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It's just an oblique attack on men.

It is, actually, and it's a subtle one. In the face of all evidence, the dogma of political correctness dictates that men and women are exactly the same and should want the same things. Therefore, using this twisted excuse for logic, anything that is done primarily by men must be portrayed as inherently sexist and actively excluding of women. That's what happens when masses of soft-minded people use low-quality logic on "sacred" conclusions they refuse to question.

The idea that it's good enough to have open access for anyone who wants to do something (and when has a wider variety of games been more available than now?) and then those who are interested can participate is anathema to this mentality. There's nothing for them to do in that scenario, no soapbox to climb on, no social engineering to perform, no downtrodden victim to pretend to champion (while actually changing nothing).

You may find this an interesting article. They were going to metaphorically roast a Harvard professor for daring to suggest men and women have different interests and priorities. He hadn't actually done anything to discriminate against women and showed no hostility towards them. He just didn't hold the "correct" viewpoint.

I can think of a certain group of American Republicans who would do exactly that...

Indeed, some conservatives in America have taken on the practice of coal rolling, outfitting diesel trucks to spew black smoke as protest against environmental regulations.

I believe in the US you control the air space over your house to ~80 to ~500 feet. (depends on states?)
Stems from a case involving someone living at the end of a runway (smirk),
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Every woman I know well enough to tell me whether she has been raped has been raped.

By the best numbers we have, 17% of women have been raped, so the most likely interpretation of your data is that you either have a thing for women who have been raped, or your sample size is too small.

Also, sexual assault is a human rights issue, not a women's rights issue, and it does it a disservice to classify it otherwise -- specifically it allows men to discount it as not their problem: http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Incidentally, I would be just as offended if someone broke my ribs as if they forced me to have sex with them, and I think sentences should be commensurate with actual damages rather than morality. Of course, sentences have almost nothing to do with actual damages for any crime, so I'm not holding my breath.

No. Bezos bought the Washington Post newspaper and online version, but he did not buy the Washington Post Company, which owns slate.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon...

--quote--
First, Slate is a property of the Washington Post Company but is not part of the Washington Post. Neither it nor Foreign Policy nor the Root have been sold. In fact, Bezos isn't even buying the building in which the Post is currently located.
--end quote--

Did anyone else notice that the affiliate tag on the links suggest that the links belong to Slate magazine and not the newspaper? For the record, Bezos didn't buy Slate last year, and I don't think he owns it now. http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon... Given the unanswered questions, I'm going to assume there's more to this story. I think this could be a syndicated article which arrived with the links. Or perhaps something broke in the WP's servers, I don't know. But I do know that I checked a half dozen other articles and didn't see any affiliate links.

Most of the heat is going into the oceans and causing the sea level to rise due to thermal expansion. Much of the rest of the heat is continuing to melt the ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic.

I think you will find that those Republicans have industries that compete with Space X in their districts. This means Space X is doing so well they feel the industries in their own districts will lose money. Perhaps you could appeal to Republicans who don't have competing space industries in their district. But complaining about this as if its just republicans doing this is disingenuous. Politicians do this to give industries in their state and edge all the time.

Phil Plait:
"That’s why this whole thing looks to me to be a transparent attempt from members of our Congress to hinder a privately owned company that threatens their own interests. I’ll note that Boeing (the major SLS contractor) has a big plant in Alabama, Brooks’ (and Shelby’s) home state, and United Launch Alliance has its HQ in Colorado, home to Gardner and Coffman (it’s even in Coffman’s district). This sounds more like they’re trying to protect their own turf more than honestly wanting transparency from SpaceX."

You can read that here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Chicago Public School teachers are paid between $50-97K, based on education and time in job, plus pension and healthcare benefits.

Since the average income of full-time workers with a master's degree is $62,000 http://www.census.gov/prod/200... , that doesn't seem unreasonable. I'm not one of those conservatives who wants to reduce everybody in the country except themselves to Wallmart wages. I want to live in a country in which I'm getting a good salary for a job well done and everybody else is getting a good salary for a job well done.

There seem to be different kinds of teachers -- some of them work hard to keep up in their field, and give their students the attention they need, and some of them don't.

I think good teachers deserve the money. The bad teachers don't. If they're bad teachers, they should be trained to improve. If they can't be trained to improve, they should be fired.

Take a science teacher. I know a lot of science teachers who read Science magazine every week to keep current with the field. I read Science magazine (most) every week just to keep current with biology, and it's a tough job. Imagine if I also had to keep up with physics. They go to science conferences and teaching conferences. They keep ahead of their kids with computers (no easy task). They help their students do science fair projects. Every so often, they have to learn an entirely new curriculum. That's a big job and they may need the summer just to catch up with their work.

Somebody is going to say, "Why do science teachers have to spend so much time preparing their courses? It's all done. They can just recite the textbook." That's a complete misunderstanding of what science teachers do. Teaching science isn't teaching revealed truth, like the Bible. Science teachers have to understand what's going on in the entire world of science, and then select the subset which is most appropriate for their students. When the Higgs boson was discovered, and kids were interested in it, science teachers had to prepare to teach what the Higgs boson was and its significance (I couldn't).

Just as important, teachers have to learn how to teach.

For example, there are certain topics that kids can understand at a certain age. If you go beyond what they can understand, they won't learn anything, and you'll bore them or confuse them and they'll be turned off on science completely.

For example, according to the science curriculum, molecules are too abstract for most middle-school kids. I was surprised at that, but it makes sense. Suppose you tell an 11-year-old kid, "There are things called molecules, that you can't see, that you can't verify experimentally, and you'll have to trust me that they exist, and here's an artist's impression of what they look like." That's not teaching science. That's memorization. You could say exactly the same thing about angels. You can't verify them experimentally either.

Understanding what and how to teach about science is a tough job. If a science teacher were doing a good job of educating my kids, I wouldn't resent him or her for getting $100,000 a year. How much is it worth to you to have a kid who understands science?

Some people are going to say, "My wife is a teacher and she works seven hours a day and gets the summer off, and forgets about work once she's outside the school door."

Sure, there are bad teachers, but how many? Look at the Vergara case, where the anti-union, anti-tenure and charter school advocates got their chance to argue that the schools were filled with incompetent tenured union-protected teachers. What was the best evidence they could come up with, and based on that, how many incompetent teachers were there?

A guess from an expert who, when pressed, said that there were 1-3% "at maximum" who were, not incompetent, but gave "cause for concern" http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Anybody still seriously doubt that Russia is a neo-Fascist country?

They do!

Guess what, even if you are not using gmail, chances ae people that you communicate with regularly ARE using e-mail, therefore, some of your email still passes through google's servers.

Benjamin Mako Hill did an analysis of his inbox. He found Google has about HALF of this personal email - and he runs his own mail server and everything. See http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Anyhow, the interesting thing is that Google has a bunch of file hashes, and they actually matched the image. I mean considering how easy it is to change the file hash, they seemed to just collect and send the same image over and over again?

You'd think by now they'd alter the images slightly to keep changing the file hash.

Alright, go for it, man: tell us all why the verb "vegetating" only applies to screens and not pages.

Let's get TV out of the way - it's passive, dumbed-down, lowest common denominator entertainment.

Video games are nothing but interactive TV programs when you think of it. There isn't any redeeming value to them. And save the hand -eye coordination benefits argument. Nothing beats running around outside and playing.

Internet - surfing crap and at best, small articles that people don't even finish reading the article - yeah, it's not just Slashdotters. I hate researching on the Internet because for one, so much stuff is just copied verbatim. You go through hundreds of sites and read the same shit over and over.

WikiPedia can be good, but sometimes the writing is just dense or doesn't flow well. There is a lot to be said about a skilled writer. Here is an example of a skilled writer making complex material understandable AND enjoyable. You will not find material like that available on the net; although, you will find the author's individual articles. But those articles will not have the long narrative that the book has and you wouldn't finish his article anyway which leads to ....

Books: long narratives on a single format. Will not get distracted by other shit. How many times has one gone to read on the Internet and get distracted and end up on a time wasting site - like Slashdot? There is NO new and breaking news here.

I find having a dead tree book (can't surf the net or get email notifications or anything like that like I can on electronic things that distract me), I can get engrossed in it and absorb MUCH more than I can reading crap on the net.

And that's my project - use my local library and read books.

So there you go. Sometimes, technology is a bad thing.

