I remember my mother speaking to some college admissions person at a semi-prestigious school in Pennsylvania, many years back when I was in the throws of applying. When speaking to some admissions confusion with respect to my high school, the guy said, "Well frankly, it's not called the Ivy League because of its academics." That's always stuck with me. Athletic scholarships? You betcha. Academic scholarships? What are those?
Ivies give so much need based scholarships that athletic scholarships aren't required. If someone's parents and poor, the school finds a way for them to graduate debt-free. (This is a big plus for them)
As for sports having an impact... They may not let in a 900 SAT football player, but 1200 may be enough for an Olympic rower.
>"Well frankly, it's not called the Ivy League because of its academics." That's always stuck with me. Athletic scholarships? You betcha. Academic scholarships? What are those?
What are you talking about? Ivy League schools do not offer athletic money and all (now, not when I was applying) are need-blind, giving tons of money to those who need it.
I never said anything about them not giving money to students who need it. Not once.
I simply stated what was told to me about athletics. There's a difference between financial aid, and academic scholarship. Recruiting for academic purposes occurs much more so in post-undergrad situations. Whether or not you want to believe that athletics play a role in admissions and awards is up to you.
Heart attack, respiratory failure, and other organ failure to boot.
Tthe math of determining these "average" lengths of addiction are also troubling. When accounting for individuals that may have been addicted for three years, but died at the end of those three years, are we factoring in 3 years as the length of addiction? Are we weighting it in some other way along a point scale? The very title of that statistic is troublesome too: the length of addiction - it is unclear as to whether the lengths being measured and averaged share the same initial and final endpoints: The length of time elapsed between having no drug problem and recovery? Or, having no drug problem and death? Or, as I suspect a combined average, which renders the statistic useless.
I find troublesome that the author of the article (renowned neuroscientist and addiction journalist as cited) suggests that addiction is akin to a habit. The behavior itself is certainly habit, but the addiction lies moreso in the etymology and function of the habit than the actual repetitive behavior. For some, the addiction is distraction, for some escape, for others a sense of identity, and so on and so forth. To prescribe "outgrowing the addiction" as a solution is awfully simplistic, almost suggesting that if an addict could only replace that habit with something else, then all would be hunky dory. Well, in theory, sure. Maybe we can start designing rehab centers like they used to do traffic school - Improv Traffic School, Comedy Traffic School, Bikers' Traffic School - maybe Knitters Rehab: "We'll help you put down that needle, and pick up this one!" or Foodies Rehab: "Stop smoking that joint, and learn to smoke these ribs!" The possibilities are endless. But not likely.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/may/11/terms-condition...
The author cites from the above-linked study that 58% of adults surveyed in 2011 would rather read an instruction manual or credit card bill than online terms and conditions. (I wish that study had clarified whether they had surveyed an equal number of men and women.) That link amongst almost every you read regarding reading contracts and whatnot always advocate reading through word for word, and making sure you understand everything. Two things prohibit this - time and ease of comprehension. If companies could bullet point, we'd all be able to get through it within a reasonable amount of time. Those bullet points would hopefully simplify the language and make clear for those who cite "difficult to understand" as the reason for why they don't read through terms and conditions. I imagine some might need to contact legal counsel for explanations every time they want to sign up for internet, use a new application, or even browse a website. These fees would be quite costly, and it is arguable that the total damages associated with failure to reading terms and conditions would not outweigh the expenditure for ensuring clarity and comprehension through legal counsel. However, despite the theoretical advocacy for thorough reading, companies do not actually want us to do this. If they did, I believe they would make it easier. Lawyers like convoluting things; they like leaving loopholes, and making language just abstruse and ill-constructed enough to deter even the most erudite from fully reading anything they've written. (I sound like I hate lawyers, but I don't. I took the LSAT's thinking maybe I would like to go to law school to learn that school of thought. But I digress…)
The article about the Londoners is just sad all around. Are they to blame? Are the companies writing these wandering tomes of terms and conditions? Surely there has to be a better way to outlay and convey the constructs of these user agreements.
I would be curious to know how many of you use these, and which you find most useful. Some of these seem odd as the top 25. I can't imagine many that have missed Google Drive, Pinterest, Buffer or even Audible. Meetup wouldn't be my go-to, but maybe I should reconsider this. Wix is not the newest or greatest for simplistic website building, and many platforms offer comparable and equally if not more simplistic interfaces for design.
