I was responding to the above attempt at defining racism. You said "the belief that a certain race is inferior in some way ".
Yes, I understand that you were being overly technical. That is why I said the "implication" is that we are talking about intelligence. If I had said that directly then there would not have been implied.
Well, people believe all sorts of silly things simply because they wish it were true. I call it the Santa Clause argument.
I suppose they think the Nobel-prize committee is controlled by an anti-black pro-Jewish conspiracy.
It is clear that many races under-perform globally when it comes to academics. The question is whether this is cultural or biological. There are differences in IQ scores between races, but the Flynn Effect is just one example of cultural differences greatly impacting all measures of intelligence that we have come up with so far. For instance, in 1900 our ancestors would have averaged a 70 IQ compared to today's standards. No research has shown that we are getting biologically smarter, but our culture and education is increasing our measurable intelligence. Just because there are some studies showing that African Americans on average have slightly lower IQs, this can easily be attributed to them not taking part in most of the advances in education and culture over the past hundred years.
There very well may be genetic differences in intelligence between the races, but there have been no studies that I am aware of which are not better explained by cultural differences. But these cultural differences are something that can be changed, and in fact should be changed if we want to tap into this wasted human potential.
Racism is the belief that a certain race is inferior in some way because of their genetics.
Then the only alternative is ignorance. Every race (identifiable sub-population) is inferior in some way (and superior in another), because of genetics. Evolution has favoured different traits in different environments. I'm sure you can find a hundred non-controversial examples. Check out disease resistance for a start, e.g. sickle-cell.
The implication is inferiority in levels of intelligence, creativity, etc. African Americans and Hispanics are not significantly discriminated against because people think they are weaker, shorter, or suffer from sickle-cell anemia. In fact it is arguable that African Americans have above average physical capabilities compared to most human races. When anyone talks about discrimination in modern times, it is regarding mental capabilities.
And other than the cultural differences that pretty clearly do impact mental capabilities, many people do not believe there is a significant difference in the intelligence derived from genetics between any of the human races.
I think it is pretty well established that there is a difference between racism and racial discrimination. Racism is the belief that a certain race is inferior in some way because of their genetics. That is different than racial discrimination, which can be far more subtle but almost just as damaging. Most racial discrimination today has little to do with race at all, but instead have to do with cultural differences. When I hear someone talking in ebonics it takes a great deal of effort not to immediately form several negative assumptions about that person. That has nothing to do with racism as I have a similar reaction to a strong cockney accent. But it is still discriminatory.
It is important to have these distinctions in our language. When I say someone is racist I mean every negative connotation and denotation that the word has. It loses its meaning if you start calling anyone who is even inadvertently discriminatory a racist.
Data without that code is almost useless because the next researcher who wants to built upon his predecessor's work will likely want to know how you went from the data to your result.
A well written research paper should give just enough information to allow others to replicate the work, but not enough so that later researchers implement the experiment the same way. Implementing research in different ways is a great way to give validity to the results. If two people with two completely different code bases come to the same conclusion that is much better than two people just running the same code on different machines.
Publishing code is still helpful as a way of performing code review and very basic authentication of results, but it is not a very good way to help validate research.
I can recall an incident where a number of Ph.D. dissertations were called into question because of a bug that had been discovered in a mainframe statistical package they had used. If memory serves, the University was contacting graduates and asking them to revisit their results to ensure that the bug didn't adversely affect the content of their work. Perhaps, nowadays, the University wouldn't care so much though I'd hope they would if for no other reason than to maintain the school's reputation.
I wouldn't call pseudo-code a reliable indication of what actually processed the data. It's pretty much the same thing as writing a specification and getting a faulty interpretation of that spec. We've all had an idea of what we wanted a piece of code do only to find that it didn't quite live up to our expectation due to some subtle bug (round-off error, etc.).
Pseudo-code should not be used to validate research or its results. Further independent research is the only way to validate the research. Forcing later researchers to implement the experiment themselves help improve the result of their validation. Your anecdote about a school using the same statistical package for a large amount of research is just one example of a problem if too much code is shared between research projects.
One of the important reasons that research code is throw away code is so that bugs in the code are not spread to other research projects.
