DarthBrooks: 9-11-2001: my son was sitting in his high-school physics class. Some kid ran in the door and said, "Hey, a plane hit the World Trade Center!"

So the physics teacher turns on the classroom TV just as the second plane hits.

After about a minute, the physics teacher turns off the TV and says, "well, that will be on the news when you get home. Let's get back to Boyle's Law."

And THAT is the mindset that puts smart kids in detention.

The resulting explosion was a perfect example of Boyle's Law in action. The teacher failed to realize it and lost a perfect opportunity to teach. That is what's wrong with education today.

Pay the Man: aagrajag: Weaver95: thamike: fredklein: Just like the TSA confiscates your 'dangerous' bottled water... then dumps it in a trash can right next to them.

I've noticed the only thing they don't dump is duty-free booze. They have other plans for that, the twats.

it's almost worth putting something icky into the booze if you know the TSA goons are just gonna steal it for themselves....

I like your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter so I have something to read in jail.

I hate those TSA farktards as much as the next guy, but how the fark did this thread deteriorate into a TSA bashing rant?

I think the loathing is bubbling just below the surface in all civilised people...

Weaver95: thamike: fredklein: Just like the TSA confiscates your 'dangerous' bottled water... then dumps it in a trash can right next to them.

I've noticed the only thing they don't dump is duty-free booze. They have other plans for that, the twats.

it's almost worth putting something icky into the booze if you know the TSA goons are just gonna steal it for themselves....

disulfiram sounds about right

mrEdude: when your highest politicians, your educators and administrators are all completely to-the-bone stupid


stupid people are a politicians wet dream, they are more easily molded into whatever the politician wants them to be, and generally they do not question what the magic moving pictures box tells them.

The politicians do not want smarter people so there is little reason to actually fix the school system. The teachers unions do not want smarter people because they may decide that unions are dumb for public schools, unless the unions are claiming that the government is screwing over the people and if so why are they not teaching that??

The unions get a cut of the paychecks of their members, in essence the teachers pay to work. The unions want harder to fire teachers, better paid teachers, and no real standards for how well the teach (they have openly opposed using student performance to grade a teacher). Stupid people do not question the role of the teachers union, they do not question the quality of the schools, they just accept what they are told.

Anodos: thelordofcheese: A guy from CMU was detained and questioned at CVS because his home-made GPS unit had a battery pack.

That's right: in a neighborhood filled with high-tech students this white guy who was openly carrying a device had what was considered a suspicious object because it required portable electrical energy.

And the reason he was let go without further investigation? The object had a Windows CE logo on it.

You are safe, citizen. The government is watching.

was this in Squill or the one on Forbes? The one on Forbes I could kinda see being concerned about bombs and stuff...

//I miss South Oakland... there, I said it

They're both on Forbes ;p.

Yeah, but this was the one down by... hmmm, not Sennot... down the street. Around the corner from the OTHER CVS which is right beside the state store.

It was a KGB member. Explains quite a bit.
/I shoulda gone to their activity last night
//even though I'm not a student
///I guess I'll hit up their meeting Monday

thelordofcheese: A guy from CMU was detained and questioned at CVS because his home-made GPS unit had a battery pack.

That's right: in a neighborhood filled with high-tech students this white guy who was openly carrying a device had what was considered a suspicious object because it required portable electrical energy.

And the reason he was let go without further investigation? The object had a Windows CE logo on it.

You are safe, citizen. The government is watching.

Had it been running Linux the FBI would have been called. Command line driven OS's have been deemed a threat to national security.

cfletch13: ZeroCorpse: That's why I became an entropy-worshiping nihilist. I figured that the only way I could get along in this world without being accosted or reviled would be to out-doomsay the doomsayers.

So far it has worked. `Perhaps too well.

I tried the whole "Show off how smart I am" thing in middle school, and I was completely cured of it by high school, thanks to teachers and administrators who were threatened by my existence. Even in the adult world, I've learned that most people don't like someone who is noticeably intelligent; They prefer their peers, superiors, and/or underlings to be as dim as they are, and suffer the delusion that they themselves are the smartest monkey in their office, because they picked more fleas this week than anyone else.

