America - The Official Thread

[Exorcet]

If you don't think bullets are meant to kill, you're naive. Air pistols or lasers would be a lot cheaper and cleaner to shoot at the range if you just wanted to make sport of target practice. You train and shoot at a range with live ammo so that, god forbid you had to use lethal force in self-defense, you could efficiently eliminate a threat without missing and/or causing collateral damage.

I did it purely for entertainment, though I suppose I would have pick up general gun handling skills as a result. Air pistols and lasers may be cheaper. They aren't going to generate the sound or recoil though.

Again, we had live ammo. It certainly could be used to kill, however there was zero intention to do that with any of the ammunition. It was in fact forbidden. I do understand why people tend to say otherwise (saying that bullets are meant for killing), but it doesn't really make sense when you think about it. The best you can do is point to very specific cases and events, but then these having nothing to do with guns or bullets in general.

 

[BobK]

When someone is walking around with a gun or attempting to bash someone with a wrench, people around them will try to remove themselves from the situation, that situation is a trigger of dis-comfort and fear.

So you're equating walking around with a holstered, safed firearm with attempting to bash someone with a wrench? I would much, much rather be in the company of a normal, calm person with a holstered weapon than someone trying to bash people with a wrench. In fact, should I ever be in the company of a wrench-wielding basher, I'd certainly hope there's someone with a gun (holstered or not) nearby.

 

[ukfan758]

I think there should be a rule change that bans the use of guns for people under the age of 18 and banning all guns except shotguns, hunting rifles, and handguns/pistols. There is absolutely no need for citizens to have automatic weapons, that is for military and police only.

 

[FoolKiller]

I think there should be a rule change that bans the use of guns for people under the age of 18

I fail to see why. I was using a gun since elementary school.

Ever notice someone who turns 21 often has those few years a drinking way too much way too often. If your username refers to the a University of Kentucky, you have to know what aim talking about. We've had basketball players with the issue. See, they were never prepared for how to properly handle alcohol. Or how teens have the worst driving records? They did just enough training to pass the test. The best teen drivers I knew were the kids who had been driving the truck around the farm since they were tall enough to reach the pedals. They had to know how to drive in open field, around trees, stumps, ditches, and holes.

Currently 4-H, scouts, and conservation camps teach kids how to properly handle and use guns. Stopping that will just mean a lot of gun mishandling cases among 18 year olds. Exposure and experience leads to competence.

and banning all guns except shotguns, hunting rifles, and handguns/pistols. There is absolutely no need for citizens to have automatic weapons, that is for military and police only.

I would argue that is a reason we should have them.

These guys think so.

Maybe we should ask the citizens of Ferguson or at the Bundy Ranch. Or maybe the parents of Baby Bou Bou.

 

[Sanji Himura]

People should fear guns, because guns kill when used to that effect. They demand respect and care, but I don't think they should terrify people. When the public can be comfortable with the assumption that everyone is responsibly armed, they can be more wary of and better prepared for people that are behaving strangely or in a way that would jeopardize the safety of people in the area.

Since yesterday would have been John Locke's 382nd birthday, let's see what the man that Thomas Jefferson really called the person who understood Natural Law said about guns shall we?

.”Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other.”

 

[Omnis]

I think there should be a rule change that bans the use of guns for people under the age of 18 and banning all guns except shotguns, hunting rifles, and handguns/pistols. There is absolutely no need for citizens to have automatic weapons, that is for military and police only.

You don't need a law to keep your kids from shooting guns.

 

[samurai8juice]

I think there should be a rule change that bans the use of guns for people under the age of 18 and banning all guns except shotguns, hunting rifles, and handguns/pistols. There is absolutely no need for citizens to have automatic weapons, that is for military and police only.

I partly agree with that. I think that anything other than a Hunting Rifle, Shotgun, and Handgun should be banned for citizen use(but maybe allowed at ranges). Because, who really needs an AR-15 with a drum magazine other than the military?

I don't agree with the age of 18 thing though. I think it should be somewhere between 8-10 for semi-automatic weapons at ranges, and 14-18 for fully automatic. But no age limit for private use.

 

[Exorcet]

I partly agree with that. I think that anything other than a Hunting Rifle, Shotgun, and Handgun should be banned for citizen use(but maybe allowed at ranges). Because, who really needs an AR-15 with a drum magazine other than the military?

Why does it matter? You could argue that people don't need much of anything but food and shelter. AR-15 with a drum magazine is desirable by some people and the act of owning one causes zero harm. That's enough to justify selling them. Banning them will turn out like banning murder. It doesn't stop murder.

