Well, if staying in school longer (till 6pm, 11 months/year) is such a great idea, why didn't he stay in Reed longer?
Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
101–110 of 130 posts
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#102That's interesting to see that Jobs treated Obama like a peer.
I would too. Just because he sits on a special chair doesn't put him above me.
Now, I may respect a man for what he's _done_ ; but in Obama's case, that isn't much (ex Obama volunteer & donor here).
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finland leads the world in education, and now they are building factories?!? Don't look to China, look to Finland!
Finland leads the world in education Slightly off topic, but Finland leads the world in junior and high-school education . They have only one universities in the top 300 of the Shanghai rankings and nothing indicates that the advantage Finish students have leaving high school gives them any advantage at University. One needs to be careful about idolizing the Finish school system. While they are no doubt awesome at pr…
In a place where a junior and high-school education are neglected, how many make it to university?
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would seem that for $529 million they could build one. Isn't Tesla building cars here?
Money is one issue, time is another. In most US jurisdictions, dozens of entities have the ability to say "no" to a development project. In states that are actively hostile to business, like New York or California, there may be hundreds of people or groups that can slow down projects. Examples: Local Zoning Board; Whomever controls permits for running utilities; State/local environmental boards (Lots and lots of $$$…
In China or Brazil, you basically partner with a connected local, and build your factory in a few months.
I really think you are severely underestimating what actually goes into building a factory. It's not handshake and 3 months later something magically springs out of the ground. Most modern factories are into the billions of dollars. For example Foxconn is opening a new factory in Brazil that won't be ready before 2013 and will cost $12 billion.
If you're just producing commodity items then you can buy commodity factory equipment. But high end manufacturing requires specialty equipment (usually from Germany, Japan or the US).
Anyway, after farming, manufacturing is the largest consumer of freshwater. I think the people have a right to know how the water is being collected and how its being disposed of since it is state money being used for the treatment. Unless you preferred the bad old days, before the Clean water Act, where factories would regularly dump toxic waste into the river, the Mississippi and the East River used to regularly catch on fire, and New Jersey literally stunk from all the pollution in its estuaries.
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finland leads the world in education, and now they are building factories?!? Don't look to China, look to Finland!
Finland leads the world in education Slightly off topic, but Finland leads the world in junior and high-school education . They have only one universities in the top 300 of the Shanghai rankings and nothing indicates that the advantage Finish students have leaving high school gives them any advantage at University. One needs to be careful about idolizing the Finish school system. While they are no doubt awesome at pr…
The Shanghai ranking doesn't put much weight on student performance.
"The ranking compares 1200 higher education institutions worldwide according to a formula that took into account alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10 percent), staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 percent), highly-cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20 percent), articles published in the journals Nature and Science (20 percent), the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index (20 percent) and the per capita academic performance (on the indicators above) of an institution (10 percent)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Unive...
However, nice bit of selective statistics to only use the top 300 in your calculation. The shanghai list actually has 500 universities listed, which bumps the number of Finnish universities to 5. So on a per capita basis Finland comes out ahead of USA!*
* - Cherry picked and irrelevant
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In its retrospective study on the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA estimated that the benefit of pollution control over the 20 year period was on the order of $22 trillion. $22T/20 years is over $1T/year. US GDP in 1990 was under $6T. US GDP in 1970 was just over $1T. > the lack of Clean Air Act controls on the use of leaded gasoline would have resulted in major increases in child IQ loss Oh really? Why would leaded gas…
GDP does not account for the externalities that the study took into account.
> GDP does not account for the externalities that the study took into account.
Externality estimates and valuations are notorious for reflecting the biases of the estimators.
Estimates that are a large fraction of GDP are very suspicious.
Do you seriously believe that the clean air act "saved" 1/6th of the US economy?
