Was there some state requirement to go into careers that you tested into? That would make women and men show up in equal numbers. However, the sharp drop off since '89 would imply that there is still cultural antagonism to (or innate bias against) women in sciences.
Try as we do, we can't escape the reality that girls are not only physically different than boys, but as an aggregate group do lean towards certain behaviours and interests.
Some of it may be learned, and there are of course outliers, but you see similar behaviour tied to gender across very different and sometimes geographically isolated cultures. In the least technical terms, there really are "girl things" and "guy things". This becomes rediculously obvious to anyone who has spent any time around little kids.
I'm all for removing artificial barriers, but once they are down we're gonna have to accept that maybe girls really do want to be princesses and maybe guys really do want to be monster trucks (not drive, be damnit, BE!)
I really doubt this guys daughter is deciding to be a princess because she feels society has limited her career choices. She wants to be a princess because that's the kind of thing little girls lean towards. If she wants to play with lego, by all means encourage that shit, but if she just wants to dress up and play with doll, let her play with her dolls and leave her alone!
This is clearly true. I mean, in islamic societies, women just naturally want to cover every part of their body except their eyes, and are averse to driving. They want to be stoned for adultery.
Women in America, before those unnatural suffragettes, didn't really want to vote. They don't want equal pay. They want to be housewives, and live in suburban homes.
My point is that we've just come out from under many millennium of misogyny. How can you say with assurance WHAT women want? Or, for that matter, what men want? The political forces have skewed our desires so fully, and informed our prejudices so entirely that women themselves don't have a gut feel for what is 'natural' for women.
Your typical 4 year old has thousands of hours of TV watching under their belt. They have watched their parents reactions to their actions. They know what you want, and what society expects.
Even the simplest repair would require the world economy to be functioning smoothly. A smart AI, if such a thing could exist, would know that. So, any disruption to the global economy would be deadly. (are you listening?)
Saying that women are opting out of STEM due to choice is not a useful statement. Of course they are choosing to opt out. The question is why is this happening? I can assert that the moronic drivel you call your opinion has been posted because you choose to do it. Now, as to why you choose to post, the assertion that you chose does not have any power to explain, Choosing is an act, not a reason for the act. It is the reason behind the act that we should consider.
Now, I never said sexism was the only cause, just that it is well established by the literature, I've seen it occur myself, and there are lots of firsthand accounts of sexism in science and engineering. So, you are free to speculate on alternate causes for the 'choice' made by women who are choosing to leave STEM. Just saying, "well, they had the choice to stay, and they left, so fuck them" doesn't really cut it as a rational viewpoint, in my opinion. Blacks 'chose' not to vote for 100 years because they were being beaten up and hung when they tried to do it. I guess your view would be that they just "chose" not to vote, so fuck them?
As to your supposed hyper-rationality, you are using rhetoric rather than reason, claiming a straw man proposal (that I believe that sexism is the only cause of women leaving STEM), which can be easily defeated. There are clearly other causes, but the one I see, the one that affects MY DAUGHTER, and other women trying for engineering degrees, is sexism, probably originating from twisted little mama's boys like you. Try arguing like a man, and using your 'hyper-reason' instead of cheesy, transparent rhetoric:)
So, in summary, go fuck yourself, you ignorant little shit. You have no idea what you are talking about. Your 'hyper-rationality' doesn't seem to be cutting it today. Maybe you should go read ' harry potter and the methods of rationality' again.
The point is that the systems designed to stop it from bouncing failed for some reason. They wanted it to be in sunlight to collect solar power. They didn't achieve that.
They are really rocket scientist heroes in my opinion, but I'm sure they are kicking themselves nonetheless. Some of these guys have spent 20 years on the project. They deserve a bigger payoff.
You know, as much as a lot of people are looking at this as a failure, I look at this as a reminder of just how damned difficult this kind of stuff is.
Sadly, I recall that the devices that were on the lander that should have arrested its bounce both failed (the rocket, and the harpoons). So, there 'was' a failure. The mission, though, got lots of data, so it can't be seen a complete failure. It is amazing, awe inspiring, and wonderful. Just not as wonderful as it would have been if the lander had stuck to the first landing place, and been around to witness the out gassing.
You claim to be hyper rational, but I see what sexism does to women first hand. In fact, your supposedly hyper rational view is provably pathetic nonsense. Women are discriminated against in STEM fields. Your argument is a typical horns of a dilemma, "if not this, then clearly that". You can't see any other reasons than 'choice'? Either you are knowingly posting a misleading argument, or you have shit for brains. Those seem to be the only choices.
