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The other point is that Netflix has a policy of firing people who do normal/acceptable/average work. On public radio this morning I was listening to them speak about the new policy as well as the unlimited vacation time. Here is the relevant quote.

Netflix's theory is that if you want to have incredible employees, you should treat employees like adults. And, you know, they actually put it in terms that is really almost that blunt, and that means giving your employees a lot of freedom, a lot of responsibility. And then if they fail to live up to that trust or if they fail to perform - and not just perform adequately but perform exceptionally - the company says you should get rid of them. So they make a practice of firing people. There's this legendary slide deck that the CEO, Reed Hastings, shared publically about this philosophy. And in one slide, you know, it says, like every company, we try to hire well. Unlike most companies, average performance gets a generous severance package.

So if you take your vacation, you had better be working through it or you will appear to be less exceptional than the other people there and end up without a job. In the end you will take less, or even no vacation because you need to work your ass off to stay employed with them. Not such a nice policy when viewed from that angle. Looks good in the papers though!

Meh, just think twice about how prepared your section is for your absence. Empower your coworkers to cover for you. Develop relationships. If you *really* think you need to work through your vacation, or else appear stagnant, you kind of suck ass to work alongside,

One thing about Netflix though, is that they readily fire low performers.

Actually, according to the CEO of Netflix, they fire adequate performers as well. They only want the exceptional. If you are only average you will be let go.

Heard this on the radio this morning.

Netflix's theory is that if you want to have incredible employees, you should treat employees like adults. And, you know, they actually put it in terms that is really almost that blunt, and that means giving your employees a lot of freedom, a lot of responsibility. And then if they fail to live up to that trust or if they fail to perform - and not just perform adequately but perform exceptionally - the company says you should get rid of them. So they make a practice of firing people. There's this legendary slide deck that the CEO, Reed Hastings, shared publically about this philosophy. And in one slide, you know, it says, like every company, we try to hire well. Unlike most companies, average performance gets a generous severance package.

The other point is that Netflix has a policy of firing people who do normal/acceptable/average work. On public radio this morning I was listening to them speak about the new policy as well as the unlimited vacation time. Here is the relevant quote.

Netflix's theory is that if you want to have incredible employees, you should treat employees like adults. And, you know, they actually put it in terms that is really almost that blunt, and that means giving your employees a lot of freedom, a lot of responsibility. And then if they fail to live up to that trust or if they fail to perform - and not just perform adequately but perform exceptionally - the company says you should get rid of them. So they make a practice of firing people. There's this legendary slide deck that the CEO, Reed Hastings, shared publically about this philosophy. And in one slide, you know, it says, like every company, we try to hire well. Unlike most companies, average performance gets a generous severance package.

So if you take your vacation, you had better be working through it or you will appear to be less exceptional than the other people there and end up without a job. In the end you will take less, or even no vacation because you need to work your ass off to stay employed with them. Not such a nice policy when viewed from that angle. Looks good in the papers though!

Huh? I think you don't understand how flight numbers work. MH means Malaysian Airlines, genius. Airlines regularly retire flight numbers associated with crashes. http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

But they don't retire them in advance of crashes, so there were likely hundreds or thousands of successful flight MH370's prior to the missing flight.

Huh? I think you don't understand how flight numbers work. MH means Malaysian Airlines, genius. Airlines regularly retire flight numbers associated with crashes. http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

Magic Online, the digital version of the famous trading card game, is currently undergoing a kind of "economic recession".

I find this ironic as NPR recently praised the MTG team for their economic skills.

Of course, western Europeans never vandalize. Especially not things of special interest or value.

Surely you mean Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, right? I mean, after all, it was the CIA during their administrations that overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran that is more responsible for the situation in the Middle East then anything else. See CIA-assisted coup overthrows government of Iran.

Or perhaps you mean the European leaders who, after WWI, created countries that never existed in the Middle East?

I think putting blame on President Carter is a bit misplaced. While President Carter called on the Shah to stop torturing people and to release political prisoners, the US continued to strongly supported the Shah. Social changes in Iran were too large and too rapid, though, to quell without even more horrendous human rights violations than the Shah was already committing. In reality, there was not way to keep the status quo in Iran. We supported the Shah far too long, against our own stated human rights beliefs and against our own best foreign policy judgements. President Nixon, though, believed that Iran, ruled by the Shah, was vital to American interests in the area, so, that's what we got.

