Why did Jon Snow wait for 6 hours outside the Apple Store?

For the Watch!

[quote poster=Cerberus; 36724; 669370]

Because I'm sure you're an expert on Mark Twain's views, right?
Like, you've studied him extensively?
Like, you've taken numerous classes on American Literature and read his collected works?
Like, you've earned multiple degrees in Literature and Rhetoric and know what you're talking about?

I read a politifact article on this about an hour ago, so I guess I'm about as qualified as anyone. It seems like it's a decision that can be made by virtually any executive at any level. Primarily the President or state governors make the call, and there's little protocol. Tradition is 30 days at half mast for a President's death, and beyond that, it's up to the discretion of the executives.

Having said that, I think your other point is the best one. It's easy if you hate Obama to try to turn everything into an issue where Obama did the wrong thing, but honestly, there is no protocol and it's typically done for times when the nation is in mourning over an event. If we put the flag at half mast every time a soldier was killed, the flag would virtually never NOT be at half mast.

Save your anger in this situation for the shooter.

Interesting study, but a few things:

1) Generally I trust findings more when there are many studies that say the same thing. I'm not saying the people who did the study let their bias in, but I'm much more trusting of a lot of people doing studies not letting their bias in (or minimizing it at least) than I am with one. So I do think this is worth the read, I'm not ready to start using this as irrefutable evidence when I get in gun debates.

2) One point is obvious: People who are ambushed don't have much better odds whether they have a gun or not. As I said, obvious, but I do think it's worth bringing up for all the people who claim that guns could have stopped some horrible event.

Anyway, I'm sure this post isn't nearly liberal enough for what people expect out of me, so here: Go Bernie Sanders! Redistribution of wealth! More education spending! That should be a bit better.

The slippery slope argument is the easy one to use for people who just don't want anything to change.

"We can't have universal background checks on guns because we'll end up with the government raiding our homes taking away all our guns!"

"We can't let them take down a flag that 30% of the population finds hateful towards their racial group because next thing you know, our rights to free speech will be gone!"

The fact is, except in very rare, extreme cases, the "slippery slope" outcome never happens.
It's just a way for people to fearmonger the masses to try to protect the status quo.

I'd argue that if there are a bunch of flags and statues on public property that symbolized the oppression of a group within our society, especially when that group is 30% of the state's population in South Carolina, that perhaps it shouldn't have taken until 2015. And if private citizens or corporations are making decisions about the Confederate flag or about statues of Confederate war figures, then, in actuality, they're just exercising their own freedom of speech or expression to take those down.

Of course, instead, we could go with the whole "We white people are being oppressed" argument.

I agree. But what you said wasn't the point I was making. I was making the point that everyone here who is advocating that the flag shouldn't be removed is doing so on the basis that people who are offended by a symbol are too sensitive, yet they are offended by the removal of that same symbol. I'm not advocating apathy. I'm pointing out hypocrisy.

It's funny you bring up the idea of people getting their feelings hurt, because what I see in this thread is an issue that probably doesn't personally affect the vast majority of you, yet you're all mad about it.

TKO's a good choice. PAN's probably the other true netting clan, and they could use a few new members.

ICD's got a lot of great netters too and are pretty much a true netting clan. I just keep getting the feeling in my gut that they're gonna go to the mattresses and war one of these sets.

If you want to join PAN:

eepandora.com

lol. oops.

Pretty much this. In addition to the 10% rule, you also can't send FA to countries significantly larger than you (I forget the exact amount, 50% bigger? Someone will correct me if I'm wrong).

If you're just trying to build one country up, people have been taking steps to do that since the beginning, and there's meant to be some difficulty in just transferring all your goods to one country, so generally, you either have to do it at a slow and steady pace (like sending foreign aid packages of food each day, day after day, or you have to find other riskier ways of transferring through the market. Problem there is that everyone has access to the public market, so you have to be fairly clever in order to make that work.


Now, if all you need to do is send foreign aid to help out a country that's been attacked or that isn't doing as well, then you just need to find the foreign aid tab. If that's all it is, it's simple. It's just if you're trying to make one really big country by transferring, then it's a bit more complicated than just transferring everything to your best country.

