That's a terrible idea. How about we take them to a conference center, and zap them with X-ray machines, using energy equivalent to the energy contained in 150,000 lbs of JetA?
Pretty soon, we're going to have a repeat of the fall of the Roman Empire, where specialization of labor goes right out the window because no one sees any real value to specializing, and pretty soon no one remembers how to do anything terribly complex and needing of a lot of domain knowledge. In the Roman Empire, everyone gave up on their specialized careers, moved out of the cities and went to work as farm hands for feudal lords, because it was better than staying in the cities and starving because their vaunted specialized careers just didn't pay any more.
I went to both a lesser state school (first two years), and a top-tier state tech school (transferred). I didn't see much difference between the education: the overall program seemed to be a little better set up at the top-tier school, but not dramatically so; the other school had some good courses, but they seemed rather uncoordinated with each other. The lower-tier state school definitely had a more hands-on approach, with us having to do our own soldering in the sophomore year there, whereas at the top-tier school I didn't see that until an optional radio class in the senior year. But the lower-tier school also wasted our time with a materials science course that was all about steel; for EE students, this wasn't very helpful, unlike the device physics course I had to take at the top-tier school where we learned about semiconductor fabrication.
However, the BIG difference I saw between the two schools was hiring: I tried to get a co-op job while at the lower-tier school, and no companies would touch me, even though I had a 4.0 GPA and was summa cum laude. I transferred to the top-tier school, had a lower GPA (it was a little tough transitioning and my grades suffered a lot), and got a co-op job after only one semester. Getting hired for a real job was also a lot easier with the top-tier school degree on my resume.
While still at the lower-tier school, I even took a trip to an Intel location (as I really wanted to work there at the time) as I happened to be in the area visiting some family. The HR guy was very nice and helpful, gave me a t-shirt, but showed me their official policy document that showed the tiers of schools they hired from, and my school wasn't on the list, and that was why they wouldn't bother to look at me for a co-op job. (Getting a co-op job was pretty important for me BTW; my family didn't have that much money so the co-op job I got was very instrumental in being able to pay for college, particularly at the more expensive state tech school I transferred to.)
So no, those cheaper schools don't always (or maybe even usually) provide worse educations than the top-tier schools, however they absolutely do hold you back from the better jobs, at least for the first 5 years or so.
Everyone knows that MacGuyver and Star Trek don't resemble reality in any way, and that real engineers toil away in horrible cubicles all day long doing thankless work that usually means nothing in the great scheme of things.
There's even a movie that accurately depicts engineering careers: Office Space.
The whole thing is completely idiotic (esp. that bit about the fashionable clothes; how disgustingly sexist).
If they want to attract more people to STEM careers, the answer is simple: pay more money, and do something about the cost of education which has been skyrocketing in the last couple decades.
It costs a fortune to get a good college degree in science or engineering or math. The careers just aren't there for science and math; at best you'll get pay equivalent to a janitor. For engineers, the pay is decent, but maxes out in 10-15 years of work and after that you're in danger because employers think you're not going to be as proficient with new technology as younger applicants. Worse, you can't ever get a decent raise at one company, so you have to quit and find a job at another company if you want a decent raise.
A bunch of bullshit programs to encourage more people to get into STEM isn't going to fix these problems.
Exactly. Similarly, we need to have special plane excursions for Congresspeople, with as many Congresspeople loaded into a 747 as they can fit. Then maybe that plane will have an unfortunate "accident"....
A crash of a plane full of CEOs and banksters wouldn't be a loss at all, it'd be a net gain to humanity.
You've got to be kidding. Japan's been struggling with trying to make useful humanoid robots for over a decade now, and they still haven't gotten very far. There's a huge difference between making a robot that can clean a toilet and do other odd jobs, and making a cruise missile. Cruise missiles don't have to move much: they have a rocket motor for propulsion, and some movable fins. They have fairly sophisticated computers inside to guide them to their target using GPS and some image processing, but the controls are easy: up/down/left/right. All they have to do is guide themselves to a target and collide with it.
A general houseworker robot has to move in far more complex ways than that. Just look at the range of motion possible with a human arm and torso. This is why humanoid robots haven't gone far: it's too complex a problem for our current engineering. We have a hard enough time just making prosthetic legs for people, and at least there part of the control system is already done for you (the human brain); making robots that can walk around and use tools like people is not within our grasp yet. Of course, we could just design a toiled that self-cleans, but such a thing would probably be horrendously expensive (or else someone would have done it by now, especially the Japanese; they love fancy toilets: go look at Toto toilets for example. Heated seats, built-in bidets, remote controls, etc. They also have a serious lack of cheap labor in their country for domestic help.), and doesn't solve all the other problems involved in maintaining a house or office: vacuuming, dusting, taking out the trash, etc.
Huh? The Chippendales are mostly seen by men? I wouldn't know from personal experience, but that's contrary to what I've been told by women. In fact, it was my own sister who once observed (I believe from her own observations) that men who go to strip clubs are usually fairly quiet, just sitting and watching the girls while sipping a mug of beer, whereas women at a Chippendales show are extremely loud and rowdy. Again, this is just something my sister told me years ago, it's not like I'd ever go to a Chippendales show.
Technically, I think you're wrong: Superman Returns wasn't really a remake, it was a sequel: it was a sequel to Donner's movies. Remember, one huge plot point was that Superman had gone away for many years, and was now back, and Lois in that time had had his kid. It had different actors than Donner's movies (Routh and Spacey instead of Reeve and Hackman), but that's not usual: Star Trek III stuck a totally different-looking actress in Kirstie Alley's place for Saavik, and no one would say that wasn't a sequel. SR was even extremely vague on when it happened, and looked like it could have taken place in the late 80s or so (there was no one running around with iPhones and bluetooth headsets and the like).
False equivalence. There's no reason the homeowner needs to hire an archaeologist and pay all these costs for excavation, except that the government requires this for some odd reason. The homeowner should have the right to simply bury the body, or even sell the bones if they want to; they don't because that's illegal, which is a government incursion into private property rights. That's OK actually, since some rights do need to be curtailed for "the greater good", however, if you're going to infringe on someone's rights, you need to pay for the costs associated. That means if you think it's so important that Native American bones be properly excavated and interred, for cultural reasons or whatever, you (the government) need to pay the cost of that, not mandate that homeowners do this at their own expense.
Finding oil or $100 bills on the land has nothing at all to do with this; there's no valid reason for the government to interfere in private property rights in these cases (except to regulate how the oil is pumped, to avoid environmental damage).
A lawsuit like that won't go anywhere. Laws and court decisions can be fucked up at times, but even that's not going to go anywhere. That's what's called a "baseless lawsuit"; it'll be thrown out of court immediately.
It's just like everyone else here is saying: anyone else who finds a skeleton on their property is just going to rebury it and shut up, so they don't have to pay these fees. If the government really thinks it's important that skeletons be properly dealt with (whether they're 400 years old or just 4), the government needs to foot the bill for dealing with them, instead of making the property owners liable for the costs for something they could not reasonably have known about before purchasing the property.
Well with stuff like Windows being used to run ships, you can be certain that poorly-written software being used in applications where it results in a danger to life and safety is probably the norm these days.
How about another Spider-Man reboot? It's only been a year or two since the last one. Or how about a new Batman reboot? A Twilight reboot sounds like a good idea too.
Living close to large bodies of water is rather necessary if you want to be a port city. Since sea shipping has been for thousands of years, and still is one of the most important transportation methods, port cities make a lot more sense than building a city in the middle of nowhere.
Flooding problems can be solved with ancient technology called "sea walls". Lots of cities in the world use these, or levies, to prevent storm flooding. The Dutch are masters of this technology, and wouldn't have half their country without it. The fact that the US doesn't invest in sea walls is just a symptom of the extreme short-sightedness and corruption that the US suffers from.