There are multiple 1,000kV HVDC lines in North America.

http://www.npr.org/2009/04/24/110997398/visualizing-the-u-s-electric-grid

And you can be damned sure that the use of CPR in its modern form has saved a tremendous amount of lives.

No, you can't be sure about that. In movies and fictional TV shows, CPR is depicted positively, with 75% of CPR recipients getting up and going about their lives with no ill effects, often within minutes. In real life, most CPR recipients die, and those that survive the procedure often have severe brain damage or debilitating injuries to other organs. Many are confined to bed or a wheelchair for the rest of their life. Less than 5% have a good quality of life outcome.

About 80% of the public say they would want to be aggressively resuscitated. For emergency room doctors, about 10% say the same.

That's just BS.

No it isn't. It is a fact of human development.

That doesn't mean helicopter parenting is in order or that they can't manage at home by themselves for a while with generally increasing autonomy, but it does mean that expecting adult thinking about longer term life choices will be hit and miss at best. It makes no more sense to hold them forever responsible for their actions than it does to teach calculus in kindergarten.

While pulling everything off the internet forever isn't really possible, we can certainly disallow use of old information from childhood when deciding on employment or credit at the very least.

Now do you see why Randi Harper and her "Code of Conducts" aren't conducive to actually helping anyone? I'm in my 30s, contributing member of society. I have a job, a kid, a wife. But god save me if shit I said when I was 14 on IRC was published. I was 14. I couldn't imagine where I'd be if my life was ruined by dogpiling for some stupid tweet I made.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/...

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/01/...

Thankfully I found Slashdot instead of 4Chan (or what ever the equivalent was back then). I learned to type such that I got +5 "Informative" from adults. Rather than running around calling each other faggots. When I posted on Usenet I used my real name and knew that people could find me with that. I created a new account on most sites that couldn't be linked to anything else (0100010001010011 for Slashdot).

I've noticed that the 20 year olds talk different depending on where they 'grew up' on the internet. If you think that adults run around calling each other Faggot and think that's "just boy talk" there's a good chance you were on 4Chan. I'm sure there are 20 year olds that have been on Slashdot since they could and I wouldn't know them any different than my peers in my 30s or the guys I looked up to that are now in their 40s. Because they learned to talk like adults.

It's why losing Slashdot is really a shame. I don't even know where 16 year old me would go these days. FreeBSD used to be one of the last 'pure' places I could go where I was judged by 1 thing, my code. I couldn't imagine the shitstorm if someone (Randi Harper) took some inside joke of a tweet to friends, twisted it and dog piled her followers on me to kick me out.

Now do you see why Randi Harper and her "Code of Conducts" aren't conducive to actually helping anyone? I'm in my 30s, contributing member of society. I have a job, a kid, a wife. But god save me if shit I said when I was 14 on IRC was published. I was 14. I couldn't imagine where I'd be if my life was ruined by dogpiling for some stupid tweet I made.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/...

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/01/...

Thankfully I found Slashdot instead of 4Chan (or what ever the equivalent was back then). I learned to type such that I got +5 "Informative" from adults. Rather than running around calling each other faggots. When I posted on Usenet I used my real name and knew that people could find me with that. I created a new account on most sites that couldn't be linked to anything else (0100010001010011 for Slashdot).

I've noticed that the 20 year olds talk different depending on where they 'grew up' on the internet. If you think that adults run around calling each other Faggot and think that's "just boy talk" there's a good chance you were on 4Chan. I'm sure there are 20 year olds that have been on Slashdot since they could and I wouldn't know them any different than my peers in my 30s or the guys I looked up to that are now in their 40s. Because they learned to talk like adults.

It's why losing Slashdot is really a shame. I don't even know where 16 year old me would go these days. FreeBSD used to be one of the last 'pure' places I could go where I was judged by 1 thing, my code. I couldn't imagine the shitstorm if someone (Randi Harper) took some inside joke of a tweet to friends, twisted it and dog piled her followers on me to kick me out.

you. post. on. slashdot. you of all people should know anecdotal evidence means squat.

especially in the face of ample evidence contradicting your naive claim: http://www.latimes.com/busines... http://www.npr.org/sections/al... http://genderandset.open.ac.uk...