I've spotted weird coding in other colleagues' code that introduced problems in the results. Perhaps that experience is why I'd still like to see the code. YMMV
The lesson you should have learned is that any cutting edge research should be taken with a grain of salt until you have either personally verified it, or have looked at numerous independent sources that have verified it. One big reason why the media is such a bad source of scientific knowledge is because they seem to feel that every published paper is evidence of scientific consensus. Don't fall into the same trap.
Uh, hang on. Oz the Great and Powerful was a Disney movie. The Wizard of Oz (1939) was an MGM movie. Just wanted to clarify that for anyone that's confused, like the previous two posters.
Thank you very much for pointing out my mistake before the misinformation spread too much. I saw Disney mentioned in the previous post and never researched who actually produced these movies.
I'm not claiming that this is the correct answer, but I think of a robot as a machine that is capable of autonomously performing a variety of highly different tasks.
I guess I'm a robot denier.
This is why the robots will take over. Because people will always demean the work that robots do as being too simplistic to pose a serious threat. But once people start to realize that the majority of all the work that humans do today is pretty simplistic, it may be too late.
Except the answer is yes. Most music can be made with digital tools without significant loss. It can't, however, replace all of them. Digital music is good for technically perfect scripted performances. It falls short for live music and anything where the imperfections improve the music, primarily music heavily focused on emotions.
Except you just explained why the answer is not yes. So the answer is still no.
Since the headline was actually wrote well (because of its use of the word "most"), the answer is still yes. Just like every industry that AI and robotics is transforming, technology doesn't have to replace 100% of human activities to have an enormous impact.
The next step would be identifying how various imperfections enhance the perception of emotion, and then the digital tools will be able to emulate that too. Not 100% (at least not for a long time), but enough to make using human performers irrelevant for most venues.
"Piracy is theft" the same way "diamonds are forever". Its not archaic, the legal definition is depriving property from its rightful owner. Theft - is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it If they want it to be "theft" they should bribe congress to have the term changed. It is copyright violation which they are trying to "upscale" into harsher and greater punishmenet.
The archaic part is when you add "to deprive the rightful owner of it", which isn't part of the definition of theft. If you steal my car while I am on vacation it is still theft, even though you didn't deprive me of the car.
As far as our laws go, AANAL but I don't think theft has an official definition. It isn't a real charge. It is just a generic term that includes things like larceny, burglary, embezzlement, etc. Our courts clearly have determined that intellectual property can be stolen, so theft is a very proper term for this kind of piracy.
The Wizard of Oz is also in the public domain, but Oz the Great and Powerful needed Disney lawyers on set [techdirt.com] to approve what shade of green they painted the witch.
This was only because they were using a character created by Disney. Frank Baum's wicked witch was wildly different than the one created by Disney, but the move Oz the Great and Powerful decided to use elements of the Disney's wicked witch instead of Frank Baum's. This is why they had to walk a very fine line to avoid copyright issues.
If Oz the Great and Powerful has used an old hag with an eye-patch and a golden cap (like the book) then they would have had nothing to fear from Disney.
Also not surprising since they started with companies like Amazon and Google. I doubt they have any problem finding enough qualified candidates from more traditional routes.
Yes, but no as the mutli-billion dollar waste it is now, with team owners expecting municipalities to build them new stadiums when the team owner could easily afford it.
The colosseum was built with public funds as well so I don't see the difference.
Face it, a culture will spend as much money on entertainment as it can afford. We spend more on it today only because we have more resources.
It's possible to make inferences without the article making an explicit recommendation. If someone tells you that it's dangerous to walk blindfolded in heavy traffic, can't you infer that you shouldn't do it?
It is possible to make inferences, but that doesn't mean you should make some that aren't held up by the actual science. His inference is like if he read a study that says some lab mice who walked blind folded in heavy traffic died, and then he inferred that he shouldn't wear sun glasses since those also impair vision somewhat.
This is exactly how bad science about things like climate change or child vaccinations start. By taking early research and blowing it out of proportion.
The summary says this "The researchers found that the mouse offspring of folate-deficient fathers had a 30 percent increased risk of birth defects, compared to those offspring who had received a sufficient amount of folate."
