I've heard of this as well. I think there was a case in Arizona, too, but the only one I could find online was the case of Robert Jordan, who attempted to sue after he barred from the police force for scoring too high on an intelligence test. At least in America, it's not just a rumor; the police *do* actively discriminate based on intelligence and a federal judge has ruled that that's perfectly okay.
This was my experience as well. I spent lots of time in humanities classes having to learn about different creation myths, etc. My exposure to evolution was limited to one *after school* session, which was prefaced by my teacher saying that evolution was "just a theory" and that people could believe whatever they wanted. I took AP (Advanced Placement) Biology. If that was they told the kids in the AP class, who knows if evolution even got more than a cursory mention in the regular class. I wonder what makes the school board think that it's a good idea for students to have a firm grip of life originating from the primordial, watery abyss of the Nu (as in the ancient Egyptian creation story), but basically no idea about the fundamental principal upon which basically all modern biology is based.
are they just criticizing something they don't understand
Okay, time to end the fake snobbery. Video games have been around for a long, long time. My dad (who will be 60 soon) owned an Atari 2600 before I or any of my siblings were born (ie he got it of his own free will). The original NES came out in the US almost 25 years ago, giving us games like the Final Fantasy series, which people spent hours and hours playing. At least *some* of the people in charge *know* what video games are, how important they are to kids and what role they play in society. However, the point of summer camp (at least as I remember it) was to give you something different. Most kids don't have the opportunity to go hiking in the woods, shoot rifles, ride horses, sail/row boats, etc at home. The point is to have a *real* adventure, the kind of experience that will stay with you for a lifetime. Spending three hours a day playing video games is a complete waste of time at summer camp as you can do the exact same thing at home. I'm sure I bitched about the rules when I was a kid (who doesn't), but I'm thankful that I was forced to "unplug" and try new things. Thanks to summer camp, I got to learn how to use woodworking tools, how to sail catamaran, how to shoot a muzzle loader and how to *properly* use a compass among other things. I'm sure at the time I would have thought it was cool if I got to play video games as well, but in retrospect I'm really glad I was "forced" to go outside and play.
Playing Wii is not the same as learning to code at computer camp or doing cool problems at math camp. Video games at summer camp are the same as video games at home. This kind of clueless convolution rings about as hollow as the "cool adults" who talk about how "tech savvy" modern kids are because they are always texting.
We already have the largest nuclear power plant in the US. With all of the urban sprawl in Az, I think it's going to become increasingly difficult to find a good location for a plant.
You make some very good points. I do realize that per capita takes into account people who don't work and was merely trying to use it as a crude means of figuring out about how much money would be a decent amount for a person to live on, given that the original poster was wondering what $0.65 can buy you in China. It's of course very important that workers have the ability to make things better for themselves through collective bargaining, etc so that conditions improve. I've just become rather cautious in recent years about sweatshop allegations because in many cases the alternatives (eg subsistence agriculture, prostitution, etc) are even worse and very well-meaning people end up campaigning for something with dubious benefits at best.
I am, however, puzzled by the "fuck you" you decided to tack on. I was just doing some rough estimating given my limited knowledge and solicited people with a firmer grasp of economics to share their opinions. I conceded that the working conditions were really bad and I don't appreciate you taking me completely out of context on this matter. I was merely attempting to give context to the hourly wage.
I'm not an economist, but according to Wolfram Alpha the GDP per capita for China is 3290 USD. Figuring 15 hours a day * $.065 per hour* 6 days a week * 52 weeks in a year = $3042 a year, so about 92% of the GDP per capita. Like any big country, I'm sure the cost of living varies quite a bit from region to region (for example a Big Mac in China costs about $1.83, meaning it takes about 3 hours to have enough to buy one) and working 15 hours a day definitely sucks, but at least on the surface the pay doesn't seem that bad. Anyone with more knowledge of economics have an opinion on the matter?
At what point does child pornography become a thought crime?