"How do we use technology to clean up New York so that it doesn't look like a landfill with people living in it?"
When was the last time you were in NYC, 1985? I can't speak about the Bronx or Queens, but Manhattan these days is a nice place, at least from what I've seen (I live in NJ, not far away, so I get over there occasionally). It's crowded, but so is every dense city in the world. They could stand to clean up some things though; the city is quite old, so a lot of the buildings and such there are old-looking too. They could really stand to knock down some of the crappier ones (I mean the smaller shops, not any skyscrapers or other old but well-maintained buildings) and replace them with newer structures. But that's true of any city. There were plenty of shitty old buildings in Phoenix (in the older sections like downtown) when I lived there, and that's a very new city for the US.
A better question would be "How do we use technology to stop electing clowns like Bloomberg so we don't get blatantly racist and unconstitutional policies like Stop-n-Frisk?"
Also, as a resident of northern NJ, one I'd like to ask is "How do we use technology to develop a better and cheaper transit method to move commuters from NJ to Manhattan, rather than these slow-ass trains that only travel once per hour?"
And another one that really irks me: "How do we use technology to eliminate these ridiculous and costly toll roads and toll bridges?" The bridge from NJ to Staten Island costs $13 now; WTF? Aren't these supposed to be public roads? And WTF is the northeast's obsession with toll roads anyway?
Also, as a NJ resident, "How do we use technology to reduce the insanely-high (highest in the country) property taxes in NJ"? I know this doesn't really concern Bloomberg, but since northern NJ really is part of the NYC metro area, it should; many people here commute to NY every day, and higher housing/tax costs make the area less attractive to workers.
"How do we use technology to ensure police officers are doing their jobs correctly?"
Aren't you thinking of LA here? I haven't heard too many horror stories about SF cops, except that incident where a transit cop shot some guy in the back of the head a couple years ago. LA and SF are very different places.
"How do we use technology to make electric cars affordable?"
Screw electric cars, just build SkyTran. That's a perfect application for modern technology, and the Bay area has just the right level of density for it to work. Last I heard, Mountain View was indeed seriously looking at SkyTran.
There's nothing you can do about asshole people, except to move away, to someplace where people are more like-minded or at least don't care about your differences so they'll leave you alone in public. Generally speaking, this means if you're not a conservative conformist, you need to move to one of the coastal cities, particularly on the west coast. (I do hear that Minneapolis is a pretty good place too, even though it's nowhere near the coast.)
Take Lasik. we've pretty much worked out where Lasik is safe: mostly everywhere which doesn't involve changes in ambient pressure
According to a quick search, Lasik appears to be perfectly safe even with changes in ambient pressure. They did note that extreme mountain climbers with Lasik did experience some myopic distortion, but that's not unsafe, it's just annoying.
Because of social pressures, nothing more. People are intersex-phobic, and can't stand the thought of having a kid who isn't clearly either male or female.
As the Wiki Intersex article says about one expert's opinion, such surgeries really amount to genital mutilation, because they're done without the informed consent of the patient, and aren't correcting a life-threatening condition at al. Worse, 20-50% of these surgeries result in a loss of sexual sensation.
Exactly: numerous scientific studies have found that people generally like to be around other attractive people, even regardless of sex (e.g., women prefer to be around attractive women rather than ugly women, men prefer to be around attractive men than ugly men, and of course both sexes like to be around attractive members of the opposite sex). So it's to a business's advantage to hire attractive people, of either sex, to interact with customers.
What's even more obnoxious is that the men who are most virulently anti-gay are themselves, in fact, homosexuals in denial. Just look at Ted Haggard and also Michelle Bachmann's husband.
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That's a terrible idea. How about we take them to a conference center, and zap them with X-ray machines, using energy equivalent to the energy contained in 150,000 lbs of JetA?