It's tough to get 15 players in a clan in this game to commit and follow through. First off, too many of us (and I'm VERY guilty of this) are just too lazy to play set after set. Beyond that, there simply aren't THAT many players who are willing to play a text-based game with all the other options that are available.

That's really what Despy is getting at. Good luck getting all those players together. If you can do it, it'll be good for the server, but ultimately, I think you'll find it harder to get 240 than you'd think. And if you can do it, it'll certainly be harder to keep them active and interested than you'd think.

Good lord, you think that's a long response by me? Do you ever read anything I post? Or rather: Do you ever read?

Furthermore: You're undermining your own argument again. You're supposedly here to troll, but my response to you shows that you succeeded and I failed, right?

Basically, I'm just a much smarter, more intellectual troll. So I guess by you responding, now *I* just won!

The only way for you to win now is to just not post anything. Please, make me lose. Please. All of FFAT roots for you to win this one.

It's cute when someone gets the notion they're somehow superior because they're bad at something because they, all of the sudden, determine the thing isn't worth being good at.

Almost every hobby anyone does is meaningless and silly to outsiders. Games like EE only have meaning because we all collectively agree to give it meaning.

The amusing thing is when someone gets all bitter because they're upset and they PRETEND that they don't assign it meaning. By playing the game and posting on the forums, you've assigned meaning to this. To pretend you don't care and that everyone else is a loser because they're better at this than you is petty and childish.

Aphrodite: If they weren't your countries, I apologize. I assumed from the people speaking that they had positively identified your countries.

Aphrodite, in case you read this thread:

I don't know the full circumstances, but if there isn't a reason for your suiciding, then it's a disappointment. Many people, including myself, were offering help at the beginning of this set, trying to give you a chance to prove yourself as being more than just the suicider that you were perceived to be.

What I have to say probably doesn't matter a whole lot to you, but next time you come to FFAT trying to figure out an alliance to join or trying to get uNAPs for a 1-man tag you're running, remember moments like this and understand that's why most people turn their back on you instead of helping.

I'd be more interested in the deathmatch style. Screw fairness in that situation. It clearly isn't a test of who really is the best killer, because some people (like Donny, since he's been brought up) would have targets on their backs. Other people (probably like me, if I were in it) would probably be a bit further down people's lists. If Donny got knocked out in the first strikes and I won, I certainly wouldn't be silly enough to think I was the greatest killer on the server ahead of all the CC, NBK, and probably even most of the ICD guys.

Either way, it'd be fun to see all of it play out.

The tournament style, if you got a decent number of people into it, would draw people away from their alliances and into the tournament for god knows how long. Even if you only had 8 people interested and did single-elim then it'd be 3 sets of playing the tournament.

Yeah, from the very beginning they did a great job with his character, from the scripting to the directing to the acting.

I might have to rewatch those this summer if we still have HBO when I'm on summer break. It's a pretty good show, and sometimes there's something pretty great about a show only doing a few seasons (2, in this case), rather than keeping it going way beyond when it's capable of maintaining its quality.

Once again, I'll second Dragon.

If you WANT to do multiple builds, I'd suggest at most two groupings of 8. If you did some grabbing outside your own (bot countries or hitting other players) and then land-traded, you could still get good sized countries just trading with 7 other countries.

But as he said, it's about being as efficient as possible. If you have 16 techers, then the buildings you capture will all be useful to your country and you won't have to rebuild.

I think that's probably the worst part about the way land-trading is in FFA right now. It prevents people from being able to diversify their countries if they so choose.

Another option (especially if you still have some catching up):

Wait until 6-7 episodes are out, add HBO for one month, watch the first 6-7 On Demand, and watch the rest as they come new.

Of course, this means you have to wait and avoid spoilers until probably the end of May or so.

Or, try to get your money's worth by getting into other HBO shows while you have it. Newsroom is one that I enjoy, and it's only a 3-season show, so it's not a huge time investment as other shows are. Or another one that to me, almost seems like a pre-cursor to Game of Thrones is Rome, which kind of gets into the same type of political gamesmanship, but in the world of Julius Caesar's and Caesar Augustus's Rome.

Instead of this, I'll second what Dragon said, but elaborate a bit.

