can also lead to more schools to teach real skills and not years of fluff and filler
Actually, college is supposed to be a breadth oriented experience. It is not supposed to be job training. If you want job training, that's what technical school is for.
No, it isn't. If I had to pay 3% of all future earnings in taxes, I probably wouldn't have gone to college, at all. That is just an insane amount of money, for what? A silly little undergrad degree?
A college education is already of debatable value for a lot of professions. Hell, I was making $40k/yr before I went to college, so college cost me $160k in opportunity cost alone, nevermind tuition, room, and board, and beer money. That's a lot of ground to make up. Add in a 3% surtax for life, and I'm pretty sure I would have said, "screw that."
Evolution is a FACT. If I can write a genetic algorithm, then the process of evolution is a FACT
Of course evolution is fact. We can watch simple organisms evolve in a laboratory. Nobody who is being serious questions this.
What we cannot prove is that evolution explains how humans came into being. Seems like the most plausible theory, but nobody's demonstrated that in a lab yet.
Except it is not an alternative. It has zero scientific merit.
The science around the creation of the universe is not well understood.
I'm told that there was a Big Bang. OK, great. What Big Banged? Where did that whatever come from and what was it outside of the context of our universe? You can't even ask, "What existed before the Big Bang?" because the dimension of 'time' didn't exist prior to the Big Bang, so there can be no "before" or "after" as we understand those concepts.
Talking to a cosmologist is very similar to talking to a clergyman. It doesn't take very long to get to, "Well, humans can't really understand that so you just have to take it on faith."
To be clear, I'm certainly not claiming that the answers surrounding the beginning of the universe are all contained within the Christian bible. All I'm saying is that between the theories of "some higher power created the universe and we don't understand how" and "the universe was the result of a spontaneous Big Bang and we don't understand how", it's not really clear to me that we can rule either out. If we can, I'd be interested to know how.
I don't want to have to uproot my family, find a new job, and start a new life in another state just because the state I happen to live in wants to push religious beliefs onto my kids through the public school system.
Teach your kids whatever you want to teach them. They'll hear from the schools, too. Eventually, they'll have to form their own opinions.
I teach my kids a lot of stuff that they don't learn in school. They'll just have to sort it all out, themselves.
For me, the problem isn't whether or not I'm an adrenaline junkie. The problem is that the effort to adrenaline ratio in motorcycling is totally out of whack.
Should we go riding? Oh, no, it's too hot/cold/rainy/snowy/dark/bright/whatever. And where will we park at our destination? And where do I keep it? And I have to maintain it? And insurance is expensive? And I need a special license? And...
But is it really worth it to twiddle your thumbs for 10 minutes at Mt. Vernon Square each day waiting for your buddy to swap cards with you? Sounds like the trouble : worth is ratio is a little off there.
Except if america caught up with the rest of the world, each of those credit and debit pairs would be one card;).
They can be one card in the US. Debit cards are always Visa or Mastercard branded. You can always use it as either a checking/ATM card or a "credit" card.
Personally, I don't use the "credit card" feature of my ATM card for two reasons:
One billing error or fraudulent transaction can cause a cascading clusterfuck of denied transactions. Let's say the restaurant I ate at accidentally charged me $10000 instead of $100.00 by forgetting the decimal point. Well, $10,000.00 is immediately debited from my checking account and now my mortgage payment, ISP, cable, gym membership, and a dozen other payments fail. Late fees, overdraft fees, returned payment fees get piled on. Would I be able to sort it all out? Yeah, probably. But it's a huge waste of time. Had I paid with a true credit card, I wouldn't ever have to pay that $10,000.00, so no cascading clusterfuck would happen.
US card issuers tend to offer rewards to good customers. My credit card gives me 2% cash back on all purchases, but my bank gives me nothing. 2% adds up pretty quick, so I'd be crazy not to take advantage of it.
So while we might look mad to you for carrying around wallets stuffed with plastic, there is method in it.
If fraud happens on these new cards, it becomes up to the consumers to prove that it was fraud and that they did not compromise their PIN.
Impossible. As soon as you type your PIN into a compromised merchant terminal (think Target) or really any website, your PIN should be considered compromised. You have no control over what happens with it after that.
To me the git integrations in IDEs have never felt quite right, CVS and SVN were great but something doesn't quite fit for the git workflow so I still use cli/gitk/gui 4-years later.
