And then there's that.
Your grandfather sounds just as amusing as Justin Halpern's, who does "S#!t my Dad Says." I would love to read more of his rants.
Yeah he really is a cool guy, It's hard to properly transplant his speeches though because his rants are just one long intertwined stream of wisdom, humor, and vitriolic abuse. Even calling them rants is more a distinction I've added to categorize by his subject matter his speeches into discernible parts. Really when I visit him it is just one long six hour tidal wave of education and insults. It's awesome.
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The downfall of the sciences in America is that there are fewer and fewer real families promoting good behaviour and solid academic studies.The attention span just isn't there amongst many of the up and coming generations. They want it done for them and they want it now!
Many of the most influential scientists in history were religous. I don't see the correlation between the downturn in scientific study in America and the church. It's influence is clearly at an all time low, and the popular media goes out of it's way to promote the exact opposite of anything you might learn in church.Ha,i have seen the church blamed for some really bizarre things here on this board, obviously some people have some issues they need to work through.
Despite nothing more than anecdote and personal observation, I would still tend to agree with your first statement.
My neighbor's daughter is in my oldest's 2nd grade class. I know that the kids have homework every night, five nights a week, because the school sends home a homework calendar--it's a month-long calendar that details each night's homework and includes a Parents Guide, which is full of notes about each day's instruction, and additional resources and materials to help children at home with the topics taught on a given day. This last Saturday afternoon, my wife and I were outside working in the flowerbeds when my daughter's friend called across from her yard, asking if our daughter could come over and play. My wife replied that she was getting a head start on next week's homework and then had her State project to work on (a project on South Dakota), but maybe she would have time to play the next day. Her father then walked over to the fence and said, "She has homework?"
We then learned that he and his wife didn't know their daughter had homework (remember that both children are in the same class), or that her State project was due in a couple weeks, or that they had just finished individual science projects on meteorology. He laughed, "Well--too late now! Besides, she's only in the 2nd grade--who cares?"
On your second remark, I'm much less in agreement. Many historical scientists were, indeed, religious--but there wasn't a whole lot of choice back then (I might remember Galileo recanting his Theory of Heliocentric Action, but sotto voce, "...and yet it moves.")
Despite a couple ready-to-hand examples like the Scopes Trial, I might argue that the religious right simply didn't comment on science 50-75 years ago in a loud enough voice to make a difference; not to mention the fact that methods of communication were fewer and less significant, and that, thanks to the post-war boom in technology, the Space Race, and scientific celebrities like Einstein, von Braun, Feynman, et al., science was pretty cool.
In 2012, church attendance is at an all-time low, and the numbers of non-religious individuals are apparently on the rise. The letter and intent of the US system of government is patently non-religious, but the polemics against a religiously-indifferent government, and against science, are now loud and self-echoing (while a whopping three quarters of the population identify as Christian, less than a 10th also identify as actively religious). A fear of mine is validated each time a politician joins the rants against state indifference and moves for diverting science funding to faith-based initiatives. Between loud politics pandering to the religious right and religious authorities declaring that science they obviously don't understand (as evinced by their comments and the content of their rants) is both wrong and damning, I'm surprised children pay any attention to science at all. Add to this, the odd private faith-based schools that teach mystery and myth as hard science, ignore the hard science, spend more class time on spiritual study and biblical history than math; plus the odd public school teacher who doesn't understand the science they teach, or deliberately sabotages the information.
The downfall of the sciences in America is that there are fewer and fewer real families promoting good behaviour and solid academic studies.The attention span just isn't there amongst many of the up and coming generations.
I wonder how much of that is a side-effect of the squeezing of the middle class. In the '50s, the average professional earned enough to support a house, a car, a stay-at-home wife, and a couple of kids. Mom could help the kids with their homework when they got home, and could oversee things to make sure they stayed on track.
Fast-forward to the "double oughts." If the same professional wants that house and car and kids, his spouse usually needs to work, too, and the two of them will still be worse off when they retire.
Social security? What's that? :P
A scheme even Madoff would be proud of?
I'm pretty sure the Paizo Off Topic forums is not an accurate representation of America.
If it were, would that be an improvement to America or the end of the world as we know it...
I think part of the issue with the diminishing of science in America has to do with the technological boom that came with the internet. When I had math in high school, calculators were available but not allowed. Despite our constant grumblings, that helped us learn HOW to solve quadratic equations, HOW to plot a parabolic curve, HOW to determine surface area and volume. If our teachers had listened to our class and caved in, we'd know how to punch the data into a device to be fed an answer - not how to determine the answer ourselves.
The internet just kind of exacerbates this. Why do I need to know anything when I can just type it into google and be told it?
That seems like a major contributing factor to me.
I think some of you will like this article about why Loki is awsome.
Waring Avengers Spoilers
edit: it is actually on topic.
