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Spam's State of the Union thread for 2014


Ms. Spam
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I've never looked at MIT. Someone told me that it's just like being in a class, with assignment due dates and everything. We use KA because they offer all levels of math for Noah. Plus, it's not structured. You "hop on, hop off". I've been using it to brush up on integration techniques and rules that I'm a little rusty on. I don't need to retake an entire class for that.

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Six days of training on driving a vehicle with 3 axles, air brakes and 24 or more people on it got me further than a 2 year business administration diploma did. The business admin stuff helped out somewhat with our family business, but certainly didn't get me any paid positions.

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I've never looked at MIT. Someone told me that it's just like being in a class, with assignment due dates and everything. We use KA because they offer all levels of math for Noah. Plus, it's not structured. You "hop on, hop off". I've been using it to brush up on integration techniques and rules that I'm a little rusty on. I don't need to retake an entire class for that.

Yes, all the course materials are available online - syllabuses, lectures (video and transcripts), homework assignments, sometimes with solutions, and exams (sometimes with solutions). But you don't have to go through the content linearly. If you want to go to the calculus courses and skip to the lectures on the topics you're brushing up on, you can do that. Theoretically you could take all the courses offered at MIT OCW in a particular degree program. It's like being at MIT, except it's not accredited so you don't get the degree. I wouldn't expect much feedback from the professors, either. Not all of them who allowed their courses to be available on OCW are still there. Some of the more basic courses, like calculus, are from 10-15 years ago, but, hey, it's calculus. It's not any different now than back in 1999.

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But just because a class is "outside of your requirements" doesn't mean you can neglect to take the required number of credits to graduate. Even electives are required, technically. MIT OCW is to supplement education, not replace classes at the school you're going to have granting your degree.

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Holy fuck. I hate to sound too much like Amanda here, but are you ****ing serious? Shit, don't you have like a PhD or something?

 

I want you to read what you just posted.

 

 

 

But just because a class is "outside of your requirements" doesn't mean you can neglect to take the required number of credits to graduate. Even electives are required, technically.

 

If electives are, in fact, required that would make them, by definition of the damn word, a requirement. I don't really know how much clearer I can make this for you. Classes outside of my requirements = classes NOT REQUIRED for me to graduate = EXTRA classes NOT a part of the degree plan

 

You trying so hard to seem smarter than everyone here is one of the most counter-productive endeavors in the history of this board.

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So... Impressions from the actual speech?

 

Meh. I mean I thought it was great he came out with a bit of swagger but there were some borderline lies like Iran and negotiating a nuclear agreement or stuff like Yemen which is on the brink of a collapse of the US puppet government.

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I'm trying to be helpful. You could be less condescending. Clearly non-verbal cues are a serious part of communication with you.

 

You must take a certain number of credits to graduate, yes? Usually the required number of credits to graduate is greater than the number of credits in your major. Other classes outside of your major classes are required - composition, mathematics, whatever - to make you "well-rounded". Then there are electives, i.e., classes that are not forced upon you, but nevertheless, something has to be taken. If you need, for example, 136 credits to graduate, you don't get to take 133 and then replace 3 credits with an online class from a different university (that doesn't offer credit for the online courses, by the way). Doing so won't satisfy the credit requirements. At least, that's never been allowed at any of the half-dozen universities I've studied or worked at.

 

Perhaps we're talking past each other at this point. Maybe you're talking about credits beyond the minimum to graduate - I don't know. Interacting with you is incredibly painful, like banging my head against a wall. I must be a glutton for punishment.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

So... Impressions from the actual speech?

 

Meh. I mean I thought it was great he came out with a bit of swagger but there were some borderline lies like Iran and negotiating a nuclear agreement or stuff like Yemen which is on the brink of a collapse of the US puppet government.

TAX HIKES: Wants to raise the top capital gains rate on couples with incomes above $500,000 to 28 percent, impose a fee on about 100 financial firms with assets exceeding $50 billion, & eliminate a tax break on inheritances. Obama says this will bring in $320 billion over a decade.

Typical Obama rhetoric. Not that I mind those increases, but seems more like red meat to lefties. $320 billion is a drop in the bucket of the $7 trillion deficit under Obama.

 

TAX BREAKS: 500 tax credit for families with 2 working spouses with income up to $210,000. Expand the child care credit to up to $3,000 per child under age 5. Offer the Earned Income Tax Credit to childless workers and noncustodial parents. Consolidate six overlapping education tax breaks into two. Most of that is for people with kids, but it was nice to hear he is remembering people who choose not to have them are people, too. But I doubt this will affect my life much.

