So, by your logic (and reading comprehension problems), are you implying that the current year is 1980? Since you seem to believe that "recorded history" in the title applies to the year span of 1951-1980, that must be the conclusion, no?
Or are you saying history just stopped being recorded in 1980, and we're living in the post-historic era?
suggests that disbelief does not entail lack of knowledge. Can that be?
Umm, obviously so. If, out of context, you ask the question, "Did Noah put all the animals on an ark before a great flood?" The answer can be yes, even if you don't believe that to be true. You can "know" it, you can answer the question truthfully, and yet not believe it to be true. Or, rather in a case like this, a non-believer is probably answering it in the same way that you might answer a question like "Did Romeo love Juliet?" Yes, he did, but he was a fictional character. "Truth" in this case isn't about literal truth, but rather an understanding of background information.
What this study seems to show is that people may "know" about the theory of evolution and even may believe it can happen (for elephants, perhaps), but they don't believe humans evolved from animals. Some people may think this is inconsistent, but it's just a different threshold of understanding/belief. Sort of like how one may believe slavery to be wrong but still be a racist. (This was true, for example, of many people in the Northern U.S. in the 19th century.)
Among epistemologists the near-consensus is that belief is one of the necessary ingredients of knowledge.
Huh? First off, as mentioned above, it's clear that someone can UNDERSTAND something (e.g., an argument, a work of fiction, etc.) without believing it to be literally true. One can thus answer a question without necessarily believing it to be true. I imagine some of the responses to the elephant question are like that: they don't necessarily recognize or perhaps don't even care about whether the question is concerning or conflicting with religious dogma.
Second, it's possible for people to see these things as two separate cases. The wacko creationists often talk about "microevolution" vs. "macroevolution" and such, and I could certainly see such religious people believing that animal species can change over time. Unless you're one of the "cave men used to hang out with dinosaurs" type of wacko, you probably recognize animal types change over time. And I also am familiar with religious people who believe that evolution of the universe more-or-less happened according to science today, but humans were still a "special creation" of sorts. You may not view these theories as valid, but people do believe them.
Third, people may also be confused by the question. They may not really understand "species" correctly and not recognize the evolution (as we understand it) occurs if one species changes into another. They may have interpreted the question more like dog breeding or something. (Arguably, that could be seen as an example of evolution under selective pressure too, but it's probably not the kind of thing the scientists asking the question in TFA were after.)
When you take the risks to start a company you can say what a ceo is worth.
Actually, no -- there are empirical studies looking at the effects of large CEO salaries and whether they correlate with higher company performance.
Basically, most CEOs are little better than random number generators when it comes to predicting better performance. No study has shown a significant effect based on higher CEO compensation. Estimates now are that increased CEO pay is perhaps only responsible for maybe 1% of company increases in market performance -- the other 99% is due to other company factors, random market influences, etc.
And in fact there are other studies which have shown that increased CEO pay often correlates with POOR returns for shareholders, since exorbitant pay often correlates with higher expectations, which means CEOs tend to take more risks (and thus fail more often).
So there are ways to determine empirically how much CEOs add to values of companies on average, and -- in the aggregate -- their salaries are NOT justified.
It's not "distributed", it's earned. Until you understand this, you have nothing to contribute.
Until "earning" CEO pay requires more skill than luck, I'm going to stick with the word distributed.
THIS.
There have been studies investigating whether increased executive pay correlates with better company performance. So far, there's little evidence justifying the massive CEO salaries.
CEOs are essentially random number generators with power. They are mainly hired for the ability to be decisive. Studies consistently show that if company stock value goes up under a CEO, the CEO gets the credit and is praised regardless of how the company is doing internally. If the internal accounting shows progress, the CEO is praised by the board for reform, even if the stock tanks a bit.
And other studies have often shown that there's a problematic delay effect which often occurs with corporate leaders -- if the company isn't growing fast enough, a CEO gets fired, but then there are big gains in the first year under the successor which may be due to policies put in place by the guy who was fired.
And once you get to a certain level in the corporate world, you can't do wrong anymore. Corporations want big gains -- not just moderate ones, but ones that outperform the rest of the market. But not every company can outperform the average (obviously). So corporations NECESSARILY award those who propose more risky policies which could allow performance beyond the mean.
So, that means that someone who gets far up the corporate ladder has often been quite LUCKY. Those who are lucky enough times get promoted, those who don't stay at middle-management levels. And eventually once you hit the top officer positions in the corporation, you don't even get blamed when "your luck runs out." Instead, you get to blame that on underlings, and you wait around for another place for your luck to turn and justify a new promotion.
This isn't speculation -- it happens in a lot of companies. Excessive executive pay is therefore often NOT justified. If all executives were paid a fraction of what they are today, the performance of most corporations and the economy would be essentially unchanged.
Don't get me wrong: there are talented, intelligent people among executives. But do they really add hundreds or even 1000 times (or more) what the lowest-paid workers at the company do? The empirical evidence doesn't support the claim that their skill effect is anywhere near that large.
If colleges limited themselves to football (or ice hockey for some universities) and whichever of men's or women's basketball was more popular, almost every athletics department would make money.
That assertion is questionable, when you look at the way athletic departments spend money. At most schools, revenue has gone up significantly in the past decade, at many places even doubling or more. Yet schools aren't making larger profits -- instead, they just increase spending.
However, the more popular sports subsidize the less popular sports (Track & Field, Baseball / Softball, etc.) that don't make much or any revenue and then Title IX requirements mean that they have to offer funding for women's sports which typically make even less revenue.
Again, that's undoubtedly true, but that doesn't explain how doubling income (mostly without expanding those programs that didn't make money and already existed) doesn't result in increased profits.
If you read the link I gave above, you'll realize that this isn't a "rational market." It's an "arms race." Athletic departments generally have discretion over spending their income, and if they don't spend it -- they lose it... it goes back into the general university budget. So, if they increase profits, the athletic departments have motivation to spend them immediately -- and by doing so, they can try to gain an edge over competition. Thus, coach salaries, facilities costs, etc. continue to skyrocket.
Throwing out the other sports would just mean that the athletic departments would spend more money on coaches and facilities in the remaining sports.
Coaches are going to get well paid, but some are probably worth it given how much money the football/basketball program can bring in for the athletics department.
Again, the logic is circular. Coaches can demand more salaries because athletic programs make more money. Athletic programs then try to make even more money to attract better coaches, so salaries get pushed higher. If head coach salaries were 1/10th or 1/20th what they are EVERYWHERE in the major conferences, the system would still work fine and there would still be incredibly talented coaches out there for these sports. But if salaries are higher everywhere, schools increase revenues to afford them. The coaches often aren't "bringing in" that money -- they're forcing the schools to find ways to RAISE that money.
A good amount does go into scholarships for the athletes, a few of whom may not be able to otherwise afford to go to college. Some don't make the most of that opportunity, but that's not any less true of the general student population itself.
Well, when you have things like outright academic fraud, fake "classes" designed for athletes, etc., I think you can argue that some schools are deliberately encouraging their athletes to AVOID education and focus instead on what they were brought there to do... i.e., play sports.
