I listened to Howard Stern on my way to... elementary.

>> ^entr0py:

>> ^Ryjkyj:
>> ^longde:
Cenk, I get it that the Martin case increases hits, but why is the facebook comment of a nobody newsworthy? The opinion of the average redneck is no mystery to anybody.

I'm of the opinion that most people are racist, especially those who think they aren't.

Are you racist? . . . In either case, ah ha!


Yes, absolutely. I grew up in a community with very few black children. I still remember the full names of every single black kid I went to elementary school with over twenty years ago because there were so few of them, and because they were so culturally distinguishable.

I'm comfortable with the fact that, if I am immersed in a different community, like say at a party or a concert, and that community appears markedly different from me, I react reflexively different. It's not a conscious thing, so it is very hard to change. I believe that it is, in fact, an ingrained genetic response. So when I'm hanging out with my black friends, I have to make a conscious decision to not act differently than I normally would, which means that I am in fact, acting differently. Get what I mean? That, in and of itself, is racism.

In fact, considering that genetics has proven that there's no such thing as specifically different "races" of people, the term "racist", is racist. Identifying individuals by "race" is a cultural, personal or possibly even biological reflexive judgement/strategy, nothing more.

You don't have to think you're better than someone else to be racist, only different, but even thinking you're different can be harmful to another person or relationship. It can even be harmful to yourself.

BTW, for those of you that want to have MORE fun with the math aspect of all of this (if you want to try to figure out for example what equation you'll be using here...) go here: Wikiversity's link for Rigid Body States O' Fun! <---WARNING: LOTS of MATH!

Angular momentum, torque, and a strange geometrical shape with different areas of "spin" make for great WTF moments. I like torque the most though, it always provides the most fun through its various breakdowns in Physics...

I can defiantly see a college professor turning that little video into an impromptu test, "Watch this video: Now, assume that this thing has these dimensions and has this mass, also here are the independent velocities for the different areas (if it's a hard class will add in extra stuff like resistance, etc...)... Go ahead and tell me x, y, and, z...? You have twenty-five minutes.".

I really do like this video though. If I was a High School physics teacher my kids would understand what is happening here before they left my class. Screw honors programs and AP crap. All students deserve a chance to be great at something not just the ones that scored good on their tests in elementary (which in UTAH, this IS THE TRUTH!). Off-topic a bit, but I couldn't help it.

I've studied the American education system and I am a product of it — not to mention my mother is an elementary school teacher. For all these things, you'll have reason to disregard my postulation. The problem isn't republican/democrat politics. The problem is politics altogether.

Parents want what's best for their children...hell even I want the best education for the children, and I'm not even a parent. However, because education is so important to us, we're not willing to gamble on a new system. This is where the politics come in...it's easy to sell the idea of more testing to "keep track" of our education goals. This, in-and-of-itself, is not illogical thinking. Collecting data points as often and accurately as possible is the best way to perform many kinds of experiments and getting the results. There's one problem with our current model, though: we're not getting results.

In my opinion, what the Khan Academy is trying to get going seems like our best bet if we want to keep our testing model and still modify our system for success.>> ^quantumushroom:

Why are these two smirking and proud?
Liberals run the show in US government schools, and conservative politicians are complicit, though without them the socialists would have already gone further.
Read all about it in this free-to-download e-book
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

The American version will star Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes in New York (I think he's playing an American Holmes as well, not "these are Holmes's adventures while in America"). The show will be on CBS and is called Elementary. I don't think it will be a full Americanization of the show, like Office or Being Human, but just doing the same thing, a modern day Sherlock Holmes, just based in America... of course CBS could still opt out if they don't like the pilot...

>> ^lucky760:

Thanks for not being too arrogant to provide a short description. There is surprisingly little info about the show, but I was able to find all six episodes available for download. Thus far I've seen the first and enjoyed it rather thoroughly. It's exactly my type of show. And I love Jim Canterbury as Dr. Watson. I wonder if Sherlock was originally conceived as a homosexual.
Are you saying they're working on creating a US version of this BBC series?
>> ^RFlagg:
Really? Sherlock is a great show... you should be sure to check it out. If you have Netflix instant, the first season is on there... and on PBS Masterpice page for free if you don't have Netflix.... Only 3 episodes to a season (2 seasons so far), each about an hour and a half long.
I don't think I'll be able to do the American remake of Sherlock though...