If that's not a suggestion to make sure you have enough folate, then I don't know what is. Do you want someone to literally spell it out for you?
How does the summary suggest taking pre-natal vitamins at all? The story does not say anything about how drastic the folate-deficiency has to be, or how poor a diet has to be to have folate-deficiency. Perhaps all it takes is eating one steak per year to get enough folate. The summary lists so many things that have folate that anyone who eats more than just Skittles may get plenty. It also may be very easy to be folate-deficient, but the story doesn't mention that at all.
The study is just showing that it is possible for the health of the father at the time of conception to affect birth defect rates. It is an initial study whose only goal is to determine if further studies are necessary. It doesn't make any recommendations about the actual diets that fathers should have.
"Real life" skills > formal education in nearly all but the most rarified environments.
The thing is, in the modern world those rare situations and environments are the ones that actually matter. A hundred years ago your ability to feed your family, maintain your home, etc. were difficult things that took significant effort. Today these tasks can be accomplished by almost anyone. And even if you cannot do some of these tasks yourself, these abilities are so common that you can pay for them to be done on the cheap.
Your usefulness in the modern world is primarily determined by how many rare abilities and how much rare knowledge / experience you have.
You are correct IMHO that most PhDs are not going to have as many blue collar skills as most of the general population. But it isn't a lack of ability; it is a matter of prioritization. Every engineer, scientists, lawyer, etc. that I know who has ever needed mechanical skills for work or play has picked up those skills quite quickly. The largest hindrance I have seen in learning these skills is a general belief that this type of work is beneath them (and while it is an arrogant opinion, it is mostly right).
An atheist does not believe in god, therefore who cares? When you think about it logically there is no reason an atheist should be offended by any of it as no one is forcing us to believe just because of a statue. I am a firm believer in live and let live. If people are happy about seeing a statue of the ten commandments, so be it! I also find it really annoying at atheists who bitch about the mangers that are set up every year around christmas, if you dont believe in it, how can it offend you?
First, a definition so we are all talking about the same thing: Offensive -> causing someone to feel deeply hurt, upset, or angry.
How does something not being true or not being real stop it from being potentially offensive? If I say all gays are stupid, is that not offensive because it isn't true? What if I say that my child says gays are stupid so it must be true. That child doesn't exist (I am not a father) so that statement must not be offensive either.
The ten commandments on publicly owned property are offensive to me because of what they represent. They represent the idea that our government and our laws should be governed by the beliefs of a single religion simply because they are in the majority.
This is made even more offensive because our laws really are modified because of religious beliefs. I would be far less offended by a satanic monument simply because satanists really don't cause as much harm to our institutions (simply because they are fewer in number, they may be worse if they were greater in number).
Politicians only like free markets if it helps their corporate sponsors. When the free market benefits the consumers it is evil and needs to be stopped with government intervention.
That would be perfect for delivery of anything that weighs about the same as a postage stamp.
Or anything weighing up to 5 pounds, which apparently makes up over 80% of their shipments. I was about to say RTFA, but then I read the article myself and found that it left out a lot of important information from the actual 60 minutes interview.
3. These sites are all primitive pigeon-holing nonsense: they are designed for people only looking for one or two things, and they match based on weighted points systems - but interesting relationships come out of various physical, intellecual and emotional connections formed over time, not superficial measures. You won't find a computer algorithm which can achieve this for you. Just get to know lots of people, and wait for a good friendship to develop, perhaps into a relationship. In particular, DON'T go by first impressions;
That is simply false. Well, not the part about interesting relationships, just the part about online sites not helping with that.
An online site is not going to magically match you with the perfect person, but it is very helpful in the process. I was on Match.com for about eight months and during that time I probably emailed a couple dozen women, went on physical dates with six women, had one three month relationship and at the end I found my current wife. Match.com wasn't some magic bullet, but it made dating far more straight forward than it is traditionally.
I knew every woman I "approached" was interested in a relationship. And while I am perfectly fine at dating, I am not good at approaching women for the first time (so online dating is perfect) I also knew every woman I dated wanted kids, liked pets, wasn't religious, could at least type intelligently, and had at least a few common interests. All of this took I'd guess about 75% of the worst parts about dating out of the equation, and just left the fun parts (and I don't just mean sex). Even the two dates who I never called again were enjoyable nights out, there just wasn't that initial connection I was looking for.
