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The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

linky

And how good is the Department's English?  Can anyone ask the board to reassign themselves?

"Humiliation," he says?  What ever happened to humility?

You call this good conversation???

No, I guess it wasn't.  I won't be participating in any more of these.

Thanks for the wake up call, Trip.

You're actually letting someone tell you what you do and do not like?

OK

1. It's to make the letters fit better in the bottom of the triangle. Without the periods, it would be more condensed.

That's a matter of font choice.  Official documents have official-looking fonts.

Interesting ideas being bunted. 

So, what does make art?

A few years back (around 2000) some artists in Toronto captured a stray cat and skinned it alive, while videotaping it.  They said later that it was art.  Some said no, some said yes, for various reasons.  I'm divided on the matter... is something NOT art simply because I find it disgusting and horrendous, morally reprehensible, vile, cruel... etc.  I could go on.  Or, is THAT the art?  I mean, I eat meat... those animals are probably not treated very well... so where does my moral superiority stem from?  Is the killing of the cat art?  Or is the video taping art?  Or is my reaction art?

Or is this discussion art?

Art isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card.

There may be "art" about that project, but I don't think suffering should be a byproduct of art.  A direct purpose of a work, maybe, but the dead cat wasn't the work's target audience.

As for the video taping, I don't see a purpose to making a new video of skinning a cat when there are likely plenty online..

[admitting]

So in other words, these people are openly admitting that Islam is in fact nothing more than a bunch of Arabian dudes with guns waiting for an excuse to murder someone? I bet Glenn Beck has already done a story on 'em.

OK, I finally caught where you went wrong.

When you said "they admit that X", you implied that X was true.  My best guess is that you forgot that one usually hears of the truth being "admitted".

Well, I thought Discordians would like it because my intent is for it to be a very chaotic program to have a conversation with, but I wanted to work with it so its more than these simple chatterbots that barely pass the turing test if they do. It's not something we can probably code in a year, but I have a lot of free time since i'm deployed right now to Afghanistan

How does this differ from a computer-powered version of the cut-up technique?

[How is what you just said different from what I just said?]

No,  they are admitting that some Muslims are violent crazy fuckers, same as any religion.

How is what you just said different from what I just said?

retarded un-thought-out remarks like this are what gets people to vote Geert Wilders.

And what exactly was "retarded" about my remark? It is a documented fact that "Muslim" terrorists are drawn, almost entirely, from the non-practicing demographic of their respective countries. So yes, since they themselves display little to no actual devotion to Islam it would appear that they are in fact using Islam as an excuse, rather than acting out of a sincerely held belief. And all orthodox Muslim scholars agree that the Qu'ran only condones defending Islam from direct, physical attacks (meaning that someone is directly shooting at you personally or someone you can see, solely because you/they are a Muslim) not the pre-emptive/punitive Bush-style attacks that this group is talking about.

Identity and inclusion.  You started off saying,

So in other words, these people are openly admitting that Islam is in fact nothing more than a bunch of Arabian dudes with guns waiting for an excuse to murder someone? I bet Glenn Beck has already done a story on 'em.

In other words:

• There's "a bunch of Arabian dudes with guns waiting for an excuse to murder someone".
• Some of these, possibly all, comprise "Islam".
  • "Islam" contains nothing else.

You more or less said, "Islam = Terrorist".  Did you mean to?

This is an awesome response.


There's going to be so much crossfire, though.


Seriously, an extensive (proactive) PR campaign would probably make such a suit more productive and less likely to become a cause for violence.

For your consideration:
Here's an essay on debt, on levels that we rarely think about.  At least read the introduction.

http://blog.longnow.org/2010/04/22/debt-the-first-five-thousand-years/

There is inadequate talk of eating babies in this thread.

SRSLY, eating sprouts wastes seeds.  Less nutrition per seed put in the ground, possibly less productivity per unit farmland.  How decadent.

Right here!

  I'm pretty sure I shouldn't ask, but ummmm WTF is that?

"A still"
A tank/machine meant for distilling (booze)

just once, i'd like somebody to run on a "soft on crime" platform

I'd vote for him



CRIMINAL PARTY 2012

I've been thinking of "Tough on Crime--I'm not spending a single extra dollar on those fuckers!" and doing things minimalistically.

I've tried a stab at random music generation myself, unfortunately I'm not even very good in making non-random music, so it turned out a bit simplistic (and I had a lot of help from a friend about harmony and chord progressions and shit). The end result is pretty funny, the melodies are random, but they always carry the same sort of "feel" or "emotion" because it selects from a limited set of chord progressions.
What happened to me was that while programming it, I would hear the melodies over and over again, and they would stick in my head! Except, there was no fixed melody to be stuck in my head, so I found myself humming, trying to hum something that I just couldn't put my finger on. It was an odd sensation.
I have to say, I did manage to program a pretty kickass randomized drum/percussion rhythm. I suppose I just have more feeling for that then, I just wrote a bunch of rules that seemed "right" to me, and out came some surprisingly funky shit, especially with some tweaking. For the notes I just had the advice my friend was giving me.

Oooh, generated music!

Ever checked out http://tones.wolfram.com/ ?

[But please refrain from calling me "son", unless you happen to be at least twice my age.]

Alright, my bad.  But please refrain from calling me "son", unless you happen to be at least twice my age.

So what's the point of studying entropy levels in music?  Is it going to make better music, or is it just an exercise in measuring entropy?

Will do.  Don't know quite why I did that bit anyways.