If I recall correctly, it's never a thought crime. Child pornography (that is, pictures of actual children engaging in sexual acts) is illegal not because the content is objectionable, but rather because its very existence requires a crime to be committed. New York v. Feber concluded that the distribution of visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children and that since the government has a compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, it is therefore okay to ban child pornography without having to first show that it's obscene. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition referenced this case when they decided that parts of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 were unconstitutional because they attempted to ban simulated child pornography (eg drawings, etc) because the creation of such images do not harm children. In effect, it's like the difference between a snuff film and a horror movie. You can make a horror movie as gruesome as you like, but you can't depict actual death in it.
Based on these grounds, I think it's shameful for Larry Sanger to be slinging mud like this. As far as I can tell, the images in question do not require the sexual exploitation of children and are therefore not child pornography. But from what I've seen, accusing anyone of supporting child pornography online is an incredibly effective way to get people to turn off their brains and hate someone without a second thought.
Yes, the German Grundgesetz guarantees free speech under section 1.5 which states:
Everyone has the right freely to express and to disseminate his opinion by speech, writing and pictures and freely to inform himself from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by radio and motion pictures are guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
The only exception to this is materials considered "harmful" to youth, although from what I can tell that's largely limited to either things with large amounts of graphic violence, denying/"revising" the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in inappropriate manners. In the case of Scientology, not only is the religion banned, but some government organizations like the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution have gone as far as creating pamphlets warning people about the dangers of Scientology (PDF in German)
In the paper he cites Ethiopia's national IQ of 63, the world's lowest, and the fact that men and women are only expected to live until their mid-40s as an example of his finding that intelligence is the main determinant of someone's health.
Having examined the effects of economic development and income inequality on health, he was 'surprised' to find that IQ had a much more important impact, he said. 'Poverty, lack of sanitation, clean water, education and healthcare do not increase health and longevity, and nor does economic development.'
He also seems to be a fan of nuclear war?
Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.
Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who’s running.
-Satoshi Kanazawa (source)
This guy seems to make a habit out of making crazy claims to get attention. Move along, nothing to see here.
To be fair, the "Mike & Ike" claim was made by the kid. And he might be lying.
But the entire "what exactly was the kid doing" tangent is really just an attempt to justify the school's bad behavior.
Exactly. Even if he was taking pills, there's no way of ascertaining what was in said pills by just looking at a photo, but seeing as how they strip search 13 year-old girls nowadays for having advil, I'm afraid that this is seeming more and more like par for the course. Even if the pills were illegal, the school had no business monitoring him like that.
As for people who are in prison, they are there because they have committed crimes.
Not all crimes need to be punished with jail time. Locking people up makes you popular with some folks and will get you votes, but does it really make sense to lock up a non-violent drug offender rather than help him or her out with a treatment program that will allow them to get their life back on track and become a productive member of society again? I never said anything about letting violent wackos from drug gangs out early, but rather expressed dismay at the growing prison complex in Arizona.
...starting the debate with an ad hominem attack upon a civil servant who has been reelected to his position multiple times.
I'm not sure what your experience with the situation in Maricopa County is, but Sheriff Joe and County Attorney Andrew Thomas are polarizing figures. The people who like them, really like them. The people who don't, really don't. Maricopa County has more pending death penalty cases than Harris County, Texas which has sent more people to the execution chamber than any other county in America. Setting all ethical issues aside, these kinds of tactics cost lots and lots of money and haven't proven themselves to be any more effective in terms of stopping recidivism. There comes a time when you have to wonder why the people in charge are asking for so much power and using so much force.
According to Wikipedia, an ad hominem attack "is an argument which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise." My calling Arpaio a wack job was based upon the methods he employs, including dying the prison underwear pink, driving an armored vehicle around poor neighborhoods to intimidate people, and buying a.50-cal machine gun shortly after 9/11 with the claim that he would use it to shoot down aircraft that looked suspicious. Those are all wacky and those are all fair game. People need to wake up and realize that such things are nothing more than hollow publicity stunts being paid for by the taxpayer.
"When I went to high school in the '70s I was never taught grammar in English. I learned grammar from Latin classes."