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be interested in what studies this information comes from and what locales it was done in.
http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/index.html is something about it
That study seems to draw all its conclusions from inner city / low income. I would submit it is not a model for the rest of the country unless further testing is done in other environments.
story: A couple of decades ago I used to work on grants and educational programs. One group came to ND to give a lecture on risk factors. In Minot ND, they told the crowd that "firearms" automatically means more violence. "It has been proven in studies" they said. One member of the crowd asked how many people in the room owned firearms. The poll came back at about 90% with many (40%) owning 3 or more. No history of violence in that crew. They were all social worker types who liked to hunt or in the case of one, target shoot. I got ahold of their source data for studies and found two things. A specific firearm study was never done and all the data came from CA or NY cities.
The USA is a large and diverse place, I am a little cynical of best practices taken from urban environments and applied to suburban and rural areas without add research and being a little more specific on why stuff seems to be working.
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't downvote but would you care to explain your reasons for all of these statements? What is so nightmatish about schools open 11mths of the year? How is school being open until 6pm dangerous? Is it something to do with darkness? Is darkness inherently dangerous? Personally I think the suggestion about union rules and hiring/firing based on merit is the most significant of the bunch. More of the same type of sch…
I'm guessing that in the northern states, part of the year is a harsh winter and early sunset, so having kids leave school at 6pm could lead to them walking home in the snow and in the dark.
Yep, having a bunch of K-6 students on a bus at 6 - 8pm every night in the winter is a safety hazard. It gets dark early and school buses are not the best for long term warmth when they break down.
Working 11 months for 10+ hours a day is a nightmare for most parents. Add to that the inevitable homework and you get a "work" / life balance that is a nightmare. No time for friends, dance, music, or play. Wakeup, goto school, do "approved" activities then come home and eat, do homework, and go to bed. More hours are not the answer. We need creative workers in science, math, engineering, and vocational. Not a bunch of factory robots.
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
>let principals hire/fire based on merit Its a simplistic idea. Principals weren't hired because of their ability to build a successful team of teachers. They are administrators. Why does anybody think they can suddenly (successfully and equitably) cast judgement on teachers? If you want to transform how teachers are hired, managed, and evaluated, to be more similar to a private business, you have to start at the top…
The best teachers I had in highschool all seemed to despise their principals, precisely because they were nothing more than overpaid bureaucrats. The best case scenario was a principal that just stayed out of the way. Of course, it's the system that made them that way. If you let principals actually make performance based decisions, then you would attract a different sort of person to the position.
I agree that principals are a result of the system, and it likely goes even higher to the school districts and superintendent. I doubt instituting a merit-based system can be done effectively without transforming the whole system, from top to bottom. I don't know if that's in the children's best interest, or would address the perceived problems. Small changes to address the cases of real incompetence are probably the low hanging fruit, and don't require radical change.
Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough on the 6pm thing. However, there seems to be evidence [1] that the typical 2 month summer break is hurting student performance - especially for poorer students whose parents can't afford to put them into enrichment activities in the summer. How, exactly, would 11 month school years be a nightmare? Misalignment already exists - Colleges get 4 months off, don't they? I also recall seeing a talk about this e…
I'm pretty sure these studies have been debunked in the past. I tend to agree with the debunking, because the arguments against summer vacation always stand up a strawman with the assumption that "good parents" send kids to camp, take the summers off, etc. None of my circle of friends went to camp. We played outside, hung out with grandparents, etc. My parents weren't teachers, so they didn't have summers off. Person…
> Personally, I lived for summer vacation until I was like 14. If you took that away, it would have negatively affected me, and many others.
I honestly think this is a product of society and not some intrinsic driver for kids in school. Would a 14 year old me like it if someone told me summer vacation was canceled? No. But if I had been in a system with a shorter summer vacation from the beginning, I don't think I would care too much.
Maybe I'm biased, but my best times with friends were usually during school months. Summers were usually spent playing a lot of video games and going on boring camping trips with various relatives. At the time I loved the break, but I can hardly remember a summer where something really interesting and eventful happened.