My direct experience with Asians (specifically Indian origin) at college were that a lot of them were admitted with scholarships or worked as teaching assistants to pay back what they owed as the difference. Many of them were in the graduate program while I was in the undergraduate, but my last two years there about half my classes were graduate classes with a couple projects removed for undergrads.

And what I witnessed to make up the higher than average test scores of the Indian students was that they would cheat. I had one of them turn around during a test and try to cheat off of my work. I turned him in so I wouldn't be blamed if he copied word for word something before I noticed, nothing happened.

They would take past students homework, put their name on it. Photocopy it 5 times and all the indians in the class would turn it in as their own work. They would get together to work on projects, despite it not being group projects...it was all heads on one screen for hours on end.

So, they may test better and score better, but after speaking with a few....their society doesn't seem to punish cheating like you have here in the US. So I don't put much stock in scores, I spoke with a number of them and they had their smart members who carried the dumb ones along.

And the reverse can also happen. The dumb ones can smother the smart ones potential. Seen it happen while I was in school, "jocks" who were obviously very intelligent would blow off classes and homework because it wasn't what the other guys in their group were doing. These were white folks mostly.

And then you have native born US people of white or black families who are just not capable of mathematics beyond simple multiplication and division. And don't absorb most subjects, but might be a wizard at automotive or electrical given the opportunity. Perhaps they are developing more slowly than others, or perhaps they will never be capable of what you expect of them. But they reflect poorly in your scores, and are not immigrants.

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for them in society.

Now if you tell me that the jobs that would normally be there for folks like this are just swamped by the immigration.....then that's another thing they should be accounted for.
Or if their low scores are holding back other students, that's nationwide...and I'll agree it's a problem that needs to be addressed.


Obviously in immigrants or native born, if you don't see improve in certain cultures after one generation...something is wrong. And it can't simply be that these people are from a certain background that is incapable of adapting...they are human after all.

But I don't think immigration is causing the flaws you see. I think they are exacerbating the problem that already existed prior to their arrival. And that native born and people with established cultural centers in those areas have learned to adapt to and taught to the new arrivals.

A few flaws I saw while in high school:

- Over indulgence in sports programs. The books would be literally falling apart and they would be paying to have a new sports complex built. Saw this in a number of schools. I even did some work on one once I was out of high school. Multi-million dollar project where half of it was in their field and complex. The other big chunk was for the administration, and a quarter or less was put into stuff for the kids...you know the reason the place exists in the first place. The common thinking was that the sports complex would "make them money", except if it had to pay it's own way and cover the payments on the property, upkeep costs, etc...it would spent it's entire years "earnings" in a single month. But the board thought it was making money, despite what everyone else told them. While the actual classrooms were all cost (in their eyes)....even though they should be the core of the school's focus and were rarely without issues. Leaking roofs, leaking windows, etc.

- Teachers overworked. Many of them had extra curricular things they were in charge of in addition to teaching class, grading homework, meeting with parents, etc. Some even worked second jobs so they could supplement their income....especially the newer teachers.

- Teachers over-controlled. Discussion was kept a little too politically correct in most explanations of topics. It makes it more difficult to wade through the language to get to the lesson being taught. Sometimes some plain spoken wording would have made it much more clear. Dancing around the holocaust and civil war subjects are doing a disservice to their impact.

- Teachers reciting from text books. Basically in these cases the teachers didn't know the subject well enough to explain it to others. These people should no be teaching. I knew of parents who would come in and remove students from particular teachers classes because they had older siblings who told their parents how horrible this teacher was. I had to suffer through because I couldn't convince my parents, and I think it hurt me in the subject of mathematics for quite sometime following that class. I lost a lot of interest in the subject because of this teacher.

- Stupid punishment. I had principals who would bend over backwards for sports players especially soccer and football, but would threaten me with detention and what not every time they thought I was doing something. One example stands out. Big snow the night before, they never plowed the township I lived in until right around the time school started. My vehicle wouldn't go in the snow, I had to go home and get a ride from my parents since their vehicle was heavier. Principal didn't believe me until the bus that would have been on my route showed up 20 minutes after I did. He threatened me with all kinds of stuff. And I lost another big chunk of interest in school, because why bother if they are going to punish you for nothing and let others slide for basically bullying other students.

