they can determine quickly and unilaterally which specific cases are firable offenses?
yes the cops are ignoring a law and a directive but they are doing so specifically because your stupid suggestion isn't possible and they know it.
The police chief and/or the mayor and/or the police department has the ability to decide what is a fireable offense and what is not. Many places falling asleep on the job even once is a fireable offense and some even showing up to work late once is fireable. If the fireable offense are listed and well documented then even most unions will leave them alone. There are plenty of fireable offense for a police officer. The only reason this is being ignored is because it is not considered serious. Putting out a memo that says "harassing a bystander with a camera or deleting something from a bystander's camera" is grounds for immediate termination is all that it would take. Obviously asking them to leave or stand back where safety is concerned is reasonable but taking their phone from them and accessing it should be on the same level as tasering them or punching them in the face or making them remove their clothes. There is absolutely no reason a cop should take a phone from a bystander and start deleting stuff. Taking a phone for evidence or for safety, maybe, but even for evidence, the street cop shouldn't be accessing it, it should be accessed by a forensic team who is recording and documenting what they are doing.
They've already got the "block by posting editor" feature. All they have to do is make Bennett an editor.
Yeah, it's very bizarre. He's obviously associated with slashdot somehow. It would make sense to have him post his own articles under his own name. His articles are also 10 times longer than other submissions. It would also make sense to have them on their own page instead of cramming 10 paragraphs into what is suppose to be a summary.
Is there a chrome extension that blocks slashdot stories with "Bennett Haselton" yet?
They let us moderate, metamoderate, and even flag everyone else's comments. They should at least give us the "flag this post as spam" option for posted articles. It might help them realize which articles suck and which don't. I wonder if they don't just count the total number of comments and as Bennett gets a bunch of comments (most of which are saying how much everyone hates his articles), they think his articles are popular because they aren't reading the actual comments.
It's still going to be cheaper for a utility company to set up hundreds of solar panels and sell the electricity to consumers than it will be for everyone to buy/maintain their own system.
Only if energy companies are willing to accept zero profit.
A utility company could easily still make a profit using the same technology as the consumer. If they save only 10% via economy of scale and then tack on another 10% for the customer convenience of not having to maintain their own system, that is 20% right there. My guess is that economy of scale is closer to 50% as the utility company can use technologies that are not practical at the home level, cut corners that are not safe at the home level, optimize in ways that are not practical at the home level as well as buy in bulk and create custom specs.
A power plant near my house did a $20 million dollar upgrade which was suppose to increase yield by 5%. They said that if it worked then they would break even after 3 months. Those type of optimizations are just not practical on the individual level.
Well, they're kind of in a losing position - raise rates to pay for losses, and people just move to renewables sooner.
It seems pretty clear that generating electricity from free sunlight is going to be cheaper than mining and transporting fossil fuels to a complex facility to burn them.
Even IF green energy becomes cheaper, this doesn't mean distributed power is going away anytime soon, it just means that large power companies will have to move to green energy sooner. Economy of scale still applies to solar energy. It's still going to be cheaper for a utility company to set up hundreds of solar panels and sell the electricity to consumers than it will be for everyone to buy/maintain their own system. There is a potential saving by being able to eliminate distribution costs so it's possible that local generation could bet out economy of scale if distribution costs are a significant part. So the question really becomes what percentage of your electricity price is generation and what percentage is distribution? The other way that local generation wins is if people start installing solar for reasons other that cost of generation.
at $10/month you start overpaying for office in only 2 years. If you're upgrading your computer every 2 years or suspend it for long lengths of time so you never reach 25 months before you upgrade then this might make sense but for most people who upgrade their computer every 3-5 years or longer then renting is definitely more expensive. We ran office 97 for probably about 10 years before switching everyone to openoffice. Our copy of office97 actually outlasted multiple PCs. We would just transfer it over to the new PC.
The rest of your post is filled with bold speculation, and causual observation, and "what ifs".
I'm not saying you're not entitled to your views, I'm just saying its not science.
That's kindof the point of this article. So James Watson states an opinion based on his casual observation and bold speculations and gets railroaded for it. Here is an interesting article about it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... Skip down to the "known facts section": 1) No one has a firm handle... 2) No one has a firm idea... 3) No one has proof... 4) As for "race", it's a sticky muck... 5) Like "intelligence", the term "race" is ill-defined...