You can blame the parents all you want, but the fact is simply that grammar isn't a part of the curriculum. I learned essentially nothing about English grammar from school, save from a few lessons that some of my better teachers did *in spite* of the curriculum. It's gotten to the point where it has become so embarrassing that they'd rather not confront the problem at all. No one learns English grammar in grade school and by the time students reach high school, the administrators freak out and decide to make everyone take two semesters of "foreign language." The students almost never learn to speak the language worth a damn, but that's okay because the American public doesn't care about foreign language education and the administrators can breathe a sigh of relief since the students now know what a verb is.
Of course you don't mean "free" as in beer. Most of your tuition is paid for by the good taxpayers of Germany who presumably view a well-educated citizenry as an overall win relative to the cost involved.
I do mean "free" as in beer. Free beer is given out to make a party better, however said beer needs to either be purchased or produced, which costs money, man-power, etc. Free education is given out to make society better, although teachers need to be paid, books need to be bought, etc. I agree, though, that it's about priority. I went to a public university (University of Arizona) in the US. With a tuition of about $3,500 per semester for in-state students (roughly 5 times the €500 fee here), it was one of the cheapest universities you could find in the state. However, when the money got tight, the state opted to slash the education budget but continued to happily fund the fourth largest jail system in the world, something that, IMO, makes no sense. People in jail must be fed, clothed, sheltered etc by the State. People in college require assistance for a time, but eventually come out more educated and more capable, which would seem to be more helpful to the economy than funding a wack job sheriff who likes to drive a tank around poor neighborhoods to intimidate people.
I feel like the general idea of university is cheaper here as well. People don't shell out hundreds of Euros per semester on books they don't want or need but nonetheless are required to buy because the prof or department has a sweetheart deal with a publisher. People live in modest student housing that costs around €190 per month with utilities and internet included rather than renting out houses and filling them with kegerators and big screen TVs. I see advantages and disadvantages to both systems, but I really think the US could learn a thing or two about saving money from paying attention to how things are here.
Disclaimer: I am German. While we have our own share of problems, I like living here but the one year I lived in the US I liked that, too.
Just one minor inaccuracy: the cost for university depend on where you live, and can range from 0-500 Eur + fees per semester. (I pay around 600)
Compared to the US, German universities are essentially free. I'm an American who has been in Germany for about a year at this point and whenever I explain that it's considered not only acceptable, but actually *normal* for a person to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a university education, people are uniformly shocked. The community college (*not* a university, mind you, you can only get a two-year degree there) near where I grew up charges $71 per credit hour for people who have residency. $71 * 12 Credit Hours (generally the fewest number of hours one can take to be considered a full-time student) = $852 or about €600 for the cheapest post-secondary education around. I understand that it's always nicer to have something for free, but I seriously have trouble sympathizing with the people who stage big demonstrations over paying €500 for a semester at a world-class university.
It's one of the many sexist pathologies of English that the male third person pronoun is used to indicate a generic third person. Using a female third person pronoun in a place where the context is obviously gender neutral highlights that pathology without sacrificing any meaning.
That it pisses you off indicates only that the pathology exists. This technique has existed for more than a decade in the humanities, and once you get used to it, it's as unnoticeable as 'he/him'--in other words, once that pathology has been exposed and turned off.
This is a far better way to remove a bit of useless baggage from the language than haranguing people to be PC or accusing them of being sexist. It just moves on to a better usage, and if that bothers you, it's only because you're trying to hang on to the old sexist trope.
It would be far better to create and use a new and actually gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. I like that better than pretending that the assumption of a feminine subject is somehow far less sexist than the assumption of a masculine subject. The latter is a rather puerile form of hypocrisy because reverse sexism is still sexism, a fact that must be acknowledged if you view the eradication of sexism as a worthy goal. That hypocrisy, the willful blindness to it, and the exhibition of both while telling others what they should do is the only baggage I see here.
