Pangloss

I agree. I have to constantly remind myself to state my opinions in such a manner that they won't be taken as facts, and I expect everyone else to do the same. By the same token, I think you have to be cautious about assuming that a factually-stated post in THIS subforum is NOT an opinion, and give the poster a chance to explain themselves further. It's about the conversation, not the conversion. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged You've changed the subject. We weren't talking about whether people should be challenged for their opinions, we were talking about why your opinion is more valuable that those of others, why you require them to change their opinions or stop posting, and why you ostracize them before this community. The entire leadership team supports the concept of challenging opinions. This is well established, and I am 100% in accord with that policy. That position has not been stated by me in this thread. That has not what I have done in this thread with my opinion. I've answered every single question you've asked of me. I've supported my opinion with facts that are not in dispute (the 9th circuit's ruling). You've responded by last-wording me and ignoring my arguments.

There's a difference between challenging someone's opinion, and elevating your own unsupported opinion above someone else's unsupported opinion. I object to the latter, not the former.

I'm not sure Dick Cheney's future is tied to anything other than a heart monitor at the moment. ... and I don't mean his medical condition.

That is exactly what I am going to keep saying. But there's nothing "pretend" about it. All opinions are equal on this forum. I believe in equality, much like someone I know who recently said: As for the first part of your question, I don't believe that opinions need rebutting. Neither your opinion nor mine is objectively established as fact, and therefore in need of rebuttal. I've stated why I feel differently, I have answered all questions put to me, and I have remained open to further discussion. I believe there is value in the sharing of opinions even when no conclusions or reached, and no minds are changed. The value comes from gradual, long-term understanding one another and the seeking common ground. I understand if you feel differently.

As have I. Please point to the section of the rules in which a response is "mandated" when a member posts an opinion that's different from that of another member. That is not an action that warrants recrimination, ridicule, or demands of "mandatory" responses. In fact opposing views are something we actively encourage on this forum. I did. I'll post it again, for the third time: A perfectly reasonable opinion and a good argument, which I happen to not agree with. And then you welcomed me to disagree: I do. Do you have any other questions for me?

Home schooling requirements for the state of Florida: http://www.floridaschoolchoice.org/information/home_education/ That program oversees "more than 60,000 students". Every student has to submit to a certified annual evaluation, and the parent has to keep up with certain paperwork. They're definitely not operating in a vacuum. One of the interesting points I notice on that page is that home-schooled students are eligible for Bright Futures scholarships. This is a lottery-funded program that guarantees free college tuition if you can maintain a certain GPA (I think it's a "B" average). This page has an interesting chart showing some homeschool requirements by state: http://www.letshomeschool.com/articles4.html Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedThis well-sourced article in the Wikipedia seems to have a number of statistics on the relative success level of home-schooling. The general thrust of it seems to be that it's no better or worse than public school, in terms of academic achievement. (The numbers in the quote below indicate sources for the points being made, which can be found on the Wikipedia page linked below.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI spoke with a friend of ours who homeschools her child (I believe he's 9 now, unless I missed a birthday). I've asked for her permission to quote some of what she told me in a recent email, but until then I just wanted to pass along one really interesting point that she made in paraphrase. She said that one thing that is very different about homeschooling is that the child can spend extra time on a subject and not necessarily fall behind on other subjects, because they can make it up on stuff they get more quickly. That actually makes common sense, because we all know that people do better at some subjects than others -- we conveniently ignore that fact when we send kids off to school together, hoping it will all average out. We applaud tutoring for the same reason, right? Isn't the purpose of tutoring to make up for what amounts to a deficiency in the system based on the fact that not all students learn every subject at the same rate? Incidentally, she doesn't really teach him much personally. Her job is more mentor and facilitator. That wasn't the case early on, but at this point, still well before "high school", he's pretty much self-educating through online school and textbooks. I'm having a hard time finding a problem with any of this, personally. Though I certainly recognize that it wouldn't work for all families.

