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[MetalSlimeHunt]

President Santorum.

Impeaching the President: Lightning Round Challenge

[nenjin]

It's just kind of amazing to me how every Republican candidate has managed to squander their virtues in this campaign season. I remember a few pages back when we were saying stuff like "Romney should be threatened by Santorum, unlike Gingrich, because Santorum doesn't have all that baggage....."

And now he's saddled himself with some exceptional baggage. I think it's getting to the point where even Santorum is a liability to the Republican party at large.

[Heron TSG]

2. I have not yet met an unemployed Occupier that was not a student. (Except for a homeless guy, but he technically makes a living carving scrimshaw and selling it at the farmer's market.) I may be in a smallish town, but we're not all jobless layabouts, you know!

Berserkly students would like to have a word with you.

Not only did you misspell Berkeley (I think), but you didn't read what I wrote.

3. If the people are too educated, they need to put their education to use. Want to be a psychologist? Make your own job, if you can't find one! Or you know, plan properly.

That is easy for you too say, it is harder to understand when there is absolutely no job prospects in the place you live.  It is hard enough to move, but it is even harder when you have loans that need to be paid back, find a job, new place, while surviving and enjoying yourself, if you can. 

If you are saying these people are not trying to find work, then it is either because there is no job prospects or school did a very bad job at preparing them for actual life.

If it was so easy then everybody would be self employed, rich and successful.  Plan properly?  Kind of hard to do when you are being pressured be your friends/parents/teachers to goto school and get an education.

I am not saying that 'these people aren't trying to find work' at all. I'm saying this: if you knowingly get a degree when you know there aren't many job opportunities (not hard to do research), you should be prepared. If you don't get your dream job you have two options: suck it up and take another job, or make your own. Not all fields can make their own jobs. It's a lot harder to be an independent anthropologist than an independent programmer. Planning properly isn't necessarily making sure that you get a job in your field, planning properly is making sure that you have a job at all. That's the important thing.

I understand the situation you're describing: I can't stay in the town I live in. There are literally no job openings except at the lumber mill, and I don't meet the weight requirement. To remedy this, I'm moving out and going to college to learn a marketable skill. Or, failing that, to find a job.

And all this brings us back on topic: Public Education.

Ricky Shitfoam Rick Santorum is against public education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/us/politics/santorum-defends-remarks-on-obama-and-public-schools.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/20/rick-santorum-takes-on-pr_n_1289533.html
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/feb/20/tp-santorum-defends-attack-on-obama-public-schools/

I'm personally of the opinion that the government has a duty to help its citizens get educated, so that we can all reap the benefits. (Better jobs, a workforce that isn't just manual labor, etc.) We'll never outcompete the third world with basic manual labor, it makes sense that we should try to encourage people to get degrees. Why we aren't telling students that math/science/engineering/compsci degrees are needed more often I don't know. There are jobs in that field, and people are willing to pay to go to college. Connect the dots => jobs. Problem solved, eh?

[nenjin]

Why we aren't telling students that math/science/engineering/compsci degrees are needed more often I don't know.

It's said, every day, in colleges around the US. They urge, they beg and plead with people to go into mathematics, engineering and computer science. They tell students there will be employers shiving each other on the convention floor to take their applications during job fairs.

After going through the American education system to a bachelors....honestly. The problem is us. The kids who go to college wanting to get an MBA because they don't like math or science. I'm not throwing stones, I got a degree in journalism. Not because I hate math and science, but because they were subjects that made me feel stupid and I didn't have the intellectual fortitude to do any more than I had to, to graduate.

Fast forward a couple years, I'm not working in a job using my degree, but in a job that computer science would have been mighty useful in. Parents don't want to hear it but their kids have small dreams. I know I did. Or more correctly, no dreams. I don't know if I'm honestly representative of my generation, but my sentiment was shared by a lot of my peers in college. Get in, get your degree, get the fuck out, get a job. That was our priority.

So until we can learn to re-instill the love of learning and the respect for it in younger generations, no amount of money is going to get people more educated in the shit America has fallen way behind in. And in this political climate, where it's still pretty much ok to dog on intellectuals and culturally it's ok to still ridicule nerds and geeks, it ain't gonna happen.

[Heron TSG]

Well, we could do more of what the current administration has been doing: Start up science competitions, grant scholarships for kids going to specific degrees, or hell, do that second thing more. There is no better incentive than free money. A lot of people just go to college to get a degree, because society expects them to. A lot of these people are really bright. However, if they're paying for something, they want it to be something they enjoy. I get the feeling that a lot more people would be willing to do math if the government essentially paid for them to do it. (Or at least gave them a few thousand dollars.)

As for the science competitions, I can say that they're working fairly well here. The Department of Energy's National Science Bowl just got a big funding boost, and they used it to spread out the regions and let more schools in. One of the new ones is around where I live, and it's now the largest regional competition in the US. This weekend, there will be 30 schools there. 24 of them have never gone before. The smallest team, mine, is sending 15 people. The opportunity to actually do science things before college can be pretty helpful. Science in a classroom is pretty dull. Science on your own is not. The same goes for Science Olympiad or the National Science Fair. Interest is what we need.

[nenjin]

I hate to frame it in these terms, but we need to find a way to make this shit cool for younger generations. Every attempt to do that comes off as so tacky it actually has the opposite effect. But there was a time, in America and just generally, where scientists were rock stars. They weren't just respected, everyone knew who they were and they gave a shit about their work. People aspired to be like that. Scientists and mathematicians are still respected by the public......but not publicly.

Unfortunately, the business of making entertainers into role models is one of the few things we can actually say we rock at in America. It's like the only industry in America that didn't tank at least once in the last decade.