Agree 100% in the case of Eclipse on Windows. Get all kinds of spurious commits involving line endings. So I just drop into a cygwin shell for commits.
If you lived in Minneapolis proper you'd know that in residential areas (outside of snow emergency routes) you may not even see a plow for that small amount of snow.
I've lived in several northern cities, and I can confirm. There's no way in hell they'll drop a plow and tear up the asphalt over a measly 2". They'll throw down some sand and call it a day.
I wish I hadn't already commented in this thread, because this needs to be modded up.
I grew up in the north and now I live in the south. And while I nearly 100% agree with the following quote:
The second problem was that we weren't dealing with whatever dainty light fairy powder you Northerners deal with in which you think a snowplow would help. We were dealing with sleet and slush. "Wintry mix," you hear it called on weather stations.
My quibble is that this is not the "second problem". It is the first and main problem. It is well over 50% of the entire problem. All this business about people leaving at the same time is a red herring. Had they left over a period of half the day, the same thing would have happened. Because it is damn near impossible to drive on ice. In North Dakota, 2" of snow would have blown off the roadway before the plow could even get there.
Seriously? You do realize there are things call "spring" and "fall" in the north, too, right? You know -- when "temperatures hover between 30-35 degrees" and you might end up with a rainstorm or an icestorm or whatever?
Yes, I realize this. I grew up in the north and learned to drive in the north. It was snowing for my first behind-the-wheel driving lesson.
Please understand that "hovering between 30-35" is the norm for the entire winter down south, not just for a few weeks here, a few weeks there. Also, to tell you the truth, I don't remember the temperature being 30-35 much at all. I remember it being 60 degrees one day and 10 the next. Because the only terrain there to slow down those oncoming weather systems was about 1,000 miles of prairie grass. Sound familiar?
Guess what? In the north, when they are calling for "freezing rain" or "sleet" and put out a winter storm warning, people drive with great caution. Now, most places in the north have salt to handle these scenarios, but -- even with the salt -- nobody wants to be driving on the roads during freezing rain, even in the north.
Whatever. I never looked at a weather report in the north unless I was waxing my skis. I certainly didn't check the NWS before hopping in the car.
Driving works in the north for 3 reasons: 1. Snow is not difficult to drive in, and snow is what mainly happens in the north. 2. Dedicated snow removal equipment. If snow or ice or whatever is in the forecast, the entire bloody state is instantly covered in chemicals. Hell, some bridges even have deicers built into the bridge. 3. More experienced drivers. But I list this last for a reason: last is least. You can dismount that high horse whenever you're ready.
A warning about something like that happens, and people leave work early.
What? You're joking. If we left early for snow, we'd never be at work.
Schools close.
Um, no. My kids' school district down here has more snow days in a single academic year than I had my entire life, growing up. Northern districts will close for extreme cold, but not for snow.
There's nothing you can do to prevent sliding around with a car on ice.
Chains will improve grip and reduce stopping distance. It is entirely possible to drive with chains on glare ice at low speeds. Done it dozens upon dozens of times (former ski racer here). Sucks driving that slow when you're a speed demon at heart, but you get there eventually.
But my guess is that a lot of this problem has to do with people -- and the news media -- not understanding the details of the weather warning information I mentioned in my post.
Southerners speak slowly, but that doesn't mean that they're stupid. A meteorologist at a large market news station is going to understand, much better than you do, what to make of NWS alerts.
Unless the weather people in Georgia are significantly more incompetent, my bet is that every time a "watch" or an "advisory" comes on, people in the south go a little crazy, and then nothing or very little happens. Then when an actual "warning" comes up, they don't realize that means something different.
Well, I don't live in Atlanta, but this is not my experience. My experience is that local meteorologists are constantly analyzing all available data sources, including NWS alerts, and tweeting out updates as the various weather models change or converge (increasing forecast confidence). I enjoyed your mental image of a bunch of confused southerners running around like decapitated chickens, but I'm telling you that that's not what it's like down here.
I am from up north and while I laugh at the idea of 2 inches of snow affecting anything (we've had that amount and more in the last two weeks), I do understand those in the South who only experience this every decade are out of their league when it comes to dealing with this type of event.
I grew up in the north, now I live in the south. Here is why 2 inches of snow paralyzes us:
1. We don't get light, fluffy snow like back in the old country. 2" in North Dakota will blow right off the road before the plow can even get there. And anyway, actual snow is easy to drive in.