The problem appears to lie in one of the files /system/lib/libstagefright*

NPR is saying that Google Hangouts makes the problem worse:

The messaging app Hangouts instantly processes videos, to keep them ready in the phone's gallery... this setup invites the malware right in. If you're using the phone's default messaging app, he explains, it's "a tiny bit less dangerous." You would have to view the text message before it processes the attachment. But, to be clear, "it does not require in either case for the targeted user to have to play back the media at all," Drake says.

It would appear prudent to uninstall Google Hangouts. If you can disable MMS with your carrier, do so, otherwise do not look at text messages from originators that you do not know - delete the conversations.

Carriers are unlikely to patch (look at SamsungIME.apk if you think OEMs or carriers will lift a finger to help us).

Root your phone, and await a new set of /system/lib/libstagefright* files - Cyanogenmod will likely provide KitKat copies if they ever shirk their laziness long enough to deliver the final promised KitKat milestone.

Unless you have a conducting loop in or around your body when it fires, such as a wedding ring, or a magnets in your body, such as are found in some medical electronics, or if you've got any accidentally embedded magnets such as those swallowed by children..

      http://www.npr.org/sections/he...

Or unless there is a bulky, conducting metal object in the room, such as an oxygen tank:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07...

I'm not suggesting that a modest hom recharger will create such risks. But please, do not extrapolate armchair physics to assume you understand the real risks of a real electromechanical device without doing the research.

First, the hospitals do not bid rates generally. They only tell the insurance companies what their price lists are and that is the only place those prices are really negotiated.

Virtually all insurance companies negotiate with all hospitals. http://www.npr.org/sections/he... (You can also look up Steven Brill's articles about the Chargemaster.) That's the way the free market works. If I buy ketchup from Heinz, they'll charge me $5 a bottle. If McDonald's buys ketchup from Heinz, they'll negotiate.

If I needed a certain type of treatment... not right now... but in a week or two... I'd have time to shop around. And the medical system could offer rates just like anything else is offered with rates. The fact that they're not is one of the reasons the market has a hard time controlling costs. Lets say a hospital 400 miles away is willing to do an operation that would cost me 50k where I am for only 25k? Now assuming quality is comparable, I then do a cost benefit analysis...

I've talked to doctors and economists about this. I've read their articles (and written a few myself).

Here's the flaw in your reasoning: "Now assuming quality is comparable"...

You can't possibly tell whether quality is comparable (unless you know as much about medicine as a doctor, and maybe not even then).

For a coronary bypass operation, some surgeons will have a death rate of (say) 1%, and some surgeons will have a death rate of 2%. How do you find out their death rate? Do you think you can call their office and ask their secretary? Try that some day.

Let's assume you can find out their death rate. In socialist U.K., they're required to post their death rates on the hospital web site, so patients can make their own choices. In the U.S., you can sometimes get Medicare data.

Are you going to pick the doctor with the lowest death rate, the way you'd pick a hard drive with the lowest failure rate? That doesn't work.

A British surgeon told me, "It's very easy for me to get good numbers. Just operate on easy cases."

Younger patients have lower death rates. Older patients have higher death rates. Smokers, people with lung disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and other diseases, have higher death rates.

Some doctors specialize in tough cases. So if one surgeon has a 2% death rate, and another has a 1% death rate, the 2% surgeon may be the one who does the tough cases, and the 1% surgeon may be a worse surgeon.

Some people say, "Well, we'll correct for all those risk factors." The problem with that is, there's no way to correct for all those factors. Do you think a surgeon can print out a list for you of all of his patients, with their age, lung function, kidney function, blood sugar, and everything else you need, so that you can compare it to all the other surgeons? Ask his secretary and tell me what she says. Doctors don't even agree on what factors are important, or how much weight to give them. How important is age, smoking, diabetes? Nobody knows.

Surgeons get the best results in patients who are absolutely healthy. That is, they get the best results in patients who don't actually need surgery in the first place. They get the best results with unnecessary surgery. That happens a lot, for example in carotid artery surgery, in prostate cancer surgery, in hysterectomies. The suckers don't know the difference. The surgeon says, "The operation was a success!" The patient says, "This is the doctor who saved my life," and recommends the doctor to his friends.

