> I'm sure they have a list of accepted forms of ID that can > be presented. I've never seen a list that includes a > concealed permit.I got my Arkansas driver's license renewed last year. They had a notice saying two "approved" forms of ID were required. My expired license was one. There was an amazing list of options for the second, including:
US passport
prison release papers
parole papers
adoption papers
name change papers
sex change papers
I didn't know you had to have papers for a sex change; I thought you just took your Ultra Titanium MasterCard and flew to Denmark or wherever...
DaveWorld, again.
A friend who lives in the area said he's seen that guy before.
http://www.valmetweapons.com/uploads/Valmet_m76FS.pdf
The rifle has a vertical gas block with the sight on top, no front sight block, no rear sight block, and the rear sight is on the top cover.
The receiver is stamped, with riveted trunnions. Howevever, it still has the "kinked" Valmet (or Galil) shape. There's a vertical line just above the kink point; it looks like they simply sawed a notch, bent the receiver, and welded it. I still don't know what the advantage of the kinked receiver was supposed to be; it looks like a lot of extra work for nothing.
The back of the top cover has some kind of reinforcement spot welded around the back end. At least, it looks that way in the grainy pictures. I guess they did that to make the fit more consistent since the rear sight is attached to it.
The buttstock is a weldment of steel tubing and some sheet metal. It still looks odd to me, but I can see several advantages for military arm. It's lighter, won't crack or break, and I've sometimes wondered how waterlogged/oil soaked wood or "polymer" would hold up at forty below zero. Maybe the Finns decided to bypass the whole question.
The gas piston is held in with an ordinary roll pin, not a rivet. I had wondered about this, and it's time to install my 922r-compliant gas piston to my Romy bolt carrier. I had wondered why a roll pin wouldn't work. Now I'm going to try one.
The bolt is drilled for a spring-loaded firing pin. Though literally millions of Kalashnikov-pattern rifles have been made with free-floating pins, I still like the idea of a sprung pin. If nothing else, it'd reduce the chance of an accidental double-tap if you had some soft primers
The particular model covered by this manual uses a wraparound handguard. The gas tube slides out the back, over the receiver, after removing the top cover. As far as I can tell, the only thing holding it in place is the top cover, as opposed to the step and notched pin of the normal AK layout. Perhaps someone who has actually field-stripped one of these rifles can comment.
The flash hider is retained by a transverse cross pin. The manual doesn't say anything about unscrewing it, just driving out the pin. The hider also forms the bayonet lug.
"The handguard is retained by a threaded nut-plate at the front, and the plate has spanner-holes for the use of a special wrench," according to the manual. Of course, the Valmet doesn't have a standard rear sight block, which carries part of the standard AK handguard retention hardware. If you look at an AK handguard set, there are quite a few bits and bobs, and some fairly precise machining. I had wondered about this more than once. Apparently the Soviets placed a good deal of importance on being able to clean under the handguards. Stripping, say, a Mosin-Nagant out of its wood to wipe out water or crud isn't something you'd expect soldiers to do in the field. All the bits and levers on the standard AK let you remove the guards quickly without tools... but the Finns apparently didn't think it was worth the extra trouble.
The Valmet uses yet another type of shepherd's hook to hold the fire control group pins, this one with a horizontal loop at the front.
The handguard nut engages threads cut into the barrel. To remove the nut, you have to drive out the cross pins and drive off the gas block.
The barrel is threaded for the flash hider; after you drive out the crosspin, you unscrew it as usual.
There are a few bits in the gas block/sight assembly that I'm not sure about. I'm guessing there a spring-loaded doohickey to keep the gas tube firmly in contact with the top cover.
The picture here shows a shepherd's hook very similar to the one on my Romy G.
The gas piston has a "star" near the front. Wikipedia says: "The gas piston included small “fingers” near the piston to ensure smoother functioning inside the gas tube, which helped to increase the inherent accuracy of the rifle." Some Galils have something similar, except they call it a "sand scraper." I'm doubtful that it would either enhance accuracy or scrape sand; the star is way up at the front end of the gas piston, which isn't always tightly coupled to the bolt carrier. And if sand is going to get into the gas tube, it looks like it would hang up the scraper as easily as the end of the piston.
