Two is two all over the world, no matter the language. Maths unites humanity — that is, until someone decides to un-race-ify that which isn’t racist. At this point in the nonsense-time-continuum everything they do to make it less racist will only make it more.
And so it comes to pass that profoundly racist people are telling us maths is white supremacist. It’s not just a one-divided-by-zero moment in rhetoric and reasoning — it’s as if Asians don’t exist, or aren’t human, or don’t set records in Maths SATs? Whatever it is the Wokerati are protesting, it’s not about the group “the system favours most”. Instead it’s a scorecard in a secret social bingo and the winning numbers are W-H-I-T-E.
The most racist people in the world are not the ones doing differential geometry, it’s the ones dividing their community by their lowest common denominator — their skin.
What could be more racist than telling children that their melanin-type can’t get the answer right? Not only does it set them up to fail, it destroys their success if they manage it anyway. Did they really deserve that spot, that prize, or that degree?
Nothing entrenches racism like judging people by their race….
Is mathematics racist? California could blaze pathway with woke math
California education officials are considering applying a social justice paradigm to teaching K-12 mathematics that would erase “White supremacy” from the subject and eliminate gifted classes for students.
How disabling to grow up watching adults debate “your handicap”?
Proponents of new math say the way the subject currently is taught is suffused with White supremacy. They say it handicaps some minority students by insisting on what they consider racist concepts — such as arriving at correct answers.
And the poison chalice of low expectations shall pourth forth to shackle the children with failure, even before they start.
Children who are mathematically gifted apparently shouldn’t be taught gifted maths. Presumably we don’t want any sports supremacy either?
Behind every social justice mathematician is someone who can’t do maths. Luckily Will Happer can, which is why he is a climate skeptic too.
Some scholars say the idea that math supports or is based on White supremacy ignores the fact that mathematics is a universal language discovered and developed by diverse cultures over millennia.
“It is absurd to accuse mathematics as being ‘racist,’” said William Happer, a professor of physics emeritus at Princeton University. “We use Indian numerals that come to us through the Arabs. There are still lots of distinguished mathematicians in India who speak the same worldwide mathematical language as mathematicians in North America, Europe, the Arab world, India, China, Japan, Africa, South America, etc.
“Greek geometry, much of it borrowed from Egypt and Mesopotamia, is still one of the most sublime human achievements,” Mr. Happer said.
But “three plus three equals a Government Grant for Me?”
h/t Charles M, and Bill
Dear commenters, be kind to the mods. There are many words which will trip the filter on this topic, and approval may be slow. Apologies. Best phrase things carefully, not color-fully. They know not what they do (most of them). A race war might be exactly what a few are secretly hoping for. We, on the other hand, aren’t really interested in the color of anyone’s skin, we’d rather judge each by their character…
Correct answers are a matter of Public Safety and National Security.
The next time you fly in an airplane, drive over a bridge, stand near a boiler or compressed gas cylinder, engage an electrician, work in a high rise building, sail on a ship, or a thousand other things, it matters very much that the maths were in fact correct.
Math errors can cost lives, property, wealth and health.
The mathematically gifted ought be nurtured, for from them will come future wonders. Regardless of race.
It is lunacy to denigrate Maths to flog social justice hypocrisy and woke tyranny.
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Not just lunacy, but like a form of civilizational vandalism…
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” but like a form of civilizational vandalism…”
But we ALL know the WOKE are good at this.
I prefer to ignore these ignoramusists.
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Never suppose that they’re not aware of that.
The enemies of the West don’t even want people who support them out of conviction, because people who make a choice can unmake it. No, they want machines with all thought crushed out of them.
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Confusion is their goal.
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The Left are vandals.
Full stop.
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Perhaps you did not read widely enough else you would have discovered that Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, pointed out challenges with differentiating teaching for a class where students are at widely different levels, supporting the many parents that cited fears over their child’s unique abilities being shortchanged without pathways for students identified as gifted. To clarify, “D-Santa Monica” indicates Senator Allen is a Democrat.
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Unfortunately, the public school system doesn’t cater for gifted kids that well but it’s also unfair to expect it to. So the answer is usually private schooling. Having such a wide range of abilities in a class means some form of compromise.
The other ugly reality is that it can be shown that there appears to be an intentional dumbing down of education. My experience with the US system of universities is that its generally poor compared to other countries.
Ergo, compromised secondary and university sectors means rubbish output…by design it seems. But the Leftists who infest these systems with communist sympathies would no doubt be happy to produce under educated stupid drones that fit the Leftist world view perfectly….
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I was fortunate enough (1965) to have teachers who explained things to my parents regarding how they had to teach at an “average” level, but they recommended tutors, books and materials that were helpful. Later on, we could afford a private school that had advanced math, chemistry, physics, classes and small class sizes. Changed my life. I was “hard to handle” because I was bored out of my mind and more than a little bit hyperactive and OCD. If those teachers hadn’t helped, and my parents sacrificed, I’d probably have ended up in jail.
Clearly, public schools cannot be all things to all people. But, they don’t have to dumb it down, either.
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It’s not a matter of dumbing down, or even public vs private schools, or even city vs the ‘bush’, any more.
In Queensland, right now, they are hard pressed to get teachers who are qualified to teach maths and the sciences.
To that end, there are a couple of major high schools in Brisbane who have NO teachers qualified to teach Maths, so to cover that, what do you think they have done?
There are no Maths classes at all in those schools.
They sent a note home with students saying that until further notice, Maths classes were cancelled.
That’ll fix it.
Tony.
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The other ugly reality is that it can be shown that there appears to be an intentional dumbing down of education. My experience with the US system of universities is that its generally poor compared to other countries.
I can only comment on Australian and UK universities but in Australia education standards have indeed dropped. This is largely due to Labor, under Gillard particularly, aiming for higher levels of Australian students in tertiary education by removing quotas on the number of students entering but not funding the universities to fully cater for the increases that did occur. To cover the shortfall, student numbers were increased but as courses filled rapidly often there were no places for the extra students. So entry standards were lowered which did get more students in. But these students couldn’t get in to most courses as either they didn’t have a high enough ATAR or the courses were full. As teaching courses were not popular many of these students took a teaching degree and as in the main they had low ATARs the standards of those courses were lowered
As for “But the Leftists who infest these systems with communist sympathies would no doubt be happy to produce under educated stupid drones that fit the Leftist world view perfectly”….
The students came from both Left and Right and I can assure you from personal experience as an academic for many years students from the Right are also “under educated stupid drones” and they do fit the Rightist perfectly. Just look at the comments columns in papers like The Australian. Poor spelling, lack of grammar, inability to form coherent sentences. In actuality comments in the Guardian are of a higher quality.
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Gillard’s contribution to Australia’s dismal education predicament cannot be overstated.
In particular, under the banner of uniformity quite in the face of today’s calls for diversity, her government’s introduction of a national curriculum eliminated each state’s distinctive approach. On uniformity I always remember a leader writer from Melbourne’s Truth stating that if uniformity were a reason for doing something we’d all be wearing tyrolean hats.
The travesty is to be much worsened by the proposed imposition of aboriginal templating across all topics.
How is it that only the dumbest proposals are given legs in this country? Pumped hydro, diesel subs, desalination plants, piping gas to a coal mine, one quickly runs out of space in the text box…
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Ian,
So the Guardian commenters can spell but not think, and The Australian commenters can think but not spell.
With the Left, it’s all about presentation and not meaning.
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With Gillard, talking about education was so much Hyperbowl. Can you imagine someone even with a belabored law degree, someone who could become Prime Minister of Australia but has never even heard the word hyperbowl? On the positive side it shows that there is no discrimination in Australia and it is certainly not a meritocracy or a system for the gifted when Gillard could reach the highest position in the country without having to be good at anything. And her vision of the “Education Revolution” only required new school halls, an essential asset in the new world of home schooling. And to disagree is still mysogynist.
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And a Hyperbowl is one step up from a Superbowl.
Very meritocritous.
🙂
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Speaking from experience, in the science courses there was standing room only in the lecture theatres in first year. However in second year numbers virtually halved and by 3rd year and graduation the numbers were again reduced. Julia Gillard let everyman and his dog in, but in the sciences it was only the cohort that you would expect graduated. A lot of people racked up a HECS debt and had nothing to show for it.
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Jo you write
“So the Guardian commenters can spell but not think, and The Australian commenters can think but not spell.”
I don’t know whether commenters in the Australian can think or not as they seem unable to present their thoughts coherently unlike commenters in the Guardian who can convey their thoughts, many of which are definitely incisive, very effectively.
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This is nothing new, though. When I was working in a national service company in the early 1980’s I had a very competent, female, technical assistant with a BSc in some branch of science, which escapes me now. She was clever, did what I needed really well, but could not put a finite sentence together or correctly spell most of the words that had more than three syllables. Luckily, I had a Philippina secretary who had an excellent command of English and who was able to edit her reports into something readable. Her maths was OK though!
