>>Take CES for instance. I wouldn't take my 15 year old daughter to CES because it is a TRADE EVENT, mostly for corporate buyers and press. No 15 year old is going to be interested in that.
Ok, I have a new quest now. Thanks!
And yeah, I'd be much more worried about my daughter playing CoD online or reading the WoW forums than taking her to a show with booth babes. Hell, my wife and I go to Comicon every year, there's a lot more weird stuff there than at E3.
>>They can't guarantee that person A is race X - by definition.
Sure. But when they *can* discriminate, with high accuracy, between two groups, then the groups are distinct, and labels between them are meaningful. This is how science and statistics works.
>>And it's there that this idea of genetic race identification falls apart. The racial identity is a social construct, and to associate it with genetic markers makes it a counterproductive undertaking.
You're having a typical politically correct reaction to the (horrifying!) notion that race might actually mean something. Yes, it's a social construct. 100 years ago, Jewish people wouldn't be considered "white". They are today.
If it helps you get around your PC mind block, replace all the racial labels "White", "Non-White Hispanic", "Black", etc. with "X", "Y", "Z", and so forth. If you can develop a statistical test that discriminates between them with a high degree of accuracy, then the labels are meaningful. If you can't then the groups are statistically identical, and the different labels are meaningless.
>>The only reason you can identify race by a set of genetic markers as you describe, is because you define that set of genetic markers as identifying a race.
I'm pretty sure that we were giving people racial names long before we had genetic testing.
The interesting thing is that these arbitrary classifications can be scientifically discriminated against.
>>There is only one genetic race of humans.
You know as well as me that the common usage of "race" when referring to humans is different from the scientific definition. You sound like Stallman trying still, after all these years, to redefine words in common usage.
>>It cannot be defined scientifically, only politically, by arbitrarily choosing a set of markers.
Learn stats, please. If you can discriminate between two populations, then the two populations are distinct, and the labels are meaningful. I can create a test that can discriminate between "tall" and "short" people, or "fat" and "short" people. It doesn't matter what the labels mean, exactly, but if I can create a classifier that operates with a decent accuracy, then the labels show a meaningful difference. Note that I'm using a very unobjectional example here - the only reason people like you are objecting to the racial labels is because it's not politically correct for them to actually have meaning.
>>In another post I saw you mention the fact that the sickle cell disease points to African descent. That is an excellent example of the error in your thinking
I said it was correlated. And this is why you don't just check one marker, but multiple markers in your statistical testing.
Do yourself a favor - replace the word "race" with "national origin". I think you'll find that most of your objections fall away once you get out from under your kneejerk reaction to a loaded word.
>>Genetic subgroups, OK--although based on probability, yes? But does that make a "race"? Are (Ashkenazi) Jews a "race"? Are "several Asian groups" a "race"? Better to use less-charged language, don't you think?
Being afraid of language never benefited anyone.
As I said, race is a socially constructed phenomenon that *also* has enough statistical differences in the people given those labels for science to discriminate between them.
I just hate it when otherwise scientifically-minded people become complete dimwits any time a politically correct urban legend turns out not to be true.
Given this was taking place in Hungary, we can use some common sense and assume they are testing to see if the guy's DNA matched markers taken from Ashkenazi Jews.
>>the association is sufficiently weak to be diagnostically useless
No, it's not. That's the point. Statistical methods have enough power to determine what race a person is with, IIRC, around 13 markers checked.
If you can discriminate between two groups using stats, that means that the two groups are statistically distinct, tautologically speaking.
>>Furthermore, the very notion of "racial fragility" (which for some reason gets called "racial purity") is enormously stupid. Racial fragilists claim that if they have just one ancestor who happens to belong to a particular socially constructed cultural group then their own racial identity is completely destroyed (ie is fragile). Since racial identity is purely a social construct that happens to be weakly associated with minor genetic variations, this is clearly idiotic.
I agree it's all nonsense - it's normally called miscegenation here in the US.
