rec.woodworking

[John]

Or High School debating?

[tom]

[B A R R Y]

How about rec.pedantic.debates?

Personally, I just use the "kill (or ignore) thread" when a thread is completely dead to me, or "skip to next thread" if it's got promise. I don't bother with kill files as even the nit pickers occasionally post something of value to me.

Killing a thread means I'll never see it again.

[clmessina]

Well, first off you have to consider the problem with traditional education (which you probably haven't realized since you're still in the High School system). The problem is that it takes a long time to really 'learn' anything. Sure, a teacher can throw stuff at you for

1/hr. a day over the course of a semester (3-4 months), but can any of us really say we fully know a topic after such a short time span? Knowing enough to make an 'A' on the test is not the same thing in a topic such as woodworking in comparison to a skilled woodworker who's been practicing or running a business for 20 years, nor is it close to a lawyer who's been practicing after gaining his degree for 20 with a corporation or firm. And really, that's what you're looking at. High School is a good career stepping stone. Debate is a good platform to begin learning how to construct a reasonable arguement, wood shop is a good platform to begin learning wood.

In my experience I think there are way too many lawyers but an infinite possibility of career options for wood workers. Learning about wood can really teach you about the world, put you in touch with science/engineering as well as art. Also, learning the rudiments of debating skills may be nice 30 years down the road if you practice law but learning to work with wood is a skill you could use to put yourself through college- even law school, if you disagree with me and happen to think there aren't enough lawyers out there.

That said, I'd go with the wood working any day of the week, but, don't expect to learn all you need (much less want) to know in high school.

Best of luck

[J. Clarke]

You might want to look at Hamster--it's a bit of a pain to set up but once it's up you can filter on nearly anything, and since it's a news proxy and not a newsreader it works with _any_ newsreader, even one on a different machine running a different architecture.

[J. Clarke]

There's that, and there's also the issue that most things that are worth knowing you can't learn by sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher who has never done them drone on.

In interpersonal relations a lathe and a 3 foot long ash turning square beats debating skills every time .

That applies to just about everyting except maintaining your sanity while sitting quietly in a stultifying atmosphere and resisting the urge to _kill_ the idiots who are forcing you to sit there--that high school teaches in abundance.

[tom]

[Dave Balderstone]

Y'know, if you weren't using webtv you could find software to filter the stuff you don't want to see. Failing that, there's a word... "ignore" that you could look up. You may find it useful.

[Brian Henderson]

I don't rely on my newsreader to filter anything for me. I pull all the new available headers and only mark those threads I care about for retrieval. If there's an ongoing thread that I care about, I have it automatically watched for, but for the most part, I never see anything I don't want to see, I just get what I think I'll be interested in.