HelloSign is new to me. I hadn't heard of Fiverr either, more familiar with the more currently popular crowdsourcing sites. I've only recently discovered TalkWalker, so I'm still seeing how that fits into my social media plan.
At the risk of seeming like I'm just tearing down the author, I must admit that I'm hard-pressed to come up with a better list of "must-have" tools. I use Google Drive religiously, but not sure what I would tell someone else I couldn't live without...
Let's hope that the competition between Amazon and PayPal results in some significant value for the consumer/user/business users. Years ago, when I first built my e-commerce site, the only viable payment method that could be easily integrated was PayPal. Unless I wanted to pay a significant premium to have a payment gateway before I was ready to take on those initial sunk costs, PayPal was the most attractive and likely solution.
Hopefully, the industry will shift as more options become available and user-friendly. PayPal has the advantage of name recognition, but Amazon shares the same, and frankly, I personally regard Amazon more positively than PayPal. Hopefully, the industry continues its trend, now a quasi-oligopoly and eventually monopolistic competition.
Like others have mentioned, I too wonder how they are going to divvy shares.
I presented Conway's Game of Life in a classroom this summer of 10-12 year olds. They had no issue understanding it, were fascinated by the very simplicity of the concept that has immeasurable applications.
I would agree that most AP CS students come from a background of CS. It was certainly less common for students in my high school (a private college-prep school) to randomly pick up AP CS to look good on their transcripts. Most had already an interest and experience.
I think there are two types of CS students, which are quite often reflective of preferred learning styles and life schemas: those who are far more intuitive learners, and grow and retain knowledge through doing (experience and practice); and those who need the rules laid out, so that they may digest them, incorporate them into their operational styles, and then figure out how to use them, push them to their limits, and break them. Both of these types of students possess the ability to operate from a place of creativity, but some have yet to develop gut intuition, and feel safer and more confident starting from a place of concreteness, and from there, launching into a more nebulous space.
I applaud the author for innovating the CS (and AP CS) curricula and teaching methodology. I think that it may very well prove more functional and effective for many students.
As I see it, the natural extension of identifying this "secret to teaching," is to try and extrapolate it to "unlearning," or memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's.
If we can mimic and model the neuronal pathways and firings within humans, using AI, then we should also be able to study the relationship between the failure and degradation of pathways. AI pathways are subject to break and fail as well, though the causes are of course different. However, it would be imagined that there must be some shared structural stresses that result in the "unlearning" and failure to fire or function.
The potential for AI is immeasurable. If we can teach a robot, surely we can stress its system enough to "unteach" it. Despite being unable to force-feed it junk-food and/or vitamins/minerals, we can replicate environmental stressors, and once having generated the "unlearning" process, examine how to halt the degradation and perhaps reverse the trajectory.
Simply not doing what one is specifically "tasked to do" does not necessarily represent procrastination. It may be not be a direct route to one's specific end; however, it's important to recognize that sometimes on the journey from side to side, one learns, finds, or imagines a new way to move forward.
The internet simply provides new ways (which society moves to chastise and to ascribe blame) to wander off the beaten path. I find that when my internet clicking and surfing become as wayward as a three year old following a butterfly in flight, usually I come away having learned something unexpected or something I didn't know I wanted to know, in both cases, of value. Do I think people spend/waste a lot of time watching random fart contests and people acting the fool? Well sure. But, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The benefit of online "procrastination" in many cases is significant.
I agree that there are a great many number for whom "time crunch" and the pressure of an imminent deadline help to produce a superior outcome. For those that know themselves well enough, I agree absolutely simply set your own start time, and don't built yourself up over "procrastination." You're simply scheduling your own work.
However, there is also another subset of people that put off starting projects and work until the last minute, and don't function well under pressure. Many produce inferior work; some break down.
Ultimately, the key is self-awareness and self-acceptance. Identify what kind of person you are, in terms of work habits and conditions, and be completely honest with yourself. Then don't feel guilty or silly or whatever other negative attitude people want to attach for structuring your own production schedule according to your strengths and superior functioning.
I remember my mother speaking to some college admissions person at a semi-prestigious school in Pennsylvania, many years back when I was in the throws of applying. When speaking to some admissions confusion with respect to my high school, the guy said, "Well frankly, it's not called the Ivy League because of its academics." That's always stuck with me. Athletic scholarships? You betcha. Academic scholarships? What are those?