The full Lena picture, which many of the kids will find and know they're working on, is most definitely pornographic. That carries an important context.
On top of that, you have spoken for Lena in assigning the "sexual object" label to her; it was never your choice, it was hers, and she chose to have that picture taken. You don't get to speak for her or be offended on her behalf. Take five seconds to actually understand what you are talking about before you spout off and look like a fool.
Why do you claim I was trying to speak on her behalf? I never attempted such a thing.
But what would you say to the girls in the class who are made offended and/or uncomfortable by the image and its origin? Do they have a right to feel uncomfortable? What's the big deal with using a different image and removing the problem?
Except it's not porn. it's an image of a face cropped from a larger image that happened to feature softcore nudity.
Even if it were only the face it would still be creepy since the expression is clearly suggestive, but a lot of the kids are going to find the original and that changes the context.
So, there are two implicit assertions here: first, that softcore nudity is porn and unprofessional (unless it's at least a couple hundred years old, in which case it's merely 'art').
This is playboy, I'd consider it professional softcore pornography.
Nudity in art regardless of age can have pornographic aspects or not.
The second assertion is that softcore nudity is so horrendously unprofessional that it taints even derivative works where no nudity is detectable or implied.
Here I'm assuming you mean "unprofessional" as in don't bring it into the workplace. I don't know what "softcore nudity" is but softcore pornography should not be brought into the workplace. Cropping helps, I doubt having the cropped Lena photo as a desktop background would be an issue, but using it in a presentation? I'd say that's unprofessional.
It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines
As a "tradition", there is surely some value in being able to compare current vs.historical efforts to analyze the same image.
True, but I'm not sure it's worth the baggage.
Also, you are implying (very un-subtly) that there is something inherently shameful, or at least "non-proud" in guys looking at porn. I would call that prudish and potentially misandric.
Not quite, I'd say there's something inherently shameful about inserting porn into a technical field not caring or realizing that there's people who won't want to view it in a professional setting. I would call that asshole-ish.
1) Every picture is also part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having being tortured to death. Do you think those pictures belong in the classroom as well?
Do I think pictures of individuals being tortured should be included in a classroom setting? If a history class, or current affairs, carefully presented in context, and the children were sufficiently mature - it may be appropriate.
But not appropriate for a computer vision class regardless of the age.
Should CROPPED pictures be included of such out of context? No. Because the subject suffered, unlike in this case, where the subject has no problem being seen.
Kids aren't stupid, they'll figure out the source of the photo and everyone will know. The nature of the photo creates the context.
2) There are students, particularly female ones, who find it both objectionable and threatening. That is completely relevant to its use in a high school class.
I find cars objectionable and threatening - they've killed way more people than consensual, safe, softcore pornography
And if a lot of people shared your strong objections to car pictures than I'd agree schools should avoid unnecessary photos of cars.
You have no idea how difficult it is for me to respond civilly after you claimed I'm a sexist that objectifies women.
YOU are the one arguing that objectification is inevitable. When you see that image, do you think less of the model, or of women in general? If yes, YOU have a problem. If no, you've blown a hole in your own argument.
You've missed the point entirely.
The problem isn't that me or a woman in the class is objectifying women because of the picture.
The problem is that there are men in the class who are objectifying women, or thinking it's appropriate to objectify women, because of the picture.
Whether or not I'm one of those men is irrelevant, merely the fact women have a reasonable expectation that those men are there objectifying them makes it an issue.
There are two very obvious gender differences. One males are, on average, far stronger than women.
True, but of fuck all relevance here. Second pregnancies are far more costly to women.
True, but in most civilised nations, contraceptive pills and implants and morning-after pills and early terminations and (as a very last resort) adoption are universally available.
Which is one of the reasons that Western women are more sexually liberated, but the differences persist.
but also because men have far less to fear about being physically overpowered.
