In New York, low SES / Minority students are doing very well in charter schools that the government is trying to shut down.

Like I said, you can make all the excuses you want but the simple fact is, Public Schools are awful. "White" flight happens because the racists in charge are trying to lock minorities into the plantation and anyone that gives them an exit strategy is fought against. That raises the bar for who can successfully escape the plantation.

The color of a student's skin has no impact on their learning potential. As charter schools prove over and over again.

Public schools can make excuses decade after decade or they can fix the problems.

Maybe you should look into charter schools that cater to low SES students and end up having a vast majority of success stories.

If the public education system wasn't hiding behind racism, they'd be looking at why low SES students excel in charter/private schools and either encourage low SES students to go to those schools, or figure out how to replicate that success themselves.

As it is, public schools are more interested in plugging their ears and making excuses.

As you perfectly demonstrated.

Studies have shown that the children most likely to get their homework done come from families with a single black mother.

Low SES and minority.

Morgan Spurlock made the idiotic comment about how Norway is "homogeneous" right before transitioning to his piece on a charter school with minority students who were excelling.

SES or "Socio-Economic Status" is the most common race bait thrown around in the education system. Anyone who has experience outside the public education system figures out real quick that you can't look at the skin color or bank account of a student to see how well they're doing.

Racism is the last excuse that our failed public education system still clings to. That and "we don't have enough money."

It's just one of the many reasons why despite being certified to teach high school math, I have no intention of ever teaching in a public school. I'm more interested in helping out at my daughter's small private school. My summer project is overhauling their library system. I've already fixed all the laptops as well as they can be. If possible I'd like to go into a part time teaching role to help out.

The school is filled with students from a variety of racial backgrounds and financial circumstances and oddly enough I can't judge their grades by any of that.

It's easy enough to simulate martian conditions here on earth, which is a more controlled and far cheaper means of experiment. It was found that certain lichen can do quite well, although note that this was on the assumption that water would be available.

It would probably be best not to introduce earth microbes before a full terraforming plan is developed. The population might explode, consume all the available micronutrients, and then die off. Or it might become a pest, inhibiting the release of other, more useful microorganisms later on. And it might obscure any extant martian microorganisms or micoorganism fossils when those could provide a far better template than earth-based extremophiles. We'll want something robust and sustainable, a planned ecosystem genetically engineered to produce all the right byproducts and which changes in concert with the alterations to atmosphere, global temperature, and soil composition without any unintended extinction events.

No, slaughter is indiscriminate killing. Reducing casualties is a definite move away from that. While attaching a cost to war is one way of prohibiting it -- hence the success of M.A.D. -- the problem is someday you do wind up having to pay that cost. Overall it's better to reduce the cost than trying to make it as frightful as you can.

But if soldiers can be made obsolete, perhaps killing people can be made obsolete as well. Just as women and children have sometimes enjoyed a certain immunity for not being part of the military forces, when the main threat and the main production force on both sides is robotic, why would the humans be attacked at all when their influence on the outcome is only marginal and doing so would open your own humans to retaliation?

You make a good point. However, this isn't universal. First of all, as the proverbial fat guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet, I've already chosen pay a higher price for significantly more bandwidth than my neighbors. I have an expectation that I have full access to that. I am also lucky enough to have a choice in ISP's where I live. I cancelled my capped service for a more expensive (and even faster) uncapped service. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but I'm willing to pay more for a bigger plate - I just don't want to be gouged by my ISP for that plate. I'm not saying that they can't say "no" to that either - it's their network. I just know what I want as a consumer, and my hope is that I live in a place where competition is great enough that I have that choice.

Another thing that is rapidly changing is the ease of access to streaming for the masses. It used to be that only geeks like me would build a dedicated media PC tied to a TV for streaming video. Now, streaming appliances are ubiquitous. Streaming for Netflix (and related services) is available on dedicated devices (like a Roku) for $100. It's built into TiVo, and it's even integrated into most TV's and Blu Ray players. My parents stream internet video, and they're in their 70's. If that isn't a litmus test for the masses streaming internet video, I don't know what is.

The other thing that you mention is that the vast majority of ISP's do not offer any TV service at all. I am not sure where you're getting your numbers on this (and it could be that you're talking about the amount of ISP's versus the amount of subscribers). I presume that you're referring to residential broadband internet. Most Americans choose between Cable and DSL, and some can get FTTH. According to this report, as of late 2013, over 50% of American residential broadband internet is delivered via Cable. DSL is at 34% and is trending downward. I'm not trying to get into a pissing match here, as you make a good point, but what I'm saying is that most customers purchase internet connectivity from providers who do sell TV service. Given this information, it's no surprise that it's not in the best interest of the largest type of ISP to be entirely friendly to streaming video service. This is even more poignant given that the cable and FTTH providers are all trying to sell their own competing streaming service to us. Finally, remember that the AOL/Time Warner merger, while an utter failure, was (in large part) supposed to merge internet and video service to dominate the VOD marketplace. Again, it didn't work, but this has been on the mind of big companies for a very long time.

