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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday August 30 2014, @10:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the stranger-than-truth dept.

"An eighth-grade language arts teacher from Maryland has been placed on administrative leave after school officials learned he allegedly authored two books containing questionable content under a pseudonym.

Local network WBOC News reports that the investigation concerns two books published by McLaw under the nom de plume “Dr. K.S. Voltaer,” and one is about a fictional, futuristic school shooting that goes down in history as being the largest ever in the United States.

http://rt.com/usa/182964-teacher-leave-shooting-book/"

This is lunacy. School administrators are terrified there will be another Columbine or Sandy Hook and are overreacting, or are they. What could they do to prevent one. Nothing, nil, zero. No need to ask yourself 'why', say thank you to the traitorous NRA , the propaganda arm of the small arms manufacturing industry, for blocking any form of gun control. They have successfully infected the country with The American Disease™ almost unfettered access to weapons of war that kill with brutal efficiency. Sadly there appears to be no cure.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The preceding paragraph was not up to our standards. The comments to this story are spot on. You expect better than this and we let you down. There are so many comments referring to this paragraph, we cannot just delete it, hence the strike-through. More to follow.]

 
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  • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday August 30 2014, @08:28PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Saturday August 30 2014, @08:28PM (#87649) Journal

    For reference, I could only fit the following into 120 characters:-

    Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out? http://tinyurl.com/njd2xuj [tinyurl.com]

    but the full quote is:-

    On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

    And if you access the hyperlink and read to the end, you would have been rewarded with the following:-

    Meeting Dr. Wollaston [wikipedia.org] one morning in the shop of a bookseller, I proposed this question: If two volumes of hydrogen and one of oxygen are mixed together in a vessel, and if by mechanical pressure they can be so condensed as to become of the same specific gravity as water, will the gases under these circumstances unite and form water? "What do you think they will do?" said Dr. W. I replied, that I should rather they would unite. "I see no reason to suppose it," said he. I then inquired whether he thought the experiment worth making. He answered, that he did not, for that he should think it would certainly not succeed.

    A few days after, I proposed the same question to Sir Humphry Davy [wikipedia.org]. He at once said, "they will become water, of course;" and on my inquiring whether he thought the experiment worth making, he observed that it was a good experiment, but one which it was hardly necessary to make, as it must succeed.

    -- Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes (1830)

    I chose the first quote as a sarcastic comment about "big data" analytics. They also show that, for centuries, people without a STEM background have been asking wrongheaded questions and that experts have held diametrically opposed views without scientifically testing them.

    However, you are are correct. Any group of idiots with an Internet connection can get wrongheaded answers with less intermediation. First and foremost are proponents of "post-modern" Critical Code Studies [wikipedia.org] who critique source code at great length [10print.org] without understanding software. Unfortunately, striking them repeatedly with InterLisp manuals [fau.edu] would be of most benefit to the people holding the manuals.

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  • (Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Saturday August 30 2014, @09:26PM

    by pnkwarhall (4558) on Saturday August 30 2014, @09:26PM (#87659)

    I appreciate your explanation of the significance of the quote for you. That's the nice thing about quotes -- they can mean many things to many people simultaneously.

    As for the significance to me:
    I feel there's a prevalent view that the Internet is a force "for good", for the evolution and development of humanity (especially in tech circles). How does that work exactly, if the majority of the content on the web is porn, marketing garbage, and better-and-better disguised propaganda/social engineering efforts?

    Soylent was created as a reaction to to the slide of /. into... well, what it's become, which includes a glut of article summaries written as blatant propaganda (and selection of the articles themselves). (I hope that) The outcry against this article's summary displays the intent of the Soylent community to maintain a certain standard for the discussion on the site -- which could be considered (like any website) a microcosm of the 'net at large. I believe sincerely that "garbage in == garbage out", which is why this discussion about the summary is important. But as a general comment on the Internet -- if we fill the Internet with garbage (i.e. "the wrong figures"), the right answers for humanity will not come out.

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    Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven