packsaddle

Sentinel947, I think Papadaddy is who stimulated those questions so he's the one who can best answer them. From the other thread: "It sickens me that he [Papadaddy's father] fought and so many died to preserve the freedoms that we are now giving away without a fight." Me, I see that we have gained some freedoms since that time. We've all lost some as well. On balance, I'd have to think about it before I went back to the times prior to WWII. OK, that didn't take long...I'd just as soon stay in this time.

I'd like to pause to remember the fallen and to honor all of our veterans and service members this day. Thank you for your service.

Outstanding!

Scoutingagain, actually I maintain that it happened in 1996, based on Biblical history. Of course none of this will matter in a couple of weeks. Jblake47, you better watch how you throw around the 'M'-word. Ol' Beavah is liable to jump all over your case, especially if you're going to further suggest cult status. But again, it won't matter in a couple of weeks.

I guess I didn't notice anyone disparaging STEM. What I did notice was people disappointed in the way the economy has made it hard even for highly-skilled persons, maybe some skepticism with regard to what people should expect from STEM education. That skepticism is not inappropriate.

Skeptic, I wholeheartedly agree with what you write about the need for the broad perspective. I also agree with regard to your comment about methods but you reminded me of another aspect of parental engagement with that comment. There is no one who will 'know' a child as well as the parents can, if they are really engaged as parents. In that situation, they will be better prepared to choose the right learning setting with the best teaching methods for their child. No one is better prepared to make that decision, IF they really know their own child. I see many of the differences and inequities as a result of differences in parents and parenting. Schools merely provide opportunities. They are poor substitutes for good parents. This is one reason I get depressed at times because the 'bad parenting' cycle is one that is difficult to break out of. I've seen it happen a few times but not often. OGE asked about whether or not STEM initiatives are scams. The answer is probably mixed. If one examines these things at a level that is 'local' enough to really know the personalities involved, the answer should be easy (and hopefully not a scam). But when an initiative originates from an organizational level for which it is difficult to really know the responsible persons, there is always a greater risk of deception. Nevertheless, when the opportunity comes along for local persons to do something good, regardless of the origin of that oppportunity, I say go ahead and make the very best you can of that opportunity...even if it does turn out to be part of some scam. Like the song goes at the end of the 'Life of Brian', "always look at the bright side of life".

OGE, my answer is 'no', we're not 'fine'. What I see is students who are really bright but who arrive unprepared in both background knowledge and understanding as well as not possessing the 'attitude' that it takes to make up 'lost ground' and get competitive. This is primarily a problem in math and the quantitative subjects which are necessary for the sciences and engineering. I can identify individual students who are going to 'make it' in the real world, short of catastrophe, no matter what. Then at the other extreme there are students who should not have been admitted in the first place. They go away quickly. I expend a lot of my time trying to move students from the middle group up to the first group. Sometimes it works. But patterns that are formed early in childhood are almost impossible to overcome by the time I meet these kids. That could be one motivation for some of these early STEM programs. I see great discrepancies among arriving students and the strongest factor seems to be what school system they attended. That factor includes not only the school itself but also all the related factors such as family background, motivation, economic status, family engagement, etc. Here's the thing: a school that has a 'critical mass' of engaged, motivated parents will naturally tend to provide better preparation and education. The parents demand it. A school that does not have that 'critical mass' of engagement is left to fate - if they happen to have a really good principal they can still be a really good school. But without engagement by the community, a weak principal and school is likely to be allowed to continue. There seems to be a lot of this but I don't necessarily blame the school. If society just shrugs, they're getting what they deserve. In this country, families which understand the importance of STEM disciplines and education seem to be in a minority. But if they are clustered, they can achieve local excellence. This describes an inequity that crosses all sorts of boundaries but I think it is concern for the 'others' that is driving the STEM interest today.

"... if you can re-translate passages of the bible to mean things that they didn't originally mean, or to make it fit your view of what scriptures say, then it makes the Bible nothing but a book of fairy tales." Heh, heh, you just reminded me of that quote from Father Reginald Foster, "...these are all nice stories, you know..", lol. You guys are bringing all kinds of smiles to me today, thanks. I even get to quote TheScout again: "The purpose of religion isn't to bring people together." Gotta love him.

I follow this stuff because I teach across many fields and I want to understand why some students succeed while others struggle. Here are my observations: There are people who have mastered the skills of their profession and can solve most any problem that is put before them. There are other people who have mastered those same technical skills but who have also gone beyond that and acquired a broader understanding of complex social/political/economic systems and how their profession interacts with all aspects of society. I'm thinking about Steven Dutch's really, really, REALLY inconvenient truth here: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/Inconvenient.HTM I really like this quote from him near the end: "While the Chinese were unrolling an LED screen the size of a soccer field at the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony, we were groveling before people who want to see Obama's birth certificate and still insist the earth is 10,000 years old. I watched the opening ceremony and contrasted it with the sorry spectacle of the 2008 Presidential election and thought, they are going to mop the floor with us." His point is fairly plain and I agree with him. Yes, luck and connections have some influence. But luck isn't dependable and connections can also be fickle, especially over the long run. Dutch is retired now. The students' loss.

Anyone who quotes Heinlein is OK with me. There is 'STEM' and then there is STEM. I am at what many would call a STEM educational institution, in a STEM field. My son is an engineer (mechanical) and I interact a lot across disciplines, including many of the fields of engineering. My son was strongly recruited during his junior year, along with many of his buddies. He has quickly climbed the ladder and makes a lot more money than I do. His buddies have been similarly successful. There is another group of graduates who are not as successful, even though many of them had grades as good as the first group. They were interviewed but not strongly recruited. Some of them were hired but laid off...by the same firms as my son and his buddies. What do you think the difference is?