In the south, we get what's referred to as a "frozen mix", which means some combination of sleet, freezing rain, ice, and snow. Ice is very difficult to remove (you can just plow it to the side), and it's near impossible to drive in. This is the single biggest reason why winter weather destroys us.
2. No dedicated snow removal equipment. It just isn't worth the money for us.
3. Improper winter driving technique. But I really think that this is a distant 3rd cause, because see #1. Ice.
So what should Atlanta have done when NWS issued a snow warning?
1. Cancel school. They get like 1 snow day every 3 years. They can afford to be wrong sometimes.
2. Pretreat the interstates and major roadways. I realize that they lack the equipment to do much more than that, but there is inexcusable that the interstates were impassable. They had all damn day.
So that is one northerner turned southerner's perspective.
Why? 2-3 inches here and the only things we do different are leave earlier and drive slower. No chains. No pre-salting the roads. Just slow the fuck down until the roads get plowed or melt.
Maybe because there's more traffic in Atlanta than in the entire state of OK? Maybe that was an exaggeration, but I doubt that I exaggerated by much.
But since we have Google, let's see how OK does when y'all get your once in a blue moon snow. Oopsie!
Anyone using anything but the National Weather Service for weather information is a fool consuming altered data proffered with the intent to draw eyeballs to adverts.
That really depends on the metro area.
For instance, in the DC area, we have the Capital Weather Gang. Read some of their blog posts and form your own opinions, but in my view, they are a valuable asset to the region. They present the NWS reports, but they also read and interpret other weather models and do a fantastic job explaining complex weather concepts to average Joes like me. They are introspective, always publicly evaluating their performance forecasting major events.
As for me, I read CWG and I get NWS alerts on my phone. That's about as accurate as you can hope for in this area.
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So refuse to issue passports to citizens with outstanding student loans. Problem solved.
It's not a student loan; it's a surtax. You'd have to refuse to issue passports to any college-educated people for life.
fleeing the country for 3% extra tax sounds absurd.
It's not like he's fleeing to some shithole of a 3rd world country. Many people work in a different country anyway.
Hell, I almost left the US, and it wasn't for financial reasons. It was just because I like other parts of the world, too.
can also lead to more schools to teach real skills and not years of fluff and filler
Actually, college is supposed to be a breadth oriented experience. It is not supposed to be job training. If you want job training, that's what technical school is for.
This is actually a really good idea.
No, it isn't. If I had to pay 3% of all future earnings in taxes, I probably wouldn't have gone to college, at all. That is just an insane amount of money, for what? A silly little undergrad degree?
A college education is already of debatable value for a lot of professions. Hell, I was making $40k/yr before I went to college, so college cost me $160k in opportunity cost alone, nevermind tuition, room, and board, and beer money. That's a lot of ground to make up. Add in a 3% surtax for life, and I'm pretty sure I would have said, "screw that."
Evolution is a FACT. If I can write a genetic algorithm, then the process of evolution is a FACT
Of course evolution is fact. We can watch simple organisms evolve in a laboratory. Nobody who is being serious questions this.
What we cannot prove is that evolution explains how humans came into being. Seems like the most plausible theory, but nobody's demonstrated that in a lab yet.
Except it is not an alternative. It has zero scientific merit.
The science around the creation of the universe is not well understood.
I'm told that there was a Big Bang. OK, great. What Big Banged? Where did that whatever come from and what was it outside of the context of our universe? You can't even ask, "What existed before the Big Bang?" because the dimension of 'time' didn't exist prior to the Big Bang, so there can be no "before" or "after" as we understand those concepts.
Talking to a cosmologist is very similar to talking to a clergyman. It doesn't take very long to get to, "Well, humans can't really understand that so you just have to take it on faith."
To be clear, I'm certainly not claiming that the answers surrounding the beginning of the universe are all contained within the Christian bible. All I'm saying is that between the theories of "some higher power created the universe and we don't understand how" and "the universe was the result of a spontaneous Big Bang and we don't understand how", it's not really clear to me that we can rule either out. If we can, I'd be interested to know how.
I don't want to have to uproot my family, find a new job, and start a new life in another state just because the state I happen to live in wants to push religious beliefs onto my kids through the public school system.
Teach your kids whatever you want to teach them. They'll hear from the schools, too. Eventually, they'll have to form their own opinions.
I teach my kids a lot of stuff that they don't learn in school. They'll just have to sort it all out, themselves.
I will agree w/one of your complaints. The old farts at the airport are a sour crowd.
Do you include yourself among those sour farts? Just sayin'...
We will all die. Not all of us will truly live.
For me, the problem isn't whether or not I'm an adrenaline junkie. The problem is that the effort to adrenaline ratio in motorcycling is totally out of whack.
Should we go riding? Oh, no, it's too hot/cold/rainy/snowy/dark/bright/whatever. And where will we park at our destination? And where do I keep it? And I have to maintain it? And insurance is expensive? And I need a special license? And ...
Oh, fuck it. Let's go skiing!
Looks pretty good, but I already learned Giteye. How does it hold up against Giteye? any killer features?
Beats me. I've never used giteye. Just thought I'd pass along the tip.
But is it really worth it to twiddle your thumbs for 10 minutes at Mt. Vernon Square each day waiting for your buddy to swap cards with you? Sounds like the trouble : worth is ratio is a little off there.
If you DO use it at an ATM, how do you authorize it?
Mine requires a PIN to use at an ATM.
Beats me. My credit card charges an ATM fee of like 5%+20% interest. I've never even tried because I think the bank would get more cash than I would!
Except if america caught up with the rest of the world, each of those credit and debit pairs would be one card ;).
They can be one card in the US. Debit cards are always Visa or Mastercard branded. You can always use it as either a checking/ATM card or a "credit" card.
Personally, I don't use the "credit card" feature of my ATM card for two reasons:
So while we might look mad to you for carrying around wallets stuffed with plastic, there is method in it.
If fraud happens on these new cards, it becomes up to the consumers to prove that it was fraud and that they did not compromise their PIN.
Impossible. As soon as you type your PIN into a compromised merchant terminal (think Target) or really any website, your PIN should be considered compromised. You have no control over what happens with it after that.
I was about to write this as well. We have been using pins for credit cards in Switzerland for the last 10 years...
Quick question: What do you do for online transactions? Also enter your PIN? Just curious.
You might want to give Atlassian SourceTree a try. Also free-as-in-beer, but a little lighter-weight. I find it's pretty nice.
To me the git integrations in IDEs have never felt quite right, CVS and SVN were great but something doesn't quite fit for the git workflow so I still use cli/gitk/gui 4-years later.
Agree 100% in the case of Eclipse on Windows. Get all kinds of spurious commits involving line endings. So I just drop into a cygwin shell for commits.
Everyone in Atlanta hit the roads at once. Atlanta traffic is... interesting. The problem wasn't excessive speed.
In the south, it doesn't snow. It ices. Winter tires (the kind without studs) won't do a damn thing on ice.
If you lived in Minneapolis proper you'd know that in residential areas (outside of snow emergency routes) you may not even see a plow for that small amount of snow.
I've lived in several northern cities, and I can confirm. There's no way in hell they'll drop a plow and tear up the asphalt over a measly 2". They'll throw down some sand and call it a day.
I wish I hadn't already commented in this thread, because this needs to be modded up.
I grew up in the north and now I live in the south. And while I nearly 100% agree with the following quote:
The second problem was that we weren't dealing with whatever dainty light fairy powder you Northerners deal with in which you think a snowplow would help. We were dealing with sleet and slush. "Wintry mix," you hear it called on weather stations.
My quibble is that this is not the "second problem". It is the first and main problem. It is well over 50% of the entire problem. All this business about people leaving at the same time is a red herring. Had they left over a period of half the day, the same thing would have happened. Because it is damn near impossible to drive on ice. In North Dakota, 2" of snow would have blown off the roadway before the plow could even get there.
Stay warm!
Seriously? You do realize there are things call "spring" and "fall" in the north, too, right? You know -- when "temperatures hover between 30-35 degrees" and you might end up with a rainstorm or an icestorm or whatever?
Yes, I realize this. I grew up in the north and learned to drive in the north. It was snowing for my first behind-the-wheel driving lesson.
Please understand that "hovering between 30-35" is the norm for the entire winter down south, not just for a few weeks here, a few weeks there. Also, to tell you the truth, I don't remember the temperature being 30-35 much at all. I remember it being 60 degrees one day and 10 the next. Because the only terrain there to slow down those oncoming weather systems was about 1,000 miles of prairie grass. Sound familiar?