/Resents stupid people.
//And I'm positive they resent me, too.

You sound like one of those pessimistic, lonely people that can't can't function socially and grow up falsely believing that they are smarter than everyone else.

I was thinking the same thing until I got to the underlined part. I've worked in that type of environment and it's no fun at all, though it is amusingly stupid if you're on the outside looking in.

FTF: Officials decided to call in the explosives team to look over the object - which an administrator had confiscated and taken into a principal's office - as a precaution.

that's just as bad as the stupid TSA who collect items which they have evaluated as potentially lethal in a farking garbage can. if it presents any kind of threat to you, why are you handling it so insouciantly?

trixter_nl: stupid people are a politicians wet dream

True. Ever notice how both parties say they want better education but neither will ever do anything substantive? That's not an accident.

I have a cheap laptop I bought about four years ago, being that I am rough with some thing, s i't been though alot, but repaired.

Repairs include a new LCD backlight (I opened the panel and replaced the light), and external wifi antennas, with power sliced off a USB connector. Foil tape holds the external wires in place

Needless to say every one who sees it is leary of the Franken-laptop, I porbably can't make it through airport security with it...

can takes pics iif you want'em

thelordofcheese: Anodos: thelordofcheese: A guy from CMU was detained and questioned at CVS because his home-made GPS unit had a battery pack.

That's right: in a neighborhood filled with high-tech students this white guy who was openly carrying a device had what was considered a suspicious object because it required portable electrical energy.

And the reason he was let go without further investigation? The object had a Windows CE logo on it.

You are safe, citizen. The government is watching.

was this in Squill or the one on Forbes? The one on Forbes I could kinda see being concerned about bombs and stuff...

//I miss South Oakland... there, I said it

They're both on Forbes ;p.

Yeah, but this was the one down by... hmmm, not Sennot... down the street. Around the corner from the OTHER CVS which is right beside the state store.

It was a KGB member. Explains quite a bit.
/I shoulda gone to their activity last night
//even though I'm not a student
///I guess I'll hit up their meeting Monday

oh man, I forgot about the one next to the state store... I thought that was a Rite-Aid... you mean the one near Dave and Andy's, right?

But "the other one" is obviously the one on Halket...

/went to Pitt, but half-lived on CMU's campus
//your people weren't farktards, and did the most amazing stuff on your lawn
///wish I had known about CMU, I would have applied out of HS

TsukasaK: MacGa

aagrajag: TsukasaK: maceinator: MacGabhain: Not tech or math related, but my wife just had an ENTIRE college class not be able to tell what she wrote on the board because it was in cursive. It was two words, and she has very good handwriting

Yeah, not taught anymore. My nephews, in college:

- can barely write legibly in block letters,
- can't solve for 'x' in x+5=13 (seriously),
- can't read or write cursive; a signature is a graphical image to them. They "sign" their names in block letters.

We have a very deep hole to dig out of. It will take decades to get back where we were, and that will still put us behind the rest of the world.

The only one that doesn't belong in that sequence is writing in cursive. Seriously, it's a dead art, like speaking latin. There is no reason beyond curiosity for it to be taught nowadays.

'Fraid I have to agree here. I learned cursive quite well in school, and my handwriting has long since become a grab-bag of printing, cursive and various ligatures and digraphs that no one else can read. I couldn't write a majuscule "Q" to save my life.

My calligraphy's pretty good, though.

Comes in pretty handy to be able to read it when other people write it, however. I'm not saying we should return to spending an hour a day writing interconnected "o"s to train our muscles to write neatly (my mother did this in grade school around 1940), but they couldn't read the phrase "Perfect Pizza".

xaverianbob: thelordofcheese: A guy from CMU was detained and questioned at CVS because his home-made GPS unit had a battery pack.

That's right: in a neighborhood filled with high-tech students this white guy who was openly carrying a device had what was considered a suspicious object because it required portable electrical energy.

And the reason he was let go without further investigation? The object had a Windows CE logo on it.

You are safe, citizen. The government is watching.

Had it been running Linux the FBI would have been called. Command line driven OS's have been deemed a threat to national security.