I think part of the issue with the diminishing of science in America has to do with the technological boom that came with the internet. When I had math in high school, calculators were available but not allowed. Despite our constant grumblings, that helped us learn HOW to solve quadratic equations, HOW to plot a parabolic curve, HOW to determine surface area and volume. If our teachers had listened to our class and caved in, we'd know how to punch the data into a device to be fed an answer - not how to determine the answer ourselves.
The internet just kind of exacerbates this. Why do I need to know anything when I can just type it into google and be told it?
That seems like a major contributing factor to me.
I personally think the effect of those things is the exact opposite. Internet and calculators basically help us free the RAM inside our brains, which we can dedicate to other things. A modern scientist is probably hundreds of times more efficient when researching than a scientist at the start of the XXth century.
The problem is, and on this I agree with you, in the manner said tools are being taught. I graduated as a finance engineer (although my field of work and passion is making olive oil. Life has strange ways of leading us forward), and one of the things I noticed among some of my friends, particularly those who went onto becoming portfolio managers and traders, is that they became masters at handling the tools of their trades, such as stock analysis, but in most cases are not really sure how exactly those tools get to the results they need. They hadle the input and output perfectly, but have issues when understanding the throughput.
I've seen that happen with structural engineers and even designers, becase they were formed to effectively use tools, but were skimpy in the "how on earth does this tool work on the first place" area.
The tools make us much more efficient and push science forward, but I completely agree with you in that if we stay in the knowledge of how to use them, while skipping the how they do it, we end up with a poor capacity to think outside the box and innovate when the premises of the issue change beyond what the tool was designed to do.
Now, one does have to wonder if that is really a problem in the way education works or is an unnavoidable process caused by the exponential growth in tool complexity. After all, the more advanced tools get, the harder it is to understand what they do and how they do it. In that regard, the Internet is probably our saviour, as it is allowing us to work more and more as a collective brain, with the capacity to overcome the impossibility of a single individual from understanding a potential overly-complex tool.
That makes me think that, perhaps, the apparent slow-down being discussed here might be just part of a natural process of adjustment. Knowledge has become incredibly atomized due to specialization, and perhaps when we finally manage a fully integrated process of conjoined R&D, we'll see the engine kickstarting again.
So basically, I think we'll have an industrial revolution sometime in the next few decades.
We have a sky high rate of immigration, primarily of low skilled workers. Guess what happensto schools when they get overcrowded.
You mean how during 2000-2004 the DHS estimates 3.3 million illegals arrived, but from 2005-2010 only 1.5 million arrived? If your employer cut your pay check in half, would you consider that an economic boom for your household?
We have a sky high rate of immigration, primarily of low skilled workers. Guess what happensto schools when they get overcrowded.You mean how during 2000-2004 the DHS estimates 3.3 million illegals arrived, but from 2005-2010 only 1.5 million arrived? If your employer cut your pay check in half, would you consider that an economic boom for your household?
I hate to side with Drake Mallard over here, but your analogy is broken.
It's more like if you got half as much OF A RAISE as you had previously gotten.We do have a problem with illegal immigration.
I don't believe it is an epidemic or a viable scapegoat for all our country's ills, however.
I also think it's a legitimately difficult problem because it puts important American values at odds with one another.
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Internet and calculators basically help us free the RAM inside our brains, which we can dedicate to other things. A modern scientist is probably hundreds of times more efficient when researching than a scientist at the start of the XXth century.
I have to disagree with you here. When I was in 8th grade, the math teacher was helping a girl, and asked her to divide 80 by 10. She had to reach for her calculator to do it, when it should have taken her a fraction of a second to think of it in her head. When you're so lacking in basic concepts that you need a tool to do everything, it just slows you down. Sure, a scientist will get a lot more done with a calculator, but the vast majority of people don't need to know anything past basic algebra. I'd rather high school students learn how to calculate a tip in their head than learn how to solve quadratic equations on a calculator.
And on the subject of creationists, I think it's a very human temptation to blame the ills of society on a small minority of people who think differently than you. For what it's worth, I've never met a Creationist who was anti-science*. I even lived in a Christian fraternity in college which was full of creationists, even at a school almost exclusively devoted to science and engineering. Heck, Answers in Genesis has its own peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes studies on catastrophic geological processes, and an anisotropic interpretation of the speed of light to explain the distant starlight problem. So you can make a case if you want that creationists misunderstand science, or have a distorted view of it, but the thing that's patently absurd to say is that they hate it.
Besides, creationists only disagree with a very small portion of scientific thought, whereas the problem with the state of education applies to all of science, as well as math, language, literature, history, etc. The problem isn't with a small minority of people, opposing a small minority of the curriculum. It's something more systemic, that's infecting the entire culture.
