I've spent my entire life in the hustle-bustle. I want to go on a cycling tour of villages, towns, and nowheresvilles.

You may have missed the first line I wrote, so I'll post it again: "... it's not just increased education spending that creates better educated students."

The raw number of dollars spent within the general concept of education is irrelevant because it includes really stupid expenses like competitive athletics expenses, hair-brained over-investment in classroom tech, and luxury buildings for brand new schools who are seeking to attract the best and brightest teachers (to the detriment of other schools).

Moreover, I provided links to research and case studies that show the benefits of my suggestions. One doesn't need to prove that a combination of treatments work before trying a combination of treatments.

I'll brake it down easy for you:

Given: Schools in poor neighborhoods provide poor education to their students. Those students grow up with a higher rate of criminality and a lower chance to enter the (fiscal) middle class.

Suggestion: Decrease class room size (proven benefits by research)
Suggestion: Ensure sufficient climate control (proven benefits by research)
Suggestion: Engage the parents (proven benefits by research)
Suggestion: Recruit passionate and competent educators and make the necessary efforts required to convince them to stay long-term (proven benefits by experience)
Suggestion: Implement all of the above for a single school in a very bad part of town.

Would you assert that these actions, widely implemented over a low-income, low-performing area are not likely to beneficially affect the futures of the students, families, and neighborhoods treated?

No, because it's not just increased education spending that creates better educated students. Buying iPads for everyone in the school will accomplish nothing. Spending money on a giant football field is worthless.

That money has to be spent on:

(1) Small class sizes
--- Case Studies: http://www.classsizematters.or...
-- Decreasing class sizes while keeping the same student population requires more classrooms and more teachers.

(2) Climate Control
--- Research: http://healthyschools.cefpi.or...
-- Ensuring sufficient climate control in classrooms requires permission to expend resources on the use of A/C and heaters and, in many cases, the actual installation of HVAC systems.

(3) Sufficient school supplies
--- Research: Not handy, but it's fairly common sense that if your school can't afford to make copies of worksheets, those worksheets cannot be completed. Then, of course, there's paper, pencils, etc.

(4) Passionate teachers and their retention
-- This does not necessarily mean "pay teachers more". It means choosing teachers better and ignoring those who are in Teach for America for 3 years so they can pad their law school applications.
-- Good, committed teachers are worth tenure, pension, and reserve fund to pay for substitutes. If you don't give them the financial security required to work hard in bad neighborhoods, they will take their resumes and go to other districts.

(5) After school programs for parents of students
-- 99.99% of the valuable education these students will receive comes from the school, but if the parent's do buy into it, that student will have to *fight* all the ailments of home just to graduate high school. Involve the parents by bringing them to school or visiting home and you'll see the investment stick.

This and many similar disparities are only solvable with enhanced K-12 education in low-income, low-performing areas. Yes, that means spending more federal/state dollars per capita than in median income areas. More teachers (that stay for more than 3 years), smaller classrooms (that also have heating, cooling, and supplies), and more reliable funding. It does not suffice to provide equal state funding-- we got shit to fix.

Not enough minorities at Microsoft? What's the proportion of minorities in the tech field?
Not enough minorities in the tech field? What's the proportion of minorities taking STEM majors?
Not enough minorities in STEM majors? How prevalent and to what quality was their STEM education in K-12?

It always comes back to the K-12 education. Crime, poverty, treatment of women, minority imbalance in industry-- How good was the education?

Want to fix the future? Focus on the education of the poor.

I'm so done with this "Wikipedia has incorrect information and thus it's not worth anything" BS. The brilliance of Wikipedia is that if you know about something and can cite some high quality source, you can ethically edit an article. Some people edit articles imperfectly, but others will come by and improve.

While we like to think that being absolutely perfect is the best option, it's impossible. Getting that last 5-10% of absolute perfection requires a massive amount of work (time, money, etc.). When striving for anything error-free, perfection becomes the enemy of good and we don't have the massive community within Wikipedia to actually add new articles and information. Instead of perfection, it's the agility of the Wikipedia community that brings the greatest value. They can add, remove, and correct anything-- and so can you. You just have to care enough to do so and do so with informative source material.

No, a flat tire is a reasonable issue about which to complain. It becomes a meme-worthy "First World Problem" when you complain that you have to use the keyboard on your smartphone to find a nearby auto shop because Siri doesn't understand what an auto shop is.

