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"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.]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Walzmyn on Saturday August 30 2014, @11:43AM
Keep your pacification bullshit outta the summary. Stick it in a comment if you want.
You might want to take notice of the fact that the places that deny guns (Chicago, D.C., etc...) are the places that have the shootings.
There haven't been any school shootings where teachers are allowed to carry concealed.
(And if we did away with all the guns, the loons would just use knives)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by cafebabe on Saturday August 30 2014, @12:26PM
"If guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns." Even if guns are eliminated, people can still kill with swords and knifes. The elimination of guns only reduces a person's effective radius. It does not reduce it to zero and it does not eliminate the underlying cause. Indeed, is it worthwhile to ban weapons when it leaves people vulnerable to nutjobs, de facto criminals or a rogue government? "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
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(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Saturday August 30 2014, @07:26PM
For some reason (maybe it's the context of this article/discussion, or just a result of my thinking of late) cafebabe's signature, which I've seen many times, suddenly changed from a simple statement describing the general public's understanding of computer technology, to a much more meaningful and poignant critique of the Internet.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday August 30 2014, @08:28PM
For reference, I could only fit the following into 120 characters:-
but the full quote is:-
And if you access the hyperlink and read to the end, you would have been rewarded with the following:-
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
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.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday August 31 2014, @01:54AM
Yes, and yes. And there's a decent argument that reducing someone's effective radius (and ability to kill through barriers) is a useful thing to be doing if you want to reduce the body count when somebody flips out and starts killing people.
Yes, address the underlying causes that cause people to go on rampages. But if it were possible to completely eliminate guns, it's likely that somebody on a rampage would kill closer to 3-4 people rather than 25. For example, if somebody starts slashing a sword at a school, it's relatively easy for people to run away from them, put locked doors in between, or even grab a sturdy stick and push them away - it's not perfect, of course, but it reduces the damage quite a bit.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday August 31 2014, @09:55AM
I agree with your figures. My concern is that we may optimize for one rare case (and ignore the underlying problems) while leaving people with greatly reduced defences in more common cases. It is premature optimization.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01 2014, @10:09AM
knives/swords have a smaller radius then guns, true
on the other hands guns are way louder and thus the use of gun will warn other nearby potential victims that danger is near, in a way a knife wont
most of the articles about school knifings (mostly from china) I've seen have higher body counts then the mass shootings in the US