Pretty soon, we're going to have a repeat of the fall of the Roman Empire, where specialization of labor goes right out the window because no one sees any real value to specializing, and pretty soon no one remembers how to do anything terribly complex and needing of a lot of domain knowledge. In the Roman Empire, everyone gave up on their specialized careers, moved out of the cities and went to work as farm hands for feudal lords, because it was better than staying in the cities and starving because their vaunted specialized careers just didn't pay any more.
It's true, doctors are getting squeezed a lot these days. Not sure about lawyers; I imagine the biggest sociopaths still do great in that field.
I went to both a lesser state school (first two years), and a top-tier state tech school (transferred). I didn't see much difference between the education: the overall program seemed to be a little better set up at the top-tier school, but not dramatically so; the other school had some good courses, but they seemed rather uncoordinated with each other. The lower-tier state school definitely had a more hands-on approach, with us having to do our own soldering in the sophomore year there, whereas at the top-tier school I didn't see that until an optional radio class in the senior year. But the lower-tier school also wasted our time with a materials science course that was all about steel; for EE students, this wasn't very helpful, unlike the device physics course I had to take at the top-tier school where we learned about semiconductor fabrication.
However, the BIG difference I saw between the two schools was hiring: I tried to get a co-op job while at the lower-tier school, and no companies would touch me, even though I had a 4.0 GPA and was summa cum laude. I transferred to the top-tier school, had a lower GPA (it was a little tough transitioning and my grades suffered a lot), and got a co-op job after only one semester. Getting hired for a real job was also a lot easier with the top-tier school degree on my resume.
While still at the lower-tier school, I even took a trip to an Intel location (as I really wanted to work there at the time) as I happened to be in the area visiting some family. The HR guy was very nice and helpful, gave me a t-shirt, but showed me their official policy document that showed the tiers of schools they hired from, and my school wasn't on the list, and that was why they wouldn't bother to look at me for a co-op job. (Getting a co-op job was pretty important for me BTW; my family didn't have that much money so the co-op job I got was very instrumental in being able to pay for college, particularly at the more expensive state tech school I transferred to.)
So no, those cheaper schools don't always (or maybe even usually) provide worse educations than the top-tier schools, however they absolutely do hold you back from the better jobs, at least for the first 5 years or so.
Everyone knows that MacGuyver and Star Trek don't resemble reality in any way, and that real engineers toil away in horrible cubicles all day long doing thankless work that usually means nothing in the great scheme of things.
There's even a movie that accurately depicts engineering careers: Office Space.
The whole thing is completely idiotic (esp. that bit about the fashionable clothes; how disgustingly sexist).
If they want to attract more people to STEM careers, the answer is simple: pay more money, and do something about the cost of education which has been skyrocketing in the last couple decades.
It costs a fortune to get a good college degree in science or engineering or math. The careers just aren't there for science and math; at best you'll get pay equivalent to a janitor. For engineers, the pay is decent, but maxes out in 10-15 years of work and after that you're in danger because employers think you're not going to be as proficient with new technology as younger applicants. Worse, you can't ever get a decent raise at one company, so you have to quit and find a job at another company if you want a decent raise.
A bunch of bullshit programs to encourage more people to get into STEM isn't going to fix these problems.
Exactly. Similarly, we need to have special plane excursions for Congresspeople, with as many Congresspeople loaded into a 747 as they can fit. Then maybe that plane will have an unfortunate "accident"....
A crash of a plane full of CEOs and banksters wouldn't be a loss at all, it'd be a net gain to humanity.
I must have forgotten or missed that part. But it's been years since I saw that movie.
You've got to be kidding. Japan's been struggling with trying to make useful humanoid robots for over a decade now, and they still haven't gotten very far. There's a huge difference between making a robot that can clean a toilet and do other odd jobs, and making a cruise missile. Cruise missiles don't have to move much: they have a rocket motor for propulsion, and some movable fins. They have fairly sophisticated computers inside to guide them to their target using GPS and some image processing, but the controls are easy: up/down/left/right. All they have to do is guide themselves to a target and collide with it.
