Done!

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"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas." -- Keppel Enderbery, former Australian cabinet minister

"Most cars on the road have only one occupant, usually the driver." -- Carol Malia, BBC anchor

Tom, I have had trouble forming an opinion on this topic.  While my gut response is in favour of SSM, I also understand the concerns that are frequently raised against it, especially the "if gays then who next?" argument.  These three posts of yours have clarified the discussion for me significantly.  I just hope someone doesn't come up with an equally convincing counter-argument!

One I hate even more is the use of "leverage" as a verb.

An excellent point, especially with respect to Global Warming predictions.  As someone who has been in the Modelling and Simulation field for years, I approach all computer models with scepticism because I know how their results can be misinterpreted or misused.  When the Left believe such models religiously (irony intended), they are the ones being anti-intellectual. 

Buckaroo Banzai?  One of my favourites.  It is too tongue-in-cheek to be taken seriously, and therefore can't be considered bad.

When Dune came out I remember noticing that anyone who had read the book hated the movie, and most people who hadn't read the book found the movie confusing.  The only ones who enjoyed it were sitting beside someone explaining the storyline to them.

I tried an experiment with my youngest son (something I never thought to do with his four siblings, so my database of one may not be very reliable!).  Treating math like a language, and acknowledging that one learns languages more easily at a younger age, I started teaching him math when he was 3.  Nothing fancy, just simple addition and subtraction, but consequently (I believe) he has never been AFRAID of math.  Now he is 10 and is bored in school because he can do Junior High math, but not necessarily because he is brilliant.  I think that parents can encourage math literacy, or can discourage it by claiming that math is hard.  Or by reading the NYT.

Perfect!  Did it matter that the square root of 2 is about 1.4?  Of course not.  What mattered was that anyone writing the test had to demonstrate some common sense by realising that the answer COULDN'T be 1, 2 ,or 4.  Calculator not required.

As a follow-on to my previous post, my new students quickly learn that they are not to use their calculators unless calculating a square root or doing trig.  Every one of them is incapable of basic arithmetics, even though they could do it in Grade 6.  Teachers are allowing calculators far too early in school, and consequently students (understandably) take short cuts until they have forgotten everything they knew.  If teachers allowed students to answer a word problem with "cos(46)" or "sqrt(46)" instead of a decimal value -- at least until the final years of school -- the students' skills in arithmetic would be maintained.

Exactly.  I have been tutoring HS math for several years, and have often told my students that it is unlikely they will every need to know that the sine of 30 deg is 1/2.  However, mathematics, and algebra in particular, does teach them how to analyse a problem to determine what they already know, what they need to know, and how to get from one to the other.  The equations are merely a means to an end.

I hadn't remembered that, but your point is well made.

What was the blunder?  I also read the book, but didn't notice that.

In Chris Stringer's new book Lone Survivors he discusses how when sea levels rose 14000 years ago and cut off Tasmania from Australia, the isolation led the islanders to lose many of their skills.  Similarily, over 60,000 years ago the isolated groups of modern man in Africa and Neandertals in Europe all made tools and (perhaps) buried their dead, but it was only when conditions allowed the AFRICAN population to grow that culture -- no longer hindered by isolation -- really took off.  That may have been the reason for our success.

I toyed with counting the LOTR trilogy as one, but King Prawn beat me to it.  Instead I will go with:

1. Bladerunner, for all the reasons already mentioned.

2. The Big Sleep, instead of Casablanca, but the original version rather than the one that was eventually released.  The added scenes between Bogart and Bacall just make the story harder to follow.

3. Gettysburg.  It's just an outstanding movie.

I go by the one name because of my hero, after whom I have patterned so much of my life: Cher.