It does exist and it's called the "generic they." I realize it pisses off quite a few of the grammar purists, but everyone from Shakespeare to Jane Austin to Mark Twain to George Bernard Shaw has used it. Consider the sentence "Nobody in their right mind would do a thing like that." Going purely by how it sounds to me, "Nobody in his right mind would do a thing like that" sounds outdated (like it's from a movie from the 50s) and "Nobody in her right mind would do a thing like that." sits about as well with my ears as spelling "women" as "womyn" does with my eyes. I think part of the problem with the sentence in question ("the key would be that there is a lot of what a developer needs and very little of what she doesn't need") is that saying such a thing using a singular form is awkward in and of itself. This book is written for all Python developers, so it sounds much more natural to me to say "the key would be that there is a lot of what developers need and very little of what they don't need." The bottom line is that using either pronoun generically sounds unnatural to me unless we're talking about a situation where only one gender can be involved (eg pregnancy for women, circumcision for men).
PS If you think English has sexist pathologies, you won't want to learn Spanish ("ellas" is plural feminine, "ellos is plural masculine, but for some reason a group of 200 women with one guy is still "ellos") or German (the generic pronoun is "man," although they're starting to use "frau" (women) in situations that only apply to women like pregnancy).
From what I've heard, language identification is a fairly well-understood problem in computational linguistics. The language a given text is written in can generally be identified using a statistical approach using an n-gram method (often a trigram). Like the Wikipedia article states, there are problems given the fact that a lot of stuff on the web can have several languages on one page, but at least the bot should be able to fairly easily figure out if a page is written only in English. There are even javascript language identifiers, so I think figure out what language something is written in is the least of their worries.
When I was a small child, my father (who rode his bike every day to work) was struck by a flatbed truck because the driver wasn't paying attention to traffic. He was thrown off of his bike and hurled head first into a tree. Although he broke his arm very badly and still has trouble with it sometimes to this day, he didn't die or receive permanent brain damage because he was wearing a helmet. Wearing a helmet, especially in an environment like the American Southwest (I'm from Arizona) where generally not that many people bike and roads are designed for driving giant SUVs, isn't necessarily about protecting yourself from getting a bump on the head because you were careless but rather reducing the impulse of an impact of an auto accident so that you're not killed by it. Cars have crumple zones, bikes don't, and dead children can't learn from their mistakes.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard of this as well. I think there was a case in Arizona, too, but the only one I could find online was the case of Robert Jordan, who attempted to sue after he barred from the police force for scoring too high on an intelligence test. At least in America, it's not just a rumor; the police *do* actively discriminate based on intelligence and a federal judge has ruled that that's perfectly okay.
I'm guessing he's going to use the same method Superman uses to stay awake and vigilant all that time.
This was my experience as well. I spent lots of time in humanities classes having to learn about different creation myths, etc. My exposure to evolution was limited to one *after school* session, which was prefaced by my teacher saying that evolution was "just a theory" and that people could believe whatever they wanted. I took AP (Advanced Placement) Biology. If that was they told the kids in the AP class, who knows if evolution even got more than a cursory mention in the regular class. I wonder what makes the school board think that it's a good idea for students to have a firm grip of life originating from the primordial, watery abyss of the Nu (as in the ancient Egyptian creation story), but basically no idea about the fundamental principal upon which basically all modern biology is based.
A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention!
Okay, time to end the fake snobbery. Video games have been around for a long, long time. My dad (who will be 60 soon) owned an Atari 2600 before I or any of my siblings were born (ie he got it of his own free will). The original NES came out in the US almost 25 years ago, giving us games like the Final Fantasy series, which people spent hours and hours playing. At least *some* of the people in charge *know* what video games are, how important they are to kids and what role they play in society. However, the point of summer camp (at least as I remember it) was to give you something different. Most kids don't have the opportunity to go hiking in the woods, shoot rifles, ride horses, sail/row boats, etc at home. The point is to have a *real* adventure, the kind of experience that will stay with you for a lifetime. Spending three hours a day playing video games is a complete waste of time at summer camp as you can do the exact same thing at home. I'm sure I bitched about the rules when I was a kid (who doesn't), but I'm thankful that I was forced to "unplug" and try new things. Thanks to summer camp, I got to learn how to use woodworking tools, how to sail catamaran, how to shoot a muzzle loader and how to *properly* use a compass among other things. I'm sure at the time I would have thought it was cool if I got to play video games as well, but in retrospect I'm really glad I was "forced" to go outside and play.