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most young people lack critical thinking. the way i see it, schools, uni etc are supposed to be the tool to teach young minds to think critically and develop their own ability to use logic in every day life. maths, as a subject, teaches this well by developing patterns in thought that can be applied to all subjects.
due to the constant appeals to authority and deference of teaching to social media trash like the whole climate change subject, we see critical thinking has become only about being critical of some subject matter and the belief that chaos will ensue if it is allowed to be continued. this is just nonsense.
critical thinking –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
is in a short quote – “Critical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgment.[1] The subject is complex, and several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking”
maths creates the logic because it forces you deal with everything in a critical manner, science uses the logic, and language based subjects are supposed to allow the communication of it. i say supposed to because quite often it is neglected by those that concentrate on the logic.
what needs to be taught in school is what is known and what is NOT known in a truthful, unbiased manner in all subjects. eg the class of what is climate change should be only a deconstruction of the hypothesis and little more, because most will already have a good idea of what the ‘consensus’ is through media. in fact a good way of teaching critical thinking would be to deconstruct current media and show just how flat out wrong they are on subjects such as climate change and renewables etc.
if such a subject was taught, it wouldnt be a right v left argument, it would be back to the way it should be, right v wrong, reality v fantasy.
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Re TdeF
June 12, 2021 at 3:07 pm
Remember Tom Lehrer’s observation that the US military was the first to not discriminate on “race, colour, creed or ability”
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Once upon a time I drove around Holland to enlighten a minister of education of Ivory Coast on the Dutch education system. He loved it but asked why it was so expensive? I answered: Try ignorance. He understood.
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Accidental green there Ian. I was held back when in a class of students who were hopeless at chemistry. I ended up leaving; it was far too boring.
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On re-reading I agree with you Ian. Gifted children in maths. and science tend to be short-changed if they have to cope with mixed-ability classes. We need their skills to be properly developed, not frittered away by lack of special teaching. After all, no one complains when sports-mad or music-mad children receive special treatment. Why should science-mad children be treated as lesser beings?
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But Annie, he’s using a strawman — the move in California is to do the exact opposite of that and cancel classes for gifted maths kids.
California seeks end of advanced math courses in name of social justice
May 2021
“In California in 2004-2014, 32% of Asian American students were in gifted programs, compared with 8% of White students, 4% of Black students, and 3% of Latinx students,” reads the text of the new framework.
In response to these apparent inequities, the framework recommends doing away with the accelerated math track the state’s middle school students can currently choose. Under the current system, gifted math students could take both Math 7 and 8 in 7th grade, allowing them to take Algebra 1 in 8th grade. This track puts such students on a pathway to take Calculus by 12th grade, setting the stage for them to take more advanced math courses in college.
The framework argues California’s public schools should do away with grouping students by ability, instead “districts and schools must confront the structural inequities of tracking and ability grouping, and to strengthen their efforts to support all students learning along a common pathway.”
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Every single child is immeasurably precious, no doubt about that.
No less precious are the gifts that some children were born with. Art, Music, Maths, Language.
Any Nation that wants to survive must make efforts to assist high potential individuals in any field into some type of guided development. This does NOT mean that lower achievers don’t have worth or merit. It means that special or unusual talents or abilities must be recognized as National Assets, and developed as such. Because those abilities/talents do matter.
Everyone is an individual. No one is more important on any ethical or moral balance, a priori.
However. Civilizations must, should, can, and ought, to enhance their chances of survival and that includes the intellectual and physical ability of their citizens to excel. Otherwise, there is no point to being an individual or having a government, because without a protected status of being an individual there’s not much use in being a citizen.
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Jo you write
But Annie, he’s using a strawman — the move in California is to do the exact opposite of that and cancel classes for gifted maths kids.
Maybe you too should re-read what I wrote as I was commenting on Senator Allen’s opposition to the proposed changes and on his support for those parents that also opposed them and with which changes I also strongly disagree.
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It is a straw man, because one lonely oppositional “D” voice only ignores the tidal wave of insane leftist prejudicial indoctrination. If basic mathematics is prejudicial in favor of whites, it must be more so in favor of Asians.
The left ruins and politicizes everything, striving to divide people against people, an old but deadly statist tactic.
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Straw men must never be left near open fires.
Above all do not smoke near them.
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There might have been an advantage being in the “Industrial” stream. There were no pretences, it only went to year ten and was for boys pre-trade. Particularly in 4th form we were the “bad boys” but it was a false label. We messed around a bit but were generally decent students. I learnt a lot of basic physics in those two years and have appreciated it ever since. Have never used log tables though. 🙂
In those days only boys with rich Dads went to uni, girls, not so much. One lad was particularly bright and had he taken the academic stream he was bound to get a uni scholarship but the nearest uni was 1,000 miles away so would still have needed support. I believe he ended up an engineer anyway.
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Annie thanks for your explanation but generally I prefer red thumbs for reasons that I hope are obvious.
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An act of terrorism or some form of treason would be more accurate.
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I think you need to look outside the (manufactured) concept of racism, the whole purpose of this and the left-wing education “initiatives” which are entrenched in the UK is to deny excellence and to reduce the level of attainment and knowledge as far as possible.
Producing poorly educated people is the pre-requisite for the advancement of marxist-socialism – those who have been taught to think and evaluate critically see through the socialist dogma and understand it destroys the human spirit and society.
Using Maths in California, and I think it was a professor in Oregon who kicked this off, has nothing to do with Maths being “racist”, it is a subterfuge to divide and and conquer by creating and inflating ‘racism’, the left-wing see that as their way to successfully establish marxism in the Western world..
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Those who took AP math and science courses in high school got the kick start they needed to excel in college and beyond as scientists and engineers. We definitely don’t need a generation of technology workers who were constantly told how everything is before ever learning how to figure things out for themselves.
Dragging down the top to achieve equal outcomes started with the IPCC and climate reparations. The first glimpse of this in education was participation trophies. Extending this nutty ideology to actual learning is way over the line.
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Singapore leads the way – The secret of Singapore’s success in education
How did that happen? What did Mr Lee and Singapore do right?
For starters, it should be emphasised that Singapore’s education system was not designed de novo by Mr Lee and his colleagues. Rather, it was built on the very solid foundations inherited from Singapore’s British colonial past. In contrast to many of his contemporaries among post-colonial leaders, Mr Lee was not afraid to embrace whatever elements from that past that would prove useful to the nation-building enterprise.
Nowhere is this approach more evident than in education. Many of the country’s premier educational institutions – for example, the National University of Singapore (founded in 1905), Raffles Institution (founded in 1823), and the Anglo-Chinese School (founded in 1886) – significantly predate independence. Moreover, the curriculum for secondary education is modelled on the British O-level and A-level qualifications (with some adaptation to account for the generally higher average attainment levels of students in Singapore). And, though infrastructure is by no means neglected, the key focus of educational investment is students and teachers.
A national system of generous scholarships enables the best students to avail themselves of an education at some of the world’s premier universities, even as Singapore develops its own world-class institutions. With starting salaries above the national median, the teaching profession attracts, develops and retains some of the best graduates.
Moreover, Singapore’s education system is unabashedly meritocratic (some might say elitist) in its focus on identifying and developing the very best talent and, equally important, directing it towards public service.
Government scholarship recipients are obliged to serve in the public sector for a minimum of two years for every one year of study. The same meritocratic approach governs the development and promotion of teachers. Top-performing teachers are given leadership responsibilities without excessive regard to tenure, and there is a revolving door between the Education Ministry, classrooms, and school administration. Educators are frequently seconded to carry out policy work. Many subsequently choose to return to the classroom.
The elitist tendency in Singapore’s education system is tempered by the fact that quality education is available for all levels of academic aptitude. Singapore is rightly proud of its elite secondary and tertiary academic institutions, but one could argue that the hidden gems of the system are the hundreds of neighbourhood schools, the Institute of Technical Education, and polytechnics that provide high-quality education for all.
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Didn’t the Scottish education system have a lot to do with that legacy?
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Sadly that circumstance no longer obtains: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1436414/Scotland-news-worst-education-system-uk-nicola-sturgeon-SNP-independence-referendum
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See what woke does
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Whereas, in South Africa, the ‘universities’ have almost completed their self-appointed task of ‘decolonising’ their curricula. I don’t know what their ‘learners’ (the SA replacement of ‘students’) are actually learning, but it is likely to be on the grounds that at least ONE of the ‘three R’s’ is ‘Rioting’.
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California should ask Singapore how their Asian kids dealt with white supremacist maths. I suspect it has something to do with hard work and parents that give a toss.
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Years ago I was talking to a South African and education came up. His wife was a teacher who dropped out to raise their children and then went back to work.
She could not get a job in the “white” school system as they were for the new graduates but was welcomed in the “coloured” system.
Where education was the way up, parental questions were about things like not enough homework, they dealt with any behavioural glitches and the children got the experienced teachers.
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I meant in the way of understanding currency counting or keeping to schedules like time management.
If your going to buy anything you need to know how and not totally reliant on a gadget that has limitations.
Just is a little disheartening to see our politicians reverse what made our countries independent and destroyed what ‘fun’ life has been before the multitude and massive amount of restrictions and regulations made that much more difficult and challenging.
00
NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Mary W Jackson must have excelled at their subject.
” Good enough ” calculations would have resulted in spacecraft either disappearing out of the solar system or crashing back to earth.
IIRC John Glenn asked for Katherine Johnson to check the figures produced by the spacecraft on-board computer before he would trust the results.
