If NRO can pull a couple hubble class telescopes out of petty cash, why are we so certain there isn't a Shuttle or the functional equivalent stashed somewhere?
Not exactly a functional equivalent, but... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
Wrong. God farted.
It's true. Everyone knows the methane in God's farts contains exclusively carbon-14.
> The singularity itself? A teaspoon of singularities would have infinite weight.
No, it wouldn't. Black holes have a finite weight.
Singularities consume no space, so you can fit an infinite number of finite weight singularities in a teaspoon. Hence infinite weight
The mass is finite. The volume is 0. D=M/V. The density is infinite.
Apple employees and fans, you would think that Jobs created Apple single-handedly, perhaps with divine powers.
Jobs did create Apple single-handedly. He used Woz's hands.
Sounds less to do with the religion and more to do with those practicing it.
The religion isn't really the doctrine. It is the people practicing it. The doctrine is just a framework.
many people are taught that Columbus proved the world was round even though everyone thought it was flat (invented by Washington Irving), George Washington cut down his dad's cherry tree (also invented by Washington Irving), and that Paul Revere said "The British are coming!" (invented by Henry Longfellow).
"Don't know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know about American History But Never Learned" is a fascinating read on this subject.
Find me a school that teaches that, please. Ive never heard a school teach that throughout my educational years.
Let's say you have a school district which is incredibly poor, but has a highly motivated but not unusually smart set of parents (Such districts aren't hard to find - they exist in most US cities and more isolated rural areas).
You mean like New York and DC, who have the twin distinctions of being the MOST funded per pupil, and also the least performant, in the country?
To give our highly motivated parents the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume they've: * Ensured that their kids can read, count, and possibly add or subtract 1-digit numbers before entering first grade.
That puts them at about a second to third grade level in the public schools I went to, and FCPS (fairfax county) is one of the better school districts in the country. Id say "motivated parents putting kids 2 years ahead of peers" is a pretty good example of why motivated parents IS a solution. Heck, look at homeschooling scores (any of them), and THEN tell me that parents cant fix the issue.
FCPS is not one of the better schools districts. It's consistently rated in the top three in large districts in the country (along with its sister across the Potomac in Montgomery county MD). The irony is as bad as DC schools are, most of the surrounding suburbs (excepting Prince George's county which has pockets that are as poor as Southeast DC) have excellent public education. My kids (yes triplets) just completed half-day Kindergarten in Fairfax County public schools and they can do all those things. It shocks me the level of pressure that are put on these kids to perform. When I was that age in California's once excellent (pre-Prop 13) schools, I ate paste, picked my nose, and watched movies and filmstrips. We didn't even start that stuff until 1st grade. Fairfax and Montgomery have the most educated workforce in the country (as measured by the % of the adult population with master's level degrees) and hence a lot of parents apply educational pressure on kids. My wife has a summer reading, writing, and math program for my kids. I think it's slightly over the top. I'm pressuring her to cut back on the workload. One of them doesn't have the attention span yet to keep up with his siblings and it's frustrating him. There's a fascinating analysis in Gladwell's "Outliers" about 2nd graders in Baltimore and summer break. It analyzed some standardized test taken at the start of the year and at the end and then the start of the next year. It showed that poor kids and rich kids learned the same amount during the school year, but that the rich kids scores increased a little over the summer, while the poor kids regressed and needed to re-learn some subject matter. The attribution was that the rich kids got academic exposure over the summer and the poor kids didn't. I think further data suggested that a shorter break over the summer would help the poor kids, because they would have less time to forget.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
