VMars

If there were big tax cuts and big spending hikes, how do you know which one affected revenues? Just the one that you like?

I am not an audio learner, and wouldn't have watched the debates, but my husband insisted on it. So I barely paid attention to the specifics of what they were saying, but I walked away thinking that Romney clearly won. I thought he seemed much more dominant, and thought that he had a longer time of "possession" (but the newscasters said that Obama actually spoke for 4 minutes longer). I thought that Obama seemed very tired and disorganized, and his leaving the debate floor seemed like a retreat. Debates don't convince me which way to vote (again, not an audio learner), but if I were a personality voter, I would definitely be voting for Romney if this debate were the only idea of their personalities that I had.

That was my first reaction, too.

Just in case people want to see the whole thing, this came from the blog Hyperbole and A Half. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html My favorite is the one with the cake. Even though I've read it before, I still laugh.

I like Hrothgar's suggestion. I would also recommend not teaching a system that you don't play. For example, if you play 2/1 and not SA, when you eventually teach systems teach 2/1 and not SA.

"It is reasonable to estimate that each class in a given public elementary school is drawn from the same pool of students." That's actually not very reasonable. Some teachers are very good with certain types of students, and so are given more of them. Or some who have a reputation have the more pushy parents make sure that their kids (who they also push to succeed) are in those classes. Or a principal is looking to get rid of a teacher, and gives them more kids with bad behavior, in hopes that they'll quit or get worse scores and thus they can justify firing them. In HS, it can be much the same. There is only one other Geometry teacher at my school, and I know that the students were very unevenly distributed, with most of the pre-judged weaker students being placed in my class. If our CST (CA testing regime) scores were compared, I am sure that mine will be lower. If you say that you want to judge by improvement (rather than absolute), I'd wonder how you intend to do that, since they have not taken a Geometry CST (and I don't know that the Algebra I CST is necessarily a good predictor for Geometry). And even comparing the students repeating Geo, who therefore have a CST result, I had most of them for summer prep, and all those that made the most significant gains judging by class tests (which took place after the initial CST) were put in her classes, I got the others who did not improve as much. So she may get credit for the gains she made. You might say "oh, this means that there should be more testing, to get an accurate picture". I understand that from a data point, but there is such a thing as students being over-tested by standardized tests (especially students of color. There are several good books about this.) You could also ask about teacher's in class tests. I would argue that these tests are not necessarily well-standardized. You'd have to give the same exact tests to all students, but as I've been seeing, that doesn't work as well (but that's a separate issue). Professional test-makers would basically argue that teachers are not good at making reliable assessment measures, and that the conclusions drawn from them are not valid.

But on the other hand, many of these students who seemingly don't care (at least in HS) have basically had a history of being dumped on in elementary/middle school. I had a student I brought to our teachers meeting, who basically broke down crying, thanking all of us for our persistance in not letting her check out, and is now checked into 11th grade, with straight As. She had a horrible history, including verbal and emotional abuse by teachers in her past. If we hadn't reached out to her, she would be a HS drop-out. She's now on a path to college.

Now imagine that you were a Calculus teacher with those same students, who are sorely deficient in math literacy. Do you want your effectiveness to be rated in how well these students (who come in woefully underprepared) do on Calculus standards?

I agree that it's pretty cool to use as a review, and I utilize it for that extensively. The other problem is that it does not do error-analysis. For example, if a student makes a wrong answer, it would be nice if the student got feedback on why that answer is incorrect, rather than "try again". This frustrates students who have a lot of trouble catching all their errors, but actually understand something. It's rather draining on them because they keep getting wrong answers, and don't know why, and feel "dumb" (to quote them), and give up.

I taught a summer school class aimed at Geometry repeaters that used Khan Academy. The good part was that it enabled me to assign problems to students so I could intervene with students that needed the help. The bad part is that I really don't think that most kids (especially those that didn't do any talking, either to me or to other kids) really learned anything. I have those students in my actual Geometry class this year, and most of them tell me that they "enjoyed" the summer school program, and ask when they can do that again, but I don't see actual gains in skills/knowledge as shown in their classwork. If you really think that all students need to do to learn math is watching a video with someone talking to them, and then doing problems that encourage them to click quickly and not actually think (because they get badges for that), then you haven't taught in public school in the current century. I would catch students working on "telling time" or "adding numbers" because they wanted to up their badges. The saddest thing is that students wouldn't click on the "hints" or "I want help" button, because that would set back their progress and they'd have to do more problems. I believe that others in the forum have made posts about the latest research in education, which says that students learn best in social settings (discussing concepts with others, etc.) and learn best with a combination of "explore/discovery" time, instead of having someone just tell them what to do. Guess how Khan is set up? Basically, Khan is old-school style learning, set in new technology. There are many good uses of it, and I definitely use it to supplement my teaching (just today I referred a Pre-Calc student to it for practice with fractions that are interfering with her ability to succeed in PC), but there is no way that I believe that it's actually a step forward to the future of education.

