------------
Mitchell B's post was about God (or lack thereof). It was a long rant about ideas about God and applications of religion to the real world. My post agreed with him on many points, pointed out some flaws in how the post was constructed, and argued one small detail in his post (because other than that, I agreed with him).
------------
Alli S's post was about homework. My 360 was about homework as well. Basically, I agreed with her on many points.
-
Albert X said... Alli,
Thanks for the comment :P Just to answer your question about how homework can have negative effects, I'm talking about time constraints (in my case, specifically band stuff), sleep problems with some people, and grading issues (although grading issues mostly shouldn't be a part of it, since if your don't NEED to do the homework, that imply that if you did it, you would do well). Basically, stuff you've mentioned in your blog.
Onto the blog itself; I found it amusing that we did the same topic >_<. I agree with you on all points. Especially on the last part about having less homework. Ideally, if that were to happen, teachers would have to give out less repetitive work in order to touch bases with all things learned in class, and give assignments that require you to use what you learned in class. (In short, less work but more thinking.) In addition to that, perhaps giving students summaries of what was taught in class or examples of more complicated concepts via a website, a textbook, or a handout would help students understand what they were doing so that they wouldn't feel as swamped. Separate from that, what our math teacher does is a good idea in theory, but it can have negative consequences. Since you're learning new concepts, if you don't do your homework, you might not understand what the class has learned come test time. Responsible students would keep up with the class by doing homework when necessary, even if it doesn't count for a grade (I applaud you for that). Sadly, not everyone is responsible, so what our math teacher doesn't isn't always possible. Moreover, that method probably wouldn't work in a class that deals with more abstract concepts (English) or a class that requires you to learn outside of class (social studies). An ideal method of homework distribution to maximize learning and minimize work would be personalized homework, but as Ali said, that just isn't possible yet. (Wow, you actually read all that? Nice :D)
Mitcheeeeellllllllllll
I was thoroughly amused by your post. Nice atheist argument, I agree with most of it. You didn't touch base with all religions, but that's fine, since not all religions have "God." I did find it interesting that you touched base with Buddhism though. The first paragraph reminded me of last years social studies (yay Mr. Williams) and the second paragraph reminded me of a joke you were telling >_<.
Onto business. Jon already mentioned this, but this is a pretty one sided 360... which doesn't work, sadly. Setting that aside... I just wanted to say that I found the statistic that 1/3 people said that line A wasn't the same length as the exhibit A line funny and interesting, although at first I wasn't sure how that tied in to your blog. I liked the points you made in the blog, and the support you provided for the points. There's just one thing I want to take issue with: the "time" thing. Now, I'm taking on side on whether or not the big bang may or may not have occurred, or whether or not the universe had a beginning, but I DON'T think that by saying that you can perceive time as infinitely small, you can say that time is infinitely long in both directions. I'm not saying that time isn't infinitely long in both directions; I'm just saying that what you provided isn't exactly proof of that. For example, all values from 1 to 2. There are an infinite number of values from 1 to 2, but there is still a beginning and an end (that is, [1,2).) Granted, this might be a bad example since numbers do go on forever in both directions. But numbers are concepts, in application to real life, there are no "negative" numbers. You can't hold a negative number of apples. Negative numbers are simply the removal of positive numbers. If viewed like this, 0 is the lowest number. If you still don't like that example, then take a physical object, such as a piece of paper. In theory, you could measure it with infinitely small units of measurement; but that doesn't change the fact that the paper doesn't stretch on forever.