...armed gunman opens fire on unarmed targets, and the logical response is to request that his targets be allowed to arm themselves to fend off future attacks of a similar nature.
For $30k/year glorified rental cops? You want armed TSA personnel? Then get real federal agents, complete with all the screening and training that involves. That's especially important when you have armed people in very crowded places - like airport security lines. One cut rate trigger happy yahoo could kill 10x as many people "defending" himself as the attacker did. BTW, if you're going to institute those standards, you'll have to pay them more than $30k/year.
Remind me again why it's practically impossible for me to purchase a handgun to defend myself in California?
Since I don't live anywhere near there, I neither know nor care about California gun laws. This is a federal issue though (what do you think TSA is a part of?), as are airline regulations. Are you suggesting that passengers be allowed to carry guns on a plane? OK Corral at 30,000 feet. I think I'll take the train.
he had an opportunity - if what he was, was a whistle-blower - to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information
Plausible deniability by Congress. "We didn't know". It's like Reagan and Iran-Contra. People said he didn't know. I figured there were two possibilities. Either he knew or he didn't, and I'm not sure which was worse.
Under the Balassa-Samuelson model, the quickest way to increase a currency's value is to ramp up export production.
That would be fine -if Germany were the only country using the Euro. That was the argument against the Euro from the beginning, and it looks like the doubters were right.
the technology to chemically separate the fission products produced in a LFTR is very expensive
Is that the process using fluorine gas inside the plant to extract various components? I thought that its workability was basically demonstrated. Why is it expensive?
The research reactor operating at LBNL in the 1960s cost hundreds of millions of dollars to cleanup
Is that significantly more than other plants of that era? Why is it more expensive - is it related to the LFTR technology?
New Zealand (my nuclear-free home country)
Baah, those sheep still glow in the dark. Sorry about all those South Pacific nuclear tests back in the day.
Fun fact: skill correlated strongly with alma mater. All of the MIT-educated developers were better than all of the non-MIT-educated developers.
Unless the correlation is 1.0, those two statements are not the same (they teach that at MIT). I agree that there is a correlation, but it's not perfect. I've worked with some excellent people from MIT and other highly rated schools, but also some doofuses. If I were hiring people straight out of school then, absent other information, I'd heavily favor the ones from the fancy schools. The more on-the-job experience someone had though, the less I'd weight that factor.
No, it's to get every student to do as well as they can. The best schools, especially in the early grades, work on that. Kids doing well don't need as much help as those who are not. However, it doesn't mean everyone has equal capability, regardless of how hard they work or how good the teaching.
We simply make it that difficult to weed students out.
I detest that approach, particularly when it involves something as meaningless and pointless as brute force memorization. If you want to weed out students, teach important topics to an advanced degree. Jumping though hoops is for seals. Your criticism has great credibility since you taught the subject.
It should be "as my two brothers who are doctors say...", otherwise you have two objects and no subject. Sorry for the pedantry, but I can't resist now that Slashdot has become a forum for demonstrating that nerds know English:)
P.S. I think you comment is very accurate, and it jibes with what I've heard from many others. It also explains why I could never be a doctor.
It's one thing to understand the quantum mechanical underpinnings (thank you Linus Pauling) and quite another for the calculations involving same to be tractable. I've always loved the idea of chem as a branch of physics, but AFAIK it's simply not tractable. I believe some work is being done on it with supercomputers, but it's far from solving everything.
Interesting - you're not the first chem major to say that here. I wasn't a chem major, and never took orgo, but in my basic chem I always found P-Chem both the easiest and most interesting. Probably belies my physics orientation. Everything else in chem, even short of orgo, always seemed like too much memorization, which I always sucked at. Probably why I liked physics, math, and engineering classes - nothing to memorize. Oddly though, I also like history, but the stuff you have to remember is easier for me because it has more context.
When the brightest student in my organic chemistry class can only get about 60% of the answers correct on the first exam, that should tell you they are teaching the subject matter poorly.
That's SOP for orgo (not 1st hand experience I admit), but why should people be able to get anything approaching a 100% on a test? Orgo or not, it means the ability to test how well a student understands the material is difficult because the detection curve is compressed towards the top. It also favors being able to regurgitate or recalculate what you've been shown, as opposed to really testing how well you know a subject. Give students problems that are so challenging that they're unlikely to get all of it, or at least unlikely to get all such questions.
It's tough for students who are used to being able to get almost all the problems. There was a prof at my alma mater that always took this approach and was very upfront about it at the beginning of the semester. He was not a sadist, or even a ridiculously hard grader, so he'd tell people not to get upset even if they thought they did poorly. Wait for the grade. Inevitably some girls would walk out crying (sorry for the stereotype, but it was true), and guys just asked directions to a train track to lie across. When they got their grades back, frequently they'd done well. It's a good approach, but you have to get used to it.
