If there's that much "brand loyalty" that farmers are screwing themselves by continuing to buy from a manufacturer that screws them over with repairability, when there are better alternatives out there, then fuck the farmers. I have zero sympathy for people who make stupid buying decisions (in the face of much better alternatives) and then whine and complain about how the vendor is mistreating them.
Tractors cater to a market that expects high reliability, ease of use, and ease of maintenance, or at least the farmers I know do.
If they're buying John Deere, then obviously ease of maintenance is not a concern of theirs.
The real solution is to modify humans (somehow) so they don't age as quickly, and can have kids between the ages of 50-100. On top of that, genetically engineer them so they *cannot* have kids before 50yo. That'll give them plenty of time to work on their careers and build nest eggs before getting involved in child-rearing. By that point, they'll be able to simply take a few years off from work and raise the kids instead of relying on day-care.
Yes, women do make better doctors. There was a study on this not very long ago that came to that conclusion, based on actual medical data (patients with female doctors had better outcomes).
The musicians bit sounds suspicious. However, women are supposed to generally have better fine-motor control than men (which is why they excel at things like hand-sewing, knitting, etc.), so that can translate to better overall ability with musical instruments. Of course, that's a bit separate from actually composing music. That seems to be dominated by men, but that could be due to culture/economics.
Engineering, in the long term, seems to be moving to Asia and out of western nations. So his contention (that it's "going away") does seem to have some truth to it.
You can still repair anything you want, and you can pay anyone you want to repair your device, you just can't expect the company to warranty your device afterwards.
Wrong. See the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975.
Manufacturers can only refuse to honor warranties if they can prove that your repair is what caused the problem.
One problem here is that a lot of this stuff isn't made plainly clear to customers before purchase. They certainly aren't going to advertise, "our products are specifically engineered so that you can't work on them, and you'll have to pay a small fortune for our technicians to come fix them in the field for you!". (Or, with more consumer-type goods like cars, "our cars are specifically designed so you can't even change your own oil, and it has to be done at the dealership at inflated prices!")
There should be a law that this stuff should be made clear to the potential customer, so that they can compare brands based on these factors.
There's other equipment companies you can buy from. One big one is Kubota, a Japanese company. I'm not sure how their repairability compares to John Deere, but given how many times I've seen John Deere in the tech news about how the intentionally make it impossible for end-users to repair their equipment, I advocate buying Kubota or other foreign brands as a rule. They certainly can't be any worse than JD. Plus that bright orangish-red color is a lot easier to spot from a distance.
And given they're engineered in Japan, they've got to be better designed. All the Japanese cars I've ever worked on have been so much better engineered than any American car I've touched, there's just no comparison. With American cars, the engines will frequently have some clever and innovative design, but the component reliability will be crap, and the rest of the car will be crap too, with interiors falling apart in a very short amount of time, and generally poor design and layout of everything (like making it unnecessarily difficult to change the oil or do other simple maintenance). With Japanese cars, they aren't always at the cutting-edge of technology, but the component reliability is great, the overall design is great, and they seem to be designed specifically for easy servicing.
Women are still brutalized in a lot of places and lack the most basic of rights, and we first worlders focus on paychecks.
So are you advocating that the first-world countries use military force to invade these countries where women are brutalized, and then occupy these nations and set up puppet governments, or better yet, colonial administrations?
I'm not sure how else first-worlders are supposed to solve the third-worlders' problems.
Actually we do. The birth rate is barely sustainable or simply too low in many developed countries.
The only alternative is high levels of immigration, which are also unpopular. Either you have a lot of immigration or you make having children more attractive by being less burdensome.
It's not, it's in society's interest to assist parents for the reason outlined above
The thing is, a large part of our society now believes that employers should not have any responsibility to "society" and issues like you speak of. They also believe immigration should be stopped. They believe we should let "The Invisible Hand" take care of issues like whether people should choose to have kids or not.
I say we adopt their ideas into law. No more immigration, no tax breaks for working parents, and while we're at it, let's eliminate government-run schools too. And these new laws should be written so that, once passed, they cannot be repealed, since I'm sure these people are quite sure they're right. Let's see how well society fares under this philosophy.
I come from a "large" family of six kids and I think my parents did a decent job. But I suspect two of my siblings get all their news from infowars when the most inflammatory programming my parents ever ascribed to was 60 minutes.
