Very interesting… My mechanic insisted to me that France was over 50% Moslem and that Germany was closing fast. I showed him (on my phone) that the CIA WorldBook says that France is about 8% Moslem and Germany about the same. He was skeptical. That’s what they want you to think!
I mean, have whatever opinion you want about immigration - good, bad, control it, stop it, open it up… But you don’t get to have an opinion about something that has a number attached.
Now I go to the dealer. Inconvenient and maybe a little more expensive, but refreshingly professional!
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MO, thanks for your usually very clever comments. Always make me feel better! (I mean that to sound sincere… is there a “sincerity” tag?)
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It’s really not simply an issue of cutting the arts, there is little to no practical science taught in schools and extremely little focus on the most common forms of science and mathematics encountered outside of further STEM education. When our government pushes for “core” education programs they really mean they are meeting minimum college admission requirements and not producing adults post graduation.
I don’t disagree that humanities are frequently looked down upon, but considering that business and healthcare are the new normal for undergraduate education we STEM nerds still get crapped on for “working too hard for the same result.” The push is to get out ASAP, and/or to make money as the driving force for many.
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It’s easy to do to people you don’t know. I do it here all the time.
Talk about a derail.
What era in US history would you say Americans were better educated? And I don’t mean credentialed.
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Everyone we all know for the next forseeable future…
Hopefully without all the surprise, though? THESE UNEDUCATED FOLKS ARE WRONG! TRUMPKINS ARE WRONG! gets noxious really quick. It didn’t win the election and doesn’t seem to be helping the interregnum…
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Talk radio listener, surely.
I know what she meant but I found it frustrating that somebody supposedly critiquing the fascism of the Trump camp would use such grotesque language.
If that is normal, normal is wrong and needs to be fixed.
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Follow the thread back - it goes directly to your denial of @Akimbo_NOT’s contention concerning poor education being a factor in creating poorly informed citizens like the woman in the video.
Neither I or @Akimbo_NOT are arguing that there was some past golden age of American education. We’re talking about the here-and-now, a time when Americans should be better educated than they are given the resources currently available to us.
You talk about Americans having a better understanding of scientific principles, of law, and of medicine. So how to you explain the large numbers of American adults who are climate-change denialists and creationists, who don’t understand what the First Amendment means, and who spend billions of dollars on quack cures. Are all of these people with a high school or college diploma simply stupid in your view? And why do many of them tend to vote for the GOP and for outright snake-oil salesmen?
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I think Americans today are certainly more knowledgeable, but I don’t think that’s the same thing as more educated. Knowledge without direction or foundation is just trivia-hacking. Unfortunately, our school system’s programs are heavily built around simple, easy-to-score tests, and those kinds of tests are designed to verify knowledge, not education. As a result, we have a population that “knows” a lot of things and can do supremely well at Jeopardy and spelling bees, but whose foundational education on things like the scientific method, critical thinking, and comprehension are woefully lacking. It doesn’t really matter if you know when the Civil War was fought if you can be taken in by the lie that it wasn’t fundamentally about slavery.
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Agreed. What many of them have wouldn’t even qualify as knowledge. It’s information and data without context.
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Hey! I play the pipes! We could do this as live-performance civil service. Hand out the whiskey. And everyone could pay me to stop until I got down the street out of earshot. Believe you me…I’m that good!!!
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Make it a drinking game. 
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Your sources are blatantly partisan. Find an AP or BBC source. No subjectivity, just the facts.
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We already have the Regular Lounge threads for that.
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This isn’t the first time you’ve been told.
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You are looking for a rational reason and you’re never going to find one. There’s no simple because of A we get B. It’s more complicated and mocking people like in the video might make you feel good, but it doesn’t help.
Try listening to the This American Life episode linked to by @vonbobo above. The book I linked to in response to that comment is pretty darned thorough too.
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SHHHHHHH!
The first rule of the Lounge is… something to do with alcohol.
But I’m sure one of the first few is that you DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE LOUNGE!
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