joeclark77

In fact I think it's a great area where technology can be used to support homeschooling networks. There are some organized by geographic areas, churches, etc, but what if you live in a cabin on a mountain somewhere? Forming a virtual homeschooling network where one parent teaches math, another teaches writing, etc, could be a wonderful solution.

Python 3, I hope. Right?

I think that by "different walks of life" you mean different skin colors, right? Real diversity to me means people who come from different places, have been through different experiences, do different kinds of work, have read different books, have different ideas, and so on: exactly what public school can't offer.

First of all, what have you got against sex and weapons? Are you a commie or something? (/jk)

Second, yes, it's true that there are gangs, crime, bullying, popularity-obsessed people, etc., in the real world. But the difference is this: outside public school, those are bad behaviors, which lead to unsuccessful outcomes. If you want to teach children to succeed in society, you need to teach the opposite of what public school "socialization" teaches.

Your last point in particular doesn't pass a reality check. We learn best from people who have already been through what we're going through, not from others who are just a clueless as we are.

The answer to that is, "get out of the metro". Cities are designed for singles and DINKs. There's a reason people talk about moving to the country, building a little house, starting a garden, etc... it's a better life for a family, and sustainable.

No, that's not what society is. Admittedly, public schools are doing their best to "shape" society with their own pathologies, but the behavior "socialized" in public schools still doesn't fly in the adult world. Most people spend their 20s unlearning that bizarre teenage socialization in the "school of hard knocks".

In what world is normal life in society a "bubble" but rigidly-structured conformity to professionally-designed programs in a walled-off institution not a bubble?

You apparently didn't notice I was simply taking your four paragraphs, which to you must seem to be taken-for-granted common sense, and replaced them with four corresponding statements that are well known to everyone else's common sense. You're free to ask for examples, but I didn't need to provide any to make my point.

High school graduates are all "off". It takes years for them to learn to behave naturally as adults. I'm a professor - I've seen it. The only freshmen who are interesting to talk to at all are the homeschooled ones.

High school teaches "just for the test" and includes a lot of baloney like "evolution" for purposes of checking checkboxes.

High schools are packed with "absurdly unqualified" teachers and even more unqualified "administrators".

All your rationalizations seem pretty thin gruel when you face the undisputable fact that homeschooled kids far exceed public-school peers in academics.

See? beat for beat.

Parents may or may not make the best choices for their children; there are no guarantees there. When talking about government, though, it is guaranteed to make poor choices, and self-serving ones to boot.

What defense do free citizens have against the ambitions of a government, when they don't have the right to pull their children out of its clutches?

"Peers" as defined in public schooling means "people within plus or minus 12 months of your age, and with virtually the same experiences and knowledge". That's hardly "diverse", and moreover is hardly reflective of the kind of people you interact with in real life as an adult. Homeschooled kids regularly interact with adults and children much older and much younger than themselves, gain a far greater range of experience, and are far more effective adults.

I have a hard time imagining what you mean by "pushing them farther than parents think they should be pushed". Homeschooled students far exceed public schooled students in academics. I guess you are referring to the condom-on-banana stuff and the lectures on white privilege, right? In what other areas are public schools actually considered to be "pushing the boundaries"?

Maine is nice and the cost of living is low. Fast internet is available in the towns. If you're looking for a remote cabin by a lake, you might have to go with satellite internet.

I think many homeschoolers know that students "develop socially" in the public schools, but have observed also that the social structures and behaviors seen there (gangs, bullies, cliques, general teenage crappiness) are utterly dysfunctional and quite unlike the social behaviors that would be acceptable in the adult world.

There's a case to be made for homeschooling as a better way to "socialize" kids than public schooling.

There's no "ability gap" between the "elite" and the "public". The reason the "elite" have had such a bad year in Britain, the USA, and elsewhere is that they have proven themselves manifestly incompetent.

The real skills gap is between the, I don't know, maybe ninety percent of us who work in office jobs and could be easily replaced, compared to the maybe ten percent who have really invested in learning their trades (whether it be rocket science or plumbing) and cannot be easily replaced. My generation (GenX) was taught when we were kids that we should be "knowledge workers" and get paid a lot for doing very little. The end result is, most of us are in jobs where if we quit tomorrow, the boss could have a replacement hired in a month. We were pushed to be "generalists" with the idea that we could have a whole bunch of different careers, rather than spending our lives doing one thing. But the joke's on us: those people who spend their lives doing just one thing are the ones most valuable to the world.

I've been learning the Starting Strength approach, and although I'm hardly an expert yet, it makes a lot of sense to me. Look for the book by Rippetoe: http://amzn.to/2gAliEO Essentially it's barbell training using four exercises that each work multiple muscle systems together: the squat, the press, the bench press, the deadlift. It's about building strength, not losing weight, but you'll experience both of those things, and strength will really help with your back.

What appeals to me about the method is that it's based on solid thinking about the physics and physiology involved. The book is full of anatomical drawings that wouldn't be necessary and wouldn't be found in your average workout book. The creator really made a thorough study of strength training his life's work.

What's more, choosing Python 3 was already a no-brainer for someone like me who was a Python beginner five years ago.

Don't worry... eventually we'll get Python 4 or something, and then all of us who learned Python 3 first will become the grumbling holdouts...

If doing the ordinary and correct things is leading you to despair, then try something adventurous and radical: sail the ocean, climb a mountain, become a monk... use your imagination!

(Here's a secret: ten years from now, no one will know or care whether you have that master's degree or not.)

"no matter which side you're on"... but what about those against net neutrality? Are we not a side?

I like Vim for editing markdown (I write books on Leanpub, and use Deckset for my lecture presentations, so this is serious work). I'm still learning it but I enjoy learning how to customize it. My advice: google and implement one change at a time, rather than trying to add ten different features to your .vimrc all at once.

For coding Python, I prefer PyCharm from JetBrains. In time I may get Vim to do everything a real IDE does, but time is money and I can't wait.

They should be paying him, frankly. Twitter has been circling the drain and their best hope for a revival is that Trump has found Twitter to be a good way to bypass the media filter and speak directly to his supporters.

Lord Moulton called it "the realm of manners" in between the domains of law and of free choice. Mark Steyn interpreted it recently: http://www.steynonline.com/7468/the-realm-of-manners

Whoa... is this a real thing?

That is an interesting framing of the question. Who is to say that "the Internet's democracy" disagrees with plain old democracy on this issue?

Since I assume that the new administration will be biased in favor of free enterprise, the answer to how you can keep Net Neutrality seems obvious: get together with like-minded people and string up your own wires.

I'd go with Python and specifically the scientific + numerical libraries. There are books like "Python for Data Analysis" from O'Reilly.

Five years ago I would have said "R", but Python enthusiasts have been replicating what R does in Python at a frantic pace, and R will never really replicate what Python brings to the table.

...and the mask comes off. It seems that the writer isn't actually concerned with "fake news", but demands that Facebook censor "opinion pieces" negative of his candidate. Amazing that he thinks this is somehow strengthening his case!

Burning some old tires in the backyard ought to do it.

What's more: if the shoe were ever on the other foot, say if the popular vote went for the Republican but the electoral vote was due to the Democrat, there isn't a chance in the world that the blue states would keep their end of the bargain. They would immediately sue and block it. The NPVIC is only meant to be binding on red states, and everyone knows it.

Don't discourage them. This is the "see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women" phase. Let the victors enjoy it for a bit longer.

It is meaningless which candidate won the most votes, because the election was not about winning the most votes. If it were, millions more Republicans in hopelessly blue states like California might have voted, and similarly on the other side. We do not know who would have won if it was understood that victory depended on total votes.