I agree - anyone ever getting any real replies on those sites?
Yes, my wife that I met on Match.com is sitting in the other room right now. But both of us are above average in both our careers and attractiveness (although neither of us are rich or and we would not be mistaken for models).
I don't have any friends who were successful with online dating unless they were also successful in regular dating. Match.com just lets you immediately know who is available and makes it much easier to weed out anyone who you absolutely would not want a relationship with (doesn't like kids, religious, etc.). But if you have trouble getting dates without online dating, you will probably have trouble online too.
When bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial individuals of native american/tongese extraction with dwarfism make up 51% of the population, that can be a goal.
Why?
Why isn't there a goal that these dwarfs also make up 50% of all Basketball players?
Probably because no one believes that more dwarfs would improve the NBA.
Most people believe that more women in STEM fields will improve those fields. If there are a million programmers in the country and only 25% are men, odds are that there are 500,000 women out there who would make fine developers but don't because of . And more importantly, there would be 50,000 more of the top 10% of programmers who actually do most of the work. I work in consulting and we are always looking for more elite IT consultants, and I would love for the number of elite professionals in this field to increase by 50%.
These gender gap figures are only irrelevant if you believe that women are simply inferior to men in STEM fields. Most people don't believe that.
Most instate Universities with room and board are around $18,000/yr. So, a 4 year degree is in the neighborhood of $72,000. I don't know what mid-size cars you drive, but that's pretty steep.
Well I am pretty sure that he meant the cost of tuition, since you have to spend money on room and board even if you don't go to school. But the amount of opportunity costs of an average student is likely around $8k per year since you can probably only work part time, so I still agree with your actual figures.
It has nothing to do with the major one picks (although some majors do not gain one an advantage in employment). 40 years ago, a college degree in business allowed one to jump into middle management. Today, it is pretty much standard for administrative assistants to have one. Yes, today's administrative assistatns do more than yesterday's secretaries and stenographers, but $72,000 worth of education more?
Well, if you compare that $72k with an investment paying out 8% over inflation (a very high ROR), you would need to make about $5500 per year more for the education to be worth it for the employee (if they invest that money too). And if you look at it from the employer's perspective, they would only have to be about 15% more effective to make the degree worth it (if you assume they are paying $5500 more than for a non-degreed assistant).
I think that even for an administrative assistant, it is more than worth it to get a degree. All employees such as these that I have worked with have had degrees, and they are vital employees who make important decisions. They aren't just answering phones and sending faxes. I know of some that have worked with my parents where this isn't true, but that was a different generation.
It is becoming more and more rare for someone who works behind a desk to not benefit greatly from a college education. And that is not just to get a job; it really does help educate the workplace. Most people do not have the self-motivation to educate themselves so an extra 4 years of "forced" education is useful.
Iranian oil makes up a very tiny fraction of US imports.
Why do people think it matters where we get our oil from? Oil is a global commodity sold in a global marketplace. Even cost of oil we buy from Canada is significantly impacted by events in the middle east. If an Iran embargo increased the cost of oil, the price that Canada charges would go up just about as much as the price that Iraq charges.
Do you really think that most people consume more fuel when they buy a more efficient car?
I have no idea what the data actually says about this topic, but there are ways that more efficient cars can either increase consumption or at least greatly reduce their benefits.
1. People decide to buy a bigger house by living farther from work. This is quite common. I know this is just anecdotal, but I do have one friend who was planning on moving about 20 miles closer to work but settled on buying a Prius instead. His Prius purchase definitely caused him to spend more money on gas if you consider that the alternative was spending more money on real estate instead of gasoline.
2. Efficient cars keep gasoline prices down so that others decide to buy a Charger instead of a Civic. This would not increase overall consumption, but it certainly reduces the positive effects of efficient cars.
None of this means that making efficient cars is a bad thing, it just shows that the effects of each efficient car purchase is not as simple as just comparing gas consumption with your previous car.
He should have said smart phone, not cell phone. Many people, myself included, thought that smart phones would be too expensive and not useful enough. From what I remember, that was the opinion of the vast majority of even technically savvy people.