The best thing that could happen to you is to go to a doctor who examines you and gives you tests and says, "You know, you're healthy. You don't need this surgery." Of course, in the free market, surgeons like that will make less money. So the invisible hand will replace them with surgeons who operate on people who don't nee

Emotion is not broadcast by the face. This has been known for a long time. Here's a clever study that shows people attend less to the face than the body when trying to guess someone's emotion.

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/30/...

While it is not a vendor's responsibility to control what a buyer does with the acquired product

Anti 2nd-Amendment zealots would disagree.

And, although the above lists mere tort-claims, there are movements afoot towards criminal liabilities for gun-sellers as well. For the Greater Good.

This splicing of foreign genes into plants is actually fairly common. There are some common soil bacteria that tend to do this naturally with plants.
In fact, some GM plants are created using Agrobacterium, a bacteria that injects a little chunk of DNA into plant cells naturally.

See http://www.npr.org/sections/go...

This mixing of genes between completely different plants or plants and bacteria is actually quite common in nature. For example, take the sweet potato, which contains bacterial genes naturally.

See http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
http://www.npr.org/sections/go...

How about slashing the OSHA budget? http://www.npr.org/2011/03/01/...

The US has a similar plan, the EB-5 visa program, but you only need to invest $1 million to get your green card.

I say, if we're going to let people bribe their way to the front of the immigration line, we should get top dollar for it. $15 million sounds about right, plus $2 million paid directly to the government, and used to hire more immigration workers to clear the ludicrous immigration backlog for everyone else.

*Especially* since a good chunk of those buying green cards are Chinese businessmen and government officials fleeing corruption charges in China: if we're going to be complicit in fraud, I want a bigger piece of the action.

Oh, and by the way, ever notice that Americans who're furious about people "skipping the line" in the immigration process never complain about this program? Seriously the only mention I can find over on Fox News is concern that Mexicans are doing it, despite the fact that for every Mexican EB-5 visa applicant, there are 200 Chinese.

We never were the dominant species. I'd say E. coli, or possibly some underground species of Archae are the dominant life on Earth.

Ranking by biomass, in the animal kingdom alone insects are more dominate than humans by 10-100 times.

Bacteria (all bacteria taken together that is) has over a thousand times the biomass as humans.

A couple quick Google searches didn't turn up any biomass amounts for E coli specifically, so I can't say for sure, but yes I presume it is safe to say even that one bacterial strain far outweighs humans.

I did however come across this interesting article (if tldr, scroll down to the table):
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/03/141946751/along-with-humans-who-else-is-in-the-7-billion-club

Humans:
- Population: 7 billion
- Biomass: 350 million tons

Ants:
- Population: 10 billion billion
- Biomass: 3,000 million tons

Bacteria:
- Population: 4 quadrillion quadrillion
- Biomass: 1,000,000 million tons

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/...

For those who do not want to go to the article, where does US oil come from:
    - USA: 38.8%
    - Canada: 15.1%
    - Saudi Arabia: 8.1%
    - Mexico: 7.5%
    - Latin America (other than Mexico/Venezuela): 6.2%
    - Venezuela: 5.9%
    - Nigeria: 5.2%
    - Africa (other than Nigeria): 5.1%
    - Persian Gulf (other than Saudi Arabia): 4.8%
    - Other than above: 3.3%

You know and I know that "Robbing Paul to pay Peter" is not sustainable; the problem is most people will whine about the short-term excuse "But think of the children! and are too stupid to focus on long term stability at the expense of greed.

This whole situation is similar to how banning forest fires ironically and paradoxically led to an increase in fires.

* http://www.npr.org/2012/08/23/...

I like your journal entry where you go over the USA Budget 2013 numbers ...

* http://slashdot.org/journal/30...