TL;DR -- Athletic departments generally try to spend as much as comes in, so streamlining programs to "money-making" sports likely won't change that. And it's pretty clear what the priorities are when academics conflict with "student athletes" at big sports schools.
So the scientific method works, is that what the article should tell us?
Exactly. I'm not sure what the point is here. And TFS's conclusion is just weird: "The story shows that even when Einstein's wrong, it's because he was already right the first time." Actually, if you read TFA, it has a quote from Einstein himself about how he admitted he got things wrong and sometimes his errors had been published.
The only vaguely interesting aspect to TFA is how Einstein apparently got upset that someone dared to do peer-review on his paper before simply publishing it. Granted, peer-review was not a universal standard in the 1930s (at least not peer-review by external reviewers -- review by expert editorial boards was standard long before that), but Einstein still seems to have reacted quite poorly in this case... refusing to admit he was wrong, and later finding his error and not acknowledging he could have found it had he listened to the reviewer's criticism.
The lesson here is NOT that Einstein was always right. He was clearly fallible and recognized himself to be so. On the other hand, he also seems to have a tendency (a natural human one) to refuse to acknowledge errors. That's one of the reasons peer review exists, since scientists often -- consciously or unconsciously -- refuse to see errors in their own logic. TFA's lesson actually shows us that even great scientists can be WRONG, but a proper scientific process can help to weed out those errors.
The H is indeed a mistake. The link states clearly that the word originates from the German place Neandertal.
No, it doesn't. The link states that "Tal" used to be spelled "Thal" before the modern German spelling reform, which happened roughly 100 years ago. Since the word was coined in the mid-1800s, it originally had "Thal" in German too.
This got corrupted when used in English long ago and the H was added. The result is eternal confusion about the spelling.
No -- the English used the proper German spelling at the time the word entered English. Then the Germans decided to change their spelling of the word.
Additionally, the German word (with or without "h") was ALWAYS pronounced "tal," as most cases of "th" are in German. (See English words like "Thomas" pronounced "tomas" as well.)
I can't believe you got upvoted. Means none of them, including you know that you can use keyboard shortcuts with the ribbon. Just press the damn ALT key, watch and learn.
Actually, no -- of course I know that. Stop being a jerk and assuming everyone else is an idiot.
As I said, I prefer something else. You like the ribbon. Congratulations. I said explicitly I can understand why some people like it. I find it less useful than you do. I said why, and it had nothing to do with using shortcut keys WITH the ribbon. In case you misunderstood, I wasn't talking about using shortcut keys to NAVIGATE menus -- I was talking about shortcut keys as direct commands. Obviously one can use shortcut keys to navigate the ribbon, but that's not what I was talking about.
Completely agree about toolbar customization. That was the first thing I'd do in older versions after install. Much more useful for users who know what they're doing and what they need.
They're just haters. No modern computer user can honestly say they'd prefer searching through dropdown menus over the ribbon that focuses on putting the most used features at the users fingertips.
*Raises hand*
I dislike the ribbon. But then I'm a keyboard shortcuts guy. I know dozens of them for MS Office, and whenever there's a feature that I use often, I look up a keyboard shortcut if possible.
Which means the ribbon is useless to me. It takes up a bunch of space with buttons I don't need, and on the rare occasions when I need a feature advanced or rare enough that I don't know a shortcut, it's often not even on a ribbon button -- I end up going through advanced feature dialogs anyway. I use a Mac at work, so luckily I still have the drop down menus, which are usually at least twice as fast as wading through a bunch of non-intuitive icons in a half-dozen ribbon tabs with 20 buttons each.
Text was invented for a reason -- it communicates quickly, clearly, and efficiently. So I find it a lot easier to navigate when I'm searching for a feature I don't know -- which is the only time my mouse generally goes up to that part of the screen.
If you actually use the ribbon for common everyday tasks, I can understand how it might be useful for you. I'm not against offering a ribbon interface, but I do think it should be one option rather than the only one. I'm not a "hater." I just work differently and I'm just glad Mac versions of Office still give the menu options.
The common ancestor we share looks nothing like either humans or great apes (speculated to look much like a Lemur).
While the common ancestor may look quite different from modern humans or modern great apes, the common ancestor of both most certainly would be classified as an ape according to evolutionary biology taxonomy.
Furthermore, lemurs split off into a separate taxonomic Order nearly 65 million years ago. Apes separated from monkeys from 25 million years ago. Great apes separated from lesser apes 15 million years ago. Estimates are that human ancestors separated from chimp ancestors only about 7 million years ago.
Bottom line -- human ancestors were "apes" and "great apes" long before they separated from other species. While evolutionary biologists debate the exact last common ancestor between humans and other species, there's little doubt that that common ancestor was very much a "great ape."
We evolved from apes. The science is settled.
I think you just proved my point by quoting a fact that the science does not support. Humans did not evolve from apes or any currently living species of primate.
Humans did not evolve from modern apes. They did evolve from prehistoric great apes. While the exact common ancestor between humans and the closest other species is still under debate, evolutionary biologists firmly agree that that common ancestor was an ape -- just not a species still around today.
Assuming there is more than one human in the world, we are "apes" not a [single] "ape."
We are not several species of APE.
Never said we were. But the entire human species includes more than one exemplar of "ape." I was using the plural in that case to refer to individuals (and because it was grammatically more convenient), not to imply that humans are more than one species. Sorry for the confusion.
Sets. Venn Diagrams. We always called it "New Math" but maybe it had some other term at that point.
Well, set theory and stuff like Venn diagrams were part of some New Math curricula beginning in the 1960s, but mostly at the primary (or maybe middle-school) level. They were intended to teach things like Boolean algebra, which would be relevant to new trends (at that time) in computer programming. Again, the emphasis was on getting students up-to-speed to participate in the Space Race, etc.
And I also should note that Venn diagrams were in fact meant to be visual aids to support the new abstract concepts (like Boolean algebra and set theoretical relationships), kind of like the visualizations you're arguing for in Common Core.
Anyhow, they certainly weren't supposed to displace algebra and geometry in high-school curricula. If your school did that, they were doing the "New Math" wrong.
Your point would be so much better expressed if you understood the difference between having a common ancestor and evolving from
Well, you're both a little wrong. Humans ARE apes. Specifically, we belong to the taxonomic classification that includes all Great Apes. Strictly speaking non-human apes and human apes both descended from apes. And even if you use the common meaning the the word "ape" to mean only non-human apes, humans still descended from apes, just not the extant species of modern non-human apes. (If GP had said humans descended from monkeys, on the other hand, you'd have a valid point.)
Or just block the ad-blocker blocker script. Just like one can do for most of these sites trying to block ad blockers.
I don't agree with this strategy. As far as I'm concerned, ad blockers are fine -- there's no moral obligation to download ads. But when a site publicly declares it won't give you content without ads and puts in place a script to deny access to people who use ad blockers, I think you should respect that. Go somewhere else. Read other stuff. It's one thing to say "I'm going to only download part of the content sent by a site" (effectively what ad blockers do). If it's a publicly accessible website, that's your choice. But it's a different thing to circumvent or disable measures that are designed to prevent your viewing -- that's stepping over a moral line and taking content that the owner says you're NOT welcome to take.
