upvotinglurker

If children aren't eating, the cause is most likely not being able to afford food, or not being provided with food by their parents. If teachers were to have any effect, it would be by giving the children money or food, not "hanging out" and "encouraging" them.

A clearer way of stating it might be not "the euro students value their education more because it's free," but "the euro students value their education more because college attendance is determined by academic status rather than ability to pay. So, they had to work hard at their studies to get into college, and must continue to perform well academically or risk being kicked out."

Whereas in the US, college attendance generally* is determined by ability to pay, and a student who can pay will almost certainly be able to find some college that will let them attend, whether they take their studies seriously ("value their education") or not.

*Of course achievement still matters if you want to get into the most selective institutions ... but I gather you can do that with (a lot) of money, too.

From Harold McGee's fabulously scientific book On Food and Cooking[0]:

"Hearts of palm are the growing stem tips of various palm trees, especially the South American peach palm Bactris gasipaes, which readily resprouts after its tip is cut....[Harvesting] hearts of other palms often results in the wasteful death of the entire tree."

(emphasis mine)

[0]https://books.google.com/books?id=bKVCtH4AjwgC&lpg=PA316&vq=...

Small farms that keep grain-fed livestock absolutely do.

One of these things is not like the others. Other people cannot kill me with their gay marriage or expensive coffee flavored drink.

Also, even more archaically, to grains of salt - for example, those used to cure corned beef.

> In my experience, they typically like to pick apart others, but can't handle being picked apart.

Yes. cryoshon even states in his post that he wouldn't want to be around a person like himself. So he's only allowed to interact with masochists who like being constantly criticized while never criticizing back, because anything else would be "fake"?

Primary/secondary textbooks are not professional academic publications, and typically lag far behind the latter. Your primary/secondary teacher's behavior is not a reflection of professional archaeologists' behavior.

You'd have to reach a very high salary before you can buy a presidential election or gun control laws (stuff I think GP was alluding to in their post)

In what way? And isn't "black market company" an oxymoron?

Yep. The AmazonBasics brand of aspirin may appear, but it will just be putting their label on the product manufactured by the companies already specialized to manufacture it (as is probably true with a lot of existing AmazonBasics products).

> The original commenter's scenario talked about novice vs. experienced.

It talked about novice vs. "skilled, competent" drivers, which suggests the latter meeting some threshold beyond just experience. (Making their behavior even more likely to be a demonstration of skill and safe technique.)

Yes. It seems like never having a serious health problem in your life would be the "edge case," at least if you live to be elderly.

This is the first time I've heard of the Sentinelese, but based on the Wikipedia articles[0], they have been observed using enough words, grammar, etc. for linguists to make hypotheses about how it is (or is not) related to and inter-intelligible with the languages of nearby ethnic groups.

If "the Sentinelese have been observed using sounds and patterns of sounds in ways that match what we have always known/referred to as language, therefore they have language" is not an acceptable statement, then it's hard to see how any statement on the subject can be made at all (including the statement "Koko has language").

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language, as well as the one you linked directly to

> My point was more that, in this case, she is “just a librarian”, because this type of thing is what being a librarian is supposed to mean—it’s just that most people suck at being librarians,

In my experience (working in an academic library and interacting a lot with employees of other academic libraries), most actual present-day academic librarians do not suck at being a librarian. They're not as high-profile as Jessamyn West, but neither are they "computer literate old ladies" -- they use computers constantly in their daily work and are at least aware of issues with digital privacy, copyright law overreaches, etc. I suspect anyone who thinks "computer literate old lady" is still the normative example of a librarian, hasn't interacted with many librarians lately (or perhaps has limited experience e.g. in a small town library).

I wonder what kind of liability insurance, regulatory compliance, etc. is required for a business like this (in the US, where any injury to a child seems culturally likely to lead to a lawsuit). Mom-and-pop day cares exist in my area, so clearly it's possible to have a child-centered business without the backing of corporate lawyers -- but how big of a risk are they taking should something happen?

Are there numbers on the average height of those fatal falls? If they're from balconies, roofs, etc., I'd say being on a bike (a few feet from the ground) would make it much safer.

> I suspect adults learn languages a lot faster than kids, when we spend the same amount of time being exposed & practicing.

In linguistics, it's pretty well accepted that kids learn languages faster than adults for neurological reasons, with considerable research support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period

Presumably their class sizes would also be a responsive part of the system (so they wouldn't be half full).

> So taking a year or two to figure out how to be an adult is not the worst approach to take.

A year spent figuring out how to be an adult would indeed be helpful. Unfortunately, for students who are still immature and sheltered at 18, an additional year spent having their lives completely managed by their parents seems more likely.

When an entire department wants a publication on paper, a single copy in a library won't serve that need (since that copy can only be in one place at once). I experienced this in college (before electronic journals were widespread) with professors assigning a reading to an entire class and not providing copies.

And that's not taking into account that much of academia comprises disciplines where nothing is exactly "useful", or expected to be (e.g. arts and humanities). Metrics of worthiness in these areas are naturally going to be pretty subjective. (Which is not to say they couldn't be crowdsourced.)

Yup. One of my high school classmates was an assistant manager at the Burger King where we worked as soon as he graduated high school.

Very much. I watched the show for the first time by "binging" the first four seasons, just ahead of the season 5 premiere, so I went in already having heard all the buzz about the showing being "Mr. Chips to Scarface." By episode 2 or 3 I was already thinking he was always Scarface.

Is that true for English language books in the age of Amazon, Goodreads, etc.?

> Reading almost certainly takes more activity from the reader.

People who make this kind of claim seem to think "visual learning" means being shown pictures or videos (not reading)

> Also your idea that visual learners tries to avoid workimg real problems seems to be that you have dealt with lazy people who tried to hide between learning styles.

I think that's exactly what GP was trying to say.

I work an administrative job at a US university, and I definitely recognize the trope of people pursuing their PhD just because they like the student lifestyle and/or don't know what else to do.

To the extent society needs education as civic socialization, it seems like it should be done at the pre-college level.

In the US today, it is happening neither in high school nor in college (at least for most people at most high schools and colleges). The former is mostly about keeping youth supervised while parents work and enabling sufficient standardized test scores to get into college; the latter about getting the piece of paper that allows you to get a livable-wage job.

> Are you a police officer? Trial attorney? Inspector General? You almost certainly should not be on social media, or exclusively posting baby pictures and acting within defined guidelines from your employer.

An agent from the local mid-size-city FBI office spoke at an "information security for regular people" event at my university. He said he had a Facebook profile, but pretty much all the information on it was false.

> Nobody cares if your SQL is written by nazis as long as nobody knows they're nazis.

If they're posting nazi stuff on Facebook, everybody knows they're nazis.