"Diversity" [is] different viewpoints and different values that will help question assumptions you take for granted
Ironically that's one of the reasons for age discrimination - the fear that old farts know too much history and have been around the block too many times to buy into the latest groupthink. Don't misunderstand me; it goes both ways. Sometimes the old farts need to be shaken up by younger people with crazy new ideas. The worst thing you can do in this industry is to have a closed mind and not want to try new things. OTOH, the old farts can tell a whippersnapper when his "new" idea has actually been tried 27 times, never worked, and most importantly, why it never worked. That's not always a death knell for a "new" idea, because sometimes the tech has changed such that it will be practical. Usually that's not the case though. At the very least, it challenges the whippersnapper to explain why it will work this time.
Give them a yardstick and they think they can measure anything.
They are a bit overconfident about that, aren't they?
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Said by a fellow named A. Einstein, who was reputed to have some understanding of quantitative thinking, but who probably wouldn't be hireable in the 21st century.
It's the invention of three Googlers, including an HR VP who was quoted recently in an article that questioned the wisdom of certain Google hiring practices said to encourage 'echo chamber' hiring.
Oh the irony. First he says it's bullshit, and then he goes in on a patent for it. I'll give the guy some respect if the only reason he did it is for whatever reward Google gives for patents. As my old mentor used to say, it's ok to be a whore, just don't be a cheap whore.
Seriously, the worst thing about this type of approach is that it's bias is self-reinforcing. Hire people on this basis, and surprise, surprise, surprise, your top performers will be people that passed this test. It'll also be gamed to hell. I might be able to see something like this for LinkedIn, so long as it's only used as a small part of evaluation, but social media? As has been pointed out, most of the best people I know don't use social media. Of those that do, they're more likely to use it for family and friends than colleagues. Heck, I'd be tempted to consider an absence of social media presence as a positive thing. At a place like Google, at least that would give you insight into why so many smart people avoid social media.
Diversity be damned - we're so narcissistic that we want an army of clones. "Good fit in corporate culture" is often a euphemism for groupthink.
Slashdot Mirror
...armed gunman opens fire on unarmed targets, and the logical response is to request that his targets be allowed to arm themselves to fend off future attacks of a similar nature.
For $30k/year glorified rental cops? You want armed TSA personnel? Then get real federal agents, complete with all the screening and training that involves. That's especially important when you have armed people in very crowded places - like airport security lines. One cut rate trigger happy yahoo could kill 10x as many people "defending" himself as the attacker did. BTW, if you're going to institute those standards, you'll have to pay them more than $30k/year.
Remind me again why it's practically impossible for me to purchase a handgun to defend myself in California?
Since I don't live anywhere near there, I neither know nor care about California gun laws. This is a federal issue though (what do you think TSA is a part of?), as are airline regulations. Are you suggesting that passengers be allowed to carry guns on a plane? OK Corral at 30,000 feet. I think I'll take the train.
Why is this rated funny? Insightful would be more like it.
If only that were true.
1-800-JAIL4ME
he had an opportunity - if what he was, was a whistle-blower - to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information
Plausible deniability by Congress. "We didn't know". It's like Reagan and Iran-Contra. People said he didn't know. I figured there were two possibilities. Either he knew or he didn't, and I'm not sure which was worse.
Under the Balassa-Samuelson model, the quickest way to increase a currency's value is to ramp up export production.
That would be fine -if Germany were the only country using the Euro. That was the argument against the Euro from the beginning, and it looks like the doubters were right.
the technology to chemically separate the fission products produced in a LFTR is very expensive
Is that the process using fluorine gas inside the plant to extract various components? I thought that its workability was basically demonstrated. Why is it expensive?
The research reactor operating at LBNL in the 1960s cost hundreds of millions of dollars to cleanup
Is that significantly more than other plants of that era? Why is it more expensive - is it related to the LFTR technology?
New Zealand (my nuclear-free home country)
Baah, those sheep still glow in the dark. Sorry about all those South Pacific nuclear tests back in the day.
A typo, I swear! Whole different thing! Dammit, that's the problem w/ playing pedant.
Fun fact: skill correlated strongly with alma mater. All of the MIT-educated developers were better than all of the non-MIT-educated developers.
Unless the correlation is 1.0, those two statements are not the same (they teach that at MIT). I agree that there is a correlation, but it's not perfect. I've worked with some excellent people from MIT and other highly rated schools, but also some doofuses. If I were hiring people straight out of school then, absent other information, I'd heavily favor the ones from the fancy schools. The more on-the-job experience someone had though, the less I'd weight that factor.
Einstein had neither a college diploma or university degree
Actually he had a degree from Zurich Polytechnic, but no doctorate (except for honorary ones later in life).
Thanks for the up mod, but it's really the GP who deserves it.
An indecisive doctor is a shitty doctor.
But one who thinks they know everything and always make the right decisions is even worse. Confidence and humility are not mutually exclusive.
No, it's to get every student to do as well as they can. The best schools, especially in the early grades, work on that. Kids doing well don't need as much help as those who are not. However, it doesn't mean everyone has equal capability, regardless of how hard they work or how good the teaching.
We simply make it that difficult to weed students out.
