Very well put. I hear you bro.

I gave up on pop music years ago when rap came out.
Even though rap must still be VERY popular (because thats pretty much all I hear when listening to what's coming from other peoples cars at least here in AZ), I have absolutely no respect for and nothing at all in common with the prison/drug/gangasta culture or their values, so don't like the mindset that produces or likes rap, so I get literally nothing out of listening to it other than a stress headache.
The problem is there appears to be almost nothing new that isn't rap, a derivative of it, or heavily inspired by it, except blatant commercial crap obviously targetted solely at teen girls.
Furthermore the advent of technology in mainstream music has completely deemphasised the importance of skilled musicianship, and replaced it with a sound that is completely overproduced rather than live/natural.
  I'd go as far to say that even 80's punk had far better musicians on average than any of todays rap bands, and they were often trying to sound crap on purpose.

That as much as anything is why I keep listening to the same old rock bands, even though I am myself bored with the lack of anything new to listen to.

Not true. It speciifes what each student should know at each grade level. Therefore, that determines the curriculum.

From 71234.56789@compuserve.com:

That reminds me, I must get one of those new v.92 mod^D

I tried this out in the lab but it melted my interocitor.

Well I would argue that whoever specifies the curriculum as a side-effect also determines what testing happens, since even independents can't test for anything other than what's in the curriculum.

Yes it does.
It defnes both what to teach and the testing that ensures it was done. The only thing it doesn't speicify is how to teach that stuff, which is basically irrelevant compared to the what.

http://www.corestandards.org/a...
>> Teachers know best about what works in the classroom. That is why these standards establish what students need to learn, but do not dictate how teachers should teach.

You're missing the real point here. I don't think anyone here is seriously against raising standards or having common standards as a principle in itself.
The actual issue is, do you really want to continue with something that even Gates himself has admitted is a failed experiment? ... Or even worse... to put the responsibility for defining the actual content of lessons, and the criteria by which students get lablelled for the rest of their lives, into the hands of a businessman who's priorty is continually proven to be corporate profit and social engineering to that end (regardless of how well he hides it behind a facade of charity)?. I sure as hell don't.

The problem is, the Gates foundation is not altruistic. Gates repeatedly demonstrates he still has vested profit-making interests that at least influence his projects if not obviously come first.

You don't want anyone who's motive even includes corporate gain, let alone is the main one, deciding how to educate our kids.

Common Core is actually most likely a long-play intended to benefit Gates the most. When Gates was at the helm of Microsoft he started them into strongly marketing to schools, the intent being direct influence over the mental processes of the entire next decision-making/product-buying generation. Common Core is just a better disguised approach to exactly the same goal.

>>> "We want to inspire a generation of citizen-scientists. If we can lower the barrier to entry so the only limit is creativity, that might help with finding treatments for neurological disorders." ...and besides, making it easy to send uncomfortably large pulses of electricity directly into the middle of a cockroach's brain is waaay cool

Things _have_ changed a lot in the last 25 years. Many women prefer geeks now, but I do strongly suspect that its mostly because we usually have a significantly higher income than average, and also they think that as a group we are easily manipulated. Buyer beware.

They should make a lump of phosphorus foam and try floating it on water.

So you and the Birkenhead Drill is saying its more OK that a child should grow up without a father than a mother? I don't think that is either true or fair.

>> Who here thinks watching porn causes men to not be able to get erections with women? Dumb.

Although I don't suffer from it, I can understand it.

If you get used to the perfect fantasy, (i.e. a model hired for her perfect physical appearance then filmed with perfect lighting and makeup and any slight imperfections post-processed out) , then a real woman with inevitable faults when compared to an unacheiveable perfection may not meet your unrealistic and artificially high expectations enough to sufficiently turn you on.

This is clearly a natural conclusion of women's and society's ongoing erosion of the value of masculinity and the traditional male role, and even the value of men's lives compared to women's lives.

It seems to me that all the attention in society is still on women''s rights, and if you even mention mens rghts many people think you're soft in the head or something, or worse yet, just done something "socially unacceptable".

For example, even though approximately equal numbers of men are kiled by prostate cancer as women killed by breast cancer, but were is the vast majority of the attention and money going?
(http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/05/breast-cancer-receives-much-more-research-funding-publicity-than-prostate-cancer-despite-similar-number-of-victims/)

Its very subliminal too, for example next time you watch TV note how the media NEARLY ALWAYS portray men as more stupid and lazy than women, (in pretty much every commercial the butt of the "joke" is a dumb man who is shown up because he's too stupid to use the same product as the woman).

Basically societiy is continually reasserting a strong message to men that we are very much 2nd-class citizens and should just count ourselves lucky if some women even gives us the chance to date her, and it goes without saying that most women think most men should pay for everything during the date and do all the other things that demonstrate themeselves as being subsurvient.

  For example did you know the Birkenhead Drill ("women and children first") was only invented in the early 1850s? Note I have no problem with children first as there is actually some logic to it, but the implicit belief that one person's life is more valuable than another's just because "vagina" is insulting and damaging.

I won't even get into the ongioing massively high suicide rate of young men that indicates a serious societal problem is still going unaddressed.

Is it really any wonder then, that most young men are desperately finding alternatives to the current value system of this society?