The right of homophobes to adopt children

[HoreTore]

Music shall be encouraged in schools, from the age of 5 to 14. In particular, folk songs should be revived and especially those that embodyour nation's history.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[HoreTore]

These tardos are the kind of people who can wake up one day and say to themselves "plowing the fields with horses is an integral part of british history - lets ban tractors from agriculture!"

Which can be a thought sane men have too, but they come to their senses two seconds later and realize that its a bunch of bull. The BNP make it their policy. You have to be a special kind of deranged to manage that.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I want to adopt a cotton-pickin' ginger BNP homo.


I'll call him Harry. We'll have so much fun together!

[Rhyfelwyr]

I don't find anything unusual about the folk songs thing, from what I've seen that's what we do already, here in Scotland at least. It makes sense you learn about your own country's culture/history, don't they do that in Norway?

[HoreTore]

I don't find anything unusual about the folk songs thing, from what I've seen that's what we do already, here in Scotland at least. It makes sense you learn about your own country's culture/history, don't they do that in Norway?

There's little a ten year old enjoys more than singing old, out of fashion songs with lyrics that are completely alien to him and has zero relevance to the life he lives.

Oh, and did I mention that everybody on earth thinks those songs are utter crap? Kids will sing Waka, Waka, not some boring old song they can't dance too. And no, I'm not counting folk dancing as dancing. Thinking you can change that borders on insanity.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

There's little a ten year old enjoys more than singing old, out of fashion songs with lyrics that are completely alien to him and has zero relevance to the life he lives.

Oh, and did I mention that everybody on earth thinks those songs are utter crap? Kids will sing Waka, Waka, not some boring old song they can't dance too. And no, I'm not counting folk dancing as dancing. Thinking you can change that borders on insanity.

You're an ignorant and prejudiced barbarian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e34fG1DJQnI

Oh, and you can dance to it, the "grand reel" is a great way to meet girls without being a drunk letch.

[Rhyfelwyr]

There's little a ten year old enjoys more than singing old, out of fashion songs with lyrics that are completely alien to him and has zero relevance to the life he lives.

Oh, and did I mention that everybody on earth thinks those songs are utter crap? Kids will sing Waka, Waka, not some boring old song they can't dance too. And no, I'm not counting folk dancing as dancing. Thinking you can change that borders on insanity.

I hate Scottish (Highland) folk music with a passion, I scived off every PE class when we did ceilidh dancing. I'm listening to modern Romanian dance music (Inna!) as I write this...

But I can still see why I was taught about Robert Burns etc at school, because it is part of my history, makes sense that you learn about the country you live in first.

I think you are just trying to find problems with the BNP and a lot of these suggestions you are mocking are pretty standard for the mainstream parties and are already in practice anyway.

[HoreTore]

This has just been a couple of examples of the epic laughs I had while reading that piece of crap last night.

Listing all of the retardedness in that document would take much more time than I care to spend on the idiots.


But I have to say, my absolute favourite was their fenomenal math fail. Especially since they want increased focus on maths. I lolled all the way to the bank when I spotted that remarkable gem! I mean, come on, I have more intelligence in my breadbox than you can find in the entire BNP party and voter mass. And I don't even have a breadbox.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Whatever, I could do the same thing with the Labour/Tory/LidDem manifestos if I wanted.

[HoreTore]

Whatever, I could do the same thing with the Labour/Tory/LidDem manifestos if I wanted.

A challenge to thee then:

Do it!

I'm especially interested in you finding evidence that the person who wrote those manifestos doesn't understand primary school level maths while bitching about the current state of maths education.

[ajaxfetish]

But I have to say, my absolute favourite was their fenomenal math fail. Especially since they want increased focus on maths. I lolled all the way to the bank when I spotted that remarkable gem! I mean, come on, I have more intelligence in my breadbox than you can find in the entire BNP party and voter mass. And I don't even have a breadbox.

Is this the 'epic math fail' you're referring to?:

Television should strive to depict improved standards of conduct rather than reducing
much within its remit to the lowest common denominator

You may not be aware of this, but the phrase 'lowest common denominator' has developed an additional meaning in English, independent of its mathematical sense.

The Free Dictionary glosses it as

a. The most basic, least sophisticated level of taste, sensibility, or opinion among a group of people.
b. The group having such taste, sensibility, or opinion:

The OED gives as one sense of 'denominator':

(b) fig. something common to or characteristic of a number of things, people, etc.; also attrib.; so least or lowest common denominator, the lowest possible common denominator; also attrib. and fig.

And dictionary.com includes a note from the American Heritage Dictionary's New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

Note : The term lowest common denominator is often used to indicate a lowering of quality resulting from a desire to find common ground for many people: “This fall's TV programming finds the lowest common denominator of taste.”

It's a quite standard use of the phrase and has nothing to do with math. If you find it amusing, your amusement is at the expense of standard English usage rather than the BNP.

Ajax

[Rhyfelwyr]

Well at least that's cleared up. Just because the BNP have bad policies doesn't mean you need to go out your way to find problems with everything they do.