Playing Wii is not the same as learning to code at computer camp or doing cool problems at math camp. Video games at summer camp are the same as video games at home. This kind of clueless convolution rings about as hollow as the "cool adults" who talk about how "tech savvy" modern kids are because they are always texting.
We already have the largest nuclear power plant in the US. With all of the urban sprawl in Az, I think it's going to become increasingly difficult to find a good location for a plant.
You make some very good points. I do realize that per capita takes into account people who don't work and was merely trying to use it as a crude means of figuring out about how much money would be a decent amount for a person to live on, given that the original poster was wondering what $0.65 can buy you in China. It's of course very important that workers have the ability to make things better for themselves through collective bargaining, etc so that conditions improve. I've just become rather cautious in recent years about sweatshop allegations because in many cases the alternatives (eg subsistence agriculture, prostitution, etc) are even worse and very well-meaning people end up campaigning for something with dubious benefits at best.
I am, however, puzzled by the "fuck you" you decided to tack on. I was just doing some rough estimating given my limited knowledge and solicited people with a firmer grasp of economics to share their opinions. I conceded that the working conditions were really bad and I don't appreciate you taking me completely out of context on this matter. I was merely attempting to give context to the hourly wage.
I'm not an economist, but according to Wolfram Alpha the GDP per capita for China is 3290 USD. Figuring 15 hours a day * $.065 per hour* 6 days a week * 52 weeks in a year = $3042 a year, so about 92% of the GDP per capita. Like any big country, I'm sure the cost of living varies quite a bit from region to region (for example a Big Mac in China costs about $1.83, meaning it takes about 3 hours to have enough to buy one) and working 15 hours a day definitely sucks, but at least on the surface the pay doesn't seem that bad. Anyone with more knowledge of economics have an opinion on the matter?
.....which is what I said, but somehow my post got modded troll and yours was modded +5 insightful.
If I recall correctly, it's never a thought crime. Child pornography (that is, pictures of actual children engaging in sexual acts) is illegal not because the content is objectionable, but rather because its very existence requires a crime to be committed. New York v. Feber concluded that the distribution of visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children and that since the government has a compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, it is therefore okay to ban child pornography without having to first show that it's obscene. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition referenced this case when they decided that parts of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 were unconstitutional because they attempted to ban simulated child pornography (eg drawings, etc) because the creation of such images do not harm children. In effect, it's like the difference between a snuff film and a horror movie. You can make a horror movie as gruesome as you like, but you can't depict actual death in it.
Based on these grounds, I think it's shameful for Larry Sanger to be slinging mud like this. As far as I can tell, the images in question do not require the sexual exploitation of children and are therefore not child pornography. But from what I've seen, accusing anyone of supporting child pornography online is an incredibly effective way to get people to turn off their brains and hate someone without a second thought.
Quick, someone find those magical MIT students who proved the mythical man month wrong!
Yes, the German Grundgesetz guarantees free speech under section 1.5 which states:
The only exception to this is materials considered "harmful" to youth, although from what I can tell that's largely limited to either things with large amounts of graphic violence, denying/"revising" the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in inappropriate manners. In the case of Scientology, not only is the religion banned, but some government organizations like the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution have gone as far as creating pamphlets warning people about the dangers of Scientology (PDF in German)
Indeed, I was to understand that there'd be pie and punch.
He also seems to be a fan of nuclear war?
-Satoshi Kanazawa (source) This guy seems to make a habit out of making crazy claims to get attention. Move along, nothing to see here.
To be fair, the "Mike & Ike" claim was made by the kid. And he might be lying.
But the entire "what exactly was the kid doing" tangent is really just an attempt to justify the school's bad behavior.
Exactly. Even if he was taking pills, there's no way of ascertaining what was in said pills by just looking at a photo, but seeing as how they strip search 13 year-old girls nowadays for having advil, I'm afraid that this is seeming more and more like par for the course. Even if the pills were illegal, the school had no business monitoring him like that.