Try searching for 'discrimination against women in STEM' for more information. In case you can't figure out how to use google, here is one.
With everyone from the federal government to corporate America working to encourage more women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math fields, you would think the doors would be wide open to women of all backgrounds. A new study shows that this could not be further from the truth and that gender bias among hiring managers in STEM fields is extraordinarily prevalent.
Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.
Some strikes hit the engines which, at the very least, cause the plane to be pulled from service and inspected. Sometimes they wipe out both engines. Oops. A bigger concern for me, as someone who spends a lot of time in little planes, is said Phantom womping into the leading edge of a Cessna or Beaver - planes that aren't constructed a whole lot heavier than the drone. That could ruin your day.
Most drones weigh less than 5kg. They probably wouldn't even dent your leading edge. It would be like a kite strike, I suspect. The shipping weight of a phantom drone is 6.6lbs (3kg)
Also, it would be pretty easy to avoid. I've encountered BIG birds on final, and been able to get around them with ease. Now, birds are pretty predictable (they always dive). However, I've never had a bird strike in 2000 hours of flying cessnas.
Kites are illegal near controlled airports. I could see making it illegal to fly drones there too. I don't think making it necessary to get a pilot's license (like the FAA is planning on doing) makes sense.
On the other hand, I'm a pilot (or was a pilot before the FAA took away my medical certificate) with 2000 hours of time in small aircraft. Other aircraft aren't the problem. They never were. The problem is distraction during busy times, fuel issues (like forgetting to switch tanks,) breaking weather minimums, flocks of birds, etc. The number of midair collisions every year is vanishingly small when compared to the number of operations.
I'm all for increased air safety, but imagine an interaction between a drone and a 747. Unless it is a predator, I suspect the 747 wouldn't even notice it. If you hit one in a small prop plane, it would dent a wing. If it hit the prop, maybe you would have a dented prop that would have to be filed out. They are very light. I would be more afraid of a bird strike, which could take out the windshield.
Now am I saying women can't do this work? No. I am rather saying they don't want to do it. They sit down in the programming classes, notice it is not fun for them, and leave.
What a stupid thing to say. Karmashock, probably indian. My daughter is in her third year in engineering, and encounters your attitude ALL the time, I really don't know what is up with indians. All the indians I've known have treated me (a man) with respect. However, at her school, the indian TAs won't help her, and the indian students are either rude or sexually suggestive. So, what does she do? She kicks their asses by actually studying instead of cheating, by finishing group projects on her own that they are too stupid or lazy to do, and cries in her dorm room every night because their stupid attitude has infected her. She has a 4.0 GPA, and now wants to quit engineering with only a year to go. I guess it wasn't 'fun for her'.
To a certain extent, that's meaningless. Those calories are bound up in a way that you can't use them--which is why they're waste). It may be that there are some usable calories in there if you went back and ingested them again, but obviously there are significantly diminishing returns.
My dog, when she was a puppy, had an annoying habit of eating her own poop. The question is, is it nutritious? I suspect putting it through a second time isn't such a bad thing nutritionally, although it is disgusting, obviously. It certainly adversely affected her breath.
The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.
People driving around in cars is only a tiny part of it. You could stop everyone from driving a petroleum fueled car right now, and it would make little or no difference. Heavy industry, HVAC in homes and businesses - that's what does it. The solution is nukes or one form or another. Solar and wind can't put a dent in it, and China's not going to stop putting a new coal-fired power plant online EVERY WEEK any time soon. Cars have got almost nothing to do with it.
Sorry, I don't think that is right. See this link. From the article:
Our cars and trucks are a major cause of global warming. Collectively, they account for nearly one-fifth of all U.S. emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. About 5 pounds comes from the extraction, production, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emissions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s tailpipe.
Statistics is hard. You can't simply use a random selection, or else you might conclude children with large feet have better reading skills. [rationalwiki.org]
Well, if the point of statistics is to predict things, then causality is immaterial. If you have a list of children, and you have their shoe sizes, you can use the statistic to predict their reading ability. If you are trying to understand the causes of reading ability, you aren't going to pick a statistic that includes shoe sizes. So, the whole 'correlation isn't causation' trope is, in fact, nonsense.