Hello Kilobug,

You're speaking my language. What you describe is the method of making a decision, but not necessarily the general goals of the decisions made. Together, goals/motivation and method create an ethic. With that, I have a couple questions for you:

1. Being a consequentialist, how do you determine which consequences are acceptable. Do you consider pain, loss, preference, pleasure, happiness, gain, etc.? If so, at what balance? Just for yourself or for the consideration of others as well?
2. While you are a consequentialist, have you always been? Was there a time when you could describe your ethical decisions based on virtues, rules, or duty?
3. As a consequentialist, do you find that virtue, rules, or duty still work their way into your decision-making or the methods of decision-making you prescribe for others?

"Now with them only working 5 days and many U.S. Post Office holidays, they're still getting the same money for significantly less."

Depends on your definition of the term "significantly less". If peoples' lives were hanging in the balance based on the arrival time of your DVDs, then yes, service is significantly less. If your income relied on Netflix DVD arrival times, then yes, "significantly less". But if the only value coming from the DVDs arriving per the previous expected schedule is that you can get through the entire Gossip Girls collection in 6 fewer days, then no, service is not "significantly less."

Sure you could make an argument for the raw percentage increase in time between DVDs, but without the context of the value of the product delivered, you really can't argue much about service. In the world of complex economics, we tend to term this issue as "not a big freakin' deal, man".

Sometimes service decreases and the cost to the user stays the same. It's a strategic move in contrast of charging everyone more to keep service levels the same after a market as changed. That's business. Don't like it? Try one of the Netflix wanna-be companies and compare the per-dollar value.

What the hell are energy deposits? Have we renamed "fossil fuels" like oil and natural gas to simple "energy"? Because PR professionals don't get to do that!

Can we please set some sort of standard for the vocabulary of artificial intelligence? Because I'm fairly certain that kiosk manufacturers "BCS" has not created a networked artificial intelligence just to help you decide if you want to upgrade to more leg room.

It's a set of video recordings set to play in response to input stimuli and complete actions in the background and nothing more. It's "smart".

I propose:
Intelligent -- Smart and Sentient.
Sentient -- For others to describe/debate.
Smart -- Capable of making complex decisions from multiple forms of input (sensory, data input, etc.). (A really good bot.)
Clever -- Capable of making decisions and acting on those decisions. (A bot.)
Terminal -- Capable of acting on commands. (An ATM.)

"Students who chose to independently use online instructional websites are also more likely to exhibit behaviors and traits associated with academic success and lifelong learning."

While the above statement from the summary doesn't directly suggest causation, do to the intricacies of the English language, it implies that taking online classes contribute to academic success and lifelong learning. However, I would assert that, if you're going to imply causation, it may be accurate to suggest those who have been academically successful have already started on the road of lifelong learning and utilizing online classes is just one method of travel along said road.

Smartphone and tablet software were always destined to be a very small market. With the prevalence of social networking and simplified mass criticism of these truncated applications, it's extremely easy for a single superior application to completely a particular niche. Moreover, since the applications are so truncated and are not full-performance desktop applications, people do not feel as though they need to pay too much for an "app". Thus, subscription and micro-transaction models had to be introduced to keep the revenue rolling in. Even more people are unwilling to pay such fees, so the market for that revenue stream is smaller yet.

But that's beyond the point. There is still a MASSIVE market for in-house administrative applications within colleges, universities, municipal governments, and medium sized businesses. The key-term is "in-house". Most of these types of organizations either do not have the allocatable capital to pay for off-the-shelf software or have very specific needs that off-the-shelf software cannot meet. That's why so many of their employees rely upon storing everything in spreadsheets!

What a wise programmer could do is get a job in one of these organizations with the expectation that s/he would be able to interview departments regarding their computer and data usage needs. The wise programmer would then seek to organize, standardize, and automate as many processes as possible in as simple a UI as possible while keeping open the opportunity to add modules for additional functions in the future.

You won't get rich doing this, but you will definitely have a secure job developing, implementing, and maintaining such systems.

WARNING: This wise programmer must be a people person or else s/he will never find out what the users actually need.

I see the same thing in my research in California. While many, many people are willing to profess the need to use less water (especially during this drought), use less electricity (with recent plant closures, summer peak demands), and use less gasoline, they have a very hard time reconciling these very distinct concerns with the demands of modern social expectations.

How do we over-use water and why?
-- Showering 1+ times per day - We do this for person comfort, to reduce the potential of being odorous around others, and because it's socially expected to shower daily regardless of actual need. The vast majority of people living California can get away with showering every other day, but choose not to.
-- Laundry - We try to buy water-conserving washing machines, but we still have to actually use the water. And the bigger you are and the lower your tolerance for wearing clothing for more than one day increases your water consumption for laundry.
-- Landscaping - The most onerous of water sins in California is the use of water-hungry plants to keep everything looking green. Our landscaping shouldn't be bright green during a drought. Many private citizens cannot simply stop watering their lawns for fear of receiving fines from their HOAs, City governments, or their landscaping actually dying and then needing to pay to replace them.