I could see how such a treasure hunt could backfire horribly....
Ha ha ha, that is crazy! Go Wildcats! :-)
PS I am aware of the irony implicit in my using an emoticon :p
If we're talking about money spent on education, then it most certainly does as would any other thing the government spends a lot of money on. The US has only five percent of the world's population, but roughly 25% of the world's prisoner's. I think that raises some serious questions. Are we Americans *really* that much more dangerous and violent than the other people on this planet?
Not all crimes need to be punished with jail time. Locking people up makes you popular with some folks and will get you votes, but does it really make sense to lock up a non-violent drug offender rather than help him or her out with a treatment program that will allow them to get their life back on track and become a productive member of society again? I never said anything about letting violent wackos from drug gangs out early, but rather expressed dismay at the growing prison complex in Arizona.
I'm not sure what your experience with the situation in Maricopa County is, but Sheriff Joe and County Attorney Andrew Thomas are polarizing figures. The people who like them, really like them. The people who don't, really don't. Maricopa County has more pending death penalty cases than Harris County, Texas which has sent more people to the execution chamber than any other county in America. Setting all ethical issues aside, these kinds of tactics cost lots and lots of money and haven't proven themselves to be any more effective in terms of stopping recidivism. There comes a time when you have to wonder why the people in charge are asking for so much power and using so much force.
According to Wikipedia, an ad hominem attack "is an argument which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise." My calling Arpaio a wack job was based upon the methods he employs, including dying the prison underwear pink, driving an armored vehicle around poor neighborhoods to intimidate people, and buying a .50-cal machine gun shortly after 9/11 with the claim that he would use it to shoot down aircraft that looked suspicious. Those are all wacky and those are all fair game. People need to wake up and realize that such things are nothing more than hollow publicity stunts being paid for by the taxpayer.
You can blame the parents all you want, but the fact is simply that grammar isn't a part of the curriculum. I learned essentially nothing about English grammar from school, save from a few lessons that some of my better teachers did *in spite* of the curriculum. It's gotten to the point where it has become so embarrassing that they'd rather not confront the problem at all. No one learns English grammar in grade school and by the time students reach high school, the administrators freak out and decide to make everyone take two semesters of "foreign language." The students almost never learn to speak the language worth a damn, but that's okay because the American public doesn't care about foreign language education and the administrators can breathe a sigh of relief since the students now know what a verb is.
Of course you don't mean "free" as in beer. Most of your tuition is paid for by the good taxpayers of Germany who presumably view a well-educated citizenry as an overall win relative to the cost involved.
I do mean "free" as in beer. Free beer is given out to make a party better, however said beer needs to either be purchased or produced, which costs money, man-power, etc. Free education is given out to make society better, although teachers need to be paid, books need to be bought, etc. I agree, though, that it's about priority. I went to a public university (University of Arizona) in the US. With a tuition of about $3,500 per semester for in-state students (roughly 5 times the €500 fee here), it was one of the cheapest universities you could find in the state. However, when the money got tight, the state opted to slash the education budget but continued to happily fund the fourth largest jail system in the world, something that, IMO, makes no sense. People in jail must be fed, clothed, sheltered etc by the State. People in college require assistance for a time, but eventually come out more educated and more capable, which would seem to be more helpful to the economy than funding a wack job sheriff who likes to drive a tank around poor neighborhoods to intimidate people.
I feel like the general idea of university is cheaper here as well. People don't shell out hundreds of Euros per semester on books they don't want or need but nonetheless are required to buy because the prof or department has a sweetheart deal with a publisher. People live in modest student housing that costs around €190 per month with utilities and internet included rather than renting out houses and filling them with kegerators and big screen TVs. I see advantages and disadvantages to both systems, but I really think the US could learn a thing or two about saving money from paying attention to how things are here.
Disclaimer: I am German. While we have our own share of problems, I like living here but the one year I lived in the US I liked that, too.