Note that this is an article that comes out AGAINST James Watson but clearly admits that noone knows. So a man was crucified for stating an opinion in a largely gray area. Here is another quote from James Watson: If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true. and another: We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science. and another: Our goal should be to understand our differences. and another: Ultimately, we'll help the people we discriminate against if we try to understand more about them; genetics will lead to a world where there is a sympathy for the underdog.
James Watson firmly believes that there is a strong genetic component to intelligence and personality. This doesn't instantly make him a racist. It makes him fall on one side of the nature/nurture debate that is still very much up in the air. This isn't just some random part of him, if he didn't strongly believe in the nature side then it's very probable that he would have never discovered the DNA that gave him his nobel prize.
Say it again, there is no scientific proof that diffrences between races are greater than diffrences between inviduals. In fact there is proof in the opposite.
Difference between individuals is greater than differences between races is not the same as saying there are no differences between races. There will always be outliers but there is no denying there are difference between races. There are even diseases that attack certain races more than others and medicine specifically targetted at those diseases. Heck, there are traits that are specific to a particular religion like Amish are more likely to be born with 12 fingers. Any isolated group will start to have divergent traits. Average skin color isn't the only difference between africans and caucasians. It would be shocking if average intelligence, average height, etc... was exactly the same. Whether the difference is significant is up for debate but there are definitely going to be differences in any group isolated and allowed to drift. I would argue that there are probably also significant differences between the different regions of africa and definitely differences between blacks living in africa and the ones that have lived in the USA for several hundred years. The conditions in africa and the conditions in the USA over the past several hundred years have been considerably different so it only makes sense that certain traits that were advantageous in one place and not that other were probably passed on more. The same could probably be said of the differences between europeans and americans. There were several selection biases that probably started it out skewed like religious persecution. It very well could even explain why americans on average are more religious that their european counterparts. Sure, there's cultural influences but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a slight genetic component too.
Both are true, from a certain point of view. Any time you would say, "there are not enough qualified applicants", there's a good chance that you could still find enough if you were willing to pay enough. But perhaps the "enough" that you'd have to pay is simply unreasonable. So in my opinion, that's really the question that we need to answer: Is the 'enough' that you'd have to pay in order to attract qualified applicants unreasonably high?
There is also the difference between the individual company and the economy as a whole. As an individual company (i.e. google), I could easily get enough employees if I paid double what facebook paid but if there are truly not enough employees then this will cause an upward spiral of scalping from each other until someone can't afford it anymore. This may or may not be a bad outcome.
And why would you make it a tax? If you can identify the rate that other, similarly qualified people are making, then you can just require that H1Bs get paid 10% more than that.
You answered your own question. It's next to impossible to define the prevailing wage. It's much simpler to say that we don't care what you pay them but you must pay 50% over whatever they are willing to work for. A combination of you must pay the "prevailing wage" and half again as much to the government might be a good solution. The point is to make it so that H1B1s are considerably more expensive than hiring locally. If you have an important position that you REALLY need someone and can't find someone local then you'll be willing to pay the premium. It doesn't make sense to give that extra to the H1B1 holder. Why should the H1B1 holder get paid more than local talent? It does make sense though to make H1B1 holders more expensive than local talent. The other advantage of having a 50% tax on H1B1 wages is that then instead of driving local wages down they drive local wages up as it's much cheaper to give a local a 25% pay increase than it is to pay the H1B1 tax. The "no quality candidates" problem can be more easily seen in the trucking industry. The complaint there is that there are not enough truck drivers. The truth is that they just don't pay enough. Almost anyone can drive a truck with only minimal training. If you doubled the salary of truck drivers then you could easily find plenty of candidates. You actually see this from time to time. As truck driver salaries start to increase then factory workers start quiting their jobs and becoming truck drivers.
Most (all?) ABP users use blocklists that are updated frequently, the plugin itself doesn't change that often. And you can naturally add your own (regex-based) rules. Sure, it might work, for a little while. But it is ultimately futile.