A general houseworker robot has to move in far more complex ways than that. Just look at the range of motion possible with a human arm and torso. This is why humanoid robots haven't gone far: it's too complex a problem for our current engineering. We have a hard enough time just making prosthetic legs for people, and at least there part of the control system is already done for you (the human brain); making robots that can walk around and use tools like people is not within our grasp yet. Of course, we could just design a toiled that self-cleans, but such a thing would probably be horrendously expensive (or else someone would have done it by now, especially the Japanese; they love fancy toilets: go look at Toto toilets for example. Heated seats, built-in bidets, remote controls, etc. They also have a serious lack of cheap labor in their country for domestic help.), and doesn't solve all the other problems involved in maintaining a house or office: vacuuming, dusting, taking out the trash, etc.
Huh? The Chippendales are mostly seen by men? I wouldn't know from personal experience, but that's contrary to what I've been told by women. In fact, it was my own sister who once observed (I believe from her own observations) that men who go to strip clubs are usually fairly quiet, just sitting and watching the girls while sipping a mug of beer, whereas women at a Chippendales show are extremely loud and rowdy. Again, this is just something my sister told me years ago, it's not like I'd ever go to a Chippendales show.
Technically, I think you're wrong: Superman Returns wasn't really a remake, it was a sequel: it was a sequel to Donner's movies. Remember, one huge plot point was that Superman had gone away for many years, and was now back, and Lois in that time had had his kid. It had different actors than Donner's movies (Routh and Spacey instead of Reeve and Hackman), but that's not usual: Star Trek III stuck a totally different-looking actress in Kirstie Alley's place for Saavik, and no one would say that wasn't a sequel. SR was even extremely vague on when it happened, and looked like it could have taken place in the late 80s or so (there was no one running around with iPhones and bluetooth headsets and the like).
False equivalence. There's no reason the homeowner needs to hire an archaeologist and pay all these costs for excavation, except that the government requires this for some odd reason. The homeowner should have the right to simply bury the body, or even sell the bones if they want to; they don't because that's illegal, which is a government incursion into private property rights. That's OK actually, since some rights do need to be curtailed for "the greater good", however, if you're going to infringe on someone's rights, you need to pay for the costs associated. That means if you think it's so important that Native American bones be properly excavated and interred, for cultural reasons or whatever, you (the government) need to pay the cost of that, not mandate that homeowners do this at their own expense.
Finding oil or $100 bills on the land has nothing at all to do with this; there's no valid reason for the government to interfere in private property rights in these cases (except to regulate how the oil is pumped, to avoid environmental damage).
A lawsuit like that won't go anywhere. Laws and court decisions can be fucked up at times, but even that's not going to go anywhere. That's what's called a "baseless lawsuit"; it'll be thrown out of court immediately.
It's just like everyone else here is saying: anyone else who finds a skeleton on their property is just going to rebury it and shut up, so they don't have to pay these fees. If the government really thinks it's important that skeletons be properly dealt with (whether they're 400 years old or just 4), the government needs to foot the bill for dealing with them, instead of making the property owners liable for the costs for something they could not reasonably have known about before purchasing the property.
Interesting. I was actually thinking of the infamous case when a US Navy ship running Windows NT had to be towed to port.
Well with stuff like Windows being used to run ships, you can be certain that poorly-written software being used in applications where it results in a danger to life and safety is probably the norm these days.
How about another Spider-Man reboot? It's only been a year or two since the last one. Or how about a new Batman reboot? A Twilight reboot sounds like a good idea too.
Living close to large bodies of water is rather necessary if you want to be a port city. Since sea shipping has been for thousands of years, and still is one of the most important transportation methods, port cities make a lot more sense than building a city in the middle of nowhere.
Flooding problems can be solved with ancient technology called "sea walls". Lots of cities in the world use these, or levies, to prevent storm flooding. The Dutch are masters of this technology, and wouldn't have half their country without it. The fact that the US doesn't invest in sea walls is just a symptom of the extreme short-sightedness and corruption that the US suffers from.
