Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 22, 2013 -> 03:37 PM) Personal anecdote: my wife's uncle worked as a retail manager for decades. In 2009, at the age of 60, he lost his job. When unemployment ran out, he had to start drawing from his 401k to cover his mortgage (on his small house). He's been unable to find steady, full-time employment anywhere since 2009 because no one's hiring someone in their 60's for that type of management. His 401k is mostly gone and it's possible that he's eventually going to lose his house. His situation is far from unique, yet your response appears to be even more callous than "let them eat cake." It's a sad story, and it sucks, and it's a good thing we have programs like Medicare and Social Security to help people like this, but at some point you have to draw a line in the sand and admit that the government literally cannot just pay for everyone to live what you believe to be a good life. Will this retirement problem suck for some people? Absolutely. What do you propose is the solution? Increase taxes to fund higher levels of social security? How much would we have to do that to give someone a "living wage" that would pay for someone living in retirement for 20 years?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 22, 2013 -> 03:08 PM) Moral indifference to the likely reality of widespread elderly poverty in the wealthiest country in the world noted, though. Or, calling out a fear-mongering doomsday prophecy. Tell me, will this end up being as bad as the government cutting spending by 2%? If so, I might change my mind. I mean, the result of the sequester has REALLY changed things in this country. Oh man. Dead people are piling up on the streets and it's starting to get annoying.

LOL the history of the world. 100 years ago we had nothing and society continued on.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Mar 22, 2013 -> 01:43 PM) I had Wisconsin in the elite 8. f***. Same here.

This is going to really screw up my bracket if Wisky loses.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 02:30 PM) Of course, we should be judicious about our resources. But if there is genocide, etc, I believe that it is a good use of our resources to stop it. Not really. Had the US wanted it could have likely struck a deal with Germany and Japan, where the US would not get involved. The simple fact is that in 1939 people were saying the exact same thing as Duke. You cant change history, the US participation in WWII was not immediate and both Germany/Japan declared war on the US. If it was entirely about security and taking over the world, the US would have gotten involved as soon as France fell and Western Europe was on the brink. Where's the evidence for that? Hitler wanted to take over the world. He had plans of invading the US. He wanted the world, not just Europe. But that still doesn't address the scope of the differences. You're comparing apples and oranges.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 02:33 PM) It was important to my parents. I really didnt care. I only cared about college entrance requirements. Doesn't that include being on the honor roll?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 02:25 PM) Im not really overblowing anything 10%+ being homework and participation, just shows that grades are nonsense. They at most should be 1%. I can remember classes where it was something stupid like 20% plus. Honor roll at my school was over 3.0., I was in all ap classes, it meant I had to get a C.... That isnt exactly difficult. But you realize those things are there for the dumb kids so they have an easier time getting a passing grade right? You're not devaluing grades for the kids that want to get good grades or use grades to get into college. In that respect it's used fairly across the board. If your argument is that grades are propped up to a certain extent and don't show, to 100% certainty, how smart someone is, fine, I can agree with that. But you're arguing that grades are worthless because a small percent of a grade can be subjective. That's going to an unreasonable extreme. And again, the point here is not whether the honor roll is a fair representation of intelligence or not, it's that we can't praise kids for being good at something because by doing so we're indirectly saying other kids are bad. We can't let a team win because that means another team has to lose. We're a bunch of p*****s who just complain and whine. If we don't like something WE shouldn't have to change, THEY should. It's why this country is going to s***.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:59 PM) Its not our job, its our choice. That is why it is great to be an American, we have the choice to help other people. There is an irony in your post. In 1939 people were saying that we should leave Europe alone because "they'll get sick of killing each other eventually if left to their own devices. Not our job to do it for them and American lives are not to be wasted to help them." Today those men and women who sacrificed their lives for Europeans are considered some of the greatest heroes in American history. People like my great uncle, who died at Normandy, who fought because sometimes helping other people is the right thing to do. Isolationism will never fly with me, I will not let my family down like that. They have given to much, I will honor their sacrifice in trying to make the world a better place. The Axis taking over the world had a direct impact on our security and our future prospects globally. An ass-backwards country in the middle east does not.