Texas, you'll recall, has creationism in science textbooks. Techs affair with Texas will be short lived as i don't think tech people are going to want their kids taught Texas science.
Depends on the school district. Rural East or West Texas: perhaps, with a good chance the biology teacher’s main job is assistant football coach. Super-competitive suburban schools serving the kids of these well-educated transplants? Beyond tolerating “we learned in this course that A, but the Bible says B” exam answers, no - those kids are being prepped to pass the AP Biology and Chemistry exams.
> Texas, you'll recall, has creationism in science textbooks. Techs affair with Texas will be short lived as i don't think tech people are going to want their kids taught Texas science.
As someone helping a 14 year old with their 8th grade science homework, I can assure you that this isn't the case at least in one city school district.
I think a /lot/ of people don't understand how schools are structured in Texas, which is very different even from the Midwest where I grew up. In Texas, school districts are "ISDs"[0], which means that they make budgetary and curriculum decisions independent of the city they resides in and multiple ISDs can coexist in the same city. In San Antonio metro area, where I reside, there are nineteen (19) different ISDs in the same metro area. There is sometimes cooperation between them, but in general they operate completely independently from one another and from the city itself.
This contrasts with most other states where the state DoEd sets state-wide curriculum, and cities operate school boards (which may or may not be elected positions), which run the school system for the city. In Texas, the state DoEd sets minimum standards which are mostly enforced/set by setting minimum standards for acceptance to state universities. So in Texas, yes, /some/ public schools /may/ teach creationism in their science textbooks. But I do not believe this to be commonplace, and I've yet to observe it happening in any of the materials I've been exposed to in any Texas city. The science textbook used in the district my girlfriend's daughter attends is a newer edition of the same textbook I had in a city in the Midwest, for instance.
Because Texas has this ISD system, it is true that /some/ schools in the state may use materials which teach this, but it's important to note that the state's DoEd, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has a policy of neutrality on the subject of intelligent design but has multiple times soundly rejected approval of materials which contain anti-evolution rhetoric, including in 2011 which was the last time that these materials were up for review. Given that, while it's possible /some/ schools may be using these types of materials, it would be against the recommendations of the TEA, and these materials would likely not qualify as meeting the necessary science requirements to attend a state university in Texas.
The fact people constantly bring up "creationism is taught in Texas" is to me a coastal "elite" trope that is intended to dig into Texas stereotypes and make fun of people in Texas as backwards hicks, when in fact Texas has been at the forefront of science and technology in the United States for over a century, including today. The AMD Zen (now Zen 3) microarchitecture that just slapped Intel up the side of the head was designed here in Texas [1], SpaceX is at the forefront of reusable rocketry and is doing that work here in Texas, NASA has had and continues to have a huge footprint in Texas, additive metal 3D printing (SLS) was invented in Texas at UT[2] and continues to be advanced there and several companies producing 3D printing systems are based in the area, last year the first woman to ever receive the Abel Prize was Professor Emeritus Karen Uhlenbeck at UT Austin [3].
In every single aspect of science, technology, engineering, and math, there are people in Texas pushing the envelope of human knowledge and achievement, and it is exceedingly disrespectful to them to publicly shit on "Texas science", thank you very much.
There are plenty of smart people in Texas, of course. However, it may be difficult to attract scientific-minded employees to a location where their kids will be taught on a curriculum that rejects science in some regards.
That also hints at the larger culture clash that may result from the "liberal elites" moving to the area. If this migration does happen it'll be interesting to see how the culture in Texas changes.
Last I checked, there are _tons_ of "liberal elites" here (speaking as one of those, I suppose).
Let me check the public schools in my immediate neighborhood (I walk my dog past all of these)... We have two dual-language immersion schools (Spanish/English and Arabic/English), a Montessori school, and one school that doesn't fall into any particular bucket but is highly ranked. Those are the _public_ schools for this neighborhood. If you live here, you're going to one of those three or paying for one of the private (mostly Catholic) schools nearby. Hell, we're not even in one of the "good" school districts... Those are out in the suburbs.
You do realize that Houston _is_ the global R&D center for multiple domains, right? Medicine, Geoscience, several different engineering disciplines.
The migration you're talking about started in the 70's and has been going strong for many decades. As someone who moved here for work after getting a PhD, I can assure you, it's not that hard to "attract scientific-minded employees" here. My previous employer had thousands of positions that required a PhD. The overwhelming majority of those were filled by people who moved here for the job.