I disagree. In fact had the opposite effect: New Math as taught in the late 1970s/early 1980s was unsuccessful in teaching pre-college math.
Sorry, but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. The New Math in secondary education was developed in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, the New Math movement was largely dead.
By replacing basic Math education like algebra/geometry with the screwed up "New Math" they ruined math for those of us who actually had to take it in college for engineering. You can't learn Calculus without a solid understanding of Algebra and Geometry.
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. In the mid-1950s, high school enrollment in Algebra was down to about 25% of all high students, and enrollment in Geometry was down to less than 12% of high school students. The New Math was about encouraging students to take such courses, by combatting an anti-intellectual populism in the previous generation of educational reformers. It also encouraged clarity in concepts and algorithms in these classes which would line up better with advanced math taught in college. Also, the very idea of teaching calculus in high school was a product of the New Math reform.
New Math didn't teach what we needed to know to be successful in college math.
Without the reform of New Math curricula in the 1950s and 1960s, you may not have even had the option of taking math like geometry or algebra in high school, let alone calculus. How would missing out on such things be better preparation for college math??
I think you're focusing too much on the reforms to primary education, and you don't seem to know what secondary New Math curricular reform was about. It was mostly about emphasizing the math you think claim it was jettisoning from curricula.
I'd suggest you read about what the New Math reform actually was about. Here's a short intro to curricular reforms over the 20th century, here's a longer history of the New Math movement, and here's an intro to the sorry state of secondary math education in the U.S. around 1950 -- which definitely included little decent prep in geometry or algebra. One of the main goals of the New Math reform was to incorporate "a solid understanding of Algebra and Geometry" into the U.S. high school. At times, the reformers did go too far into abstraction, but I'm really not sure what you're talking about.
The teaching "experts" who came up with "New Math" were not seeing anyone. They were idiots and ruined math for decades.
Um, no. Well, you can argue that they "ruined" math education, but they weren't "idiots." The New Math was developed in the 1960s mostly by college professors and advanced math people in reaction to the "Space Race." The idea was to introduce mathematical abstractions (set theory, formalizations of analysis, etc.) at lower levels in education, which might be beneficial to students who were heading toward engineering and science degrees.
As you rightly point out, there were a number of problems with the execution here. First, not every middle-school student has the talent or interest in becoming an engineer or scientist, so the New Math came across as increasingly irrelevant and confusing. Second, teachers often weren't clear on the rationale for the methods either, which led to poor implementation. Third, the New Math took basic algorithms of computation (which would be useful to everyone, whether they were heading for college in science or not) and made them seem complex and arcane (e.g., doing arithmetic in other bases), thus alienating less-talented students even from basic math.
I'm not sure what you were studying in the 1980s, but that was well past the heyday of the New Math.
In any case, the goals of the New Math were very different from Common Core -- the New Math wanted to increase output of scientists and engineers from our schools (focusing on abstract math for talented kids), regardless of the negative impact it had on the rest of the population's education. The Common Core instead is trying to be about better math pedagogy and better understanding for kids in general. We can argue about the details of the implementation, but the aim is different.
Bottom line: the New Math was developed by experts in math not pedagogy. They weren't idiots -- they just didn't care about teaching the masses how to compute a tip when paying for dinner. They were trying to win the Cold War. And while their efforts arguably screwed up primary math education for the majority, the New Math reforms to secondary education were largely successful in improving pre-college math training in American high schools.
Midwestern American here, and lots of rural roads here are unpainted (and always have been) and, with the understanding that they are in sparsely populated areas, people do speed very fast there as well.
I would qualify this a bit further and say that drivers who are familiar with the roads and the area tend to speed a lot on rural roads, regardless of markings. Those who are less used to driving on unpainted roads or who are less familiar with the area will likely drive more slowly.
I don't know about the UK, but rural roads in the US that lack a central line generally also lack outside lines as well (without marking the barriers on the edges of the road). When you drive on a road with no paint on it, you're forced to pay more attention to the actual curves of the road, rather than just pointing your car a little to one side of that center line. That's inherently a more complex cognitive task, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it caused most people to slow down -- unless they knew the road very well.
Anecdotally, I saw this growing up in a semi-rural area where roads with central lines were initially uncommon. By the time I was older, many roads in the area had been painted with central lines. While I always remember occasional cars driving fast, I did observe a LOT more "speed demons" racing around those roads after the lines were painted. (This was also recognized by the municipality, which voted for increasing the number of posted speed limit signs, where before no signs were necessary.)
Again, that's just my own experience, but I wouldn't dismiss the psychological and cognitive effects of having a "guideline" to point your car at and how that might make you feel safer at a higher speed.
I don't know about you, but here multi-lane roads are common, where you have 2-5 lanes of traffic all going the same direction.
Removing the 'interior' lines would be suicidal.
Uh, I'm pretty sure GP was talking about what this thread is about, mostly two-lane roads (with one lane going each direction). The claim higher in the thread is that erasing a middle (white) line in such a road would make it more difficult to see where the road is. GP was proposing that lines on edges of roads could be maintained to solve that problem.
Again, I don't think there was any suggestion that we erase all lane markings from 4-lane or 6-lane highways or whatever.
"Organization do" (singular) is proper British usage and is dominant in most English speaking locales. "Organization does" (singular) is Americanized pidgin.
No, this is completely wrong, regardless of what English-speaking country you live in. First, in a case like "organization do," the implication is still plural, not singular. "Organization" is here interpreted as a collective noun, meaning that while it is singular in form, when used this way it emphasizes the plural nature of the composition of the organization. "Germany is a nation," but "Germany have won the tournament." The latter does not mean that "Germany" is plural, but rather is a collective noun standing in for "members of the German team" which is plural and take a plural verb.
Second, your use of the word pidgin is inaccurate. A pidgin language is a second language, a simplified version of one language used as a form of communication between communities which do not share the same language. Americans do NOT have a different primary language other than English. Therefore, American English by definition cannot be a "pidgin." You can claim it is a dialect, and you can object to characteristics of it, but it's not a "pidgin" language.
Third, in British English the usage of a plural verb in this case is by no means mandatory. For some types of organizations or groups of people, a plural verb is common. For others, a singular verb is more common. Some show a mixture depending on context (whether the collective nature or the individual volition of members is being invoked). Also, corpus studies have shown that the use is dependent on formality, with plural verb forms being more common in very formal language and very informal language, but less common in "everyday" polite language.
Fourth -- and perhaps most importantly -- in this specific case, your claim doesn't accord with examples used prominently in British English journalism. The Pirate Bay *IS* largely considered singular there. Numerous examples at the BBC website, for example, show that the BBC would prefer the singular "American" verb when referring to The Pirate Bay ("The Pirate Bay lets"). A few quick looks on other UK sources seems to indicate that the singular verb form is much more common.
Get some elementary knowledge, stop the uninformed insults, and lose the provincial attitude.
Maybe you could try getting some more advanced knowledge and realizing that your oversimplified statements are wrong.
TL;DR -- Your assertion about British English in general is overbroad and inaccurately phrased. While there is more usage of plural verbs with singular collective nouns outside of the U.S., that usage is not always "proper" -- it depends on the particular noun and context. And regardless, your opinion does not reflect common journalistic practice from the UK regarding the specific word "The Pirate Bay."