Latin is still spoken in the Holy See. If you want to learn to speak it, you could try Rosetta Stone or Transparent Language. Or learn to speak it in Rome! http://www.slate.com/articles/...

In practice, voter tests would rule out the black / gay / poor / jew / undesirable-group-du-jour.

Only when they are designed to rule out those groups instead of ruling out people who have no business voting (for example, people who don't understand how plurality voting can lead to someone getting elected with a minority of the votes).

Not to mention too dumb to know what an Airbus looks like ... oh wait, that's us.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Presumably the parent was modded troll because the moderator thought it wasn't true.
Not only is it true, it's actually an *understatement*. iPad revenue exceeds the combined revenues of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Tesla, and Groupon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

You shouldn't need the American proof of that.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Yes, Corporations Are People

Yeah, much better to let Amazon to run all the book publishers out of business. :rolleyes:

Yes, the DOJ should totally prosecute the theoretical future anti-trust actions by Amazon, while ignoring the actual increase in prices brought about by market manipulation of Apple. :rolleyes.

The future is here: http://www.slate.com/articles/...

You're (I believe inadvertently) painting an inaccurate picture when it comes to Tesla's stance towards unions. Even if they are neutral towards employee unions (more on that in a minute), NADA is still one of the largest unions in the automotive industry, and has made no bones about the fact that they are opposed to Tesla's business model. Unions have been attacking Tesla from the start and continue to do so even now. Factory employee unions may not be a part of the fray yet, but they're hardly the only type of trade union.

Moreover, on the topic of employee unions, Musk may say he's neutral, but Tesla's actions make it clear that it is hardly neutral. From another article (emphasis mine):

Musk's opinions on unionization aren't clear. When he announced the Fremont factory's purchase from Toyota, Musk told The Chronicle that "on the question of the union, we're neutral." [...]

Tesla's last annual financial report struck a far less welcoming note. It listed the possibility of union activity under "risks" to the business.

"The mere fact that our labor force could be unionized may harm our reputation in the eyes of some investors and thereby negatively affect our stock price," reads the report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "Additionally, the unionization of our labor force could increase our employee costs and decrease our profitability, both of which could adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations."

[...] Other Tesla managers, [UAW President Bob] King said, seemed to be opposed. Musk, he said, was "very open and said he would respect what the workers wanted. But his operating management has done the opposite."

And, contrary to your claims regarding Uber, it has been facing issues from trade unions, namely taxi, limo, and other professional driver unions across the country that have been campaigning extremely hard to keep Uber out. I'll grant that they are almost entirely operating against Uber at the city and state level, but that pressure on the governments is originating from the unions. Without the unions campaigning, the city governments likely wouldn't be getting involved at all.

That said, I do agree with you that the summary grossly missteps by suggesting that the issue of state-level protectionist regulators has much of anything to do with the complaints of small-government folks.

everything you said has been debunked by actual facts.

No, it is NOT true that temperatures have been essentially flat.

Well, putting it in bold clearly means you're right...not.

Try looking at actual data. That's the RSS data, which is inherently better than spotty surface station coverage in that it directly integrates the entire lower troposphere. That's a slightly negative trend that's going hard on twenty years...all with CO2 levels worth panicking over according to some.

The sea ice is only a "rebound" because its being compared to the previous year which was THE LOWEST SEA ICE EVER RECORDED.

2012 was the lowest (due mainly to a weather phenomenon, not climate in particular. 2013 was the rebound year, and this year looks to be continuing the trend. Will the long-term decline resume? Personally, I doubt it based on solar activity, but we'll see...

Thank you for the public service of displaying your ignorance, now go away.

I'll leave it to the readers to decide who's ignorant (or brainwashed:).

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

As for your Slate link, it's addressing one specific article. It makes the tired "the heat is hiding in the ocean" claim, which has not been verified whatsoever. How has the ocean been heating (imperceptibly) for almost 20 years while the atmosphere stays the same temperature, pray tell?

You might also want to reflect on the fact that while the Arctic ice has been generally on the decline, Antarctic sea ice has been at record extent this year, and global ice as a whole is around average...

everything you said has been debunked by actual facts.

No, it is NOT true that temperatures have been essentially flat.