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I was responding to the above attempt at defining racism. You said "the belief that a certain race is inferior in some way ".
Yes, I understand that you were being overly technical. That is why I said the "implication" is that we are talking about intelligence. If I had said that directly then there would not have been implied.
Well, people believe all sorts of silly things simply because they wish it were true. I call it the Santa Clause argument.
I suppose they think the Nobel-prize committee is controlled by an anti-black pro-Jewish conspiracy.
It is clear that many races under-perform globally when it comes to academics. The question is whether this is cultural or biological. There are differences in IQ scores between races, but the Flynn Effect is just one example of cultural differences greatly impacting all measures of intelligence that we have come up with so far. For instance, in 1900 our ancestors would have averaged a 70 IQ compared to today's standards. No research has shown that we are getting biologically smarter, but our culture and education is increasing our measurable intelligence. Just because there are some studies showing that African Americans on average have slightly lower IQs, this can easily be attributed to them not taking part in most of the advances in education and culture over the past hundred years.
There very well may be genetic differences in intelligence between the races, but there have been no studies that I am aware of which are not better explained by cultural differences. But these cultural differences are something that can be changed, and in fact should be changed if we want to tap into this wasted human potential.
Racism is the belief that a certain race is inferior in some way because of their genetics.
Then the only alternative is ignorance. Every race (identifiable sub-population) is inferior in some way (and superior in another), because of genetics.
Evolution has favoured different traits in different environments. I'm sure you can find a hundred non-controversial examples.
Check out disease resistance for a start, e.g. sickle-cell.
The implication is inferiority in levels of intelligence, creativity, etc. African Americans and Hispanics are not significantly discriminated against because people think they are weaker, shorter, or suffer from sickle-cell anemia. In fact it is arguable that African Americans have above average physical capabilities compared to most human races. When anyone talks about discrimination in modern times, it is regarding mental capabilities.
And other than the cultural differences that pretty clearly do impact mental capabilities, many people do not believe there is a significant difference in the intelligence derived from genetics between any of the human races.
I think it is pretty well established that there is a difference between racism and racial discrimination. Racism is the belief that a certain race is inferior in some way because of their genetics. That is different than racial discrimination, which can be far more subtle but almost just as damaging. Most racial discrimination today has little to do with race at all, but instead have to do with cultural differences. When I hear someone talking in ebonics it takes a great deal of effort not to immediately form several negative assumptions about that person. That has nothing to do with racism as I have a similar reaction to a strong cockney accent. But it is still discriminatory.
It is important to have these distinctions in our language. When I say someone is racist I mean every negative connotation and denotation that the word has. It loses its meaning if you start calling anyone who is even inadvertently discriminatory a racist.
Data without that code is almost useless because the next researcher who wants to built upon his predecessor's work will likely want to know how you went from the data to your result.
A well written research paper should give just enough information to allow others to replicate the work, but not enough so that later researchers implement the experiment the same way. Implementing research in different ways is a great way to give validity to the results. If two people with two completely different code bases come to the same conclusion that is much better than two people just running the same code on different machines.
Publishing code is still helpful as a way of performing code review and very basic authentication of results, but it is not a very good way to help validate research.
I can recall an incident where a number of Ph.D. dissertations were called into question because of a bug that had been discovered in a mainframe statistical package they had used. If memory serves, the University was contacting graduates and asking them to revisit their results to ensure that the bug didn't adversely affect the content of their work. Perhaps, nowadays, the University wouldn't care so much though I'd hope they would if for no other reason than to maintain the school's reputation.
I wouldn't call pseudo-code a reliable indication of what actually processed the data. It's pretty much the same thing as writing a specification and getting a faulty interpretation of that spec. We've all had an idea of what we wanted a piece of code do only to find that it didn't quite live up to our expectation due to some subtle bug (round-off error, etc.).
Pseudo-code should not be used to validate research or its results. Further independent research is the only way to validate the research. Forcing later researchers to implement the experiment themselves help improve the result of their validation. Your anecdote about a school using the same statistical package for a large amount of research is just one example of a problem if too much code is shared between research projects.
One of the important reasons that research code is throw away code is so that bugs in the code are not spread to other research projects.