Some "sporter" models used a left-right pushbutton safety instead of the usual AK pivoting dust cover/lever. Supposedly the pushbutton was quieter and less likely to spook game while hunting.
Some Valmets have a carry handle. I've not found any drawings or pictures of how they mount.
The M-88 has a crosswise pushbotton safety. There is no conventional AK safety lever, and it doesn't use the mainspring-mounted dust shield some variants do, so there's an open hole in the side.
The top cover holds the iron sights and/or scope mounts. It's attached to the back of the rifle with a button head Allen screw, thus requiring an Allen wrench for removal.
The front of the top cover is formed into a short cylinder, which telescopes over the gas tube by 5mm. There is no rear sight block or separate gas tube retainer hardware.
There are two round blocks pressed onto the barrel. These are threaded to accept the screws that hold the wooden foregrip. This dispenses with all the conventional lower handgrip retainer hardware.
The magazine release isn't covered well in the manual. It ism however, very small; all I can see is a nub hanging under the receiver. According to the text, you pull a button back toward the trigger guard.
A half-cock position is described; it has a whole section (number 5) telling how to do it. I can't see any unusual parts in the exploded view; it sounds like they're making a "feature" of how the hammer hangs up the bolt carrier sometimes.
The M-88 has a rear-set trigger like a Saiga.
The gas block is adjustable via a flathead screwdriver.
In the exploded view, the main spring retainer has no release button. It is threaded for the top cover retainer screw.
There's a "screw number 2" on the front of the receiver; it has something to do with snugging the fit of the top cover. I couldn't really tell from the pictures.
There's a Valmet Part Number 15 shown loose near the middle of the receiver, described as a "buffer". It looks for all the world like a Romanian slant cut muzzle brake.
There's a wide-base front sight at the muzzle, instead of the usual Valmet gas block ears.
> http://blog.makezine.com/ >> Despite the critical need for bicycle transportation in Africa, >> there are no bike-building businesses. All bicycles are instead >> imported, and these relatively few imported bicycles are >> designed for well-paved roads, inappropriate for rural >> transportation in these regions. The Bamboo Bike Project is >> filling that gap. Who would've thought, a bicycle made mostly >> out of bamboo?! But this plant's stalk is surprisingly very >> strong and shock-absorbent. Bicycles built with bamboo frames >> will allow Africans to use only a few pieces of imported parts, >> building the rest out of local and native bamboo.Ooo-kaay.
Typical fucktard liberal treehugger crap. The "bamboo bike" shown in the links off the article appears to have a bamboo frame, joined with what looks like fiberglass and epoxy at the joints. The articles babble about "sustainable transportation" and "local production" and other buzzwords.
A bicycle frame can be made out of anything with a fair strength to weight ratio. So you get unskilled labor to cut some bamboo... where does the epoxy come from? The chain? The wheels? The tires? The ball bearings? They're going to pick them off the ball bearing bush? Knit tires from hemp fiber?
Half a dozen newspapers ran the press release as straight news. I don't expect reporters to be engineers, but even a liberal treehugger should know there's more to a bicycle than a frame.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)
> volunteer to do some gun show hunting (no pun intended). What's with > not bringing guns to a gun show in LR?? It's a *gun* show, duh.I used to go a couple of times a year, until 1993-ish when Bush "NRA Lifetime Member" started issuing executive orders to ban all sorts of stuff. Then attendance at the gun shows went nuts; lines snaking fifty yards to get in the door. All Mormon-looking 20 and 30-somethings with their full packs of brats. They bought *everything*, starting with any "assault" looking stuff, all the way down to old Iver Johnson revolvers missing major parts. It was like huge swarms of locusts. Prices, of course, jumped accordingly. Why be reasonable when people would buy anything at any price? Gun stores would get tables, mark everything up 50% from store price, and sell out. It was crazy.