As I said in my post, it is possible for racism to be nonsense while still acknowledging that science can genetically tell the socially-constructed races apart.
It's the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might make you feel.
In cases like the Hemmings family finding out they're related to ole' Tom Jefferson, it certainly does matter, as it sheds light on an aspect of history that is traditionally not recorded and/or talked about by historians.
>>Adds anonyo: "The test is of-course nonsense, and notions of 'racial purity' have long been discredited."
These are two different claims. One is that the test is nonsense, the other is that racial purity has long been discredited.
It's quite possible for both the genetic test to be valid, and to not *care* about racial purity.
While notions of race are tied up in all sorts of political correct nonsense and/or racist stereotyping, the simple fact of the matter is that there is a certain nexus of genes that are associated with what we commonly call race, and no amount of politically correct handwaving will make the science go away. Things like sickle cell anemia are associated with people of African descent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#Genetics), as is Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_genetics_of_Jewish_people), high rates of adult lactase enzymes in people of Northern European descent, low rates of alcohol dehydrogenase in several Asian groups, and so forth.
Long story short, while the concept of race is socially constructed (what is considered "white" has changed significantly over the last 100 years), the labels that we do use for race can be backed up by genetic testing (by looking for clusters of genes associated with a race), and so tests like this *are* scientifically valid, even though ethically suspicious.
Sure, you need to double check that your TV won't overscan on HDMI, but neither of my TVs do. You can pick up a no-name (Insignia) 32" 1080p TV from Best Buy for $229 that has PC Mode on HDMI.
They are topics that interest liberals more than conservatives. Air pollution should be a very obvious example of this, that you should be able to agree with me on. Certainly I think you should be able to concur with the statement that liberals worry about air pollution more than conservatives.
>a) Computer monitors tend to be much sharper than TV displays. Fuzzy displays don't work for computing
HDMI TVs can be just as crisp as monitors.
>TV sets are still being manufactured with overscan
Sure, and if you're stuck in the 1980s, you'd be in trouble.
Fortunately, you can buy many (most?) TVs with 1:1 pixel mapping these days. Sometimes you'll see it described as computer mode, or something like that.
I too look for laptops with large keyboards on them. I tend to buy massively heavy desktop replacement laptops with a 45 minute battery life, so maybe my experience is different from yours, but I can find laptops with reasonably decent keyboards.
I'm not quite as fast on them as I am on my desktop, but I'm approximately 5x faster typing on my laptop than I am on my tablet's touchscreen, and about 2x as fast as when I use my tablet's docking keyboard (which is also too small).
As far as displays go, why are you adverse to buying TVs? TVs are much cheaper than comparable computer monitors, and if you do your research. For example, a 32" monitor will run you between $700-$900, but you can get a very nice LED TV you can use as a monitor for half that.
It's not especially liberal. I'd say it was more right-wing than CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS, and certainly left-wing of Fox.
That said, their choice of topics show a bit of a liberal bias. Looking at today's stories: 1. Air Pollution in America 2. "An NPR and ProPublica investigation has uncovered the military's failure to treat thousands." 3. Native American foster care 4. "Two-thirds of the people stopped at the Mall of America were minorities, activity reports show." 5. Mine safety 6. "Doctors Often Receive Payments From Drug Companies" 7. "NPR and the Center for Public Integrity examine colleges' failure to protect women from campus rape."
I've been using tablets for a couple years now, and they're basically good at doing light web browsing and emailing, but for anything long, I still wait to go back to my desktop to do it. Even simple things like copying and pasting are sort of a pain in the ass on tablets (long press, move the edges around, long press again). It's like we're back in the 1980s in the tablet world.
>Witness people - not even only lower class uneducated peasants but middle class supposedly educated people - gladly boasting of having 5 or more kids even today
If it weren't for immigration, most first-world countries would be in a population decline. So these people are doing their best to help us all out.
If you made $100k in SF and paid $12k per year in living expenses, that leaves $88k for other things.
If you now make $50k in idaho and pay $3.6k per year in living expenses, that leaves only $46.4k for other things.
