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Submission + - NASA to prioritize relations with Islam? (sfexaminer.com)

dcroxton writes: NASA head Charles Bolden recently said that one of Obama's three priorities for him was "to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." Many on Slashdot supported Obama's decision to scrap the moon program. What is the feeling on using NASA as a supplement to the State Department?

Comment Re:Thought control (Score 1) 895

You have got to be kidding. The new textbook standards are no more "thought control" than any of the other textbook standards, in Texas or anywhere else. They are the result of the interpretation of the members of the Texas school board, which is in charge of making such decisions. I don't think you would have such harsh words if they decided on a textbook standard more in accord with your views of history.

Comment Re:History is the most important subject (Score 1) 895

"In most of the world I'm categorized as a right-wing conservative, yet in the US I'd likely be labeled a "capitalism-hating socialist" for my political views. You there have Mussolini in one side and Hitler on the other, the middle ground between them is still fascism." People need to get over the idea that the U.S. should be judged by the standards of the rest of the world. One, the U.S. is not the rest of the world, and thank goodness. I don't want to be like Italy or Greece. Two, it's not that the rest of the world is far to the left of the U.S.; it's that Europe is far to the left of the U.S. For theocracy, how about Saudi Arabia or Iran? For autocracy, how about Libya or North Korea? Nobody (I hope) wants to be like them. The U.S. should strive for the best government it can have, not a government in line with the rest of the world.

Comment Re:The School is in Pensylvania (Score 1) 699

It's also interesting to note that the theory some people had that the student took webcam shots of himself and that's what the school was using is impossible. The webcam could be not be activated, used or deactivated by the students. Trying to Jailbreak the laptop to allow you to do things like disable the webcam was an offense punishable by expulsion. Oh, and just for good measure, students weren't allowed to use their own computers at school.

They may not have been able to deactivate the webcam electronically, but I'll be a piece of dark-coloured paper and some tape would have worked wonders. Not that the student should have known this, but maybe something to think about if you ever have a borrowed laptop with a webcam.

Comment Re:There's more to this story (Score 2, Insightful) 691

But America has far more premature births than other countries, for reasons that are not understood (and probably don't relate to healthcare). America does a better job of keeping those premature babies alive than any country in the world, but not enough to offset the fact that premature babies are more likely to die than full-term babies.

Comment Re:Welcome to Fascism (Score 1) 1070

>You are close to the mark, but this is potentially worse than fascism as we have known it. It opens the possibility of an entirely new form of tyranny that the human race has not yet experienced.

I love Slashdot for statements like this. Because McCain-Feingold has been overturned, the U.S. is about to become worse that Stalinist Russia, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Uganda under Idi Amin...It is refreshing to see the imaginative leaps the human imagination can undertake.

Comment Re:What can't I f**king decide for myself? (Score 1) 360

I agree completely about MP3 players, but your anger is directed at the wrong side politically. The stem cell debate is not about legality, it is about public funding. And no one is trying to tell you what religion to have. It is the left who wants to tell us what size toilets we can have, what kind of light bulbs we can use, and what kind of safety devices need to be on our cars.
Idle

Hand Written Clock 86

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

Comment Re:Capitalist flight (Score 0, Troll) 1142

>Why does this ridiculous soundbite keep getting regurgitated *every single time* this topic comes up?

>If corporations don't pay tax as so many Internet corporate lick-spittles shriek, then they wouldn't need ridiculously twisted foreign tax accounts and be prancing around like sooks when someone comes along and tells them to meet their obligations in their home countries would they? They would just happily pass this tax burden it along.

>That's right logic doesn't come into a discussion where fanatical ideologists are hopping up and down does it?

Good, you first abuse your opponents' motives before claiming they are illogical. That's standard /. practice.

The reason the corporate tax matters, even though it gets passed on to the consumer, is that consumers are less willing to pay for things when prices are higher. The corporation can set a lower price point without the tax and sell more product, possibly making more profit along the way (depending on the exact elasticity of demand, tax amount, price change, etc.). I don't approve tax shelters in general, but you can't argue that raising taxes don't matter.

>That's right logic doesn't come into a discussion where fanatical ideologists are hopping up and down does it?

Oh, I guess you can.

Comment Re:Supply and Demand (Score 1) 1322

No, the salaries are decent (especially considering you get several months off every year). I've known quite a few people who were interested in teaching but decided against it because of the requirements for certification. Someone with a Ph.D. is qualified to teach college students, but not high school students. Even though certification is basically the equivalent of a master's, you have to have the specific courses required for certification, which typically means a year or two beyond a master's degree.
And what are those courses that give one a unique insight into teaching students under 18? I know someone who had to take a course on "Mental Hygiene in the Classroom," and another on world music. He wanted to teach German, but his undergraduate coursework had not included something to give him sufficient credentials in internationalism -- even though he had lived in several foreign countries while growing up.
Why is this? The NEA, which pushes for these barriers to entry -- ostensibly in the name of good teaching, but in reality to create an artificial shortage of teachers.

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