Investing in a diversified selection of index funds and staying the course will beat that vast majority of professional advisers.
While this is certainly true, I do think there is some use for professional advisers, especially if they participate in financial planning (as many do), rather than just managing investments. (If they only do the latter, you really have an "investment manager," rather than a financial adviser.)
Several years ago I was convinced by my spouse to go talk to one of these people. We had a recommendation from a family member who is in the financial sector. What was useful was NOT the possibility of ongoing investment advice (which, the parent said, could mostly be summed up with "diversify" and "track the average with index funds or related securities").
Instead, the utility of financial advice was the overall state of a person's financial "health" in general, and how to get things organized. Stuff like assessing whether you have an adequate liquid "emergency fund," whether you have enough insurance (and of what types), whether you are saving enough for retirement, for kids' education, etc., how to approach making major financial decisions/investments, how to diversify types of assets and accounts to maximize tax advantages, etc.
Sure, you can do all this yourself. I certainly had the ability to research all of this myself, but frankly I hadn't before I met with this adviser. Some of it I just wasn't interested in learning a lot about, some of it was stuff I hadn't really thought about yet (or considered various aspects in managing risk, etc.).
To me, once I knew all the stuff after a few meetings, I could run stuff basically myself. Other people aren't as savvy financially, or they really can't be bothered to sort it out (just like many people can't be bothered to do their own taxes) -- so maybe paying for a periodic consultation and assessment could be helpful.
The problem, from my perspective, is that "financial advisers" focus too much on investments, since their goal is often to grab as much of your assets as possible so they can extract fees for "management," etc. That's where things get stupid. If they really focused on "consultation fees" for providing more comprehensive planning, I think it would be a more legitimate business. But that's hard work. It's much easier to skim a few percent off the top of investment accounts which are "managed" (but really often just designed to track index funds).
No rights are absolute. All run up against limits.
Agreed. But generally one's "right not to be killed" is not limited except under really dire circumstances.
It's possible to believe that a fetus has a strong right to live, and the woman has a stronger right to not be pregnant under some circumstances.
[snip]
I don't hold that position, but it seems plenty consistent to me.
Well, it's only consistent because you introduced a "magical" right that achieves your desired goal. Suppose I wanted to justify the murder of a mother-in-law. Now, of course "it's possible to believe that" a mother-in-law "has a strong right to live," but perhaps it's also "possible to believe that... a woman has a stronger right not to be" a daughter-in-law "under some circumstances."
Thus, a woman has a magical justification to murder her mother-in-law, and it's "plenty consistent" because I created a new "right not to have a mother-in-law" that proves my point.
To get to the heart of the matter, your argument overlooks the entire justification for the pro-life argument in the first place, namely that the "right to live" of the fetus trumps the mother's right of choice. Supposedly (if you believe this), the "sanctity of human life" does not allow the fetus's right to be overturned.
But you're proposing a special exemption to deny a "person" (according to the pro-life side) a fundamental right to live, which comes about not because of anything the fetus did nor the mother did, but rather what a third party did. We used to have justice systems in the world that would punish sons for the crimes of their fathers, but such systems have generally been abolished in the civilized world -- however, you propose to reinstate it.
Let's put this in another way to make the supposition clear. Suppose the child in question is not a fetus but rather a 10-year-old. Suppose the father rapes the mother when the child is 10. The mother is disgusted every time she looks at her child, because it is a perpetual reminder of the evilness of the father who raped her. Should the mother be able to kill her 10-year-old because of the ongoing psychological damage inflicted upon her by being reminded in her offspring of the connection to the father?
I doubt very few people would agree to such a rationalization of murder. Yet those who declare abortion should be banned (which generally requires recognizing some sort of fundamental "right to live" of a fetus) but allow exceptions in cases like incest or murder are making a similar argument.
Either the fetus has a right to live which trumps the mother's right to choose, or the fetus is not granted that right and can be aborted on a mother's whim. The prior action of a third party (father or otherwise) should not be able to trump a person's right not to be killed. Personally, I think those who argue for such exemptions but claim to be "pro-llife" are either being disingenuous and trying to appear less extreme than they really are, or they don't REALLY believe in the assumption of the fetus's "right to live."
(P.S. Not that it should matter in evaluating my argument, but I'm NOT "pro-life.")
The trouble with cheap land is that it's a long way from where you want to be.
Exactly. In the upper 80%+ of the state of New Hampshire, things are a LOT cheaper (with a few notable exceptions of touristy towns in the middle of the state). If you're living in someplace like Nashua, you're essentially paying to live in a Boston suburb.
I was billed by Comcast for a year for a cable modem rental even though I bought my own.
HOW I DISCOVERED COMCAST CUSTOMER SERVICE WAS EVIL INCARNATE
Once upon a time (over a decade ago), I moved between states. Before leaving State 1, I called Comcast and said, "I'm moving. Cancel my service. I'm going to get Comcast in State 2. Should I return my cable modem?"
"No," said the helpful Comcast rep, "Take your modem with you."
I arrived in State 2. The tech who came to set up my "installation" (which was supposed to be free, and said so on the work order) said he'd give me a new modem that was standard in State 2. He collected my old modem, and (thankfully) gave me a receipt.
A month passes. In State 1, I am charged a $200 fee for the modem that was never returned, plus a $50 "lost equipment" fee. In State 2, I am charged a $50 installation fee, even though I was told by multiple people it was free.
I tried calling Comcast. They told me I needed to go to the local center in person and talk to someone there, since they collected my modem and set the local pricing (free install deal, etc.). I went to the local center in person, and they told me they had no power to resolve any of this -- I needed to call.
So, I called Comcast again. Again, I was told they couldn't do anything. I said I needed to speak to a supervisor. They told me that they couldn't transfer me, but they could have one call me back. I objected, but I was told, "That's the way the system works."
Three days later, on a Sunday afternoon, I was called by a Comcast "supervisor." I explained the situation. He proceeded to offer me a year-long "promotional offer" which would net me about $240 in savings. But I told him that I had been billed for $300 erroneously (including $250 for a device that I had documentation for its return), and I would not pay it.
He then told me that HE had "no power" to fix my problems, because only people in "my local market" could fix them. I asked where he was. Somewhere across the country. Okay, so could he transfer me to a supervisor in my "local market"? No -- obviously not! It was Sunday afternoon! Nobody was available in my "local market."
Okay - well, perhaps they could put another request into "the system" to have a supervisor call me back from my "local market" on a day they were available? Nope -- "I'm sorry, the system doesn't work like that."
At this point, it was beyond belief. "Wait," I said, "So, let me get this straight: You're calling me to tell me you can't fix my problem, and there's nothing you can do to put me in touch with a person at your company who could fix my problem?" Yes.
I was in the middle of a Kafka novel.
I gave up. I filed complaints with the FCC, state agencies in both states, and the BBB, sending all of them copies of my documentation. Six months later they finally had sorted it out and I didn't have to pay anything, and the BBB even got them to send me an apology letter.
Moral of the story: Don't talk to Comcast. Be sure you have written records of everything. File complaints with government agencies. Not only is it more efficient, but it also creates government records of how bad Comcast really is.
Slashdot Mirror
Or are you saying history just stopped being recorded in 1980, and we're living in the post-historic era?
suggests that disbelief does not entail lack of knowledge. Can that be?
Umm, obviously so. If, out of context, you ask the question, "Did Noah put all the animals on an ark before a great flood?" The answer can be yes, even if you don't believe that to be true. You can "know" it, you can answer the question truthfully, and yet not believe it to be true. Or, rather in a case like this, a non-believer is probably answering it in the same way that you might answer a question like "Did Romeo love Juliet?" Yes, he did, but he was a fictional character. "Truth" in this case isn't about literal truth, but rather an understanding of background information.
What this study seems to show is that people may "know" about the theory of evolution and even may believe it can happen (for elephants, perhaps), but they don't believe humans evolved from animals. Some people may think this is inconsistent, but it's just a different threshold of understanding/belief. Sort of like how one may believe slavery to be wrong but still be a racist. (This was true, for example, of many people in the Northern U.S. in the 19th century.)
Among epistemologists the near-consensus is that belief is one of the necessary ingredients of knowledge.
Huh? First off, as mentioned above, it's clear that someone can UNDERSTAND something (e.g., an argument, a work of fiction, etc.) without believing it to be literally true. One can thus answer a question without necessarily believing it to be true. I imagine some of the responses to the elephant question are like that: they don't necessarily recognize or perhaps don't even care about whether the question is concerning or conflicting with religious dogma.
Second, it's possible for people to see these things as two separate cases. The wacko creationists often talk about "microevolution" vs. "macroevolution" and such, and I could certainly see such religious people believing that animal species can change over time. Unless you're one of the "cave men used to hang out with dinosaurs" type of wacko, you probably recognize animal types change over time. And I also am familiar with religious people who believe that evolution of the universe more-or-less happened according to science today, but humans were still a "special creation" of sorts. You may not view these theories as valid, but people do believe them.
Third, people may also be confused by the question. They may not really understand "species" correctly and not recognize the evolution (as we understand it) occurs if one species changes into another. They may have interpreted the question more like dog breeding or something. (Arguably, that could be seen as an example of evolution under selective pressure too, but it's probably not the kind of thing the scientists asking the question in TFA were after.)
When you take the risks to start a company you can say what a ceo is worth.
Actually, no -- there are empirical studies looking at the effects of large CEO salaries and whether they correlate with higher company performance.
Basically, most CEOs are little better than random number generators when it comes to predicting better performance. No study has shown a significant effect based on higher CEO compensation. Estimates now are that increased CEO pay is perhaps only responsible for maybe 1% of company increases in market performance -- the other 99% is due to other company factors, random market influences, etc.
And in fact there are other studies which have shown that increased CEO pay often correlates with POOR returns for shareholders, since exorbitant pay often correlates with higher expectations, which means CEOs tend to take more risks (and thus fail more often).
So there are ways to determine empirically how much CEOs add to values of companies on average, and -- in the aggregate -- their salaries are NOT justified.
It's not "distributed", it's earned. Until you understand this, you have nothing to contribute.
Until "earning" CEO pay requires more skill than luck, I'm going to stick with the word distributed.
THIS.
There have been studies investigating whether increased executive pay correlates with better company performance. So far, there's little evidence justifying the massive CEO salaries.
CEOs are essentially random number generators with power. They are mainly hired for the ability to be decisive. Studies consistently show that if company stock value goes up under a CEO, the CEO gets the credit and is praised regardless of how the company is doing internally. If the internal accounting shows progress, the CEO is praised by the board for reform, even if the stock tanks a bit.
And other studies have often shown that there's a problematic delay effect which often occurs with corporate leaders -- if the company isn't growing fast enough, a CEO gets fired, but then there are big gains in the first year under the successor which may be due to policies put in place by the guy who was fired.
And once you get to a certain level in the corporate world, you can't do wrong anymore. Corporations want big gains -- not just moderate ones, but ones that outperform the rest of the market. But not every company can outperform the average (obviously). So corporations NECESSARILY award those who propose more risky policies which could allow performance beyond the mean.
So, that means that someone who gets far up the corporate ladder has often been quite LUCKY. Those who are lucky enough times get promoted, those who don't stay at middle-management levels. And eventually once you hit the top officer positions in the corporation, you don't even get blamed when "your luck runs out." Instead, you get to blame that on underlings, and you wait around for another place for your luck to turn and justify a new promotion.
This isn't speculation -- it happens in a lot of companies. Excessive executive pay is therefore often NOT justified. If all executives were paid a fraction of what they are today, the performance of most corporations and the economy would be essentially unchanged.
Don't get me wrong: there are talented, intelligent people among executives. But do they really add hundreds or even 1000 times (or more) what the lowest-paid workers at the company do? The empirical evidence doesn't support the claim that their skill effect is anywhere near that large.
If colleges limited themselves to football (or ice hockey for some universities) and whichever of men's or women's basketball was more popular, almost every athletics department would make money.
That assertion is questionable, when you look at the way athletic departments spend money. At most schools, revenue has gone up significantly in the past decade, at many places even doubling or more. Yet schools aren't making larger profits -- instead, they just increase spending.
However, the more popular sports subsidize the less popular sports (Track & Field, Baseball / Softball, etc.) that don't make much or any revenue and then Title IX requirements mean that they have to offer funding for women's sports which typically make even less revenue.
Again, that's undoubtedly true, but that doesn't explain how doubling income (mostly without expanding those programs that didn't make money and already existed) doesn't result in increased profits.
If you read the link I gave above, you'll realize that this isn't a "rational market." It's an "arms race." Athletic departments generally have discretion over spending their income, and if they don't spend it -- they lose it... it goes back into the general university budget. So, if they increase profits, the athletic departments have motivation to spend them immediately -- and by doing so, they can try to gain an edge over competition. Thus, coach salaries, facilities costs, etc. continue to skyrocket.
Throwing out the other sports would just mean that the athletic departments would spend more money on coaches and facilities in the remaining sports.
Coaches are going to get well paid, but some are probably worth it given how much money the football/basketball program can bring in for the athletics department.
Again, the logic is circular. Coaches can demand more salaries because athletic programs make more money. Athletic programs then try to make even more money to attract better coaches, so salaries get pushed higher. If head coach salaries were 1/10th or 1/20th what they are EVERYWHERE in the major conferences, the system would still work fine and there would still be incredibly talented coaches out there for these sports. But if salaries are higher everywhere, schools increase revenues to afford them. The coaches often aren't "bringing in" that money -- they're forcing the schools to find ways to RAISE that money.
A good amount does go into scholarships for the athletes, a few of whom may not be able to otherwise afford to go to college. Some don't make the most of that opportunity, but that's not any less true of the general student population itself.
Well, when you have things like outright academic fraud, fake "classes" designed for athletes, etc., I think you can argue that some schools are deliberately encouraging their athletes to AVOID education and focus instead on what they were brought there to do... i.e., play sports.
TL;DR -- Athletic departments generally try to spend as much as comes in, so streamlining programs to "money-making" sports likely won't change that. And it's pretty clear what the priorities are when academics conflict with "student athletes" at big sports schools.