The article is trying to predict bugs based on language. To that end, it doesn't matter if there is causation, it just matters that there is correlation.
Well, the last time Republicans were in charge was Jan 2007. At that time, the unemployment rate was 4.6% and falling, and the deficit was $161 billion.
Yes, they certainly built quite an extravagant house of cards. If only they'd held power for one more term it wouldn't have collapsed...or something.
Republicans controlled Congress for 12 years; six years with a Democrat president, six with a Republican. The highest unemployment seen during this entire 12 years was 6.3%, and it lasted only one month.
If Republicans were the problem, we shouldn't we have seen a problem before 14 years had passed?
Since 2009, for five years, we have not seen the unemployment rate drop below 5.9%.
And yet the only time workers got even a small raise was under Clinton. Strange.
The fact is that since republicans have had control of the house, no stimulus (like the two stimulus measures passed under Bush by both parties, or the 2009 stimulus bill) has happened, and nothing but cuts and stupid government shutdowns have occured. The deficit (as a percent of GDP) has gone down every year since the financial meltdown. This means an ailing private sector must take up the slack of the hundreds of thousands of federal and local jobs that have been lost. The republicans have blocked all bills that might have helped, and in fact have been actively hostile to such efforts as extensions to unemployment, and even food stamps.
Also, are you SERIOUSLY trying to blame the financial meltdown on Obama? I mean, why didn't the lack of legislation under Bush have its intended effect, and calm the markets? The invisible hand was apparently too busy bitch slapping bond brokers and people who had their future tied up in 401Ks. Without the bailouts of banks (the TARP, under Bush, passed by the democratic congress) our economy would have crapped its pants. In trying to get stimulus after the near depression, 177 republicans voted against the 2009 stimulus act in the house, and only 3 republican senators (one of whom was Arlen Specter) voted for it. Without that stimulus, we would still be in a depression.
The fact is, republicans brought on the financial meltdown due to lack of oversight, nearly destroying the economy, and have done everything in their power since to keep it fucked, all the while blaming Obama, who wasn't even around (well, he was a Senator) at the time. They should be laughed out of office. Sadly, they have a really good PR firm working for them (FOX news).
Let's do another analogy:
You buy a crappy house. There are guys paid to keep up the place, but they are doing a crappy job so you fire them. You put a lot of your own money, blood, sweat and tears into fixing the house up. Sure, it's not the greatest house, but it's a whole lot better than it was. However, it will require maintenance to keep it that way until everything is in working order. But, you have to move because the contract at your job is up.
I would blame the moron who bought the house. Particularly because he then went in and knocked out all the load bearing walls, slapped some paint on it, and put termite attractant all over the remaining walls. Then, he managed to fuck up any ability to fix it by burning down the town's bank, and skipped town, leaving the new owner, who didn't want it in the first place, to deal with it.
Last time I was subjected to a new round of their peace and prosperity, I had to look for a new job.
I was out of work for two years (2009-10), had 20 job interviews, and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy before getting a new job. I was out of work for eight months (2013-14), had 60 job interviews, and took out a bank loan to pay rent before getting a new job. As a moderate conservative, I remembered when Republicans once stood for responsible government.
You guys still exist? Seems like most moderate conservatives are democrats these days.
And I've remained in the USA for the last...hmm, it's been almost forty years since I lived in Europe.
And I haven't bothered to watch the (TV) news in longer than that. I'll scan the web for headlines, but that's about it.
Amazing how much happier it's possible to be when you don't waste your time worrying about things you have no control over....
In a democracy, you are supposed to have control (a teeny weeny bit of control) over government. You can't exercise that control unless you keep track of what is going on.
We are having a mid-term election today in the U.S. that is probably going to allow the wrong party to control congress. When I say 'wrong', I mean the party that doesn't have the most popular support. This is the fault of people who don't pay attention. That control will allow them to cement their control of the supreme court, and many lower courts. It will allow them to continue to block legislation that could easily get us out of our current crappy job situation. It will enable them to gut the first step towards a national healthcare service we've been able to make since the 1960s. It will allow them to block meaningful legislation that could help avoid global warming. It will enable them to continue to roll back reproductive rights for women.