The sea ice is only a "rebound" because its being compared to the previous year which was THE LOWEST SEA ICE EVER RECORDED.

Thank you for the public service of displaying your ignorance, now go away.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Of course, we still can't make anything out of carbon nanotubes.

Your Slashdot id is apparently a lie... :-)
Carbon nanotubes have been used to make tons of things. The problem with them isn't finding uses for them, it's how expensive they are to make. Keep in mind that aluminum used to be one of the most expensive materials on earth due to its difficulty to smelt.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2012/11/27/civil_war_who_would_come_out_on_top_if_the_united_states_all_declared_war.html

And sometimes it is, despite the supposed inefficiencies. That's what the French government thinks, and there are similar opinions in other European countries.

If governments could reflect the diversity of opinions in their population perfectly ever time, the world would be a simpler place.

In practice they tend to reflect the opinions of a very specific group of people - politicians (closely followed by bureaucrats) who are e.g. typically older and wealthier than the average man on the street.

There's an interesting article by an author on the topic, called "Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller: Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you". Worth reading, at least.

Not really, but the outrage would be less phony if they weren't such hypocrites.

This was specifically for international flights into the US originating from certain countries, not a TSA-wide procedure.

Yet... give it a month. I know a couple of TSA people for some reason. Their IQ is slightly above your typical McDonalds worker, only because they need to know how to put on a tie. A lot of their "procedures" are only there because they heard it was a good idea on the news yesterday. Granted, I'm near Chicago so maybe they have smarter people working in the newyork airports but I doubt it.

Keep in mind, that TSA has yet to have stopped a single bombing. The only reasons we've not had a plane go down is due to lack of effort, not any increase in security. The few attempts that have been made, made it through the TSA with ease and it was the efforts of passengers or the stupidity of the attacker that saved the plane.

In tests, they fail to stop devices from getting on the plane pretty much every time:
http://nypost.com/2013/03/08/t...

They've no evidence that they have ever stopped anything:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

The majority of what they catch are people trying to smuggle things they shouldn't like plants and animals or people that try to take legit firearms into the cabin when they should have put it in their luggage:
http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/01/ts...

Probably so. Mahatma Gandhi advocated fighting the Nazis with a one-two knockout punch of surrender and mass suicide. Mother Theresa was a galactic douche with PR talents that you might expect from the love child of Oprah Winfrey and Gandalf. And FDR, well, about the best you can say about FDR is that he made World War II look like a lucky break for the US economy.

Woz? Um, well, I heard he was caught doing 115 MPH in a Prius. That's about the only bad thing anyone has ever said about him. Personally, I would have given him a trophy rather than a ticket, but that's probably why I'm not a cop.

And contrary to the previous poster's statement which you seem to think is correct, this is not about anyone telling you what health care services you can have.

Of course it is, for people of limited means. Which applies to most of Hobby Lobby's workers, since they don't get paid much.

It is about the government forcing someone to violate their faith.

Bullshit:
1) Hobby Lobby was fine with covering these meds before it was mandatory
2) They're invested in the pharmaceutical companies selling said meds
3) All their products come from China with it's mandatory abortions
4) Arguing you have the right to to mess around with other people's lives, cuz religion, is always bullshit, whether it's contraceptives, gay rights, or segregation.

You can still have all the abortions you want, you can still have all the birth control you want.

While having to double pay for it, since health insurance is part of your compensation. Hobby Lobby is still happy to cover Viagra and vasectomies, though.

It seems your problems with religion has clouded your thought process to the point you cannot see logic. Maybe it is time to step back and take a deep breath.

Maybe you could stop being a dumbass for five seconds. Under the same logic in this ruling, if your company is owned by Jehovah's Witnesses, they could deny you coverage for blood transfusions. Or if you work for a Scientologist, any kind of psychiatric medication. Of course, SCOTUS tied themselves into pretzels to avoid that exact sort of outcome, which means they're favoring one religious sect over another, which means this is all buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuullshit.

How narrow is the ruling, really? SCOTUS declared that any closely held business has the right to refuse to pay for insurance that covers contraception if the owners have a religious objection. This may account for about half of private sector employment in the US [citation; there is a linked pdf from the Stern School in the third paragraph]. My Google-fu is not terribly good, and I am having trouble pinning down exactly what proportion of the total America workforce this represents---recent employment reports from BLS seem to indicate something on the order of 70% of the workforce is in the private sector. Assuming that this number is correct, something like 35% of the workforce is employed by closely held businesses. So while the jurisprudence may appear narrow, the effect is potentially quite large.