Guess what? In the north, when they are calling for "freezing rain" or "sleet" and put out a winter storm warning, people drive with great caution. Now, most places in the north have salt to handle these scenarios, but -- even with the salt -- nobody wants to be driving on the roads during freezing rain, even in the north.
Whatever. I never looked at a weather report in the north unless I was waxing my skis. I certainly didn't check the NWS before hopping in the car.
Driving works in the north for 3 reasons:
1. Snow is not difficult to drive in, and snow is what mainly happens in the north.
2. Dedicated snow removal equipment. If snow or ice or whatever is in the forecast, the entire bloody state is instantly covered in chemicals. Hell, some bridges even have deicers built into the bridge.
3. More experienced drivers. But I list this last for a reason: last is least. You can dismount that high horse whenever you're ready.
A warning about something like that happens, and people leave work early.
What? You're joking. If we left early for snow, we'd never be at work.
Schools close.
Um, no. My kids' school district down here has more snow days in a single academic year than I had my entire life, growing up. Northern districts will close for extreme cold, but not for snow.
There's nothing you can do to prevent sliding around with a car on ice.
Chains will improve grip and reduce stopping distance. It is entirely possible to drive with chains on glare ice at low speeds. Done it dozens upon dozens of times (former ski racer here). Sucks driving that slow when you're a speed demon at heart, but you get there eventually.
But my guess is that a lot of this problem has to do with people -- and the news media -- not understanding the details of the weather warning information I mentioned in my post.
Southerners speak slowly, but that doesn't mean that they're stupid. A meteorologist at a large market news station is going to understand, much better than you do, what to make of NWS alerts.
Unless the weather people in Georgia are significantly more incompetent, my bet is that every time a "watch" or an "advisory" comes on, people in the south go a little crazy, and then nothing or very little happens. Then when an actual "warning" comes up, they don't realize that means something different.
Well, I don't live in Atlanta, but this is not my experience. My experience is that local meteorologists are constantly analyzing all available data sources, including NWS alerts, and tweeting out updates as the various weather models change or converge (increasing forecast confidence). I enjoyed your mental image of a bunch of confused southerners running around like decapitated chickens, but I'm telling you that that's not what it's like down here.
I am from up north and while I laugh at the idea of 2 inches of snow affecting anything (we've had that amount and more in the last two weeks), I do understand those in the South who only experience this every decade are out of their league when it comes to dealing with this type of event.
I grew up in the north, now I live in the south. Here is why 2 inches of snow paralyzes us:
1. We don't get light, fluffy snow like back in the old country. 2" in North Dakota will blow right off the road before the plow can even get there. And anyway, actual snow is easy to drive in.
In the south, we get what's referred to as a "frozen mix", which means some combination of sleet, freezing rain, ice, and snow. Ice is very difficult to remove (you can just plow it to the side), and it's near impossible to drive in. This is the single biggest reason why winter weather destroys us.
2. No dedicated snow removal equipment. It just isn't worth the money for us.
3. Improper winter driving technique. But I really think that this is a distant 3rd cause, because see #1. Ice.
So what should Atlanta have done when NWS issued a snow warning?
1. Cancel school. They get like 1 snow day every 3 years. They can afford to be wrong sometimes.
2. Pretreat the interstates and major roadways. I realize that they lack the equipment to do much more than that, but there is inexcusable that the interstates were impassable. They had all damn day.
So that is one northerner turned southerner's perspective.
Why? 2-3 inches here and the only things we do different are leave earlier and drive slower. No chains. No pre-salting the roads. Just slow the fuck down until the roads get plowed or melt.
Maybe because there's more traffic in Atlanta than in the entire state of OK? Maybe that was an exaggeration, but I doubt that I exaggerated by much.
But since we have Google, let's see how OK does when y'all get your once in a blue moon snow. Oopsie!
Anyone using anything but the National Weather Service for weather information is a fool consuming altered data proffered with the intent to draw eyeballs to adverts.
That really depends on the metro area.
For instance, in the DC area, we have the Capital Weather Gang. Read some of their blog posts and form your own opinions, but in my view, they are a valuable asset to the region. They present the NWS reports, but they also read and interpret other weather models and do a fantastic job explaining complex weather concepts to average Joes like me. They are introspective, always publicly evaluating their performance forecasting major events.
As for me, I read CWG and I get NWS alerts on my phone. That's about as accurate as you can hope for in this area.