So what should I do when a SCP and SSH into my router running (BusyBox [ASH]) OpenWrt instead of using the X-WRT web-based GUI?
/which I carry around in my backpack
//with my laptop
///and BackTrack 3, Ophcrack, a USB WiFi NIC, COFEE, DECAF...

eddyatwork: The thing that is chilling to me today about schools is how they are training people to live in a prison mentality where all independent thought must be crushed instantly in the guise of safety and all spirit must be destroyed by meaningless rules that accomplish nothing.

I think I read that book in AP English

If you honestly think something might be a bomb, you're a god damn idiot if you touch it or move it.

THIS! It was at this point in the article that I figured out that something else was up, because if they had thought it was a bomb they would have evacuated the school as per standard procedure. You have to wonder - if this is the 'tech' magnet school, how afraid of technology they are at the other places.

stickintehmud: eddyatwork: The thing that is chilling to me today about schools is how they are training people to live in a prison mentality where all independent thought must be crushed instantly in the guise of safety and all spirit must be destroyed by meaningless rules that accomplish nothing.

I think I read that book in AP English

you mean the one where they dispense subsidized psychoactive medications that make you blank out for extensive periods of time? or make non-promiscuity something to be ashamed of/called out for by social peers? or de-emphasize durability in favor of consumption? or replace simple entertainments with ever increasingly technologically complex games?

mark12A: Ya know, I'm beginning to wonder if we need to set up something similar to "Free Enterprise Zones" like they have in China, except that we'll set up "Freedom Zones", composed of certain midwest states where SWAT teams, bomb squads, ATF, DEA, and other oppressive entities (like large, stupid school systems) are BANNED, and where chemistry sets, electronic parts, and other cool stuff are easily available. A Darwinian stew, to be sure, but the survivors would be America's only hope for survival...

FTA This kid could have been me. In third grade I brought in a contraption to test filaments for a new light bulb. My reasoning was something like this, "Edison lived long ago, maybe some new material he never tested could make a better light bulb filament." Mainly I though it was cool. So, it was a bottle, two electrodes, a thermal cut-off and an electric train transformer to drive the current. No one helped me and it worked. The teacher loved it.

Although I grew up in San Diego, I graduated long ago. Today, I would be in detention.

The main emphasis on K-12 teachers now is their evaluations of the students. That has broken the system. In my opinion the K-12 system could be corrected if the teachers were only responsible for teaching and some other group were responsible for student evaluation.

I accurately guessed "either California or Massachusetts" before clicking the link!

maceinator: Says the guy fresh out out of college.

I don't know where you work, but I have never had a boss ask for something in cursive, its not as useful as say having the information in spreadsheet. If the contents were put into a cursive font I'm pretty sure they'd think I was messing with them.

When my brother was in high school in the mid-70s, he and his friend Bob made a "time bomb" as a gift for their physics teacher. The "bomb" consisted of a broken alarm clock, a dead 6-volt battery, some wires, and cardboard tubes filled with putty and painted red for the "dynamite". The teacher thought it was amusing, and kept it on his desk for a while. Bob's younger brother Will thought it was cool too, so he decided to take it from the teacher's desk and put it in his locker, intending to take it home later that day. When the custodian, who was doing "routine maintenance" (i.e. checking for drugs in the locker) found the "bomb", he freaked and called the cops. Will ended up being suspended for a week for having a "bomb" in his locker, notwithstanding the fact that the "bomb" had been sitting in plain sight on the teacher's desk for weeks.

/plus la change, plus la meme chose

Fano: Anodos: stickintehmud: eddyatwork: The thing that is chilling to me today about schools is how they are training people to live in a prison mentality where all independent thought must be crushed instantly in the guise of safety and all spirit must be destroyed by meaningless rules that accomplish nothing.

I think I read that book in AP English

you mean the one where they dispense subsidized psychoactive medications that make you blank out for extensive periods of time? or make non-promiscuity something to be ashamed of/called out for by social peers? or de-emphasize durability in favor of consumption? or replace simple entertainments with ever increasingly technologically complex games?

I think he means Harrison Bergeron.

wasn't that a short story? like, by many standards a pretty short story?