The problem with your version is that you're just basically farming your own countries. Land-trading isn't about transferring land, it's about generating ghost acres.

When Country A and Country B hit each other, they basically both break even (in theory at leasT) between the actually main acres they lose. Where land-trading is profitable is through the ghost acres that are generated on each hit. So Country A hits B and gains 1,500 acres and 500 buildings, but B only LOST the 1,500 acres. So those other 500 built acres are created out of thin air.

You'll also benefit from having as many countries as possible (you'll probably want to make all 16 available) because there are country-to-country diminishing returns, so that you can't go back and forth between A and B all set. You'll do that one say, then you'll do A and C, then A and D, then A and E (hey! I love their TV shows!), and so on, doing 4-5 hits between each time as Dragon suggested.

Rats: I was hoping to plan a huge 3 on 1 gangbang of ICD, but it just isn't fun without you over there. Please come back!

You're absolutely right. It's easy for people to start distrusting police officers when we hear of several big cases in the last year that were questionable. It's still a tremendously small portion of police officers.

And it pains me to say this, but I do think KoH is right (at least in his basic point) that the U.S. has really good police officers for the most part.

Preventing this type of incident is nearly impossible. The body cameras might be a great step, or maybe they wouldn't be (I think there would have to be a lot of limits put on when those would be reviewed because otherwise it'd be ridiculous how much additional cost would be involved having IA guys just watching hours and hours of irrelevant footage). But I think the thing that is really discouraging for most people is that after the event happens, people want to see actual justice, not a pseudo investigation that overwhelmingly always finds the officer was not at fault. Cops need to be given benefit of the doubt. They have to know that society has their backs. But they also have to be held to a standard where if they do many a questionable call, the situation is adjudicated.

Thanks for adding absolutely nothing to the conversation again.

I would actually argue that this economy actually is less a house of cards than the others. You imply that during the Clinton years there were bubbles leading us to prosperity, and with the housing bubble and the tech bubble, that's definitely true, but as of yet, there don't seem to be any bubbles that any economists I've seen/heard/read have discussed.

Also, while this recovery has certainly been consistent and sustained, Republicans have rightly pointed out in many ways it's been slow. And for the most part, it seems like the numbers are climbing in a way that, at least to me, seem like they make sense for a true recovery instead of a bubble. The stock market recovered first, after companies laid off large amounts of workers, became more efficient, and retooled themselves. Then they built up their balance sheets. Then the jobs started coming back.

Again, I'm no economist or accountant, but the fact that there hasn't been any wild speculation and growth in any markets (or maybe there has and I'm just unaware of it), and the fact that companies actually seem to be balancing themselves better when it comes to saving and spending mean that this probably is a healthier economy so far?

Lastly, if you're really endorsing completely laissez-faire economics with what you say about presidents not being able to help the economy, then I completely reject that premise. They certainly can't do it on their own, but I encourage you to study your late 19th century and early 20th century U.S. history and remind yourself of what a world with few to no restrictions on the market brought us.

You're being quite misleading with a lot of what you're arguing.

The 2009 budget would be a Bush budget, since we're talking fiscal years, which begin in October of the previous year when Bush was still in office. 2010 would be the first true Obama budget.

Secondly, the economic crash occurred in Sept. of 2008, so the 2009 Fiscal Year was going to have a much larger deficit no matter who was President and no matter what type of spending was done because the crash was going to cause a huge drop in tax revenues. And of course, the crash itself was no fault of Pres. Obama's, whether you want to try to trace it back to Pres. Bush or to policies of the 80s and 90s. So even saying that he cleaned up a mess in 6 years IS still a positive on his record, because it wasn't HIS mess that he cleaned up.

On your last point, it's certainly a reasonable thing to believe that perhaps the numbers aren't as accurate as many might think, but even you acknowledge that it's a reasonable assumption (although admittedly still an assumption) that the numbers would probably be consistently off, so if we use the first term numbers of FY 2009 and FY 2013 as I used before, we go from 1.4T to 680B, which is a 51-52% reduction in the deficit.

The thing is: If you want to argue that someone else might've handled the recession in a better way, fine. That's up for debate. If you want to argue that the ACA has hidden costs, fine. But if you want to debate whether Pres. Obama cut the deficit by 50% in his first term, you're simply debating against the facts. And if you want to debate that the economy hasn't markedly improved during Pres. Obama's tenure, you're debating against the facts there as well.

