven't seen any of their output yet, I have browsed by some Star Trek fan flick sites. These seem to be people who care about what they are doing, making decent productions, and not mortgaging the house to do so.
If this is the wave of the future, I say, "Bring it on!"
Am I the only one who noticed that the article was written by: Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com), and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize. Some of the other articles linked on the left are suspicious as well. I agree with the conclusions of the article, but I question the research.