 

EDUCATION: Offer two years of free community or technical college. Students would need to go to school at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 grade point average and make progress toward a degree. The White House estimates that would cost $60 billion over a decade. Wow, a 2.5 GPA, at half time? That's setting the bar f*cking low! How about if you are going to do this, at least make it for full time only, and demand a 3.2 GPA or better! But as I stated before, I don't agree with this at all, and you can basically triple the "estimated cost" if you want an accurate number.

 

PAID LEAVE: Call for federal and local laws allowing workers to earn up to a week of paid sick time a year. Urge Congress to give federal workers an additional six weeks of paid parental leave. Call for more than $2 billion from Congress for paid family and medical leave programs. Question: What companies don't already offer sick time and vacation time? Answer: Employers that are not worth working for. I don't think there needs to be a law for this. If the economy is on the up climb as he claims, this issue will take care of itself: as more jobs become available, people will leave their current job that doesn't offer sick time for those that do. Companies that offer crappy benefits will be forced to offer them to remain competitive. I suspect this is aimed at companies that employ undocumented workers.

 

HOME OWNERSHIP: Cut insurance premiums for government-backed mortgages by half a percentage point to .85 percent. The White House says the reduction would save new home buyers and those who refinance $900 a year compared to current rates. I could care less, as I have no desire to own a home. Renting is better for me, because I think more often than not, you never see the return on your property when you factor maintenance and upkeep costs. When something breaks, I love calling the landlord and letting them pay for fixing it.

 

RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Boost retirement savings by automatically enrolling people without access to a workplace retirement plan in an Individual Retirement Account. Expand access to employer plans for certain part-time workers. I've not much of an opinion on this. I guess retirement for part timers sounds like a good idea, but to pay for it, I think employers will be forced to lower wages and salaries.

 

MIDDLE EAST: Urge Congress to pass a new authorization for use of military force against the Islamic State group and militant extremists in the Mideast. Until now, Obama has been relying on 9/11-era war powers. Straight out of 2002-2004 Bush era. A president claiming to need more power is a president who shouldn't get it.

 

CUBA: Seek support for normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Obama wants Congress to lift the economic embargo on Cuba, though the White House doesn't expect Congress to take that step quickly. I've long felt the Cuban embargo was an outdated policy and hypocritical seeing as we do business with the Chinese and Russians. We should fully normalize US Cuban relations.

 

IRAN: Vow to veto new sanctions on Iran while world powers pursue nuclear talks. While I see no reason to sanction Iran at the moment, taking it off the table altogether gives the Iranians a blank check to do whatever they want, and provides no consequences if they do something that they need to be sanctioned for. Even if this is what he wants to do privately, very stupid to telegraph it to the Iranians like that.

 

TRADE: Ask Congress for so-called "fast track" trade promotion authority to allow an up-or-down vote on trade pacts. Obama wants to secure two major trade agreements - one with the EU, and one with Asia-Pacific nations. Not my area of expertise, but unless someone provides me a reason why this shouldn't happen, less bureaucracy is a good thing.

 

CYBERSECURITY: Call for legislation enabling information-sharing between the private sector and U.S. agencies like the Homeland Security Department. Companies would qualify for targeted liability protection if they comply with certain privacy restrictions. I am all for increasing cyber security, but any time the government wants to "share information" with private companies and citizens, it makes me nervous. Sounds more like a pretext to expand governmental data mining to me.

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Holy ****. I hate to sound too much like Amanda here, but are you ****ing serious? ****, don't you have like a PhD or something?

 

I want you to read what you just posted.

 

But just because a class is "outside of your requirements" doesn't mean you can neglect to take the required number of credits to graduate. Even electives are required, technically.

If electives are, in fact, required that would make them, by definition of the damn word, a requirement. I don't really know how much clearer I can mak

Clarification - when I say elective, I mean a class a student can elect to take from a list of options. At my current university, for instance, all students must take a lab-science course to graduate. They are free to elect to take whichever course tickles their fancy. However, they are not free to elect to not take a lab-science course. Hence the oxymoron "required elective". Course credits above and beyond graduation requirements aren't electives, they're extracurriculars. Now, I've known students who thought "elective" meant they didn't have to take a course, and feared Cerina may have been under the same impression. Trying to help her, but I failed. Clearly, Cerina's intense dislike of me means I could claim the sky was blue and she'd counter that I'm blind, and dumb to boot.

 

Apologies for thread derailment.

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Question: What companies don't already offer sick time and vacation time? Answer: Employers that are not worth working for. I don't think there needs to be a law for this.

 

My company doesn't offer paid maternity/paternity leave, and we have very good benefits otherwise. Most companies I know don't, actually. For us, maternity leave falls under FMLA, which is unpaid leave. In order to be paid you have to use your sick and vacation time (and good luck if you've only been at the company a year or so and don't have much sick time saved up).

 

Most temp and project workers, skilled and unskilled, also don't get paid leave, whether it's vacation or sick time. This was the case when I was working a tech writer job.

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