... Except to say one more thing, and then I am well and truly done:

In my strong opinion, this is the worst case of TROLLING I have even seen on Slashdot, in my many years participating. Not least because you have done it over a period of years.

And you know what they say about trolls.

I found this article very interesting:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_...

That's all true, unless it isn't. Law and regulation can be effective, but only if people follow it. If instead, the response is widespread disobedience of that law (and other laws that just happen to be like the first), then it can actually be extraordinarily counterproductive.

A good example is the era of alcohol prohibition in the US. For example, the US government poisoned a large number of people (starting in 1926) in a futile attempt to deter alcohol consumption. The estimates of deaths from the program go as high as 10,000 (with NYC experiencing at least 1100 deaths attributed to that program).

In addition, organized crime thrived on the black market for alcohol, creating a powerful shadow force that took at least half a century to dismantle. Today's black markets in recreational drugs and similar things can directly trace their roots to that long ago period.

So sure, you can force people to make healthy choices, but only if they comply with the law. If they don't, then you can make the problems much worse.

Gmail doesn't manage most of the planet's email by a long shot (Hotmail, ISPs email, Web hosting accounts email, China and other countries who try to avoid USA-based Internet services, etc) and email is compatible everywhere anyway. There's no lock-in.

Actually, they could very well be close.

Benjamin Mako Hill analyzed his email records and found that Google handled over half of his personal email. It doesn't matter that he runs his own mail server or anything, Google still acquired half of his personal correspondence - sending OR receiving.

Sure they don't have a monopoly, but if everyone else has similar statistics, it means Google handles roughly 1 in 2 non-spam non-autogenerated, non-mailing list email.

Heck, many legitimate companies I've seen lately (usually Chinese ones) use Gmail addresses. Usually along the lines of user-company@gmail.com or company-user@gmail.com.

When Mary Margaret Vojtko died last September—penniless and virtually homeless and eighty-three years old, having been referred to Adult Protective Services because the effects of living in poverty made it seem to some that she was incapable of caring for herself—it made the news because she was a professor.

The story of Mary Margaret Vojtko is more complicated than it seems on first glance. Vojtko was a hoarder who rebuffed numerous attempts by others to reach out and help. Among other things, she refused to let a repairman fix her boiler because she didn't want anyone disturbing her house. Yes, she was paid poorly and had no benefits, but there were other factors at work.

Actually the only question here is what the term "redskins" means in means in historical context.

No, that question is barely relevant. The question is whether the term is regarded as offensive NOW. Historical discussions (some would say unfortunately) are rather irrelevant, because people tend not to care much about history. Your post seems to be an example of this.

As a Native American (Cherokee) I find it HIGHLY OFFENSIVE NOW!. Call me a Redskin to my face and you will have a fight on your fucking hands.

Historically it has been a derisory term, and no-one can really deny that native Americans were derided with it while being oppressed in other ways.

Nope -- historically, it originated as a translation of terms that Native Americans (or American Indians, if you prefer) used for themselves.

Bullshit we never used that term for ourselves. It comes from a time when you got paid for the "redskins" you brought in from dead Indians. Even today if I called my brother to his face a "Redskin" to his face he would kick my ass.

And, I sincerely doubt that even when the sports team named themselves "Redskins" that they wanted to insult themselves with a derogatory term. They presumably meant it as a term to honor the heritage of a strong people (who, by extension, apparently might win at sports competitions). Mostly, the rather novel "offensiveness" of this term was generated after mid-20th century concern about "color" terms regarding race... educated folks stopped using it, leaving it only the choice term of jerks and bigots. It's kind of like "white flight," except in language.

I do not see you "honoring" me by putting a price on my skin Unega Soqua.

It's like we generally don't refer to black people as "coloured" any more, because historically it has very negative connotations. Signs with "no coloureds" and the like.