I grew up in Finland and went to school there. Yes, some kids were bullied and none of the teachers ever noticed some of that. It didn't happen in the school, but when I was on the second grade n(elementary school), I definitely had two biys bullying me for a while. After school ended and we had to walk home, they'd follow me, push me around, scare the crap out of me. I was the only child and very quiet, timid, easy to scare.

Those boys really scared me, I remember just running off and grabbing the arm of a woman walking home from the store, to make the boys think I knew her. It eventually got bad enough that I just refused to go to school. My mom didn't understand what was going on, and she threw a frigging fit that scared me even more. But still, I refused to go to school.

Eventually it all came out. I eventually talked to my parents, and my mom came to observe this after one schoolday. She grabbed the kids when they started attacking me and scared the crap out of at least one of them. He was nice after that, he just said 'please don't tell my parents, I didn't know I was really scaring her!" My dad went to talk to the other bullys parents on one night, and they had no idea he was doing that. My parents had a talk with my teacher too. I was left alone after that (and luckily thye worse kid actually moved away before too long). It wasn't anything too bad, but at that time, it was awful. Some kids maybe just not realize what they are doing. And the parents really had no idea.

Teaching kids bullying is bad should really start at a young age. You have to make them realize what they nare doing is wrong, and how wrong it can be.

On junior high we had a girl who me and my friends made fun of. We thought it was just a 'fun' thing to make comments about her hairdo, or things like that. We were still 'friends' with her, but I bet she hated us. I myself never realized that little comments like 'your hair looks like a sausage roll', even when made in a 'friendly way' hurt her.

I didn't even realize that until I was way older! If I could go back in time, I'd never make those comments! We all thought we were just being funny, but little things like that can also hurt. I am not sure how one could deal with things like that, but we all should just be taught that little things can hurt. It doesn't have to be pushing and hurting, it can be just silly little remarks, and I know I will feel bad about all that for the rest of my life!

Bullying of even that kind usually stopped (mostly) after people graduated from Junior high, and went to either highschool, or vocational school. I went to highschool, so I have no idea how life in a Finnish vocational school is (we were told horror stories though, that vocational school woulod be really bad and everybody was being bullied to death, but I think it wasn't true, or at least not today).

To me watching American TV shows about high schools, and seeing kids bullying, being bullied and so on, was awful. To me, high school was a whole different planet. Kids were trying to be nice, or at least more adult-like, and bullying wasn't there. At least according to the TV shows, High school is bullying heaven! And all about cliques! Maybe because we really didn't have jocks or cheerleaders, it was better? No drama clubs, glee clubs.. You might have bene classified as a 'nerd', or a 'good girl', but at least not too many peoiple were outcasts in my school. And if they were, it was because of their personality, not because of what they wore or were interested in.

It really breaks my heart to know kids are bullied so bad they feel like the only way out is to kill themselves.

People will need to care more, to put themselves in anothers' shoes. When you are a kid, it can be hard. But I think it should start from the home, and schools should try to do whatever they can. People just need to understand how it feels, and how you'd feel if somebody did that to you, or to your loved one.

Excuse the rant, my dog has gotten me up at wee hours (around 4:30am, though this morning she graciously let me sleep until 5:15am) every night for quite a while and I am seriously lacking sleep and can be emotional and/or weirdy irritated and grumpy, not to mention insane.

I was in the elementary main office calling to have my dad come to pick me up as I was sick at school. They happened to have the launch on the TV in the waiting room. While I was standing at the counter (I was probably in fourth or fifth grade) I saw it blow up on the television. I turned to the secretary and immediately told her that I thought the shuttle had just blown up; she of course didn't believe me at first. I knew quite a bit about the shuttle even at that age and knew something horrible had just happened, although I was still too young to fully grasp the full implications of that moment in history.