I detest that approach, particularly when it involves something as meaningless and pointless as brute force memorization. If you want to weed out students, teach important topics to an advanced degree. Jumping though hoops is for seals. Your criticism has great credibility since you taught the subject.
Just the fact that they call it "orgo" tells me it's weird. Where does the second O come from?
Where does the 'o' in "won't" come from?
As my two brothers whom are doctors say ...
It should be "as my two brothers who are doctors say ...", otherwise you have two objects and no subject. Sorry for the pedantry, but I can't resist now that Slashdot has become a forum for demonstrating that nerds know English :)
P.S. I think you comment is very accurate, and it jibes with what I've heard from many others. It also explains why I could never be a doctor.
It's one thing to understand the quantum mechanical underpinnings (thank you Linus Pauling) and quite another for the calculations involving same to be tractable. I've always loved the idea of chem as a branch of physics, but AFAIK it's simply not tractable. I believe some work is being done on it with supercomputers, but it's far from solving everything.
Interesting - you're not the first chem major to say that here. I wasn't a chem major, and never took orgo, but in my basic chem I always found P-Chem both the easiest and most interesting. Probably belies my physics orientation. Everything else in chem, even short of orgo, always seemed like too much memorization, which I always sucked at. Probably why I liked physics, math, and engineering classes - nothing to memorize. Oddly though, I also like history, but the stuff you have to remember is easier for me because it has more context.
When the brightest student in my organic chemistry class can only get about 60% of the answers correct on the first exam, that should tell you they are teaching the subject matter poorly.
That's SOP for orgo (not 1st hand experience I admit), but why should people be able to get anything approaching a 100% on a test? Orgo or not, it means the ability to test how well a student understands the material is difficult because the detection curve is compressed towards the top. It also favors being able to regurgitate or recalculate what you've been shown, as opposed to really testing how well you know a subject. Give students problems that are so challenging that they're unlikely to get all of it, or at least unlikely to get all such questions.
It's tough for students who are used to being able to get almost all the problems. There was a prof at my alma mater that always took this approach and was very upfront about it at the beginning of the semester. He was not a sadist, or even a ridiculously hard grader, so he'd tell people not to get upset even if they thought they did poorly. Wait for the grade. Inevitably some girls would walk out crying (sorry for the stereotype, but it was true), and guys just asked directions to a train track to lie across. When they got their grades back, frequently they'd done well. It's a good approach, but you have to get used to it.
"Diversity" [is] different viewpoints and different values that will help question assumptions you take for granted
Ironically that's one of the reasons for age discrimination - the fear that old farts know too much history and have been around the block too many times to buy into the latest groupthink. Don't misunderstand me; it goes both ways. Sometimes the old farts need to be shaken up by younger people with crazy new ideas. The worst thing you can do in this industry is to have a closed mind and not want to try new things. OTOH, the old farts can tell a whippersnapper when his "new" idea has actually been tried 27 times, never worked, and most importantly, why it never worked. That's not always a death knell for a "new" idea, because sometimes the tech has changed such that it will be practical. Usually that's not the case though. At the very least, it challenges the whippersnapper to explain why it will work this time.
Give them a yardstick and they think they can measure anything.
They are a bit overconfident about that, aren't they?
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Said by a fellow named A. Einstein, who was reputed to have some understanding of quantitative thinking, but who probably wouldn't be hireable in the 21st century.
It's the invention of three Googlers, including an HR VP who was quoted recently in an article that questioned the wisdom of certain Google hiring practices said to encourage 'echo chamber' hiring.
Oh the irony. First he says it's bullshit, and then he goes in on a patent for it. I'll give the guy some respect if the only reason he did it is for whatever reward Google gives for patents. As my old mentor used to say, it's ok to be a whore, just don't be a cheap whore.
Seriously, the worst thing about this type of approach is that it's bias is self-reinforcing. Hire people on this basis, and surprise, surprise, surprise, your top performers will be people that passed this test. It'll also be gamed to hell. I might be able to see something like this for LinkedIn, so long as it's only used as a small part of evaluation, but social media? As has been pointed out, most of the best people I know don't use social media. Of those that do, they're more likely to use it for family and friends than colleagues. Heck, I'd be tempted to consider an absence of social media presence as a positive thing. At a place like Google, at least that would give you insight into why so many smart people avoid social media.
Diversity be damned - we're so narcissistic that we want an army of clones. "Good fit in corporate culture" is often a euphemism for groupthink.
The clearest result of risk management is that you stop taking risks
Mark Twain has been reincarnated in the 21st century. Seriously, that's the best damn description of risk management I've ever heard.
P.S. Not being a credit stealer, I'll remember to attribute it Anonymous Coward. Is that a pseudonym?
We all knew our shit stank long before this ... the US is also taking the lead. Most of this stuff originates from the US, but it infects everyone.
So your shit stinks, but it's still the fault of the US? Maybe you should tell your PM that Sweden is a sovereign country.
GP here. I misread the GGP - my bad. But did it really need 6 posts correcting it?