My mandate? Why is that my mandate, iNow? Can you show us any places where the recitation of the pledge is mandatory?

Eh? I didn't ask you for anything, I just answered your question. I don't want something from you, though you apparently need something from me. You seem to want me to change my opinion, and if I don't do so then you'll heap ridicule. I'm not really interested. But since you've asked me another question, I will certainly answer it, in this case by pointing out that I already have, when I said this: And: You went on to state a perfectly valid opinion about what the court decided (in this post). I don't see an unanswered question for me there, just this statement: (shrug) Then in your opinion I'm wrong. More power to you. Not every argument has to be resolved, you know.

Objective evidence that people are harmed by the use of the word "god" in the pledge, not including emotional or psychological harm that is derived by the recipient but not intended as such. I agree! Values like "live and let live", and "to each his own", and "no harm no foul". What inequality? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged It isn't allowed?

True.

That's an interesting point about being criticized for sending your kids to public school, and I think it's something that probably also comes up in the context of deciding whether to send one's children to private school. So it's probably a fear that's been around a while, but I would imagine that it has an impact here as well. Your post also reminds me that another question we should ask here (on an academic level) is whether they can acquire "life long friends" (i.e. the general benefits of social associations) if they are being educated via home schooling. Put another way, I'm not sure I buy the premise that social interactions are limited in home schooling. Also, there are many negative interactions to go along with positive ones, and I don't just mean bullying -- I mean things like the reaction to bullying, as in how it's handled by administrators so that it becomes a learning experience instead of a damaging one -- even if we buy the premise that having the "bullying experience" can produce a positive outcome. Presumably not every school will handle that situation well. I'm sure it's possible that some home-schooled students are isolated and become developmentally challenged as a result, but I have no idea what the experience of most home-schooled children actually is.

If we have this conversation again on Monday, will they still be "teabaggers", given that the health care plan includes $400 billion in new taxes?

No worries, I respect your opinion on it (that fear is the primary motivator for home-schooling). But I think fear comes in a lot of flavors. Even fear of moral suasion comes in multiple flavors, and not all of them reside towards the right end of the political spectrum. -------------- I think we can do better than the implications in this thread from various posters, and the apparent generally-accepted wisdom in this community, that home schoolers are mostly religious zealots, and that those who pursue this path are on an inferior path to knowledge. What I think I'm hearing here are popular opinions without substantiation. I think we can do better than that. My personal experience suggests that the answer is deeper than what's being conveyed by the majority here. My cousin, a devoutly religious Christian conservative who was at one time employed by Focus on the Family (as in she follows the popular stereotype), has two sons whom she home schooled. One of them went to West Point, and the other got a full scholarship to an Ivy League school. Both graduated ahead of schedule and with honors. I can't speak to the question of adjustment to psychological norms, but one is married and has a child on the way, and the other will be getting married soon, and their wives are gorgeous and well-educated. (shrug) But of course I'm sure no one would dispute that there are exceptions to every rule, so we really need to know if cases like this are closer to the norm, or closer to the exception. Otherwise I don't see how we can really pass judgment on this issue. So, would anyone like to collect and present some evidence for us to consider? Specifically, how about some statistics on the educational question? How prepared/unprepared are they for college? How do they stack up against public school students? Also, are there any qualitative numbers on reasons behind parental home school decision-making? (I did see that swansont posted a link to an article on page 1 in which a spokesperson for a special interest group with unknown motivations said that most parents who select home schooling "self-identify" as evangelicals, but I'm hoping for a little more detail and clarity here, if we can find it.)