This likely isn't the fault of your parents; this is something that's plaguing our entire society. There's only so much parents can do to influence their kids while still living in a society the parents have no control over. It's like immigrant parents who come to western countries and raise kids there, and then get mad when the kids adopt western values or date western people; you can't completely isolate your kids from society, for good or ill: the kids are going to be a product of both the parental upbringing and the society at large. So if you're in Sweden and your society is extremely anti-discrimination and non-religious and pro-equality (of races and sexes), then there's a good chance that's going to rub off on your kids, even if you try to raise them to be misogynistic, religious nuts. Or, if you're in a society where half of that society believes in extreme right-wing racist philosophy, there's a chance that's going to rub off on your kids too. And on top of that, this stuff doesn't only get adopted into peoples' minds at early ages; people adopt philosophies at all stages of life, and the extreme right-wing stuff seems to be more likely to be adopted by older people (but not always; look at Milo Yiannopolous and other young conservatives like him).
If the main reason is women raising kids, we've got a problem and the discussion is not over. That work is vital for the future of society, and should not come with a big financial penalty.
It should, if that's what society wants. If this results in society collapsing because of vastly insufficient reproduction, then so be it.
I'm reminded of that saying, "every nation gets the government it deserves".
Lazy co-workers who want to ignore proper, safe patient movement procedure because you happen to have a penis, therefore you're Superman and can benchpress an aircraft carrier. So that 600 lb guy in a steel reinforced "big boy" bed who just had both hips replaced is no problem for you.
Isn't this what orderlies are supposed to be there for? Do they not have those any more?
It would only take around 50 years of non-procreation globally to wipe out humans.
I don't see how this is a problem. If we as a species are so dumb that so many members of our species (including a bunch of people posting right here in this discussion, apparently) do not see the value of supporting the half of our population that perpetuates the species, then I think it'd be better if our species went extinct.
Of course, what's happening now is that the middle classes aren't having kids any more, and they're all being produced by the lowest classes, who also come with the most social problems. So the problem will be self-limiting in a way, with society devolving and unable to create new members who can run it competently, causing a collapse. I believe Jared Diamond wrote a book named "Collapse" talking about the collapse of civilizations, and that's surely what we have to look forward to.
I do. I mean, of course a large country has a diverse population and no random person there is personally responsible for the worst products of that country, but collectively, countries need to own up to the the evil things they've produced, and for the US that's things like the Trail of Tears, the WWII internments, the Kent State Massacre, and Facebook.
A lottery is the best way, IMO, along with the provision that a background investigation needs to be done on the winner and if they have a history of really wanting to hold public office, they're not allowed to have the position.
Arthur C Clarke wrote a book called "Songs of Distant Earth" that had a society with exactly this system of choosing leaders.
You'd be likely to get people who were careless or unqualified, but look what we've been ending up with.
Exactly. Picking people at random simply cannot be worse than what we have.
We could also add some other qualifications, like having a high school diploma, etc. And some mechanism for getting rid of them quickly if they suck, like today's "recall elections", but these just allow people to vote to eject the leader and choose a new one at random.
Actually, I would like to comment that not all country is horrible. The really old stuff, and related genres like bluegrass, had musical value I think: these were authentic artists, not corporate-created caricatures. But you're looking at stuff from the 40s-70s or so. Johnny Cash, for instance, I think is a good example of an authentic country music artist. It's not my preferred style of music by any stretch, but I can recognize the value. But all the stuff that's sold as country these days is utter trash, and a lot of it seems to basically be "redneck rock".
There's other music out there besides that produced by "the music industry". There's a big cottage industry of indie artists out there, producing their own recordings in their garages or maybe renting studio time, and doing everything themselves. Of course, none of these people are getting rich, and it's not that easy to find this stuff (and find stuff among it that you really like), but it is out there thanks to the Internet.
I have some music in my collection that's only a year or three old. The thing is, it's all from bands that got started back in the 70s and 80s. They're still playing their own instruments and singing with their real voices. Unfortunately, they're not getting any younger, and I imagine will be retiring before too long. But maybe not; Roger Waters AFAIK is still touring and he's in his 70s now.
There's tons of great music out there besides classical, especially in rock IMO. The key is, you need to listen to rock from the 60s-80s or so only. It's not going anywhere.
Yeah, it sucks that modern music is so horrible. But that's OK, we can still listen to the good stuff from yesteryear.
Bike paths are something the government *should* be building.