Idaho might be a great place to retire, but if you're still working, I think you were better off in San Francisco.
You forgot taxes. Our tax system is designed to allow people enough money to pay for living expenses, and then squeeze them for every drop they have after that. The problem is that the tax regime is based on gross pay, but in SF, your gross and net can be radically different, and the system fucks you.
Using the math from the GP (8x greater living expenses in SF and 2x greater income in SF), this is what the numbers actually look like: SF: $100k income = $66k in take-home pay after federal and state taxes (using a tax calculator here). $66k - $48k in living expenses = $18k/year in spending money. Idaho: $50k income = $37k in take home pay after federal and state taxes. $37k - $6k in living expenses = $31k/year in spending money.
So moving to Idaho would increase his free spending money significantly.
>So, I agree the person who moved to Idaho would have been better off financially in SF.
You forget taxes.
Our federal taxes are written for folks in Idaho, which assume a certain, flat amount of money is enough to live on. They absolutely fuck over people who live in SF where rents are astronomical.
Slashdot Mirror
>>I took a class in Mandarin, and was sorely disappointed to learn that KFC is not actually called the "House of the Ancient and Inscrutable Colonel".
My wife is Chinese, and is also a Neal Stephenson fan, so she calls it that every once in a while.
So be happy. There's at least one Chinese person out there using that phrase. =)
>I have always felt that a Snow Crash motion picture would have to me animated. It's too cartoonish to be live action.
It was written with a graphic novel in mind... that's one of the reasons why the visual imagery in the novel is so powerful.
>>Take CES for instance. I wouldn't take my 15 year old daughter to CES because it is a TRADE EVENT, mostly for corporate buyers and press. No 15 year old is going to be interested in that.
Ok, I have a new quest now. Thanks!
And yeah, I'd be much more worried about my daughter playing CoD online or reading the WoW forums than taking her to a show with booth babes. Hell, my wife and I go to Comicon every year, there's a lot more weird stuff there than at E3.
>>And D3 is very, very boring. No now creativity, boring story full of holes.
Haha, oh, Geekoid. Always telling these crazy stories! Go eat your applesauce.
-Leah
>>Are you under the impression that 300, 200 and 100 years ago marriages were about romantic love?
In what country?
America has never had arraigned marriages. Read John Adams diary for amusing stories of his socially awkward flailing at women.
In countries like Japan, you can still get an arraigned marriage, more or less, if you want one.
>>The Hemmings family is DEFINITELY talked about by historians.
Today.
That's why I said "traditionally". Try finding Sally Hemmings in a textbook published in the 1950s.
>>They can't guarantee that person A is race X - by definition.
Sure. But when they *can* discriminate, with high accuracy, between two groups, then the groups are distinct, and labels between them are meaningful. This is how science and statistics works.
>>And it's there that this idea of genetic race identification falls apart. The racial identity is a social construct, and to associate it with genetic markers makes it a counterproductive undertaking.
You're having a typical politically correct reaction to the (horrifying!) notion that race might actually mean something. Yes, it's a social construct. 100 years ago, Jewish people wouldn't be considered "white". They are today.
If it helps you get around your PC mind block, replace all the racial labels "White", "Non-White Hispanic", "Black", etc. with "X", "Y", "Z", and so forth. If you can develop a statistical test that discriminates between them with a high degree of accuracy, then the labels are meaningful. If you can't then the groups are statistically identical, and the different labels are meaningless.
>>The only reason you can identify race by a set of genetic markers as you describe, is because you define that set of genetic markers as identifying a race.
I'm pretty sure that we were giving people racial names long before we had genetic testing.
The interesting thing is that these arbitrary classifications can be scientifically discriminated against.
>>There is only one genetic race of humans.
You know as well as me that the common usage of "race" when referring to humans is different from the scientific definition. You sound like Stallman trying still, after all these years, to redefine words in common usage.
>>It cannot be defined scientifically, only politically, by arbitrarily choosing a set of markers.