Wrong again! In the mid-1800s, the word "black" became to be seen as an offensive term, since people generally don't actually have black skin. So, "colored" originated as a polite term which more accurately designated the various skin tones of real people. (It lives on in respectable names of black organizations, like the NAACP, "National Association of Colored People" -- it obviously wasn't offensive back then; it was the most proper term to use.)

"Colored" gradually gave way to "Negro" ("United Negro College Fund"), which was taken to be a more scientific description of race. Since all the educated folks stopped using the term "colored" (not for any particularly offensive reason), it was only left for hicks in the South -- hence it came to be associated with segregation and eventually became offensive. (Not because it was deliberately used as a slur, but because it became outdated except in regions populated by folks who couldn't keep up with new terms, and often tended to have worse views on race.) Meanwhile, the 1960s saw a decline of "Negro" and a new interest in rehabilitating what had been an offensive slur for over a century: "Black" became the new preferred term of the anti-establishment "Black Power" groups. With "negro" seeming old-fashioned, and some remaining hatred of the old "black" slur, other folks kept searching for something else -- hence "African American."

And so it goes. In any case, "colored" used to be a respectable term historically. Then it got on the "euphemism treadmill" as educated folk keep fleeing away from previous terms, leaving them only used by uneducated folk, which results in the sentiment that these previously acceptable terms must be offensive.

I cannot speak for what an African American finds offensive I am not one. I can speak for me a Cherokee.

You can try to play the victim c

Similarly, "redskins" started life intending to be a pejorative term

Nope. It "started life" as a translation of a term Native Americans used for themselves, without any pejorative meaning.

Of course, that doesn't mean it hasn't become offensive in some contexts since then. But it's not where it came from.

Actually the only question here is what the term "redskins" means in means in historical context.

No, that question is barely relevant. The question is whether the term is regarded as offensive NOW. Historical discussions (some would say unfortunately) are rather irrelevant, because people tend not to care much about history. Your post seems to be an example of this.

Historically it has been a derisory term, and no-one can really deny that native Americans were derided with it while being oppressed in other ways.

Nope -- historically, it originated as a translation of terms that Native Americans (or American Indians, if you prefer) used for themselves.

And, I sincerely doubt that even when the sports team named themselves "Redskins" that they wanted to insult themselves with a derogatory term. They presumably meant it as a term to honor the heritage of a strong people (who, by extension, apparently might win at sports competitions). Mostly, the rather novel "offensiveness" of this term was generated after mid-20th century concern about "color" terms regarding race... educated folks stopped using it, leaving it only the choice term of jerks and bigots. It's kind of like "white flight," except in language.

It's like we generally don't refer to black people as "coloured" any more, because historically it has very negative connotations. Signs with "no coloureds" and the like.

Wrong again! In the mid-1800s, the word "black" became to be seen as an offensive term, since people generally don't actually have black skin. So, "colored" originated as a polite term which more accurately designated the various skin tones of real people. (It lives on in respectable names of black organizations, like the NAACP, "National Association of Colored People" -- it obviously wasn't offensive back then; it was the most proper term to use.)

"Colored" gradually gave way to "Negro" ("United Negro College Fund"), which was taken to be a more scientific description of race. Since all the educated folks stopped using the term "colored" (not for any particularly offensive reason), it was only left for hicks in the South -- hence it came to be associated with segregation and eventually became offensive. (Not because it was deliberately used as a slur, but because it became outdated except in regions populated by folks who couldn't keep up with new terms, and often tended to have worse views on race.) Meanwhile, the 1960s saw a decline of "Negro" and a new interest in rehabilitating what had been an offensive slur for over a century: "Black" became the new preferred term of the anti-establishment "Black Power" groups. With "negro" seeming old-fashioned, and some remaining hatred of the old "black" slur, other folks kept searching for something else -- hence "African American."

And so it goes. In any case, "colored" used to be a respectable term historically. Then it got on the "euphemism treadmill" as educated folk keep fleeing away from previous terms, leaving them only used by uneducated folk, which results in the sentiment that these previously acceptable terms must be offensive.

You can try to play the victim card all you like, but only simple minds are unaware of historical context.

Hilarious. Read some history of these terms, if you want (but obviously haven't). Historical context is precisely an argument AGAINST these sorts of politically-correct arbitrary linguistic arguments. Often the history of these terms is much more benign that you might think.