Then came the wheelies, in packs. Any given show, there'd be 20 or 30 powered wheelchairs, complete with sidemount baggage, scraping against tables on both sides as their crazed drivers rammed them down the aisles. They were aggressive as hell, ramming into people, over toes, etc. Yeah, asshole, you have a right to get around in your chair, but not to take up all four feet of a four-foot aisle. The wheelies made it generally miserable to negotiate the floor.
Somewhere in there came the "no personal weapons" bans, the searches at the door (turn out your pockets, open your coat, open any purses or bags), the freaking metal detector, the price jumps, and the general asshole attitude. I realized the shows had become places I didn't care to go, and I saw nothing there I couldn't get by mail, even with shipping.
The "no guns or ammunition" schtick was probably due to the "soldier of fortune" guys who would strap on a dozen assorted pistols and rifles and wander around selling or trading. I guess the new management felt they were losing table rentals, besides. Of course this meant that the vendors had no opportunity to buy anything, but they didn't care. There used to be some straaange people wandering around the gun shows; worthy entertainment all by themselves.
A. In RAID 0, the zero stands for how many files you are going to get back if something goes wrong.
--bash.org
> > One hundred megatons! This begs the question of just what is the > > theoretical limit to the nuclear bomb? > > A hundred megatons, a thousand megatons, or more?I don't know... but I assume there are practical geometry problems you'd run into that would establish a limit on the size. The usual configuration is a hollow sphere of plutonium inside a sphere of RDX or similar high-brisance explosive. The explosive has a maximum burn rate, which would limit the physical size of the core, and it has limits on pressure, which would limit the thickness of the core. But how close they are to those limits, I have no idea.
Back at Los Alamos they had problems calculating the compression wave of the explosive as it crushed the core. They had rooms full of WACs and civilians with calculators on one side, and their new electronic computer on the other. Feynman said the computer guys were losing ground to the calculators because they kept playing with the new toy. Anyway, Teller persuaded Oppenheimer that the problem could not be solved in the time they had available, and suggested they do some empirical testing using instrumented explosive models. Some lucky sergeant got to blow up some high percentage of the entire WWII production of RDX in the New Mexico desert running the tests.
The problem they were trying to solve was what happened at the segment interfaces. It wasn't practical to cast a big ball of RDX around the core, so they cast the explosive in wedges and assembled them into a sphere. But the joints cause odd reflections in the pressure waves, and they weren't sure what that would do to the collapse of the core. Also, the stuff had air bubbles in it from mixing. The explosives guys couldn't keep the bubbles from forming while casting, and the effects of the bubbles were impossible to model with the resources they had. So they had another sergeant who took twenty pound blocks of explosive and cut into them with a dental drill to get to the bubbles, then carefully packed the holes with more explosive. I bet that guy's asshole was never the same after that...
We started buying bottled water; whatever was cheap at the dollar store or Wall-Mall. The stuff was actually drinkable. Normal bottle size is 20 oz; I drink four per day. It's tasteless, so it's not all that arduous.
The store was out of the cheap stuff the other day, so AB bought a case of water packaged by Nestle. It was worse than tap water - it was slimy, like it had glycerine or something in it. Same as a bottle I picked up in a convenience store a few months ago, packaged by the Coca-Cola company. Yech!
Why the *hell* someone would doctor water into slime boggles my mind almost as much as why people would buy the stuff more than once...
> > Of the 123 motorcyclists taken to LVH since the repeal, the > > death rate was higher among patients who did not wear > > helmets. Four of 31 helmetless riders died; two of the 92 > > patients who were wearing a helmet when they crashed died. > > Bare-headed riders spent an extra day in the hospital on > > average.I note the article carefully avoided mentioning what the riders actually died of.
I was coming home from work on my Seca Turbo in May of 1987 when a DWI veered across two lanes of traffic to run me down. Totalled the Turbo, left me with my left leg broken in three places, bone crushed to powder partway down. I'll never walk normally again, though after three operations, I get around a lot better than I used to. For short distances, anyway.