Learn stats, please. If you can discriminate between two populations, then the two populations are distinct, and the labels are meaningful. I can create a test that can discriminate between "tall" and "short" people, or "fat" and "short" people. It doesn't matter what the labels mean, exactly, but if I can create a classifier that operates with a decent accuracy, then the labels show a meaningful difference. Note that I'm using a very unobjectional example here - the only reason people like you are objecting to the racial labels is because it's not politically correct for them to actually have meaning.
>>In another post I saw you mention the fact that the sickle cell disease points to African descent. That is an excellent example of the error in your thinking
I said it was correlated. And this is why you don't just check one marker, but multiple markers in your statistical testing.
Do yourself a favor - replace the word "race" with "national origin". I think you'll find that most of your objections fall away once you get out from under your kneejerk reaction to a loaded word.
>>Genetic subgroups, OK--although based on probability, yes? But does that make a "race"? Are (Ashkenazi) Jews a "race"? Are "several Asian groups" a "race"? Better to use less-charged language, don't you think?
Being afraid of language never benefited anyone.
As I said, race is a socially constructed phenomenon that *also* has enough statistical differences in the people given those labels for science to discriminate between them.
I just hate it when otherwise scientifically-minded people become complete dimwits any time a politically correct urban legend turns out not to be true.
Given this was taking place in Hungary, we can use some common sense and assume they are testing to see if the guy's DNA matched markers taken from Ashkenazi Jews.
>>the association is sufficiently weak to be diagnostically useless
No, it's not. That's the point. Statistical methods have enough power to determine what race a person is with, IIRC, around 13 markers checked.
If you can discriminate between two groups using stats, that means that the two groups are statistically distinct, tautologically speaking.
>>Furthermore, the very notion of "racial fragility" (which for some reason gets called "racial purity") is enormously stupid. Racial fragilists claim that if they have just one ancestor who happens to belong to a particular socially constructed cultural group then their own racial identity is completely destroyed (ie is fragile). Since racial identity is purely a social construct that happens to be weakly associated with minor genetic variations, this is clearly idiotic.
I agree it's all nonsense - it's normally called miscegenation here in the US.
As I said in my post, it is possible for racism to be nonsense while still acknowledging that science can genetically tell the socially-constructed races apart.
It's the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might make you feel.
In cases like the Hemmings family finding out they're related to ole' Tom Jefferson, it certainly does matter, as it sheds light on an aspect of history that is traditionally not recorded and/or talked about by historians.
>>Adds anonyo: "The test is of-course nonsense, and notions of 'racial purity' have long been discredited."
These are two different claims. One is that the test is nonsense, the other is that racial purity has long been discredited.
It's quite possible for both the genetic test to be valid, and to not *care* about racial purity.
While notions of race are tied up in all sorts of political correct nonsense and/or racist stereotyping, the simple fact of the matter is that there is a certain nexus of genes that are associated with what we commonly call race, and no amount of politically correct handwaving will make the science go away. Things like sickle cell anemia are associated with people of African descent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#Genetics), as is Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_genetics_of_Jewish_people), high rates of adult lactase enzymes in people of Northern European descent, low rates of alcohol dehydrogenase in several Asian groups, and so forth.
Long story short, while the concept of race is socially constructed (what is considered "white" has changed significantly over the last 100 years), the labels that we do use for race can be backed up by genetic testing (by looking for clusters of genes associated with a race), and so tests like this *are* scientifically valid, even though ethically suspicious.
I have unique passwords for every serious site that I use (banking, credit cards, etc.)
I use the same throwaway password for websites that I don't give a rat's ass about.
Worst case scenario is that someone impersonates me on Slashdot.
32" 1080p TV that has PC mode on HDMI: $229. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insignia%26%23153%3B+-+32%26%2334%3B+Class+/+LCD+/+1080p+/+60Hz+/+HDTV/4550185.p?id=1218483794718&skuId=4550185&st=insignia%2032%22&cp=1&lp=1
On Newegg, both 32" monitors are $700+, and are lower resolution (1366 x 768).
