I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)

@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"

Pretty sure if we had more bees and other pollinating insects they'd be distributing this pollen rather than it gathering on trees like that.

Distributed storage is potentially a better option than mass storage facilities. A combination would be ideal. Too many people are waiting for the government or industry to do something when they could be doing it themselves. Especially now that a large battery bank doesn't cost $30k and weigh two tons.

Can be! It depends on the contents of the container and how air-tight its construction and materials are. Generally materials packed for transport are supposed to be strapped or otherwise held in place so that they don't shift and upset the transport vehicle (see the 747 that crashed in the Middle East when its cargo shifted...). But that's just the stuff that was meant to be in the container. Every ship has to contend with the risk of water ingress. Un-contained water in a vessel forms a "free surface" and the so-called free surface effect applies. That's where that material can and will move based on gravity, often making a bad situation much much worse. Imagine water in a tank (itself a free surface) vs. water sloshing around the cabin of a plane. This is what usually causes ships to capsize: water gets in and isn't contained, so it can move tremendous amounts of mass anywhere it wants to go -- usually in the direction it's already going. Calculations of ship stability for things like cargo loading and ballast assume minimal free surface in the ship, because you have to. That's how ships stay upright and afloat.

How does this apply to lost containers? Depending on how watertight the container is and how well strapped in the contents are, some amount of water may get in and form a free surface. This free surface will move around until the container finds its equilibrium which may or may not be watertight and less dense than the water around it, which defines whether it floats or sinks and what direction it faces when it does.

A container with a lot of weight on one side but otherwise watertight will stand upright and perhaps still sink (like the one at the end of this video). A container with well-distributed weight would tend to end up flat. Whether it sinks or not depends on whether it's watertight and what its density is -- the weight of the container displacing ocean vs. the weight of the ocean it displaces.

Sadly, a significant number of containers end up at the worst possible density/displacement where they float just at or near the surface and lay in wait to devastate passing ships, regardless of the orientation of the container itself.

My brain is moving slow this morning. But it sounds like an argument that wealthy people should stop hoarding wealth and allow more equitable distribution because they'll be better off. But they already have all the wealth in the current system, so you're not incentivizing them to change their patterns.

If you're arguing for a new system that doesn't allow the amassing of wealth by a small percentage of people, you're going to have an uphill battle because money = speech and thus, those with the money have more rights to decide how the system works.

When I was cub scout age in Calgary a guy from the left hand side of the normal distribution decided to test the safety of the ice on the Glenmore Resevoir by driving his VW Beetle onto it. It was safe for skating but not for cars.

You'd want to match weight distribution so clusters of Li cells around the engine compartment and fuel tank might work well.

I've always thought this would be a cool business to have. Retrofitting cars with more self-driving features would also be awesome.

It doesn't even look like these guy's are using advanced batteries. Small LIPO batteries distributed around the open areas of the car would make weight distribution better and probably provide a much higher total range.

Maybe they are keeping it simple for cost reasons.

There's a legal reason for that. In Germany, the law prohibits the distribution or public use of symbols of unconstitutional groups (flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting) as part of an effort to 'de-nazify' the national culture following the end of WW2. The Wolfenstein games are chock-full of these symbols. You can see the effects of the law on other WW2-themed games as well, like War Thunder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a

@jwray

*facepalm*

You realize the link you just posted is titled "IQ dominates socioeconomic background data for white men" (my emphasis).

Sure, there is a correlation between IQ and crime and it is hotly contested to what that actually means.

To some, that means only dumb criminals actually get caught (meaning we don't know the true average IQ of criminals because the smart ones get away with it).

To others, it reflects the socioeconomic status of the people most likely to commit crimes (i.e. likely grew up poor in a neighborhood without strong educational opportunities and therefore does not share the cultural values that IQ tests inherently load into the questions and furthermore the test-taker may be openly hostile to standardized test-taking).

To still others it reflects the RESULTS of crime (i.e. leading a criminal lifestyle makes it more likely that you are going to suffer traumatic physical injuries to the head that literally make you dumber).

The 7-8 point difference you quoted is not nearly enough to make a difference on the crime rates. 100 IQ is the normally distributed mean and Japanese people on average, score around 106. For reference, a standard deviation on the IQ test is 15 points, meaning that for all intents and purposes Japanese people are still roughly in the same ballpark as Americans with their 98-point average.

And literally the first Google search result when I looked up Japanese IQ scores was this one, explaining how national average IQ scores correlate with the per capita income and national rates of economic development.

In other words, economic factors correlate with IQ, which correlates with negatively with crime, which seems to further reinforce the idea that socioeconomic forces are a key factor in criminal behavior.

Look, we're getting really far afield of what the video is about. I think it is a no-brainer that few gun crimes are committed in Japan because guns are so heavily regulated. We do have stabbings, in fact we have mass stabbings (which is something you don't see so often in the U.S.). The thing we both agree on is that it is impossible for the U.S. to replicate these crime statistic results, whether that be for cultural reasons or whatever other cause you want to throw out there.