I'm not arguing against what you suggested that I'm the fat guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I totally am that guy. But things are changing. The average consumer is streaming internet video, and the whole content industry is shifting in that direction (e.g. 95% of the HBO-produced shows will shortly become available on Amazon Prime Instant Video). The writing is on the wall, and many of these companies are trying to milk returns from their legacy investments for as long as they can. I can't fault them for it, as these are expensive networks to build and maintain. However, they need to tread lightly, because given the lack of competition in most marketplaces, anything viewed as abuse will make these ISP's ripe targets for federal regulation.

...which is exactly why you fired them. They didn't understand (or care about) the needs of their customer, lumping you, as an outlier, into a group of pirates. They didn't want your business.

I did the same thing with Cox Communications. They had an (unenforced) cap. I know that it was unenforced because I routinely exceeded the cap. Still, I routinely exceeded it with my regular use, which was a liability. I switched to a more expensive FiOS service because it was not only significantly faster, but it was also unmetered. Then again, I am fortunate enough to live in an area with competitive service. The funny thing is that the faster FiOS provided crappy service to intermediary backbone peers, degrading Netflix and YouTube service...so in my case, there simply wasn't enough competition.

We clearly need to capture this whale and study it.

I will, from time to time, fire up my Apple //e and write in AppleWorks for a while. It's kind of awesome. There are not many features, and the simple text display keeps me focused.

The other thing I like is how the interface, the clackety feel of the keyboard, etc... all take me back to an earlier time. When I connect in that way, with that time, what I write will be different in subtle ways.

Good for him.

I went the opposite route of never taking notes to taking meticulous notes. But I found in my upper level courses that my brain simply could not keep up with the material at hand. It was instead most important that I had the notes to refer back to for doing the homework, which was where I would actually figure out the material. Trusting only to my brain capabilities during that hour, I never would have parsed it into anything comprehensible. I would also go back and create a comprehensive table of contents for my notes which forced me to review them, figure what was important, figure out how it all related, and left me with a very handy tool for referring back to the material.

Of course, that only worked in classes with good lecturers in the first place.

In any case, we live in age where the professor only needs to deliver a solid lecture once and put it on youtube. I feel it would be better to do that and use the hour to answer questions and work problems -- things which actually do require the instructor's physical presence.

With HD digital projectors getting below $700 and Blu-ray players getting well under $100 and tons of classic movies on Blu-ray for $15 or less, it should be doing fine.

I can't imagine being dependent on streaming to watch the movies I want to watch. A lot of kids these days only care that it looks good on their phone or tablet.

If I get Blu-ray, it's for high quality shows/movies and I prefer to get a DVD with them. It's rare that I'll buy a Blu-ray only movie. I know that I in theory can back it up, but it's going to cost a bunch of money to get the software and hardware to do it. It's going to be a long time before I have a blu-ray collection that justifies it.

That's really all they need to do, they need to package DVDs with Blu-ray discs at no extra cost. I get my digital backup and if I want to watch the movie in maximum quality, I can.

WTF did I just read?

Actually, humans have done a good job of surviving famine and other food stresses by adopting long term storage strategies. It's fundamental to agriculture -- usually your crop is not producing 365 days of the year. Humans unable to ration and protion themselves would be less likely to survive because food availability is rather variable. We're not just eating machines. And there are plenty of places historical and contemporary places with high food aviailability and no significant obesity problem. Compare America to Japan. It really is the content of the diet which is at issue (as well as a more leisurely lifestyle) not simply the availability of the food.

Microsoft does not own the information; they as a third party own the server on which someone else's information resides, a server which is held and taxed as a foreign asset outside US regional jurisdiction. It's one thing to compel Microsoft as a transnational company to produce one of their corporate records regardless of where they have stored it: agreeing to subject themselves to the US judicial system is part of incorporating in the US. It's entirely another when they are being told their foreign offices are actually territory of the US government and anyone or anything which resides there must submit to the pleasures of the US judicial system.

If I had written a letter in Britain and put it in a British safety deposit box I don't think the court would have the guts to demand it, even if the bank were jointly owned in the US. But scan that letter and store on the server and suddenly it's free game. Why? Because now it's easy to sneak the data out of the country without bothering the local authorities? Good news for people torrenting.

I suppose if you live in other countries you should doublecheck that any web companies you do business with do not also have a US presence because if they do any of your data could be subject to requisition by the US government even if it's data which has never left your country.

The parents point is that all doors need to behave the same way. If one door can be locked, they all can be locked. The question is not "can a door be locked" but "should this door be locked so the player has to find a key?" If a player can block one door, they all need to be blockable. There should not be two doors that look identical but one will swing through a player, and the other will be blocked by the player.

It's about consistency of behavior. If one door behaves differently than another door then it needs to look different. If a door cannot be locked, then it shouldn't have a key hole. Any door with a keyhole should have a key somewhere in the level and it should be able to be locked and unlocked with that key. The only question is the starting state of the door and how many copies of the key there are.

It's not really a hard concept. It's about consistency of behavior.