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The movie “Hidden Figures” was based in part on Katherine Johnson’s experiences at NASA. I would give it a double thumbs up.
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My daughter could not get the same level of math in a 1700 pupil Queensland high school as I did in a small NSW country high back in the 70s, such is the dumbing down of our system.
My little country high school didn’t run to much math & physics courses with only 12 kids total in the senior classes in the 50s. You had to do the honors courses to get them. One great teacher ran these before & after school every day for those who wanted/needed them.
Math is one subject many girls don’t do too well, we had some girls who would never be able to make change for a bus ticket, but there was one I was really jealous of. She was the one with a Greek mythology book under the desk she was reading while the rest of us were struggling with the latest concept.
The rest of us could only wish for her ability. I have often wondered what she did with it.
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She, umm, went back to Greece!
Tony.
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Accidental red there Tony. Sorry.
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Did engineering and got a job with Rolls Royce?
(One of its histories was summarised as “The Glory that was Grease” – by New Scientist IIRC)
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Lance
In a series of radiation courses that I took back in BC calculators were allowed in all but one – dosimetry.
The rationale was that you had to have a familiarity with the numbers as, one day, you might end up in a situation where the real choice was “one look and get the hell out of there” rather than having time to use a calculator.
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In a high radiation environment, calculators are compromised and useless. They taught you well.
In dosimetry, you bet your azz that 5 minutes and a slide rule tell all that needs be known.
Longer than that and you are dead.
Depending on the situation, 2 seconds is more than enough to bail out.
10
Lance
I don’t think slide rules were allowed either – you had to know it
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The problem with slide rules, I had an Otis-King with a slide equivalent of 6 feet, was the need to know where to put the decimal point.
Similarly with calculators, I had to make the students check the result as too often they believed implicitly what the calculator display said.
Often their result was out by a factor of ten, or even total garbage as the had input a number incorrectly.
They needed to have some idea of the ball-park the result should be in.
40
I’d love to see some examples of non-racist mathematics, where it would be applied and what the outcome would be. It may well be the same as standard maths except you simply pay a royalty to have it authorized.
These things usually involve the simple arithmetic of adding up $.
30
In the U.S. nuclear power industry, I met an engineer with a master degree from a very selective French technical university. When he interviewed for entrance into the school, he was asked if he spoke French. He responded he didn’t speak French, but he spoke “mathematics,” the universal language of science. He was accepted, received his degrees and eventually emigrated to the U.S.A.
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How timely. Surely a coincidence.
If you have children or an interest in Education, take an 11 min. look at “The Poison In Our Schools”.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/06/11/john-spiropoulos-reports-on-the-poison-in-our-schools/
CRT is Cultural Marxism. It is not about Education, it is about Control; undermining Families, Cultures, Nations and People. It is as close to organized Marxist subversion, sedition and treason as it gets.
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“CRT”.
I always took this to mean “Cathode Ray Tube.”
You live and learn.
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Me too.
What is it anyway? Just one too many TLA for me.
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CRT = Critical Race Theory
It is identical to Marxist theory that uses Class as a wedge to divide people, but substitutes Race for the same purposes.
Mao Zhedong used it in China to turn children against their parents, eliminate any ideological disagreement, socially isolate and shame opposition, and ultimately to justify violence against opponents.
It is a truly evil concept.
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Simply envy wearing a slightly different hat.
Make people angry about what the other guy can do and you can’t.
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Homeschool your kids….
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A math error is why climate science is so wrong. In feedback analysis, the feedback fraction is the fraction of the output added to the input before being amplified by the open loop gain and the feedback factor is the feedback fraction times the open loop gain.
Schlesinger misidentified the feedback factor as the dimensionless feedback fraction while considering the actual feedback fraction as a function that converted degrees back to W/m^2 and then take a fraction of that so it could be added to W/m^2 of forcing.
The function that converted degrees back to W/m^2 was the inverse of the presumed open loop gain that ‘amplified’ W/m^2 into degrees. The result is that only the forcing is affected by the open loop gain, while the feedback is not since the open loop gain is canceled out as it goes through the feedback path. The consequence of this is that the W/m^2 that comes out of the presumed feedback block are not the same as the W/m^2 of forcing and can not be summed before being amplified, thus nullifying Schlesinger’s application of feedback analysis to the climate (that Roe replicated and repeated the same errors).
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Hi CO2,
Wow; that’s complexification at its finest. 🙂
Nobody should take the IPCCCCC calculations on climate change too seriously because they were never based on any reality known to true science.
Their sole purpose was to give the impression of Science at work.
Before any mathematical wheels are set turning the most important thing is to know what you are calculating.
Any system as complex as the Earth’s atmospheric pulsing under the periodic influence of the Sun, gravity and that Gas Almighty, CO2, needs careful analysis before applying mathematics.
Process analysis is obviously needed to establish where calculations are valid.
Problem is that for CAGW via the Climate Elite all we have is pseudo science based on a fairy tale.
We need to “UnWoke” climate science from grip of the manipulators.
🙂
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“Wow; that’s complexification at its finest.”
Yes, and it’s fooled many on both sides for a very long time. It’s one of the three misrepresentations required to justify that inputs and outputs expressed in non linearly related units can be modeled with linear feedback analysis. Another is that approximate linearity around the mean is sufficient to satisfy the linearity requirement, which it is not. The final one is that the W/m^2 of forcing not accounted for by the incremental analysis is the implicit power supply while these Joules are already completely consumed maintaining the average temperature which is also not accounted for.
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“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
Christiana Figueres, Executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This is why we are where we re right now; staring into the abyss
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And it’s a big chasm.
Every bludy politician on earth seems to have their finger in the pie.
In the last 120 years the world has been subjected to horrific impositions which have been a result of the greed of our leaders.
World War 1. 1914-1918.
The Great? Depression. Theft on a grand scale. The 1930s.
World War 2. 1939_1945. Rulers want more.
Korea _ push back on communism.
Vietnam – end French occupation, slavery and push out communist Russia and China.
Many other wars in Europe and the middle East.
Europe overrun by the deliberate removal of borders allowing freedom of occupation to millions seeking a “better life”.
The “Free Ride” is near its end, the big worry is that it will end with a big bang.
Climate Change _ Global Warming – another upper elite U.N. Grab for domination: submit or else.
COVID19_ the disease you have when you aren’t having a disease. Criminal incarceration of whole countries, police abuse of power and removal of basic rights on the basis of some hyped up story about a Virus.
All the most recent enslavement has been made possible by the gradual introduction of massive Social Security payouts bringing the idea that the government will look after everyone. No need to work, just vote for the biggest handouts.
Where will we be in 2022.
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Many mathematicians have a hard time with nonlinearity.
By contrast I am baffled by linear algebra. It means nothing to me. As if I am completely desensitized to the concepts and actions. My world is full of acceleration and timeliness.
Raving … Get it?
22
How did you derive such a world view with respect change over time?
Ha…proof you can have nerdy Dad jokes….
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The less people know about maths means the less uncomfortable questions about climate chamge. Cancel culture 101
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co2isnotevil – I have no idea what your explanation means but….is it a bit like the way an op amp with an open loop gain of 100,000, with a feedback resistor network to give a gain of only 10 doesn’t quite give 10? And that you’d need the mythical op amp with an infinite open loop gain to give exactly 10?
This was something I’d never thought about until someone pointed it out to me.
00
Except that the implied open loop for the climate feedback model gain is a dimensionless 1, while it’s assumed to be some arbitrary value that turns W/m^2 into degrees.
It not like the difference between 9.999 and 10.0, but more like the difference between free market capitalism and centralized control.
10
A favorite practitioner of hyperbole
Titania McGrath Twitter account
Not much more to say. The world has gone mad
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“The world has gone mad”
I would certainly agree and this “New Math” where you don’t have to get the correct answer is just another sign of it.
When I was a kid, “New Math” was just old math (basic algebra) being taught a grade or two earlier than it had been in the past. Today’s “New Math” appears to have only a passing resemblance the “Old Math” I was taught.
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NewMathSpeak…..
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Here is the answer! Watch to the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dmErVe3uK4
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Excellent video.
40
That’s what you call a situation that comes back to byte you on the b&m.
20
She gave the wrong “wrong” answer. $2000 + $2000 = $20002000.
20
I vaguely remember “New Maths”.
I just missed out on most of it, but I remember the younger kids all carrying little green plastic boxes full of pieces of wood of different lengths and colours. The word “Quesonaire??” somehow springs to mind.
The joke appeared down the road, that the little kids were learning to use “rods’ so they could handle “logs” in later years. The less academically-inclined seemed to use them as psychedelic building blocks or a sort of kiddie-sized Jenga. Learning stuff “off curriculum”, perhaps?
20
Raving
Titania is a british person who writes a spoof blog ridiculing wokeism
40
And brilliantly deadpan too
30
Not sure as to …
… Absurdity in trurth
… Truth in absurdity
….( ______ … fill in the blank)
30
Ms McGrath is mentally challenged, at the very least.
Titania, in William Shakespeare ‘s 1595–1596 play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the play, she is the queen of the fairies. Obviously not a McGrath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DJvrrPhvqE
20
Artwork in the video belongs to Andrew Gonzalez.
00
“There are many words which will trip the filter on this topic…” Part of the problem?