/not important... we're headed towards something of both anyway...

Anodos: stickintehmud: eddyatwork: The thing that is chilling to me today about schools is how they are training people to live in a prison mentality where all independent thought must be crushed instantly in the guise of safety and all spirit must be destroyed by meaningless rules that accomplish nothing.

I think I read that book in AP English

you mean the one where they dispense subsidized psychoactive medications that make you blank out for extensive periods of time? or make non-promiscuity something to be ashamed of/called out for by social peers? or de-emphasize durability in favor of consumption? or replace simple entertainments with ever increasingly technologically complex games?

Gooble Gobble! We accept you! One of us! One of us!

Delay:
The main emphasis on K-12 teachers now is their evaluations of the students. That has broken the system. In my opinion the K-12 system could be corrected if the teachers were only responsible for teaching and some other group were responsible for student evaluation.

That would make sense. Almost every where else has an external groupwatching to ensure the job is getting done.

Half the teachers don't know what they're teaching out of the book. The only reason they're still in a class room is the fact that they need a job and can't do anything else.

Most industries will send people back to school to learn new skills relevant to their job, not teachers though. If only there was a 2 month window every year when there was time to do this.....

Anodos: thelordofcheese: Anodos: thelordofcheese: A guy from CMU was detained and questioned at CVS because his home-made GPS unit had a battery pack.

That's right: in a neighborhood filled with high-tech students this white guy who was openly carrying a device had what was considered a suspicious object because it required portable electrical energy.

And the reason he was let go without further investigation? The object had a Windows CE logo on it.

You are safe, citizen. The government is watching.

was this in Squill or the one on Forbes? The one on Forbes I could kinda see being concerned about bombs and stuff...

//I miss South Oakland... there, I said it

They're both on Forbes ;p.

Yeah, but this was the one down by... hmmm, not Sennot... down the street. Around the corner from the OTHER CVS which is right beside the state store.

It was a KGB member. Explains quite a bit.
/I shoulda gone to their activity last night
//even though I'm not a student
///I guess I'll hit up their meeting Monday

oh man, I forgot about the one next to the state store... I thought that was a Rite-Aid... you mean the one near Dave and Andy's, right?

But "the other one" is obviously the one on Halket...

/went to Pitt, but half-lived on CMU's campus
//your people weren't farktards, and did the most amazing stuff on your lawn
///wish I had known about CMU, I would have applied out of HS

Too expensive for me. The academic decathlon people in my HS were all my friends and got free rides to Gannon, and because of that and the fact that I helped establish (re- actually) the computer club in HS during the .com bubble I got a nice package. Worked in ITS as well, but made sure to work the Thurs night shift b/c NO ONE called in. Went to work high a lot, then hit the parties.

Transferred to a state school closer to home. Met my (now) ex there, and moved to pgh where she became a children's librarian and CLP in SqHl. I used to do hardware repair at Pitt, then QA at UPMC until Feb. She works in a bookstore in the middle of Madison and I'm unemploye, though I had an interview last week. A previous post kinda explains why I don't work for a ""non-profit" corporation anymore.
/I coulda just lied to the administration like the systems analyst does
//he gave me a recommendation
///but I don't feel comfortable lying
////I thought MAYBE making notes, ad appending justifications, would persuade them to make improvements to not just their systems but their employees skills as well
\last interview was for a small, local web dev company

Thank you Bush, it takes a special man to tap the vast stupidity and fear the general public has.

Pay the Man: I hate those TSA farktards as much as the next guy, but how the fark did this thread deteriorate into a TSA bashing rant?

Because you Hopey McChange libtards insist that driving cars and eating bacon is going to kill us all, so why don't we just pay the lazy arsed poor people to stay home and take drugs so they can murder the hard working patriots that support them in their sleep for money to buy hookers and blow with.

/like that.
\\did I leave anything out??
//oh yeah
\Tila Tequila is a alien looking my space dwarf slut that heels her shiat down the drain.

But it had WIRES!!!!

Fano: I think he means Harrison Bergeron.