[HoreTore]

It is absolute fail usage whichever way you see it. Hilarious when coupled with bitching about how maths education these days are too focused on the struggling students.

Perhaps with even more focus on bringing the struggling students up, we wouldn't have a ton of people running around saying the exact opposite of what they mean.

The Oxford Dictionary(I assume that's what OED is) doesn't support your argument though. In fact it supports the opposite(unsurprisingly), as the lowest common ground between someone cannot be less than the best, as you can't go around cutting people in half, now can you?

[ajaxfetish]

For more on 'lowest common denominator', here are the first ten quotes to come up on the Corpus of Contemporary American for 'lowest common denominator'.

Obamacare, aka socialized medicine, has come to America. The effect will be to reduce us to the lowest common denominator. We'll all be the same.

I'm sorry that you feel that way, and I do agree that the road - the path to increasing our audience and serving our audience is not lowest common denominator, not to sort of attract younger programming by trying to do things that we think younger people will like, but rather to continue to do the great quality storytelling that we do.

And he wrote for almost the lowest common denominator with the idea that people were going to come because they wanted to see blood and guts and, you know, sex and stuff on stage.

We can say in theory that everyone will learn the same competency, but the problem with these sorts of competencies is they often turn out to be lowest common denominator competencies.

Put it back into the government, and that's us, that means you're going to the lowest common denominator. It doesn't matter which state it is, you're going to go to the lowest common denominator -- which means if California is suffering, the rest of the country pays for it.

It allows for association health plans, which means that, all the mandates, like for mammograms and making sure that women and people who need coverage in this country, all the mandates would be gone and you'd go to the lowest common denominator.

We will reach our lowest common denominator, and the work will begin.

Designing a seat to be not uncomfortable for the largest number of people reduces the ergonomic contours to the lowest common denominator. As a result, no-brainers like an adjustable lumbar support turn out to be a genuine pain for some because of the wide range not just in height but in lower-back curvature.

Sure, it was a politically foolish move, but what I'm saying is when you're actually pandering to the politics of fear itself, you know, I think that's going to the lowest common denominator.

So, he's just gon na muddle through the remainder of his year on with catering to the - the lowest common denominator kid because that's about the only thing that he can do, right, Nick? But you're not disappointed in yourself, right?

Those are from the Denver News, NPR, Glenn Beck, ABC's 'This Week' and 20/20, Esquire, and Popular Science. Not a one of them has to do with the math meaning. I don't have time at the moment to check all 181 instances of the phrase in the corpus, but a brief glance isn't turning up any math-related use at all. For most modern English speakers, you're going to hear this phrase used as it is in the BNP manifesto much more often than you're likely to hear its use as a mathematical term.

Ajax

[HoreTore]

.....And Glenn Beck not being smart enough to complete primary school maths is supposed to surprise me how....?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Eh, in it's Math sense lcd is never really very interesting anyway. The one which matters is greatest common divisor (gcd()), primarily because others can easily be written in terms of that. (lcm(a,b) = a*b/gcd(a,b).)

[HoreTore]

Eh, in it's Math sense lcd is never really very interesting anyway. The one which matters is greatest common divisor (gcd()), primarily because others can easily be written in terms of that. (lcm(a,b) = a*b/gcd(a,b).)

Nonsense, kids will learn about lcd years before they start factorization, as it is required to add and subtract fractions with different denominators.

[ajaxfetish]

.....And Glenn Beck not being smart enough to complete primary school maths is supposed to surprise me how....?

2 things:

First of all, only 1 of the 10 is from Glenn Beck, and it's a coincidence of recency that he was among the first 10. Only 2 instances of the phrase in 181 are from Beck, both in that same quote. Other sources using the phrase in exactly the same way include respected news sources, popular magazines, and academic journals. So I don't see how Glenn Beck's education has any relevance whatsoever.

Second, it's got nothing to do with math education anyway. This meaning is no longer related to math, and it could just as easily be used this way by a math professor as by a math illiterate.

Ajax

edit: and really, should I be upset at people using the word 'semantic' in phrases like 'it's all just semantic anyway'? Do they mean, 'oh, that's just the meaning of the words we're using'? No, they mean whatever technical mistakes they made in their phrasing are trivial, and don't undermine their point. Tons of terms have a technical meaning in the jargon of a given field, as well as a broader meaning in use by the populace as a whole. If you can't accept that and insist that everyone use your jargon terms the way they would if they were a math teacher, well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.

[HoreTore]

There is some merit in the claim that maths education is declining. It is, however, bot because we fail to elevate the strongest, it is because we fail to learn the struggling ones simple concepts like this, as is evidenced by a gang of dolts now saying the exat opposite of what they're trying to say.

It is wrong, both in a "speaking sense" and in a mathematical sense. You cannot chop people into pieces, and as such the lowest common denominator MUST mean to elevate lowest to the level of the highest or above, it simply cannot have any other meaning, unless you are dumber than the contents of my non-existant breadbox.

[ajaxfetish]

it simply cannot have any other meaning

Do you speak a human language? Claims like this make me wonder . . .