Yes, the TX state educational board is fucked up. That doesn't translate to what's taught in most schools in urban areas. It unfortunately _does_ mean that schools have the leeway to teach bizarre stuff, but most in the areas being discussed by this article don't.
The reason folks don't want to move here has more to do with the weather and traffic than anything else. (The weather really does suck half the year, but we get 4-5 really nice months of weather in the winter.)
There are definitely some sprawly areas that I'd recommend avoiding (Houston has more in common with LA than with SF), but by and large, Houston's a great place to live. I walk more or less everywhere I go, have a 110 year old house with a great backyard, and live within walking distance many of the best-rated restaurants and bars as well as downtown. This is the expensive area, and you can still easily buy a house for under $500k.
Where does this happen in Texas public schools? Have you ever been to a populated city like Dallas or Houston? What culture change are you expecting? Texas is already full of liberal elites living in two of the largest cities in America.
Your post reminds me of when I studied abroad and some European exchange students asked me if I rode a horse to school and if the Indians were still around when they found out I was from Texas.
I don’t think SpaceX is a great example of “Texas science” given the vast majority of their major science and engineering work is located in their California offices.
I think that was the point. For all the stereotypes of Texas (I'm originally from Norway - we use Texas as a general synonym for "crazy" [1]), there are significant areas that are a lot more progressive, so to assume moving to Texas means moving to some creationist hellhole is excessive.
Given the specific Texans I know that have had expat assignments in Stavanger, I can't imagine that helped erase the stereotype... We seem to send some crazy folks over there... Not to mention drillers... Drilling engineers are nuts.
To be fair, the origin of the term probably has more to do with 50's and 60's Westerns than with any idea of present-day Texas. You'll also find references to "wild west" / "vill vest" used in pretty much the same contexts as "texas".
Though we also have the harsher term "Amerikanske tilstander" ("American conditions") that especially in the 80's was often used in politics by the left to evoke an image of a failing state.
Fellow Norwegian here, can confirm this is an old term related to the "cowboys & indians / wild west" stuff that was so prevalent in American cultural exports at the time. I actually grew up in Texas among a tiny colony of Norwegians in the Houston area (obviously centered around the oil industry).
It's given me an interesting window into all the weird obviously false stereotypes that Americans have about Scandinavians and that Scandinavians have about Americans (and Texans in particular).
Like pretty much everywhere in the US, big Texas cities lean (or, in Austin’s case, are quite) left, suburbs are increasingly very swing, and the rural areas are really right wing but have been emptying out. Texas has a somewhat higher proportion of rural to urban/suburban population than New York State which makes Texas overall a “red” state and New York “blue”, but a current Silicon Valley resident is probably going to feel far more at home in Austin, Houston or one of their closer suburbs than they would in rural western or upstate New York.
I was excited then annoyed. I hate the SO moderators. It makes no difference to them how many people seek the answer, if they deem it off topic all those people are out of luck.
As the original asker of the question, I agree. This question was from 12 years ago, back when Stackoverflow was a lot more fun. I asked the question because while I knew a few neat little things, I knew other people also knew cool things that I didn't know, and I wanted to find out what they might be.
I don't get that exclusionist attitude either. If they think its subjective, why not just tag it accordingly, or move it into some sub-forum instead of outright killing the discussion.
Because they'd have to exclude it from search because it'd affect the results
People might like it or not, but SO is a tool that provides fast access to answers on technical questions because people want to solve their problems(and learn), it's QA.
If you want to discuss stuff then there are forums, reddits, discords or even HN.
How many times have I googled a question only to arrive at a closed SO question- too many times. It's truly annoying. Plainly people do want to discuss things on SO.
it's not meant to be a discussion forum, it's more a database of questions and answers ideally written to Wikipedia type quality. It gets a lot of hate for its quite strong moderation, however, it's ended up one of the best resources to find answers to programming questions, so they are doing something right.
The post and fox news are absolutely light weight versions of the national enquirer. Regardless, Twitter can do what Twitter likes. You can start your own Twitter if you like. Twitters rights are as precious as fox news's.
Thanks for everyone's input, i ordered the thinkpad x1 carbon, first ibm computer i've ever bought (for you younger folks, lenovo is rooted in ibm), will post on how it goes. thanks again.
The x1 is a great machine, I've been using a work issued one with ubuntu for a couple of years now, I use two external displays with it both at work and home.
because i do a ton of travel while working and i have been spoiled by the macbook air, which is the nicest physical device i've ever owned and it's hard to go back. the huawei comes close, but the quality was just so bad