Indeed... while it's good that there are less uninsured people now, it doesn't fix the problem that the whole profit-driven (lack of) healthcare system is rotten to the core. I sure don't have any type of health care, public or private. I am expecting a fine at some point, though. Some of the regulatory patchwork like expanding medicare, or letting college students stay on their parents' insurance until 25, will pump up the numbers -- for a while. For some. Meanwhile, people will continue slipping through the cracks, costs will continue to rise. The only question for me is, how many years will it take for the house of cards to come tumbling down? When do we establish an actual healthcare system like every other developed country? How far will my teeth and spine have deteriorated and my carpal tunnel syndrome progressed in the meantime? Even if I do end up with a shitty, expensive healthcare plan before then, how much debt will the necessary surgeries put me in?
One of the nice things about obamacare is the yearly caps on out of pocket expenditures. Even the cheapo policies have these. So, your out of pocket for a year is something like $6500 (not including the premiums.) If you are poor, you get subsidies, so the premiums are not bad. Considering that a typical surgery can cost $250,000, this is pretty good news.
Also, the US price spiral for healthcare seems to be calming down, possibly due to obamacare's vast array of controls.
I want a public option too, but it was not going to get through the democrats in charge, so we ended up with something that is less of a punch in the mouth for healthcare providers, similar to the German system which has been so effective for so long. If the red states would just stop blocking the medicaid expansions for political reasons, we could have a system that actually works for most people.
It still won't be the most cost effective system, and it still won't give us the best outcomes, but it will be better than having people die of cancer because they couldn't afford chemotherapy or surgery, or lose their retirement and house because they refused to just die. And no, they don't do chemotherapy in an emergency room, Mitt.
It costs $420 a person to go to burning man. There were nearly 70,000 people there in 2013. By charging people an additional $20, the management would have an additional 1.4 million dollars to buy a fleet of 20 ice trucks, and give out ice for free at 20 locations. They could sell the ice trucks after the event, or just store them until next year.
In fact, I could do this, and make my fortune. Pre-sell "ice passes" for $30 that would entitle the holder to free ice at any ice truck.
Just pre-queueing the ice makes sense too, but having more locations means you don't have to walk as far, or wait as long. Having 20 locations means a 10 minute walk, and a 0 minute wait for most people at most times.
Slashdot Mirror
Was there some state requirement to go into careers that you tested into? That would make women and men show up in equal numbers. However, the sharp drop off since '89 would imply that there is still cultural antagonism to (or innate bias against) women in sciences.
Too bad they will only make 80% of what men of equal talent will make in the job market.
This is practically a troll.
Try as we do, we can't escape the reality that girls are not only physically different than boys, but as an aggregate group do lean towards certain behaviours and interests.
Some of it may be learned, and there are of course outliers, but you see similar behaviour tied to gender across very different and sometimes geographically isolated cultures. In the least technical terms, there really are "girl things" and "guy things". This becomes rediculously obvious to anyone who has spent any time around little kids.
I'm all for removing artificial barriers, but once they are down we're gonna have to accept that maybe girls really do want to be princesses and maybe guys really do want to be monster trucks (not drive, be damnit, BE!)
I really doubt this guys daughter is deciding to be a princess because she feels society has limited her career choices. She wants to be a princess because that's the kind of thing little girls lean towards. If she wants to play with lego, by all means encourage that shit, but if she just wants to dress up and play with doll, let her play with her dolls and leave her alone!
This is clearly true. I mean, in islamic societies, women just naturally want to cover every part of their body except their eyes, and are averse to driving. They want to be stoned for adultery.
Women in America, before those unnatural suffragettes, didn't really want to vote. They don't want equal pay. They want to be housewives, and live in suburban homes.
My point is that we've just come out from under many millennium of misogyny. How can you say with assurance WHAT women want? Or, for that matter, what men want? The political forces have skewed our desires so fully, and informed our prejudices so entirely that women themselves don't have a gut feel for what is 'natural' for women.
Your typical 4 year old has thousands of hours of TV watching under their belt. They have watched their parents reactions to their actions. They know what you want, and what society expects.
Even the simplest repair would require the world economy to be functioning smoothly. A smart AI, if such a thing could exist, would know that. So, any disruption to the global economy would be deadly. (are you listening?)
Saying that women are opting out of STEM due to choice is not a useful statement. Of course they are choosing to opt out. The question is why is this happening? I can assert that the moronic drivel you call your opinion has been posted because you choose to do it. Now, as to why you choose to post, the assertion that you chose does not have any power to explain, Choosing is an act, not a reason for the act. It is the reason behind the act that we should consider.