The safety argument is also extremely weak since safety is pretty much arbitrary. You say that some guns are not safe enough to be given to people. This is just your own opinion though, and if it was enforced it's basically a case of one person putting their will ahead of someone else's. If that's OK then wouldn't it be OK for someone to judge every decision that you make and approve of deny it? If you want to buy a car, someone else might say it's too fast for you and deny the purchase. Try to buy a house and they say it's too big for you. You want to go to college to become a programmer but they say the economy needs more plumbers and you're forced to become a plumber.

I don't agree with the age of 18 thing though. I think it should be somewhere between 8-10 for semi-automatic weapons at ranges, and 14-18 for fully automatic. But no age limit for private use.

A range with experienced officers is probably the best place to take someone young with a gun. I've shot along with kids younger than the girl in the video. Four years and I can't remember an incident worth mentioning. I'm pretty sure the range officers once went ballistic on someone who wouldn't stop pointing the gun in an unsafe direction though.

 

[GBO Possum]

<snip>

It's a crazy thing to happen, but is just an unfortunate accident.

@PeterJB - No, guns aren't just for shooting people. <snip>

Not all guns are for shooting people, however it's hard to argue that an Uzi is designed for purposes other than killing people.

 

[BobK]

I partly agree with that. I think that anything other than a Hunting Rifle, Shotgun, and Handgun should be banned for citizen use(but maybe allowed at ranges). Because, who really needs an AR-15 with a drum magazine other than the military?

Here's why:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

 

[Sanji Himura]

In other words, our current form of government has the ultimate check against tyranny written in, @samurai8juice. If the government gets so out of control that it doesn't know its *** from a hole in the ground, it is our legal obligation to use force to instill change from the government - a coup.

 

[zzz_pt]

I was about to post something I find ludicrous about the foreign policy of the USA... And then I read some people's oppinion about guns.

I'll leave this:

 

[Famine]

I'll leave this:

No you won't.

That's the exact incident that has been discussed for the last page. It also has its own thread. We don't need to see the video posted on GTP.

 

[zzz_pt]

No you won't.

That's the exact incident that has been discussed for the last page. It also has its own thread. We don't need to see the video posted on GTP.

What? What's wrong with the video I've posted?

I saw it has been discussed for the last page, that's why I posted the video.

In case you didn't watch it, it doesn't show the "bad part" and it's an opinion on the subject.

 

[Maccer_42]

No one talking about all the recent celebrity nudes that were 'leaked'. I didn't feel it was thread worthy but thought at least someone might have mentioned it in here by now.

 

[FoolKiller]

No one talking about all the recent celebrity nudes that were 'leaked'. I didn't feel it was thread worthy but thought at least someone might have mentioned it in here by now.

Too busy looking.

 

[Sanji Himura]

Breaking News: Jets were Scrambled after a pilot of a private plane was unresponsive. The plane, a Socata TBM700 is a high performance single-engine turboprop that was on course from Rochester, New York, to Naples, Florida.

Source: AP.

 

[ukfan758]

Breaking News: Jets were Scrambled after a pilot of a private plane was unresponsive. The plane, a Socata TBM700 is a high performance single-engine turboprop that was on course from Rochester, New York, to Naples, Florida.

Source: AP.

Any update?

 

[Adamgp]

Any update?

http://news.yahoo.com/fighters-scrambled-pilot-fails-respond-172057761.html

 

[FoolKiller]

This is not math.



I wonder how long a complex physics equation would take to complete using this method.

But I see a huge failure. She splits 6 into 1 and 5. She doesn't explain how, just does. She actually says "we know." How do we know? Oh, memorization! Wait, I thought that was the wrong way that we were trying to get away from.

Then we have 10+5. And we just know that 10+5 is 15. How? We just do.

Ladies and gentlemen, this "our friend 10" BS is why my daughter is in private school, will remain in private school, and why I will fight Common Core from ever coming into contact with my daughter.

For more brilliant teaching methods, here is the full series of videos.
http://www.wgrz.com/story/news/local/2014/09/02/common-core-homework-helper/14925331/




Now for something completely different:


Welcome to Police State, USA.

