But the fact is you don't have a legitimate point. Summers is right that biological differences between men and women possibly are reasons for the discrepancies in the sex ratio in the harder science.
Note that Summers wasn't canned, he did resign. And while other factors may have certainly been at play, the silly brouhaha by much of the faculty at Harvard was a major reason and still serves my point.
Anyway certainly wasn't Summers fault if the ideologically-blinded professors cannot handle the fact that Summers listed a possible reason for less women in the sciences as biologically based, president or not--it was theirs! Summers is president of the university, not of Political Correctness Club.
As for your ideology, it's certainly implied by how you're twisting the facts to paint Summers out as some sort of insensitive jerk for his comments.
At the time, Art History was pretty much a required course. It was held only at 8 AM, in Wheeler Auditorium (this was before somebody burned it down).
Well, I can see why!
As an aside, REM sleep is not particularly deep or satisfying sleep. It's similar to stage 1 sleep in that aspect, which is the lightest stage of Non-REM sleep. Real, quality is sleep is stages 3 and 4.
He was giving us advice IN GENERAL, not just his class. It's true syllabi are usually tentative, because things happen, but the professor should be held to their word.
A professor cannot, believe it or not, just do anything they want and give any grade they want. Students can petition to have their grades looked into, although most don't know they can and who knows how fair the process really is.
Again, if the prof says X, then you have every right to EXPECT X. If you want a more extreme version of this situation, just imagine a professor that says they are moving the test back a class the class before the test was originally supposed to occur, and to "not come" because he would be out of town, and then hold the test anyway and fail all of his students. Tweak that scenario as much as you want if you're not satisfied with it.
Doubt it. When it comes to the Summers debacle 1) most undergrads probably wouldn't even know it went on, 2) if you have the facts it's really easy to argue against the "Summers is a sexist patriarchal monster!" nonsense.
Oh please. The truth is we don't know a lot of how the brain works and a lot on behavioral genetics. There ARE differences between men and women whether you want to admit it or not. Speculating that there very well could be an innate reason why men and women have different ratios in different fields is fine, which is what he did.
The conference was titled, "Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce". From what I can see, it wasn't necessarily about *why*, it was about "what we should do", and even then he DOESN'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH OTHERS' CONCLUSIONS. I'm sorry that some of his speculations may not appeal directly to your ideology, CheshireCatCO, but AT A UNIVERSITY HE SHOULD BE MORE THAN FREE TO SHARE LEGITIMATE IDEAS WITHOUT BEING CENSURED. But alas, he did not play homage to the proper gods, and was a sinner to be excommunicated for his heresy, right?
Pinker explains it well:
First, letâ(TM)s be clear what the hypothesis isâ"every one of Summersâ(TM) critics has misunderstood it. The hypothesis is, first, that the statistical distributions of menâ(TM)s and womenâ(TM)s quantitative and spatial abilities are not identicalâ"that the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women, and that the variance for men might be a bit higher than the variance for women (both implying that there would be a slightly higher proportion of men at the high end of the scale). It does not mean that all men are better at quantitative abilities than all women! Thatâ(TM)s why it would be immoral and illogical to discriminate against individual women even if it were shown that some of the statistidcal differences were innate.
Academic Dave Gwydion has a colorful recap by one faculty spy who supported the resolution. The anonymous scribe reports that Summers didn't lose support from faculty members who objected to his comments, but from those who "object to Larry either because they think he's an arrogant prick who deserves to be taken down a peg, or because they think he's funnelling money in the wrong direction." Assistant professor LubÅs Motl, who opposed the resolution, thinks the vote "will be mentioned as a sad day in the history of Harvard University" as "an example of another era of McCarthyism." A physicist, Motl believes the majority of votes against Summers were cast by faculty of the humanities, "especially the people who think that they can determine the scientific truth by a vote."
Summers was mostly blasted for what he said, not the "way he said it", and Summers probably wasn't truly sorry because there was nothing to be sorry for. He had to play campus politics because, hey, it's not like most of the highly liberal faculty were very supportive of him...!