- And I could go on and on. If you weren't a native English speaker or aware that all this above shit was common. You might think you were being singled out and only end up going because the law says you have to. And most times despite the evidence that the above does not work, it's just enforced more stringently...making it even less desirable to put up with all the BS.

Education might be considered a socialist program, but it's lost it's focus from education and put it into sports or administrative costs...or when it comes to college outrageous fees that have little to do with what you are receiving. Or....profit centered for many people involved. A capitalist way of thinking, and it's not WHY these places exist..it's against their nature to be this way. And it's going to affect the overall education of your population as costs rise and money is taken away from what should be it's only goal.

<shuac touches finger to his chin and looks upward slightly> I wonder who'd be interested in such an automotive feature? hhhhhmhmhmhmhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

>> ^bobknight33:

His thinking is very bad logic and will doom any society. HE praises unions but just about all companies that have unions are on the edge of failure. Auto, Airline, Teachers.


obviously someone drinks the Kool-aid

please, expand on how the unions are crippling these industries, and elaborate on how these very same industries (infact same companies in alot on instances) are doing just fine outside of the US with unionization

pensions in the North American auto industry is the only thing I think you may have stumbled upon

but I'd like you to hear your argument as to how the wages/benefits these industries pay out (ESPECIALLY the airline and teachers in particular) are crippling these industries

because I mean, you definitely seem to be equating these industries being unionized with their failure

and not things like lack of funding (education) or business strategies (North American automotive industry) or innovation

perhaps if unionization isn't as big a hinderance outside of the US as it is in the US, maybe the problem really lays somewhere else

also expand on the "very bad logic" statement... which points in particular he made you disagree with and why

1) somewhere exists a group of scientists who know the precise temperature the earth is supposed to be.


Well, no. Precision isn't the issue, accuracy is. When building a climate model we don't need a precise answer for temperature at a location, we need accurate (though perhaps fairly imprecise) temperatures for many locations over time. This may seem pedantic, but you've wandered into discussing science so you might as well learn the terms.

Do you really think there would ever come a day when the alarmists concede they were wrong, especially after establishing a world climatocracy of near-absolute power?


Sorry, you're talking about some dystopian future ruled by environmentalists? Are you worried about this coming to be? Do you look around at the world and shudder at the enormous power environmentalists are getting? I mean, for whatever you think of climate change theory, surely you have to agree that the climate change movement has been pretty much completely ineffectual at getting anything significant changed or regulated. Near-absolute power, even imagining the passing of quite a bit of time and the world getting disastrously more environmentally conscious, is a bit of a stretch.

Look, I disagree with the "stereotypical environmentalist" on a lot of things - and I think many environmental programs and restrictions and whatever are pointless (recycling, random painful acts of conservation, etc..). But whether or not you like environmentalists or think they'd do a good job running things doesn't effect whether the proposition in question is true.

Me? I think the balance of evidence is currently on the side of global warming becoming a problem in the next 100 years. I think the evidence is strong enough to prompt further research and certain kinds of actions. And I don't mean cutting automotive emissions by 20%. That is really pointless. Cars burning gas is a turd that we need to flush completely and soon (burning oil at the current rate has enough problems, global warming or not) - not slowly polish.

In general, I think that good approaches to fighting global warming (mostly new energy sources) are net wins whether or not they're related to global warming. Nobody is going to regret stimulating the economy by spending on research, technology development, and manufacturing. And if it turns out global warming was happening for some other reason (or not happening at all) we'll be happy to have our Mr. Fusion powered air conditioners and holodecks.

9 : 5
10 : 6
11 : 5
9 : 5 (or 10 : 5)

This is a website, not an SAT exam. A channel subdomain name should convey simply the general idea and do so succinctly.

If the idea of the channel is to be focused on teachers, students, classrooms, and the educational system, *school is well-suited.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^lucky760:
An alternate and maybe better channel name could be school maybe.

SAT vocab test:
economics : money
automotive : wheels
aeronautics : wings
education : ?
I say based on those past examples, the right name here is blackboard, not school.
Naming it school would be as ridiculous as calling our economics channel market, or our automotive channel street.
Or maybe we should just call it education, and not make it needlessly obscure...

>> ^lucky760:

An alternate and maybe better channel name could be school maybe.