Fair enough. This is at least a response that's worth continuing to discuss, but a few questions:

If costs are being pushed onto private citizens through indirect taxes, wouldn't that not necessarily increase the deficit though? If money is being collected to pay for such expenses, it's not a deficit issue. You want to argue that Pres. Obama increased taxes, that's a different discussion, and that at least seems to be the direction farmer is going, but ultimately, that wasn't what KoH brought up that I refuted him on. It's very possible I'm misunderstanding this point though. My degrees are all in the Humanities, and I have virtually no background in economics or accounting beyond the most basic levels. If I'm wrong, I am open-minded enough to hear what you have to say about this. I'm only closed-minded to KoH because he just shouts empty rhetoric and thinks everyone should adopt his viewpoint.

Secondly, if the books are so bad, I assume they've always been that bad. Please tell me if that's not a fair assumption.
If that's the case, then how they measure the deficit now vs. before probably still implies that there's SOME truth to the numbers even if it's not 100% accurate, because I would assume the outlays from 2009 are equally inaccurate as the outlays in 2013. Again, correct me if I'm wrong.

[quote poster=farmer; 35503; 645480]+.9% Increase in Medicare Tax Rate (plus next item…)
3.8% New Tax on unearned income for high-income taxpayers= $210.2 billion ($200,000 for individual and $250,000 for joint filers)
New Annual Fee on health insurance providers = $60 billion (For calculation - Sec 9010 (b) of the PPACA.)[1]
40% New Tax on health insurance policies which cost more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family, per year = $32 billion (inland tax as opposed to an importation tax)
New Annual Fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs = $27 billion (For calculation - Sec 9008 (b) of the PPACA)[2]
2.3% New Tax on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices = $20 billion
+2.5% Increase (7.5% to 10%) in the Adjusted Gross Income floor on medical expenses deduction = $15.2 billion
Limit annual contributions to $2,500 on flexible spending arrangements in cafeteria plans (plans that allow employees to choose between different types of benefits) = $13 billion
All other revenue sources = $14.9 billion
10% New Tax imposed on each individual for whom “indoor tanning services” are performed.
3.8% New Tax on investment income. Includes: gross income from interest, dividends, royalties, rents, and net capital gains. Investment income does not include interest on tax-exempt bonds, veterans’ benefits, excluded gain from the sale of a principle residence, distributions from retirement plans, or amounts subject to self-employment taxes. (The lesser of net investment income or the excess of modified Adjusted Gross Income over a the dollar amount at which the highest income tax bracket, typically $250,000 for married filing jointly and $200,000 filing as an individual). [/quote]

The recent discussion has been on deficits, not taxes. If this has any bearing on whether the deficit numbers are real or not, I don't see it. Please explain.

It's clear you have nothing to add. You don't need to keep proving it.

I've kind of thought the same thing as Ketchup if I decide to play and want to get some warring in. A 1v1 could be fun.

If it was against ford, I'm sure he would beat me because he certainly has more experience with both warring and with warring 1v1 specifically, but I'd like to think I'd at least put a beating on most of his countries and take several of them down with me.

I'm too lazy to play countries right now. My role in this game has diminished to occasionally giving advice and to trolling people on political threads.

If the cost of the ACA is through the increase in premiums primarily, then it has absolutely zero to do with the federal deficit.
If the cost of the ACA is through other means that ARE part of the federal deficit, KoH is welcome to Google it himself and tell me if my numbers are wrong.

The point is: *I* provided numbers showing how KoH was wrong to imply that Pres. Obama failed to cut the deficit in half during his first term. All KoH has done is argue about the ACA, by stating that somehow that has an effect that SHOULD affect the deficit, but that it isn't reflected by my numbers. He's argued this without actually looking anything up. So no: the burden isn't on me to prove KoH's point for him by looking up articles for him.

And playing the conspiracy card without evidence, as you did in your 2nd post, is exactly what KoH did as well.

You want to make that case? Surely if the federal government is cooking their books, someone reputable out there has written about it. Back yourself up with some facts.