1. The total tax revenues for USA Federal government are 2.46 Trillion USD.
2. The total expenses for USA Federal government are 3.8 Trillion USD.
3. The interest payment on the outstanding public debt that is on the books is at least 360 Billion USD for the year based on the interest rate (which is manipulated by Federal reserve and other banks, but that's a separate subject matter).
4. Social Security benefit payouts are budgeted as 882.7 Billion USD.
5. Medicare for the year is budgeted at 523 Billion USD.
6. Medicaid for the year is budgeted at 283 Billion USD.
7. Other mandatory programs for the year is budgeted at 654 Billion USD.
8. War will cost 525.4 Billion USD.

So the total revenues are 2.46 Trillion USD, total expenses are 3.8 Trillion USD, the interes payment is 360 Billion USD.

Agreed, that the US doesn't have a saving problem, it has a spending problem.

The US is fucked. :-( It is not a matter of if but when.

A recent SCOTUS case had the feds saying that a treaty trumps state law. The ruling went against the feds 9-0 but some justices said the decision did not go far enough in clarifying situations where Treaties conflict with State and Federal law.

Its name is "Senator" Ted ( a.k.a. Wacko ) Cruz.

Thanks In Advance,
K. Trout

I'm not an AC, but thanks for playing. My point is that a lot of Southerners don't feel that they're entitled to own other humans; in the past, certainly, but Northerners did a lot of that too.

Then you need to be shouting that from the rooftops. Because down south you are electing people like Rick Perry, and active hypocrite traitors like Canadian Ted Cruz. People who would stop the Government (an act of treason in my book, then go on the program they stopped government for.

That's who people are voting for, and electing to the highest state offices and they are shaping the South's image. And that is the image the South presents to the world. You have a Governor in Florida that won't allow mentioning of Global Warming, you have elected people in Oklahoma who would put biblical or Crystal or Astrology non-science as legitimate science class courses. You wave that second place finish flag like it was your primary one.

One fascinating thing, is that in Texas, apparently they cannot force a women to not eat her placenta. Personal freedom you know. The freedom to self cannibalize.

http://www.npr.org/sections/he....

And they passed a law! Global warming is fake, but eating your placenta is great science.

Copraphagics are next in line for the personal freedom train? I'll pass.

Am I foolish enough to think that 100 percent of the people down south think that way? Hell no. But enough do that you present that image to the world. Don't want that image? Change it. Don't blame anyone else for your image - it's well earned.

Got it. Bugs in the airplane's airflow decrease fuel economy, but aren't considered a safety concern.

Safety my first thought, but in respect to the stealth aircraft, and it's pilots. Missions launched from the U.S. to say Iraq, they should accumulate a lot of bugs, - I did check, Hemolymph being a copper-based protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., not so stealthy when they arrive at their destination. I know they also fly patterns to avoid areas known to have radar coverage, but those times they are in an area of radar coverage.

"May Berenbaum says pilots have long known insects can fly very high." http://www.npr.org/sections/kr... with the bumblebees as high as 18,000ft, so many that from China to the U.S. "They are likely to be burning a ton of energy to maintain flight." http://www.independent.co.uk/n... (Kool picture of a Bumblebee about to get high).

So maybe it's already been done (finding a way to reduce bug splatter), but would be a security risk if revealed, as anything to do with the Stealth aircraft is.

NPR also had a few interviews with the author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed .

Most of the examples were people that made tongue in cheek jokes to a small audience (their friends) and someone got 'outraged' at it and then they had the entire internet doxxing them and trying to ruin their lives.

Then how does one go about finding such a friend willing to offer such charity? Perhaps it appears easy to you, but a lot of people remain homeless because they lack certain social skills. This could result from autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, past abuse, or any of several other conditions.

If they're as disabled as you're describing, they're likely to be eligible for state mental health programs. Staying with family or friends would probably be a better option, but if mental issues or circumstance preclude that, then options are limited. These are the people who couldn't have signed lease papers on their own, anyhow.

No one can rely long-term on staying in shelters because it is too likely that on a given night, there are too many people there.

Shelters aren't meant to be a long-term solution. The mentally ill and physically disabled ought to be provided for by the government. In many countries, they are. In the United States, there is some limited level of help (previously mentioned state institutions). Children that fall into homelessness may be forced to enter the foster system, which sucks, but I don't have a better answer, based on the available options that I know about. Physically and mentally able adults should be able to find some kind of work, and will probably qualify for government assistance, besides that.