Now, I never said sexism was the only cause, just that it is well established by the literature, I've seen it occur myself, and there are lots of firsthand accounts of sexism in science and engineering. So, you are free to speculate on alternate causes for the 'choice' made by women who are choosing to leave STEM. Just saying, "well, they had the choice to stay, and they left, so fuck them" doesn't really cut it as a rational viewpoint, in my opinion. Blacks 'chose' not to vote for 100 years because they were being beaten up and hung when they tried to do it. I guess your view would be that they just "chose" not to vote, so fuck them?
As to your supposed hyper-rationality, you are using rhetoric rather than reason, claiming a straw man proposal (that I believe that sexism is the only cause of women leaving STEM), which can be easily defeated. There are clearly other causes, but the one I see, the one that affects MY DAUGHTER, and other women trying for engineering degrees, is sexism, probably originating from twisted little mama's boys like you. Try arguing like a man, and using your 'hyper-reason' instead of cheesy, transparent rhetoric :)
So, in summary, go fuck yourself, you ignorant little shit. You have no idea what you are talking about. Your 'hyper-rationality' doesn't seem to be cutting it today. Maybe you should go read ' harry potter and the methods of rationality' again.
The point is that the systems designed to stop it from bouncing failed for some reason. They wanted it to be in sunlight to collect solar power. They didn't achieve that.
They are really rocket scientist heroes in my opinion, but I'm sure they are kicking themselves nonetheless. Some of these guys have spent 20 years on the project. They deserve a bigger payoff.
You know, as much as a lot of people are looking at this as a failure, I look at this as a reminder of just how damned difficult this kind of stuff is.
Sadly, I recall that the devices that were on the lander that should have arrested its bounce both failed (the rocket, and the harpoons). So, there 'was' a failure. The mission, though, got lots of data, so it can't be seen a complete failure. It is amazing, awe inspiring, and wonderful. Just not as wonderful as it would have been if the lander had stuck to the first landing place, and been around to witness the out gassing.
You claim to be hyper rational, but I see what sexism does to women first hand. In fact, your supposedly hyper rational view is provably pathetic nonsense. Women are discriminated against in STEM fields. Your argument is a typical horns of a dilemma, "if not this, then clearly that". You can't see any other reasons than 'choice'? Either you are knowingly posting a misleading argument, or you have shit for brains. Those seem to be the only choices.
Try searching for 'discrimination against women in STEM' for more information. In case you can't figure out how to use google, here is one.
With everyone from the federal government to corporate America working to encourage more women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math fields, you would think the doors would be wide open to women of all backgrounds. A new study shows that this could not be further from the truth and that gender bias among hiring managers in STEM fields is extraordinarily prevalent.
Here is another one:
Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.
Concerning indians, here is another reference.
Some strikes hit the engines which, at the very least, cause the plane to be pulled from service and inspected. Sometimes they wipe out both engines. Oops. A bigger concern for me, as someone who spends a lot of time in little planes, is said Phantom womping into the leading edge of a Cessna or Beaver - planes that aren't constructed a whole lot heavier than the drone. That could ruin your day.
Most drones weigh less than 5kg. They probably wouldn't even dent your leading edge. It would be like a kite strike, I suspect. The shipping weight of a phantom drone is 6.6lbs (3kg)
Also, it would be pretty easy to avoid. I've encountered BIG birds on final, and been able to get around them with ease. Now, birds are pretty predictable (they always dive). However, I've never had a bird strike in 2000 hours of flying cessnas.
Kites are illegal near controlled airports. I could see making it illegal to fly drones there too. I don't think making it necessary to get a pilot's license (like the FAA is planning on doing) makes sense.
On the other hand, I'm a pilot (or was a pilot before the FAA took away my medical certificate) with 2000 hours of time in small aircraft. Other aircraft aren't the problem. They never were. The problem is distraction during busy times, fuel issues (like forgetting to switch tanks,) breaking weather minimums, flocks of birds, etc. The number of midair collisions every year is vanishingly small when compared to the number of operations.
I'm all for increased air safety, but imagine an interaction between a drone and a 747. Unless it is a predator, I suspect the 747 wouldn't even notice it. If you hit one in a small prop plane, it would dent a wing. If it hit the prop, maybe you would have a dented prop that would have to be filed out. They are very light. I would be more afraid of a bird strike, which could take out the windshield.
Microkernels!