Why is there a filter at all? If someone thinks they may be offended then why would they visit this site? Answer… they want to be offended so they can claim to be a victim.
I could find many sites that may offend me, I simply don’t visit them, or if I don’t like the headline I don’t read any further.
140
Most would feel the same Wixy, unfortunately the adults of the past never pushed back hard enough when rubbish like ‘woke-maths’ was raised as a legitimate replacement for what works in reality and so came to pass anti hate speech laws like 18c that legally suppresses free speech.
For decades when any anti western, capitalism, democracy, Christian idea was passed through our politics or laws many were distracted with living a good and happy life with social pursuits abound to distract from what was really going on, this luxury of mass global communication from anywhere may well be the last one we have before the onset of real life oppression takes hold.
120
Basic philosophical and behavioural fact:
Offence can NOT be given.
It is ONLY EVER TAKEN.”
Have at it, as they say in the classics!
50
The earliest use of Fraction is observed about 4000 years ago by Egyptians.
Who used decimal points the first time to write fractional numbers?
This was first done by Abu’l Hasan Ahmad ibn Ibrahim Al-Uqlidisi who was the first Arab mathematician active in Damascus and Baghdad.
First written proof of this use is in his book Kitab al-Fusul fi al-Hasib al-Hindi around 952 AD.
https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-the-decimal-point
He sounds white.
110
Obviously used his vulgar privilege to divide the common people and decimate the region.
90
Oh ouch! Yonnie!
40
I think Uncle Joe started this cr@p when he stated that “poor kids were just as smart as white kids”
This needs to be on the plinth of Joe Bidens statue.
150
And the statue placed on top of Joe Biden.
100
🙂
10
It was informative for Joe, allegedly proud of his Irish heritage, to say that poor white kids don’t exist, that the only poor kids were black kids. Amazing. This from a man who has never had a job except on the public purse.
40
“The most racist people in the world are not the ones doing differential geometry, it’s the ones dividing their community by their lowest common denominator — their skin.”
A perfect summation Jo.
170
It’s already too difficult to teach abstract concepts. The most dominant personalities in the class are not the ones whose talents need nurturing. It’s the ones who will insist that you pass on a superficial understanding.
I’ve got few anecdotes from teaching. My favorite is where I was taking a class assembly in the morning as a relief teacher. Took the role and read out announcements, then chatted with two year 11 students. They asked what I would normally teach and why I wasn’t teaching it. I said that it was chemistry and I didn’t enjoy it because when I teach the kids that a mole is the same number as the number of carbon 12 atoms in 12 grams of carbon 12, they laugh at me. One started wetting himself while the other looked at him in a confused way. I asked them which one was good at chemistry and the laughing one pointed at the confused one. A kid of Chinese decent who is probably a gun beaker these days.
It appears that our education experts want the students to equate feeling inadequate to an old-white-male conspiracy. I suspect it’s to fill up the schools with activist teachers instead of ones who want the students to learn properly. And as I discovered, they stoop to surreal depths to achieve it.
50
Abstract concepts, ah yes. Do you remember when teaching mathematics would be revolutionised with the introduction of the “cuisenaire” system of coloured rods. When kids had been taught with this system they had no idea of what “concept” meant. When they were asked what 2 plus 2 equalled the answer was invariably what coloured rods.
They could not grasp that “2” was a concept that could represent anything, they could only associate the number with a coloured rod. This failed system was taught for a number of years in Victorian schools circa 1970. Don’t know how these kids fared in later life.
100
I loved Cuisenaire rods as a kid but my teachers never really used them to teach mathematics because I had traditional teachers that taught things the proper way. However Cuisenaire rods were very good for construction of structures like towers.
90
In primary school in the 60’s in South Australia the first ‘lesson’ of every day was for the whole class to recite the times table up to 12 x 12.
As a parent, I did the same with my 2 boys when they went to bed each night.
Nowadays, youngsters are hard pressed to calculate the change for a simple retail transaction or add a list of numbers without their phone calculator. Sad.
90
I learnt the times tables by rote. Cuisenaire, I assume, stopped that. It is possible that tables by rote slowed down the best but it stopped many others failing.
10
Hanrahan , Rote learning, as all the critics note was like teaching a parrot to talk, it could repeat the words but have no idea what they meant. Well, like you I can repeat all of my tables up to the 12 times, use this information very regularly to calculate everything from what the cost of goods are in the supermarket to how much diesel I will need to cut the hay. I asked the grand daughters how I would know a shed I was building was square, They were quite young ,but both are high achievers, and when I said 3 4 5 they were fascinated, what does that mean grandpa, Pythagoras theorm. They remember to this day and rib me about how they taught the dinosaurs, but, they remember! And when they use the word “gross” my auto response is always “12 dozen” Grandpa your a dope, BUT THEY REMEMBER!
20
As you know, Leftists don’t believe in objective reality.
The answer to any mathematical problem is whatever you want it to be.
Spelling is another casualty of the Left’s war against education. Spelling died long before mathematics. It is now common to see spelling mistakes in newspapers and magazines, both printed and digital, and also on captions of TV news programmes.
It’s only a matter of time before someone dies as a result of their inability to do basic arithmetic, such as in the refuelling of an aircraft, for example (if the usual multiple checks fail).
140
Surely history was the first thing the left destroyed so we wouldn’t be aware of our civilisation and in respect of climate that we could start at year zero around 1980 and ignore the inconvenient wrather that went before
90
That as well, Tonyb.
70
Yes just like with genders, apparently there are 61 possible answers to 1+ 1 = ?
20
The decline in standards of spelling and syntax are apparent and have been for over 20 years. We have poorly educated teachers instructing young students.
90
Men have been pushed out of teaching. Girls are notoriously uninterested in math and science. If students are not introduced to a topic they can hardly get excited about it.
40
Actually, women are very adept at abstract mathematics. It isn’t that they aren’t capable or are disinterested, but rather they are often discouraged by external influences. In engineering, I’ve found women very capable or superior capable in electrical, mechanical, chemical and nuclear engineering. Might be my exposure or not, but in the ability to perceive abstract solutions to complex problems, the women were very often better at solving things than the men. Perhaps it is an individual thing, but I must say that the women were formidable. It has taken me 40 years to admit it, but it was and is the truth.
61
Lance, dare I suggest that women doing engineering degrees in the 70s and 80s are not a representative subset.
I’m sure the situation selected for high IQ creatives in women.
No doubt they were formidable. :- )
50
Jo, in the 60s, students on our Industry Automation course about 50% were girls.
Achievements-wise they clearly exceeded male students, however for 10 years after graduation, I have not heard of any making to a “high” engineering position. Do not know what happened later…
To me it is obvious – the society can force-change traditional male & female roles within a single generation. What will happen after that is still an open question.
20
An electrician I know, graduated from the tools to sub station design, said every girl who got their trade ticket was in the office soon after.
And the women Lance admires did not become teachers. No way was I demeaning all women.
00
GlenM … 20 years? Channel 7 paid me in 1990 to research and write a script for a doco on WA schools. After a month or two of research my final script focused on the fact that many English teachers could barely read and write. The doco was never produced, of course … it had no references to student sex, drugs, crime, etc, that are the mainstay of commercial television.
It turned out that Owen Watts, then dean in Curtin University’s faculty of education, was at the same time writing an article published in a 1991 edition of the Australian Journal of Teacher Education, titled “Who is teaching our children to spell? The literacy crisis in teacher education”.
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1153&context=ajte
His article says essentially what my script said. Test were conducted on 200 first year students in the faculty :
“The results for each stream over each of the testing periods showed that for spelling, competency was achieved by 70% of the Early Childhood group, 65% of the Primary group and only 43% of the Secondary group. When the measure was applied to punctuation the results were worse with 37% of the Early Childhood group; 27.5% of the Primary group and a dismal 25% of the Secondary group achieving competency.”
“The affective qualities may outweigh the cognitive, but is society willing to continue to accept that being a “good” teacher is sufficient to excuse being a poor spelling teacher or even a teacher who cannot spell? If teachers are to assist their pupils to develop language competencies, then they need to have those abilities themselves. The question remains, who is teaching our children to spell if the teachers themselves cannot spell?”
That was 1991, 30 years ago, and one of the most important articles ever published on Australian teaching standards. Like my doco script, it was ignored. Much of the reason it was ignored was because somebody in the media would have had to … read it. Even today the Owen article deserves media attention if there’s to be a better understanding why Australia has been sliding down the global literacy tables.
Those would-be teachers who scored as little as 25% punctuation competency have long since graduated and for the past 30 years have been in front of classrooms handing down their poor literacy to the next generation of students, plenty of whom are now young teachers. Subject knowledge is history.
The result? I estimate about 70% of the sentences in a story I read this morning in a Seven West newspaper had punctuation errors (but only a couple of spelling errors).
If only we had YouTube in 1991, maybe somebody would have paid attention.
20
This actually happened during Canadas adoption of metric, a jet plane was being fuelled and the refueller had to convert gallons to kilos, got it wrong and only half filled the tanks, it was not caught later because the fuel gauges were inoperative, this on a brand new 767, it ended ok though after a loooong glide.
130
That was Air Canada flight 143, otherwise known as the Gimli Glider.