I haven't seen this many people so amused by poop since I rode the bus to elementary school.

>> ^marinara:

allow me to point out the obvious. The murderers who committed the columubine massacre weren't obeying gun laws.

so gun laws are a stupid idea? it seems all these clever sociologists etc. are just blind. of course, because there's a singular event where in absence of gun laws some twisted fucks killed kids in their school that's a perfect reason why gun laws would have no effect.


allow me to also point out something obvious: 3.45 of 100,000 citizens killed by guns in the US vs. 0.19 of 100,000 in Germany. That's 18fold. one of them has strict gun laws, the other doesn't.

so just ban guns and everything would be alright? funny enough this little teutonic country's population possesses 12% of the world's guns. but still thanks to the extremely strict laws we don't have rates like the US in regards of people getting shot.

gun laws save lives. it doesn't get more "fact" than this.

>> ^Sagemind:

...because everyone like a good link: http://www.wolf-pac.com/
http://videosift.com/video/Cenk-Announces-Wolf-PAC-com


Hrm it's odd, they don't actually provide much information about the details of what they are trying to do on their website or in that vid. Yes they say they want to overturn corporate personhood, but what are the mechanics of the constitutional amendment exactly. Also, isn't it obvious that the recent corporate personhood decision is just the tip of the iceberg - and what about the earlier corporate personhood rulings, what about citizen funded elections?

>> ^Farhad2000:

Seriously?
Why?
face palm


No kidding! He just started back then too! Sheesh. I wonder if they regret it now.

>> ^cosmovitelli:

>> ^MycroftHomlz:
Just for a bit of conversation, did any of you catch that he doesn't tell us what holds the "other" end of the spring? He says the nucleus acts like a box. How so? What are the ends of the box?

Elementary my dear Mycroft. (Elementary particles) -Constituent parts of the nucleus manifest as mass & therefore gravity.
Actually I'm not that smart but couldn't resist. Might be some other force at that scale - sift physicists?


The last time I looked, it involved virtual particle that pop in and out of existence (lots of them) and do other unusual things to tether the electron. This is of course known as the electromagnetic force, which is very well known and understood, however understanding just exactly how it works involves very complicated quantum physics which I don't know a lot about. As far as I know these virtual particles create a sort of a photon field with which the electrons interact which in turn gives rise to the electromagnetic wave.

So it's not gravity, the electromagnetic force is much, much stronger and is one of the primary reasons everything (that we experience) holds together rather than collapsing in on itself into a black hole.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:

Just for a bit of conversation, did any of you catch that he doesn't tell us what holds the "other" end of the spring? He says the nucleus acts like a box. How so? What are the ends of the box?


Elementary my dear Mycroft. (Elementary particles) -Constituent parts of the nucleus manifest as mass & therefore gravity.
Actually I'm not that smart but couldn't resist. Might be some other force at that scale - sift physicists?

Contributing to Society is being able to take care of you own shit. The rich kid should work also as it builds moral fiber. As for kids social development working would be better that doing nothing, playing video games and staying on the streets all hours of the night. Work is good for ones sole. It builds self esteem, good character and you makes some money.

Oh wait that's it. If little Johnny learns the value of work he'll probably turn that little skull of his into a capitalist. Liberals can't have that, no fucking way will your ilk let that happen. Keep johnny stupid, dependent and feed him liberal lies that the world "OWES" him a better life. >> ^packo:

>> ^bobknight33:
Its call WORK. Get a job. Contribute to society not take from it.

contributing to society would be helping the poor wouldn't it?!?
how come that contract you make from society to a poor kid doesn't equate to the contract from a rich person to their child? ie, to pay their way in school, why shouldn't a rich kid be required to do the same thing?
let alone, this doesn't even touch on a child's social development, and the importance of after school activities, or a life outside school
honestly... we are talking about children in elementary school to high school here... not adults
grow a heart
contribute to society != contribute only to oneself