I've spotted weird coding in other colleagues' code that introduced problems in the results. Perhaps that experience is why I'd still like to see the code. YMMV
The lesson you should have learned is that any cutting edge research should be taken with a grain of salt until you have either personally verified it, or have looked at numerous independent sources that have verified it. One big reason why the media is such a bad source of scientific knowledge is because they seem to feel that every published paper is evidence of scientific consensus. Don't fall into the same trap.
Uh, hang on. Oz the Great and Powerful was a Disney movie. The Wizard of Oz (1939) was an MGM movie. Just wanted to clarify that for anyone that's confused, like the previous two posters.
Thank you very much for pointing out my mistake before the misinformation spread too much. I saw Disney mentioned in the previous post and never researched who actually produced these movies.
I'm not claiming that this is the correct answer, but I think of a robot as a machine that is capable of autonomously performing a variety of highly different tasks.
I guess I'm a robot denier.
This is why the robots will take over. Because people will always demean the work that robots do as being too simplistic to pose a serious threat. But once people start to realize that the majority of all the work that humans do today is pretty simplistic, it may be too late.
Except the answer is yes. Most music can be made with digital tools without significant loss. It can't, however, replace all of them. Digital music is good for technically perfect scripted performances. It falls short for live music and anything where the imperfections improve the music, primarily music heavily focused on emotions.
Except you just explained why the answer is not yes. So the answer is still no.
Since the headline was actually wrote well (because of its use of the word "most"), the answer is still yes. Just like every industry that AI and robotics is transforming, technology doesn't have to replace 100% of human activities to have an enormous impact.
The next step would be identifying how various imperfections enhance the perception of emotion, and then the digital tools will be able to emulate that too. Not 100% (at least not for a long time), but enough to make using human performers irrelevant for most venues.
"Piracy is theft" the same way "diamonds are forever".
Its not archaic, the legal definition is depriving property from its rightful owner.
Theft - is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
If they want it to be "theft" they should bribe congress to have the term changed.
It is copyright violation which they are trying to "upscale" into harsher and greater punishmenet.
The archaic part is when you add "to deprive the rightful owner of it", which isn't part of the definition of theft. If you steal my car while I am on vacation it is still theft, even though you didn't deprive me of the car.
As far as our laws go, AANAL but I don't think theft has an official definition. It isn't a real charge. It is just a generic term that includes things like larceny, burglary, embezzlement, etc. Our courts clearly have determined that intellectual property can be stolen, so theft is a very proper term for this kind of piracy.
The Wizard of Oz is also in the public domain, but Oz the Great and Powerful needed Disney lawyers on set [techdirt.com] to approve what shade of green they painted the witch.
This was only because they were using a character created by Disney. Frank Baum's wicked witch was wildly different than the one created by Disney, but the move Oz the Great and Powerful decided to use elements of the Disney's wicked witch instead of Frank Baum's. This is why they had to walk a very fine line to avoid copyright issues.
If Oz the Great and Powerful has used an old hag with an eye-patch and a golden cap (like the book) then they would have had nothing to fear from Disney.
Also not surprising since they started with companies like Amazon and Google. I doubt they have any problem finding enough qualified candidates from more traditional routes.
Yes, but no as the mutli-billion dollar waste it is now, with team owners expecting municipalities to build them new stadiums when the team owner could easily afford it.
The colosseum was built with public funds as well so I don't see the difference.
Face it, a culture will spend as much money on entertainment as it can afford. We spend more on it today only because we have more resources.
It's possible to make inferences without the article making an explicit recommendation. If someone tells you that it's dangerous to walk blindfolded in heavy traffic, can't you infer that you shouldn't do it?
It is possible to make inferences, but that doesn't mean you should make some that aren't held up by the actual science. His inference is like if he read a study that says some lab mice who walked blind folded in heavy traffic died, and then he inferred that he shouldn't wear sun glasses since those also impair vision somewhat.
This is exactly how bad science about things like climate change or child vaccinations start. By taking early research and blowing it out of proportion.
Seriously?
The summary says this "The researchers found that the mouse offspring of folate-deficient fathers had a 30 percent increased risk of birth defects, compared to those offspring who had received a sufficient amount of folate."