*In person, that is. Comment sections abound with them, but you can find idiotic internet commenters to discredit any viewpoint you want. I'd wager that for every conservative Christian who denies science, there's a liberal atheist or spiritualist who thinks "science" means "ideas I agree with." e.g. "It's been scientifically proven that a fetus is just a lump of cells, not a human being," or people like Deepak Chopra trying to validate Eastern mysticism by linking it with quantum mechanics. The knife cuts both ways.
I don't believe it is an epidemic or a viable scapegoat for all our country's ills, however.
I also think it's a legitimately difficult problem because it puts important American values at odds with one another.I don't think its a viable scapegoat for ALL of our country's ills. It certainly negatively impacts many of them, though.
As for putting important American values at odds with one another, I don't believe it does.
As noted in another thread, Texas has added the most jobs to it's economy the past few years. Texas also has the second highest number of illegal immigrants in the country. This would seem to be at odds with the idea that illegal immigration is making the unemployment rate worse.
California, the state with the highest number of illegal immigrants, roughly 7.8% of its population, but spending on services for them is close to 5% statewide (in some jurisdictions it comes close, but never goes over, 10%). At the state and local level, immigrants use more services than they pay in taxes, but on the federal level, they pay more taxes than services they use (they pay into SS, but cannot receive it, they can't receive food stamps or pretty much every other program).
I don't disagree, they can cause a problem. But in the grand scheme of things, it's such a minor problem, that would actually cost more to solve it (Alabama is having economic problems right now) than to ignore it.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
We can't call ourselves the land of opportunity, we can't claim the American Dream exists if we don't give hard working people who desire it the chance to come here. I'm no fool, I believe we've failed dearly to live up to that ideal throughout our history, but it should still be held up as an ideal and closing our borders to our poorer neighbors goes against that ideal.
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Regarding illegal immigrants being a drain on health care, CDC estimates that preventable obesity is costing the system something like 100 times as much as all the illegals put together. Something to think about.
Talking more about making it better: Flame Challenge, where scientists explain fire and 11 y/o's judge who did it the best.
Quick read through, I'm familiar with TANF (it's been a while, but I did some research on the topic years ago), how specifically are illegal immigrants eligible for TANF?
The Illegal Immigration Reform Act (1996) and the Balanced Budget Act (1997) both make illegal immigrants ineligible for TANF. As such, the problem isn't necessarily with illegal immigrants, but with identify theft and fraud in public programs (because illegal immigrants couldn't receive benefits without the use of fraud).
The only way that illegal aliens can receive TANF, is if the state administering the program approves them. Texas law specifically prohibits illegal aliens from receiving TANF, so my follow up question, would be, why did Texas administrators, in 2002, allow $1.6 billion in funds be spent on people who are specifically prohibited from receiving such funds? In fact, Texas rules state that legal immigrants who are barred from federal funds are also barred from state funds. Just to repeat that... LEGAL immigrants.
The numbers are either bunk, or the product of fraud. If the later, the problem isn't the illegal aliens, but rather with procedures for verifying eligibility, not the actual eligibility.
I've just looked up 5 other states eligibility requirements for TANF, all of them exclude illegal aliens.
From the National Agriculture Law Center:
Aliens in the United States without authorization, commonly referred to as “illegal aliens,” remained ineligible for federal public assistance.
So if Texas provided TANF to illegal aliens, it did so under it's own rules. Could you please be so kind as to point to the law that allowed that to happen?
Who is the Mr. Rogers of this century?
In what way? A christian that lived like christ but didn't let it get in his way of having fun? Or just a genuinely good role-model that isn't a fictional character?
Or some other way?
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Who is the Mr. Rogers of this century?
In what way? A christian that lived like christ but didn't let it get in his way of having fun? Or just a genuinely good role-model that isn't a fictional character?
Or some other way?
Some random memories:
I remember wanting to go to the planetarium because he made it so cool; learning about electric cars; that jogging was good for you; that that everyone's afraid of the dark, but it can be exciting to imagine what's there and fun to see if you can guess what's there before you turn on the light--then try again with different shapes; that leaves are just like the panel on 'one of these new, dandy solar calculators'; that the rainbow is made of seven different colors we can see with a prism or in a puddle of water; that electricity can be made from movement; that you should always wear house shoes, and button-up sweaters are respectable.
And so much more.
Seeing some cool stuff lately, ran across Pranav Mistry.
He's been working on something he calls Sixth Sense. It's a projector/camera display, which costs about $400 to acquire (though you have to piece it together yourself). The instructions for it are open source. Amongst it's various capabilities, you can clip a microphone to a piece of paper, and the camera/projector will turn it into a tablet computer. The camera tracks your hand movements, while the microphone picks up when you touch the paper.
First off, the device itself is pretty awesome. What makes it ridiculous though is that it's open source, including what hardware is being used.