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By stuffisthings on The Future Is Going to Be Awesome and Terrifying
I'm sure that when, say, Cuba builds a drone and uses it to blow up an Alpha 66 member driving through downtown Miami during rush-hour, along with a few bystanders, we will suddenly discover that we were mistaken about what international law does and does not allow re: drone strikes in foreign territory. Because right now there is literally no distinction between that scenario and what we are doing in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.
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By HereKitty on Scott Adams Buys a Car
Scott Adams, kind of a dick.
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By e on A Secret About Coconut Water And Also Happiness In General, Possibly
Count me in the hating coconut water club! My secret to happiness is buy no coconut water, save the 50 cents, save it up for a real beverage.
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By RocketSurgeon on Cheap Eats: Hot Tips for Beginners
I love my online subscription to Cook's Illustrated. Also, I'm working my way though "Ratio" by Michael Ruhlman. It teaches you how to understand basic preparations and measurements for baking, cooking, etc. so you learn to build dishes based on standard ratios/ingredients rather than on recipes. For instance, bread dough is five parts flour, three parts water and biscuit dough is three parts flour, one part fat, two parts liquid. It allows for more creativity than recipes and helps you be flexible if you have some but not all ingredients for a recipe you already know/like.
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By stuffisthings on Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe Give Good Podcast
Also it's interesting that when you talk to anyone who went to school in Europe or Asia, the one thing they complain about is too much high-stakes testing and rote learning. Yet that's our magic bullet solution for US education. I think the real reason our education does so badly cannot be found in the classroom. Yes, maybe our teachers aren't quite as well-educated as in some countries, and maybe our buildings are a little more dilapidated. Yet we spend more money per student than anyone else. However, if you look at the universe of factors that might affect student performance, and compare the US to other developed countries, there is one thing that sticks out: the huge number of children living in poverty. There are only 5 countries in the OECD that have worse child poverty than the US -- Chile, Turkey, Romania, Mexico, and Israel. When it comes to education, these are also among the lower-ranking countries internationally -- the US actually significantly outperforms its child-poverty peers, probably because of the large investments we make inside the classroom. Likely because very few countries with the level of resources we have choose not to spend them on first reducing child poverty before dumping more into education. Of course, for the education "reformers," recognizing that child poverty is the biggest cause of poor educational performance would require admitting that the socio-economic system that has benefited them so handsomely simply isn't working for a large portion of the population. And why do that when you can juke the stats to get an apparently quick 'n' easy result? Also, I should point out that most of the top-performing countries have teacher's unions whose power and militancy would make any American school administrator weep with rage.