That's Rhetoric 101.

He was quoting me, Ivan. Don't give farmer too much credit. :)

Sure. It's easier to argue with a strawman than it is someone who actually asks you to prove your silly BS.

So you think 97% of the scientific community is corrupt and concerned more with money than with the scientific process and that there's 3% out there who are upstanding citizens. Oh, and that 3% just coincidentally happens to be on the same side as big oil.

Seriously, say that out loud to yourself a few times and see how many times it takes before it even sounds dumb to you.

I hate this misconception. People using the word "Climate Change" isn't because Global Warming was proven wrong, Climate Change is the CONSEQUENCE of Global Warming. It's pointing out that the end result isn't just a world that's 3 degrees warmer, but that those 3 degrees (or whatever) have tangible effects on climates around the world.

Unlike what archaic said, THIS is actually the main reason I can't see myself becoming a Republican ever. There is a willful tendency to be anti-intellectual and anti-science.

KoH: I don't know what is in or not in those numbers. I assume everything, since it's actual fiscal year deficit (not projected budgets), but ultimately, I posted numbers. If you think they're wrong, find numbers you believe are right and post them. Otherwise accept the fact that you posted a comment based on a false narrative and open your mind to the fact that Pres. Obama isn't driving up the deficit as you believe he is.

I'm far from the most expert source on killing, but it doesn't look like anyone else answered your question:

With someone not stonewalling, the most common range that I usually saw was 180-250 HPK for someone who knows what they're doing. Obviously there are plenty of kills that go above or below though.

And yes, programs that call/text when being hit are actually quite common among most of the bigger clans, especially the war clans. Heck, even PANLV has one, although we generally only fire it up when we are in a war or anticipate one, and PANLV is usually one of the hippiest, most tree-loving clans on the server.

I remember in a war with NBK awhile back, we generally felt we had to finish a kill in about 30-40 seconds tops to avoid someone getting in and stonewalling, and that was with watching when countries would typically play and trying to hit when the person was likely to be off line.

I'm sure CC is about the same, although the only time I've had the pleasure of warring CC was last set and their first strike virtually wiped us out, so it wasn't really a typical war.

Actually, now that I think about it, that DOES seem like the typical FFA war of the last several resets.

Fiscal Year Deficit for 2009 - When Obama took office - 1.4T
Fiscal Year Deficit for 2013 - 1st year in Obama's 2nd term - 680B.

It seems to be pretty clearly referencing issues like the Hobby Lobby and Notre Dame court cases that have involved religious exemptions for the birth control mandate found in the ACA.

No. Neither of you have any rights concerning these forums. As has been brought up many times before, any rules of freedom of speech like in the United States apply to the government abridging your rights. The administration of this game, including the moderators, have every right in the world to ban you, close your threads, or do whatever the hell they want on THEIR forums. Deal with it.

PAN, ICD and TKO generally have split up the best netters in the game between them. Pick one and join. I'm sure if you're in any of their tags and you have questions, they'll be happy to help you.

I'd suggest PAN, since that's of course where I play (when I play).

eepandora.com

I agree with most of your sentiments, Oceana.

This is gonna be a long response, but I think it will help point out a lot of flaws in our system.

For textbooks, the thing we found the most obnoxious was that with all the digital printing possibilities nowadays, the textbook industry seems to be lagging behind. We questioned several companies on the idea of a custom printing or a digital version of the text, and none of them are there yet. Instead, the textbooks we went with are $92 per student, which is one of the most expensive books my school carries right now. And there weren't really any significantly cheaper options.

As far as copying another country, much of it is beyond our ability to fix with quick fixes.