Every one of the EMTs and police at the scene kept telling me how my helmet had saved my life. So did approximately forty hospital personnel, who apparently thought I was there for their entertainment. After a few hours I grew tired of pointing out to them that my helmet had never touched the ground, and motorcyclists normally don't wear helmets on their legs. This didn't seem to faze the Helmet Believers in the least.
Boss Tweed said, "Y'all can do the votin' as long as I do the nominatin'." In Stat 101, the prof said, "You can let them analyze your data any way they want, as long as you're careful about how you collect your data." That article is a waste of ASCII without any head-injury-related data to back it up. I also noticed their supporting hearsay from two states that they claimed had higher death rates after repealing helmet laws; they didn't bother to mention the several states where there was no change, or ones where the rate actually dipped a bit.
Um. Yes. The person who made the ad linked "the gloves come off" with "fight", but she mixed up two entirely separate things. When knights challenged one another in the Middle Ages, one would throw a gauntlet or glove at the feet of another. If the challenge was accepted, the other knight picked up the gauntlet.
In the case of boxing gloves, you put them on to fight, not take them off. When you take them off, you're quitting.
Oddly enough, most of the people I mentioned the ad to didn't understand the difference between boxing and chivalric challenge. Zee Eengleesh, she is-a not as precise as she used to be...
My wife picked up some notpads at the Wal-Mall. They're some kind of nasty limp paper, but hell, they're just notepads. Except... you can't use all of the page. There are areas all over them where a ballpoint pen won't write. The pen still writes elsewhere, and another pen won't write on the same spot.
Paper has "tooth", a fine surface designed to take ink or graphite. But parts of this paper are so slick the ball just slides around.
Simple enough solution - throw away all the useless pads, buy some made somewhere else. I send AB back to the Wal-Mall.
Nope. *All* paper products are the Wal-Mall are made in China. Probably by the same company. So I fight with the crappy paper.
Go somewhere besides the Wal-Mall? People's Merchandise Distribution Center #0024 won the war here years ago; other than a few gas stations and convenience stores, it's the only game in town. There's a K-Mart in the next town, but its merchandise is usually of even lower quality than Wal-Mart.
> > Ahhh... that would leave the incumbent in office.Nah, use the Powerball Lottery system. They keep popping balls until someone's valid Social Security number comes up, then the Secret Service charges out to take the lucky winner to the White House. It might turn out something like the movie "The Running Man."How about > > having a Presidential Draft? A "massive bank of computers" would > > randomly select the President from the ranks of registered voters, for a > > term of six months. Let the rest of the world respect and/or fear > > Mr./Mrs./Ms. Jo(e). Average Lunchbucket. Then the "massive bank of > > computers" would select the remaining offices of the President.
"Our new President is... Lincoln Robertson, of Jersey City!
Congratulations, Lincoln! Treasury Department agents are on their way
for YOU! Yes, we have your credit report already... police report
coming in... looks like Mr. Robinson is unemployed, with a long arrest
record for dealing in narcotics. So, Lincoln, you probably have cash in
hand as you make your run, unlike our last winner, who had all her
credit cards shut off and committed suicide in her Beverly Hills home.
...
We expected Lincoln to make for Canada, but it looks like he's taking
the long route! He was spotted by a cousin in Memphis... looks like
he's going for Mexico! US Border Patrol agents have tightened up the
border. Meanwhile, if you see this man call our 800 number! And now we
return you to our exciting chase footage..."
How about we abolish the office of President via a Constitutional
amendment and make Congress get off its lazy collective ass and work for
a change?
- Terry Pratchett
> I still have a hard time believing people bought into Daytime Running > Lights. What a farce, all based on irrelavent data.Same deal as the blindingly-bright turn and stop lights, and the stupid cyclops brake light in the middle.
A lot of newer cars are bright enough to destroy my night vision when they hit the brakes. Of course, it's for SAFETY... and you can't be against safety. Because if you are, we'll strap you down and get out the needle and the electrodes, and you'll be *much* more agreeable when we're done with you...