Story at https://youtu.be/cZkKFSqehN4
70
That is a good example of truly understanding what you are doing rather than just remembering instructions. It required the pilot’s skills in a glider to bring the jet down safely.
60
There are a few stories where pilot skills saved the day, the Gimli Glider is one.
Another was QF32 where Richard deCrespigny and a talented crew saved a badly wounded A380.
Another lesser known story was TACA F110 where a young pilot, now dubbed The Original Sully, brought a B737 dead stick to land on a New Orleans levee. A new engine was fitted and it was flown out again.
Of course there was “Sully” Sullenberger himself, but we all know that story.
50
H
Heard from inside sources that QF32 also had a very experienced check crew aboard
00
A check Captain and a check-check Captain. Just as well it is a big plane with a big cockpit. Everyone was busy particularly the No 2 in the right seat. The auto check list never stopped. I doubt they would have done as well with a Boeing style paper check list, Airbus’ computer prioritised it.
The first thing deCrespigny did right was to brief such a large crew on chain of command within the cockpit so no one invaded another’s patch. But I’m with you, he was not alone and had a LOT of help.
30
Having flown both, IMO Boeing electronic checklists (EICAS) are superior to the Airbus equivalent (ECAM).
00
On skills and flying – in WW2 Rolls Royce ran training schools for those flying behind Merlin engines on how to manage them in flight – even to well beyond normal operating procedures.
A Lancaster flight engineer I knew had ultimate respect for them – in his words (IIRC) “They showed you how to go to about 99% of wringing the engine’s neck without actually doing it”
20
The Merlin was an intricate piece of machinery, it needed many special tools. It was lighter than the DB engine in the ME109 but was more powerful because they could use more boost, partly because of higher octane petrol.
In those days England led the world in metallurgy. The first Packard copies built were fitted to Lancasters and used for training only, never to fly beyond British shores.
There is a story that after the war the Russians couldn’t build a jet engine so when invited to see how RR Derwents were built the Ruskies wore crepe soled shoes to pick up shavings from the floor. They are now shirty that the Chinese are reverse engineering THEIR engines.
Another story is that Russia stole detailed drawings of the B29. The engineers were told to make an exact copy, which they did right down to having “Boeing” stamped on the rudder pedals. Or so the story goes.
20
The UK Labour Government gave the Russians several RR jet engines – 1947 from memory.
10
Another thing or two about the Merlin:
Being a Rolls Royce product they were “well assembled”. When the US started making them under licence, they could not seem to get the same performance out of them.
This was eventually tracked back to manufacturing and assembly procedures.
The American engines were produced in large quantity by Packard. They were fully interchangeable. If you disassembled ten of them and dumped the parts in a pile on the floor, it was possible to assemble ten completely different engines that would meet specifications and start first time.
The RR assembled engines were HAND FITTED. Whilst nice in peace-time, the “down-time” during two-way aerial gunnery sessions was not inconsequential.
Second thing was the fuel system.
Most Merlins had carburetors. The German “competitor” was fuel-injected. A Messerschmidt could be flown inverted for a considerable distance. Trying that or even a “hesitation roll” with a Merlin could rapidly become “interesting”, especially at low altitudes.
10
The real B-29 story is that several of these made emergency landings on Soviet territory, at Vladivostok, after receiving damage whilst visiting Japan.
The Russian engineers grabbed the least damaged one and minutely reverse-engineered the airframe and the powerplants.
As one would expect, they were eventually thrilled to have their own nuclear-capable bomber, the Tupolev TU-4. About 850 of these were built but only one remains at a Russian air museum. The Soviets went to jet bombers and gave an unknown number of Tu-4s to china. They were reported to be still flying them in 1968.
The Soviet clone was so accurate, it even included some features unique to that aircraft. Some of these were the rather unique interior paintwork, the repair patches applied by US ground crews after the aircraft received battle damage during previous visits to Japan. The best one was a non-critical mis-drilled hole in one wing panel that went into the production Tupolev aircraft.
This wasn’t the only US aircraft built in numbers by the Soviets. The other classic was actually a licence-built version of the Douglas C-47 / DC-3; the Lisunov L1-2. The Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp engines on these were a big hit. At last count, the remaining production line for them, (now in Poland), is THE source for new parts to keep some very old engines running all over he world.
10
Speaking of Objective Reality, few have done it as well as Ayn Rand.
An interesting link: Economics in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged,
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2013 Copyright©2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/JARS12-13.pdf
This article provides a summary of economic issues found in Atlas Shrugged. It discusses the role of individual initiative, creativity, and productivity in economic progress as illustrated in this novel . It also shows the novel’s depiction of the benefits of trade—and the destruction of exchange relationships and production that results from government intervention in the economy.
70
It has been obvious for dome time that the younger generation can’t spell or add up, not their fault as they just aren’t taught it at school.
60
Damn it Ronin apparently spell check knows that “dome” is a word just not the one you were after.
Your minor key strike error made me laugh.
30
Sambar, beware laughing at the awesome power of Muphry’s Law.
40
It took the ice-age caveman 12,000 years to arrive here, fly to the moon, cure most of otherwise terminal diseases and triple life expectancy at the most happiest times ever experienced by humanity.
It will take only a few years of tyranny by ignorance for humanity to be pushed back inside the cave.
We need to wake up to wokery and it’s fakery. The other option is another dark age from which there will be no renaissance
40
A talk about “The Greatest Maths Mistakes”.
https://youtu.be/34detVy-Hiw
20
Interesting, but far more about software development than maths.
If you make it to the end, the comparison of the root cause analysis approaches taken by aviation and medicine was quite enlightening.
30
Half way through and I am surprised that a professional pedant could say that a “fly by wire” aircraft is one “where the controls are actually connected to what’s happening, it’s not like electronics”. Sorry Matt, “fly by wire” is computer controlled. The F117 [The Hopeless Diamond] is FBW, impossible to fly by hand.
10
Surely peak racism is when you say to someone “The reason why you can’t add up is because you are black”?
90
Joe Biden actually said that a while back MSN ……..crickets.
But yes jokes or Golliwogs are terrible.
50
No surprise about the following article because Gates is a Leftist Elite Socialist Billionaire promoting “woke” lunacy.
https://mynorthwest.com/2604518/rantz-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-bankrolls-math-is-racist-lunacy/
SEE L8NK FOR REST
60
Bill Gates did pull his head out of his nether regions to make at least one intelligent comment:
Bill Gates: Stop shutting down nuclear reactors and build new nuclear power plants…
Unfortunately, after making this comment he promptly re-inserted his head there by finishing his comment with:
… to fight climate change
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/bill-gates-bullish-on-using-nuclear-power-to-fight-climate-change.html
60
So …
science is real, but math is rac!st?
I am half German and half Scott.
It’s not a problem except sometimes I get confused about in which direction I should cross the Rhine.
80
The practical consequence of quotas is the dumbing down of standards. No matter what clothes one dresses this pig in,
its still a big. Whether “vibrant cultural discussion” or “recognition of cultural difficulties” or any of a dozen other excuses,
the point remains that it is easier to dumb down standards and certify non-performance rather than undertake the harder task of
bringing those behind up to snuff, with the inevitable failure of some.
The group supposedly helped is actually harmed if certifications awarded them are presumptuously discounted, even for the competent.
When people with legitimate skills and qualifications aren’t differentiated from those without due to politics, you end up with a substandard performance in every part of your economy.
And differences in the conduct of basic hiring is yet another reason to leave a politocracy for a meritocracy, should one believe in merit. The US is described as Blue and Red; but moving toward a repeat of Blue and Grey in one form or another.
50
The Leftist Elites / Socialist Billionaires with their slave army of useful idiots are trying to de-educate the West and return us into a state of feudal serfdom. The dumbed-down people will be too ignorant to complain or know any different.
Essentially the Left are trying to return us to a condition akin to before the Enlightenment hence their opposition to important Enlightenment values such as science, reason, progress, tolerance and individual liberty.
91
Here is a very good short US video about old math vs new math, see link below.
The woke mathematics is considerably more complicated and confusing than the traditional “racist” method.
But that’s the plan. The Left are trying to create a slave population of illiterates and innumerates. But instead of just banning education altogether like Pol Pot, they do essentially the same thing in a less obvious way by making education useless.
https://youtu.be/KYFolsI9GxU
50
I was half expecting to see Tom Lehrer…
40
Harrison Bergeron has gone from fiction to documenaru
40
Fairly off topic, but it does pertain to the thinking processes – how come Jews don’t get the free pass for their behaviour, that other ‘genocided’ folk get, when their reactions become violent?
41
Because they are Chosen People.
They took it upon themselves, can’t complain now…
00
I’m sorry if this is off topic but I wanted to make this post today.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Blackhawk crash that killed 18 men, mostly SAS, at High Range, Townsville.
I also believe it is the 50th of our withdrawal from Vietnam.
Lest we forget.
100
Australia’s official withdrawal from Vietnam was 11 January 1973 but there was a platoon of combat soldiers guarding the Australian Embassy in Saigon until some unspecified date in June.
10
Point taken. I repeated something I heard on the radio.
20
There is so much news, and so many short videos about how Maths is ….. well, whatever they want it to be these days.
There’s TV footage every week day about how Maths REALLY is these days.
