Little Tweaks

[Nypsy]

All homework, materials, plans, powerpoints, etc., are on the internet (Easier to get back on track after absences, fewer worries)

That's the way some of my daughters high school classes are run.

[MaSonZ]

Dvorak is a keyboard layout built for speed, as opposed to QWERTY, which was actually built to create typos and slow you down (early typewriters couldn't handle the speed).  It would require a few weeks' training, but you'd gain around 10 wpm and a good dose of accuracy.  It's the way it was supposed to be in the first place. I type about double the speed of other peers around me...do I need another 10WPM?

On titles, my point exactly.  They're needless- we have first names for a reason.  For a long time, we only had one name (e.g., Socrates, Joseph).  Last names are a necessity nowadays due to the billions of people that we have, but titles are a bizarre holdover from medieval times.How is that your point...? I said I would require "Mr. Brown", which enforces keeping titles.

The laptops would be just like calculators (which run at around $80 a pop)- most would buy them themselves, and aid would take care of the rest.  It turns out that enough people feel bad about not paying for it themselves if they can that the cost goes way down.  Buying in bulk directly from suppliers also drives costs down.  In addition, laptops are a common feature of many households already, so it's not like you have to buy them for everyone.  Districts can also collect old laptops and refurbish them, or ask for donations (with the donor's name glued on it).  There's plenty that can be done to reduce the cost.This is true, but still an expensive cost up front for the districts.

Ok, so let's get with the times, then.  Can your school teach our school how to get our stuff online?  I kid you not. I'm sure my school could.

So I guess when Oog and Boog thought of the wheel and moved their stuff on rickshaws instead of their backs, they were lazy?  We make technology to make things easier, so that we can do more of what we want and less of what we don't.  That's logic, not laziness.  In fact, the "simple" day that you speak of is only simple because of the vast amount of technology in it already.  For example, before small-scale refrigerators and ovens (as opposed to hearths) cooking used to take all day.  So what's so great about doing stuff like fiddling with the lights, heat, garage door, keyboards/mice, credit/debit cards, printers, yourself, anyway?  I can use your argument to take civilization back to the stone age.You completely read my post wrong... If we need a robot for us to make simple every day tasks done by thinking would we have to move from our bed in the morning? no. Yes, we need advances in technology, but we can already see what the internet has done to our generation. Find me any 50 random adolescents, or young adults for that matter, and have them write me a 10 page research paper WITHOUT using the internet, only using interviews and researching books. Highly doubt much more then half of them could do it.....

@Hannibal Yes, let's inhale acrid, stifling smoke in order to escape reality.  Woohoo!  Lung cancer!

@Dragon, I get it, I made a multiplication error.  I'll do it on paper next time.  Yes, I know it makes me look like an idiot.

-Penguin

[Penguin]

Maybe not you, but they could use it.

That seems arbitrary and pointless, though.

True, but we got the school in the first place- so it's not impossible.  The money can be accumulated over time, too.

Books, like the internet, are just wrappers for the information inside.  It's just that one book weighs more than the entire internet (calculated by estimating the number of electrons in all internet-enabled devices and multiplying by the mass of one electron).  Furthermore, if I asked 50 of your generation to do research with only the internet from the early 90s (I estimate that you're around 20 years old), then they'd be bagged, too.  More and more information is on the internet, especially on Wikipedia and Google.  Being able to use books is just like being able to use a slide rule, punch-card, or even an abacus to do math.  The old versions were inefficient, so now we use computers and graphing calculators.  Also, define "adolescent" if you mean an 11 year old, then they'd be hard pressed to write a paper that long at all.  Save for one story I wrote, I've only gotten to 7 pages.  I rarely used the library before the 7 page paper, and it wasn't too hard to figure out.  Just ask the librarian to find it, and then go to the table of contents and find what you want.  It works the same way on Wikipedia, only with a search function and that table of links.

-Penguin

[Meatwad]

This thread makes me

[Tordon22]

Some interesting ones, the DVORAK keyboard at least.

Why titles? Respect, manners, because you don't have an informal relationship with everyone. How would you get the attention of someone you didn't know, just call out their hair color and sex?

I agree with uniform scales on time and temperature, as well as other units.

Some of those things I don't believe will be changed in our lifetime just because of their familiarity and history with people. Like the sports names. I'm sure you have to have seen what happens on these forums (if not in real life) if you try to offer a change that is different from what someone "grew up with". They fight it to the death, no matter how logically or obvious it may be.

Others are silly.

[titanic3]

Don't fix something that's not broken. 