How do we over-use electricity and why?
-- Air Conditioning - Despite living in California, people don't like to feel the heat in their homes. Most important, though, is office air conditioning. The office I'm in right now is at 68 degrees. I sweat on my way to work and put a jacket in my office. And on cooler days? The AC is still on because none of the buildings in my area have windows that open.
-- 24-hour Appliances - Perpetual connectivity has convinced many Americans to allow newer devices to be active while they're away. DVRs, newer TVs, etc. all eat up big kWh.

How do we over-use gasoline and why?
-- Long-distance commuting - Everyone in California expects to some day own a 2-story track home or a large-footprint ranch home. However, if you want the job to afford the home, you have to work in an area of high-property demand. You must then decide: small home and short commute or large home and long commute. Many select the latter and end up with 80 miles of commuting every day-- just chewing up that gasoline.
-- Designing communities around the automobile - Modern cities and housing communities are designed around the expectation that the vast majority of transportation trips (non-recreational) will be done by personal automobile. This enables designers to create ped/bike un-friendly housing communities, roads, and intersections that make it *feel* less safe to travel by anything but a car/truck. Thus, small trips like going to/from K-12 school or to pick up eggs and milk from the closest market imply a very distinct need to consume more gasoline.

Given all these engineered and socially enforced standards of resource consumption, I can't really be surprised when, as the article describes, people who are concerned about the environment don't reflect those concerns in their own personal habits.

If we want to see actual change, we have to either change those social/engineered constructs or bend them in such ways to make them more environmentally-sensitive.

In this case, where motorists are looking to pedestrian signals to decide whether or not they can increase speed to beat a light, and rear-ending another in the process, the liability is obviously with the motorist. Pedestrian signals are in place exclusively for the management of sidewalk-to-sidewalk traffic. At no place in law, MUTCD, or HDM does it suggest otherwise. Thus, the motorist is at fault if s/he uses a pedestrian signal to measure how to drive an automobile on the road and, in doing so, causes harm to person or property.

Moreover, California Vehicle Code 21703 explicitly states: "The driver of a motor vehicle shall not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for the speed of such vehicle and the traffic upon, and the condition of, the roadway." That's the citation to resolve the rear-ending issue. Increase the fine, advertise it well, and watch these kinds of collisions go down.

But that's not even the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that there is an over-inflated value of life and convenience placed on the motor vehicle and driver in comparison to all others using the public right of way. This is why the pedestrian signal is being blamed for the issue, not the motorists themselves.

Drivers of motor vehicles notoriously go un-cited for killing bicyclists and pedestrians in the course of violating traffic law and, recently, some people are picking up on the pattern.

http://www.vice.com/read/you-c...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11...
http://www.bicyclepaper.com/ar...
http://cironline.org/reports/b...

Moreover, the last 4 decades of city design have seen the expectation of free right turns and super-wide right turns-- both of which make traveling by automobile faster and more convenient, but also increase the amount of time it takes for a pedestrian to cross a road. With the increased crossing time requirements, it becomes more and more necessary to have countdown timers on pedestrian signals.

If you want an engineering solution to this problem, implement the 3 engineering change below:
(1) Tighten up corners to at intersections. This reduces the distance corner-to-corner, reduces the time needed to cross the street, and slows down automobiles so that they actually see the pedestrians crossing the street (http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/signalized/13027/images/e91.png).
(2) Add pedestrian bulb-outs wherever there is street parking to further reduce the time needed to cross the road. (http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/images/pages/N2674/Bulb%20Outs.jpg)
(3) Then, and only then, remove the count-down timer for pedestrian signals at that intersection.

Effects:
(1) The right-turning automobile is slowed, but red signal durations become shorter because it takes less time for pedestrians to cross the street.
(2) Pedestrians cross the street quicker.
(3) Pedestrians count-downs are removed due to lack of need thus removing the temptation from motorists to use them inappropriately.

Bzzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing, though! You were a delight.

Uber is not a carpool or vanpool service. They facilitate a distributed taxi service. Carpools and Vanpools are formed wherein the driver and occupants share similar destinations. With Uber and Lyft, drivers are without destination until the promise of reimbursement for wear and tear, fuel, their time, and the facilitator fees is sufficient provokes them to pick up a passenger. That's a taxi service.

The constant attempt to brand these services as "rideshare" or "carpooling" is 100% genuinely deceptive.