So yeah. Get 'em while they're young and start treating math and science (and the people that do them) with real respect in the public sphere. It's one thing hearing the president say it. It's almost like your parents or your teacher saying it. You expect to hear it from them. Hearing from other corners as well would be better.

Which is why, despite Mythbusters being science-lite, I appreciate what they do. Because they're making science approachable to people while still being true to who they are. Blowing shit up being cool is something anyone can understand. If you teach them something in the process, and they find learning how shit blows interesting, then you've potentially just made a future scientist.

[Frumple]

Damnit nenjin, you ninja'd me. Had just put down the eating spoon for a second to note that we would likely get some absolutely tremendous interest boosts in the hard sciences with some curriculum and teaching standards (and incentives) changes. You get a massive change of atmosphere when you've got a teacher actually interested/invested in the subject teaching a sane sized class an actually effective (i.e. not specifically catered to pass a test) curriculum.

Better support for students actually interested in the subjects would be awesome, too. As an example, I know the major reason I'm in the soft instead of hard fields right now is because I got hijacked by the system back in 4th grade; school wouldn't let me take advanced maths for math class credit. You're probably not going to get a 4th grader to doubleup on mathematics on top of everything else, unfortunately, especially when half of that is stuff they literally did years previous. Because of that, I basically stopped studying math (and coasted from 4th to about 10th grade ).

Between that and some decent media exposure (Stuff like myth busters would probably count, I guess. I'm not up to date on TV shows) we could probably see some changes going down.

And maybe a few people ragging too hard on geeks blown up with home made IEDs, but there's a cost to everything.

Anyway, santorum against public education? Add another black mark to the list. Bleh.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Which is why, despite Mythbusters being science-lite, I appreciate what they do. Because they're making science approachable to people while still being true to who they are. Blowing shit up being cool is something anyone can understand. If you teach them something in the process, and they find learning how shit blows interesting, then you've potentially just made a future scientist.

I hereby dub this idea the Sagan Effect.

[nenjin]

Mr. Wizard, anyone? I watched alllllll the time as a kid.

(I don't know if I really count though. My dad obsessively fed me stuff about Davinci and tons of other high-minded stuff as a kid. And I turned out to mostly be a bum who only now is like "shit, I should have sincerely started caring about stuff like this years ago." I think plenty of kids in America are smart...they just lack the reasons to capitalize on their gifts because they weren't ever forced to.

[Zrk2]

Mr. Wizard, anyone? I watched alllllll the time as a kid.

(I don't know if I really count though. My dad obsessively fed me stuff about Davinci and tons of other high-minded stuff as a kid. And I turned out to mostly be a bum who only now is like "shit, I should have sincerely started caring about stuff like this years ago." I think plenty of kids in America are smart...they just lack the reasons to capitalize on their gifts because they weren't ever forced to.

Or had reason to or motivation. Let's be honest here; being smart and being cool are portrayed as inversely proportional in society. My sister's 10 year old friend up and said "being dumb is cool". Okay. The Department of Education is one thing which really needs funding. Fuck your oil, Mr. Bush, fuck your bailout, fuck your foreign aid. AID THE GODDAMN KIDS YOU'VE SCREWED OVER BEFORE BITCHING ABOUT THE STATE OF THE WORLD.

[Sirus]

Know what America needs? More science fairs. Real ones, not just going through the motions where half the kids make a baking soda volcano while the other half attach wires to various produce. Let the kids or adults choose a topic that interests them and let them explore it. Give tangible prizes to encourage creativity and effort. Combine this with the aforementioned sci-lite sources and high quality media for the heavier stuff (remember that mini-series last year, starring Stephen Hawking? That was awesome shit), and hopefully Americans will start liking science and math again.

If nothing else, I respect Obama for running science fairs and taking part in them.

[Zrk2]

Hell, while we're at it. Let's fucking fix discovery and history channels. I'm sure they'd love some subsidies in exchange fro real science/history shit showing up on their channels.

[Sirus]

Hell, while we're at it. Let's fucking fix discovery and history channels. I'm sure they'd love some subsidies in exchange fro real science/history shit showing up on their channels.

True that. Fewer aliens and biblical stories, more real science (and history).

[SalmonGod]

It should also be mentioned that a person can be incredibly intelligent without being hard science intelligent, and shouldn't be at such a disadvantage just for lacking the specific talents that are most in demand at a given time. 

I went into computer science initially.  While I could understand programming logic easily, I simply couldn't handle the level of ability to manage technical details.  I could struggle through it, but I didn't think I would come out of it at a level where I would be competitive in the job market.  So I switched to something that I was better suited for.  I found 3d art was a perfect fit for me.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted to do with my life, nor was it what I was best at... but it seemed like just the right compromise between "enjoy it well enough" and "quite good at it."  Too bad it's a viciously competitive job market.

Besides, the world needs proper historians, philosophers, anthropologists, etc.  We really don't want those academic traditions to disappear.  They do incredibly valuable things for us.  They just don't directly produce material value, so they don't get material rewards.  It's really a shame.

I just get annoyed when conversations like this focus on how people should mold themselves to fit the demands of capitalist society, instead of recognizing how capitalist society often fails to be reasonable in its demands.

[Aqizzar]

Alright alright, we've had enough back-patting for one night.

Jesus, when the Hell is that primary going to get here?  For now, let's talk about how Gingrich's billionaire bankroller is saying he might dump up to another hundred million dollars into Gingrich's campaign, provided he (and the PACs he legally doesn't run) stops attacking Romney.  Because he'd be happy with either of them winning, as long as Santorum doesn't.