Utterly, utterly false. Non-consensual sex / sexual assault is rarely about being physically overpowered. This is one of the main rape myths that (proper, i.e. egalitarian rather than anti-penis) feminists have tried to dispell.
Ask any woman, it's still something they have to be aware of, I know many girls who won't trail run by themselves because they're worried about guys attacking them. That's a concern that never even crossed my mind.
And it's not just rape, spousal abuse is still terrifyingly common and there's certainly a sexual component to that.
I'm seeing the context of the "Lena" image as being a standard test for image processing.
There's no technical reason for that to be true. It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines, its continued usage suggests that hasn't really changed. I don't think that's a message you want to send about a technical field.
As for art, a lot of it appears to have a sexualized component when it was created (some of it very explicit), but in the context of a class, it's being studied for its place in art history.
That's art, the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value.
I don't think the standard computer vision test image should be making provocative artistic statements.
So what am I missing? Tell me how a cropped Lena picture is any worse than (say) Goya's The Nude Maja, which Wikipedia notes was probably created to hang in a private collection, and whose subject, just like the Lena photograph, looks directly at the viewer (and unlike the Lena photograph, "Nude Maja" tends not to be cropped).
It's not any worse. But neither image should be used as a standard test image.
And yes, using an image you know many students will find offensive or threatening just because you think they should feel otherwise is preaching.
If someone finds a picture of a face offensive or threatening, then they've got problems no amount of preaching is going to fix.
So what? Just like it's not the role of the school to fix your attitudes towards sexuality it's not the role of the CS class to "fix" theirs.
And it's very disingenuous to say it's just a picture of a face, kids aren't morons, someone will figure out the source and spread the news. And even as just a face it's very obviously a sexualized picture.
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. I'm afraid that your armchair logic and reasoning are going to come in second to those who have not only witnessed it, but been a part of the whole thing first hand.
How exactly does it create a hostile environment?
Context.
For bonus points, explain how nudity in classic art (paintings, sculptures, etc) does not create a hostile environment in the classroom.
That looks like you're criticizing my grammar or something, I think you're incorrect.
And yes students will figure out it's a pornographic image
1) Every picture is a small part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having sex. 2) What is wrong with softcore porn, please? Answer in a way that's relevant to the use of it in this circumstance.
1) Every picture is also part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having being tortured to death. Do you think those pictures belong in the classroom as well?
2) There are students, particularly female ones, who find it both objectionable and threatening. That is completely relevant to its use in a high school class.
shows a woman as a sexual object
The full picture shows a woman as sexual. It does not show a woman as a sexual object, unless you're seriously suggesting something like porn makes you think women aren't human?
Wow, you're the second person in this thread to try that horrible BS debating tactic.
where women would be expected to have different attitudes
So your whole argument is based on your ignorant sexism?
You have no idea how difficult it is for me to respond civilly after you claimed I'm a sexist that objectifies women.
There are two very obvious gender differences. One males are, on average, far stronger than women. Second pregnancies are far more costly to women.
This means that men are far more likely to be interested in casual sex than women because they have far fewer things to fear from casual sex. Both because men feel less consequence from potential pregnancies but also because men have far less to fear about being physically overpowered.
It is not true for everyone, there's a cultural component as well, and there's nothing shameful or unfeminine about a woman interested in casual sex. But the fact the genders do have very different attitudes is backed up by virtually every study ever done.
Don't you think that using a picture that shows a woman as a sexual object is going to add to the objectification of women?
No. I don't see pretty and/or nude women as objects. Why the hell would you ?
You're seriously using the "if you're criticizing X because you think it leads to Y then that means you have a strong tendency to Y" argument? I'm sorry but I think that's a very insulting tactic.
Sexual objectification involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person.
This isn't nude photography, this is pornography, it is a woman being portrayed in the nude as an object of male sexual desire. This is literally the definition of objectification of women!
The fact you can view and enjoy pornography without objectifying women doesn't mean there aren't a lot of women and men who find it very objectifying.
You may not agree with them but why not take their concerns into account?
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
So are you in favour of prayer in the classroom? Having endless religious speakers and abstinence only advocates come in to speak?
Because your comment suggests you think it's perfectly appropriate for teachers to push their personal views on the classroom. I take the converse view, they don't get to preach their beliefs and we don't get to preach ours. And yes, using an image you know many students will find offensive or threatening just because you think they should feel otherwise is preaching.
The problem is a RELIGIOUS legacy of people being ashamed of their bodies. Women, especially, are taught to feel ashamed of their bodies.
No, the problem is guys who are so oblivious about women's concerns that they'd use a pornographic picture as an assignment for a high school classroom. And yes students will figure out it's a pornographic imagine.
And guys who think that such images are an excuse to objectify women are behaving equally awfully, but this is not the problem right here.
Don't you think that using a picture that shows a woman as a sexual object is going to add to the objectification of women?
And it's not just some religious legacy or shame at work here, sexuality is one of those rare instances where women would be expected to have different attitudes than men. Using a pornographic image in the classroom will create an environment that makes women feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, there's no reason to have it.
While I see many challenges to geoengineering, talks breaking down into nuclear war is not one of them. I mean, I have challenging talks with my wife all the time about the budget, but I never think going into it that she's going to burn down the house in response to a dispute.
Part of the reason that happens is you're both aware of the consequences of things getting out of hand.
This kind of speculation is a balance, talking about nuclear war too much is just fearmongering and people won't take you seriously.
On the other hand part of the reason it's probably not going to happen is people are aware of it. One of the reasons the West isn't taking a stronger response to Russia in Ukraine is the possibility that things will escalate and you'll end up in a war that could go nuclear.
The issue with geoengineering is you've added a dial on the planet that many people will want to control, that's very likely to increase international tensions among big powers. The more tensions you have the more likely a war is going to break out.
Geoengineering probably isn't going to lead to a nuclear war, but that's partially because we sometimes remind ourselves that it's a possible outcome.
Sorry what? Generously, they make 1.6b in revenue, allowing them a net margin equal to google and they need to increase revenue by 15X and somehow salvage 25% of that into net income.
Huh? Why are you comparing their margin to Google's? There are sub-Google levels of profitability.
The thing is wall street speculation is now highly automated.... and cause a sell-off run much more efficiently than humans reading twitter ever could.
This is exactly what triggered it. The page was up for forty five seconds. 45 seconds is not enough for humans to read and understand it, but that is plenty of time for bots.
During that 45 seconds, assorted stock-trading bots picked up on it, scanned it, and sold over 3M units, or $153M, of their stock. That's over 30x their normal trading levels.
This doesn't quite make sense to me. Assuming the bots are smart enough to parse the earnings reports (highly plausible) wouldn't they react the same as if it were a proper release?
Why is the early release difference? Would this same drop have happened when the bots saw the news overnight and reacted the next morning, or would the human investors have done something that would have changed the bots behaviour?
The article is kind of vague on the dropoff but it seems to be the real benefit isn't in the speed, it's the dropoff location.
As someone who lives in an apartment getting a parcel looks like me checking the main entrance (which I don't use) for delivery notices of parcels they tried to deliver while I was at work then heading to the parcel depot during the 6 hours window on Saturday when I'm not at work and they're open.
But Uber can get the current GPS location of its customers, so could do the dropoff directly to the person and skip the game of depot tag.
The traditional delivery companies might have a real hard time responding to that.
Designing and building a dam that provides drinking water and electricity to millions is not "societally meaningful"?
Likewise, designing a weathersat that improves predictions of hurricanes and such is not "societally meaningful"?
Interesting that the argument being used is that "most of what engineers do does nothing for society, so women don't want to do that sort of thing"....
Look at the summary: affordable solutions for clean drinking water, inventing medical diagnostic equipment for neglected tropical diseases and enabling local manufacturing in poor and remote regions.