However, how the hell does it cost $100 million dollars to build one? That's insanity. Bike paths are narrow and simple, and don't need all the work that roads do. A thin layer of asphalt, laid by a small cart pulled by hand (I've seen one used in a park for laying a walking path) is all you need. Someone must have been getting paid off there.
The spirit of the law thing only becomes relevant if you have a case that goes to trial; that's really something for a judge to decide. This isn't a court case, this is the DOJ enforcing the law as it's written and asking the university to comply with the law. The university is doing just that. They could refuse and turn it into a court case, but that costs a lot of money, which will all be taxpayer money (on both sides, CA state taxpayer money on the university's side and federal taxpayer money on the DOJ's side), so they're just giving in.
As for crowdsourcing, that sounds nice, so maybe some volunteers will step up and volunteer for that. But for now, the university can't wait, they have to comply with the law, so the materials need to be removed.
Yes, the law is stupid. Blame Congress for that, and Presidents Bush (I & II) for signing it.
I wear hiking boots at work all the time. There's nothing "macho" about modern hiking boots. These aren't Timberlands or steel-toed work boots; modern hiking boots are high-performance footwear, both lightweight and water-resistant, with tread optimized for very rough terrain. Also, there's a difference between hiking boots and backpacking boots (the latter is heavier and sturdier, with tread not as good for rock-hopping). Finally, there's nothing at all macho about the purple-trimmed hiking boots that women wear.
I completely disagree. You're acting like universities are corporations; they're not. They're not supposed to be "maximizing productivity", they're supposed to be working for the good of the taxpayer (in this case, California taxpayers). That means that putting a bunch of CA workers out of a job, and sending those jobs to India, is not in the interest of the taxpayer. If it were, then it'd be OK for government at all levels to outsource work to other countries, including incarceration. I should hope it's obvious why this is not acceptable, whether it's prisons or police or dog-catching, but I suppose with so many people these days on the "privatization" bandwagon maybe it's not that obvious.
Call it a jobs program if you want, but when the government spends money, it's supposed to do it locally as much as possible, even if it costs more, because it benefits the government's constituents more, boosts the economy (which the government itself is benefiting from), and puts people to work so they're paying more taxes instead of receiving taxpayer benefits. Privatization sends profits out of the government's reach, and also revenues if the work is outsourced.
Canceling funding for everything is meant to be used as a threat for government-funded entities that don't work for the benefit of the government and people they're supposed to be serving. To use your terrible analogy, it's more like using pistols in a criminal court case: if the accused refuses to abide by the court's judgment (submit to a trial by their peers, go to prison if that's the sentence), then the government's agents will use guns to enforce the court's will, and the government has every right to do this.
This isn't about going over the university's expenditures with a fine-toothed comb; this is about the university outsourcing/offshoring a major department, which is doing a disservice to the people that university is supposed to work for. It's bad enough when private corporations outsource their IT departments, which almost always has terrible results, but private companies are only answerable to their shareholders. Universities are answerable to the government and the taxpayers. If the company's shareholders want to make an issue of the outsourced IT at *their* company, they have every right to. If taxpayers and government want to make an issue of outsourced IT at the university that takes money from them (and I sincerely hope they do), they have every right to.
And this is ultra-liberal Northern Virginia, immediately outside of Washington, D.C.
What planet are you on? NoVA is not "ultra-liberal" by any measure. The biggest tech industry there is most likely defense, and there's nothing about defense that screams "liberal". There are indeed a bunch of liberals inside DC proper, but DC itself is a somewhat small part of the DC metro area. There's some other pockets of liberalism, like downtown Alexandria, but overall NoVA is a fairly conservative place, though not in the red-state way as it votes reliably Democratic (which is a center-right party remember). But any place that's basically a giant suburb with never-ending strip malls and McMansions cannot truthfully be labeled "ultra-liberal"; that's just ridiculous.
Women are not attracted to IT because of the macho image
Here again you're throwing around totally wrong terms. There's nothing "macho" about IT. What planet are you on? Construction is "macho", special forces in the military is "macho", etc. IT is not. It might be full of a bunch of sexist brogrammers, but that doesn't make it "macho". You could say it has a reputation for being filled with sexist douchebag assholes I guess, but that is not "macho".
