[fishtank]

Good essay from a Hillsdale College graduate.

[eyespysomething]

The internet is the anti-christ.
Watch and see.



/ tinfoil hat

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Most interesting!

Now if it could give me guidance in teaching ungifted students basic algebraic reasoning!

[jim_trent]

I have posted some things here that were from my personal experience and have had others post, "I checked with Google and did not find anything so you are lying".

One was the ugly split between Conservatives and Libertarians in a small (30 or 40 members) local organization. Another had to do with past negotiations that involved emminent domain. Neither would ever make the news. That does NOT mean that they don't exist or didn't happen, though. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes this. People who believe that if it cannot be found on Google, it doesn't exist, must live in very small worlds.

[Prodigal Son]

You might be interested in this.

[Prodigal Son]

We have grown impatient when we want an answer, and we are usually able to find the answer without doing any additional reading in the area.

One of my own predictions is that the internet will actually have a detrimental effect on learning. In the future, we will probably see a time when a computer/internet interface is wired directly into the brain. When this happens, people will be able to instantly have the answer to even the most complex equation or the most obscure bit of knowledge. Languages will be translated instantaneously for example. There will be no need to know how to spell or use grammar correctly when there is a program running in the background to check all your output.

What will happen is many people will no longer see a need to spend large amounts of time learning and mastering a subject- why would they when any question they can think of can be so readily answered? There are long term ramifications of such a phenomenom.

If nobody sees a need to really study a subject you'll have ever fewer people who understand that subject completely enoug toadd to it- in other words, add to the body of knowledge that exists or come up with new ideas and theories.

[Eaker]

Ping to read at home.

[claptrap]

There is a lack of anything definite in this article.
The only conclusion he came to was he didnt have any idea where the internet was going.Predictions are more fun to shoot holes into when they are a bit more detailed.

[txhurl]

Remember when Clintoon was running around claiming how everthing was going to be 'transparent'? Transparency, that's all you heard.

[jimbo123]

I was on FreeRepublic when the first plane hit the WTC on 9/11.

[Stallone]

How to fly a Helicopter, by Dave Barry

Although flying a helicopter may seem very difficult, the truth is that if you can drive a car, you can, with just a few minutes of instruction, take the controls of one of these amazing machines.

Of course, you would immediately crash and die. This is why you need to remember :

RULE ONE OF HELICOPTER PILOTING :
Always have somebody sitting right next to you who actually knows how to fly the helicopter and can snatch the controls away from you because the truth is that helicopters are nothing at all like cars.
Cars work because of basic scientific principles that everybody understands, such as internal combustion, and parallel parking. Whereas scientists still have no idea what holds helicopters up.
"Whatever it is, it could stop at any moment," is their current feeling. This leads us to :

RULE TWO OF HELICOPTER PILOTING :
Maybe you should forget the intire thing.

This is what I was thinking recently as I stood outside a small airport in South Florida where I was about to take my first helicopter lesson. This was not my idea. This was the idea of Pam Gallina-Raissiguer, a pilot who flies radio reporters over Miami during rush hour so they can alert drivers to traffic problems.
I began having severe doubts when I saw Pam's helicopter. This was a small helicopter. It looked like it should have a little slot where you insert quarters to make it go up and down. I knew that if we got airborne in a helicopter this size in South Florida, some of our larger tropical flying insects could very well attempt to mate with us.

Also, this helicopter had no doors. As a Frequent Flyer, I know for a fact that all your leading United States airlines, despite being bankrupt, maintain a strict safety policy of having doors on their aircraft.

"Don't we need a larger helicopter?" I asked Pam, "with doors?"
"Get in," said Pam.

Now we're in the helicopter and Pam is explaining the controls to me over the headset. But there's static and the engine is making a lot of noise.

"........your throttle [something]," she is saying. "This is your cyclic and [something] your collective".
"What?" I say.
"[something] give you the controls when we reach 130 metres," Pam says.
"WHAT?", I say.

But Pam is not listening. She is moving a control thing and WHOOAA we are off the ground, hovering, and now, WHOOOOOAAAA, we are shooting up in the air, and there are still no doors on this particular helicopter.

Now Pam is giving me the main control thing.

RULE THREE OF HELICOPTER PILOTING :
If anyone tries to give you the main control thing, refuse to take it!

Pam says : "You don't need hardly any pressure to ........"

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

"Now that was too much pressure," Pam says.

Now I am flying the helicopter. I AM FLYING THE HELICOPTER. I am flying it by not moving a single body part for fear of jiggling the control thing. I look like the Lincoln Memorial Statue of Abraham Lincoln, only more rigid.

"Make a right turn," Pam is saying.

I gingerly move the control thing one zillionth of an inch to the right and the helicopter LEANS OVER TOWARDS MY SIDE AND THERE IS STILL NO DOOR HERE. I instantly move the thing one zillionth of an inch back.

"I'm not turning right," I inform Pam.
"What?" she says.
"Only left turns," I tell her. When you've been flying helicopters as long as I have, you know your limits.

After a while it becomes clear to Pam that if she continues to allow the Lincoln Statue to pilot the helicopter, we are going to wind up flying in a straight line until we run out of fuel, possibly over Antartica, so she takes the control thing back. That is the good news. The bad news is she is now saying something about demonstrating an "emergency proceedure".

"It's for when your engine dies," says Pam
"It's called auto-rotation. Do you like amusement park rides?"

I say, "No, I DOOOOOOO............."

RULE FOUR OF HELICOPTER PILOTING :
Auto-rotation means "coming down out of the sky at about the same speed and aerodynamic stability as that of a forklift dropped from a bomber."
Now we're close to the ground (although my stomach is still at 130 meters) and Pam is completing my training by having me hover the helicopter.

RULE FIVE OF HELICOPTER PILOTING :
You can't hover the helicopter.

The idea is to hang over one spot on the ground. I am hovering over an area about the size of Australia. I am swooping around like a crazed bumblebee. If I were trying to rescue a person from the roof of a 100 storey burning building, the person would realise that it would be safer to simply jump. At times I think I am hovering upside down. Even Pam looks nervous.

So I am very happy when we finally get back on the ground. Pam tells me I did great and she'd be glad to take me up again. I tell her that sounds like a fun idea.

RULE SIX OF HELICOPTER PILOTING :
Sometimes you have to lie.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Principled]

bttt