Yes, I'm much more interested in the story of how his dad taught him so well and effectively than I am in the solution itself.

And while I'm sorry you had such a crappy experience in public school, you might be heartened to know that not all public schools are equally horseshit as the ones you were unfortunate enough to attend. We have some absolutely stellar schools around us here, with teachers that actually care, and they try hard to challenge the kids to reach above their "expected potential". Not every school, mind you, but many of the ones in our district are excellent. I think it helps to have schools large enough to have multiple classes per grade level, which means they can offer a whole class or two of remedial addition to the kids who need that, several classes of algebra and trig to the majority of students, and a class of calc 1 and calc 2 to the kids who want that challenge.

Sadly, I know that your story is far too common. I have a friend who grew up in California public schools, then due to family circumstances had to take his senior year of high school in a Kentucky school. He went from an 11th grade pre-calc class to basic math in 12th grade, complete with scarily stupid students and teachers. (I don't know where in Kentucky he was.) With no challenges in school, (and suddenly being dropped into a foster family situation,) he found himself in the classic teenage rebellion scenario, and discovered plenty of ways to get into trouble. It was fortunate for him that he had only one year to suffer through the bad school before he got into a college, which certainly helped him get his life back on track.

Private schools aren't always the answer either, by the way. There are some well known parochial schools around here that deliver some pretty mediocre educations.

So my advice is don't judge all public schools based solely on your own experience. Like most other things in life there are good ones and bad ones out there, and any responsible parent needs to be very selective where their kids go.

I have evidence to the contrary. As I posted above, I had a dog that would watch me throw a ball onto a sloped roof, where it left her sight. It then rolled along the slope of the roof in an arc and returned to sight a few seconds later, further down the roofline. She became quite good at positioning herself under the spot where the ball would eventually reemerge and drop to her.

It obviously doesn't mean she understood the calculus or formal proofs. It does demonstrate that mammalian brains are capable of taking in some facts of movement and making predictions based on them. It's not all that surprising in a dog. They are descended from animals that hunt cooperatively in packs, where they learn that some of the pack will drive prey out, and others know to run ahead to where the prey will likely flee to, even though they aren't always following them with their eyes.

Exactly. As a kid, I had a dog that understood when I threw a ball up on the roof of our garage, which caused it to disappear from her sight, that it would roll along the slope of the roof and and reappear further down the roofline. She actually got fairly good at predicting where the ball would reappear, repositioning herself along its path over time so she would meet it at its eventual drop point. Does that mean my dog understood calculus, or solved Newton's problem? Well, she recognized a pattern and was able to apply a repeatable solution.

That tells me that the brain is capable of recognizing complex patterns around us, and is actually already very capable of deriving and applying practical solutions. ("So easy a dog could do it.") Applying abstract mathematical models to them, however, is not so easy.

What I'd be most interested in in this whole saga is "what methods did his father use to teach him math?" Obviously they were highly effective.

The terrorists and governments BOTH win when psych cases make posts like yours.

The only way to avoid government mind control is to free your mind by suicide. Please do so now, for your own good. Your mental difficulties will only get worse and there is no such thing as effective psychiatric treatment, which would be under government oversight anyway.

We've been asking for a meritocracy for a long time, now. How do you expect to prove your merit without some kind of testing?

On the plus side, if you try to go to work for a beer bar you can always just play tapper. Or the minigame in Fable.

Perhaps instead of complaining and characterizing the people funding these projects as "suckers" when you don't know jack about shit, you should visit the site and glance at some of these projects. Next to the donation amounts, it tells you what you get. Some projects never give you anything other than a warm feeling. Some projects will put your name in the credits. Some projects are there to make a thing, and you get parts for the thing for some donation levels, complete kits for some donation levels, and complete products for other donation levels. Some projects only offer kits, some only complete products, some only plans, etc etc. There is usually plenty of information about the developer and their qualifications online, so you can make a relatively informed decision like any other investment. And unlike taxes, there's no reason to bitch or complain or make ignorant statements, because no one is forcing you to participate.

Is that really why you think firefly died? Because I know from experience that sci-fi fans are perfectly happy to watch multiple sci-fi shows at "once" (provided they don't occupy competing time slots.)

Babylon 5 would have been successful regardless of what else was on the air because it is different from anything that has been on before or since, despite its failings. I am far more interested in rewatching B5 than Trek, and I own pretty much all of both. (Literally all in the case of B5; I might be missing some TNG or something still, and maybe one or two movies I don't want to watch anyway.) I have a bunch of box sets etc. I don't want anyone to think I'm just a B5 fanboy, I'm a sci-fi fanboy in general. I like almost all of it, except BSG ;)

yeah, they don't give ratings boxes to just anyone, they give them to the people that fit their economic profile. just another subtle form of social manipulation. I mean, it's not especially subtle, but they're not shouting about how discriminatory their policies are, either.

I've shared this and I'll share it again (and again...) but when I was in third grade I had an asshole, authoritarian teacher who I believe was only at my school for a couple of years. He was a lazy, arrogant, abusive asshole. When one was done with one's work one was to literally lay one's head down on one's desk and wait quietly for the other children to finish. I was in trouble on numerous occasions for "looking at the other children". I wrote so many lines I had wrist problems before I ever owned a computer or even discovered masturbation.

I went to a private school for a couple of years, before my parents broke up and there wasn't enough money because my dad was a deadbeat. I was about to be learning algebra, I was learning Spanish (I had great retention back then, and I never forgot some of the words I learned back then... though "ferrocarril" does have a fantastic ring to it, no?) and so on. Then I was placed literally into kindergarten due to my age and went from actually learning at a satisfying pace to being told lies about American colonization, making flags out of construction paper and placing Dead-President's-Head's stickers on them, and the like. After a year of that I spent two weeks in first grade before being bumped up to second, where I was still doing work inferior to what I'd been doing in my previous school.

Especially if you are smart, but your parents are dysfunctional and can't teach you how to blend in because they know fuck-all about how social situations work.

Alas, I discovered life about the same time I went to college for the first time and besides, by that time I was prejudiced against education. What really shat upon my educational aspirations at that time, though, was a counselor who suggested I take a fully practical case load and save my electives for later. If I could remember who that was, I would send them a picture of my asshole right now. Hated it. Made school just a big bore of a chore. Most counselors don't give one tenth of one fuck about you as a person or even as a student, you're just a convenient unit that can be used to fill out slightly empty classes. What, am I bitter? Why do you ask?

Now I have a two-year degree from going back to school much later, but it wasn't convenient for me to matriculate to a four-year at the time and now what do I do with this extra piece of paper? It's too crisp to be good bumwad.

"There is already strong evidence indicating that circa 1970's/80's US pollution played a key part - if not the cause of - the 1980's Ethiopian Famine."

It's nice to post citations.