Now am I saying women can't do this work? No. I am rather saying they don't want to do it. They sit down in the programming classes, notice it is not fun for them, and leave.
What a stupid thing to say. Karmashock, probably indian. My daughter is in her third year in engineering, and encounters your attitude ALL the time, I really don't know what is up with indians. All the indians I've known have treated me (a man) with respect. However, at her school, the indian TAs won't help her, and the indian students are either rude or sexually suggestive. So, what does she do? She kicks their asses by actually studying instead of cheating, by finishing group projects on her own that they are too stupid or lazy to do, and cries in her dorm room every night because their stupid attitude has infected her. She has a 4.0 GPA, and now wants to quit engineering with only a year to go. I guess it wasn't 'fun for her'.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03...
To a certain extent, that's meaningless. Those calories are bound up in a way that you can't use them--which is why they're waste). It may be that there are some usable calories in there if you went back and ingested them again, but obviously there are significantly diminishing returns.
My dog, when she was a puppy, had an annoying habit of eating her own poop. The question is, is it nutritious? I suspect putting it through a second time isn't such a bad thing nutritionally, although it is disgusting, obviously. It certainly adversely affected her breath.
The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.
People driving around in cars is only a tiny part of it. You could stop everyone from driving a petroleum fueled car right now, and it would make little or no difference. Heavy industry, HVAC in homes and businesses - that's what does it. The solution is nukes or one form or another. Solar and wind can't put a dent in it, and China's not going to stop putting a new coal-fired power plant online EVERY WEEK any time soon. Cars have got almost nothing to do with it.
Sorry, I don't think that is right. See this link. From the article:
Our cars and trucks are a major cause of global warming. Collectively, they account for nearly one-fifth of all U.S. emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. About 5 pounds comes from the extraction, production, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emissions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s tailpipe.
Statistics is hard. You can't simply use a random selection, or else you might conclude children with large feet have better reading skills. [rationalwiki.org]
Well, if the point of statistics is to predict things, then causality is immaterial. If you have a list of children, and you have their shoe sizes, you can use the statistic to predict their reading ability. If you are trying to understand the causes of reading ability, you aren't going to pick a statistic that includes shoe sizes. So, the whole 'correlation isn't causation' trope is, in fact, nonsense.
The article is trying to predict bugs based on language. To that end, it doesn't matter if there is causation, it just matters that there is correlation.
Well, the last time Republicans were in charge was Jan 2007. At that time, the unemployment rate was 4.6% and falling, and the deficit was $161 billion.
Yes, they certainly built quite an extravagant house of cards. If only they'd held power for one more term it wouldn't have collapsed...or something.
Republicans controlled Congress for 12 years; six years with a Democrat president, six with a Republican. The highest unemployment seen during this entire 12 years was 6.3%, and it lasted only one month. If Republicans were the problem, we shouldn't we have seen a problem before 14 years had passed?
Since 2009, for five years, we have not seen the unemployment rate drop below 5.9%.
And yet the only time workers got even a small raise was under Clinton. Strange.
Look here
The fact is that since republicans have had control of the house, no stimulus (like the two stimulus measures passed under Bush by both parties, or the 2009 stimulus bill) has happened, and nothing but cuts and stupid government shutdowns have occured. The deficit (as a percent of GDP) has gone down every year since the financial meltdown. This means an ailing private sector must take up the slack of the hundreds of thousands of federal and local jobs that have been lost. The republicans have blocked all bills that might have helped, and in fact have been actively hostile to such efforts as extensions to unemployment, and even food stamps.
Also, are you SERIOUSLY trying to blame the financial meltdown on Obama? I mean, why didn't the lack of legislation under Bush have its intended effect, and calm the markets? The invisible hand was apparently too busy bitch slapping bond brokers and people who had their future tied up in 401Ks. Without the bailouts of banks (the TARP, under Bush, passed by the democratic congress) our economy would have crapped its pants. In trying to get stimulus after the near depression, 177 republicans voted against the 2009 stimulus act in the house, and only 3 republican senators (one of whom was Arlen Specter) voted for it. Without that stimulus, we would still be in a depression.
The fact is, republicans brought on the financial meltdown due to lack of oversight, nearly destroying the economy, and have done everything in their power since to keep it fucked, all the while blaming Obama, who wasn't even around (well, he was a Senator) at the time. They should be laughed out of office. Sadly, they have a really good PR firm working for them (FOX news).