And I was assuming that the lack of sit/lie laws in those half-dozen nearby cities would not last forever because those half-dozen nearby cities would want to try to shake that perception.
...
Then how should somebody who is already homeless go about researching which nearby cities both A. lack a sit/lie law and B. are highly unlikely to adopt one in the next twelve months?

Isn't the homeless guy hanging out in the library all day a cliche? Information is more available now than it ever has been, and word of mouth is just as powerful as it ever was.

We don't have a perfect system, and there are "holes" that aren't well-handled. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how to handle homelessness and mental illness, and how we can improve our current system, but I think we've gotten pretty badly off-topic from the statement that you originally made, and which I took exception to:

In cities that have criminalized homelessness, failure to own or rent an enclosed place in which to live lands a person in prison.

I might rephrase my reading of that as "All people who live in cities that criminalize homelessness, and who fail to own or rent shelter, land in prison". I think that I've sufficiently supported my objections to that statement. If you made a weaker claim, like that it "tends to land a person in prison", I probably wouldn't have replied, because I think that's a more reasonable claim, backed up by statistics.

But I think that this isn't even the argument that you're interested in making. I think that the root of the matter is that you're more stuck on the idea of whether sit/lie laws are governmental coercion with the non-choice to sign a rental lease or be thrown in jail, and whether any specific lease entered into under those circumstances could be considered to have been entered into of both parties' free wills. Is that a fair assessment, or have I missed the mark?

Actually, the case was about the phrase "established by the state."

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/25/417435290/breaking-down-the-supreme-court-ruling-on-obamacare-subsidies

I was listening to NPR the other day, and this story popped up: Examining Race-Based Admissions Bans On Medical Schools .

The short version is; certain states have ruled that colleges are not allowed to consider race as part of their admissions criteria, and medical schools are noticing that black and latino graduation numbers have decreased since then.

The intent was to focus on merit-based evaluations. Seems noble, right? We want the best doctors we can get. However, the effect appears to be to reduce the number of minority students admitted. This, of course, has people outraged, and scrambling to find ways to work around the system - like sending recruiting teams to primarily-black or latino high schools, and hoping that will increase the applicant numbers.

What shocked me is that everyone is dancing around the race issue (and only certain races; not, for example, Indian or other asians). Everyone agrees the minority graduation numbers have dropped because individuals from a given group don't actually meet the admissions criteria. They're not qualified to be students or doctors. That apparently hundreds or thousands of people's failing grades were ignored because of their race. That prior to the no-race rule, doctors, in this case, were not necessarily the most well qualified individuals for the job. In fact, some significant percentage of them should not have been allowed in.

This trend isn't new either. When I was a lifeguard back in the 90's, the requirements changed from being able to swim a specific distance in a certain time, to removing many of these fitness requirements altogether. The reason? It was apparently unfairly eliminating people with poor physical ability or handicaps. The new focus was to do all the lifeguarding from the side of the pool: hooks, ropes, and life preservers.

Heck, just last month there was a minor kerfuffle about fire departments force- and expedited-promotions of minorities over whites.

I can't help but see this girls-only computer science focus being another of these sorts of ill-considered plans, where capability takes a back seat to minority inclusion and political correctness. Sure, it's not as vital as our doctors, firemen, and lifeguards, but it's the same line of thought. In our rush to be politically correct and all inclusive, we mistake equality for equally fair, and it serves no one well except those promoting our differences.

Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? Like Harrison Bergeron crazy? I can't be the only one, right?

Yes, there was at least one study with irritable bowel syndrome. Links: the paper or a random summary

Your statement about "black children are incarcerated like this and put in debt bondage to the state" is rubbish, absolute rubbish." That is nonsense.

Do you have a source to back your claim that Giant Electric Bra is wrong? Because it seems, sadly, you are very much incorrect:-

• USA Modern Debtor's prisons
• More, from the Southern Centre for Human Rights
• NPR story

Next you'll be telling us people don't go to jail for owing the IRS.