So the scientific method works, is that what the article should tell us?
Exactly. I'm not sure what the point is here. And TFS's conclusion is just weird: "The story shows that even when Einstein's wrong, it's because he was already right the first time." Actually, if you read TFA, it has a quote from Einstein himself about how he admitted he got things wrong and sometimes his errors had been published.
The only vaguely interesting aspect to TFA is how Einstein apparently got upset that someone dared to do peer-review on his paper before simply publishing it. Granted, peer-review was not a universal standard in the 1930s (at least not peer-review by external reviewers -- review by expert editorial boards was standard long before that), but Einstein still seems to have reacted quite poorly in this case... refusing to admit he was wrong, and later finding his error and not acknowledging he could have found it had he listened to the reviewer's criticism.
The lesson here is NOT that Einstein was always right. He was clearly fallible and recognized himself to be so. On the other hand, he also seems to have a tendency (a natural human one) to refuse to acknowledge errors. That's one of the reasons peer review exists, since scientists often -- consciously or unconsciously -- refuse to see errors in their own logic. TFA's lesson actually shows us that even great scientists can be WRONG, but a proper scientific process can help to weed out those errors.
The H is indeed a mistake. The link states clearly that the word originates from the German place Neandertal.
No, it doesn't. The link states that "Tal" used to be spelled "Thal" before the modern German spelling reform, which happened roughly 100 years ago. Since the word was coined in the mid-1800s, it originally had "Thal" in German too.
This got corrupted when used in English long ago and the H was added. The result is eternal confusion about the spelling.
No -- the English used the proper German spelling at the time the word entered English. Then the Germans decided to change their spelling of the word.
Additionally, the German word (with or without "h") was ALWAYS pronounced "tal," as most cases of "th" are in German. (See English words like "Thomas" pronounced "tomas" as well.)
I can't believe you got upvoted. Means none of them, including you know that you can use keyboard shortcuts with the ribbon. Just press the damn ALT key, watch and learn.
Actually, no -- of course I know that. Stop being a jerk and assuming everyone else is an idiot.
As I said, I prefer something else. You like the ribbon. Congratulations. I said explicitly I can understand why some people like it. I find it less useful than you do. I said why, and it had nothing to do with using shortcut keys WITH the ribbon. In case you misunderstood, I wasn't talking about using shortcut keys to NAVIGATE menus -- I was talking about shortcut keys as direct commands. Obviously one can use shortcut keys to navigate the ribbon, but that's not what I was talking about.
Cheers!
Completely agree about toolbar customization. That was the first thing I'd do in older versions after install. Much more useful for users who know what they're doing and what they need.
They're just haters. No modern computer user can honestly say they'd prefer searching through dropdown menus over the ribbon that focuses on putting the most used features at the users fingertips.
*Raises hand*
I dislike the ribbon. But then I'm a keyboard shortcuts guy. I know dozens of them for MS Office, and whenever there's a feature that I use often, I look up a keyboard shortcut if possible.
Which means the ribbon is useless to me. It takes up a bunch of space with buttons I don't need, and on the rare occasions when I need a feature advanced or rare enough that I don't know a shortcut, it's often not even on a ribbon button -- I end up going through advanced feature dialogs anyway. I use a Mac at work, so luckily I still have the drop down menus, which are usually at least twice as fast as wading through a bunch of non-intuitive icons in a half-dozen ribbon tabs with 20 buttons each.
Text was invented for a reason -- it communicates quickly, clearly, and efficiently. So I find it a lot easier to navigate when I'm searching for a feature I don't know -- which is the only time my mouse generally goes up to that part of the screen.
If you actually use the ribbon for common everyday tasks, I can understand how it might be useful for you. I'm not against offering a ribbon interface, but I do think it should be one option rather than the only one. I'm not a "hater." I just work differently and I'm just glad Mac versions of Office still give the menu options.
The common ancestor we share looks nothing like either humans or great apes (speculated to look much like a Lemur).
While the common ancestor may look quite different from modern humans or modern great apes, the common ancestor of both most certainly would be classified as an ape according to evolutionary biology taxonomy.
Furthermore, lemurs split off into a separate taxonomic Order nearly 65 million years ago. Apes separated from monkeys from 25 million years ago. Great apes separated from lesser apes 15 million years ago. Estimates are that human ancestors separated from chimp ancestors only about 7 million years ago.
Bottom line -- human ancestors were "apes" and "great apes" long before they separated from other species. While evolutionary biologists debate the exact last common ancestor between humans and other species, there's little doubt that that common ancestor was very much a "great ape."
We evolved from apes. The science is settled. I think you just proved my point by quoting a fact that the science does not support. Humans did not evolve from apes or any currently living species of primate.
Humans did not evolve from modern apes. They did evolve from prehistoric great apes. While the exact common ancestor between humans and the closest other species is still under debate, evolutionary biologists firmly agree that that common ancestor was an ape -- just not a species still around today.
We are "AN APE" a particular type of APE.
Assuming there is more than one human in the world, we are "apes" not a [single] "ape."
We are not several species of APE.
Never said we were. But the entire human species includes more than one exemplar of "ape." I was using the plural in that case to refer to individuals (and because it was grammatically more convenient), not to imply that humans are more than one species. Sorry for the confusion.
Sets. Venn Diagrams. We always called it "New Math" but maybe it had some other term at that point.
Well, set theory and stuff like Venn diagrams were part of some New Math curricula beginning in the 1960s, but mostly at the primary (or maybe middle-school) level. They were intended to teach things like Boolean algebra, which would be relevant to new trends (at that time) in computer programming. Again, the emphasis was on getting students up-to-speed to participate in the Space Race, etc.
And I also should note that Venn diagrams were in fact meant to be visual aids to support the new abstract concepts (like Boolean algebra and set theoretical relationships), kind of like the visualizations you're arguing for in Common Core.
Anyhow, they certainly weren't supposed to displace algebra and geometry in high-school curricula. If your school did that, they were doing the "New Math" wrong.
Your point would be so much better expressed if you understood the difference between having a common ancestor and evolving from
Well, you're both a little wrong. Humans ARE apes. Specifically, we belong to the taxonomic classification that includes all Great Apes. Strictly speaking non-human apes and human apes both descended from apes. And even if you use the common meaning the the word "ape" to mean only non-human apes, humans still descended from apes, just not the extant species of modern non-human apes. (If GP had said humans descended from monkeys, on the other hand, you'd have a valid point.)
Or just block the ad-blocker blocker script. Just like one can do for most of these sites trying to block ad blockers.
I don't agree with this strategy. As far as I'm concerned, ad blockers are fine -- there's no moral obligation to download ads. But when a site publicly declares it won't give you content without ads and puts in place a script to deny access to people who use ad blockers, I think you should respect that. Go somewhere else. Read other stuff. It's one thing to say "I'm going to only download part of the content sent by a site" (effectively what ad blockers do). If it's a publicly accessible website, that's your choice. But it's a different thing to circumvent or disable measures that are designed to prevent your viewing -- that's stepping over a moral line and taking content that the owner says you're NOT welcome to take.
I disagree. In fact had the opposite effect: New Math as taught in the late 1970s/early 1980s was unsuccessful in teaching pre-college math.