Sure, you need to double check that your TV won't overscan on HDMI, but neither of my TVs do. You can pick up a no-name (Insignia) 32" 1080p TV from Best Buy for $229 that has PC Mode on HDMI.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insignia%26%23153%3B+-+32%26%2334%3B+Class+/+LCD+/+1080p+/+60Hz+/+HDTV/4550185.p?id=1218483794718&skuId=4550185&st=insignia%2032%22&cp=1&lp=1
They are topics that interest liberals more than conservatives. Air pollution should be a very obvious example of this, that you should be able to agree with me on. Certainly I think you should be able to concur with the statement that liberals worry about air pollution more than conservatives.
So you buy a small 1080p TV, then.
As I said, if you do some legwork, you can save yourself hundreds of dollars for a TV that can look better than a normal monitor.
>a) Computer monitors tend to be much sharper than TV displays. Fuzzy displays don't work for computing
HDMI TVs can be just as crisp as monitors.
>TV sets are still being manufactured with overscan
Sure, and if you're stuck in the 1980s, you'd be in trouble.
Fortunately, you can buy many (most?) TVs with 1:1 pixel mapping these days. Sometimes you'll see it described as computer mode, or something like that.
I too look for laptops with large keyboards on them. I tend to buy massively heavy desktop replacement laptops with a 45 minute battery life, so maybe my experience is different from yours, but I can find laptops with reasonably decent keyboards.
I'm not quite as fast on them as I am on my desktop, but I'm approximately 5x faster typing on my laptop than I am on my tablet's touchscreen, and about 2x as fast as when I use my tablet's docking keyboard (which is also too small).
As far as displays go, why are you adverse to buying TVs? TVs are much cheaper than comparable computer monitors, and if you do your research. For example, a 32" monitor will run you between $700-$900, but you can get a very nice LED TV you can use as a monitor for half that.
>>NPR - "Liberal" indeed.
It's not especially liberal. I'd say it was more right-wing than CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS, and certainly left-wing of Fox.
That said, their choice of topics show a bit of a liberal bias. Looking at today's stories:
1. Air Pollution in America
2. "An NPR and ProPublica investigation has uncovered the military's failure to treat thousands."
3. Native American foster care
4. "Two-thirds of the people stopped at the Mall of America were minorities, activity reports show."
5. Mine safety
6. "Doctors Often Receive Payments From Drug Companies"
7. "NPR and the Center for Public Integrity examine colleges' failure to protect women from campus rape."
And so forth.
I've been using tablets for a couple years now, and they're basically good at doing light web browsing and emailing, but for anything long, I still wait to go back to my desktop to do it. Even simple things like copying and pasting are sort of a pain in the ass on tablets (long press, move the edges around, long press again). It's like we're back in the 1980s in the tablet world.
>Witness people - not even only lower class uneducated peasants but middle class supposedly educated people - gladly boasting of having 5 or more kids even today
If it weren't for immigration, most first-world countries would be in a population decline. So these people are doing their best to help us all out.
You forgot taxes. Our tax system is designed to allow people enough money to pay for living expenses, and then squeeze them for every drop they have after that. The problem is that the tax regime is based on gross pay, but in SF, your gross and net can be radically different, and the system fucks you.
Using the math from the GP (8x greater living expenses in SF and 2x greater income in SF), this is what the numbers actually look like:
SF: $100k income = $66k in take-home pay after federal and state taxes (using a tax calculator here). $66k - $48k in living expenses = $18k/year in spending money.
Idaho: $50k income = $37k in take home pay after federal and state taxes. $37k - $6k in living expenses = $31k/year in spending money.
So moving to Idaho would increase his free spending money significantly.
>So, I agree the person who moved to Idaho would have been better off financially in SF.
You forget taxes.
Our federal taxes are written for folks in Idaho, which assume a certain, flat amount of money is enough to live on. They absolutely fuck over people who live in SF where rents are astronomical.