Viewing profile — emerod

This is a very clear articulation of my professional experience as well. I feel like I have to drop out of "aesthetic perfection" mode in order to just do what I can to help someon…

The [older, lower capacity] Pop Icon, by the way, is free right now with airtime. https://shop.tracfone.com/shop/en/tracfonestore/phones/tf-al...

You can get one online from Tracfone for $10, but then you have to pay shipping. https://shop.tracfone.com/shop/en/tracfonestore/phones/tf-al...

Perhaps from one of these sites: http://www.bnf.fr/fr/la_bnf/anx_dep/a.collections_sonores_en... https://www.bnfcollection.com/

What you're describing sounds like the Apple, Google, or Facebook ecosystem. How is it different from any of those?

This is not a 'strawman', this is the actual content of every substantive criticism I received in 12 years of homeschooling my child. Because we followed a structured curriculum an…

This highlights why compulsory public schooling was so long in being established. It follows the trajectory of the US transitioning from an agricultural economy to an industrial ec…

It would be more honest if this mission were made explicit--to serve as a holding place for children without daytime caretakers. Then, one of its primary objectives would be to pra…

Whether teachers have noble motivations is completely irrelevant to whether the institutions perform their function well. All it means is that the teachers are working for institut…

The literacy rate cannot function as a measure of the success of public education in the US. Rather, it is a measure of how useless the US public education system is, because it ac…

>>I think you're mistakenly assuming the point of public school is to educate. I think it exists more so the proles have somewhere to dump their kids when they're working. The "edu…

I had a similar experience in grammar school. I was the only qualified advanced student in English, so I spent class time sitting in the hallway going through the advanced reading …

I agree, it's an anecdotal rationalization, as is yours. Yet, it's also true that creators actively frustrate efficient use of distribution platforms in support of their bad busine…

This is no different from the situation during the US Prohibition era. Pragmatically speaking, the threat of punishment did not cause sufficient change in social behavior or attitu…

If transfer of ownership does not actually occur when a digital product is "purchased", then how can one argue that ownership is lost when a digital product is "stolen"? In both ca…

To the extent that this advice about prison applies to business, it applies in an organization where pathological behavior is glorified as "leadership" and everyone else feels like…

I don't even understand why some college students still lug around tons of worthless paper textbooks.

Nothing has changed in the last 20 years in terms of the economic model for the textbook publishing industry. The strategy is still about how to create artificial demand with usele…

How about a prepaid Android phone for $10? So, technically it is subsidized, but there is no contract to sign.

The notion of implicit involvement is a PR strategy for legitimizing a government. If a majority of the population do not feel implicitly involved, they will not care if the govern…

I have found that reacting to news in "real time" (for example, as it is fed to me through TV or Facebook) leads to a loss of perspective. The purported urgency of the story overwh…

The so-called "civic duty to vote" is really a civic duty to support whatever is done by the representatives chosen by the plurality of voters. As a task supposedly necessary to ma…

Like a love shack, but using electronics.

Precisely. They needed to ditch the old Neighborhood Hobby Shop Full of Expert Geeks marketing strategy in order to be competitive in the mass consumer market. Radio Shack was alwa…

It sounds like what some Radio Shack stores tried to be, and maybe what Radio Shack marketed itself as in the 1960s.