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[RedKing]

Oh hey cool...glad to see they're asking about Trump's rallies being like a hockey match.

Spoiler: Anti-Trump protesters caught on film. (click to show/hide)

[Vector]

So, I know a couple of things about PTSD, and here are the two things I've heard about returning vets.

1. Having folks fight wars with no clear and justifiable purpose is not helping with the PTSD. The "career soldier in a time that requires no war-making, yet has war nonetheless" doesn't work for the vast majority. We should probably stop with the non-declared war stuff.
2. Quick trips home, as opposed to a slow, 8-week trip on a freighter (or whatever) is not helping. Folks need time to decompress and recontextualize their experiences.


As for math, I think that the single greatest obstacle to kids learning mathematics right now is that they're spending time on the computer instead of playing outside, and parents are using credit cards exclusively instead of any paper money.

I'm not even kidding. This isn't about "word problems," this is about "numbers represent physical quantities." Kids used to learn fractions mostly at home from cutting cakes and brownies (Very Important) or halving and doubling recipes with mom, measurements and volumes doing carpentry with dad, counting from counting up change with their families, decimals at the grocery store, geometry from being out in nature, all of that. They used their fingers and toes instead of using a calculator when they were struggling. If you keep using your fingers and toes, eventually you'll figure your shit out. You will not learn much of anything by using a calculator. Seriously.

People save on time and money by ordering food out, and then they pay for math and chemistry tutors later. I'm not fucking kidding around here.

"Number sense" isn't really number sense, it's nature sense. Playing in the dirt is how people get their intuition about this stuff, at least at the beginning.

[smjjames]

Eh? Come on Trump, theres no evidence of protesters being violent. The guy that got punched didn't throw any himself at any point.

[RedKing]

Eh? Come on Trump, theres no evidence of protesters being violent. The guy that got punched didn't throw any himself at any point.

He violently threw his face at that poor old man's fist.



Mmmmm...more cop fellating. I was worried they might not get the verbal fluffing with Chris Christie gone.

[Vector]

I did an absolutely ludicrous amount of math (and even simple algebra) when I first started playing Harvest Moon 64, so yeah, I agree with you.

[RedKing]

Kasich indignant that Hewitt basically just told him "you can't win".


EDIT: Apparently Trump thinks 50.1% is a "random" number.

[mainiac]

Never thought of it that way. I would argue, though, that at least some (very small amount) of non-"edutainment" games can help with mathematical understanding. Best example in my mind being Pikmin (all 3).

I'm kinda skeptical of the premise.  We have a tendency to assume that things are getting worse and then look for explanations for that decline we just assumed.  The long term trend is towards a society that's a lot better in math.

[Rolan7]

Kasich indignant that Hewitt basically just told him "you can't win".

Specifically his defense was that Ford "healed the party" and "served America" by pardoning Nixon
like how the hell do you even justify that, much less use it as a defense

[mainiac]

Kasich indignant that Hewitt basically just told him "you can't win".

TBF, denial is a sacred right in the republican party these days.

[smjjames]

Why does Trump think 1237 is a random number? It's exactly half the total delegates, no randomness involved.

[HAMMERMILL]

I agree with all the manlove for vets (I get to see firsthand the shitty VA service due to my half-brother's travails), but here's the problem -- what do you do for a guy that's spent 4-8 years straight out of high school being trained primarily to be a killboy, with very little technical skills adaptable to civilian life? Where do you employ him?

What do you about guys that are so damaged by their experience that they're essentially disabled?


EDIT: Rubio about ready to drop the mic after that Cuba response.

Yeah, the military doesn't really offer good job experience. They do everything different than in the civilian world and they don't do 'their job' everyday, or even very often. That said, veterans get the MGIB now which is now new and improved, they can almost become professional college students forever.

At the end of the day, even if combat was scary or your deployment sucked, these veterans are grown adults that must live with their decisions. It's a volunteer force. If they are so messed up from their experiences, they get disability. I know a guy that got 100% disability for PTSD. He was basically paid to stay away from society. Then he became a sheriff's deputy. That's kinda dumb no matter how you look at it.

[RedKing]

Cruz: Join me, voters and together we can rule the galaxy as President and minions. Search your feelings....you know it to be true.

HAMMERMILL: True, but it's a raw deal to say "Here's a monthly check, do us all a favor and disappear."

[penguinofhonor]

Seriously though, what's with this democracy thing? You need more than 50% of people to support you, but who decided how much? Did someone just pick a number?

[Vector]

I'm kinda skeptical of the premise.  We have a tendency to assume that things are getting worse and then look for explanations for that decline we just assumed.  The long term trend is towards a society that's a lot better in math.

I agree with this in principle, but in recent years there has been a really serious decline. I'm saying that as someone who's been tutoring for 12 years. I used to just see kids who weren't so good in math and were therefore struggling a lot; you really would have to do a lot of drills, because they just couldn't remember otherwise.

Now I'm teaching kids who seem like they've just never seen how to deal with a fraction in eighth grade, or how to add 35 and 10 in their heads. There has been a real decline in basic skills because there is no longer as much training in the basics.

I wasn't even an especially sharp student. I had a really hard time with exponents and geometry, and long-division. I don't think that this is a matter of rose-colored glasses, here.

[Frumple]

[snip]

... 'course, vec, sometimes it's the exact opposite. It wasn't until I started using computers heavily to assist with math-y stuff that I got even the most remote of intuitive grasps on mathematics, and that was with a childhood that had plenty of cooking and carpentry. Pretty sure it was actually a straight up accounting class in high school (that used mostly calculators, occasionally even of those glorious printer calculators -- maybe we should use those more, or at least make calculation history a bigger/more obvious part of our calculators?*) that did more for me in regards to that sort of thing than pretty much my entire life beforehand, and most of college afterwards. For me, I didn't start getting easy (well, easier... it was still probably three or four years post-highschool that simpler stuff started getting really comfortable) mental manipulation until I was able to do easy physical manipulation (of the numbers/formula/etc.), and that didn't come until digital (or at least stuff like those older calculators) was available.

Frankly, just using spreadsheets to solve problems in other things (optimizing gaming, messing with statistics, etc.) has probably done more for me than absolutely anything else I've ran into. Being able to easily shift around and make a fairly visual representation of what you're doing is just... it helped more than anything I'd previously worked with. You could sorta' do it with pen and paper/chalk board/etc., but that was much slower, much much less fluid, so on, so forth... being able to build the equation, see how the parts shift when you change numbers... it's just something you can't really have outside a digital environment.

That finger and toe stuff, hands on things in general... y'could do 'em, but actually contextualizing what you were doing instead of just doing it rote. Not so much. My grandmother, just as an example, didn't have calculators for most of her life, and still barely uses measurements when cooking. Couldn't and still can't do much with math even if her life depended on it. There's just... other skillsets that can be learned when you're doing that sort of thing than mathematical internalization, y'know? Or it's really hard to go from those particular skillsets to other mathy things.

*Actually, that might really help to some degree. In retrospect when I was doing accounting/spreadsheet tutoring that several of the older (we're talking, y'know, 50s and whatnot)/less math inclined students seemed to do a lot better as the semester went on apparently just from showing them how to open up the history function on the calculator programs the comps we were using had.