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If there's that much "brand loyalty" that farmers are screwing themselves by continuing to buy from a manufacturer that screws them over with repairability, when there are better alternatives out there, then fuck the farmers. I have zero sympathy for people who make stupid buying decisions (in the face of much better alternatives) and then whine and complain about how the vendor is mistreating them.
Tractors cater to a market that expects high reliability, ease of use, and ease of maintenance, or at least the farmers I know do.
If they're buying John Deere, then obviously ease of maintenance is not a concern of theirs.
The real solution is to modify humans (somehow) so they don't age as quickly, and can have kids between the ages of 50-100. On top of that, genetically engineer them so they *cannot* have kids before 50yo. That'll give them plenty of time to work on their careers and build nest eggs before getting involved in child-rearing. By that point, they'll be able to simply take a few years off from work and raise the kids instead of relying on day-care.
Yes, women do make better doctors. There was a study on this not very long ago that came to that conclusion, based on actual medical data (patients with female doctors had better outcomes).
The musicians bit sounds suspicious. However, women are supposed to generally have better fine-motor control than men (which is why they excel at things like hand-sewing, knitting, etc.), so that can translate to better overall ability with musical instruments. Of course, that's a bit separate from actually composing music. That seems to be dominated by men, but that could be due to culture/economics.
Engineering, in the long term, seems to be moving to Asia and out of western nations. So his contention (that it's "going away") does seem to have some truth to it.
You can still repair anything you want, and you can pay anyone you want to repair your device, you just can't expect the company to warranty your device afterwards.
Wrong. See the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975.
Manufacturers can only refuse to honor warranties if they can prove that your repair is what caused the problem.
One problem here is that a lot of this stuff isn't made plainly clear to customers before purchase. They certainly aren't going to advertise, "our products are specifically engineered so that you can't work on them, and you'll have to pay a small fortune for our technicians to come fix them in the field for you!". (Or, with more consumer-type goods like cars, "our cars are specifically designed so you can't even change your own oil, and it has to be done at the dealership at inflated prices!")
There should be a law that this stuff should be made clear to the potential customer, so that they can compare brands based on these factors.
There's other equipment companies you can buy from. One big one is Kubota, a Japanese company. I'm not sure how their repairability compares to John Deere, but given how many times I've seen John Deere in the tech news about how the intentionally make it impossible for end-users to repair their equipment, I advocate buying Kubota or other foreign brands as a rule. They certainly can't be any worse than JD. Plus that bright orangish-red color is a lot easier to spot from a distance.
And given they're engineered in Japan, they've got to be better designed. All the Japanese cars I've ever worked on have been so much better engineered than any American car I've touched, there's just no comparison. With American cars, the engines will frequently have some clever and innovative design, but the component reliability will be crap, and the rest of the car will be crap too, with interiors falling apart in a very short amount of time, and generally poor design and layout of everything (like making it unnecessarily difficult to change the oil or do other simple maintenance). With Japanese cars, they aren't always at the cutting-edge of technology, but the component reliability is great, the overall design is great, and they seem to be designed specifically for easy servicing.
Women are still brutalized in a lot of places and lack the most basic of rights, and we first worlders focus on paychecks.
So are you advocating that the first-world countries use military force to invade these countries where women are brutalized, and then occupy these nations and set up puppet governments, or better yet, colonial administrations?
I'm not sure how else first-worlders are supposed to solve the third-worlders' problems.
Actually we do. The birth rate is barely sustainable or simply too low in many developed countries.
The only alternative is high levels of immigration, which are also unpopular. Either you have a lot of immigration or you make having children more attractive by being less burdensome.
It's not, it's in society's interest to assist parents for the reason outlined above
The thing is, a large part of our society now believes that employers should not have any responsibility to "society" and issues like you speak of. They also believe immigration should be stopped. They believe we should let "The Invisible Hand" take care of issues like whether people should choose to have kids or not.
I say we adopt their ideas into law. No more immigration, no tax breaks for working parents, and while we're at it, let's eliminate government-run schools too. And these new laws should be written so that, once passed, they cannot be repealed, since I'm sure these people are quite sure they're right. Let's see how well society fares under this philosophy.
I come from a "large" family of six kids and I think my parents did a decent job. But I suspect two of my siblings get all their news from infowars when the most inflammatory programming my parents ever ascribed to was 60 minutes.