Interviewer: Like I said, I am the mother of a 12-year-old girl, and she loves your music. Her friends love your music. You have a huge platform among a very vulnerable, impressionable set of the population. And I wonder if you think about turning your lens outward, turning it away from the diary page, and sending a broader message to girls who would be really receptive to hearing about big ideas and the big world that's outside.
Swift: Like what kind of messages?
Interviewer: Well, other characters. I don't mean to minimize the effect of a love song or a pop song. But do you ever think about writing about other experiences, things that might turn girls away from themselves in a different way?
Swift: There's nothing that's gonna turn girls away from themselves at age 12...I think the best thing I can do for them is continue to write songs that do make them think about themselves and analyze how they feel about something and then simplify how they feel. Because, at that age — really at any age, but mostly that age — what can be so overwhelming is that you're feeling so many things at the same time that it's hard to actually understand what those emotions are, so it can turn to anxiety very quickly.

I'm not a fan of Ms Swift's music (I'm not a 12-year-old girl) but I do have a healthy amount of respect for the way she conducts herself in public.

My father was a police officer for 20 years and somehow managed not to shoot any black people or violate anyone's rights. That's 99.9% of police officers.

Well, you're off by at least an order of magnitude, and likely a lot more. If you look at official police misconduct numbers for example here, you'll see that something around 1% of police officers are involved in serious complaints each year. Keep in mind that's an annual rate, so I don't know how that extrapolates to the percentage of police who engage in bad activity over an entire career, but it's undoubtedly somewhat higher (and could be a significant percentage of police). (To be fair -- if you read the stats here in detail, the rate of criminal activity among police is not significantly higher than that of the general population, but one would think that we should hold law enforcement to a somewhat higher standard in obeying the law....)

And keep in mind these are reported official cases of misconduct. Recent analyses have shown that lots of questionable actions taken by police while on duty are not prosecuted or investigated thoroughly -- or even reported: recent media analysis of fatal shootings by police, for example, suggest they are probably twice as common as the official reported number.

You add all these factors together, and I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at figures closer to 10% or higher of police who engage in significant criminal misconduct.

I have a great deal of respect for "good cops" who put their lives on the line every day. If you dad was one of them, you should be proud. And most police do a good job. But there are also SIGNIFICANT numbers of police who commit crimes in the U.S. every year.

And the bad cops aren't 1 in 1000 (as your off-the-cuff stat suggests), they're definitely greater than 1 in 100, and factoring in recent stats, it's likely as many as 1 in 10 or more.

Also, we need to look at official criminal activity vs. more subtle forms of questionable actions, like intimidation in interrogations, etc. Those may not rise to a criminal level, but many, many police abuse their authority to various degrees. This is where GP has a point:

That's patently absurd.... "Don't talk to police" is for the people asking for trouble.

There are lawyers who advise that. In general, it seems like reasonable advice. Unless you are asking the police for help, you gain nothing from talking to them and can accidentally implicate yourself (even if you've actually done nothing wrong). Be polite. Provide ID if the situation warrants. Then ask to leave... politely. There are too many ways they have power and authority to screw you over, even if it doesn't rise to official "misconduct," so what's the benefit in taking the risk?

Err, you may wish to get some education as well, because it ain't just almonds like you assert it is: http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

There have been antitrust allegations around Apple's new streaming music service. This seems to me to be just another way to prevent the competition from actually competing.

People used to scream holy hell when MS did this kind of shit, but Apple is just as bad and in many cases much worse. I guess they saw that Microsoft got off with a little wrist slap so why not use borderline illegal (or blatantly illegal, once in a while) anticompetitive tactics.

You seem awfully fixated on stereotypes which aren't actually important in any meaningful way. History review?

Baby books, new baby announcements and cards, gift lists and newspaper articles from the early 1900s indicate that pink was just as likely to be associated with
boy babies as with girl babies. For example, the June 1918 issue of the Infant's Department, a trade magazine for baby clothes manufacturers, said: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl."

Aaaand, from NPR:

Before Gatsby, a 1918 trade catalog for children's clothing recommended blue for girls. The reasoning at the time was that it's a "much more delicate and dainty tone," Finamore says. Pink was recommended for boys "because it's a stronger and more passionate color, and because it's actually derived from red."

To our 21st century ears, all this men in pink stuff may sound a bit blushy. "It's so deeply entrenched in us and our culture," says Finamore. "We think of pink as such a girlish color, but it's really a post-World War II phenomenon."

