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Comment Re:Wait... What?!? (Score 1) 597

...I think Tesla needs to go back to school. ...This Tesla company, there seem to be a bunch of "special" people working there. Just wow. lol

I think you need to learn the difference between Tesla and journalists that quote "Industry consultants" making crappy predictions (that will benefit their industry) and use Tesla's name for clickbait.

Industry consultant claims the advent of solar power and home batteries from companies like Tesla will force the reinvention of home wiring from primarily AC high voltage to DC home-run low voltage to reduce power conversion loss.

Comment Wrong solution to the wrong problem (Score 1) 208

Rote teaching of CS to students not interested in CS will just turn people off to it. Teach children critical thinking, teach them about all the cognitive biases that we suffer from. Teach them to think and how to figure shit out. Use puzzles and games to promote exercising these abilities.
Or continue to crank out students that know how to take a test. Which is a surprisingly useless skill once you're out of school.

Comment Re: This is a surprise? (Score 2) 445

The Lord YOUR GOD sayeth so. All you have to do is listen and believe. Why is that so hard?

Because it's all unsubstantiated hearsay that contradicts itself and fails to map to observable reality in any meaningful way. All the while threatening infinite punishment for being unconvinced and calling it "love."

Comment Re:wow (Score 1) 234

that's amazing. we should scrap the public school system and rely on the whims of super-rich individuals to educate a handful of students.

That's not what he's trying to do. He's trying to improve his own children's education and he's stating his opinion on the matter. But given your reading comprehension, you may have a point.

Comment Re:Here we go again... (Score 1) 234

Elon on the fast track to developing more things that only benefit the already rich.

Your post juxtaposed with your signature has pegged my irony meter at 11.

He's using the money generated by creating a luxury product (Tesla Model S) to fund the development of a middle class product and the required infrastructure (Superchargers, Gigafactory, and Tesla factory expansion) to support the middle class product (Model 3). That bastard, using a sustainable business model to achieve an important goal. He should have started with some piece of shit electric golf cart that no one wants and gone out of business. Right?

Comment Re:Billionaires funding schools = bad (Score 1) 234

Some people might point to this as a good thing, but I disagree. When rich, influential people begin taking control over key aspects of our society, such as education, even small experiments like this run the risk of being trotted out as the antidote to all those evil government-run schools out there.

Look at political advertising pre- and post- Citizens United decision. Smart people can see though most BS that either side generates. However, the reality is that the masses are definitely swayed by political ads. Now, it's just a matter of who has the most money and can blanket people with their message. A lot of political advertising is "issue advertising" designed not to promote a candidate, but an ideology. Education sounds like a perfect place to get that message in early. (And yes, I'm aware that the conservatives will point out the evil liberal agenda that public schools have...anything that isn't American exceptionalism is an evil liberal plot.)

I'm not saying it would happen, but giving influential people access to educational institutions could just end up creating students in their own image.

The dude created a private school for his kids and for some people that agreed that they don't like the current US educational system. He's not taking control of anything. He's running an experiment in educating his own children. He's an interesting guy and it's an interesting experiment. No public funds were used, no public policy was changed, no agenda was forced down anyone's throat.

Comment Re:Interesting but... (Score 1) 234

He can do what he wants with his money. I was making an assumption that his goal was to improve education. It is a suggestion that I think would help him get closer to that goal.

As to throwing money at inner city schools? That depends on the school. If they are lacking funds for music and the arts then yes it could help.

Bad assumption, though in general Elon Musk does try to shake things up in a way that will ultimately benefit society in general. He didn't like how his children were being taught so he created a school for them and the children of some other SpaceX employees that agreed with his philosophy. Musk tends to be very results oriented so it's awesome that he's doing this. Why? Because if it works, he'll expand upon it and we'll all learn something about education. If it doesn't work, he'll kill it (after trying to tweak it, of course. He's pragmatic, not a quitter.) And we'll all learn something about education.

A billionaire throwing some money at inner city schools would have a very time limitted benefit, if any. He's probably spent less than $200,000 on his kids "school" so far. [1] So one inner city school could have one year of band. I hope we can spend more money on inner city schools, but I also hope we can learn better ways to educate children in general and I don't expect any one person to focus on all of societies problems, nor on the problems that I consider most important.

[1] I invented that number, but it's probably in the ballpark. He hired one teacher so it's basically one teacher's salary and whatever real-estate overhead is required, which may be just some space in a property SpaceX already owns

Comment Re:Weakness (Score 1) 284

Why would you respect the spread of ignorance? Which is all religion is, ignorance... that's why Islam is growing so fast, they target uneducated youth. When religion gets to shape young minds everyone suffers.

Sadly this is not true. Extremely intelligent people can be and are religious. Assuming otherwise is hubris and ignorance on your own part. The 9/11 hijackers were by and large well educated and successful.