I have to question a few of your points.
"How do we use technology to clean up New York so that it doesn't look like a landfill with people living in it?"
When was the last time you were in NYC, 1985? I can't speak about the Bronx or Queens, but Manhattan these days is a nice place, at least from what I've seen (I live in NJ, not far away, so I get over there occasionally). It's crowded, but so is every dense city in the world. They could stand to clean up some things though; the city is quite old, so a lot of the buildings and such there are old-looking too. They could really stand to knock down some of the crappier ones (I mean the smaller shops, not any skyscrapers or other old but well-maintained buildings) and replace them with newer structures. But that's true of any city. There were plenty of shitty old buildings in Phoenix (in the older sections like downtown) when I lived there, and that's a very new city for the US.
A better question would be "How do we use technology to stop electing clowns like Bloomberg so we don't get blatantly racist and unconstitutional policies like Stop-n-Frisk?"
Also, as a resident of northern NJ, one I'd like to ask is "How do we use technology to develop a better and cheaper transit method to move commuters from NJ to Manhattan, rather than these slow-ass trains that only travel once per hour?"
And another one that really irks me: "How do we use technology to eliminate these ridiculous and costly toll roads and toll bridges?" The bridge from NJ to Staten Island costs $13 now; WTF? Aren't these supposed to be public roads? And WTF is the northeast's obsession with toll roads anyway?
Also, as a NJ resident, "How do we use technology to reduce the insanely-high (highest in the country) property taxes in NJ"? I know this doesn't really concern Bloomberg, but since northern NJ really is part of the NYC metro area, it should; many people here commute to NY every day, and higher housing/tax costs make the area less attractive to workers.
"How do we use technology to ensure police officers are doing their jobs correctly?"
Aren't you thinking of LA here? I haven't heard too many horror stories about SF cops, except that incident where a transit cop shot some guy in the back of the head a couple years ago. LA and SF are very different places.
"How do we use technology to make electric cars affordable?"
Screw electric cars, just build SkyTran. That's a perfect application for modern technology, and the Bay area has just the right level of density for it to work. Last I heard, Mountain View was indeed seriously looking at SkyTran.
There's nothing you can do about asshole people, except to move away, to someplace where people are more like-minded or at least don't care about your differences so they'll leave you alone in public. Generally speaking, this means if you're not a conservative conformist, you need to move to one of the coastal cities, particularly on the west coast. (I do hear that Minneapolis is a pretty good place too, even though it's nowhere near the coast.)
Take Lasik. we've pretty much worked out where Lasik is safe: mostly everywhere which doesn't involve changes in ambient pressure
According to a quick search, Lasik appears to be perfectly safe even with changes in ambient pressure. They did note that extreme mountain climbers with Lasik did experience some myopic distortion, but that's not unsafe, it's just annoying.
Why do surgeons have to decide soon after birth?
Because of social pressures, nothing more. People are intersex-phobic, and can't stand the thought of having a kid who isn't clearly either male or female.
As the Wiki Intersex article says about one expert's opinion, such surgeries really amount to genital mutilation, because they're done without the informed consent of the patient, and aren't correcting a life-threatening condition at al. Worse, 20-50% of these surgeries result in a loss of sexual sensation.
Yes, but I also hear people (mostly women) bitch about strip clubs, even though that's the exact same context as a Chippendale gig.
Exactly: numerous scientific studies have found that people generally like to be around other attractive people, even regardless of sex (e.g., women prefer to be around attractive women rather than ugly women, men prefer to be around attractive men than ugly men, and of course both sexes like to be around attractive members of the opposite sex). So it's to a business's advantage to hire attractive people, of either sex, to interact with customers.
What's even more obnoxious is that the men who are most virulently anti-gay are themselves, in fact, homosexuals in denial. Just look at Ted Haggard and also Michelle Bachmann's husband.
Why is it that I never hear anyone bitch about the Chippendales, and how they objectify men's bodies?