Sorry, but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. The New Math in secondary education was developed in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, the New Math movement was largely dead.
By replacing basic Math education like algebra/geometry with the screwed up "New Math" they ruined math for those of us who actually had to take it in college for engineering. You can't learn Calculus without a solid understanding of Algebra and Geometry.
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. In the mid-1950s, high school enrollment in Algebra was down to about 25% of all high students, and enrollment in Geometry was down to less than 12% of high school students. The New Math was about encouraging students to take such courses, by combatting an anti-intellectual populism in the previous generation of educational reformers. It also encouraged clarity in concepts and algorithms in these classes which would line up better with advanced math taught in college. Also, the very idea of teaching calculus in high school was a product of the New Math reform.
New Math didn't teach what we needed to know to be successful in college math.
Without the reform of New Math curricula in the 1950s and 1960s, you may not have even had the option of taking math like geometry or algebra in high school, let alone calculus. How would missing out on such things be better preparation for college math??
I think you're focusing too much on the reforms to primary education, and you don't seem to know what secondary New Math curricular reform was about. It was mostly about emphasizing the math you think claim it was jettisoning from curricula.
I'd suggest you read about what the New Math reform actually was about. Here's a short intro to curricular reforms over the 20th century, here's a longer history of the New Math movement, and here's an intro to the sorry state of secondary math education in the U.S. around 1950 -- which definitely included little decent prep in geometry or algebra. One of the main goals of the New Math reform was to incorporate "a solid understanding of Algebra and Geometry" into the U.S. high school. At times, the reformers did go too far into abstraction, but I'm really not sure what you're talking about.
The teaching "experts" who came up with "New Math" were not seeing anyone. They were idiots and ruined math for decades.
Um, no. Well, you can argue that they "ruined" math education, but they weren't "idiots." The New Math was developed in the 1960s mostly by college professors and advanced math people in reaction to the "Space Race." The idea was to introduce mathematical abstractions (set theory, formalizations of analysis, etc.) at lower levels in education, which might be beneficial to students who were heading toward engineering and science degrees.
As you rightly point out, there were a number of problems with the execution here. First, not every middle-school student has the talent or interest in becoming an engineer or scientist, so the New Math came across as increasingly irrelevant and confusing. Second, teachers often weren't clear on the rationale for the methods either, which led to poor implementation. Third, the New Math took basic algorithms of computation (which would be useful to everyone, whether they were heading for college in science or not) and made them seem complex and arcane (e.g., doing arithmetic in other bases), thus alienating less-talented students even from basic math.
I'm not sure what you were studying in the 1980s, but that was well past the heyday of the New Math.
In any case, the goals of the New Math were very different from Common Core -- the New Math wanted to increase output of scientists and engineers from our schools (focusing on abstract math for talented kids), regardless of the negative impact it had on the rest of the population's education. The Common Core instead is trying to be about better math pedagogy and better understanding for kids in general. We can argue about the details of the implementation, but the aim is different.
Bottom line: the New Math was developed by experts in math not pedagogy. They weren't idiots -- they just didn't care about teaching the masses how to compute a tip when paying for dinner. They were trying to win the Cold War. And while their efforts arguably screwed up primary math education for the majority, the New Math reforms to secondary education were largely successful in improving pre-college math training in American high schools.
Midwestern American here, and lots of rural roads here are unpainted (and always have been) and, with the understanding that they are in sparsely populated areas, people do speed very fast there as well.
I would qualify this a bit further and say that drivers who are familiar with the roads and the area tend to speed a lot on rural roads, regardless of markings. Those who are less used to driving on unpainted roads or who are less familiar with the area will likely drive more slowly.
I don't know about the UK, but rural roads in the US that lack a central line generally also lack outside lines as well (without marking the barriers on the edges of the road). When you drive on a road with no paint on it, you're forced to pay more attention to the actual curves of the road, rather than just pointing your car a little to one side of that center line. That's inherently a more complex cognitive task, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it caused most people to slow down -- unless they knew the road very well.
Anecdotally, I saw this growing up in a semi-rural area where roads with central lines were initially uncommon. By the time I was older, many roads in the area had been painted with central lines. While I always remember occasional cars driving fast, I did observe a LOT more "speed demons" racing around those roads after the lines were painted. (This was also recognized by the municipality, which voted for increasing the number of posted speed limit signs, where before no signs were necessary.)
Again, that's just my own experience, but I wouldn't dismiss the psychological and cognitive effects of having a "guideline" to point your car at and how that might make you feel safer at a higher speed.
I don't know about you, but here multi-lane roads are common, where you have 2-5 lanes of traffic all going the same direction.
Removing the 'interior' lines would be suicidal.
Uh, I'm pretty sure GP was talking about what this thread is about, mostly two-lane roads (with one lane going each direction). The claim higher in the thread is that erasing a middle (white) line in such a road would make it more difficult to see where the road is. GP was proposing that lines on edges of roads could be maintained to solve that problem.
Again, I don't think there was any suggestion that we erase all lane markings from 4-lane or 6-lane highways or whatever.
"Organization do" (singular) is proper British usage and is dominant in most English speaking locales. "Organization does" (singular) is Americanized pidgin.
No, this is completely wrong, regardless of what English-speaking country you live in. First, in a case like "organization do," the implication is still plural, not singular. "Organization" is here interpreted as a collective noun, meaning that while it is singular in form, when used this way it emphasizes the plural nature of the composition of the organization. "Germany is a nation," but "Germany have won the tournament." The latter does not mean that "Germany" is plural, but rather is a collective noun standing in for "members of the German team" which is plural and take a plural verb.
Second, your use of the word pidgin is inaccurate. A pidgin language is a second language, a simplified version of one language used as a form of communication between communities which do not share the same language. Americans do NOT have a different primary language other than English. Therefore, American English by definition cannot be a "pidgin." You can claim it is a dialect, and you can object to characteristics of it, but it's not a "pidgin" language.
Third, in British English the usage of a plural verb in this case is by no means mandatory. For some types of organizations or groups of people, a plural verb is common. For others, a singular verb is more common. Some show a mixture depending on context (whether the collective nature or the individual volition of members is being invoked). Also, corpus studies have shown that the use is dependent on formality, with plural verb forms being more common in very formal language and very informal language, but less common in "everyday" polite language.
Fourth -- and perhaps most importantly -- in this specific case, your claim doesn't accord with examples used prominently in British English journalism. The Pirate Bay *IS* largely considered singular there. Numerous examples at the BBC website, for example, show that the BBC would prefer the singular "American" verb when referring to The Pirate Bay ("The Pirate Bay lets"). A few quick looks on other UK sources seems to indicate that the singular verb form is much more common.
Get some elementary knowledge, stop the uninformed insults, and lose the provincial attitude.
Maybe you could try getting some more advanced knowledge and realizing that your oversimplified statements are wrong.
TL;DR -- Your assertion about British English in general is overbroad and inaccurately phrased. While there is more usage of plural verbs with singular collective nouns outside of the U.S., that usage is not always "proper" -- it depends on the particular noun and context. And regardless, your opinion does not reflect common journalistic practice from the UK regarding the specific word "The Pirate Bay."