SAT vocab test:

economics : money
automotive : wheels
aeronautics : wings

education : ?

I say based on those past examples, the right name here is *blackboard, not *school.

Naming it *school would be as ridiculous as calling our economics channel market, or our automotive channel street.

Or maybe we should just call it *education, and not make it needlessly obscure...

Oh you don't like how they try to use personality tests, GPA, and the infamous "career day" to help kids decide? I'm still not sure what I could stand to do for the rest of my life, and that's mainly because everything they tried to tell me was not helpful and everything you look into is not what people claim it to be.

Which I view as a failing of colleges, since young people are paying money to go into things they only have a very vague notion of and unless their parents or a close relative do the job, no one is going to provide them with straight answers in a vast majority of the time. Assuming they even consider what careers to ask about or what questions to ask about said careers.

I hold it up as proof that colleges at this time are there to get people in and out of programs while milking them for as much as possible, but don't actually take the time to evaluate that their programs provide the building blocks the student would need to follow the job path they THINK they want. The colleges don't care if the students presumptions are wrong.

I also view elementary to high school as bypassing a lot of common knowledge, common sense, life skills, etc things kids should learn. Like electric safety and basic repairs, basic automotive/mechanic/tool usage, cooking/laundry basics, and probably the most important of all nutrition and exercise. You see people on the news having heatstroke and everything else because they don't drink enough fluids or don't realize that not sweating is a really bad thing. Plus proper stretching and all that. I mean I remember them having wood working classes, and it didn't even focus on things you might actually run into that you could repair on your own without having some major equipment.

Education is great, but too many people come out of high school and college with a lot of knowledge, no applicable skills to a field, and almost no rudimentary skills to speak of. And this isn't saying they should be trained for jobs, this is saying they have enough of a common life skill set that they can at least somewhat measure what is required in positions. Right now, everyone claims they can do everything and they really know very little.

But Im with you there on the TNG DNA job matching.....wish we had it. No politics, nepotism, and what not to throw a wrench into everything.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^chilaxe:
@NetRunner 'everyone who qualifies for college should go for free.'
Just what we need, more lazy, talentless graduates with a heart-warming "culture studies" or "environmental studies" degree working for minimum wage at Starbucks.
I have too many friends to count who got useless college degrees and now, ten years later, are still doing nothing with their lives.

So free choice didn't make people lead full and productive lives? Imagine that.
Snark aside, I don't really see why more scholarships would change things. I'm not talking about making college compulsory, I'm talking about taking monetary cost out of the equation when discussing whether you go or not.
Remember that episode of ST:TNG where all the kids on the Enterprise got kidnapped by an alien race, and they did tests on their DNA, and then told them what their career would be and immediately put them to work? They were fun professions too, like musician, sculptor, engineer, etc.
I sometimes think I would've personally preferred that to having to figure out in my teenage years what kind of career would appeal to me, acquire the skills and training required by that career, and then find a job. It seems like our education system should expend a greater effort on that, rather than just presenting kids with ever-larger menus of classes to take and degrees to earn.

Also, we need to build a one-way highway along to equator. With massive amounts of cars constantly driving west, we can slow down the earths rotation, thereby slowing down the magma vortices under the earths crust and effectively bringing tectonic movement to a halt.

This would also be a massive economic booster for the construction and automotive sectors, along with the tourism industry for the equatorial countries providing pitstops and Haliburton who gets the contracts to excavate the latrines (beware of faulty wiring).

The only downside is that earth would lose its magnetic field, but political pundits could show that magnetism equals marxism (it's available for all! and both start with an "m"!), so that is easily solvable.

Big win for all.

Remember: God makes a kitten purr for every 40.000 km you drive on the Equatorial Highway!

@messenger

You keep saying roads are designed for automotive traffic like there's something wrong with that. Somewhere above you pointed out that cyclists pay taxes too. Your taxes also pay for sidewalks, bike trails, and forest preserves but you don't have the right to drive your car on or through any of them. If you want to ride a bike in amongst the cars, you have to accept that it's dangerous: you're harder to see, even in daylight, and your "crumple zones" are all filled with vital organs. It's a hell of a lot safer for you if you act like normal traffic.