Cops vs people in wheelchairs

 

[Northstar]

Common Core is a joke, last year I was helping the 2nd grader of the people I rent a room from and she said her teacher told her if she didn't know a word she wasn't supposed to sound it out and instead should just skip it and come back to it later and see what word would fit with the rest of the sentence. Granted I'm not 100% sure that is a result of CC, but I just can't fathom a teacher making something like reading that complex of a thing for a 7 year old without being told to do so.

 

[FoolKiller]

Common Core is a joke, last year I was helping the 2nd grader of the people I rent a room from and she said her teacher told her if she didn't know a word she wasn't supposed to sound it out and instead should just skip it and come back to it later and see what word would fit with the rest of the sentence. Granted I'm not 100% sure that is a result of CC, but I just can't fathom a teacher making something like reading that complex of a thing for a 7 year old without being told to do so.

I see why they would do that if the goal is to read a sentence. It is a common crossword puzzle strategy, but just like in crossword puzzles it is a cheap trick to get around actually knowing vocabulary.

I am guessing the list of spelling words is a thing of the past, judging by this anecdote and the way I see kids spelling things today.

 

[Danoff]

This is not math.

I wonder how long a complex physics equation would take to complete using this method.

That is how I do arithmetic (and I'm an astrodynamics expert). Is that how I would teach it? No. Do I think kids are going to learn things right from that? No. But is the principle helpful and worth being taught? Absolutely.

If you learn math by visualizing numbers as sets, you can combine the sets that are easy to combine and collect the leftover bits mentally. When I add 5 and 6, I don't mentally add 5 and 6, I add 5 and 5 and 1. Again, I'm a 34 year old expert in astrodynamics with a master's degree in engineering. I visualize the ways that 5 breaks down: 0 and 5, 1 and 4, 2 and 3. Then, when I need to add 12 and 14, I know that the 2 and 4 is actually a 5 with 1 leftover. Then I add the 2 sets of 10, the 5, and the 1, and get 26. This takes a fraction of a second and happens subconsciously. I just visualize how 12 blocks and 14 blocks fit together.

To an extent, I do the same thing with multiplication. Though it's not as geometric, I use the same principles and apply them to multiplication that I have memorized (as do most people I think). I don't multiply 7 and 13, I multiply 7 and 10, and 7 and 3, add them together (blocks) and get 91. And to an extent, deep deep down, I think when I multiply 7 by 3 I actually visualize 3 sets of 7 blocks fitting together.

I think what you're seeing in that video is a good idea broken down into poor implementation so that teachers who don't understand it can learn to teach it.

 

[FoolKiller]

Object oriented math is not the issue. I taught my daughter to do simple arithmetic by age 3 by picturing the numbers as objects. I can actually watch her eyes go up (accessing visual images in her brain) when she does math.

These are things that we all do in our heads. The issue here is the drawing it out that way. A child will not get credit for writing: 9+6=15. That is wrong in common core. They have to draw out these crazy diagrams to show how they got their answer. Carrying a 1 is not enough anymore. But if you draw it out and get the final number wrong you get partial credit.

If you were writing out an equation to work out the physics necessary in certain gravitational fields to place an object into orbit would you be drawing out your hundreds, tens, and ones?

Common core is taking the a Hooked on Phonics style and applying it across the board, with less repercussions for being incorrect than skipping the drawing out the object orientation because you know the answer without needing to draw it out.

 

[Danoff]

Object oriented math is not the issue. I taught my daughter to do simple arithmetic by age 3 by picturing the numbers as objects. I can actually watch her eyes go up (accessing visual images in her brain) when she does math.

These are things that we all do in our heads. The issue here is the drawing it out that way. A child will not get credit for writing: 9+6=15. That is wrong in common core. They have to draw out these crazy diagrams to show how they got their answer. Carrying a 1 is not enough anymore. But if you draw it out and get the final number wrong you get partial credit.

If you were writing out an equation to work out the physics necessary in certain gravitational fields to place an object into orbit would you be drawing out your hundreds, tens, and ones?

Common core is taking the a Hooked on Phonics style and applying it across the board, with less repercussions for being incorrect than skipping the drawing out the object orientation because you know the answer without needing to draw it out.

Yea I'm really not arguing that it's being taught well. I'm just pointing out that the concepts being taught are solid. I guess you're not arguing that the concepts are weak, you're arguing that they're being taught badly. So I guess we're in violent agreement.

 

[BobK]

And yet -- the concept may work well for some people, but I for one find that approach to be confusing; consulting a mental lookup table for me is more straightforward. As such, I think it's wrong to teach it as the only way it may be done. And it's doubly wrong to give partial credit for the wrong answer but using the right method but less credit for getting the right answer but not by the approved method. So long as the method used wasn't osmosis, of course.