His words were twisted in some of the most disgusting ways possible. If Harvard faculty can't be charitable in how they treat their president's comments, then I wonder just how bright some of their minds really are.
I believe that the story is likely to be true, ESPECIALLY with the Harvard thing. If you think the crazy-liberal types don't exist in academia, then just remember that despite how innocuous the statements the Harvard president made really were, he WAS censured, 218-185.
218-185. These are people who are supposed to be some of the brightest people around, reacting to a basic biological and psychological fact that there may be behavioral differences due to differences in the brains of men and women. This wouldn't be blasphemy in my psych classes, yet, the PRESIDENT OF HARVARD was censured by faculty over it. If you think that instructors as petty and harebrained like that described are rare, then just look at that 218-185 ratio and the brouhaha his statements caused in the first place.
In the sciences, this might be more uncommon, but in the liberal arts you do find a lot of politically-driven idiocy.
Was your son's class an intro to women's studies? If so, I am NOT surprised. The * Studies classes are probably the worst offenders, typically being more political propaganda and bizzaro ideology than anything of substance. My Black Studies class was the single worst class I've taken, with questions asking us if blacks were the first to arrive at the Americas, leaving behind the Olmec statues (answer was true, but the TRUE answer is obviously very false) and if Taco Bell is racist for using Mexican imagery and language in advertising (answer was, of course, "TRUE"). And that question was on an 100-point, 10-question quiz...!
The textbook? Written by Kwanzaa inventor, Black Panther, and convicted felon Maulana Karenga, who made sure to capitalize the first letter in "Blacks" and always lowercase "whites". I could go on, but there really is an amazing degree of fashionable politicized-ideological garbage in academia.
Well, then I'm not surprised. The gaming press has always been very awful and, as I said, I'm surprised EGM lasted as long given the issues with gaming publications and their audiences.
There really is no need for a print gaming press. Hell, there's already too many gaming news websites as it is that all say the same things.
Not only is print media in general doing worse as the internet takes over, but you also have to consider the audience. Gamers, as an audience, typically learn about games, both current and upcoming, through online channels.
Similarly PC Magazine and others have shut their printing operations for similar reasons. Technical users get their news off the internet.
I'm really surprised EGM lasted as long as it did, especially since the gaming magazine market in general was really quite terrible. I haven't picked up an issue of EGM in ages, though, so I can't attest to its quality.
I find the worst part about these "MacHeads" isn't just Mac fanboyism. It's worse than that. It's Apple fanboyism. They'll cheer on the Ipod, buy their overpriced peripherals, etc, when there are so many better MP3 players. Sansa Clip/Fuze, Creative Zen, and Cowon D2, so on and so forth.
For example, check out this Sansa Fuze story on digg I found, with one comment by a so-called "macslut":
The main complaint is inferior video (which is true, but it's a @^!!ing MP3 player!) and incompatibility with iTunes. As far as I'm concerned, not having to use iTunes to even UPLOAD the music is a plus.
Even funnier is that while the Fuze doesn't support AAC, Sansa did add (after this post was made, I will admit) ogg and flac compatibility. The Ipod, however, is lacking there...
"The author of this article is positioning this player as a new threat to the iPod, but like all superior spec'd players before it, people are going to see that there's subtle advantages to getting the iPod that go beyond the specs."
That is the crux of the Apple fanboy's complaint about non-Ipod MP3 players. There's "subtle" advantages to the Ipod, which is really just the fact that it's locked down to their stupid iTunes software.
People want justice in the world. They want karma, they want a god or a superhero to come down from above and fix the ills of the world. They want safety, they want security, they want peace.
Government, like religion, usually works so long as you believe in it. When you stand back, however, you often see just how useless and ineffective it is, just like everything else. Truth is, you're not going to find any justice. No hero or knight in shining armor is going to ride out of the smoke and save you.
You can't escape from risk. A lot of the ills of everything else in the world (corruption, stealing, cheating) find their way in government just like everything else. But still people act and pretend as if the government really will be that magical entity that can make things all better, that won't be corrupt, that won't be like everything else in the world.