Last week I really cared about one particular cyclist who broke a rather important traffic law. He ran a stop sign, traveling perpendicular to me, as I was entering the intersection. Fortunately, I was cruising at a pretty slow pace (maybe 25mph tops) so it wasn't a tough stop, but I did have to lock 'em up to not run the idiot over.

I don't really give a shit if cyclists ride on the shoulder (when there is one) or even the sidewalk (provided there's room amongst the pedestrians). Sure, these are technically illegal but they are good examples of, as you called it, victimless traffic laws.

One of the big problems with having bikes sharing road space with cars is you can easily fit 2-3 bikes in a car's blind spot. This is one of the big reasons bikes get sandwiched during lane changes. This is also one problem that's really not helped by typical urban bike lanes.

"This idea that car drivers don't break laws is utter fiction", and also something that I never claimed. Not sure why you're debunking the phantom argument.

I don't think any laws are going to make it safe for cyclists to be on the roads, even in designated bike lanes. No matter how perfect the system is and even if everyone adheres to it, bikes are difficult to see and even a "minor" collision with a bike is a major accident for the rider. In less urban areas, bike lanes are sometimes built some 20+ feet off the side of the road. This works well, when possible, because short of a major accident that launches a car off the road and onto the bike lane, the two never really share the same space.

Within a dense city, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe elevated bike lanes could work, sort of like how they run subway tracks in certain places.

Ok, I just paused writing for a second to do a search for "elevated bike lanes" and found some interesting concepts:

http://www.thepurehands.org/cycleways/
http://kolelinia.com/kolelinia/

Somewhere I saw someone mention that a lot of older cities also have abandoned subway tunnels that could be repurposed. I understand that underground isn't the nicest place for a bike ride on a warm spring day, but it's a pretty sweet idea if you're just looking to commute. Even if you just reused sections of tunnel in spots where there was no room overhead, it's valuable to keep in mind.

I really think separating the bikes from the cars is the way to go. Like I said before, even in the best circumstances there will be accidents and bike vs car is never really going to turn out well for the biker.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'nasioc, subaru, review, funny, automotive, cars, racing, rally, pron' to 'redacted' - edited by jonny

I'd love to see a new "Formula Zero" racing series. The automotive regulations would read:

Vehicle must have 4 wheels.
Vehicle must be moved by torque to said wheels.
Vehicle must be controlled by on-board driver.
Vehicle may be no wider than 2 meters, and no longer than 6 meters.
Vehicle must be able to pass standardized battery of crash & safety tests.

Beyond that, go for broke.

Thing is, I'm not sure it'd be particularly fun to watch, because it'd be (like Enzoblue said) largely a contest of who handles g-forces best, and which team spends the most money on their car.

Automotive pole dancing, a hot new fetish.

>> ^chilaxe:

I only have a vague idea what a Firebird is, but I believe it's some kind of automotive vehicle that bestows social status among douchebags.


You're pretty close, but douchebags are more about the Hondas. Firebirds and Camaros are more for the young mullet crowd.

I only have a vague idea what a Firebird is, but I believe it's some kind of automotive vehicle that bestows social status among douchebags.

But deterrents aren't effective, @Shepppard. If harsher penalties were deterrents, then we'd not have murder because of the death penalty. But that hasn't worked as a deterrent so why would you think DUI laws would? Let's look at the numbers:

15,000 deaths in the US related to drunk driving, you say? My numbers say it's more like 11,000, but whatever. According to the Department of Health's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (that's a bureaucratic mouthful, ain't it?), "1.2 million adults aged 21 or older" were arrested for DUIs during the past year.

So, for 15,000 (or 11,000) deaths we're preemptively locking up 1.2 million people. That's a deterrent? My numbers say that automotive fatalities are estimated around 33,963 a year with 1/3 being from DUIs. Shouldn't we just outlaw driving altogether with such high numbers? 3/4 of the deaths are male, which is a higher amount of crashes than caused by DUIs so maybe we should ban men from driving?

If the numbers add up, then men should be banned before those driving with a BAC of .08 or higher.

And of those 15,000 (11,000?) is it proven that driving under the influence caused the wrecks? Probably not. From what I've learned (unless the information received was bogus), if you're in an accident in California and it's the other guy's fault but your BAC is above .08, then it becomes your fault and you're charged with a felony. That could easily skew numbers in any statistic.