Just one minor inaccuracy: the cost for university depend on where you live, and can range from 0-500 Eur + fees per semester. (I pay around 600)
Compared to the US, German universities are essentially free. I'm an American who has been in Germany for about a year at this point and whenever I explain that it's considered not only acceptable, but actually *normal* for a person to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a university education, people are uniformly shocked. The community college (*not* a university, mind you, you can only get a two-year degree there) near where I grew up charges $71 per credit hour for people who have residency. $71 * 12 Credit Hours (generally the fewest number of hours one can take to be considered a full-time student) = $852 or about €600 for the cheapest post-secondary education around. I understand that it's always nicer to have something for free, but I seriously have trouble sympathizing with the people who stage big demonstrations over paying €500 for a semester at a world-class university.
Guess it's time to stop reading Atlas Shrugged,
That's good advice for anyone.
How dare you! That book cured my insomnia, you insensitive clod!
No, it's a good choice.
It's one of the many sexist pathologies of English that the male third person pronoun is used to indicate a generic third person. Using a female third person pronoun in a place where the context is obviously gender neutral highlights that pathology without sacrificing any meaning.
That it pisses you off indicates only that the pathology exists. This technique has existed for more than a decade in the humanities, and once you get used to it, it's as unnoticeable as 'he/him'--in other words, once that pathology has been exposed and turned off.
This is a far better way to remove a bit of useless baggage from the language than haranguing people to be PC or accusing them of being sexist. It just moves on to a better usage, and if that bothers you, it's only because you're trying to hang on to the old sexist trope.
It would be far better to create and use a new and actually gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. I like that better than pretending that the assumption of a feminine subject is somehow far less sexist than the assumption of a masculine subject. The latter is a rather puerile form of hypocrisy because reverse sexism is still sexism, a fact that must be acknowledged if you view the eradication of sexism as a worthy goal. That hypocrisy, the willful blindness to it, and the exhibition of both while telling others what they should do is the only baggage I see here.
It does exist and it's called the "generic they." I realize it pisses off quite a few of the grammar purists, but everyone from Shakespeare to Jane Austin to Mark Twain to George Bernard Shaw has used it. Consider the sentence "Nobody in their right mind would do a thing like that." Going purely by how it sounds to me, "Nobody in his right mind would do a thing like that" sounds outdated (like it's from a movie from the 50s) and "Nobody in her right mind would do a thing like that." sits about as well with my ears as spelling "women" as "womyn" does with my eyes. I think part of the problem with the sentence in question ("the key would be that there is a lot of what a developer needs and very little of what she doesn't need") is that saying such a thing using a singular form is awkward in and of itself. This book is written for all Python developers, so it sounds much more natural to me to say "the key would be that there is a lot of what developers need and very little of what they don't need." The bottom line is that using either pronoun generically sounds unnatural to me unless we're talking about a situation where only one gender can be involved (eg pregnancy for women, circumcision for men).
PS If you think English has sexist pathologies, you won't want to learn Spanish ("ellas" is plural feminine, "ellos is plural masculine, but for some reason a group of 200 women with one guy is still "ellos") or German (the generic pronoun is "man," although they're starting to use "frau" (women) in situations that only apply to women like pregnancy).
From what I've heard, language identification is a fairly well-understood problem in computational linguistics. The language a given text is written in can generally be identified using a statistical approach using an n-gram method (often a trigram). Like the Wikipedia article states, there are problems given the fact that a lot of stuff on the web can have several languages on one page, but at least the bot should be able to fairly easily figure out if a page is written only in English. There are even javascript language identifiers, so I think figure out what language something is written in is the least of their worries.
When I was a small child, my father (who rode his bike every day to work) was struck by a flatbed truck because the driver wasn't paying attention to traffic. He was thrown off of his bike and hurled head first into a tree. Although he broke his arm very badly and still has trouble with it sometimes to this day, he didn't die or receive permanent brain damage because he was wearing a helmet. Wearing a helmet, especially in an environment like the American Southwest (I'm from Arizona) where generally not that many people bike and roads are designed for driving giant SUVs, isn't necessarily about protecting yourself from getting a bump on the head because you were careless but rather reducing the impulse of an impact of an auto accident so that you're not killed by it. Cars have crumple zones, bikes don't, and dead children can't learn from their mistakes.