I agree that religion can be a vector of incredibly bad ideas. Unfortunately intelligence does not inoculate people against bad ideas. It's worse than that, intelligent people are better at constructing complex justifications to support their bad ideas. The sooner that secular people (myself included) admit this and stop talking down to the religious, the better.

Comment Re:Lies! Lies! All lies! (Score 1) 284

If Islam is like American-style Christianity, its followers actively ignore the words of their own prophet so they can do whatever atrocious shit they wanted to do anyway.

For Christianity, that means hating gays, subjugating minorities, and living a selfish, materialistic life while judging others.

Not only is there no biblical basis for those things, the RED words in the bible point the exactly opposite direction.

The Bible is very vague on whether you should still hate gays, have slaves, stone people, etc... Pretending that

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

obviously means the old law can be ignored is moderate apologetics. All the Abrahamic religions have plenty of fire and brimstone, and killing in the name of God. Ignoring that is just as much an act of cherry-picking as is ignoring the more love and tolerance passages. The fact that it takes a "bible/koran scholar" to make a plausible argument other than "just ignore the old stuff" is problematic at best. Hell, the Bible ends with Revelations, which is seriously lacking in "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor."

I could be totally wrong, but I'm pretty confident in this. The Bible is easy to use to justify misogyny, hating gays, having slaves, etc... My understanding is that the Koran is more so. Maybe the people doing that are "reading it wrong," but the fact that these "holy books" are so easily misinterpreted makes it hard to say that Christian/Muslim fundamentalists are not following the religion. They are doing what the books say to do.

Dear God, next time you inspire a holy book please leave out "allegories" that seem to promote killing, enslaving, stoning, beheading and burning people at the stake for victimless crimes. Someone might think you meant it. Actually, please stop being a lazy bastard that outsources all killing, enslaving, stoning, beheading and burning people at the stake do do it yourself.

Comment Time to Godwin this shit (Score 1) 525

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Joseph Goebbels

Yes, I know that this is what both sides think. Now as far as the discussions of conspiracies by rich environmentalists go, please go to wikipedia and look up the wealthiest 100 companies. Then go and look at all the money being pumped into politics and explain to me how 90% of all the money and (and therefore power) is opposed to AGW and yet the conspiracy is supposedly about all the money being made by scientists and the potential green industries. Seriously, if you're going to claim a fucking financially motivated conspiracy, please explain the fact that all the real money in this game is in the anti-AGW camp. Conservative governments are passing laws opposing research and passing gag-rules on scientists. And the most likely conspiracy is a cabal of middle-class scientists sworn to unite the world under a UN world government? Un-fucking-believable.

Comment Re:Why have all the major English speaking... (Score 1) 525

countries, the major ones anyway, gone completely mad? Well, I guess I shouldn't include Canada, or should I? This is in reaction to something, but I just don't understand what it is. This so-call fiscal conservative + anti-reason + racist + I've got mine so fuck you mind set really needs to go.

Actually Canada has gone mad too. Canadian weather forecasters forbidden discussing climate change. Basically Canada has enacted a bunch of laws preventing government funded scientists from speaking to the public without consent, especially on environmental issues. They never get consent. They've also defunded a bunch of environmental research.

Comment Re:Last time one was used? (Score 1) 55

People often make that statement but there is no proof that a LES would have been of use in the Challenger incident. There were no indications of a problem right up until the ET exploded, if a capsule had been on top of the ET stack there is every chance that it could have been crippled/destroyed in the explosion much as the shuttle was. And yes I am well aware that the at least one of the astronauts was alive after the explosion, in the shredded remnants of a useless cockpit. The only way to be reasonably certain of a successful escape would have been to have sensors to detect the issue and activate the escape system before the ET went up, and if such sensors had been available to even the shuttle it would have been possible to have detached from the ET and possibly (though it would have been quite risky) steer the shuttle around for a landing or at least a ditch in the ocean.

LAS on the shuttle was impractical for a number of reasons. One of the lessons of the Challenger incident was that LAS was more important of a requirement than they thought when making design trade offs when developing the shuttle. So part of post-Challenger requirements for new designs is to include LAS.

Comment Re:Last time one was used? (Score 4, Informative) 55

<quote><p>I suppose its not a bad thing to have just in case but I don't see the reasoning behind the fixation on it as a design requirement and their ranting about its "importance" in press releases. In almost 300 manned space launches a Launch Escape system has only been of verifiable use in a single incident(Soyuz T-10-1).</p></quote> Marketing. This is a joyride for the rich - they want some danger but they also want to feel that there's a safety mechanism in case of failure. I imagine it'll help sell a lot of tickets, no matter how little use it gets or whether it prevents any deaths.

You really should learn about a topic before posting. The Dragon 2 is being developed as part of NASA's commercial crew program. Launch Abort is a NASA requirement. NASA will be using Dragon to transport astronauts to and from the ISS.

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