The early news here in Qld is on at 4PM, and the main nightly Bulletin is on at 6PM.
In between them is Eddie on his Millionaire quiz show.
If I have been occasionally watching that early news, then as that ends, I will get up and head back for another hour in front of the computer doing what it is that I do.
I can multi task, so that means I can hear what’s on ….. in the background.
Every time a Maths question comes on, the contestant says ….. “Oh Eddie, Maths is not my strong suit, so I’m going to Pass on this question.” (every time)
The next contestant invariably gets the wrong answer, and mind you, this is not complex Maths we are talking about here.
The average person has no idea about the simplest Maths, let alone anything complex, like multiplication and division.
I look upon Maths these days, and it actually IS a foreign language for virtually everyone.
And hey, have you ever really wondered why it’s these subjects they have come after.
What’s probably the single most outright racist subject that there ACTUALLY is.
English!
You never hear anything about that being racist, now do you?
Tony.
70
If maths mattered we would have found X by now.
90
Here it is. Found it
00
Yes, but. Try this one for a beer at the local pub:
There’s a number. It is its own angle, cosine, and arc cosine, and all are the same number in radians.
X = 0.739085133
It is the solution of X = Cos(x)
00
Me too. I learnt later that Katherine was referred to as “Calculator”; it wasn’t just artistic licence .
00
-But don’t ask Y
00
I find ‘X’ in every shopping centre.
“You are here.”
Tony.
30
I found 3X once, then my wife slapped the life out of me.
20
If 3X is rounded down to 8 life becomes a lot easier and safer.
00
Look, there it goes!
Where?
Up there!
You mean that Chemtrail.
Oh, I give up!
Tony.
10
I think that there’s four of them in Queensland.
Tony.
00
There used to also be 3 – apparently XXX was produced at a brewery in Toowoomba – before my tasting time but apparently it was pretty ordinary.
00
The answer here is quite simple. They should introduce anti-racist maths as an optional elective, below vege math, but allow students to choose the old advanced racist varieties as well. The new version would be perfect for budding white skinned woke arts students, where they could complete their math studies with an A grade and not be as embarrassed about their inability to determine the answer to difficult problems such as resolving 1+1. The anti-racist math would include things such as non-binary studies, where students would change their gender on alternate days whilst pondering the 1+1 answer.
Meanwhile, in the next room, the very racist Asian, Indian, African, etc, and small group of conservative white kids would learn Newton’s laws and Einstein’s theory as part of advanced Physics and maths.
50
Related…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9585165/Oxford-University-teach-imperial-measurements-tied-idea-Empire.html
Oxford University is set to teach students that imperial measurements including the mile, inch, yard, pound and ounce are ‘tied deeply to the idea of Empire’ in ‘decolonising’ project
Oxford University reportedly has plans to ‘decolonise’ imperial measurements
It will teach that the measurements are ‘tied deeply to the idea of the Empire’
A potential new curriculum could teach the ‘history of modern measurement’
It comes after a pledge to embed teaching on colonialism and Empire in courses
Maths and life sciences were previously given grants to ‘diversify’ syllabuses
Oxford University reportedly plans to teach that imperial measurements are ‘tied deeply to the idea of the Empire’ in a bid to make science courses less ‘Eurocentric’.
The University has suggested imperial measurements, including the mile, inch, pound and ounce, should be ‘decolonised’ due to its links to the British Empire.
[….]
Undergraduates and scholars will reportedly conduct research this summer to determine how Oxford’s science teaching can be made less ‘Eurocentric’, before drawing up proposals for lecturers to apply recommendations to the syllabuses.
The plans support a ‘cultural shift’ in teaching and hope to see Oxford students’ learn and understand the ‘global historical and social context to scientific research’.
The eight-week decolonising project is said to be considering a new curriculum on the ‘history of modern measurement’ and its ‘ties’ to ‘Empire and Imperial standardisation’.
While imperial measurements, including weight, length and volume, could also be given historical context in Oxford University’s physics curriculum.
[…]
See link for full article…
30
Most of Europe used similar units, before the pretension of Metric. The “platinum standard” of the entire system is supposed to be a set fraction of the diameter of the Earth. Except, that their “reference datum” was derived from navigational charts of dubious accuracy themselves. It took satellites and some pretty slick optical toys to sort out the size AND shape” of the planet.
In Russia, pre-revolution, they had measurements like the “Arshin” (actually VERY close to the “yard”) and the “Line”, (within a couple of thou of an actual one-tenth of an inch).
The “pound” is also found all over central Europe as the “Pfund” or a variation on that pronunciation. The “foot” with minor dimensional variations was known as a “foot”, “fuss”, etc., as local language required.
Then there were “practical” units of measure. The “Chain”; 22 yards – a standard measure of ground. So standard that it defines the length of a PROPER cricket pitch.
The “Rod”, is one quarter of a “chain”.
You just had to know your stuff.
Always remember that the entire US space programme up to and including Apollo, was conducted in these “archaic” English dimensions, and number-crunched on wooden slide-rules and hand-drawn on big sheets of paper, despite the US “officially” adopting the Metric system on the late 1800’s.
Don’t get cocky, kids!
20
But Oxford doesn’t give a Firkin about them. They want everything reduced to a Minim.
00
I’ll be semi-breve:
Folks might start to get crotchety about that.
Or all-aquaver.
I’ll see myself out….
00
Intersectional maths can’t permit individualist prime numbers.
20
That the ‘St. Julia Memorial Halls’ made no difference to the educational standards of Australian children is something of which we hear little- I wonder why.
20
Just another data point from me. I learned and eventually taught year 12 pure and applied mathematics in Victoria. That meant lots of algebra in the junior secondary years. The old red Turner and Watson form IV text had fallen out of favour by then and Barbara Lynch’s series were in vogue.
My first epiphany was the advent of Mathematica and lesser programs capable of running on the PCs of the day. Just how many hours of practice in algebra would be required when a computer program could effortlessly provide the solutions. The answer of course is mental dexterity and concept development.
My second epiphany was in a brief return to teaching in Queensland in the early 2000s. When I asked my year 12 advanced maths class to find the point of inflection in a cubic and demonstrate that it was a rising or falling point I was stunned when a student used their calculator to find the exact answer. How did they know it was a falling inflection point? The student held up their calculator and showed me the graph. Second derivative? What’s that and why would you bother? I should have read the syllabus more closely because the syllabus authors apparently agreed.
Now none of that has anything to do with the foolishness of the woke movement or the need to challenge out brightest and best intellectually, but so much of the pre-computer syllabus was shaped by the need to produce engineers and scientists.
I wonder what school mathematics syllabi contain these days and how it would be possible to design a mathematics syllabus to produce enough people who can maintain and advance the field when most of what I did is about as relevant as a slide rule or napiers table of logarithms. Perhaps the time of mass forced labours in algebra has gone the way of the beautiful copperplate handwriting of my mother.
One of my daughters is a senior lecturer in physics. I look forward to an interesting conversation with her on exactly what physicists do these days in the way of mathematics.
60
My calculator battery died during a final exam of organic chemistry in 1976.
The Professor gave me an additional 15 minutes to complete the exam using a K&E slide rule.
Several people complained. The Professor said that anyone who would hand in their calculator and finish the exam with a slide rule would be allowed an additional 15 minutes. There were no takers.
70
Texas Instruments TI 58/59?
Or, were you an RPN driver?
10
I’ve spent a lot of time on HP calculators – good once you get familiar with RPN.. On the other hand I once long hand beat a person with a borrowed HP 35 on calculating a square root
10
In 1986, I was posted back to the RAAFSTT at Wagga Wagga to teach the electrical trade to new trainees.
I had a bit of a ‘rep’ even then as being capable in Maths, (well, more capable than most of the Instructors anyway) so I was given the long (teaching time) subject of Electrical Technology 2, as it was virtually a wholly Maths based subject, and required knowledge for the remainder of the Course. I still think that the other Instructors disliked teaching the subject because of that Maths Basis. For me, it was always my favourite subject to teach. It was always the subject where I most saw the ‘blink’ of amazement on their faces, as the light went on for the students, and they ‘got it’.
Now, to specifically avoid the problem of 20 to 30 students with 20 to 30 different
plastic brainscalculators, every student was issued the same calculator (Casio fx-100C) at the start of their electrical course, and as Elec Tech 2 was (almost) at the front end of the course, this was the first real occasion where that calculator was going to be used on an hour to hour basis, virtually for the whole length of the subject.The whole of Day One for the subject was teaching the students how to use the Calculator, as it’s a Scientific calculator. For me, I learned that (how to use that calculator) on my first ‘sit in’ for the subject as a trainee Instructor, before being ‘thrown in at the deep end’.
The trigonometric functions amazed me, how to work out the result of complex vector diagrams just using the correct sequence of buttons on that calculator. Gone were the days of slide rules and log tables we all used when we were being taught ourselves. The time saving element in all of that was the big thing for me.
That very same fx-100C I was first issued with sits 6 inches to the left of my keyboard, and is used on a daily basis, often in fact, now 35 years old, still in perfect working order, surprisingly only on its third battery. It takes one AA battery, and the manual, which I also still have, claims that one battery will give 17,500 hours continuous operation.
Maths is the electrician’s ‘go to’ subject.