[Ardy123]

I agree with the idea of moving to a uniform measurement system. Lets face it, for a country that rebelled against 'the king' we are the only ones still using 'his foot' as measurement of length.

As for the keyboard, yeah, its a better layout but I'm lazy and I've gotten used to QWERTY keyboards.

As for the laptops in school... well I don't know about laptops, but I do believe a move to cheap 'e-book' readers would be an enormous savings if managed correctly (one could easily see how this could get manipulated to cost schools more).

[phatzo]

-Rename football to American Rugby (It's pretty much that)

Blasphemy

[phatzo]

How would you get the attention of someone you didn't know, just call out their hair color and sex?

"Hey, ginger woman" lol

[curry1]

@Hannibal Yes, let's inhale acrid, stifling smoke in order to escape reality.  Woohoo!  Lung cancer!

I challenge you to find proof of that.

[Tordon22]

"Hey, ginger woman" lol

I thought they were rangars in your parts.

[BoilerDown]

Key:

Approved.
Conditional Approval or Approval with alterations/corrections.
Conditional Denial.
Denied.

-All time is 24-hour UTC (No more timezones, no more A.M. P.M. shenanigans)  Approved.
All measurements are metric, but temperatures are in Kelvin (let's get with the times, and no more negative temperatures)  Approved except for temperature, which is approved for science, not every day life by non-scientists.
-Tau, a new constant defined as circumference divided by radius, joins math along e, i, and replaces pi (Makes trigonometry easier)  Approved with corrections in bold-italics.
-School starts at 8:00, ends at 15:00 (More sleep)  Denied.  School times should vary according to when its daytime locally.  Consequence of changing to UTC, see above.
-All homework, materials, plans, powerpoints, etc., are on the internet (Easier to get back on track after absences, fewer worries)  While more could be on the internet, not all can be.
-Tax day is moved to the first of a month (Why not, it looks nicer on a calendar, and the previous date was just as arbitrary)  Approved.
-Change US National Anthem to "America the Beautiful" (It makes more sense)  Denied.  Actually I rather like our war-anthem.
-9 months of 30 days each, and December picks up the extra 5-6 (No more date-guessing shenanigans)  Approved.
-10 days in a week with three days off in a row (See above)  Approved with alterations.  Make it first, last, and sixth day off each week, and you have my support.
-Make month names latin numerals (Sounds cooler, and makes more sense)  Approved.
-Remove irregular verbs/adjectives/nouns from all languages everywhere (Makes more sense)  Approved.
-Issue all students laptops (on good behavior)  Conditionally Denied.  Laptops go out of date too fast.  Desktops.  And no Macs.
-Redraw state borders to make a grid (It's like that in the West, why not in the East?)  Except when major water boundaries make more sense.
-Rename soccer to football (Get with the rest of the world)  Non-American Football when speaking in English in North America.
-Rename football to American Rugby (It's pretty much that)  Denied.  I'll consider American Football, but only when conversing in English with non-North-Americans.  Still gets color red.
-Get rid of the titles of Mr., Mrs., Miss, and Ms., and just call everyone by their first names  Approved.
-Change QWERTY to Dvorak as the standard keyboard layout (it's much faster)  Approved.
-Tiny bit of cartilage in skull coded into everyone's DNA so that nanobots can get in and out via syringe to enable us to work, perform every day tasks, and play games just by thinking. (Not so much a tweak as a technological breakthrough, but it's still awesome!)  Denied until the technology is actually here to do it, then we can talk.

EDIT: Explanations in parentheses

-Penguin

I wrote something like this on my Facebook wall once.  Or technically, as a "note" on my wall.  Whatever.  I had titled it, "10 laws I would pass for the betterment of the worlds of religion, government, and entertainment."  Cut and pasting from it:


1) Almost everything that isn't a danger or removal of rights to others (unless with their informed and revokable-at-any-time consent) will be legal. Nothing is illegal or immoral that doesn't qualify above.

2 & 3 skipped for being a Rule 14.

Edit: decided to risk #3.  #2 will never fly though.

3) Religions are now free to try, convict, and impose punishments to their own members for violations of their religious rules outside of any interference from the state. The accused/convicted/punished however can "get out of jail free" at any time by disavowing their affiliation with the religion in question, if they don't want to accept the accusation/judgment/consequences. No government will recognize religious laws, and no religion will have any authority over non-members of that religion.

4) All American college football divisions will have a 32 team playoff to determine the national champion. There will now be a 10 second runoff rule in college football, and all goalpost uprights in college football must be replaced if they are not of NFL height.