> > Oh boy...off subject but well within the range of interests....every vehicle > > to be fitted with a remote "off" control, operable by police and others, > > when you are wanted for questioning or arrest.They've been slavering for those since the early '70s.
If they go to a simple radio system, it'll take about three days for DIY car zapper plans to float out onto the 'net. If they use encryption, it might take as much as a week. Once the systems start being installed, they're sitting targets for the kind of people who have nothing better to do than crack the system. Shortly after, police cars will be the targets.
The tattletale dataloggers on some US-market cars have already been deemed admissible evidence in court, and of course there are the various spy proposals that keep surfacing in connection with the forthcoming OBD-3 spec...
Meanwhile, RFID is coming at the retail level, and retailers are ajoy at the thought of scanning customers as they *enter* stores, where their socks, underwear, and so forth will obligingly broadcast their ID codes as they walk between the sensor blades. Exactly *why* they need to know this sort of thing is a mystery to me.
You'll know me; I'm the Luddite who will be putting his underwear in the microwave to kill the RFID bugs.
As the ultra-violence begins and the red, red kroovy flows, the musical score begins and the sound level goes way up.
And the music is... "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens; I think it was a Kingston Trio cover.
A less appropriate song is hard to imagine, but it was creepy all the same. It's times like that I realize how far away DaveWorld is from TV-Land; was it intended to be creepy? Was it intended to be something else? If it was, did other Americans "get it", or was it some British cultural thing?
"In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight."
[screaming and crying]
"Near the village, the peaceful village, the lion sleeps tonight."
[whirring saws and flashing knives]
"Hush my darling, don't fear my darling, the lion sleeps tonight."
[screams of agony]
> > I have been an outspoken opponent of collectivism ever since I read the Ayn > > Rand pamphlet "Textbook of Americanism" back in 1987. Like her or not, she > > nailed collectivism dead on for what it really is: The dehumanization of > > the individual in order the serve the interests of those who believe they > > have the right to the lives and property of others. Most of the evil in the > > world can be traced to one form of collectivism or another.When I was in elementary school in California in the 1960s I saw a lot of that kind of thing. Group this, group that, and finally group grades, where they'd have four or five kid groups working on class assignments, and they'd all get the same grade when it was turned in.
What usually happened was the "group" would all look at me, and when I wouldn't do the whole thing, they'd get ugly. Then we'd get another collective F.
I've seen the same sort of behavior in work situations, where "teams" would ride the back of the one or two fools who tried to bust their butt to do the work for the whole team. Fortunately, the school system had already taught me how to deal with that...
One innovation of the corporate method, though, is that the teams all had "team leaders", who, once elevated to fuhrer status, took all the credit for success, and none of the blame for failure.
Management is sitting around, waiting for something good to happen, then taking credit for it."
- Scott Adams
The INSAS was supposed to replaced the FAL for the Indian Army. It uses 5.56mm ammo, 20 or 30 round mags.
The front sight is combined with the gas block. I've found pictures of several variants, some with a ring around the sight post, etc. The gas block is adjustable, and can cut off gas completely if desired.
The bayonet lug is pinned to the barrel between the flash hider and gas block.
Some have the front sling mount pinned between the bayonet lug and gas block, others have it on the gas block.
Most spec sheets say it has a carry handle, but many of the pictures I found don't show it. The handle hinges on the left, wraps entirely over the receiver, and the handle hangs below the ejection port when folded.
The receiver is the usual straight AK type, but it has a Valmet-style top cover sliding into the gas tube, and no rear sight block.
The handguard looks Valmet-like. It appears to be one piece, though I can't tell how it's attached. I found no drawings, manuals, or exploded views for the INSAS, so a lot of this is guesswork.
The rear sight is on the top cover. The tiny pictures I've found show... something... in the middle of the top cover. It might be a base for a scope.
The safety and fire selector are on the left side. So is the cocking handle. The right side is blank, other than the ejection port. There's no slot for the cocking handle, and no safety lever on the right.
