Lie 10: itworld.com has interesting, informative, insightful, and meaningful content.

I get your point, but really, this is the first time they've bumped it in what, 7 years? That's not bad, like hike after hike after hike. If they bump it again next year, then we have a problem.
I just joined in late December, so I guess I get to ride out nearly a full year on the old price. (assuming we're grandfathered in). Still seems like a pretty good deal. If you've got a Kindle you can read a lot of books for free too, though sadly that doesn't apply to anyone merely using a Kindle app.

No, no it's not about that. We aren't the kind of parents that demand he get straight As or anything remotely like that. It was a bonus that he was on the honor roll, and I mentioned it only because I wanted to point out he wasn't a kid with a dull intellect. I have no problem if he gets Cs once in a while, it happens.
I'm talking about the stress and workload they're putting on kids. The material and homework I'm seeing is not appropriate for someone who is 12 or 13, it's just too high level. Example: try teaching a 12 year old about genetic counseling, meosis, DNA, and biology they used to teach at a high school level. That's what they're giving him to work on, and often homework questions aren't even covered in their book (that could be the teacher) . They even have to type blogs and whatnot. They're forced to do creative writing. You can't force or teach someone to be creative; you can encourage it, but it shouldn't be part of your language grade.
As far as dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, I totally agree with you there. Not everyone can be a winner. That's life. Teaching them otherwise is not teaching at all. The times table example is not about that though, that was about unnecessary busy work. Of all things to pound in a kid's head, I don't find the concept of multiplication all that difficult. But for everything else, CC is swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. At least, at his school, anyway.

You jump to conclusions in your accusal of my jumping to conclusions (conclusception ..?); I only named two kids here as examples, by no means did I exhaust my experiences with the system with just two anecdotal revelations. I know of other children, and talk to other parent and teachers.
You are partly correct, in that it does vary somewhat from teacher to teacher, some are certainly better or worse than others. But they don't choose the textbooks, and I still find common core the engine behind it all.

As much as we won't ever agree on this, sorry to hear about your stalker. I know the feeling.

Right off the bat, your stats are 10 years old and thus irrelevant, and what of India?
FYI, both my wife - who used to teach - and I help our son with his homework a great deal, in fact, every single night, and there is no way in hell he could complete it on his own if we didn't. Yes its called being a parent, which is a lot better than being a presumptuous douchbag citing "excuses".
He's not the only child in this situation either: Jillian is a friend's daughter in his same class, also very bright and studious, and on the verge of tears several times a week. She too is no longer doing well.

They are stressing these kids out to the max and beyond. My kid is not even sleeping at night. They treat them like they're adults and they're not adults yet. Overly high, unrealistic expectations do not result in better performance, it does exactly the opposite, it destroys confidence, enthusiasm, and appreciation of education. And while I don't believe rote memorization is the key to learning, something simple like the times table is not the place to be getting tough. All the child needs to understand is that 5 x 3 means 5 + 5 + 5, or 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3. There is no call to make them write all that out for every single homework problem assigned, night after night, for half the school year.

It's a disaster. It's pushing the majority of young children far too hard for their age, and making them work inefficiently, where even memorizing the times table isn't good enough now, it all has to be written out ad nauseum. The detailed material they get in their books for 7th grade biology looks like High School material. All this is going to accomplish is to produce confused, bitter adults.. or the worker drones they really want. It's a beautifully evil dichotomy, talking about raising kid's self esteem while doing everything to make them feel stupid and in over their heads. Say one thing, do another. Forcing kids to do "creative writing" is another faux pau, it should be an elective. Not everyone is cut out to write creatively.
Sure, let's whine about how supposedly far behind the US is to China, India, or Japan.. and then let's look at their teenage suicide rates. Education can certainly be improved, but Common Core is not the answer. What it really boils down to is the cash cow it is to the NEA.
My kid is bright and used to love science; he used to frequently be on the honor roll is usually student of the month a few times a year. Lately, he's begun to hate school with a passion. Common core is the core of the issue. How is that inspiring him to learn or embrace knowledge? It's the scholastic equivalent of a shotgun wedding, expecting to engender true love at the end of a barrel.. / rant

This bit:

doesn't apply if the reason we're spending more on individuals is because unemployment and welfare are at record highs. No new bills are needed for that, it just makes use of existing ones. And the House has only been R since Pelosi left in 2011.

Well at least it's too late for them to muck up my Skyrim with in-app purchases. Imagine: Want that grand soul gem? $1. How about that Dwemer battle axe with a 60% stamina poison enchantment? $2. Hey, 25 cents everytime you want to fast travel... etc..

That crap nickel and dimes you to death and you wind up spending vastly more amounts than you would have if the game was just paid for up front.

We are still disposing of them, yes, there's always crates full of them at the dump (in Vermont). There's no used market for them though. I see people trying to sell them, but I never see anybody buy them. Their value is in the negative numbers; IE you typically have to pay to get rid of them. Even the thrift stores sell LCDs now. Only a fool would pay money for a CRT in this market.

Pretty much constantly. Entropy is a bitch and the sea generates a lof of it.

I don't even know where to begin. The ocean is a harsh environment and ships work hard and maintenance and upkeep is a constant chore day in and day out both in port and while underway. The engineering crew is basically the travelling maintenance department. If the ship doesn't carry a crew, it will have to come out of service for maintenance and repairs, which means not only is it not making money, it's tying up an expensive berth in port. If it does break down while underway, how is anybody going to get to it? It could take days.

Honestly, not much, except perhaps demand better software. Better processes, better languages. I'm just hypothesizing here but it might not have happened if they had e.g. followed better development standards like the MISRA C standard, or don't use C at all, use Ada or something. Better QA processes might have caught it before it went into production, e.g. using a dynamic stack profiling tool, input fuzzing, whatever. Fundamentally a system like this should have an independant hardware watchdog timer to at least try and make it fail-safe in the event of a CPU crash. Finally any motor vehicle ought to have a manual cutoff switch wired into the fuel pump or ignition circuit so that when the CPU shits it's bits you can still turn the damn thing off before you crash crash.

Yes, and everyone walks around with some kind of writing tool on them and thinks they're an author too. The unreadable dreck that has turned the self-pub market into a steaming shit-pile makes it very clear that people like you are the ones doing it. Photography is art. Just because you have a tool that is capable of creating art, doesn't mean the person wielding it is, anymore than the billions of people with computers that can run a compiler are capable of writing a useful application.

They're talking about something the size of a boulder according to TFA. Earth gets hit by objects this size all the time.

The diameter of the biggest impactor to hit Earth on any given day is likely to be about 40 centimeters, in a given year about 4 meters, and in a given century about 20 meters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Frequency_of_large_meteoroid_collisions_with_Earth

"There are other elements involved, but if size were the only factor, we'd be looking for an asteroid smaller than about 40 feet (12 meters) across," said Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Not really. Couldn't robots do this at a fraction of the cost and risk?