I don't think it's futile. A website knows if you view their ads. There are already websites that block your access if you turn off their ads. You're viewing their ads because you're viewing their content. Worst case scenerio is that the website makes ads indistinguishable from content then there is no way to block the ads. This can be accomplished by embedding the ad as an image in the website, writing the website in flash, product placement, etc... It's the same thing that will happen with blockbuster movies. If the studios can't make money by selling the movies then they will make money with tie-ins, product placement, etc... It will degrade the movie, sure, but they have to pay for it somehow. The same will happen with the web. If ads ultimately fail then websites will start doing product placement, charging for access, etc... New scientist went the pay route. Their free content is basically gone. I could see slashdot easily going the product placement route where every 5th article is an article that was paid to be put there.
I would think it would be trivial to circumvent adblock plus. It's a free download so as soon as they release a new version you could load your site and check to see if it is working and if not then adjust accordingly. It's an arm race that adblock can't possibly win. Spamassasin is much harder to fight because it is based on text and is based on the individual's personal heuristics but I would think circumventing adblock plus would be trivial.
IQ is just a measure of intelligence, and I agree not a perfect one. That's not the point. The point of the "lead crime hypothesis" is that if there is a shift downward in intelligence or a shift upward in violence, etc... then this shift although minor might have significant effects by pushing people below some threshold. Africa also has the problem of "brain drain" where alot of highly intelligent people escape and move elsewhere causing further stagnation. Just like "generational poverty" here in the USA there are multiple factors playing together but I don't think it's safe to completely ignore the population's intelligence when trying to figure out how to solve the problems in africa.
As far as IQ diffrences between races, there is no scientific proof. There are a few books such as IQ and the Wealth of Nations, but they are not scientific, as their methodology is horrible.
Of course there is no scientific proof. There is no scientific proof against it either because no one is allowed to study it so the only books that get written are by fringe people who are racist and trying to prove an agenda. Whether it's worth studying is obviously debatable but it should be allowed to be spoken about and studied without being criticized.
He basically said he thought Africa was unlikely to improve its condition because black people are stupider.
Although this is definitely on the extreme side of things and I don't necessarily agree with it there is some evidence for it. Google the "lead crime hypothesis". If say the average IQ of africans is 10 points lower than the average IQ of north americans, this might be enough to destabilize the region. 10 points doesn't sound like much but it means there are alot more really dumb people and alot less really smart people which might be enough to halt progress. Again, Watson shouldn't be shooting stuff like this out of his mouth without evidence but that doesn't mean his hypothesis is completely bogus.
2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies. you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
One reason there are not any good studies is because it's a taboo topic. No professional would risk their career testing something like this. It would be suicide. What's left is a bunch of fringe people on both sides that have bad methodologies. If you want good, rigourous studies then you need to allow the studies to take place. It's very hard to have a study take place when just vocalizing an opinion gets you crucified before the study even begins.
Drug use could motivate theft though...just sayin'
Yes, this is the same logic that causes companies to pull your credit report before offering you a job. Someone who has financial problems is probably more likely to steal but I still don't like it. It's the same problem that a felon has. You run into financial problems and now you can't find a job because you've had financial problems which causes the financial problems to be worse.
The answer to invasive species like Asian carp is to introduce seals into the Great Lakes. Of course, you will need some polar bears to keep the seals in check.
This might not be a completely bad solution if the seals preferred asian carp to salmon. You don't need polar bears to keep seals in check. I'm sure humans can do a decent job there.
Except your missing the fact that the opinions of a scientist are not equal to science.
Your treating science as a religeon, something men in lab coats say and you unquestioningly believe.
Science is a method. Its not believing unquestioningly what scientists say. Science has standards for ascertaining truths based on observation. Watson's claims are not backed by science, but by his own personal prejudices and political views. That alone is good reason to kick someone out of the scientific community.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it. I'm not for sure how substantial his claims were but there is no denying that there are differences between races. How many white people do you see in professional sports? And there is a reason we split men and women sports apart. An average male athlete would have no problem competing at the olympic level in many sports if they were allowed to compete on the female side. I've heard somewhere that an average 50 percentile male is stronger than 90%+ females. Even pointing this out though can get you persecuted and heaven forbid someone mentions that there are IQ difference between races. We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA. If he says that there is a DNA element to intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is the big deal, he's speaking the truth. Now how much is based on race/genetics is a nature/nurture debate that we're a long way from solving but the fact that there is a genetic basis to intelligence is undeniable however much people stick their heads in the sand and try to deny it.
This is absolutely not true. Any respectable broker will thoroughly vet their contractors.