There seem to be two issues here: 1) Is there a valid constitutional question regarding whether it is allowable to pass a law without actually voting on it? It's happened many times, but never for something so monumental. I think it's a bit ridiculous to never question a rule until it becomes about "something monumental", and I think that both parties have produced this mess, but none of that necessarily precludes Supreme Court interference. American history is rife with examples of something that happened many times over before the Supreme Court interceded, and often it seems like the question of intercession is dependent more on the willingness of a party to bring the issue before the court than it is on any of the circumstances involved in the issue itself. 2) Does it make sense, and/or is it objectionable, for members of Congress to vote on a bill that they will not know (or perhaps even participate in) the content of? If this goes forward it will mean that members who voted for it hope that any personal concerns they have will be addressed in reconciliation, but they won't actually know (or having ANY control over) whether that will be the case. To me the second point is not constitutional in nature, but just a sheer "is that any way to run a railroad" type of question. As such it may not be really pertinent to this case. Which I guess is why opponents are focusing more on the first question.

Arguments, yes, those I'm interested in. Ridicule, not so much. Do you want to convince me, or do you want to rub tar all over me and then pour feathers over my head? Not that I'd necessarily object to the latter, but I'll probably make you pony up for dinner first.

Some schools may require high school calculus, but I believe in general it's assumed that you'll take calculus at the undergraduate level. You could look at it (taking it in high school) as a way of getting a leg up on the competition for admission -- the better you do at the most advanced courses, the more likely they are to want you on their roster. Georgia Tech computer science program's undergraduate course requirements may be viewed at the link below. I linked these because if memory serves they're fairly typical. As you can see they have calculus listed, which means they're expecting most of their undergrads to take it. It looks like they make you take the first two Calc classes alongside engineering/science students, but the third one is explicitly for CS, and then a fourth class is on applied combinatorics (probably how to write algorithms that run against finite data structures). http://www.cc.gatech.edu/future/undergraduates/bscs/corereq

Really? How do we know this?

I gotcha now' date=' thanks. Okay well I definitely misunderstood you then, so I appreciate the clarification. I don't disagree with what you're saying, and I think the world is much better off today for its improved awareness of human suffering, both large and small, and the communications and empathy that come along with "sensitivity". My concern, vis-à-vis "god" in the pledge, is that it's (IMO) a case of being too specifically concerned about one group, not because it's truly suffering, but because it's a minority group that hasn't been listened to on other, perhaps more important issues, in the past (e.g. the problem you mention with students leaving the room). I have not yet seen any reason why my mind needs to change on this issue, e.g. objective evidence of modern suffering due solely to the use of that word in the pledge. Which leads me to the general opinion that removing it is an example of the "flatlining" I mentioned earlier. Your mileage is welcome to vary, of course, and my mind is open to further evidence on the matter.

I'm reminded of that old adage about sausage and legislation! Oh well. Thanks ParanoiA. Always good to see you pop in here for a helpful post. Just to outline this, what it sounds like is that the following is going to take place: 1) Pelosi will put forward the Senate health care bill as writ. A vote will take place, and if 218 members vote yes then the bill passes and there is no reconciliation. 2) If the bill fails, Pelosi puts forward something called "the rule", which is an undetermined reconciliation package for the Senate health care plan. If it passes then the President signs it into law and a team from the House will meet with a team from the Senate later to determine what the law actually means. (Hopefully without accidentally spending another trillion dollars.) So does everyone think I've paraphrased that more or less accurately?

Ran across an interesting paper today while mining the ACM database for something unrelated. It's entitled "On the Potential of Limitation-oriented Malware Detection and Prevention Techniques on Mobile Phones", and it can be found via Google Scholar in the January issue of the International Journal of Security and its Applications. In a nutshell, the authors suggest that operating system restrictions in smartphones are helping to prevent the rapid spread of malware. (They recognize that malware is not currently a serious problem, but note that the threat is expected to rise with the increasing functionality and popularity of the devices.) An interesting caveat to this finding is that while these restrictions may impede malware developers, they also impede the development of software that detects and prevents malware on the device. The authors also propose a novel detection scheme for finding malware on mobile devices based on a signature approach by monitoring power usage and mapping it against application usage over time.