Ajax

[HoreTore]

Do you speak a human language? Claims like this make me wonder . . .

Ajax

Its like stating that "North" can mean "South".

[Tellos Athenaios]

Nonsense, kids will learn about lcd years before they start factorization, as it is required to add and subtract fractions with different denominators.

Hmm, I got along fine using simply: a/b + c/d = da/bd + cb/db = (da + cb ) / db. Much easier to compute because both lcm and gcd require division. Anyway lcd requires lcm which in turn requires gcd. (Well you could say gcd requires lcm, except for a few edge cases such as (0,1) this identity does not hold: lcm(0,1)= ??, but gcd(0,1) = 1.)

[ajaxfetish]

denominator: shared or common characteristic
common: redundant with the above meaning of 'denominator', but oh well
lowest: lowest in elevation, and figuratively, lowest in quality or moral value: basest

Put them all together and what do you get? The Most base and unsophisticated qualities common to the populace. That meant to appeal to the masses rather than the discerning.

It makes perfect sense if you start with the right senses, and you've accepted that definition of 'denominator' from the OED above, which applies both to its mathematical sense and to its nonmathematical sense. Furthermore, since when was making logical sense a requirement for a human language? Idioms by their very nature defy logical interpretation, which is why they must be learned. How does 'kick the bucket' make sense? How does 'I could care less' make sense? They don't need to. This is language, not math. 'North' can mean 'South' if we define it that way. There's nothing about the string of sounds [nɔɹθ] or [saʊθ] that links them intrinsically to points on the compass. It is only by convention that these have their meaning, and similarly by convention, 'lowest common denominator' has the meaning given above. You don't have to like it. But calling it wrong or questioning the intelligence of those who use it is just petulant.

Ajax

[Strike For The South]

Horetore

Learn english better

[HoreTore]

Hmm, I got along fine using simply: a/b + c/d = da/bd + cb/db = (da + cb ) / db. Much easier to compute because both lcm and gcd require division. Anyway lcd requires lcm which in turn requires gcd. (Well you could say gcd requires lcm, except for a few edge cases such as (0,1) this identity does not hold: lcm(0,1)= ??, but gcd(0,1) = 1.)

Kids learn fractions way before they learn algebra too.

A kid solving 2/6 + 3/9 will set up lines of multiples for each denominator like this:
6 12 18 24 30
9 18 27

...and he will learn that the name for "18" is this problem is "lowest common denominator", and he will also know that this number is highere than both the numbers he started out with, and thus will understand that using lcd a a standard in ither aspects of life means raising poor quality to a standqrd quality that is higher, usually much higher.

Since the BNP failed to complete primary school mathematics, they do not understand this, something it seems that they share with mr. Ajaxfetish.

SFTS,
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "lrn2english".

[Tellos Athenaios]

Kids learn fractions way before they learn algebra too.

A kid solving 2/6 + 3/9 will set up lines of multiples for each denominator like this:
6 12 18 24 30
9 18 27

Multiplication tables, you mean? That would explain; I never needed to learn those: first I went to a montessori primary school so I learned long division and then when I moved I was told at my new primary school I could continue using long division when I was horrified at the amount of work it would require to solve even simple problems using that multiplication table monstrosity.

[HoreTore]

Multiplication tables, you mean? That would explain; I never needed to learn those: first I went to a montessori primary school so I learned long division and then when I moved I was told at my new primary school I could continue using long division when I was horrified at the amount of work it would require to solve even simple problems using that multiplication table monstrosity.

Multiplication tables(or whatever) is the long method, but kids learn it mostly as a teaser, just like they are given calculus problems before they learn about X. Its intention is to stimulate logical thinking. Ie. "if you take this and that, you must get this".

This is introduced when kids are struggling to come to grips with what multiplication is all about, and so you can't teach them an algorithm that requires a knowledge of multiplicationm because they just don't have that knowledge yet. To understand problems involving X, you need to understand how you flip the problem around, but you can of course introduce such problems long before they learn of the relationship between multiplication and divison, and they will solve it with the tools they have available, and that will usually involve writing down a bunch of numbers and tweaking them until they fit.

In conclusion, the point of making those tables is not to solve the problem(because the answer is irrelevant ), but rather to fiddle around and spot connections between numbers and a starting level.

[HoreTore]

For the record, I never used those tables myself... For the smaller numbers I just did the maths in my head, for the bigger numbers I multiplied both numbers and then shrunk the fraction after the operation, because dividing stuff was über-awesome.....

[Rhyfelwyr]

HoreTore you are just being incredibly petty to try to prove some sort of crappy point. If you actually want to make some notable comments on the BNP's policies go ahead, until then please stop being so anal.

[HoreTore]

HoreTore you are just being incredibly petty to try to prove some sort of crappy point. If you actually want to make some notable comments on the BNP's policies go ahead, until then please stop being so anal.

When wanting to set the economy bsck to the 19th century and completely destroy all economic innovation and creativity wasn't enough for you, I honestly don't see much point in debating this with you.