I actually wasn't referring to any literary works but there are three I can apply:

1. Harrison Bergeron - NCLB ensuring nobody feels like a loser. Or a winner.
2. 1984 - mindcrime (writing in a diary can get you arrested)
3. Brave New World - Soma is being over dispensed in young people to calm them.

I just emailed the school:
You are what is wrong with education, with this country, and with humanity. Kindly remove yourself from all of the above.

bookman: ZeroCorpse: eddyatwork: The kid has learned three lessons that are very important here.

1. The nail that stands tallest gets hammered down first.
2. No matter how much you explain something to an administrator they'll never get it.
3. Being intelligent is a punishment.

If the kid had made a crappy diorama none of this would have happened.

Yeah. A big THIS. At least, that has been my experience.

That's why I became an entropy-worshiping nihilist. I figured that the only way I could get along in this world without being accosted or reviled would be to out-doomsay the doomsayers.

So far it has worked. `Perhaps too well.

I tried the whole "Show off how smart I am" thing in middle school, and I was completely cured of it by high school, thanks to teachers and administrators who were threatened by my existence. Even in the adult world, I've learned that most people don't like someone who is noticeably intelligent; They prefer their peers, superiors, and/or underlings to be as dim as they are, and suffer the delusion that they themselves are the smartest monkey in their office, because they picked more fleas this week than anyone else.

/Resents stupid people.
//And I'm positive they resent me, too.

After reading your post, and viewing your profile, I want you to know that my heart bleeds for you.

About a drop once per century.

I suspect that most of your problems with the 'stupid" people around you are due to their perception that you are a self-important twat who would only be happy if he were Lord and Master of the universe.

Get over yourself.

1) No, his profile doesn't. 2) Projection. 3) Your post was a lame and pointless.

In the school's defense, there's nothing in the article that says it was for a science project..it was just a device that the kid brought in from home. Sure, it was a "technology-oriented" school, and it's possible that kids there are encouraged to bring their inventions all the time, but I'm hesitant to blast the school for their initial reaction.

Of course, I didn't see the need to confiscate it after it was deemed harmless.

I was tempted to fire up my under average brain and strike out at ZeroCorpse for his/her telling troll but several Farkers beat me to it and they did it well.

The article is a sad commentary on the state of the union. As several have said, if kids did today what we did as a kids they would somehow be labeled and have their life choices limited due to their independent thinking.

Relative to superiority complexes: Part of what I do is hire new-grad engineers. Engineers are generally pretty ego-centric when they realize what they may know compared to non-engineers. What they don't realize yet is that an engineer without funding is just a dreamer. Some of the schemes I've seen constructed to secure funding for a project were nothing short of brilliant and I for sure would have never thought of it. So smarts come in all colors and may not be obvious to me or you.

I am hyper sensitive to those who seem to actually believe non-engineers are dim or stupid and usually will not hire them because of the disturbance potential in a usually high pressure work environment involving all sorts of people. I would not hire ZC. Jerks are not welcome.

Yes, there are times when I dumb-down to fit in with the crowd. But there are also plenty of times when I sense someone dumbing-down to fit in with me. That is life.

This story is a sad commentary on the general lack of science education, PC and tort paranoia in school administrations. If the US needs more IT and engineering professionals, THEN PAY FOR IT. These are "skilled" vocations that many people cannot do and those who can spend a great deal of learnin' time progressing from Jr High science class to competent scientist/engineer/programmer/code writer/system nurse. Obviously their decisions are not as life or death-ish as a medical professional, but they can cause the loss of gudzillions of dollars or people's lives if they are wrong. They should be paid accordingly and they are not. Most engineers work for the pleasure of the task and appreciate that they have at least a middle class income. Guess who takes advantage of that mind-set . . . who's the smart one in this picture.

Enough of this crap, posting now and going to something else.

0) disband all teachers unions. period. sucks to be you.
1) fire bad teachers
2) fire bad admins/principals
3) fire disruptive students (sorry, you are an attention whore 5 times? fark off)
4) seperate the kids by desire/ability
5) stop funding the schools with local taxes and switch to state taxes.
6) pay the farking teachers already

I don't know about number four.....
everything else seems to have merits

maybe number 3 should be to isolate disruptive students: A WEEK IN THE HOLE!

eddyatwork: a prison mentality where all independent thought must be crushed instantly in the guise of safety and all spirit must be destroyed by meaningless rules that accomplish nothing.