I don't need to properly debunk that to know it's some neocon bullshit.

I've read reports (and google/wiki confirms) that we had twice the boots on the ground in Haiti in <2 days after their earthquake than we do today in Puerto Rico after 12 days, and Haitians aren't Americans. Please explain how it's so much harder to get aid to Puerto Rico with warning the disaster was coming days ahead of time.
I'm not at all sure about your claims about the mayor of San Juan, but even if what you say were true, blaming the mayor, as if FEMA is unaware of the urgent need without her properly filed and formatted request made in person at their headquarters, for the complete failure of FEMA to distribute supplies to citizens on the whole island is ridiculous , imo. For days that headquarters was unreachable....everywhere was, many places still are today. She's certainly made multiple requests both private and public since the storm, as have other mayors that could...many still can't. I guess they're SOL for disaster relief until they get it together, right? *facepalm

Liberia bitch using liberal media slant describing The Federalist Society.. How how funny to watch.

Please re enlighten me the 3/5 clause...

It was to limit the racist southern politicians ( all Democrat)from getting more voting power. This was a provision that was not directly about race but about status and the allocation of political power. Free blacks were counted in exactly the same way as whites. The clause did not say that a slave was three-fifths of a person. The clause said nothing about free blacks, who were treated by the clause exactly as free whites were.

Rather, the clause provided a mathematical formula that allowed for the allocation of representatives in Congress that factored in the slave population. No slaves could vote in the country (although free blacks could vote in a number of states), and the clause did not provide a voice for slaves. This was about the distribution of political power among the states.

So yes you can thank Republicans for limiting the power from the racist KKK loving political south.

Here's a thought experiment:

Imagine a power technology emerging that makes the cost of electricity virtually zero and the supply virtually endless.

Since the emergence of life, the task of survival is the quest for energy in one form or another. Most of the critical advancements by humanity have been driven by the need to acquire, distribute and store energy. When you're sitting at your computer being productive for a paycheck, you are serving the same goal as prehistoric hunter-gatherers, you're just doing it via a much more complex system of acquisition and distribution.

The more efficiently we acquire energy, the less effort it takes to satisfy our individual energy needs and the more time we have for other pursuits such as culture and exploration.

What happens when the effort necessary to acquire a life's worth of energy approaches zero?

I'd have to beg to differ on America having similar Aboriginal/White conflict. IMO the divide between aboriginal/white in Canada is actually much deeper, and with a greater potential for future violence than even black/white relations in the US. The conditions on Canadian native reserves are MUCH worse than in the US. It's severe enough that the first time a Canadian is driving past an America aboriginal reserve they have to ask twice to confirm it really is one. The general state of broken down infrastructure, housing and in general is so bad it's even visibly unavoidable up here in Canada. In the US you can't tell you've gone past anything different unless something culturally relevant is posted up.

It's also made worse by systematic segregation that the reserve system in Canada creates so any seed of racism has lots of fertile ground and lacks any reference to counter balance it.

When a car is stolen is something goes missing on farms near a reserve the immediate default assumption is that someone 'aboriginal' took it. It's only made worse when more often than the statistical distribution should dictate, it actually was someone from a reserve that did it. Recently a car of young aboriginal kids pulled into a farmers yard and one of them was shot and killed. They said they had a flat and were just looking for help. The case is on going, but the courts have heard that the neighbour had already put a call in to police about a theft minutes before the shooting though. Of course, white folks on the internet made such helpful comments as suggesting the farmers mistake was 'leaving any witnesses'. It's also not just white racism against natives though, the racism against settlers(whites) amongst aboriginal populations can be just as ugly and rampant. When Canada decided to have our border crossing guards carry guns, we had to close a border crossing that was in a Mohawk reserve because they wouldn't allow it. The border station there was already riddled with bullet holes before this. If the government DID try and enforce the same law there as the rest of the border, people were going to die.

Being a Canadian colours my view, but it seems there is at least some parallels between race relations up here and in the US. The difference is up here is it's aboriginal/white as opposed to black/white.

I don't know how close the parallels are, but in Canada it is statistically accurate to observe the following:
-Aboriginal people are disproportionately the victims of violent crime
-Aboriginal people are disproportionately committing violent crime
-Aboriginal people are over-represented in the prison system
-Living conditions on Aboriginal reserves even compared to neighbouring municipalities are, on average, grossly worse

These are basic facts that are, statistically speaking, irrefutable.

There facts clearly indicate there is a problem in society. Unless you believe that race determines criminality, they indicate that a group of people is facing some kind of systematic disadvantage, currently, historically or both.

Canada has failed in trying to address this issue IMO. Instead of looking for the systematic problems, we are trying to treat the symptoms. For example, we have passed laws that demand differential sentencing to be more lenient towards convicted criminals if they are of aboriginal back ground.

What we really need is to discuss the root issues. If you grow up on a reserve or in a terrible neihgbourhood, that matters. If the likelyhood of growing up in those places is still racially distributed, that's a major root cause that needs addressing above all others.