You are quite right about how businesses will deal with bad certificates. If they've got a bad reputation, then no one is going to give a shit about them. Nobody that is informed is going to buy a security system that doesn't work.
Your overall point is rather silly, but this in particular stuck out:
Worse, the private industry has a conflict of interest. Their business makes money by issuing certificates to paying customers, not rejecting customers for bad information. The more stringent their policy, the more applicants they reject, and the less money they make. It is simple math, they have to make it as easy to get an SSL certificate as possible or go under. (The bond rating industry suffers from a different, but somewhat similar conflict of interest, actually)
Actually, if the business wants their SSL certs to continue to mean anything, then they very well will be rather stringent, at least theoretically. If the certs are meaningless it devalues the certs meaning less people want it in the end. To use a loosely analogous example, a magazine wants to have a lot of stuff to publish, but they won't publish everything--they'll (theoretically) do fact-finding and verifying before bringing things to print. Bungling facts is going to lower their reputation. "More", in the end, can often lead to "less", and business knows that.
On the other end, the government isn't going to be so concerned on the value of the certs because, hey, it's not like the government particularly cares what you think about their certs. The idea that a business must make it as easy as possible to get an SSL certificate "or go under" is ludicrous.
I find it interesting that you trash business doing SSL certs for profit motive supposedly making them hand out certs like candy to get money, and then you go and say an advantage of the government, which you claim "doesn't have to make money" (I guess they can just print it off, but that devalues the overall money supply...), basically can just "rubber stamp" an SSL cert for anyone who walks in! So apparently it's bad for a business to not be (supposedly) stringent but the government can just hand them out to whoever walks in, being a lot less stringent?
We already have laws that could apply to forging SSL certs--fraud. Forgery, probably, or maybe those laws could be updated. Kind of like how, you know, the whole scamming thing often done by shady websites is already illegal in the first place?
As far as licenses, those are different from security measures, which an SSL is.
Then, SSL certs would not be equal for all countries, and we can't just let the USA hand them out. Nigerian SSL certs? HAH!
In the end, though, the real truth is that with computers, nothing is simple, and to think that you'll end up with a "perfect" or "not-easily-breakable" SSL scheme is just as misguided as the pro-DRM crowd. You make it, someone else will break it, whatever it is, whatever system it is.
But what many people do is run two accounts: one for a PVPer, the other for production and invention or such. It's functionally similar to simply having both PVP and Invention skills trained in some aspects (not all, but generally, it is) except that CCP just makes more money out of this arrangement.
I don't see why the a player-driven economy necessitates that people give up the main part of the game--ship PVP--just to keep said PVP running for others. IMO, WoW would be better off with a more robust economy as well.
I don't really disagree with your points. Yes, with EVE, you don't have to stay logged in 24/7 to get anywhere. But to get anywhere, you have to have an open account MUCH longer than in other games...
The metagame in EVE is great, I agree, and it is probably, for some, larger than the game itself.
As far as the big ship battles, what you're really going to be doing for a long while is using your frigates or cruisers or such to simply slow the enemy ships down or make it so they can't warp away. That's not really riveting battle, IMO.
The problem with the specialization is that you can't be a producer/inventor AND someone who does battles at the same time. I don't care about the specializing in drones/energy weapons/missles/whatever thing, that's cool, the problem is the fact that you have to pick between battle power and building power. If you want to compare to WoW, it would be like having to chose between "Warrior" and "Blacksmith" or "Warlock and "Alchemist".
Slashdot Mirror
But the fact is you don't have a legitimate point. Summers is right that biological differences between men and women possibly are reasons for the discrepancies in the sex ratio in the harder science.
Note that Summers wasn't canned, he did resign. And while other factors may have certainly been at play, the silly brouhaha by much of the faculty at Harvard was a major reason and still serves my point.
Anyway certainly wasn't Summers fault if the ideologically-blinded professors cannot handle the fact that Summers listed a possible reason for less women in the sciences as biologically based, president or not--it was theirs! Summers is president of the university, not of Political Correctness Club.
As for your ideology, it's certainly implied by how you're twisting the facts to paint Summers out as some sort of insensitive jerk for his comments.
At the time, Art History was pretty much a required course. It was held only at 8 AM, in Wheeler Auditorium (this was before somebody burned it down).
Well, I can see why!
As an aside, REM sleep is not particularly deep or satisfying sleep. It's similar to stage 1 sleep in that aspect, which is the lightest stage of Non-REM sleep. Real, quality is sleep is stages 3 and 4.
"Suck it up, the blood starts to act like a lube and after awhile you start to like it."
He was giving us advice IN GENERAL, not just his class. It's true syllabi are usually tentative, because things happen, but the professor should be held to their word.
A professor cannot, believe it or not, just do anything they want and give any grade they want. Students can petition to have their grades looked into, although most don't know they can and who knows how fair the process really is.
Again, if the prof says X, then you have every right to EXPECT X. If you want a more extreme version of this situation, just imagine a professor that says they are moving the test back a class the class before the test was originally supposed to occur, and to "not come" because he would be out of town, and then hold the test anyway and fail all of his students. Tweak that scenario as much as you want if you're not satisfied with it.
Doubt it. When it comes to the Summers debacle 1) most undergrads probably wouldn't even know it went on, 2) if you have the facts it's really easy to argue against the "Summers is a sexist patriarchal monster!" nonsense.
Oh please. The truth is we don't know a lot of how the brain works and a lot on behavioral genetics. There ARE differences between men and women whether you want to admit it or not. Speculating that there very well could be an innate reason why men and women have different ratios in different fields is fine, which is what he did.
The conference was titled, "Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce". From what I can see, it wasn't necessarily about *why*, it was about "what we should do", and even then he DOESN'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH OTHERS' CONCLUSIONS. I'm sorry that some of his speculations may not appeal directly to your ideology, CheshireCatCO, but AT A UNIVERSITY HE SHOULD BE MORE THAN FREE TO SHARE LEGITIMATE IDEAS WITHOUT BEING CENSURED. But alas, he did not play homage to the proper gods, and was a sinner to be excommunicated for his heresy, right?
Pinker explains it well:
First, letâ(TM)s be clear what the hypothesis isâ"every one of Summersâ(TM) critics has misunderstood it. The hypothesis is, first, that the statistical distributions of menâ(TM)s and womenâ(TM)s quantitative and spatial abilities are not identicalâ"that the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women, and that the variance for men might be a bit higher than the variance for women (both implying that there would be a slightly higher proportion of men at the high end of the scale). It does not mean that all men are better at quantitative abilities than all women! Thatâ(TM)s why it would be immoral and illogical to discriminate against individual women even if it were shown that some of the statistidcal differences were innate.
http://www.slate.com/id/2114964
Academic Dave Gwydion has a colorful recap by one faculty spy who supported the resolution. The anonymous scribe reports that Summers didn't lose support from faculty members who objected to his comments, but from those who "object to Larry either because they think he's an arrogant prick who deserves to be taken down a peg, or because they think he's funnelling money in the wrong direction." Assistant professor LubÅs Motl, who opposed the resolution, thinks the vote "will be mentioned as a sad day in the history of Harvard University" as "an example of another era of McCarthyism." A physicist, Motl believes the majority of votes against Summers were cast by faculty of the humanities, "especially the people who think that they can determine the scientific truth by a vote."
Bingo.
Summers was mostly blasted for what he said, not the "way he said it", and Summers probably wasn't truly sorry because there was nothing to be sorry for. He had to play campus politics because, hey, it's not like most of the highly liberal faculty were very supportive of him...!
His words were twisted in some of the most disgusting ways possible. If Harvard faculty can't be charitable in how they treat their president's comments, then I wonder just how bright some of their minds really are.
I believe that the story is likely to be true, ESPECIALLY with the Harvard thing. If you think the crazy-liberal types don't exist in academia, then just remember that despite how innocuous the statements the Harvard president made really were, he WAS censured, 218-185.
218-185. These are people who are supposed to be some of the brightest people around, reacting to a basic biological and psychological fact that there may be behavioral differences due to differences in the brains of men and women. This wouldn't be blasphemy in my psych classes, yet, the PRESIDENT OF HARVARD was censured by faculty over it. If you think that instructors as petty and harebrained like that described are rare, then just look at that 218-185 ratio and the brouhaha his statements caused in the first place.
In the sciences, this might be more uncommon, but in the liberal arts you do find a lot of politically-driven idiocy.
Was your son's class an intro to women's studies? If so, I am NOT surprised. The * Studies classes are probably the worst offenders, typically being more political propaganda and bizzaro ideology than anything of substance. My Black Studies class was the single worst class I've taken, with questions asking us if blacks were the first to arrive at the Americas, leaving behind the Olmec statues (answer was true, but the TRUE answer is obviously very false) and if Taco Bell is racist for using Mexican imagery and language in advertising (answer was, of course, "TRUE"). And that question was on an 100-point, 10-question quiz...!
The textbook? Written by Kwanzaa inventor, Black Panther, and convicted felon Maulana Karenga, who made sure to capitalize the first letter in "Blacks" and always lowercase "whites". I could go on, but there really is an amazing degree of fashionable politicized-ideological garbage in academia.
Actually, no. I had one professor tell our class to always keep the syllabi as it's essentially like a contract between prof and student.
If the prof said X, and didn't qualify it, then the prof is obliged to follow through.
Dear sir God bluephone, master of creation, Lord of the Azure Calling:
May I have an invite, you sexy hunk of man?
yours sincerely,
mindlessautomata*NOSPAM*@gmail.com
Yeah, here on Earth we call these kinds of robots "Christians".
Never before have I seen someone so breathlessly apologize for our corrupt and ineffectual system.
I don't think there's a response to this news article that could be better than the parent's.
Why did the two neutrons stop dating?
They just weren't attracted to each other.
Main character has AMNESIA and needs to go on an epic journey in order to recover their lost memories instead of seeking clinical help.
Well, then I'm not surprised. The gaming press has always been very awful and, as I said, I'm surprised EGM lasted as long given the issues with gaming publications and their audiences.
There really is no need for a print gaming press. Hell, there's already too many gaming news websites as it is that all say the same things.
Not only is print media in general doing worse as the internet takes over, but you also have to consider the audience. Gamers, as an audience, typically learn about games, both current and upcoming, through online channels.
Similarly PC Magazine and others have shut their printing operations for similar reasons. Technical users get their news off the internet.
I'm really surprised EGM lasted as long as it did, especially since the gaming magazine market in general was really quite terrible. I haven't picked up an issue of EGM in ages, though, so I can't attest to its quality.
While lamenting about the plight of the lower classes all while spending money on overpriced coffee and overpriced computers.
I find the worst part about these "MacHeads" isn't just Mac fanboyism. It's worse than that. It's Apple fanboyism. They'll cheer on the Ipod, buy their overpriced peripherals, etc, when there are so many better MP3 players. Sansa Clip/Fuze, Creative Zen, and Cowon D2, so on and so forth.
For example, check out this Sansa Fuze story on digg I found, with one comment by a so-called "macslut":
http://digg.com/apple/Sandisk_fights_back
The main complaint is inferior video (which is true, but it's a @^!!ing MP3 player!) and incompatibility with iTunes. As far as I'm concerned, not having to use iTunes to even UPLOAD the music is a plus.
Even funnier is that while the Fuze doesn't support AAC, Sansa did add (after this post was made, I will admit) ogg and flac compatibility. The Ipod, however, is lacking there...
"The author of this article is positioning this player as a new threat to the iPod, but like all superior spec'd players before it, people are going to see that there's subtle advantages to getting the iPod that go beyond the specs."
That is the crux of the Apple fanboy's complaint about non-Ipod MP3 players. There's "subtle" advantages to the Ipod, which is really just the fact that it's locked down to their stupid iTunes software.
People want justice in the world. They want karma, they want a god or a superhero to come down from above and fix the ills of the world. They want safety, they want security, they want peace.
Government, like religion, usually works so long as you believe in it. When you stand back, however, you often see just how useless and ineffective it is, just like everything else. Truth is, you're not going to find any justice. No hero or knight in shining armor is going to ride out of the smoke and save you.
You can't escape from risk. A lot of the ills of everything else in the world (corruption, stealing, cheating) find their way in government just like everything else. But still people act and pretend as if the government really will be that magical entity that can make things all better, that won't be corrupt, that won't be like everything else in the world.
You are quite right about how businesses will deal with bad certificates. If they've got a bad reputation, then no one is going to give a shit about them. Nobody that is informed is going to buy a security system that doesn't work.
Let me clarify my last statement:
You make it, there is no guarantee that someone won't end up breaking it, or find some flaw or way around the system.
Your overall point is rather silly, but this in particular stuck out:
Worse, the private industry has a conflict of interest. Their business makes money by issuing certificates to paying customers, not rejecting customers for bad information. The more stringent their policy, the more applicants they reject, and the less money they make. It is simple math, they have to make it as easy to get an SSL certificate as possible or go under. (The bond rating industry suffers from a different, but somewhat similar conflict of interest, actually)
Actually, if the business wants their SSL certs to continue to mean anything, then they very well will be rather stringent, at least theoretically. If the certs are meaningless it devalues the certs meaning less people want it in the end. To use a loosely analogous example, a magazine wants to have a lot of stuff to publish, but they won't publish everything--they'll (theoretically) do fact-finding and verifying before bringing things to print. Bungling facts is going to lower their reputation. "More", in the end, can often lead to "less", and business knows that.
On the other end, the government isn't going to be so concerned on the value of the certs because, hey, it's not like the government particularly cares what you think about their certs. The idea that a business must make it as easy as possible to get an SSL certificate "or go under" is ludicrous.
I find it interesting that you trash business doing SSL certs for profit motive supposedly making them hand out certs like candy to get money, and then you go and say an advantage of the government, which you claim "doesn't have to make money" (I guess they can just print it off, but that devalues the overall money supply...), basically can just "rubber stamp" an SSL cert for anyone who walks in! So apparently it's bad for a business to not be (supposedly) stringent but the government can just hand them out to whoever walks in, being a lot less stringent?
We already have laws that could apply to forging SSL certs--fraud. Forgery, probably, or maybe those laws could be updated. Kind of like how, you know, the whole scamming thing often done by shady websites is already illegal in the first place?
As far as licenses, those are different from security measures, which an SSL is.
Then, SSL certs would not be equal for all countries, and we can't just let the USA hand them out. Nigerian SSL certs? HAH!
In the end, though, the real truth is that with computers, nothing is simple, and to think that you'll end up with a "perfect" or "not-easily-breakable" SSL scheme is just as misguided as the pro-DRM crowd. You make it, someone else will break it, whatever it is, whatever system it is.
But what many people do is run two accounts: one for a PVPer, the other for production and invention or such. It's functionally similar to simply having both PVP and Invention skills trained in some aspects (not all, but generally, it is) except that CCP just makes more money out of this arrangement.
I don't see why the a player-driven economy necessitates that people give up the main part of the game--ship PVP--just to keep said PVP running for others. IMO, WoW would be better off with a more robust economy as well.
I don't really disagree with your points. Yes, with EVE, you don't have to stay logged in 24/7 to get anywhere. But to get anywhere, you have to have an open account MUCH longer than in other games...
The metagame in EVE is great, I agree, and it is probably, for some, larger than the game itself.
As far as the big ship battles, what you're really going to be doing for a long while is using your frigates or cruisers or such to simply slow the enemy ships down or make it so they can't warp away. That's not really riveting battle, IMO.
The problem with the specialization is that you can't be a producer/inventor AND someone who does battles at the same time. I don't care about the specializing in drones/energy weapons/missles/whatever thing, that's cool, the problem is the fact that you have to pick between battle power and building power. If you want to compare to WoW, it would be like having to chose between "Warrior" and "Blacksmith" or "Warlock and "Alchemist".