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:46 PM) Where im going with this is, honor rolls have nothing to do with the wussification of America. Subjective grading does. The second you give grades for busy work, participation, extra credit, hard work, you are creating a system where the smartest are not always being recognized. So if we really want to change things, get rid of grades entirely. Give subjective tests, and let the results speak for themselves. If you want to give awards based on standard tests that every kid in the school took, I would have no problem with that. But when student X, had teacher Y, who gave everyone As. Where as student Z, had teacher X, that gave most people Bs, its stupid to give student X an award, because its impossible to tell if they are more deserving than student Z. And I remembered that stupid honor thing I was thinking about it was called "National Honor Society" http://www.nhs.us/ The wussification is that the middle school teacher felt compelled to get rid of a ceremony honoring kids for doing well because other kids got sad that they didn't do well. I still think you're completely overblowing those "extras" to grades. Take those away and the bell curve of students isn't going to change. The smart kids are going to stay smart and the dumb kids are going to stay dumb. And even if you have a teacher that never gives an A and is a dick, in the grand scheme those things get averaged out.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:58 PM) It's also just something that is allowed to be considered. It may also be unfair to this student that her school may have not had as many extracurricular options as other students, however, those are also allowed to be considered. Also LOL at being forced to pay to apply. I didn't word that very well. It's not that she was forced to apply, it's that she applied and was forced into an application process that was inherently unequal.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:45 PM) Sure, but that quoted text was in response to jenks' statement that he would prefer no racial element at all. As soon as you make race a factor it's discrimination. Schools can hide it in these application processes all they want, but what the US attorney didn't want to answer - and what is absolutely true - was Alito's question that if you have two identical students with the same qualifications and the only difference is one is black and one is white, under these admission standards, the black kid is going to get in over the white kid, and it's only because of race. That should be unconstitutional.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:43 PM) He did, immediately, and out came the "what about 1/8???" "What about 1/32???" stupidity. It's self-identification. It's compiled and readily available to administrators. I thought he said he couldn't - that they might be able to use what they self-identify as on the application but they don't have to. And the school doesn't go classroom by classroom to count minorities. They're relying solely on how people self-identify on the application even though it's not a clear cut case of being 100% one ethnicity. I mean, I get your point that the same issue might exist with census data, but census data is just a figure, not a figure being used to decide whether there should be an exception to the equal protection clause. That's why it's important in this case. Yeah I think that's a problem here. I'm not sure how she has standing, but the argument is that she was forced to pay money to apply and she wasn't treated fairly. She was probably a poor choice to bring this. If you're going to infringe on a constitutional right (equal protection) then you need to show a compelling government interest to do so. If this system isn't doing anything to further that goal, it's a wasted policy and isn't doing anything but discriminating against whites. It's like arguing that cops should be able wiretap your phone without a warrant and the evidence shows that doing so has never uncovered any kind of illegal activity. If doing so isn't getting you anywhere, you're infringing on a constitutional right for no reason.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:31 PM) It's pretty easy to understand how the university (or the US Census!) determines that. If they couldn't figure it out on their own with about 5 seconds of thought or if they thought the "what about 1/32 hispanic?" was a good gotcha moment, then they are thinking at a junior-high level. If self-identified demographics aren't reliable, then we might as well trash the entire census and the study of demographics all together. It doesn't matter what you or Scalia or Roberts prefer UT's policies should be unless there's actually a Constitutional violation. It's not the role of the Court to evaluate the efficacy and merits of admissions criteria. If it's so easy why couldn't the attorney for the university explain it? The bolded doesn't make sense. If this woman was denied equal treatment because of her race, whether or not the school's program is effective would relate to whether it was narrowly tailored and an important government interest. It's difficult to defend an admissions factor as being important if it doesn't work.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 01:22 PM) I know what their line of questioning was, and it later gets stated by Kennedy in a way that doesn't sound like it's coming from a teenager who just took their first civics class. They kept asking him to tell them what their quote would be when they know full-well that there cannot be a quota. Should the individual determination of university admissions policies be left up to the SC? Would an answer of "5%" of the student body be ok but "5.1%" is a violation of this middle-of-the-pack applicant's constitutional rights to be rejected anyway, regardless of racial consideration? I fail to see how it was a 7th grade question - how can you identify the issue of diversity when you don't have a clear ability to determine who is a minority and who is not. That's going to be an important question in the future when we become a more mixed society. I'd prefer race not be an issue at all.