Chipping the web: October 6th
October 7th, 2008 7:00:05 am pst by 
Sterling Camden
- 100 Skills Every Man Should Know – DIY Advice – Popular Mechanics
/me 75
Thanks, Arjan.
Tags: popularmechanics skills list diy lifehacks - Scripting languages and the web
My fourth installment on the history of programming languages.
Tags: geeksaresexy programming languages scripting webdev - Dead German poet told to pay his television license
The real question here is: if Schiller were "in a position to watch television or listen to radio", would he? If so, what would he consume? Or rather, what would consume him?
Tags: germany schiller socialism television radio geeksaresexy
Posted in Share the Love | 
23 Comments » RSS 2.0 | Sphere it!
Subscribe by Email
100 Skills Every Man Should Know? Me a mere 40
Significantly, no financial skills were on their list;
so presumably it was made up by a Wall Street banker
Good point — you’d think that “balance a checkbook” and “manage a budget” might be required survival skills. But hey, if the US Government doesn’t need it, why should we?
Hey, if you’re in the right line of business, government will cover your debts — and, in the process, cause significant damage to everyone else’s checkbooks and budgets.
It sounds like I’m in the wrong field.
Even McCain (in last night’s debate) is ready now to have the government absorb all our lost home equity.
What a country!
(fine print: we all end up paying for this via either taxation or increased national debt. Eventually the Russians and Chinese will own everything, and then we’ll see who really won the Cold War.)
- Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd
It’s an understandable mistake.
I never knew before that many European countries have a TV/radio tax to fund public broadcasting. Is that really an essential service of government?
No. It isn’t.
Then again, neither is most of the rest of what government does.
Public broadcasting usually guarantees a higher standard and (thus) counts as education, which IS an essential service of government, lest you get redneck backwoodsmen voting for Palin etc
The commercial channels often do late-night pubic broadcasting, without the L, you notice
Trashy stuff usually 
Education is important. Government controlled education gradually and inevitably turns into propaganda.
@apotheon,
In the US that would be true
Government needs at least to set minimum standards,
e.g. people should be able to read and write their own language correctly, to do well in at least one foreign language, to find places in an atlas, to do elementary arithmetic (e.g. balance a cheque book) etc etc.
Sometimes I think such thingy should be a prerequisite for voting rights ??? What think ye?
You don’t have to worry about me voting for Palin or her elder stalker McCain — but my reasons have more to do with thinking that the Republicans want government to be too involved in our lives (religion, book banning, sending all your money to Iraq, etc.) rather than the other way around.
Education definitely benefits everyone. At least in the US, though, I deeply mistrust government involvement in it (just look at the disastrous effects of No Child Left Behind). While it probably isn’t realistic to completely privatize education in America, I favor more local and less centralized control over it. And whoever funds something often has the final say. The federalist ideal that “we the people” are represented by federal involvement doesn’t work out that way in practice, I’m afraid.
Here (Germany) state goverments define 3 school leaving levels.
1) Hauptchulabschluss (for folks of IQ about 90?)
2) Mittlere Reife ( 100-110?)
3) Abitur (>120?)
Abitur is needed to attend university. It is a wide education, after that it gets narrower and more specialised.
I assume your NCLB is trying to get the weaker achievers up to at least level 1?
NCLB mandates standardized tests that have such momentous consequence that most of the school year is focused on how to pass the test rather than really learning the subject matter. After the tests are administered here in WA state in the spring, teachers hardly know what to teach. It has become the driving force for our public school curriculum.
Furthermore, it provides no accommodations for children with special needs, for whom a standardized test with a rigid administrative protocol may not reveal what they really know.
In our experience, this policy hinders learning rather than insuring its success.
Educational standards are represented far differently across different countries, too — kinda like infant mortality rates. It’s almost meaningless trying to compare general education rates in different countries using their own statistics, and at the moment, “their own statistics” is the only way we can compare them because they’re the only even remotely comprehensive statistics we have.
“Lies, damn lies and statistics.”
Standardized test scores only begin to be meaningful if all the children who take the test are equally good at test-taking (subject matter excluded).
In the case of an autistic child I know, he is faster at pure arithmetic than I am, and can tell you the day of the week for any date instantly. But ask him to solve a word problem, and he doesn’t even know what you’re asking. Does he rightly earn a zero in math?
You could argue that word problems are an important part of applied mathematics (I realized this morning that just about everything I do in my work consists of word problems). On the other hand, if properly channeled, this child’s extraordinary abilities could be harnessed productively — he might even come up with a few difficult proofs in later years. None of that is indicated by standardized tests.
Of course that’s an edge case. Personally, I always scored in the 95-99 percentile on standardized tests — but I knew how to play that game very well. There are many people in between for whom their score may reflect their knowledge in varying degrees of accuracy.
Literacy requirements for voting rights have been used in this country in the past to effect racial discrimination. They’ve been outlawed since 1970.
If we enacted something like that now, I would predict that rather than sparking civil rights protests it would only increase voter apathy.
AFAIK, those not allowed to vote (e.g. in the UK) include
The royal family
Bishops (but what about non-Xian religions?)
Peers (i.e. Lords)?
Patients in mental institutions
Prisoners in jail
Not sure about bankrupts??
What about the US?
Yes I’ve heard of NVWB (not voting while black) which Rove regularly tries to ompose
In the US, mentally competent citizens over the age of 18 can vote, with one exception: in many states, felons are disenfranchised — sometimes for life. Naturally, that hits the black community harder than most.
Maybe “naturally” was a poorly chosen term. “Due to the justice system’s tendency to convict a higher percentage of blacks (for whatever reason)” might have been better.
I’d be all for a for-life disqualification for felons if the laws were sane and well-administered. The criminal justice system in this country is so hosed up that it’s beyond irresponsible to support such a policy at present, however.
This kinda mirrors my thoughts on the death penalty, too.
I concur. I’d be all for eliminating all rights for felons, if 100% of convicted felons were truly guilty of a crime against their fellow citizens. Unfortunately, many are innocent, and many others are convicted of “crimes” that don’t wear that name well.
Nor can a justice system ever be perfect. So, I say mete out whatever punishment you think is appropriate, and no more. Once they’ve served their sentence, they should be full citizens again. If that seems unjust, perhaps the sentence wasn’t sufficient.
To get back to the ‘skills’ article: How did they come up with that list? My skill set is – ahem – different (i.e. low intersection rate with their list).
According to the article, they debated amongst themselves at Popular Mechanics. Not a very scientific approach. Nor do they clearly indicate what their goals are. “You need to know these things because…?”