> It certainly can be and these days it's doing more harm than good but part of what was great about the news is that it took the burden of thinking away from people.
If someone points out someone else I admire is a criminal, I would approach it a different way. It has less to do with what I want to call archetypal and more to do with the historically observable fact that what is legal is not always what is moral. Murder, torture, slavery, etc. These have all been legal in some past (or present) context. The possibility that someone who is acknowledged as a decent person could be a "criminal" is no surprise to me, and I'd rather argue to that point than dismiss the whole argument.
And even if I support abortion rights, the act is technically killing. A 'life' is terminated. Regardless, I'd point out that murder holds a different connotation that implies hatred or ill-will (or "malice aforethought") toward the victim. Same with euthanasia.
Why not take these as opportunities to explore the meanings and limits of a word? One person's definition of what is the archetypal murderer or thief or racist may easily differ from yours depending on their own experiences.
Exactly! Once you've heard that someone's opinions disagree with your worldview, why read anything that person has to say? Sounds like a good way to live.
> Our schools are not failing students because they are too hard. They fail because few schools expect anything from their students and shy away from challenging their minds.
I think this is close to the mark, albeit vague. Challenging their minds in what way? Such a statement could be misinterpreted as, "We need more rigorous test standards!" or some other specific solution that does not necessarily meet the goal.
From personal experience, for classes other than upper-level math at my college, people would constantly ask questions like, "Is this going to be on the test?"
And I was always annoyed by that. It seemed indicative of the meaninglessness of our education, and I can see why math classes are so difficult for people who learn this pattern rather than the subjects. I don't know how different it is at Ivy League or other schools perceived as high in quality, but when the majority of testing is multiple-choice, true-false, or fill-in-the-blank, it becomes easy to look at everything you learn as a task of rote memorization. It's like that saying: when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The difference with math that makes it so "hard" is you often can't rely on rote memorization. You have to actually learn the material (or understand algorithms and memorize steps to finding solutions with different initial conditions). People get discouraged (probably early on) by the fact that the skills they use for academic success elsewhere do not always work with math, and I think they associate those negative emotions with "math is hard."
I don't know the solution, but I think people need to at least realize that rote memorization is not indicative of learning. It's an uncomfortable realization because so many of our metrics for academic success rely on the assumption that memorization equals learning or understanding.
Of course, that's unlikely. The status quo is always easier. Why do we expect so little from adults?
Don't forget the "Kickstrap Only" OLCG on the Scaffolding page. It misses the point of Bootstrap's fluid nesting that does a much better demo of the same functionality halfway down the page.
Practice what you preach. Passive-aggressively sniping at asynchronous code by implying it can never be small or light is not a valid argument. There is no "meat" to such a subjective position.
You can get around these issues with customization. There may be some other frameworks for setting up a quick design out there that are better suited to you if that's an issue, but I can't really help you there.
If icon size is an issue, you can try using Font Awesome: http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/. It uses a font-face for the icons rather than sprites, so you can configure further in css by adjusting size and color, whereas bootstrap's icons are limited to black/white (plus some opacity). A potential gotcha with this approach is you need to be sure you can configure your web server to send the right content-type for the font files you'll send. I had to do some minor nginx configuration to get it right for certain browsers.
There are also pre-customized resources like bootswatch (http://bootswatch.com/) if you want to get a look at some of the possibilities.
I think "obamanation" and all its variants can be interpreted either way. It is used with a negative connotation in many cases, e.g. obamanation.com or the book "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality."
I was hoping I could get some feedback on this project I've been working on. It's a music player that plays YouTube videos while allowing search through Last.fm (for better data). Right now it uses node and backbone.js.
It has a few basic features. Primarily, you can make playlists. You can also put the player into 'discovery' mode to listen to music similar to whatever you're already listening to. Search is relatively robust for a site of its kind (in my opinion).
I plan on adding a few more features including genre-based radio, scrobbling, favorites, a mobile app, and "channels" for social listening.