This might be true but most of the people I know who freelance/consult don't use a broker. If you're good, it's pretty easy to pick up jobs on craigslist, vworker, walking around town, etc.. and the more jobs you pick up, the more your name gets around.
i got convicted of felony because i got caught with some personal MDMA pillis in 2001 at an electronic music concert.
that's a "serious crime"??
As someone who hires programmers, a felony like this I would completely ignore if everything else was in line. Honesty and theft are the big ones in IT not drug use or even assault. Other careers would be different but as a programmer you are entrusted with alot of stuff (like credit cards) so a felony that is theft related is probably going to be much harder to be overlooked. Drug use, I don't really care that much about. I've hired plenty of alcoholics and probably a few pot smokers but as long as it doesn't interfere with their job, why should I care?
I'm doubting these are a single LED but a bunch of LEDs stuck together. Even if it is a single LED, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about low watt LEDs that can run for days on a small battery.
Yeah, I agree. It would definitely have to be based on the number of weeks worked or some other calculation. It would be easy enough to come up with some rules and then maybe tweak them a bit to prevent abuse. One possible problem would be construction workers that only work 9 months out of the year so they could be worked half to death for those 9 but they get overtime and still work that way anyways. I think the main point is that they should allow employer/employee flexibility with compliance but crack down on obvious abuse. There *might* be a few occupations where it's difficult to track hours and you might have to use estimates or other ways to calculate it but for the most part just like other employee protection laws we should make an effort that they are effective and aren't circumvented. Currently overtime laws are constantly being abused or subverted to the point where overtime protection is almost non-existent for whole groups of people.
Yeah, those are also household incomes where a household on average has 1.7 wage earners. Overtime pay has always been individual and probably never will be based on household.
Slashdot Mirror
they can determine quickly and unilaterally which specific cases are firable offenses?
yes the cops are ignoring a law and a directive but they are doing so specifically because your stupid suggestion isn't possible and they know it.
The police chief and/or the mayor and/or the police department has the ability to decide what is a fireable offense and what is not.
Many places falling asleep on the job even once is a fireable offense and some even showing up to work late once is fireable.
If the fireable offense are listed and well documented then even most unions will leave them alone.
There are plenty of fireable offense for a police officer. The only reason this is being ignored is because it is not considered serious.
Putting out a memo that says "harassing a bystander with a camera or deleting something from a bystander's camera" is grounds
for immediate termination is all that it would take. Obviously asking them to leave or stand back where safety is concerned is
reasonable but taking their phone from them and accessing it should be on the same level as tasering them or punching them in
the face or making them remove their clothes. There is absolutely no reason a cop should take a phone from a bystander and
start deleting stuff. Taking a phone for evidence or for safety, maybe, but even for evidence, the street cop shouldn't be accessing
it, it should be accessed by a forensic team who is recording and documenting what they are doing.
They've already got the "block by posting editor" feature. All they have to do is make Bennett an editor.
Yeah, it's very bizarre. He's obviously associated with slashdot somehow. It would make sense to have him post
his own articles under his own name. His articles are also 10 times longer than other submissions. It would also make
sense to have them on their own page instead of cramming 10 paragraphs into what is suppose to be a summary.
Is there a chrome extension that blocks slashdot stories with "Bennett Haselton" yet?
They let us moderate, metamoderate, and even flag everyone else's comments. They should at
least give us the "flag this post as spam" option for posted articles. It might help them realize
which articles suck and which don't. I wonder if they don't just count the total number of comments
and as Bennett gets a bunch of comments (most of which are saying how much everyone hates
his articles), they think his articles are popular because they aren't reading the actual comments.
It's still going to be cheaper for a utility company to set up hundreds
of solar panels and sell the electricity to consumers than it will be for everyone to buy/maintain their own system.
Only if energy companies are willing to accept zero profit.
A utility company could easily still make a profit using the same technology as the consumer.
If they save only 10% via economy of scale and then tack on another 10% for the customer
convenience of not having to maintain their own system, that is 20% right there. My guess is
that economy of scale is closer to 50% as the utility company can use technologies that are
not practical at the home level, cut corners that are not safe at the home level, optimize in
ways that are not practical at the home level as well as buy in bulk and create custom specs.
A power plant near my house did a $20 million dollar upgrade which was suppose to increase
yield by 5%. They said that if it worked then they would break even after 3 months.