 

[FoolKiller]

And yet -- the concept may work well for some people, but I for one find that approach to be confusing; consulting a mental lookup table for me is more straightforward. As such, I think it's wrong to teach it as the only way it may be done. And it's doubly wrong to give partial credit for the wrong answer but using the right method but less credit for getting the right answer but not by the approved method. So long as the method used wasn't osmosis, of course.

And that is the larger issue with Common Core. It assumes all 100+ million kids in the US, despite thousands of miles difference, are best suited with only one form of education. One-on-one time to teach a student the way they will learn best is now discouraged. I know teachers that blatantly violate the CC rules, unless they are being observed, because it is the only way they can actually teach the kids.

It is sad when the only way to properly do your job means risking losing your job.

 

[GBO Possum]

Here we go again in America, our government is panicking about terrorism. No doubt the military/industrial complex is paying them to panic and avoid thinking about fixing other preventable causes of death in America like

Tobacco smoking (400,000+ deaths per year)
Overweight and obesity (300,000+)
Motor Vehicle collisions
Firearm deaths

The last time they panicked about terrorists in a big way was for 9/11, when they spent trillions of dollars we didn't have in response to about 3,000 deaths. And, in doing so, sent more than that number of Americans to their deaths.

What was not counted was the opportunity cost of not spending those trillions on things which would actually benefit America. You know, health, education, infrastructure; the usual suspects.

That's what you get when you sell "democracy" to the highest bidder, and the new owner has short term get-richer-quick goals.

 

[FoolKiller]

Here we go again in America, our government is panicking about terrorism. No doubt the military/industrial complex is paying them to panic and avoid thinking about fixing other preventable causes of death in America like

Tobacco smoking (400,000+ deaths per year)
Overweight and obesity (300,000+)
Motor Vehicle collisions
Firearm deaths

The last time they panicked about terrorists in a big way was for 9/11, when they spent trillions of dollars we didn't have in response to about 3,000 deaths. And, in doing so, sent more than that number of Americans to their deaths.

What was not counted was the opportunity cost of not spending those trillions on things which would actually benefit America. You know, health, education, infrastructure; the usual suspects.

That's what you get when you sell "democracy" to the highest bidder, and the new owner has short term get-richer-quick goals.

1) What triggered this? I assume you are referring to something in the Middle East, but don't want to assume anything. Honestly, we've been panicking about terrorism for 13 years. It's the new boogeyman.

2) Combine your deaths, add some more, and call it cardiovascular disease (CVD) 788,000 deaths. The big trick is directly linking tobacco and diet to those deaths. We have correlation, but not causation. Death by tobacco and obesity is often an unprovable guess. Death by a specific disease is usually a definite fact found in autopsy. There is even overlap in numbers when you begin blaming tobacco and other environmental factors, until their sum total is more than the number of deaths from the disease they are accused of causing.

 

[niky]

This is not math.



I wonder how long a complex physics equation would take to complete using this method.

But I see a huge failure. She splits 6 into 1 and 5. She doesn't explain how, just does. She actually says "we know." How do we know? Oh, memorization! Wait, I thought that was the wrong way that we were trying to get away from.

Then we have 10+5. And we just know that 10+5 is 15. How? We just do.

Ladies and gentlemen, this "our friend 10" BS is why my daughter is in private school, will remain in private school, and why I will fight Common Core from ever coming into contact with my daughter.

I can certainly see where they're coming from, by attempting to get students to mentally break down larger numbers into smaller, easier to handle numbers. And yes, we can intuit what 10 + 5 is... you simply put the 1 and the 5 together for 15.... as we're trained to think in multiples of ten.

-

Big problem is... by the time you can do 10+5, and by the time you've memorized 5+5 = 6+4 = 7+3 = 8+2 = 9+1 = 10... you're already well on your way to memorizing your addition tables up to 10+10...

I don't understand people's aversion to rigid memorization... when all the shortcuts likewise rely on it to some degree (I trained to teach "Magic Finger Math" as a sideline in College. I stopped because I realized it was futile teaching students with math issues shortcuts that required more mental gymnastics than simply mastering the basic algorithms)

-

Reading up on this... I'm aghast that the Federal Government would implement a standard without any experimental or empirical validation... written by people who aren't frontline educators.

Probably easier to outsource Math curriculum development to China... at least then you'd get Abacus proficiency on the curriculum.