If that's not a suggestion to make sure you have enough folate, then I don't know what is. Do you want someone to literally spell it out for you?
How does the summary suggest taking pre-natal vitamins at all? The story does not say anything about how drastic the folate-deficiency has to be, or how poor a diet has to be to have folate-deficiency. Perhaps all it takes is eating one steak per year to get enough folate. The summary lists so many things that have folate that anyone who eats more than just Skittles may get plenty. It also may be very easy to be folate-deficient, but the story doesn't mention that at all.
The study is just showing that it is possible for the health of the father at the time of conception to affect birth defect rates. It is an initial study whose only goal is to determine if further studies are necessary. It doesn't make any recommendations about the actual diets that fathers should have.
"Real life" skills > formal education in nearly all but the most rarified environments.
The thing is, in the modern world those rare situations and environments are the ones that actually matter. A hundred years ago your ability to feed your family, maintain your home, etc. were difficult things that took significant effort. Today these tasks can be accomplished by almost anyone. And even if you cannot do some of these tasks yourself, these abilities are so common that you can pay for them to be done on the cheap.
Your usefulness in the modern world is primarily determined by how many rare abilities and how much rare knowledge / experience you have.
You are correct IMHO that most PhDs are not going to have as many blue collar skills as most of the general population. But it isn't a lack of ability; it is a matter of prioritization. Every engineer, scientists, lawyer, etc. that I know who has ever needed mechanical skills for work or play has picked up those skills quite quickly. The largest hindrance I have seen in learning these skills is a general belief that this type of work is beneath them (and while it is an arrogant opinion, it is mostly right).
An atheist does not believe in god, therefore who cares? When you think about it logically there is no reason an atheist should be offended by any of it as no one is forcing us to believe just because of a statue. I am a firm believer in live and let live. If people are happy about seeing a statue of the ten commandments, so be it! I also find it really annoying at atheists who bitch about the mangers that are set up every year around christmas, if you dont believe in it, how can it offend you?
First, a definition so we are all talking about the same thing: Offensive -> causing someone to feel deeply hurt, upset, or angry.
How does something not being true or not being real stop it from being potentially offensive? If I say all gays are stupid, is that not offensive because it isn't true? What if I say that my child says gays are stupid so it must be true. That child doesn't exist (I am not a father) so that statement must not be offensive either.
The ten commandments on publicly owned property are offensive to me because of what they represent. They represent the idea that our government and our laws should be governed by the beliefs of a single religion simply because they are in the majority.
This is made even more offensive because our laws really are modified because of religious beliefs. I would be far less offended by a satanic monument simply because satanists really don't cause as much harm to our institutions (simply because they are fewer in number, they may be worse if they were greater in number).
Politicians only like free markets if it helps their corporate sponsors. When the free market benefits the consumers it is evil and needs to be stopped with government intervention.
That would be perfect for delivery of anything that weighs about the same as a postage stamp.
Or anything weighing up to 5 pounds, which apparently makes up over 80% of their shipments. I was about to say RTFA, but then I read the article myself and found that it left out a lot of important information from the actual 60 minutes interview.
3. These sites are all primitive pigeon-holing nonsense: they are designed for people only looking for one or two things, and they match based on weighted points systems - but interesting relationships come out of various physical, intellecual and emotional connections formed over time, not superficial measures. You won't find a computer algorithm which can achieve this for you. Just get to know lots of people, and wait for a good friendship to develop, perhaps into a relationship. In particular, DON'T go by first impressions;
That is simply false. Well, not the part about interesting relationships, just the part about online sites not helping with that.
An online site is not going to magically match you with the perfect person, but it is very helpful in the process. I was on Match.com for about eight months and during that time I probably emailed a couple dozen women, went on physical dates with six women, had one three month relationship and at the end I found my current wife. Match.com wasn't some magic bullet, but it made dating far more straight forward than it is traditionally.
I knew every woman I "approached" was interested in a relationship. And while I am perfectly fine at dating, I am not good at approaching women for the first time (so online dating is perfect) I also knew every woman I dated wanted kids, liked pets, wasn't religious, could at least type intelligently, and had at least a few common interests. All of this took I'd guess about 75% of the worst parts about dating out of the equation, and just left the fun parts (and I don't just mean sex). Even the two dates who I never called again were enjoyable nights out, there just wasn't that initial connection I was looking for.