Those type of optimizations are just not practical on the individual level.
Well, they're kind of in a losing position - raise rates to pay for losses, and people just move to renewables sooner.
It seems pretty clear that generating electricity from free sunlight is going to be cheaper than mining and transporting fossil fuels to a complex facility to burn them.
Even IF green energy becomes cheaper, this doesn't mean distributed power is going away anytime soon,
it just means that large power companies will have to move to green energy sooner.
Economy of scale still applies to solar energy. It's still going to be cheaper for a utility company to set up hundreds
of solar panels and sell the electricity to consumers than it will be for everyone to buy/maintain their own system.
There is a potential saving by being able to eliminate distribution costs so it's possible that local generation could
bet out economy of scale if distribution costs are a significant part. So the question really becomes
what percentage of your electricity price is generation and what percentage is distribution?
The other way that local generation wins is if people start installing solar for reasons other that cost of generation.
at $10/month you start overpaying for office in only 2 years. If you're upgrading your computer every 2 years
or suspend it for long lengths of time so you never reach 25 months before you upgrade then this might make
sense but for most people who upgrade their computer every 3-5 years or longer then renting is definitely more
expensive. We ran office 97 for probably about 10 years before switching everyone to openoffice. Our copy of
office97 actually outlasted multiple PCs. We would just transfer it over to the new PC.
The rest of your post is filled with bold speculation, and causual observation, and "what ifs".
I'm not saying you're not entitled to your views, I'm just saying its not science.
That's kindof the point of this article. So James Watson states an opinion based on
his casual observation and bold speculations and gets railroaded for it.
Here is an interesting article about it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Skip down to the "known facts section":
1) No one has a firm handle...
2) No one has a firm idea...
3) No one has proof...
4) As for "race", it's a sticky muck...
5) Like "intelligence", the term "race" is ill-defined...
Note that this is an article that comes out AGAINST James Watson but clearly admits
that noone knows. So a man was crucified for stating an opinion in a largely gray area.
Here is another quote from James Watson:
If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true.
and another:
We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.
and another:
Our goal should be to understand our differences.
and another:
Ultimately, we'll help the people we discriminate against if we try to understand more about them; genetics will lead to a world where there is a sympathy for the underdog.
James Watson firmly believes that there is a strong genetic component to intelligence and personality.
This doesn't instantly make him a racist. It makes him fall on one side of the nature/nurture debate
that is still very much up in the air. This isn't just some random part of him, if he didn't strongly believe
in the nature side then it's very probable that he would have never discovered the DNA that gave him
his nobel prize.
Say it again, there is no scientific proof that diffrences between races are greater than diffrences between inviduals. In fact there is proof in the opposite.
Difference between individuals is greater than differences between races
is not the same as saying there are no differences between races.
There will always be outliers but there is no denying there are difference
between races. There are even diseases that attack certain races more
than others and medicine specifically targetted at those diseases.
Heck, there are traits that are specific to a particular religion like
Amish are more likely to be born with 12 fingers. Any isolated group
will start to have divergent traits. Average skin color isn't the only
difference between africans and caucasians. It would be shocking if
average intelligence, average height, etc... was exactly the same.
Whether the difference is significant is up for debate but there are
definitely going to be differences in any group isolated and allowed to
drift. I would argue that there are probably also significant differences
between the different regions of africa and definitely differences
between blacks living in africa and the ones that have lived in the
USA for several hundred years. The conditions in africa and the conditions in
the USA over the past several hundred years have been considerably
different so it only makes sense that certain traits that were advantageous
in one place and not that other were probably passed on more.
The same could probably be said of the differences between europeans
and americans. There were several selection biases that probably started
it out skewed like religious persecution. It very well could even explain
why americans on average are more religious that their european counterparts.
Sure, there's cultural influences but I wouldn't be surprised if there was
a slight genetic component too.
Except that they basically would deem that American "unqualified", thus not a real contender.
If you had to pay the h1b1 applicant 4 times the american, what would be the incentive to deem the american unqualified?
Both are true, from a certain point of view. Any time you would say, "there are not enough qualified applicants", there's a good chance that you could still find enough if you were willing to pay enough. But perhaps the "enough" that you'd have to pay is simply unreasonable. So in my opinion, that's really the question that we need to answer: Is the 'enough' that you'd have to pay in order to attract qualified applicants unreasonably high?
