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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. English class is now just reading television instruction manuals. No literature allowed. No writing allowed either, except for maybe instruction manuals. Art class is mixing colors and nothing else. Certainly no looking at or making art. Music? I guess you could study the harmonic series, otherwise you’re out of luck. Certainly no music making or listening allowed. History? Nope. Not even memorizing a list of dates. The idea of not exposing students to a worldview or moral instruction isn’t possible. Seeking to return to an older, “3 Rs” approach is more just stating a preference for teaching a preapproved worldview/morality.
  2. A few semi-related thoughts: 1. I've read a small handful of articles in my field that use a CRT approach. One of the articles was picked up and misrepresented by various right wing national outlets for a small bit of an outrage hit. I may not have agreed or followed every logical leap the articles made, but they all challenged my assumptions and thought processes, making me better at what I do. I shared some of them with my students and it made for lively discussion and they came away with an expanded understanding of their field and how they fit into it. There's a real value and power in the way that CRT approaches things, even if it can be frustrating at times. 2. My limited understanding of CRT is mostly in how it interacts with my field. It has its own technical language and approaches things very differently than most of us are used to thinking. I don't think the explanations you'll see on major media outlets are likely to be full or meaningful. 3. Most of this outrage is third hand. Parents are upset about something, but there's little explanation of what specifically they're upset about, or that explanation doesn't really make sense. Now the fact that parents are upset (which is absolutely true) is used as evidence of a problem. It becomes a self-perpetuating problem. Outrage over outrage, but what's the source? Giving lists of upset people who are upset about being upset isn't really evidence of anything other than our outrage-addicted culture. 4. Since this is mostly focused on education, my drive-by comment is that an education that doesn't upset you or make you uncomfortable (or your kids or whoever) isn't much of an education. If your education simply reenforces your pre-existing worldview, then you might not be learning very much.
  3. Mark him down as definitely not his brother’s keeper.
  4. Three state solution: Israel, Palestine, and Thunderdome.
  5. The pedant in me says, since these two players weren't eligible to play as college freshmen, I'm ranking them last in some order. With that, I'll go: Carmelo, on the strength of his tournament play KD Davis Chris Jackson
  6. Wildly different eras and cities and all, but in terms of complete dominance of their era, you can't have an all-time Laker discussion without mentioning Mr. Basketball.
  7. To be fair, Lindsay is correct here. That’s kind of the problem.
  8. Since this is the terrible idea thread, I'm pro-chaos and pro-spectacle. I'm not all that interested in fairness or the sanctity of the game. 1. Have each team send out both offense and defense. 2. Play starts simultaneously on both 30s. 3. No field goals. 4. Whoever scores first wins. 5. If you turn it over (on downs or otherwise), the opposing team gets the ball at the same 30 going the same direction. This means that one team could have both possessions at the same time. 6. If a fumble recovery or interception return crosses the 50, all 44 on-field players are eligible to participate (if they aren't otherwise occupied with their own play). 6a. If a play crosses the 50 into an active play, both plays will continue. If both plays score, whichever play scores first wins. 6b. If a play crosses the 50 into a dead ball, all on-field players can participate. The offense is free to snap the ball to start a play as well. 7. Players can switch ends of the field as they please between plays, but not during plays (except for cases where the ball crosses the 50). One side can't start with 10 players and sneak an unknown player from the other side. If you have both possessions, you can either use a backup QB or one QB on both ends as long as you don't get any delay of game penalties. 8. 50 yard line exception: if the offense has possession while the ball crosses the 50 (say the QB is scrambling), players must maintain the integrity of their side unless a turnover occurs. This means that teams with both possessions couldn't intentionally take a big loss to run extra offensive players against an undermanned defense.
  9. Having spent a few weeks over there a few years back, I’m something of a foreign policy expert. The wealth and opportunity gap between Palestinian and Israeli controlled areas is extreme. I can’t imagine growing up on the Palestinian side of the wall and not learning to hate Israelis. I also can’t imagine growing up with the constant threat of Hamas shooting rockets at me and not learning to hate Palestinians. That there isn’t more violence is a testament to our shared humanity. I don’t know the answer to this perpetual problem, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a good one.
  10. Non-trolls don’t use “democrat” as an adjective. It’s the shibboleth of the troll wing of the Republican Party. It’s Trump-speak and is an immediate identifier. It’s mostly inconsequential, but it’s a little like using “tu” to speak of the Longhorns. An individual use of “democrat party” might not be trolling, but it’s use is a clear signal of troll identity. It isn’t a partisan identity exactly, but they are rapidly become one and the same. This isn’t a defense of Democrats; I’ve never identified as one. I don’t care if anyone takes a shot at them, but if you don’t want to be considered a troll, don’t act like one. That’s of course ignoring the constant stream misrepresentations that make up this particular “non-troll’s” manner of communicating.
  11. Both siding “both sides”: There’s two sides to the both sides issue. There’s the “it’s about time” position, where you recognize that this is a long standing problem but we need laser focus on the current malfeasance before we can deal with the earlier problems. This side never happens. Then there’s “you think you’re so good?” where we bicker about who is worse and then the same thing happens again and again. This both sides is used to excuse the malfeasance. This is pretty much what always happens, even when people think they’re claiming “it’s about time.” Focusness, people.
  12. What’s the name of the logical fallacy where you condescendingly argue against a constantly shifting cloud of self-conflicting positions that you falsely attribute to your opponent? If there isn’t a name, I vote for ménage a strawman .
  13. Changing demographics.
  14. Without any real thinking about arithmetic, it's clearly a number greater than 70 and less than 80. In my own day-to-day life, I can't think of a scenario where anything in the range of 71-79 is a meaningful distinction, so I say it's somewhere in the 70s and move on. Meaningless precision is overrated.
  15. I don’t get it, but it’s amazing.
  16. It harkens back to our primal roots in using daylight to track the day. Plus, those long afternoon meetings in the winter just got a lot shorter. Instead of thinking of time as something fixed, think of it as a measure of a percentage of the sun’s movement across the sky in any given location.
  17. Like CFB playoffs, we spend too much time debating the details of the flawed system instead of putting the whole thing on trial. Rather than a variable sunrise and sunset time and a standardized rate of time, we should establish standardized sunrise and sunset times (6:30 am and 8:00 pm respectively) and use variable hour rates. Sunrise is henceforth 6:30 AM and sunset is 8:00 PM. This should be standardize regardless of your location and time of year. Make the day hours fit into this standard with a variable rate of time. It might make some things a little more complicated since time would move more quickly or slowly based on time of year and location, but it would forever solve the time change problem and give us consistent morning and evening daylight “hours.” It would also reinvigorate the watch industry since everyone’s current watches would be obsolete. Good for our health, good for our recreation, and good for the economy.
  18. If you gave me the transcript of that interaction and told me that one person worked professionally in politics/sort of journalism and the other was in 6th grade, I would have guessed wrong as to who was whom. Unless you told me it was Fox. It’s not just the absurdity of challenging such a thing, but Kilmeade sounds like a pathetic child in his response. Such insightful analysis.
  19. Just following up on that daily mail sack link, it’s comparing 2020 election results with jobs. Even if the jobs analysis was accurate, what conclusions should be drawn from such a chart? The implication is that “blue” states suffered greater losses due to “blue” policies and vice versa, but the partisan affiliation was based on 2020 presidential election results, not state leadership. Whoever made that chart studied How to Lie with Statistics well. Chapters 7 and 8 (The semi attached figure & post-how rides again) seem pretty relevant. Actually, if you dig into it, it looks like the whole book is covered. Such efficiency.
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