This likely isn't the fault of your parents; this is something that's plaguing our entire society. There's only so much parents can do to influence their kids while still living in a society the parents have no control over. It's like immigrant parents who come to western countries and raise kids there, and then get mad when the kids adopt western values or date western people; you can't completely isolate your kids from society, for good or ill: the kids are going to be a product of both the parental upbringing and the society at large. So if you're in Sweden and your society is extremely anti-discrimination and non-religious and pro-equality (of races and sexes), then there's a good chance that's going to rub off on your kids, even if you try to raise them to be misogynistic, religious nuts. Or, if you're in a society where half of that society believes in extreme right-wing racist philosophy, there's a chance that's going to rub off on your kids too. And on top of that, this stuff doesn't only get adopted into peoples' minds at early ages; people adopt philosophies at all stages of life, and the extreme right-wing stuff seems to be more likely to be adopted by older people (but not always; look at Milo Yiannopolous and other young conservatives like him).
If the main reason is women raising kids, we've got a problem and the discussion is not over. That work is vital for the future of society, and should not come with a big financial penalty.
It should, if that's what society wants. If this results in society collapsing because of vastly insufficient reproduction, then so be it.
I'm reminded of that saying, "every nation gets the government it deserves".
Lazy co-workers who want to ignore proper, safe patient movement procedure because you happen to have a penis, therefore you're Superman and can benchpress an aircraft carrier. So that 600 lb guy in a steel reinforced "big boy" bed who just had both hips replaced is no problem for you.
Isn't this what orderlies are supposed to be there for? Do they not have those any more?
Women also need to equally represented in the NBA, NFL and baseball leagues.
Actually, I have a great solution to this problem of inequality:
Eliminate the NBA, NFL, and baseball leagues altogether.
If there's no professional sports like this, then there can't be any gender inequality. And nothing of value would have been lost.
It would only take around 50 years of non-procreation globally to wipe out humans.
I don't see how this is a problem. If we as a species are so dumb that so many members of our species (including a bunch of people posting right here in this discussion, apparently) do not see the value of supporting the half of our population that perpetuates the species, then I think it'd be better if our species went extinct.
Of course, what's happening now is that the middle classes aren't having kids any more, and they're all being produced by the lowest classes, who also come with the most social problems. So the problem will be self-limiting in a way, with society devolving and unable to create new members who can run it competently, causing a collapse. I believe Jared Diamond wrote a book named "Collapse" talking about the collapse of civilizations, and that's surely what we have to look forward to.
I do. I mean, of course a large country has a diverse population and no random person there is personally responsible for the worst products of that country, but collectively, countries need to own up to the the evil things they've produced, and for the US that's things like the Trail of Tears, the WWII internments, the Kent State Massacre, and Facebook.
A lottery is the best way, IMO, along with the provision that a background investigation needs to be done on the winner and if they have a history of really wanting to hold public office, they're not allowed to have the position.
Arthur C Clarke wrote a book called "Songs of Distant Earth" that had a society with exactly this system of choosing leaders.
You'd be likely to get people who were careless or unqualified, but look what we've been ending up with.
Exactly. Picking people at random simply cannot be worse than what we have.
We could also add some other qualifications, like having a high school diploma, etc. And some mechanism for getting rid of them quickly if they suck, like today's "recall elections", but these just allow people to vote to eject the leader and choose a new one at random.
Actually, I would like to comment that not all country is horrible. The really old stuff, and related genres like bluegrass, had musical value I think: these were authentic artists, not corporate-created caricatures. But you're looking at stuff from the 40s-70s or so. Johnny Cash, for instance, I think is a good example of an authentic country music artist. It's not my preferred style of music by any stretch, but I can recognize the value. But all the stuff that's sold as country these days is utter trash, and a lot of it seems to basically be "redneck rock".
There's other music out there besides that produced by "the music industry". There's a big cottage industry of indie artists out there, producing their own recordings in their garages or maybe renting studio time, and doing everything themselves. Of course, none of these people are getting rich, and it's not that easy to find this stuff (and find stuff among it that you really like), but it is out there thanks to the Internet.
I have some music in my collection that's only a year or three old. The thing is, it's all from bands that got started back in the 70s and 80s. They're still playing their own instruments and singing with their real voices. Unfortunately, they're not getting any younger, and I imagine will be retiring before too long. But maybe not; Roger Waters AFAIK is still touring and he's in his 70s now.
There's tons of great music out there besides classical, especially in rock IMO. The key is, you need to listen to rock from the 60s-80s or so only. It's not going anywhere.