Tony.
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It was slide rules when I did electrical technology, and I suspect also for you Tony.
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Didn’t slide rules take us to the moon?
I guess after calculators it was just too much work.
Calculators may need a Dewhiteification chip.
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Yeah, in younger days, the square root of minus one in AC theory knotted my knickers for a bit; but eventually I figured that if I just “let it be”, it was just another functional “tool”.
Besides, there isn’t much you can’t do with a good dual-trace CRO and a quality multi-meter and calculator. When I discovered that the physical layout of a printed circuit board could have significant effects on RF equipment performance, it got really weird for a while.
But, similar odd things happen with board and component layout in serious audio power amplifiers..
Sometimes you just need to step back, give the brain a bit of a flush and take a deep breath.
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You’ve just highlighted an important step in learning being forgotten due to digital tech, the practical exercise, as you know being asked to ‘show your work’ was a method to test the students understanding of the lesson being taught or to show their thinking on paper.
The same was/is done in my trade (Boilermaker) that required a hand drawn geometrical layout of the object to be fabricated, now there is thousands of programs that can calculate the job in seconds and print out scaled template or use the information to operate CNC machines, while this is much easier in time and effort what is lost on the people involved is the physical concept of what their objective is that can only be taught by physically making things yourself.
I recall many times when an engineer or architect insisted on making something a certain way when it was either not going to fit or physically impossible, a practical experience of making things would go a long way to avoiding costly or dangerous mistakes in any industry.
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Man, how I hated Tech Drawing!
Tony.
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Amen to that.
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HaHa I loved it but I did have an interest in art when younger, the trick is visualizing the object in 3D relevant to the drawings view.
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Jo
Re
“Dear commenters, be kind to the mods. There are many words which will trip the filter on this topic, and approval may be slow. Apologies. Best phrase things carefully, not color-fully. They know not what they do (most of them). A race war might be exactly what a few are secretly hoping for. We, on the other hand, aren’t really interested in the color of anyone’s skin, we’d rather judge each by their character…”
Seems old time sailors could tell the nationality of a ship by the pattern of its sails.
Hence the saying that you judge not by the colour but by “the cut of the jib”
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/cut+of+your+jib
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I wonder how much longer “Thomas the Tank Engine” will survive Leftist censorship?
He is a hard working cis-gendered male whose behaviour as a tracked, wheeled vehicle seems to follow physical laws.
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And Thomas runs on coal.
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Fear not David, this from 2014 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/29/thomas-tank-engine-racist-british-blogger-accuses/
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Somewhat O/T but speaking of “cuts of jibs”
Judith Sloan on our chief health officers
https://spectator.com.au/2021/06/bretty-rides-again/
Via https://catallaxyfiles.com/2021/06/12/bretty/
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“Our covid’s in the very best of hands, the best of hands” etc
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I think I am correct in that Jordan Peterson said the real evil in Hitler was that at the end he wished for complete destruction.
Are we witnessing a replay?
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Dr. Peterson talks about this here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMqQBLZwRIE and, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dwsYWF7TXI
The overtly destructive behavior goes a lot deeper than fulfilling an agenda or goal, and perhaps the power over life and death becomes an all consuming addiction that cannot be broken leading to a self destructive spiral of fear, this was the case of the 3rd Reich when towards the end all the top leaders feared what rule changes would target them or their family, this started with Night of the Long Knives when people who served loyally were sacrificed to appease the face of the Reich.
At the moment we’re only experiencing a fraction of what people suffered under totalitarian regimes of last century but it should be enough to motivate us to put a stop to it but how?, the traditional enemy could be identified over a front line but as Cicero stated its the enemy within that’s our problem, if we want victory our front line is everywhere, government at all levels, education, legal processes, hostile media, big tech censorship, UN intrusions all of which is scattered throughout the world, our oppressors will talk like social workers but act like prison guards.
The Enemy Within
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 BC – 43 BC
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A problem report
Windows 10 and Brave
When I am typing a reply the thread renews and I lose what I have entered
Anyone else run into this?
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Try reloading the page after, it appears for me unless the filter got you.
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Y
This happens before I’ve posted. When it finishes renewing the part message is gone.
I was tempted to move to the “DISSENER” version but might go back to Firefox to check further.
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I use Firefox with windows 8.1 pro, Windows 10 was too intrusive and Opera became too slow to the point of unworkable.
One thing I did with Windows was to block and not install updates as they hide unwanted control measures, 5 years with no problems.
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My struggles with maths in my younger secondary school years were solved by reading a book by W.W Sawyer entitled ‘Mathematician’s Delight’. It was written in 1943 and, to be honest, there is some chauvanistic language to get over but, oh boy, do I wish Mr Sawyer had been my maths teacher at school – warts and all. Even in 1943 the author admits that mathematics teachers were failing students by not teaching maths as a subject to be explored and enjoyed through experimentation and not just to satisfy a curriculum requirement.
Mr Sawyer solved all the problems I had with maths very quickly and not once did his chauvanism get in the way.
The ignorant idiots currently enjoying too much power will seriously need to up their games when the parents start avoiding woke schools and woke politicians. Republicans regaining power in two years time will do the US a power of good but what about the rest of us. Are we going to fight back against the ignorant idiots infesting everywhere we look these days?
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We live in a well calculated world, trajectory as a perception of exit hasn’t got the inclusive number.
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Remember “Ebonics”? I wonder what its status is these days?
00
“The World Is Being Run By Stupid People”
“Actual Photograph of the Peter Principle”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/06/12/the-world-is-being-run-by-stupid-people/
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In a democracy everyone gets to have a say. With some it becomes a way for the rest to see just how street smart, faux-dumb and clever the few that wish us harm – by destroying an historically pansuccessful system ie from whichever way one looks at Western Culture – really are.
There are two mistakes our now lazy system makes. The first is, we don’t stand in large numbers to defend to the death, our way of life. With no wars and just a little pandemic – reasonably well handled – to stress us out, we have forgotten the hardships our recent forefathers had to face. They had two World Wars, the Spanish flue, the Depression, the Cold War. They overcame the likes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler et al. They went from the horse and buggy days to cars, planes, rockets and took us to Space and the Moon. The old enemies and philosophies in our midst learned along the way.
Those old foes have learned to challenge us from within, We don’t just tolerate the termites pushing the old red-left ideologies and attacking our Western system, attempting to divide us at all levels. We don’t, as a majority, come forth, defend our patch with lucid, strong and loud argument that our offspring – and politicians – need to hear and be directly challenged by.
After WW2, the West didn’t destroy Japan. It actually helped rebuild it and on its own it became a large but peaceful challenging economy to the West, living by International protocols. Britain India as a functioning, democratic and peaceful nation that has to accomodate its own inate problems. The West has supported third world nations for a century or more, certainly after it had its own damaging outcomes to those African and Asian nations to do reparations for after an earlier age.
Since the Wars, Western nations have accepted huge numbers of migrants from all around the world, and those include people from all levels of societies. The West, exclusively, is now having a movement by citizens that detest their own nations – how do they live with themselves if they really believe the claims they make against their own – by attempting to turn those very same people and original peoples against white people that have provided such decent lives to most. Most migration is into these predominantly, but diluting, ‘white’ nations and not back to either the countries of origin, nor to the communist eastern european zones, nor to Asian nations in general.
The second mistake we made is, we stood by and watched, knowing the left were infiltrating every position of power they could find amongst all our systems – Law, Courts, Education, Universities and even I would reckon, our armed forces where wokeness overrides the reality of our armed men in the battlefield who seem so tied up with rules that they almost have to read a book to see if they are allowed to defend themselves or shoot back. In America there is/was even a movement to remove soldiers known to be conservatives or pro-Trump. The longer Biden goes on, the USA will be unable to find enough politically pro-Biden soldiers to provide an armed force! This is the ignorance that we now have to elect to govern us. We accept seat warmers who stand for little and meekly accept what the Parties through their external sectional bosses demand. Britain is no better; just look at Boris now. He’s had so much haircut that he’s become a woke leader, indistinguishable from anyone on the left of politics in Britain.
The bottom line is, the West has become so relaxed and lazy about the world that its leaders look to manufacture ‘fear from composed disasters’ for something to do. They accept wierd ideas like ‘they control science’ (demigods), accept direction from the EU, the UN and the USA (maybe) that force themselves to destroy their own economies to satisfy those interests, totally ignoring the fact they are elected to constitutionally serve, protect and advance the interests of THEIR OWN PEOPLE! Nation destroying International agreements are not acceptable for our leaders to sign us up to. Our governments have to grow a bit of fortitude and forcefully fight back against the internal and external forces that at present seem to want to destroy us. The Anti Racial fight must be taken up and destroy those attacking us from within. Most of those executing these attacks don’t look to be too underfed, under-remunerated nor undereducated regardless of colour or creed, and they need to be attacked without bending to them because they use their personal racial features to silence those they attack.
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Mathematics underpins all science. The Rational science of Rene Descartes is based on mathematics, from addition and subtratcion, multiplication, stoichiometry to geometry and the miracle of variables, equations, equilibrium. And even accounting. Numbers run our world. Indian mathematics passed to Europe by Arabs and perfected by Europeans.
The other essential ingredients are freedom of speech, democracy, fair elections, legislated equality and meritocracy and the Judeo/Christian religion which underpins the values of the Western democracies.
It is no accident then that all these things are under assault. The weakness inherent in equality, freedom of speech and a guilt based religion is exploited in BLM, AntiFA, Man Made Climate Change (aka Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Climate Extinction), anti historic slavery, anti historic Imperialism and the iconoclasm of wokeness is all calculated. And it is being pushed by those would be world governments, the UN, the EU and China and their friends who control the education systems. And supported by the ultra rich elites who care nothing for your freedom of choice.
It is extraordinary that Climate Change is the exact opposite of rational science and this is known as ‘The Science’. I wince every time someone says ‘The Science’. It is a religion like Scientology. It denies the existence of world equilibrium in CO2, for example.
You can prove absolutely that ‘The Science’ is rubbish, but few people are scientists and everything you say is immediately contradicted by authorities, Nature, The Royal Society, the American Society of Physicists, CSIRO, BOM and even Lancet. HCQ, Wuhan Lab leak, deliberate Wuhan Flu distribution world wide, total denial and the refusal to accept and in fact the banning of cheap anti virals which would have saved millions. And Ocean acidification is quite absurd. JCU in Queensland should be on trial for faking papers, not Dr Ridd for pointing it out. It has cost the taxpayer millions to persecute and prosecute Dr. Ridd, Attorney general Porter and Cardinal Pell. Why is this tolerated?
And anything Donald Trump said was automatically a lie. Because they said so. Now they are blaming Trump for telling the inconvenient truth because the truth is so clear as the virus comes under control and the Western democracies are not critically weakened, as hoped. The military start of WWIII has to be delayed, for which the world can thank only Donald Trump who refused to die from the Chinese virus as so many hoped he would.
Now we are told the extraordinarily 20th century rapid development of science and technology in the West is a sign of White Supremacy, Imperialism, Racism and will cook the planet unless it is stopped immediately.
All these things are signs of only one movement, the desire to run the world and you will find the American Democrats, the Chinese Communist Party, UN, EU and the newly crowned Internet trillionaires and all the enemies of democracy are saying with one voice that Americans must not learn mathematics and they must be overrun by uncontrolled migration. You do not have to ask why.
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What an overview.
30
Hang on dude it underpins the trades too.
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Aren’t they based on science?
🙂
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True, but coming from a trade background, I have to suggest that there is a lot of learned and practiced art in trades too. You have to have additional skills honed with practice and a desire for quality. From silversmith to bricklayer to welder to butcher to electrician. Quantities, distances, volumes, patterns and especially techniques and procedures take good memory, physical skill, eye hand coordination plus calculation and experience and there is no replacing most skills with computers.
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And in my experience, most academic mathematicians are very impractical people.
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So how do we explain the large number of top-drawer mathematicians that are Indian? Srinivasa Ramanujan is the obvious example but there are hundreds more.
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All men are equal.
Australia population about 25 million. We have some good mathematicians.
India, population 1,390 million. They probably have the same per centage of good mathematicians as we have.
🙂
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If you are one in a million in India or China, remember, there are 1400 more like you.
But it was only in a lifetime that the population of India was 400 million, only comparable to that of Europe. In 1960, the population of India was 450 Million and that of Europe, 350 million. Even China was 667 million, half of today’s population.
And also that mathematics feeds on itself, growing with each discovery. At the same time Rational science demanded mathematics and often mathematics was designed to solve a problem and this in turn solved other problems. It’s a bit like the explosive growth in software applications in Silicon valley.
Now other countries like Germany are trying to create their own idea incubators, bringing companies and investors and bright young people into working spaces in Berlin, trying to duplicate the explosive growth in ideas in the US.
This specific idea though that black people are incapable of achieving high levels of mathematics is rubbish. However it hides an insidious implication that black people are less capable at mathematics so mathematics teaching should be dumbed down to allow black people to perform equally and not create a clear racial distinction. So every time you read of the fight against racism, it is usually an attempt to enshrine racism and racist differences in law. And what if black children are not the slightest bit interested in learning mathematics anyway, no matter how dumb you make it? How do you address that?
We get the same thing in Australia and New Zealand, where racist laws insist some people are different and should be treated differently and preferentially based on race alone. And this is called the fight against racism, in particular white supremacy.
It’s as if racism does not exist in Rwanda or India or Thailand or Indonesia. Racism can only be white on black, so it is very embarrassing that mathematics as we know it started only recently and in India. And that the Chinese and Japanese are even better than most and passionate about high performance in all education.
The objective of equality of races, of men and women, of rich and poor means equality under the law. Equality does not mean identicality! But activists now insist men are women and v.v., that we have affirmative action for midgets in basketball and that no one is natively better than anyone else at mathematics. Identicality is absurd and wrong. And this is about making the results the same, even if it means stopping mathematics development of all people with talent, even if they are Chinese, Japanese, Indian let alone ‘white’.
All people are different, except perhaps identical twins. Since perhaps the French revolution, the world fight has been for all people to be treated equally under the law, not that they are all the same. And now that we are told we have to accept two hundred genders, it is completely out of control. There are only two genders. And you can dress and behave as you please at your own risk.
Wrecking mathematics teaching is like introducing the Mao suit for everyone and wiping out the fashion industry.
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In regards to equality in Basketball, Anthony Fauci was the captain of his basketball team at University, so there you go
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“With the Left, the ‘Issue’ is never the issue; the ‘Issue’ is always the Revolution”.
– David Horowitz.
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KK, I’m not sure the word “equal” applies well.
We need to be able to celebrate and support inequality. The fact is some people possess talents that others do not and vice-versa. Our education system needs to be able to identify and enrich all of them. We can’t maximize talent by flattening out the peaks of gifted highly capable people.
Likewise we must cultivate those that appear to have little talent. It often enough is the case that low performing students are actually very bright and simply bored. If not challenged to learn in a way that fits their learning style, they might fail at school and then what?
In my opinion, our public school system was only designed to provide a basic standard ability to use math, read and write at a functional level. This in turn fit up tightly with a hands-on working world. An apprenticeship in a trade would be all that a person needed beyond the basic education.
The needs of today’s civilization have completely out-grown that educational model. Our public schools systems need a total overhaul.
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Yes 🙂
The Indian and Australian populations are “equal” in that they have a similar spread of skills ranging from very good to the not so good.
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Using second order Euler differential equations, the answer is quite simple. Calculus is increasingly ignored by pragmatic mathematicians, and as a result, senior high-school students have become increasingly baffled
10
The dumbing down has been going on for a long time. Thirty years ago a dean parachuted me into the School of Nursing. Academic jobs were tight and I was grateful for the opportunity to “help launch nursing education into the 20th C. I was, among other things, to teach research methods to nurses doing masters degrees. In my 7 years there I politely stated at curriculum meeting every year that students needed to take basis probability theory before my class. Every time I was over ruled with, “Just teach the concepts”.
The nurses eventually gave up an academic position to get rid of me.
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This lunacy will rob clever kids of an education. It will come back to haunt us. Is what history teaches.
I remember a story about a young man who was locked out of an education by a snotty establishment (he wanted to become a photographer). Being rejected he decided to go into politics and get his revenge. His name was Schicklgruber. Look him up.
00
The Critical Race Theory advocates seem to want to go their own way. Sometimes when the anger becomes too heated people re-segregate themselves, even including new national boundaries.
00
There are many humans who believe our species is the most intelligent in the universe, then we have supposed educators to prove otherwise!
All we can do is ensure that these revolutionaries see us laughing at them and post links to the proof of their ignorance. Sure they will character assassinate the post and ‘debunk’ the Mauryan Empire and their invention of the Zero. But if we chip away, we maintain our sanity, keep as much of our civil society intact and educate those closest to us, then like all revolutions, they will inevitably turn on each other as their cancel culture requires oppression of those who think the cause is just.
Use the greatest tool in history to ridicule these fools by pointing to their faux intellects and obvious hypocrisy in 0000111000101’s. You just know they won’t get it!
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What a wonderfully eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious subject!
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If you’re on Facebook, check this out
https://www.facebook.com/schoolstrike4climateauckland/posts/839239820347080
It’s a group of Kiwi climate warriors deciding to disband because they’re white
Another place to find out about it is
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/06/13/ummmm-im-not-sure-how-to-tell-you-this-but-the-woke-just-cancelled-themselves-school-strike-4-climate-auckland-organization-disbands-because-its-too-racist/
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Im sure you all are in favor of multiculturalism, or accepted it at least. But this madness is part and parcel of multiculturalism, you cant have one without the other.
What this actually is Anti white hatred, and it is really ramping up. You ain’t seen nothing yet. The compassion of white societies was their great flaw, and a fatal flaw.
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Somewhat related:
Ummmm I’m not sure how to tell you this but the Woke just cancelled themselves?? School Strike 4 Climate Auckland Organization disbands because it’s too racist??? – thedailyblog.co.nz
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haha. You cant make this stuff up
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These things make us embarrassed to be American. Now our President has ordered that in official government documents dealing with maternal health, every occurrence of the word “mother” must be replaced by “birthing person,” ostensibly to be more “inclusive.” I don’t know about you, but every person I know who has ever given birth has been a mother…..
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