All in all dating online was great.
I agree - anyone ever getting any real replies on those sites?
Yes, my wife that I met on Match.com is sitting in the other room right now. But both of us are above average in both our careers and attractiveness (although neither of us are rich or and we would not be mistaken for models).
I don't have any friends who were successful with online dating unless they were also successful in regular dating. Match.com just lets you immediately know who is available and makes it much easier to weed out anyone who you absolutely would not want a relationship with (doesn't like kids, religious, etc.). But if you have trouble getting dates without online dating, you will probably have trouble online too.
Why?
Why isn't there a goal that these dwarfs also make up 50% of all Basketball players?
Probably because no one believes that more dwarfs would improve the NBA.
Most people believe that more women in STEM fields will improve those fields. If there are a million programmers in the country and only 25% are men, odds are that there are 500,000 women out there who would make fine developers but don't because of . And more importantly, there would be 50,000 more of the top 10% of programmers who actually do most of the work. I work in consulting and we are always looking for more elite IT consultants, and I would love for the number of elite professionals in this field to increase by 50%.
These gender gap figures are only irrelevant if you believe that women are simply inferior to men in STEM fields. Most people don't believe that.
Most instate Universities with room and board are around $18,000/yr. So, a 4 year degree is in the neighborhood of $72,000. I don't know what mid-size cars you drive, but that's pretty steep.
Well I am pretty sure that he meant the cost of tuition, since you have to spend money on room and board even if you don't go to school. But the amount of opportunity costs of an average student is likely around $8k per year since you can probably only work part time, so I still agree with your actual figures.
It has nothing to do with the major one picks (although some majors do not gain one an advantage in employment). 40 years ago, a college degree in business allowed one to jump into middle management. Today, it is pretty much standard for administrative assistants to have one. Yes, today's administrative assistatns do more than yesterday's secretaries and stenographers, but $72,000 worth of education more?
Well, if you compare that $72k with an investment paying out 8% over inflation (a very high ROR), you would need to make about $5500 per year more for the education to be worth it for the employee (if they invest that money too). And if you look at it from the employer's perspective, they would only have to be about 15% more effective to make the degree worth it (if you assume they are paying $5500 more than for a non-degreed assistant).
I think that even for an administrative assistant, it is more than worth it to get a degree. All employees such as these that I have worked with have had degrees, and they are vital employees who make important decisions. They aren't just answering phones and sending faxes. I know of some that have worked with my parents where this isn't true, but that was a different generation.
It is becoming more and more rare for someone who works behind a desk to not benefit greatly from a college education. And that is not just to get a job; it really does help educate the workplace. Most people do not have the self-motivation to educate themselves so an extra 4 years of "forced" education is useful.
Iranian oil makes up a very tiny fraction of US imports.
Why do people think it matters where we get our oil from? Oil is a global commodity sold in a global marketplace. Even cost of oil we buy from Canada is significantly impacted by events in the middle east. If an Iran embargo increased the cost of oil, the price that Canada charges would go up just about as much as the price that Iraq charges.
Do you really think that most people consume more fuel when they buy a more efficient car?
I have no idea what the data actually says about this topic, but there are ways that more efficient cars can either increase consumption or at least greatly reduce their benefits.
1. People decide to buy a bigger house by living farther from work. This is quite common. I know this is just anecdotal, but I do have one friend who was planning on moving about 20 miles closer to work but settled on buying a Prius instead. His Prius purchase definitely caused him to spend more money on gas if you consider that the alternative was spending more money on real estate instead of gasoline.
2. Efficient cars keep gasoline prices down so that others decide to buy a Charger instead of a Civic. This would not increase overall consumption, but it certainly reduces the positive effects of efficient cars.
None of this means that making efficient cars is a bad thing, it just shows that the effects of each efficient car purchase is not as simple as just comparing gas consumption with your previous car.
He should have said smart phone, not cell phone. Many people, myself included, thought that smart phones would be too expensive and not useful enough. From what I remember, that was the opinion of the vast majority of even technically savvy people.