But none of that really matters -- history is irrelevant in arguments like this. The point is some people find these terms offensive NOW, and if enough people (or enough of the "right people," whomever we think should arbitrate such things) find them offensive, educated folks should change their usage. Language is all arbitrary and a social construct after all -- if its connotations cause enough offense that it ceases to be useful for communication, it needs to change.

There's far more female nurses in hospitals than male nurses

There's plenty of opportunity for sexism before you even get to the hiring process. It's not necessarily the hospitals' fault, but it still affects the male-female balance in medicine.

Passenger Pigeons were regarded as a menace by early settlers, like locust. And like locust, they were eliminated.

To go from 136 million in 1871 to zero in 1900 (the year the last passenger pigeon was shot in the wild) would have taken a phenomenal killing effort. At that size of population the reproduction rate must have been getting on for 100 million new birds a year, and every bird killed must simply created a better chance that next year's young would survive, because they would be competing for food with a smaller flock.

Granted, the nesting areas were relatively small and therefore subject to easy destruction, but two (related) factors should also be taken into account: disease and invasive species (which could well have brought diseases with them.)

Although introduced to late to be the culprit with respect to passenger pigeons, the common starling is an example of the massive effect invasive species can have on local ecologies. Furthermore, the massive changes to the prairie eco-system as the result of farming must have had an effect as well.

So while hunting and wanton destruction of nesting habitat obviously didn't help, it's interesting to ask, "Could the passenger pigeon have survived even without deliberate attempts to kill it?" The answer is not obviously "yes" (nor is it obviously "no", which is why the question is interesting.)

In this context it is worth remembering that the exclusion zone around the worst civil nuclear disaster in human history is far, far better for the local wildlife that simply having a thriving human population in the area: http://www.slate.com/articles/... (the article incorrectly states that observations of wildlife diversity around Chernobyl depend on the assumption that radiation isn't as bad for animals as humans, but this has causality backward: it is simply a matter of empirical fact, backed up by systematic observations carefully ignored by critics, that wildlife diversity in the exclusion zone is as high as that in protected nature reserve.)

i have had the same experiences as you though not for as long, i also haven't given up fruit. the science is pretty clear and this is why some people burn the 'wheat' they get from first world countries in emergency situations because they don't trust wheat, based on the science against it. the science behind the food charts in the usa is page for page how to fatten beasts for the slaughter. now i don't eat human meat but why are so many people trying to make us more fatty and marbled in texture like cows? even shills like dr oz recommends a wheatless Wednesday. kids are getting sick too it's not just adults. food allergies are higher than ever and we eat more and more stuff that humans and other omnivores never ate. they even want to make an artificial food... http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/beyond_meat_fake_chicken_that_tastes_so_real_it_will_freak_you_out_.html http://beyondmeat.com/ it is plant derived, but some are working to make fake food from mined substances. unlike the plant based fake meat the tech for mined food isn't quite there yet.

She's still promoting unsubstantiated FUD about vaccinations, she has just switched her focus from autism to "toxins".

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

"Yet as doctors say, dosage makes the poison. The amount of, say, formaldehyde in a typical vaccination is much less than you’d get eating an apple. The same can be shown for the other ingredients claimed to be toxins in vaccines as well. The truth is vaccines contain far too small a dose of any of these things to cause any of the problems McCarthy and other anti-vaxxers claim exist.as doctors say, dosage makes the poison.

Also, botulinum is the single most lethal toxin known to humans. Yet McCarthy has enthusiastically praised injecting this toxin into her face. How can anyone possibly say that and also say vaccines have dangerous levels of toxins in them with a straight face?"

A recent study of World of Warcraft players showed that male players who played as female avatars had a subconscious tendency to adopt female speaking characteristics.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

"When selecting female avatars, these men strongly preferred attractive avatars with traditional hairstyles—long, flowing locks as opposed to a pink mohawk. And their chat patterns shifted partway toward how the real women spoke: These men used more emotional phrases and more exclamation points than the men who did not gender-switch. In other words, these men created female avatars that were stereotypically beautiful and emotional."

THAT explains why there are no accidents in California involving taxis.

Oh, wait there's this one in San Diego, and this one also in San Diego, and... oh, never mind.