Okay, well if the school requires it then I disagree with the school, but if it's their idea then I'm going to fret about the ostracizing potential. I'm afraid you lost me with all of this, but it's been a long day so maybe it's just me. I have no idea how this relates to my opinion that opponents to the word "God" in the pledge are too concerned over something that's minor in my opinion. I wasn't attempting to represent "the right", I was just presenting my own thoughts. Okay, but it seemed like a lot of your argument was why it's okay to respond to those who are offended by societal actions. For example: You also mentioned that you felt that my tamed and dumbed-down campus was a "breath of fresh air" to you. So basically what you're trying to clarify with me is that you weren't saying that the flatlining of society, the making-everyone-the-same, the removal of excess, the immediate-response-to-anyone-who-is-even-slightly-offended-by-anything behavior is okay, what you're saying instead is... that it's NOT okay, that it shouldn't be done by either liberals or conservatives? I guess your opinion still has me a bit confused here, sorry. Like I said, long day.

Yes, it's pretty hard to imagine the iPad not being able to run more than one full-blown app at a time. Especially since that upcoming HP tablet is pretty slick, and will presumably run Windows software right out of the box (e.g. Kindle for Windows). I've heard that "I wish I could run Pandora in the background" comment before. It's a valid point but even so most multitasking is really just application-switching, and I don't think the iPhone would be where it is today without those HCI limitations that actually enhance its simple appeal without greatly limiting the user. They could allow 3rd party apps to "minimize" themselves for limited background execution similar to the way the iPod software runs. So you'd basically get one "slot" for a "multitasking" app, and a little icon to represent it on the title bar so you wouldn't forget that it was draining the battery (and perhaps the same double-button-click interface). But I suppose it may just be easier to remove the multitasking restrictions and then weigh the screaming about battery life. (Sure, the hackers don't complain, but they already understand battery life. Open this door to casual users and it'll be a different story.) I've never seen an Android phone but I'm curious how it handles multitasking. Some of the things I wonder about is whether the number of apps is limited (i.e. not by RAM but by a fixed number), how visible background tasks are (does the user know they left something running?), and how easy it is to switch. These were the major issues with multitasking in Windows Mobile 6.5.

If you're the Speaker for a sharply divided House of Representatives, how do you get a bill passed if the members vote it down? Simple: You declare that it has passed anyway, and send it to the White House for signature. This is what Nancy Pelosi says she will do if the House's upcoming vote on the Senate's health care bill fails. Which sounds insanely crazy, until you hear that apparently it's happened before. The so-called "Slaughter rule" (some places call it "Solution") is named for Louise Slaughter, a Democrat from New York who sits on the Rules Committee who apparently mentioned the little-known rule to Pelosi. Pelosi explained at a news conference Monday that (in 1965) Medicare opponents had put a measure put to a vote that should have stopped Medicare from passing. The vote succeeded, and according to Pelosi Medicare should have been stopped, but proponents "then went through the sheets with the names of the members and all the rest," she said, and "ended up with a victory at the end." An intriguing statement, for sure, but rather light on details. I haven't yet found an article explaining this rule's basis in detail, but this article talks about how it's been used many times before: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/16/MNS31CGOSS.DTL Which would seem to undermine any potential Constitutional crisis (sorry GOP), though it kinda begs the question of why Pelosi was acting like she didn't know about it until Slaughter told her last week, since those 2007/2008 uses would have been during her tenure as Speaker. Also I have to say that it makes me wonder what these people are doing having rules like that floating around, much less using them.

Ouch. Actually I think TBK was making a broad-based argument in support of what I labeled "political correctness", in addition to his (and your) argument that it should be legalized on the issue of constitutionality (and it was a pretty fine argument, I have to say). But somebody please correct me if I misunderstood that. (That's where the "left legislating moralty too" comment came in, not as a reflection on the constitutionality issue.) I did make an actual argument as to why change shouldn't be an automatic based on individuals getting upset. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showpost.php?p=550690&postcount=45 The Bear's Key has posted an excellent response to that argument, but it doesn't necessarily refute my point (in fact I suspect both you and he might agree that not every offense warrants a law, even if the law causes no specific harm).