There is also the difference between the individual company and the economy as a whole.
As an individual company (i.e. google), I could easily get enough employees if I paid double what
facebook paid but if there are truly not enough employees then this will cause an upward spiral of
scalping from each other until someone can't afford it anymore. This may or may not be a bad
outcome.
The problem is defining the prevailing wage.
And why would you make it a tax? If you can identify the rate that other, similarly qualified people are making, then you can just require that H1Bs get paid 10% more than that.
You answered your own question. It's next to impossible to define the prevailing wage. It's much simpler
to say that we don't care what you pay them but you must pay 50% over whatever they are willing to work for.
A combination of you must pay the "prevailing wage" and half again as much to the government might be a
good solution. The point is to make it so that H1B1s are considerably more expensive than hiring locally.
If you have an important position that you REALLY need someone and can't find someone local then you'll
be willing to pay the premium. It doesn't make sense to give that extra to the H1B1 holder. Why should the
H1B1 holder get paid more than local talent? It does make sense though to make H1B1 holders more
expensive than local talent. The other advantage of having a 50% tax on H1B1 wages is that then instead
of driving local wages down they drive local wages up as it's much cheaper to give a local a 25% pay increase
than it is to pay the H1B1 tax.
The "no quality candidates" problem can be more easily seen in the trucking industry. The complaint there
is that there are not enough truck drivers. The truth is that they just don't pay enough. Almost anyone can
drive a truck with only minimal training. If you doubled the salary of truck drivers then you could easily find
plenty of candidates. You actually see this from time to time. As truck driver salaries start to increase then
factory workers start quiting their jobs and becoming truck drivers.
Most (all?) ABP users use blocklists that are updated frequently, the plugin itself doesn't change that often. And you can naturally add your own (regex-based) rules. Sure, it might work, for a little while. But it is ultimately futile.
I don't think it's futile. A website knows if you view their ads. There are already websites that block your access if you
turn off their ads. You're viewing their ads because you're viewing their content. Worst case scenerio is that the website
makes ads indistinguishable from content then there is no way to block the ads. This can be accomplished by embedding
the ad as an image in the website, writing the website in flash, product placement, etc... It's the same thing that will
happen with blockbuster movies. If the studios can't make money by selling the movies then they will make money with
tie-ins, product placement, etc... It will degrade the movie, sure, but they have to pay for it somehow.
The same will happen with the web. If ads ultimately fail then websites will start doing product placement, charging for
access, etc... New scientist went the pay route. Their free content is basically gone. I could see slashdot easily going
the product placement route where every 5th article is an article that was paid to be put there.
I would think it would be trivial to circumvent adblock plus. It's a free download so as soon as they
release a new version you could load your site and check to see if it is working and if not then
adjust accordingly. It's an arm race that adblock can't possibly win. Spamassasin is much harder
to fight because it is based on text and is based on the individual's personal heuristics but I would
think circumventing adblock plus would be trivial.
IQ is just a measure of intelligence, and I agree not a perfect one.
That's not the point. The point of the "lead crime hypothesis" is that
if there is a shift downward in intelligence or a shift upward in violence, etc...
then this shift although minor might have significant effects by pushing
people below some threshold. Africa also has the problem of "brain drain"
where alot of highly intelligent people escape and move elsewhere causing
further stagnation. Just like "generational poverty" here in the USA there
are multiple factors playing together but I don't think it's safe to completely
ignore the population's intelligence when trying to figure out how to solve the
problems in africa.
As far as IQ diffrences between races, there is no scientific proof. There are a few books such as IQ and the Wealth of Nations, but they are not scientific, as their methodology is horrible.
Of course there is no scientific proof. There is no scientific proof against it either because no
one is allowed to study it so the only books that get written are by fringe people who are racist
and trying to prove an agenda. Whether it's worth studying is obviously debatable but it should
be allowed to be spoken about and studied without being criticized.
He basically said he thought Africa was unlikely to improve its condition because black people are stupider.
Although this is definitely on the extreme side of things and I don't necessarily agree with it there
is some evidence for it. Google the "lead crime hypothesis". If say the average IQ of africans
is 10 points lower than the average IQ of north americans, this might be enough to destabilize the
region. 10 points doesn't sound like much but it means there are alot more really dumb people and
alot less really smart people which might be enough to halt progress.