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. I'm actually thinking along the same lines, mostly to charge a cell phone on a long backpack trip. So I'm also interested in seeing the responses. What I'd like to see is a flexible membrane system that covers the exposed top of my backpack or something along those lines. Thanks for starting this topic.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

No No Option to each family, if a family wants it but can't afford it the CO will pay the difference. (they help by maintaining a used uniform exchange and other stuff too).

Recent local news: Adult male engages in sexual intercourse with girl under age 13 multiple separate occasions at a secluded location near her school. Law enforcement was contacted when her pregnancy was discovered. A year later, law enforcement has yet to make an arrest, they do know where the perp is. Baby born, no news on its fate. Girl declines social services. The legal charges in this case are multiple and the concept of 'consent' is not applicable. It is clear that a crime has been committed, law enforcement knows of this and yet, almost nothing has been done in response. That is the real world this day, this place. Have a nice one.

http://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/us-v-liddy.html A walk down memory lane.

It takes two to have an interaction like this. The 'tone' is as much a function of the mindset of the reader as it is the way the writer pens his words. The 'chip' could be just as much of a fixture of a reader's shoulder as that of the writer. To some extent it works the same way in person with actual spoken words too. Me...I just try to be ready to run fast if I'm in yankee land. But here in the South, I have to be really careful....EVERYBODY has a gun!

Congratulations, that's great news. I wish you the best of success. By the way, this doesn't disqualify you from continuing to participate in these forums. Drop in once in a while, if for no other reason than to marvel at how we manage in spite of ourselves.

I'm hoping that TRUE 'colors' is exactly what we display for the scouts. Anything else would amount to a deception.

"As Jesus is linked with his cousin St. John the Baptist, whose feast day is celebrated around the summer equinox on June 24th..." On most calendars, that would be more like a summer 'solstice'. I'll gladly have a cup of either Kool-Aid or Flavor Aid...as long as I get to mix it , not the leader of some cult.

Eamonn, not sure what to do? Put it up for auction on eBay, man!!! You're going to make a fortune off that stuff....either that or maybe enough to do something nice for HWMBO: dinner, movie, theater, chocolates? Just a thought.

I've been mulling over Trevorum's observation about Puerto Rico possibly achieving statehood. I wonder what all of us think are the pros and cons of such a thing. Up until now I hadn't worried much about it because I considered their decision-making to be deadlocked in a three-way struggle. Now that they've voted (however questionably) to join the states, and assuming the rest of the states decide to go with that option, I'm wondering how many of us have thought about this possibility and its consequences (and I'm not thinking here about how messed up the flag will be as a result).

This is why, in another thread quite a while back, I asked what would happen to the legal ownership of trademark and brand? The Congressional Charter? A lot would depend on the answer to those questions.

Seven duplicates, I think, IS the record. As far as woodbadge goes, though, if they're really like a bunch of hippies, dropping out and dropping acid, maybe I'll have to rethink my whole ambivalent attitude toward it.

JoeBob, misses "knee high socks and garters". Thanks a whole lot for the most disturbing thought of the day so far.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

And a safe, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Fire in the fireplace, grandchildren all over the place, noise throughout house, first good turn done already, beautiful day...all is well.

I guess I should add something. There is science in the strictest narrowest sense, the actual process. And then there is 'science' in some broader context, which seems to mean many things to many people and is related to the actual process but doesn't necessarily interact well with it. This is one of the difficult contrasts or differences we have to try to convey in an STS course if it's going to achieve one of its goals. Yes, AZMike is correct that any scientific research that is funded by the government is going to have a political component related to source of funding, how much funding, its administration, the reporting, publications, potential renewal, and even down to what are the research goals in the first place. I used to be part of that monstrosity. All of my colleagues (other 'worker bee' scientists) attempted to accept the reality of all of those first components in order to devote our energy to minimizing the influence of politics on the actual scientific research. I also note that at some level, ALL science is political if it ever is intended to be communicated to others. We just don't think about some scientific research in those terms if it is so irrelevant that no one cares (here I mention the extremely arcane field of taxonomy, at least for obscure taxa that seem to be unimportant outside of phylogenetic schemes). But all that is science in the broader sense. In the strictest and purest sense science, the process, is as indifferent to politics as it is to religion. It simply IS. Individuals may not pursue it in that purest sense and people may interpret results with other agendas in mind. But the actual science is either there or it isn't. If there, it's only assailable by more actual science. Yes, politics can shut off funding or move people around or even write laws to try to stifle its effect - often in vain (and here I think about how legislation couldn't keep up with the advances of molecular biology and such things as cloning). Let's face it. Politicians usually are dim-witted and therefore usually unable to comprehend any level of complexity close to what is modern science (which is how those troglodytes can feel comfortable on the science committee). But politicians DID do something that was either clever or inadvertent. By creating huge publicly-funded programs to promote science, they managed to take control of most OF it. Universities, like corporations, have no mind (and as AZMike noted for corporations, can't masturbate, lol), and administrators are some of the least imaginative people you could ever put into positions designed to stifle ideas. It is no accident that not only are the government research labs shackled to political whims, so are university programs which are constantly bombarded with encouragement to seek government funding from NIH, NSF, EPA, USDA, DOD, etc. And WHY? So administrators who really don't care about science can collect discretionary funds in the form of indirect costs with which they can build more and even bigger and equally useless...what? Administration. It's politics. If there was EVER a true oxymoron, I would have to pick 'political science'.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)