Comment Re:you are right (Score 1) 629
Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as I made it out to be. More money will attract more good teachers, but it will also attract more *worse* teachers.
Comment Re:exactly the point (Score 1) 629
Paying more won't create a greater number of good teachers either.
Baloney it won't. I consider myself a pretty damn good teacher (college level; I'm a grad student). I really *like* teaching. I enjoy helping others, and all that warm mushy stuff. Really, it's incredibly rewarding.
But I like other things in life too. I'm not a selfless utilitarian: I'm not going to go teach high school math at 30K a year when I can pull down 6 figures instead. But, if I could make 6 figures teaching high school math, I'd definitely do it. And if I did, you can bet I'd do it with a lot of passion, even though I was "bought".
Comment Re:Blizzard? (Score 2, Interesting) 356
A surprisingly coherent and cogent discussion. I expected a flame war, but really, it's a pretty good discussion. I doubt Blizzard will do anything about it, but I'm still impressed.
New Mars Rover Rolls For the First Time 100
wooferhound writes "Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time. Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet). Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things: environments where life might have existed, and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life."
Aussie Attorney General Says Gamers Are Scarier Than Biker Gangs 409
Sasayaki writes "South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson claims, in an interview with Good Game, that gamers were more of a threat to his family than biker gangs. This is the man who has been the biggest opponent to Australia receiving an R18+ rating for video games and who has the power to veto any such law introducing it."
Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered 219
anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"
Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope
the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new
Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under
disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source
projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."
Comment Insurance companies must be salivating (Score 5, Insightful) 449
Man, and I thought the main cause for concern with the upcoming revolution in genetic testing was losing my health insurance.
Comment Re:I use a unix based OS. (Score 1) 596
Me too. That's why I've stuck with my trusty Apple II.
Comment Wait, wait, wait.. (Score 1) 87
What happens when we can artificially reconstruct an entire persons genome? All you'd have to do to frame a person is download that person's DNA, manufacture the chromosomes in copious quantities and leave it at the scene of the crime.
Granted that kind of tech is probably 10 or 20 years out but it still seems worrisome.
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