Again, Watson shouldn't be shooting stuff like this out of his mouth without evidence but that doesn't
mean his hypothesis is completely bogus.
2. There are no good scientific studies on race and IQ that factor out things like education and poverty, and conclusively prove discrepencies.
you don't have to a horse in this race just to see bad methodology.
One reason there are not any good studies is because it's a taboo topic.
No professional would risk their career testing something like this. It would be suicide.
What's left is a bunch of fringe people on both sides that have bad methodologies.
If you want good, rigourous studies then you need to allow the studies to take place.
It's very hard to have a study take place when just vocalizing an opinion gets you
crucified before the study even begins.
Drug use could motivate theft though...just sayin'
Yes, this is the same logic that causes companies to pull your credit report before offering you a job.
Someone who has financial problems is probably more likely to steal but I still don't like it.
It's the same problem that a felon has. You run into financial problems and now you can't find a job
because you've had financial problems which causes the financial problems to be worse.
The answer to invasive species like Asian carp is to introduce seals into the Great Lakes. Of course, you will need some polar bears to keep the seals in check.
This might not be a completely bad solution if the seals preferred asian carp to salmon.
You don't need polar bears to keep seals in check. I'm sure humans can do a decent job there.
Except your missing the fact that the opinions of a scientist are not equal to science.
Your treating science as a religeon, something men in lab coats say and you unquestioningly believe.
Science is a method. Its not believing unquestioningly what scientists say. Science has standards for ascertaining truths based on observation. Watson's claims are not backed by science, but by his own personal prejudices and political views. That alone is good reason to kick someone out of the scientific community.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
I'm not for sure how substantial his claims were but there is no denying that there are differences between races.
How many white people do you see in professional sports? And there is a reason we split men and women
sports apart. An average male athlete would have no problem competing at the olympic level in many sports
if they were allowed to compete on the female side. I've heard somewhere that an average 50 percentile male is
stronger than 90%+ females. Even pointing this out though can get you persecuted and heaven forbid someone
mentions that there are IQ difference between races.
We're talking about a very smart guy that helped discover DNA. If he says that there is a DNA element to
intelligence (and everyone knows there is) and that it varies by race (again, this is a no brainer) then what is
the big deal, he's speaking the truth. Now how much is based on race/genetics is a nature/nurture debate
that we're a long way from solving but the fact that there is a genetic basis to intelligence is undeniable however
much people stick their heads in the sand and try to deny it.
This is absolutely not true. Any respectable broker will thoroughly vet their contractors.
This might be true but most of the people I know who freelance/consult don't use a broker.
If you're good, it's pretty easy to pick up jobs on craigslist, vworker, walking around town, etc..
and the more jobs you pick up, the more your name gets around.
Being a felon means he committed a serious crime.
really???
i got convicted of felony because i got caught with some personal MDMA pillis in 2001 at an electronic music concert.
that's a "serious crime"??
As someone who hires programmers, a felony like this I would completely ignore if everything else was in line.
Honesty and theft are the big ones in IT not drug use or even assault. Other careers would be different but
as a programmer you are entrusted with alot of stuff (like credit cards) so a felony that is theft related is
probably going to be much harder to be overlooked. Drug use, I don't really care that much about. I've hired
plenty of alcoholics and probably a few pot smokers but as long as it doesn't interfere with their job, why
should I care?
I'm doubting these are a single LED but a bunch of LEDs stuck together.
Even if it is a single LED, that's not what we're talking about. We're
talking about low watt LEDs that can run for days on a small battery.
Yeah, I agree. It would definitely have to be based on the number of weeks worked or some
other calculation. It would be easy enough to come up with some rules and then maybe
tweak them a bit to prevent abuse. One possible problem would be construction workers
that only work 9 months out of the year so they could be worked half to death for those 9
but they get overtime and still work that way anyways.
I think the main point is that they should allow employer/employee flexibility with compliance
but crack down on obvious abuse. There *might* be a few occupations where it's difficult to
track hours and you might have to use estimates or other ways to calculate it but for the most
part just like other employee protection laws we should make an effort that they are effective
and aren't circumvented. Currently overtime laws are constantly being abused or subverted
to the point where overtime protection is almost non-existent for whole groups of people.
Yeah, those are also household incomes where a household on average has 1.7 wage earners.
Overtime pay has always been individual and probably never will be based on household.