There's no slot on the left of the top cover either - the cocking handle is at the forward end of the gas piston! This was the most interesting part of the INSAS as far as I was concerned, so it was irritating I could find no exploded view of how it worked. As far as I can tell, the gas tube would have to be slotted for the handle to ride back. There's either a gaping slot for crud to enter, or some kind of internal cover that slides back with the bolt handle; I can't even tell that from what I've found.
I'd love to find an INSAS gas block and cocking handle bits for an AK project, but I've not found any INSAS parts for sale anywhere.
> > http://shorpy.com/node/5708?size=thumbnailEven with my new displays some of those pictures are like windows into the past.
The "Civil War" section is fsckin' amazing. I foresee much time spent here...
So far this is my favorite shot on the site: a railroad yard during the Battle of Nashville. Oceans of mud, but someone has polished the brasswork on the locomotives until they shine through a century and a half, even in black and white.
http://www.shorpy.com/Battle-of-Nashville-1864
For you photozoids, these are all large-format glass plates.
The Library of Congress has sat on this stuff forever, like a dragon on its hoard. I don't know how these people got access, but this freakin' rocks!
- Terry Pratchett
> > Yes, but suddenly being where no bike was before can surprise drivers. Even > > bike riders.I do a lot of riding with my brother, nowadays. We generally ride staggered, though side-by-side is legal here.
After having a number of close calls from cars pulling out in front of us, we generally close our distance up or use extra caution when passing cars at driveways, side roads, etc. A sizeable percentage of time, the car will pull out in front of the second bike.
What I figure happening is, they glance up, see "something" approaching, then they see a motorcycle pass. Then they're very surprised when a *second* motorcycle, only a length or two behind the first one, narrowly avoids their front bumper.
It could be a lot of people eaten up with dumb-ass, or maybe their lizards just aren't good with counting...
> > A friend of mine advised me to wear ear protection and guess what? > > The plugs attentuated the wind noise and I could actually hear my > > bike better!Ear plugs, ear muffs, headphones, headsets, and ear buds are all specifically prohibited by the Arkansas Motor Vehicle Code. Which is silly, since you can be completely deaf and they'll still give you a license, and they're pushing for headsets for cellular phones...
I've been riding with ear plugs for years. My Shoei RF200 is comfortable, but very noisy; even adding extra foam inside around the ears didn't help much.
I figure, if a cop ever writes me a ticket for my earplugs, I'll get my doctor to write me something to take the to judge. Or I'll just pay the ticket; it's better than going deaf from prolonged wind noise.
> > I wonder....how will law enforcement make money without speeding tickets?I'd *love* to see them make a ton of money enforcing traffic signals.
Every ten years or so, in some lemming-like fashion, we'll start getting people who just drive right through stop signs and red lights without even slowing down. I'm having to do emergency braking or evasion due to this a couple of times per week.
I'd also like to see them give tickets for driving with no license plate. An Arkansas license plate costs $19. The only reason anyone would drive without a plate is if they didn't have the mandatory insurance. *I* have to pay the insurance mafia off; if the other bastards don't, why should they drive for free? One car in ten, by my own personal count, is running without a plate.
Finally, I'd like to see them ticket the assholes driving around in the dark with their DRL high beams blinding other people, while the rest of the car is totally dark.
Nothing wrong with that. What fascinates me, though, are the demographics - the same as several of the automotive mailing lists I'm on. Mostly Dixie, some Ohio, some California, and a scattering of elsewhere.
> Many moons ago, . . . there was a movie that starred some > karate guru, . . . and at the end of the movie he is in a > living room with a whole room full of bg's wanting his hide > and all he has are his hands, feet, and a lever action rifle. > > He pops the "leader" right between the eyes (bg had on big > ugly white rimmed '70's sun glasses).Tom Laughlin in "The Born Losers" from 1967.
Think "Gran Torino" from the tie-dye and beads era. Well worth watching.