What I understand from that is that these linguists are of the school that thinks "if enough people think it is correct, it enters the lexicon". For example, Xerox is a brand name, but lots of people talk about "xeroxing" something. It has entered the vernacular. I think that the point the linguists make is that "This belongs to Lily and I" has become such a part of Standard English speakers, that it is now considered part of Standard English. Because what is considered Standard English changes (at least in the field of linguistics).

I'm sorry I was clear. By "U.S. Nationals", I didn't mean NABC championships like the Vanderbilt. Even though those are colloquially referred to as "nationals" they are actually not the events that directly pick the U.S. team. I meant the USBF event for picking the U.S. national team.

I don't have the ability to upvote, but I completely agree with your statement that in education and health care there SHOULD NOT be losers, especially when it's based on such things as parents' income levels.

Without sponsors, the best players may not be as good as they are, because they may not have the luxury of devoting as much time to playing bridge as they are able to now. I know that I would be a much better player if I played every day for 6+ hours a day. But I have to get a job in order to eat and have a roof over my head. Meckwell are naturally better players than most of us, and if they had to work at a non-bridge job they would likely still be very good, but I have doubts that they would be as good a PAIR as they are now, if they hadn't have had years of playing together full-time. Also, just because someone is the worst player on their team of 6 doesn't mean that they don't belong on that team. What I'm trying to say, is if you pick the top 6 bridge players in any country, one of those pairs has to be worst, or perhaps less experienced or more reactive in the highest pressure segment. That doesn't mean that they don't belong on that team. Should a baseball team cut the #8 hitter? And yes, I realize that people could claim that certain sponsors are not as good as others left off the national team, but in reality, they are still very good. You have to be a very good player to sponsor a team good enough to win the U.S. nationals for example.

My understanding was that in the one partnership where awm plays gazilli, he plays 1NT as a standard american response, and basically plays the ambra version of gazilli. (same as in the 1H-1NT auctions.) They do something weird over auctions that start 1S, but I'm not sure I know exactly what that is (as in, "where it's from", not as in "I don't know what is played"). ETA the parenthetical.

Since the Olympics are all about how we all get along in the name of sports, when anyone won't cooperate with that we just pretend it didn't happen, because then it won't interfere with the narrative of how we all get along.

Hilarious.

I can't upvote, but this is absolutely the right point to make!

You can have different agreements, but standard in my neck of the woods is that it is weak with both minors.

I would absolutely pass the double. From my position it's the best way of getting a plus score (only way, at this point, unless opps are as crazy as partner seems to be, and would bid 5H over 5D). Seems rather sad that at your club people don't defend in the obvious way.

Those shown at the end of this season were not what were called "white walkers" in the book. The "white walkers"/"others" are those that animated the ones that we saw at the end of this season (and we saw them at the beginning of season 1) . Also, you may want to reread the first chapter of A Storm of Swords.

That was hilarious!

You're allowed to play Multi-Landy as a defense to NT opening at all levels on the West Coast.

I never really understood where this "26" comes from, except from the Junior World Championships, which seems to actually have a category for up to 28. I was in grad school when I turned 26, and had less than 500 points, and was not magically able to suddenly pay full price for tournaments, just because I got older. Then again, I dealt with it by working at my local clubs so I could play for free, and not going to as many sectionals/regionals until I left grad school and found a job. So I guess I was interested enough to figure out how to make it work, but several of my friends who I introduced to bridge (and were grad students) were less addicted than me, and stopped playing as much because the price went up on them.

Partner had no reason to overtake the 9. As Barmar said, it was likely that partner played too quickly, and didn't think about what to do if it was K9 tight (that she wouldn't want to continue from her hand anyway, so no point in overtaking). Overtaking the Q with the K from K98 also isn't necessary, unless you think that partner won't be able to read your signal. Especially if partner is someone who will lead the Q from QJxx, and partner doesn't have any outside entries (if you overtake, and play the 9 through, declarer can cover with the T, and either win a trick when partner holds up, or else cut you off from partner's hand, which will interfere with timing, and may also cost a contract).