From reading up on this a bit just now, here are a few of the tidbits I've found from various sources, with the primary source being this article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...59555/?no-ist=&page=2

1) Their politics don't revolve around education at all. Both more conservative and more liberal parts of their political spectrum buy in to the same educational plan, so teachers don't become the target of political games.
2) They draw their teachers from the top 10% and all of them have Master's in Education degrees.
3) They focus on individuals and not statistics, and they don't try to use competition or free market attitudes in their education system, something both Republicans (with charter schools) and Democrats (with Race to the Top) have embraced.
4) The differences between their richest and poorest schools are minimal (this is big, I'll explain below).
5) At least from what they say, they don't focus on testing at all and don't teach to the test, they just have effective standards that are applied across the board and their testing success is actually authentic in the sense that it's not just that they're good at a test.
6) Their teachers focus more on the development of their curriculum and fewer hours actually in the classroom (I've got some questions about this as well--below)
7) Their safety nets and social programs are plentiful: they provide everything from subsidized daycare to taxi services to free health care for children, so the article claims there are rarely instances of children coming to school hungry or being homeless, or being late due to no rides, etc.
8) There are also significant differences in the make up of the country. Finland is a country of 5.4 million people and only 4% are foreign born.

For #6, I was curious about teacher to student ratio, and found that by the site I found, we're right in line with Finland, having a 14:1 ratio, but I wondered if this is per class or if this truly is overall. Also, I think the reason the U.S. is at such a ratio is probably partially due to rural schools and charter schools that drive the numbers down. And if this number really reflects more of an average class size, if Finland focuses more on curriculum development, they may still have a far better ratio. I don't know if this is the case because from a quick glance, I couldn't find anything about the procedures for figuring the ratio.

The other two I think are worth bringing up are #4 and #7, in conjunction. Schools in the U.S. are most often funded via local property tax funds, which means there's more money where property taxes are higher. For instance, in Illinois, there are schools in the wealthy Chicago suburbs where the average teacher salary is upwards of $70,000, whereas downstate salaries are nowhere near that (one district that I chose as a rural mid-state comparison had teacher salary just a touch over $40,000 in comparison).

So basically, many young teachers work in districts where they're building up experience and credentials, then they try to get a job at wealthier districts (and who can blame them?) where both pay and work conditions are better.

These districts are also the ones with more money to throw into other programs, and obviously (in connection with the property taxes) are home to families that are more affluent and put more importance on education.

This leads to a vast difference in educational opportunities when you look at the difference between inner-city schools of Chicago and schools like New Trier in Winnetka (one of the richest suburbs). It ends up being a social construct that helps maintain the status quo--students that went through rich schools get the best teachers and the most program offerings, whereas students that go through poor schools often get teachers who are new to the profession or aren't the most talented teachers, and that have fewer offerings.

I'd argue that the best 10% of schools in the U.S. can probably compete with the top schools in other countries that rank higher than us in PISA testing. But when it comes to the less successful schools, there are a vast number of issues that prevent them from having the same success. Some of that probably comes from our higher rate of immigration. Some of that comes from issues like homelessness and poverty. Some of that comes from our obsession with test scores. Some of it comes from the prestige that is attached to teaching and the political games (or lack thereof) that are played with groups like teachers which can erode the respect people have for teachers. Some of it comes from the time educators are given to spend on curriculum (and probably from a greater sense of accountability for those teachers once they are given extra time).

It's also that no fix will be immediate. It's quite possible that Common Core IS the answer, but that we wouldn't know it for 10 years or more, because teachers need a chance to become adept in the new things they want us to do, and students have to have the opportunity to go through the entire system to see the maximum benefits (meaning when 1st graders now are taking the 11th grade test, THAT'S when we can tell for sure).

I know that's a super long response to why we can't just copy and paste the ideas of FInland, and I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't try to understand their success, but I don't want it to seem like teachers haven't thought of this as well.

Thanks for your input, now please go back to the kid's table and finish your peas.

Fair enough. Put it this way. By being in the actual position of President, there are certain things that are just likely to happen:

1) The President (whoever it would be) would learn more about a topic for various reasons (either due to new readily available info or due to classified info they didn't previously have info on) that might change their stance.
2) The President may not have the ability to accomplish their goals.
3) The President may not prioritize a particular issue and may have to compromise on secondary issues in order to achieve his or her primary issues.

Or of course:

4) The President could just have completely (or partially) lied to try to win office.

Settling on #4 alone each and every time is certainly disingenuous though.

hawkeyee: Are you specifically a math teacher? And what levels? Elementary? Middle school? Secondary/High School?

I didn't necessarily miss your point. I'm just trying to get at the point that knowing multiple ways to get the right answer isn't necessarily a bad thing. I remember many times in math classes if there was an easy way to get the answer and a longer way, typically we were taught the long way first, and then after we mastered that, they showed us the shortcut method.