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:53 PM) I just read through the oral arguments for the case. http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments...ipts/11-345.pdf Scalia and Roberts open up the questioning of the school's lawyer with 7th-grade level questions that show they have no comprehension of racial identity. "How would a 1/4 Hispanic fill out the form? How about 1/8???" :smug: How can we ever know demographics??? Can we even trust the US Census data??????????????? edit: this is an example of why I respect Thomas's view that oral arguments at the SC are mostly just dumb grandstanding and not worth the effort of engaging in. Ugh, your hate of conservatives cloud your reading of this. The question is how the Univ. achieves what it believes is a critical mass of diversity, and Scalia and Roberts were just trying to find out how exactly the University goes about determining how many minority students they have. I think it's a perfectly valid line of questioning. What's your beef with it?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:34 PM) "Know the solution" to a problem with multiple steps and point values for each step requires some level of interpretation on the grader's part. That's a failure of the teacher to explain themselves, not some inherent unfairness in the grading process.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:29 PM) Easily In math/science. Didnt show work, participation, attendance, a million other ways. Partner test AP physics, I got a different grade than my hot lab partner, because the teacher had a crush on her. We had the same answer, the teacher just claimed "You didnt show all your work" Wtf is that. Participation and attendance are what, 5% of your grade? Yes, if you're competing for the top 1% of your class that might matter, but let's be real - those kids are not going to lose out on those extra points because they're in the 1% already. They care and they participate. Your average student is going to be average for more reasons than not getting that extra 5% for raising his/her hand as much as he/she should.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:29 PM) Partial credits. I recall always being aware of the grading. If you're told to show your work and you don't and you get partial credit, well, that's because you didn't show your work. How does that devalue a grade you get?

I guess I went to a different school. My AP classes in science and math were probably 90% objective - do you know the solution to this problem. Yes, occasionally you'd get an open ended question like "explain X theory and its importance" but those were few and far between. And again, even in those types of questions the grade is going to be based on a set criteria set by the teacher - did you name drop the scientist? 2 pts. Did you include alternative theories? 2 pts. etc. I'm not suggesting there isn't a subjective element, but I don't think it's as important as you guys are making it out to be.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:25 PM) I was a super hardcore student. Could have probably been valedictorian if I wanted to play the game. But I admit that grades were just a game. Teachers can easily be manipulated. How can a math or science teacher do this when you're given a problem with only one correct answer? Except for english teachers who may or may not like your writing style (and again, that's not the entirety of the grade), who else can be manipulated?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:24 PM) Completely untrue. Best way is a standardized/objective test. Why do you think the bar is a standardized test, as opposed to just allowing people in law school to become lawyers if they had good grades? Its because grades are not a good indicator of actually understanding the material. Ok, how else would you do it? Interview teachers/counselors about a kids "real" intelligence? That'd be worse.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:22 PM) And while we are on the subject, lets really get hardcore. Lets get rid of giving kids more time if they claim to have adhd or any other problem. No extensions, no retakes, nothing. You want grades to really matter, you want to give out hilarious awards, make these kids actually earn them in an objective fashion. Not because teacher X liked student Y and therefore gave him a good grade because he was a nice/hardworking kid. That just makes us all look stupid, because now I am being lumped in with him. I don't even know how to respond to this. You're going to an extreme that's unnecessary.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:16 PM) Why not just actually have school based on objective testing? Grades are subjective p**** bulls*** to begin with. Honor roll is nothing more than subjective nonsense. Anyone who has ever been highly ranked in a class understands that its politics and bulls***. I want to be Valedictorian, oh noes I have an accelerated class that is a out of 4.5 instead of 5.0, Ill take that class pass/fail so that it wont drop my gpa. Thats just stupid manipulation and anyone that thinks that makes America less of a p**** to allow it is silly. Tests or nothing. But then again, Im sure a bunch of p*****s are afraid of their entire lives coming down to 1 test. lol We can all throw nonsense out, its just stupid. School grades are pointless, once you are at the top, its easy to see. Most grades are not subjective. Writing, sure (even then i'm sure you'll have teachers debate this with you since most assignments have objective requirements that have to be met. Style is about the only subjective part of it). But math, science, grammar/vocab tests, etc are all objectively measured. You get the problem/question right or you don't. Grading is also the best way for third parties to measure your intelligence. How else would colleges know if you're average or above average?

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Mar 21, 2013 -> 12:11 PM) This Butler/Bucknell game is painful to watch. I don't know why I would expect anything different, it was pretty obvious what kind of game it'd be from the stats. It doesn't help that Butler plays Purdue basketball - be overly physical on every possession and force the refs to swallow the whistle.