5) Repeatedly failing to fact check your TV "news" stories will result in it being illegal to label your TV channel a "news" channel. Just like you can't call your drink "juice" unless there's at least 10% stuff from fruit in there.

6) All non-scientific temperature measurements of the weather will be done in Fahrenheit world-wide. Because -10 to 110 is a more useful range of numbers for understanding what the temperature actually feels like than -23 to 43. Scientific measurements are free to use whatever suits them best.

7) Every nation will have an independent body of its private citizens that looks through state secrets and publishes what is safe to be known to the public before the public can even know to ask for the information. Nothing will legally remain a secret by any government from the public for longer than 50 years.

8) In American football, in the National Football League, there will be a play-in game for any NFL division winner with a .500 or lower record to be played against the last potential wild-card team left out of the playoffs in the same conference. In addition the NFL will be prohibited from extending the regular season to more than 16 games while claiming to be enhancing player safety.

9) Every "reality" TV series featuring people who are best described as a "socialite" will be canceled and never re-aired.

10) Science and learning oriented TV shows are permitted only 10 seconds after a commercial break to describe what was going on before the commercial break, and no more than that. If you don't have enough material to make a TV episode without repeating everything repeatedly, you must choose to not make that TV episode.

[phatzo]

I thought they were rangars in your parts.

Ranga seems to be the current spelling.

[Tordon22]

Puck you ranga.

[Penguin]

Key:

Approved.
Conditional Approval or Approval with alterations/corrections.
Conditional Denial.
Denied.


I wrote something like this on my Facebook wall once.  Or technically, as a "note" on my wall.  Whatever.  I had titled it, "10 laws I would pass for the betterment of the worlds of religion, government, and entertainment."  Cut and pasting from it:


1) Almost everything that isn't a danger or removal of rights to others (unless with their informed and revokable-at-any-time consent) will be legal. Nothing is illegal or immoral that doesn't qualify above.

2 & 3 skipped for being a Rule 14.

Edit: decided to risk #3.  #2 will never fly though.

3) Religions are now free to try, convict, and impose punishments to their own members for violations of their religious rules outside of any interference from the state. The accused/convicted/punished however can "get out of jail free" at any time by disavowing their affiliation with the religion in question, if they don't want to accept the accusation/judgment/consequences. No government will recognize religious laws, and no religion will have any authority over non-members of that religion.

4) All American college football divisions will have a 32 team playoff to determine the national champion. There will now be a 10 second runoff rule in college football, and all goalpost uprights in college football must be replaced if they are not of NFL height.

5) Repeatedly failing to fact check your TV "news" stories will result in it being illegal to label your TV channel a "news" channel. Just like you can't call your drink "juice" unless there's at least 10% stuff from fruit in there.

6) All non-scientific temperature measurements of the weather will be done in Fahrenheit world-wide. Because -10 to 110 is a more useful range of numbers for understanding what the temperature actually feels like than -23 to 43. Scientific measurements are free to use whatever suits them best.

7) Every nation will have an independent body of its private citizens that looks through state secrets and publishes what is safe to be known to the public before the public can even know to ask for the information. Nothing will legally remain a secret by any government from the public for longer than 50 years.

8) In American football, in the National Football League, there will be a play-in game for any NFL division winner with a .500 or lower record to be played against the last potential wild-card team left out of the playoffs in the same conference. In addition the NFL will be prohibited from extending the regular season to more than 16 games while claiming to be enhancing player safety.

9) Every "reality" TV series featuring people who are best described as a "socialite" will be canceled and never re-aired.

10) Science and learning oriented TV shows are permitted only 10 seconds after a commercial break to describe what was going on before the commercial break, and no more than that. If you don't have enough material to make a TV episode without repeating everything repeatedly, you must choose to not make that TV episode.

Regarding start times, your proposal makes more sense.  How about school starting an hour after children of that age would naturally wake up due to dawn?

#4 I don't know too much about American Football...

#5 Definitely.  Cruddy reporting would become 'conjecture'

#6 It's just a matter of personal preference.  Saying that 70 degrees is hot is just as subjective as saying that 30 or 300 is hot.

#7 In the words of Caesar, "Who guards the guards?" You have to trust your government or their affiliates eventually.

#8 Again, I don't know anything about football.

#9 You can choose to watch it.

#10 Yeah, that really ticks me off.  However, few people remember stuff like the Ideal Gas Law, much less everyday scientific terminology, so telling them would definitely help.

-Penguin