Comment Re: What the fuck are you talking about? (Score 1) 385
Nothing is as sharp as obsidian. It's still used in some surgery.
Nothing is as sharp as obsidian. It's still used in some surgery.
You already have them. The white people left the cities and formed their own little planets, complete with nearly-total white schools. By default, the cities became nearly all black and, since the money and employment ran away, poor.
To your point (sorry!) There is no "fault". Girls tend not to care about STEM subjects. It's that simple. STEM requires endless hours studying alone, about subjects that would bore an anvil to tears. We literally drug our children to hold still and have the stuff poured into them. It isn't for everyone; that's why so many antisocial types gravitate towards it. You either like it, or you don't.
Teachers don't "fail" - students fail. And "failure" is not the right word. You can't force interest into a human child like some personality-altering enema. A teacher can instill the basics of how to be a human being, like history, and arithmetic, and reading. The rest comes from the child and the matrix the child lives in. You can't manufacture Alan Turings, and God help us if you could - the world does NOT need to be composed of semi-autistic math prodigies. We need the other types as well.
Let the DAMNED children become what they want to become. Here's a poser: has any one of these STEM-pushers asked the kids what they think about their "failure" to become good corporate tech fodder?
The whole "privatize schools into moneymaking ventures to raise test scores and thus provide cheaper, better labor for corporations" IS the experiment. But finding failure in the experimental results will not be tolerated. The schools will be turned into corporate labor factories, and we've no mechanism to stop them.
What are we losing? Imagination. The overworked, no-time-for-play lab mice have no damned imaginations. They will not be able to grow their minds that way. That requires free time, and freedom to wander around and do nothing but dream. That is no longer tolerated. Damaged mice. And eventually, a damaged culture, a passive, corporatized citizenry that can't even perceive what it has lost.
And oh yeah: this is being done because employers want more job applicants and thus will be able, over time. to turn STEM jobs into a paper hat minimum wage paradise - for them. They are sick at the idea of all that money flowing out of their platinum parachute accounts and into the pockets of mere laborers. It has to stop!
Perhaps girls aren't as interested in STEM subjects as boys, because their intrinsic culture, the floating "girlness" passed on from mother to daughter and from playmate to playmate, veers towards social interaction and the softer subjects. STEM is inherently a loner's paradise.
Reengineering people is not a good idea. Girls will find their own way into whatever they wish to do. You can't force them to like what you like, no matter how many Starfleet academies you lock them into.
If low-gravity icy moons are outgassing into orbit, they must be sharing chemistry, perhaps including the precursors of life. Since Saturn's moons have widely differing widely differing geology and chemistry, that's a lot of mixing going on into a lot of potential niches.
Now consider that the same thing is probably happening at Jupiter.
A sufficiently detailed human physiology mode could mean a big drop in the time and expense of searching for and qualifying new medications.
It's the stupid, scumsucking usage cap.
For a long time the reason why schools of boffin sometimes beached themselves in places like the Thames estuary was unknown, but we now think the cause is a vain search for funding.
Simpler tahn closing arms would be closable netting in the upper half of the funnel. As has been pointed out above, a booster is strong in only one axis, so you don't want any points of concentrated stress in any other direction.
I remember road salting also. And every car more than about two years old has huge suppurating rust holes in it.
Remember: seawater ruins everything.
There needs to be a capture system at the landing site. This could be something as simple as a slightly conical pit about two-thirds as deep as the stage is long, with "soft" sides. This could include a net that gets thrown over the stage right after touchdown.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne