I don't buy that reasoning. While the kid might not specifically have been exposed to Asimov, you really should be able to tell if he's seen, say, the Clone Wars on television, or if he asks to watch with you when you've got your Babylon 5 DVDs running. There's so much science fiction around that it is not believable that he has had so little exposure to it that he doesn't know if he likes it.
Ironically, Westerns are a better example; they're scarce enough that it's entirely possible the kid really hasn't been exposed to them. But sci-fi?
I'd mod this up if I had points right now. It's like the question of "I want to get my child/nephew interested in programming, what do I start them with?" The answer is the same: if they're interested, they'll get into it and you can ask the question then. You're not going to make them interested, and realistically, it's something that only a few people actually do.
There's a chance he'll be interested in some of the currently-for-young-readers sci-fi series (Hunger Games comes to mind). The intended audience of that series is older than 8 years old, but it's still closer to his level than I, Robot. But ultimately, if he's not interested, he's not interested. Don't try to "get him interested"; it'll only annoy the kid. You cannot raise kids to be fans; they are their own people.
TFA didn't even consider the most well known explanation, which others here have mentioned, more or less: women are, by and large, more likely to take jobs for job satisfaction rather than to maximize their income to support their family (sometimes because they expect their spouse to be the primary breadwinner). Someone who acts like that is not going to want to go into the computer field, which is notorious for long hours and overtime (but high pay) and low job satisfaction.
And of course, the more internet access a woman has, the more aware she will be of these facts. Also, this doesn't really apply to very poor women (who are more likely to be single mothers and sole breadwinners), and poverty is correlated with low internet access (of course it's also correlated with not going to college at all, but that shouldn't affect the proportions of one major over another.)
It really has nothing to do with sexism at all, or at least, it hasn't been proven to have anything to do with sexism.
He didn't prove the validity of jihad, he proved at most that jihad is valid when run under the rules of war, and used to attack military targets without a trial. Needless to say, jihadis don't run jihad under the rules of war or attack just military targets, so this is irrelevant.
And actually, he didn't even prove that--it exempts the targets from being members of a nation-state, but it doesn't exempt the attackers. So it doesn't apply to jihadis as attackers. A gang member may not claim that the gang has been successfully attacked by the police and so they can kill police under the rules of war.
I think this counts as a case in the land or naval forces (and if you don't think it counts, I don't see how even a fully declared war would count, which would be absurd).
WIPO was historically democratic, but America disliked this because in being democratic it let the poorer nations of the world vote
Stop right there. Many, perhaps most, of the "poorer nations of the world" aren't democratic. Letting each nation vote is not being democratic if the nations aren't ruled by their own people.
Degrees are used for signalling. In other words, employers don't want people with degrees because the employee gained useful job skills from the degree. They want people with degrees because only people who are already smarter (or already have a better work ethic) are willing to pay for the degree and go through the effort to receive one.
Having a degree which only costs $100 and which doesn't require that someone spend years of their life to get will eliminate this signalling effect, so the $100 degree will be useless in the job market.
Again, this ignores turnout. Blacks voted for Democrats anyway, so the rate could only increase by a limited amount, but the numbers would increase by more than the rate suggests because of turnout. Not only did 96%-98% vote for Obama, that 98% is taken from a larger base (because of higher turnout) than voted for Clinton, so the effect is more than the 2% you describe.
And even going by the summary, the description of it as showing the effect of racism is misleading. It shows that fewer people voted for Obama in areas with high racism, but it doesn't mean that all of that reduction was because of racism. I'd imagine that, for instance, all-black areas don't have much anti-black racism, and also voted for Obama in large numbers. That would tend to make racism correlated with votes against Obama, but not because racism leads to voting against Obama.
I was ready to make a joke post about "information wants to be free" (before noticing that the first post already did that), but it later occurred to me--could that be exactly what happened? Remember way back when when RMS refused to put a password on his MIT account and when was forced used the password "rms" so everyone could log in? And remember him getting a fifth of users to change their password to the empty string?
If RMS is as bad in his personal security as he is in his computer security, it's not surprising that he left his bag somewhere and had it stolen. Assuming that everyone in real life is honest is as bad as assuming that everyone on the computer is honest.
The classic example of this is the Mohammed cartoons. Not even the most third-world-sympathetic leftists can claim that the West did anything wrong. Yet Middle Easterners were riled up enough to kill, and some of the leaders spread fake Mohammed cartoons that were much more offensive than the real ones just to rile up the people.
Inciting the people against a foreign enemy is good, if you're a dictator. It gives them something to fight other than your regime. Whether we do anything that justifies the fight is entirely beside the point.
Why does the manner in which I speak imply something about my character?
Because the world doesn't run in a geekish way. Geeks and people with borderline Asperger's think that everything is a logical deduction and that if there is not a straight chain of 100% causality between dressing in some ways and being a criminal, making the connection must be worthless. There is such a thing as probability, and there's certainly such a thing as social cues.
Smokers who die early in life of lung cancer aren't going to be spending years with Alzheimer's, or develop other diseases of old age, many of which are chronic. So it's quite likely that the smokers are *reducing* the cost of your healthcare premiums rather than raising it.
The neon sign analogy is an analogy. In the analogy, having signs that attract attention but provide no technical information does indeed make us ignore signs when looking for technical information.
And the problem you describe could be fixed by, for instance, having all the booth babes be scantily clad and having the women with technical knowledge wear business clothing. If there is a clear visual distinction between the booth babes and the knowledgeable women, it should no longer make the customers disregard women as a group.
But the problem you describe doesn't fit your your suggestion. You suggest that people complain that the booth babes can't answer technical questions. The most obvious interpretation of that complaint is that "attracting customers in ways unrelated to the technical merits of the product" is something you don't understand (in which case, Asperger's) or more likely, don't think companies should do.
If the sales person actually wanted to give an intelligent answer, he could say something like "people are attracted by sex, so sex brings attention to our product. If you're not attracted, you're a minority, and we make our money by doing things that appeal to majorities, not minorities, because there's no money in it. If you are attracted but genuinely can't understand why this brings people to our product even though the model is unable to provide technical information, you have one of the worst cases of Asperger's I've seen."
The equivalent in a context without people is to complain that the booth has a large neon sign at it and that since the neon sign provides no technical information, you don't understand why the company has any signs at all instead of putting in more computers that demo the company's product. The world doesn't run on technical information alone.
The complaint is that the job is bad for the booth babes, not bad for the customers. In your analogy, in response to similar complaints, I would reply "if you're uncomfortable standing around in briefs, don't get a job where the requirement is to stand around in briefs."
Protesting in a way that results in a fine is not something you are supposed to do at all--(of course it could be a problem if they are unjustly fined for something they didn't actually do, but it doesn't sound like that's the problem you're describing). I have little sympathy for the idea that these elderly people have to avoid doing things that they're not supposed to be doing at all anyway to avoid being deported.
A fine is not a fee. You don't pay a fine and get permission to perform one illegal protest, any more than a company which paid the fine for illegally dumping chemicals has actually purchased permission to dump the chemicals, or a rapist who's put in jail has retroactively purchased, with his jail time, the right to commit one rape. A fine is a punishment and the activity for which you are punished is prohibited; it doesn't become okay because you've paid the fine. If you're thinking "their children can protest if they pay the fine, why can't they", you're thinking about it the wrong way.
The American Physical Society (note: article typoes this as APA) is an organization of physicists and if you're going to argue that an expert on quantum tunnelling should not speak about the subject because he's not an expert, the APS, to which he is objecting, should not speak out against the subject for exactly the same reason.
Furthermore, although claiming that there is evidence for global warming is a scientific conclusion, additionally claiming that "We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now" is a policy conclusion and doesn't follow just from the scientific conclusion that global warming is happening. This is especially so if "we" specifically refers to the West rather than "we, but only if India and China are included and will cooperate".
No, and that's one of the problems. From the link in the article to the technical blog:
Right now you can load arbitrary code into grub 2 at runtime, and that defeats the point of secure boot. So that'll be disabled. Next we'll be adding support for verifying that the kernel it's about to boot is signed with a trusted key. And finally we'll be sanitising the kernel command line to avoid certain bits of functionality that would permit an attacker to cause even a signed kernel to launch arbitrary code.
grub will no longer be able to load anything. grub has to be signed, and it will also only load a kernel that is signed, and require device drivers that are signed.
Of course this will be a disaster for anyone who wants to compile their own kernel.
There's no such thing as "macro evolution". "Macro evolution" is a buzzword that's used by creationists who, when given examples of evolution that have been observed, say "that doesn't count because it's not macro evolution". Since the only people determining whether something is macro evolution are the creationists, they can use that excuse to explain away every example.
It looks like an acronym to people. While no single characteristic necessarily will cause people to treat a word as an acronym, a combination of characteristics will. It has no obvious meaning, it doesn't look like a word or a name, it's relatively short, and it uses odd combinations of letters.
Aside: I know this is difficult to comprehend for some on slashdot, but US intelligence assets in space are almost exclusively used for FOREIGN intelligence.
And if it wasn't, how would you know? They're secret. This means that "we use it on foreign targets only" is entirely based upon trusting the government's say so, and they have every reason to lie (or just to make sure that the department which is giving us the denial isn't in the know about how the satellites are actually used). Indeed, if it's observing the US and that's classified, they may be required to lie.
The ulcers story is in fact another example where the outsiders with the radical new theory really weren't. There was a Skeptical Inquirer article which fortunately was on the web.
Summary: -- research studies take time. Given this, scientists accepted the theory reasonably fast. -- the scientist who tested the theory on himself didn't develop an ulcer. -- existing non-antibiotic treatments did work, though they were not as good at preventing recurrences.
Having to tell someone how to write your language name because that is not naturally how people would write it is a classic example of a bad user interface in a geek-written program.
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No, his dad is trying to get him interested.
I'd love to get him interested in science-fiction
I don't buy that reasoning. While the kid might not specifically have been exposed to Asimov, you really should be able to tell if he's seen, say, the Clone Wars on television, or if he asks to watch with you when you've got your Babylon 5 DVDs running. There's so much science fiction around that it is not believable that he has had so little exposure to it that he doesn't know if he likes it.
Ironically, Westerns are a better example; they're scarce enough that it's entirely possible the kid really hasn't been exposed to them. But sci-fi?
I'd mod this up if I had points right now. It's like the question of "I want to get my child/nephew interested in programming, what do I start them with?" The answer is the same: if they're interested, they'll get into it and you can ask the question then. You're not going to make them interested, and realistically, it's something that only a few people actually do.
There's a chance he'll be interested in some of the currently-for-young-readers sci-fi series (Hunger Games comes to mind). The intended audience of that series is older than 8 years old, but it's still closer to his level than I, Robot. But ultimately, if he's not interested, he's not interested. Don't try to "get him interested"; it'll only annoy the kid. You cannot raise kids to be fans; they are their own people.
TFA didn't even consider the most well known explanation, which others here have mentioned, more or less: women are, by and large, more likely to take jobs for job satisfaction rather than to maximize their income to support their family (sometimes because they expect their spouse to be the primary breadwinner). Someone who acts like that is not going to want to go into the computer field, which is notorious for long hours and overtime (but high pay) and low job satisfaction.
And of course, the more internet access a woman has, the more aware she will be of these facts. Also, this doesn't really apply to very poor women (who are more likely to be single mothers and sole breadwinners), and poverty is correlated with low internet access (of course it's also correlated with not going to college at all, but that shouldn't affect the proportions of one major over another.)
It really has nothing to do with sexism at all, or at least, it hasn't been proven to have anything to do with sexism.
He didn't prove the validity of jihad, he proved at most that jihad is valid when run under the rules of war, and used to attack military targets without a trial. Needless to say, jihadis don't run jihad under the rules of war or attack just military targets, so this is irrelevant.
And actually, he didn't even prove that--it exempts the targets from being members of a nation-state, but it doesn't exempt the attackers. So it doesn't apply to jihadis as attackers. A gang member may not claim that the gang has been successfully attacked by the police and so they can kill police under the rules of war.
I think this counts as a case in the land or naval forces (and if you don't think it counts, I don't see how even a fully declared war would count, which would be absurd).
Stop right there. Many, perhaps most, of the "poorer nations of the world" aren't democratic. Letting each nation vote is not being democratic if the nations aren't ruled by their own people.
Degrees are used for signalling. In other words, employers don't want people with degrees because the employee gained useful job skills from the degree. They want people with degrees because only people who are already smarter (or already have a better work ethic) are willing to pay for the degree and go through the effort to receive one.
Having a degree which only costs $100 and which doesn't require that someone spend years of their life to get will eliminate this signalling effect, so the $100 degree will be useless in the job market.
Again, this ignores turnout. Blacks voted for Democrats anyway, so the rate could only increase by a limited amount, but the numbers would increase by more than the rate suggests because of turnout. Not only did 96%-98% vote for Obama, that 98% is taken from a larger base (because of higher turnout) than voted for Clinton, so the effect is more than the 2% you describe.
And even going by the summary, the description of it as showing the effect of racism is misleading. It shows that fewer people voted for Obama in areas with high racism, but it doesn't mean that all of that reduction was because of racism. I'd imagine that, for instance, all-black areas don't have much anti-black racism, and also voted for Obama in large numbers. That would tend to make racism correlated with votes against Obama, but not because racism leads to voting against Obama.
Right.
I was ready to make a joke post about "information wants to be free" (before noticing that the first post already did that), but it later occurred to me--could that be exactly what happened? Remember way back when when RMS refused to put a password on his MIT account and when was forced used the password "rms" so everyone could log in? And remember him getting a fifth of users to change their password to the empty string?
If RMS is as bad in his personal security as he is in his computer security, it's not surprising that he left his bag somewhere and had it stolen. Assuming that everyone in real life is honest is as bad as assuming that everyone on the computer is honest.
The classic example of this is the Mohammed cartoons. Not even the most third-world-sympathetic leftists can claim that the West did anything wrong. Yet Middle Easterners were riled up enough to kill, and some of the leaders spread fake Mohammed cartoons that were much more offensive than the real ones just to rile up the people.
Inciting the people against a foreign enemy is good, if you're a dictator. It gives them something to fight other than your regime. Whether we do anything that justifies the fight is entirely beside the point.
Because the world doesn't run in a geekish way. Geeks and people with borderline Asperger's think that everything is a logical deduction and that if there is not a straight chain of 100% causality between dressing in some ways and being a criminal, making the connection must be worthless. There is such a thing as probability, and there's certainly such a thing as social cues.
Smokers who die early in life of lung cancer aren't going to be spending years with Alzheimer's, or develop other diseases of old age, many of which are chronic. So it's quite likely that the smokers are *reducing* the cost of your healthcare premiums rather than raising it.
The neon sign analogy is an analogy. In the analogy, having signs that attract attention but provide no technical information does indeed make us ignore signs when looking for technical information.
And the problem you describe could be fixed by, for instance, having all the booth babes be scantily clad and having the women with technical knowledge wear business clothing. If there is a clear visual distinction between the booth babes and the knowledgeable women, it should no longer make the customers disregard women as a group.
But the problem you describe doesn't fit your your suggestion. You suggest that people complain that the booth babes can't answer technical questions. The most obvious interpretation of that complaint is that "attracting customers in ways unrelated to the technical merits of the product" is something you don't understand (in which case, Asperger's) or more likely, don't think companies should do.
If the sales person actually wanted to give an intelligent answer, he could say something like "people are attracted by sex, so sex brings attention to our product. If you're not attracted, you're a minority, and we make our money by doing things that appeal to majorities, not minorities, because there's no money in it. If you are attracted but genuinely can't understand why this brings people to our product even though the model is unable to provide technical information, you have one of the worst cases of Asperger's I've seen."
The equivalent in a context without people is to complain that the booth has a large neon sign at it and that since the neon sign provides no technical information, you don't understand why the company has any signs at all instead of putting in more computers that demo the company's product. The world doesn't run on technical information alone.
The complaint is that the job is bad for the booth babes, not bad for the customers. In your analogy, in response to similar complaints, I would reply "if you're uncomfortable standing around in briefs, don't get a job where the requirement is to stand around in briefs."
Protesting in a way that results in a fine is not something you are supposed to do at all--(of course it could be a problem if they are unjustly fined for something they didn't actually do, but it doesn't sound like that's the problem you're describing). I have little sympathy for the idea that these elderly people have to avoid doing things that they're not supposed to be doing at all anyway to avoid being deported.
A fine is not a fee. You don't pay a fine and get permission to perform one illegal protest, any more than a company which paid the fine for illegally dumping chemicals has actually purchased permission to dump the chemicals, or a rapist who's put in jail has retroactively purchased, with his jail time, the right to commit one rape. A fine is a punishment and the activity for which you are punished is prohibited; it doesn't become okay because you've paid the fine. If you're thinking "their children can protest if they pay the fine, why can't they", you're thinking about it the wrong way.
The American Physical Society (note: article typoes this as APA) is an organization of physicists and if you're going to argue that an expert on quantum tunnelling should not speak about the subject because he's not an expert, the APS, to which he is objecting, should not speak out against the subject for exactly the same reason.
Furthermore, although claiming that there is evidence for global warming is a scientific conclusion, additionally claiming that "We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now" is a policy conclusion and doesn't follow just from the scientific conclusion that global warming is happening. This is especially so if "we" specifically refers to the West rather than "we, but only if India and China are included and will cooperate".
They don't have the "choice" to use the tax money that would have paid for the public school to pay for the private school instead.
No, and that's one of the problems. From the link in the article to the technical blog:
grub will no longer be able to load anything. grub has to be signed, and it will also only load a kernel that is signed, and require device drivers that are signed.
Of course this will be a disaster for anyone who wants to compile their own kernel.
There's no such thing as "macro evolution". "Macro evolution" is a buzzword that's used by creationists who, when given examples of evolution that have been observed, say "that doesn't count because it's not macro evolution". Since the only people determining whether something is macro evolution are the creationists, they can use that excuse to explain away every example.
It looks like an acronym to people. While no single characteristic necessarily will cause people to treat a word as an acronym, a combination of characteristics will. It has no obvious meaning, it doesn't look like a word or a name, it's relatively short, and it uses odd combinations of letters.
And if it wasn't, how would you know? They're secret. This means that "we use it on foreign targets only" is entirely based upon trusting the government's say so, and they have every reason to lie (or just to make sure that the department which is giving us the denial isn't in the know about how the satellites are actually used). Indeed, if it's observing the US and that's classified, they may be required to lie.
The ulcers story is in fact another example where the outsiders with the radical new theory really weren't. There was a Skeptical Inquirer article which fortunately was on the web.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bacteria_ulcers_and_ostracism_h._pylori_and_the_making_of_a_myth/
Summary:
-- research studies take time. Given this, scientists accepted the theory reasonably fast.
-- the scientist who tested the theory on himself didn't develop an ulcer.
-- existing non-antibiotic treatments did work, though they were not as good at preventing recurrences.
Having to tell someone how to write your language name because that is not naturally how people would write it is a classic example of a bad user interface in a geek-written program.