Let's do another analogy:
You buy a crappy house. There are guys paid to keep up the place, but they are doing a crappy job so you fire them. You put a lot of your own money, blood, sweat and tears into fixing the house up. Sure, it's not the greatest house, but it's a whole lot better than it was. However, it will require maintenance to keep it that way until everything is in working order. But, you have to move because the contract at your job is up.
I would blame the moron who bought the house. Particularly because he then went in and knocked out all the load bearing walls, slapped some paint on it, and put termite attractant all over the remaining walls. Then, he managed to fuck up any ability to fix it by burning down the town's bank, and skipped town, leaving the new owner, who didn't want it in the first place, to deal with it.
Last time I was subjected to a new round of their peace and prosperity, I had to look for a new job.
I was out of work for two years (2009-10), had 20 job interviews, and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy before getting a new job. I was out of work for eight months (2013-14), had 60 job interviews, and took out a bank loan to pay rent before getting a new job. As a moderate conservative, I remembered when Republicans once stood for responsible government.
You guys still exist? Seems like most moderate conservatives are democrats these days.
And I've remained in the USA for the last...hmm, it's been almost forty years since I lived in Europe.
And I haven't bothered to watch the (TV) news in longer than that. I'll scan the web for headlines, but that's about it.
Amazing how much happier it's possible to be when you don't waste your time worrying about things you have no control over....
In a democracy, you are supposed to have control (a teeny weeny bit of control) over government. You can't exercise that control unless you keep track of what is going on.
We are having a mid-term election today in the U.S. that is probably going to allow the wrong party to control congress. When I say 'wrong', I mean the party that doesn't have the most popular support. This is the fault of people who don't pay attention. That control will allow them to cement their control of the supreme court, and many lower courts. It will allow them to continue to block legislation that could easily get us out of our current crappy job situation. It will enable them to gut the first step towards a national healthcare service we've been able to make since the 1960s. It will allow them to block meaningful legislation that could help avoid global warming. It will enable them to continue to roll back reproductive rights for women.
Indeed... while it's good that there are less uninsured people now, it doesn't fix the problem that the whole profit-driven (lack of) healthcare system is rotten to the core. I sure don't have any type of health care, public or private. I am expecting a fine at some point, though. Some of the regulatory patchwork like expanding medicare, or letting college students stay on their parents' insurance until 25, will pump up the numbers -- for a while. For some. Meanwhile, people will continue slipping through the cracks, costs will continue to rise. The only question for me is, how many years will it take for the house of cards to come tumbling down? When do we establish an actual healthcare system like every other developed country? How far will my teeth and spine have deteriorated and my carpal tunnel syndrome progressed in the meantime? Even if I do end up with a shitty, expensive healthcare plan before then, how much debt will the necessary surgeries put me in?
One of the nice things about obamacare is the yearly caps on out of pocket expenditures. Even the cheapo policies have these. So, your out of pocket for a year is something like $6500 (not including the premiums.) If you are poor, you get subsidies, so the premiums are not bad. Considering that a typical surgery can cost $250,000, this is pretty good news.
Also, the US price spiral for healthcare seems to be calming down, possibly due to obamacare's vast array of controls.
I want a public option too, but it was not going to get through the democrats in charge, so we ended up with something that is less of a punch in the mouth for healthcare providers, similar to the German system which has been so effective for so long. If the red states would just stop blocking the medicaid expansions for political reasons, we could have a system that actually works for most people.
It still won't be the most cost effective system, and it still won't give us the best outcomes, but it will be better than having people die of cancer because they couldn't afford chemotherapy or surgery, or lose their retirement and house because they refused to just die. And no, they don't do chemotherapy in an emergency room, Mitt.
+1
Thanks for posting this. Very cool video.
It costs $420 a person to go to burning man. There were nearly 70,000 people there in 2013. By charging people an additional $20, the management would have an additional 1.4 million dollars to buy a fleet of 20 ice trucks, and give out ice for free at 20 locations. They could sell the ice trucks after the event, or just store them until next year.
In fact, I could do this, and make my fortune. Pre-sell "ice passes" for $30 that would entitle the holder to free ice at any ice truck.
Just pre-queueing the ice makes sense too, but having more locations means you don't have to walk as far, or wait as long. Having 20 locations means a 10 minute walk, and a 0 minute wait for most people at most times.
Reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut short story. The Big Space Fuck.