Either California issues driver's licenses to COMPETENT drivers, or they do not ... they pretend that there's a point to issuing licenses to drivers and pretend those licenses are "good enough" (even for people carrying a car-load of children) but then mysteriously pretend that a taxi driver needs a special license to carry even one consenting adult. Either California's insurance requirements and vehicle inspection requirements are good, or they are not and the state should stop hassling average citizens with them; it's a JOKE to say the insurance and vehicle inspection for driver "Joe" are adequate (even hauling passengers) but that another set of rules are needed for for the very same guy in the very same car and hauling the very same passengers ... IF HE DOES IT FOR MONEY.

It's a scam.

In most places with taxi regulations, the rules setup a limited number of authorized cronies (to artificially-inflate and protect prices) using some scheme like "medallions" as a totally-artificial market manipulation.

This plague tends to occur in big cities where [a] lots of money is on the line and [b] "big government" Democrats have a death-grip on the political machine (think: Chuck Heston with his NRA rifle), and will therefore never get voted-out over it (because their base voters will support them no matter what they do as long as they support gay marriage, or food stamps, or whatever other social "causes" are the "wedge issue" of the day)

Google actually does support public transportation. They're paying some $6.8 million to fund a San Francisco public transit program, for example.

Honestly, the big problem with public transportation isn't companies like Google. It's racism and classism. Here's a good article describing how racism has crippled Atlanta's public transportation and exacerbated the effects of this winter's snow storm, for example.

3rd reply: Women are really good at fooling Men into thinking that they've given consent when they haven't, due to evolutionary misogyny and the defense against it.

From the article: Women who have experienced this can recognize that placating these men is a rational choice, a form of self-defense to protect against setting off an aggressor. But to male bystanders, it often looks like a warm welcome, and that helps to shift blame in the public eye from the harasser and onto his target, who’s failed to respond with the type of masculine bravado that men more easily recognize. Two weeks before the murders, Louis C.K.—who has always recognized pervasive male violence against women in his stand-up—spelled out how this works in an episode of Louie, where he recalls watching a man and a woman walking together on a date. “He goes to kiss her, and she does an amazing thing that women somehow learn how to do—she hugged him very warmly. Men think this is affection, but what this is is a boxing maneuver.” Women “are better at rejecting us than we are,” C.K. said. “They have the skills to reject men in the way that we can then not kill them.”

See, that's the danger, and why I made my original comment in the first place: Schrodinger's cat (and Quantum Mechanics as a whole) has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. Here's a great piece explaining in more detail.

Oh goodie, a lesson on ABX testing I didn't need. Carbonation is more obvious than the taste differences people often fail to confirm in blind test. Slate even did some coverage on container carbonation differences talking about it. According to that I didn't necessarily describe the cause and effect correctly in my quick comment--it may be from gas escaping rather than a bottling difference--but the effect I was describing is real.

Have you ever noticed the difference between flat soda and fresh? If so, why do you believe carbonation level and bottle specific characteristics are never distinguishable? There's a motion component to it. A major reason flat soda tastes differently is that you expect a different taste from the bubbles, whether or not there even is a taste difference outside of that. Your perception of carbonation turns into a taste even though it's really not a taste, exactly. The same way that knowing the brand alters how you taste--the bit that screws up non-blind taste tests--sensing the carbonation in your mouth changes how you taste too.

Fine, you say that's still me claiming something, not a test result. I looked around for five minutes for a blind test showing some difference between two different Coke product packages that included observations on the "fizziness" of the product impacting preference. Here's a recent blind comparison with untrained testers doing exactly that. I don't think it's studied more because it is too obvious to bother.

iPhone is the luxury market?
http://news.investors.com/tech...

Also, http://www.slate.com/blogs/bus...

âoeAn Android User Is Worth One-Fourth of an iOS User.â

I think some of the stuff works. But many Hollywood films fail because the people making them don't care or have other agendas. Many movie makers live in a "different world" and are not in touch - for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There are formulas and critics say too many movies nowadays are following the same formulas too strictly. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

It's not necessary to follow the formula that strictly for success: http://www.savethecat.com/beat...
(I also suspect movie makers in other places have different styles - Hong Kong, Bollywood)

But hey it works and most people won't care if most movies start following some formulaic structure. People will care if some idiot produces a superman movie where superman never flies.