It was the first movie with Loughlin's "Billy Jack" character, but it's not really a "Billy Jack" movie. A hell of a lot better than those, in my not-so-humble opinion.
The film was loosely based on real-world events; the Hell's Angels had taken over the town of Hollister, CA once, and other towns had fallen to other gangs. Big news back in the day, so the movie was "current events" when it was made. Now those events are largely forgotten, and people forget things worked differently 40 years ago. There were no black-helicopter SWAT teams to fly in to the rescue, and as far as the mass media were concerned, pretty girls in bikinis rode small motorcycles all over the place.
In the 21st century it's easy to get hung up on the 1960s retro, but the film makes strong statements about ethics, morals, and society that weren't real popular in the 1960s, and even less popular now. Most people are sheep, and they'll put up with almost anything if they hope the status quo won't get any worse in the near future. Unfortunately, there's no Billy Jack to pull their chestnuts out of the fire in real life.
I saw this one in the theater in the mid-'70s. Three times. It was one of the things that shaped the way I see the world. I haven't seen it since, and I've never seen it in the video store, but if you find it somewhere, I guarantee it will be worth your time.
> > Oh, god. Not another Internet Personality.That should be obvious, from the horned Helmet, the flowing Cape, and the hobnailed horrorshow Boots, good for kicking.
> > Teacher candidates know their multiplication tables, but "they don't > > come to us knowing why multiplication works the way it does," saidObviously the twat who wrote that went through an educational path where all the schools used the same textbook group. Growing up as a military child, I ran into major differences in English and some in math when I attended schools across the country. The "one true way" zealots don't seem to realize not everyone used the same textbooks they did.
In the mid-1960s in California, I got "New Math." We used number lines, long division, and long multiplication, with each step mapped out to show why and how everything worked. In Florida, they used "old math" - short division and multiplication, and it was "don't ask questions, just memorize." I did poorly there. Tennessee was New Math, Arkansas was old. I heard California swung back to old math in the late 1960s.
If all you ever had was old, you probably have no idea *how* division works; you were just taught a process by rote. I had a teacher who marked one of my math assignments "F" because I worked all the problems out, instead of doing it the short way. She had no idea what I was doing, but since it didn't look like the only way she knew, it had to be wrong, even if it came up with the same answer.
> > The study by the nonpartisan research and advocacy group comes a few > > months after a federal panel reported that U.S. students have widespread > > difficulty with fractions, a problem that arises in elementary school > > and prevents kids from mastering more complicated topics like algebra > > later on.First someone will have to explain to me how fractions have anything to do with algebra.
> > WASHINGTON — For kids to do better in math, their teachers might have > > to go back to school. Elementary-school teachers are poorly prepared by > > education schools to teach math,They're poorly prepared to teach *anything*. All they're allowed to do in any modern school system is parrot exactly what is in the approved book, no deviations. The classroom security guard could do that. Or the television, for that matter.
If any teacher was stupid enough to show some initiative and actually *teach* something, they'd be stoned and burned at the stake.
> > She said the courses should explain how math concepts build upon each > > other and why certain ideas need to be emphasized in the classroom.Sure, as long as the student stays in the same school, with the same textbook set. The school I went to changed vendors between the 9th and 10th grades; not that the 9th grade books were anything to brag about, but the 10th grade ones didn't even have the same freakin' *terminology*, much less have any connection with the old books. I think only two or three people in the entire class made passing grades that year. I think they got outside help. I gave up, and read detective stories.
> > I had exactly the same desire for my office, and I found an > > mp3-capable *portable* CD player. It is designed for use with > > headphones like a WalkMan, but it drives 2W mini computer speakers > > just fine. I imagine you could send the output to your stereo amp.I found something like that at K-Mart. It doesn't do MP3s, though.
K-Mart was interesting. I would say 75% of every audio or video products they had on the shelves was "iPod compatible." Docking stations, table radios, "MP3 players", etc. - most of them wouldn't even work without the blessing of Apple Computer.
"The gun business is a cruel and shallow money trench,a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side."