I doubt there'd be numberline usage for 9-7 anyway, because single-digit addition and subtraction isn't the purpose, but I get that's not really your point, and if we're talking about, let's say, 909-722=, then a number line is fine by me.

Again, instead of subtracting 2 from 9 to get 7 for the ones column, then borrowing so I could subtract 2 from 10 to get 8, then 8-7 (since I borrowed) to get 187, I could just subtract 722 from 900 and then add the 9 back in. I can do the latter method in my head in about 2-3 seconds. That's the point of the number line, working with numbers that are more comfortable to work with.

I'm gonna try to come in here and address at least what I know of some of these things. Again, I'm not a specific Common Core expert, and my main knowledge is on the English standards, but I am, as I said earlier, actually a high school teacher who has a curriculum adapted to Common Core.

Garry Owen:

You said a couple things I think are worth clearing up. FIrst off, you claim that local boards are telling you "That's the Common Core." and basically implying you need to deal with it. They should be giving you better explanation. If they ARE, and then they're saying, we've adopted the common core because of x and y reasons, and it's designed to help bring up standards, then at least they've explained themselves, but if they're dismissing you with "That's just CC." then you should do ewverything you can to hold them more accountable.

However, beyond that, it's also a fairly BS statement. As I said earlier, there are very few things in the standards (there are a few) that say what should be taught specifically or how. I'm sure that's more prevalent on the math side since math is much more articulated as to what should be taught and to what age group, but especially on the Humanities and Social Sciences side, there's nothing that says what books I have to teach. That's still very much under local administrations' and school boards' power.

Also, while it's a minor point, you mentioned that school book companies just need to make CA happy, which I figure you assumed CA since it's the biggest state population wise, but actually the state that flexes their muscles the most on textbooks is Texas. Most English and History books are fairly conservative because Texas is the state that pushes hardest on what should or shouldn't be in textbooks, and they, as you probably were assuming with CA, also have a large population. So many books are written for Texas and adapted slightly for other states.

Schilling: Thanks for a thoughtful post. I'll try to come back and read your links later.

Apples and Oranges. The players hitting the QB in the head may have a motivation to do so--it helps their team, and it might help them financially because they'll be seen as a better defensive player.

Standing outside the batter's box for 10 extra seconds doesn't inherently do anything to the pitcher (it could mess with his rhythm theoretically, but it's not an automatic), and they're certainly not going to get paid more because of those extra 10 seconds.

ford's right. It's a game without a clock, so there are potentially problems with timing, especially the more they commercialize the game (which, along with the La Russa style bullpen management, I would argue is a way bigger problem than a batter stepping out).

If the timing of the game is why you hate baseball, you probably weren't going to like it if the game were 10-15 minutes shorter anyway.

At this point it doesn't matter much. Most netgainers at this point are probably about as military-light as they feel safe running, so the people who will be at the top right now are either people that are netgaining but probably won't finish anywhere near the top or people who were expecting to war (or actually are warring).

You had some other thoughts there that I thought I would address, but I knew my last post was already long.

1) I've taught 3 years in public schools and 7 in private. There are certainly more discipline problems in public.

2) Charter schools are a blessing are a curse. They can be great for those kids that get in, but they divert a LOT of resources away from the main public schools, and also take away a lot of the kids that act as models of what it means to be a good student, which can often make what's typically a bad school environment even worse.

3) I've been out of publics long enough that I'm not 100% sure on the testing and pay connection, but I'm almost positive that they don't do that in Illinois (at least not state wide). Merit pay in theory sounds good, but for instance, I'm blocked my a lot of older teachers from getting any Honors classes at my current school until someone retires. I've got lower and middle level tracked kids other than the elective I teach, so comparing my scores to the other guy that teaches sophomores that has regular and upper-level tracked kids would be totally unfair, because my lower-level students are probably going to average 10-15 points less on the ACT than his Honors students will. If the numbers can be put into full context and looked at in trends, that data could be useful, and I'm part of a group at my school pushing for more such analytics to help us become better teachers, but ultimately, any one year's testing scores are statistically problematic when you consider all the variables that cannot be accounted for.