I thought that the "No Child Left Behind" thing meant keeping children who didn't achieve the required standard back a year, to repeat the same grade again while the other kids moved ahead. Has it changed?

I thought it meant lowering standards so that everyone can pass?

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/10/412240568/raising-graduation-rates-with-questionable-quick-fixes
http://www.joannejacobs.com/2014/05/illinois-sets-lower-standards-for-blacks-latinos

You can't expect the American Red Cross to create houses and glossy brochures. Besides, they have their own house to look after.

He can sue the police, which is the recourse available everyone should exploit for being wrongfully arrested.

Possibly, but not likely. Police generally have qualified immunity, which basically will prevent their being sued unless there's proof of serious and unreasonable violation of Constitutional rights. This was just upheld again by the Supreme Court last year.

Read that last link to see how far "qualified immunity" goes -- guy gets pulled over for broken headlight, then takes off in the car after cops ask him to get out of the car for no apparent reason. Cops set off in high-speed pursuit, fired three shots at the car, and AFTER he finally crashed, the police fired 12 shots into the vehicle killing the guy and the (completely innocent) passenger... for no apparent reason.

Supreme Court ruled unanimously that cops have qualified immunity in that case. There's basically NO CHANCE they'll be able to be sued for arresting a guy carrying something that looked like a gun near a school in a state where carrying guns near schools is illegal.

I can't say anything about the math, but the video does look as if there is a phase change into chaotic behavior, i.e. the satellite "tumbles out of control". Here Nix's oblong shape helps turning it into a "wobbly duck". IIRC chaos means that a tiny change in initial conditions at time T can cause an arbitrarily big change at time T + delta T, thus making the result unpredictable (in spite of there being an exact formula for it) because there is always a measuring error.

I'm going to guess that he didn't file a gift tax return with the IRS for the millions he gave to person X. In which case he's up for tax evasion.

There's a certain degree of paranoia involved here as well. But this law isn't even the most onerous in the U.S. The worst one is the police confiscation laws that were originally intended to be anti-trafficking tools but now tend to be abused rather badly.

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

-Matt

Radiologists are already on their way to being obsolete. There's a simple chain of events that leads up to automation:

1. First it's hard and nobody can do it but a few PhDs
2. Then it's difficult and it requires a BS or MS.
3. Then it's a trade.
4. Then it's unskilled labor
5. Then it's automated

Wait until all these 12 year olds that started learning Python hit college and industry. There are a lot of stupid for loops that will eventually turn into big code.

I was a lazy 8th grader years ago that learned to program my TI-83. Then my TI-89. My 'studying' for my engineering tests was writing TI-Basic in the basement library. Technically I probably cheated on most tests I took in undergraduate but my "Studying" was trying to figure out how to get [Routh-Hurwitz Theorem](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Routh-HurwitzTheorem.html) into for loops on a 160×100 display. It sucked but during the tests I had debugged so many different scenarios I knew the equations by heart and just used the programs to double check my math. (And saved me when I missed carrying a 1 early on). Now I'm automating away engineers. People that sat at a keyboard and put it into the computer. They're the modern day equivalent of punch card operators. It doesn't mean they're going to get fired, they're just going to work on a task worthy of a human brain.

Arduino is going into small farms. People are programming their chicken coops. We're about to automate away 'big farming' for a lot of niche markets. A small CSA and farm will be able to automate a lot of boring repetitive 'farm tasks'.

Radiologists will be replaced by Chicken Sexers on Amazon Mechanical Turk if an algorithm doesn't get there first.

Swipe left for compound fracture, swipe right for non-compound fracture. Get a good set of training data and pay everyone $0.01 to guess. Pay the top 20% of them $.10 to guess on harder questions. Repeat the cycle until you're paying $100.00 to get an X-ray read by a few thousand people. The Government has taken to crowd sourcing people to guess events Turns out if you ask a lot of people a question the average ends up being correct.

It's worked for counting jelly beans in a jar for years

It seems Ellie can diagnose all kinds of psychological conditions...

http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...

The gap between to treatment is decreasing fast - now that VR is thought as a medium for treating addictions.

The science of climate change is settled. Al Gore flew his jet to Washington to say so: http://www.npr.org/templates/s....

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