Investing in a diversified selection of index funds and staying the course will beat that vast majority of professional advisers.
While this is certainly true, I do think there is some use for professional advisers, especially if they participate in financial planning (as many do), rather than just managing investments. (If they only do the latter, you really have an "investment manager," rather than a financial adviser.)
Several years ago I was convinced by my spouse to go talk to one of these people. We had a recommendation from a family member who is in the financial sector. What was useful was NOT the possibility of ongoing investment advice (which, the parent said, could mostly be summed up with "diversify" and "track the average with index funds or related securities").
Instead, the utility of financial advice was the overall state of a person's financial "health" in general, and how to get things organized. Stuff like assessing whether you have an adequate liquid "emergency fund," whether you have enough insurance (and of what types), whether you are saving enough for retirement, for kids' education, etc., how to approach making major financial decisions/investments, how to diversify types of assets and accounts to maximize tax advantages, etc.
Sure, you can do all this yourself. I certainly had the ability to research all of this myself, but frankly I hadn't before I met with this adviser. Some of it I just wasn't interested in learning a lot about, some of it was stuff I hadn't really thought about yet (or considered various aspects in managing risk, etc.).
To me, once I knew all the stuff after a few meetings, I could run stuff basically myself. Other people aren't as savvy financially, or they really can't be bothered to sort it out (just like many people can't be bothered to do their own taxes) -- so maybe paying for a periodic consultation and assessment could be helpful.
The problem, from my perspective, is that "financial advisers" focus too much on investments, since their goal is often to grab as much of your assets as possible so they can extract fees for "management," etc. That's where things get stupid. If they really focused on "consultation fees" for providing more comprehensive planning, I think it would be a more legitimate business. But that's hard work. It's much easier to skim a few percent off the top of investment accounts which are "managed" (but really often just designed to track index funds).
No rights are absolute. All run up against limits.
Agreed. But generally one's "right not to be killed" is not limited except under really dire circumstances.
It's possible to believe that a fetus has a strong right to live, and the woman has a stronger right to not be pregnant under some circumstances.
[snip]
I don't hold that position, but it seems plenty consistent to me.
Well, it's only consistent because you introduced a "magical" right that achieves your desired goal. Suppose I wanted to justify the murder of a mother-in-law. Now, of course "it's possible to believe that" a mother-in-law "has a strong right to live," but perhaps it's also "possible to believe that... a woman has a stronger right not to be" a daughter-in-law "under some circumstances."
Thus, a woman has a magical justification to murder her mother-in-law, and it's "plenty consistent" because I created a new "right not to have a mother-in-law" that proves my point.
To get to the heart of the matter, your argument overlooks the entire justification for the pro-life argument in the first place, namely that the "right to live" of the fetus trumps the mother's right of choice. Supposedly (if you believe this), the "sanctity of human life" does not allow the fetus's right to be overturned.
But you're proposing a special exemption to deny a "person" (according to the pro-life side) a fundamental right to live, which comes about not because of anything the fetus did nor the mother did, but rather what a third party did. We used to have justice systems in the world that would punish sons for the crimes of their fathers, but such systems have generally been abolished in the civilized world -- however, you propose to reinstate it.
Let's put this in another way to make the supposition clear. Suppose the child in question is not a fetus but rather a 10-year-old. Suppose the father rapes the mother when the child is 10. The mother is disgusted every time she looks at her child, because it is a perpetual reminder of the evilness of the father who raped her. Should the mother be able to kill her 10-year-old because of the ongoing psychological damage inflicted upon her by being reminded in her offspring of the connection to the father?
I doubt very few people would agree to such a rationalization of murder. Yet those who declare abortion should be banned (which generally requires recognizing some sort of fundamental "right to live" of a fetus) but allow exceptions in cases like incest or murder are making a similar argument.
Either the fetus has a right to live which trumps the mother's right to choose, or the fetus is not granted that right and can be aborted on a mother's whim. The prior action of a third party (father or otherwise) should not be able to trump a person's right not to be killed. Personally, I think those who argue for such exemptions but claim to be "pro-llife" are either being disingenuous and trying to appear less extreme than they really are, or they don't REALLY believe in the assumption of the fetus's "right to live."
(P.S. Not that it should matter in evaluating my argument, but I'm NOT "pro-life.")
The trouble with cheap land is that it's a long way from where you want to be.
Exactly. In the upper 80%+ of the state of New Hampshire, things are a LOT cheaper (with a few notable exceptions of touristy towns in the middle of the state). If you're living in someplace like Nashua, you're essentially paying to live in a Boston suburb.
I was billed by Comcast for a year for a cable modem rental even though I bought my own.
HOW I DISCOVERED COMCAST CUSTOMER SERVICE WAS EVIL INCARNATE
Once upon a time (over a decade ago), I moved between states. Before leaving State 1, I called Comcast and said, "I'm moving. Cancel my service. I'm going to get Comcast in State 2. Should I return my cable modem?"
"No," said the helpful Comcast rep, "Take your modem with you."
I arrived in State 2. The tech who came to set up my "installation" (which was supposed to be free, and said so on the work order) said he'd give me a new modem that was standard in State 2. He collected my old modem, and (thankfully) gave me a receipt.
A month passes. In State 1, I am charged a $200 fee for the modem that was never returned, plus a $50 "lost equipment" fee. In State 2, I am charged a $50 installation fee, even though I was told by multiple people it was free.
I tried calling Comcast. They told me I needed to go to the local center in person and talk to someone there, since they collected my modem and set the local pricing (free install deal, etc.). I went to the local center in person, and they told me they had no power to resolve any of this -- I needed to call.
So, I called Comcast again. Again, I was told they couldn't do anything. I said I needed to speak to a supervisor. They told me that they couldn't transfer me, but they could have one call me back. I objected, but I was told, "That's the way the system works."
Three days later, on a Sunday afternoon, I was called by a Comcast "supervisor." I explained the situation. He proceeded to offer me a year-long "promotional offer" which would net me about $240 in savings. But I told him that I had been billed for $300 erroneously (including $250 for a device that I had documentation for its return), and I would not pay it.
He then told me that HE had "no power" to fix my problems, because only people in "my local market" could fix them. I asked where he was. Somewhere across the country. Okay, so could he transfer me to a supervisor in my "local market"? No -- obviously not! It was Sunday afternoon! Nobody was available in my "local market."
Okay - well, perhaps they could put another request into "the system" to have a supervisor call me back from my "local market" on a day they were available? Nope -- "I'm sorry, the system doesn't work like that."
At this point, it was beyond belief. "Wait," I said, "So, let me get this straight: You're calling me to tell me you can't fix my problem, and there's nothing you can do to put me in touch with a person at your company who could fix my problem?" Yes.
I was in the middle of a Kafka novel.
I gave up. I filed complaints with the FCC, state agencies in both states, and the BBB, sending all of them copies of my documentation. Six months later they finally had sorted it out and I didn't have to pay anything, and the BBB even got them to send me an apology letter.
Moral of the story: Don't talk to Comcast. Be sure you have written records of everything. File complaints with government agencies. Not only is it more efficient, but it also creates government records of how bad Comcast really is.
THE END.