Yeah, it sucks that modern music is so horrible. But that's OK, we can still listen to the good stuff from yesteryear.
I agree 100% with your entire post.
Bike paths are something the government *should* be building.
However, how the hell does it cost $100 million dollars to build one? That's insanity. Bike paths are narrow and simple, and don't need all the work that roads do. A thin layer of asphalt, laid by a small cart pulled by hand (I've seen one used in a park for laying a walking path) is all you need. Someone must have been getting paid off there.
The spirit of the law thing only becomes relevant if you have a case that goes to trial; that's really something for a judge to decide. This isn't a court case, this is the DOJ enforcing the law as it's written and asking the university to comply with the law. The university is doing just that. They could refuse and turn it into a court case, but that costs a lot of money, which will all be taxpayer money (on both sides, CA state taxpayer money on the university's side and federal taxpayer money on the DOJ's side), so they're just giving in.
As for crowdsourcing, that sounds nice, so maybe some volunteers will step up and volunteer for that. But for now, the university can't wait, they have to comply with the law, so the materials need to be removed.
Yes, the law is stupid. Blame Congress for that, and Presidents Bush (I & II) for signing it.
I wear hiking boots at work all the time. There's nothing "macho" about modern hiking boots. These aren't Timberlands or steel-toed work boots; modern hiking boots are high-performance footwear, both lightweight and water-resistant, with tread optimized for very rough terrain. Also, there's a difference between hiking boots and backpacking boots (the latter is heavier and sturdier, with tread not as good for rock-hopping). Finally, there's nothing at all macho about the purple-trimmed hiking boots that women wear.
I completely disagree. You're acting like universities are corporations; they're not. They're not supposed to be "maximizing productivity", they're supposed to be working for the good of the taxpayer (in this case, California taxpayers). That means that putting a bunch of CA workers out of a job, and sending those jobs to India, is not in the interest of the taxpayer. If it were, then it'd be OK for government at all levels to outsource work to other countries, including incarceration. I should hope it's obvious why this is not acceptable, whether it's prisons or police or dog-catching, but I suppose with so many people these days on the "privatization" bandwagon maybe it's not that obvious.
Call it a jobs program if you want, but when the government spends money, it's supposed to do it locally as much as possible, even if it costs more, because it benefits the government's constituents more, boosts the economy (which the government itself is benefiting from), and puts people to work so they're paying more taxes instead of receiving taxpayer benefits. Privatization sends profits out of the government's reach, and also revenues if the work is outsourced.
Canceling funding for everything is meant to be used as a threat for government-funded entities that don't work for the benefit of the government and people they're supposed to be serving. To use your terrible analogy, it's more like using pistols in a criminal court case: if the accused refuses to abide by the court's judgment (submit to a trial by their peers, go to prison if that's the sentence), then the government's agents will use guns to enforce the court's will, and the government has every right to do this.
This isn't about going over the university's expenditures with a fine-toothed comb; this is about the university outsourcing/offshoring a major department, which is doing a disservice to the people that university is supposed to work for. It's bad enough when private corporations outsource their IT departments, which almost always has terrible results, but private companies are only answerable to their shareholders. Universities are answerable to the government and the taxpayers. If the company's shareholders want to make an issue of the outsourced IT at *their* company, they have every right to. If taxpayers and government want to make an issue of outsourced IT at the university that takes money from them (and I sincerely hope they do), they have every right to.
And this is ultra-liberal Northern Virginia, immediately outside of Washington, D.C.
What planet are you on? NoVA is not "ultra-liberal" by any measure. The biggest tech industry there is most likely defense, and there's nothing about defense that screams "liberal". There are indeed a bunch of liberals inside DC proper, but DC itself is a somewhat small part of the DC metro area. There's some other pockets of liberalism, like downtown Alexandria, but overall NoVA is a fairly conservative place, though not in the red-state way as it votes reliably Democratic (which is a center-right party remember). But any place that's basically a giant suburb with never-ending strip malls and McMansions cannot truthfully be labeled "ultra-liberal"; that's just ridiculous.
Women are not attracted to IT because of the macho image
Here again you're throwing around totally wrong terms. There's nothing "macho" about IT. What planet are you on? Construction is "macho", special forces in the military is "macho", etc. IT is not. It might be full of a bunch of sexist brogrammers, but that doesn't make it "macho". You could say it has a reputation for being filled with sexist douchebag assholes I guess, but that is not "macho".