Dude. Isn't that the TSA mission statement?

Uhhh, the only real problem is that they confinscated it afterwards. If it was a bomb, you all would be biatching about how ineffective the administration is dealing with these situations. It's like airport security. If someone gets through with something, you say they aren't doing their job. If they want to screen more, you say you're being violated somehow.

This is not a big deal! I can't imagine what you guys would act like if you lived when knowledge really was oppressed.

worthlessjuan: I was tempted to fire up my under average brain and strike out at ZeroCorpse for his/her telling troll but several Farkers beat me to it and they did it well.

The article is a sad commentary on the state of the union. As several have said, if kids did today what we did as a kids they would somehow be labeled and have their life choices limited due to their independent thinking.

Relative to superiority complexes: Part of what I do is hire new-grad engineers. Engineers are generally pretty ego-centric when they realize what they may know compared to non-engineers. What they don't realize yet is that an engineer without funding is just a dreamer. Some of the schemes I've seen constructed to secure funding for a project were nothing short of brilliant and I for sure would have never thought of it. So smarts come in all colors and may not be obvious to me or you.

I am hyper sensitive to those who seem to actually believe non-engineers are dim or stupid and usually will not hire them because of the disturbance potential in a usually high pressure work environment involving all sorts of people. I would not hire ZC. Jerks are not welcome.

Yes, there are times when I dumb-down to fit in with the crowd. But there are also plenty of times when I sense someone dumbing-down to fit in with me. That is life.

This story is a sad commentary on the general lack of science education, PC and tort paranoia in school administrations. If the US needs more IT and engineering professionals, THEN PAY FOR IT. These are "skilled" vocations that many people cannot do and those who can spend a great deal of learnin' time progressing from Jr High science class to competent scientist/engineer/programmer/code writer/system nurse. Obviously their decisions are not as life or death-ish as a medical professional, but they can cause the loss of gudzillions of dollars or people's lives if they are wrong. They should be paid accordingly and they are not. Most engineers work for the pleasure of the task and appreciate that they have at least a middle class income. Guess who takes advantage of that mind-set . . . who's the smart one in this picture.

Enough of this crap, posting now and going to something else.fark you. Never dumb down. You are part of the problem. There is a difference between dumbing down and teaching in a comprehensive and gradual basis. If someone doesn't have the ability or drive to keep up when education is offered then they should be left behind.

thelordofcheese: And I noticed I misspelled a word AFTER I hit Submit.
/takes second sip of coffee
//goes for 3rd

how in hell did you do that. I might notice after I've hit submit, that I misspelled a word... but misspelling it after you hit submit? You're good....

If it had been a bomb and they hadn't evacuated the school you'd all be singing a very different tune right now.

The real sad state of our country is that shiat like this gets blown out of proportion. I'll evacuate 1,000 schools needlessly before I let anything happen to one because I didn't want to cause a panic.

This doesn't have anything to do with a lack of "science education" or anything like that. Someone saw a suspicious object and reported it, so they evacuated the school.

The kid's probably a hero now to his friends for getting them out of class.

dlewis6: Uhhh, the only real problem is that they confinscated it afterwards. If it was a bomb, you all would be biatching about how ineffective the administration is dealing with these situations. It's like airport security. If someone gets through with something, you say they aren't doing their job. If they want to screen more, you say you're being violated somehow.

This is not a big deal! I can't imagine what you guys would act like if you lived when knowledge really was oppressed.

suppressed. And it still is.

Also, I wholly don't agree with 4) either (since that is for what electives and college/trade schools are) and think 3) should be some sort of alternative, like attempting to find the reason of the disruption (there are school counselors, ya know).

dlewis6: I can't imagine what you guys would act like if you lived when knowledge really was oppressed.

Maybe it's because those of us who studied history are desperately trying to keep the torch of knowledge from sputtering out while people think it's no big deal that we are dumbing everything down.

What a motion detector may look like: