All,
Having a little more time on my hands, I recently picked up this
discussion.
Regarding Bills of Rights... Rights themselves are inalienable, but the
document is a formal acknowledgement that they will be respected, and
legal teeth will enforce it. Everyone in North Korea and Cambodia has
these rights too, but their government doesn't choose to draft a document
to formally say they respect those rights, so they get violated.
Americans have always had to fight for their rights. Heck, both the Bill
of Rights and slavery were law from 1791 through 1865.
Regarding general ignorance about computers, knowhow, math... Anyone ever
watch The Simpsons? :D
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060610/bob8.asp
Did you know almost everyone on their writing staff holds a doctorate or
masters degree in hard science and math? They routinely tickle math fans
with obscure tidbits here and there. Once when Homer stumbled into the
third dimension, the equation 1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922^12 was floating
about in threespace. Plug this into a calculator or a 32-bit computer,
and it appears to be true, disproving Fermat's last theorem. But it's
only true given a computer's roundoff error. Fans responded quite well to
this obscure joke. The Simpsons also loves to make fun of people's
ineptitude with math and education in general, I'm sure everyone here
remembers something. The article above mentions an episode where the
school gets divided into girl's and boy's classes, so girls can learn math
without obnoxious boys; but then to Lisa's horror they were teaching,
"What does a plus sign smell like? Is the number 7 odd or just
different?". Lisa then dresses in drag and sneaks into the boy's school
to learn real math.
Just fight the good fight a little bit at a time. Talk to those who
listen, give nothing more than your forty-second elevator speech to
everyone else. Society wasn't built overnight. The Simpson's writers are
doing it their own way, and that's all we can do ourselves, our way, with
our own power and nothing more. In the end, it's our own experience that
matters most, that's all we're on this planet for.
--
Alexander
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list -
PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
(text/plain)