I think both lists are societally meaningful. Yes there's more money in your list, but that's also because big showy things like dams and satellites appeal to men, so some of the money is because when all the engineers are men they're going to go out and work on those male-appealing things and that's where the money and innovation will go.
For instance I think a lot of construction engineers might find a sports stadium to be "societally meaningful" and they'd make a ton of money building them. But I suspect those have worse economics than any of the more female appealing projects mentioned in the summary.
They just made the courses more interesting to female students and they signed up of their own free will.
Hold the phone! Are you saying that women didn't previously sign up for this course because (gasp) they were not interested in engineering just for engineering's sake? That certainly puts paid to your previous unsubstantiated theories of sexism being responsible for the lower numbers of females in STEM.
You're acting as if the current engineering curriculum is a canonical implementation of some ideal definition of engineering and any alteration means it's further from true engineering.
But those old courses were designed with the same objective of every other course, to attract students. And the people who designed them were male instructors who naturally designed them for the audience they understood best, male students. The difference here is they're redesigning them to expand the population to which they appeal.
They are just as valid an expression of engineering, they're just an expression that's designed to also reach the other half of the population.
I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for.
Assuming the artificial sweetener itself doesn't cause obesity (or doesn't help much) due to some mechanism like triggering further hunger or screwing with gut bacteria.
In that case drinking the soda makes them think they did something healthy, and it gives them license to either indulge or not do anything further.
If they only had the option of a sugary beverage they knew was unhealthy they may have responded by reducing the size of the beverage and meal and actually losing weight.
The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.
The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).
This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.
I'm not actually sure if the insulin response is as big a deal as it's made out to be, it seems like insulin has become a bit of a diet bogeyman over the last few years and I'm not sure how well it's backed up.
Personally I suspect it's a lot more psychological than most people let on, I know from experience that when I eat something sweet (cake, doughnut, sugary beverage) I often end up hungrier than when I started. The speed of the reaction makes me suspect this has nothing to do with insulin or fake vs real sugar but has more to do with the sweet taste hitting my tongue. Simply put when I taste yummy food I want more! And my understanding is that palatability is a well established cause of overeating.
There does seem to be evidence that artificial sweeteners are actually promoting obesity, but from what I've seen it's still really preliminary.
There's no chance of dying from a video game and I start on normal because I play to have fun, not to prove anything to anyone.
How arrogant are you to presume you know what motivated him?
If I play on hard, it's just to see if I can do it and because I got better at the game. But I'm glad you think he "earned" the right (aka he's a stuck up rich asshole who can afford the travel costs and expensive gear) to climb Everest. I think he earned the right to have an avalanche fall on his head.
There are poor people living in awful neighborhoods who wish they could afford a security system or a gun or to move and they're in danger every day. Then there's this rich asshole who's just so bored with his career and life, he has to travel around the world and climb a mountain. He got what he deserved and frankly every poor person he offended agrees with me.
Are you posting this from a poor village in Africa where you're volunteering to give subsistence farmers a better life or are you posting from a nice home in the West working a typical Western job?
You probably spend a similar portion of your wealth on recreational activities as he did. The only difference is he had a lot more money so could spend more. You're a rich asshole who's just so bored with his career and life, he has to surf the Internet on his fancy computer posting on forums. I think you earned the right to have a router fall on your head.
This is not such a good comparison. For one thing, a video game gives you continues
Fine, mountain biking, martial arts, skydiving. There's risk in all of those, I assume you disapprove?
and, other than a factory worker in korea, doesn't exploit poorer cultures in dangerous ways.
Working as a Sherpa can pay an order of magnitude more than other occupations in that economy. That doesn't mean there isn't an ethical dilemma involved but your argument is almost like saying we can't pay them Western salaries so we shouldn't hire them at all.
There's a more subtle problem with your line of thinking that slashmydots pointed out, that the pursuit of everest is selfish. You do not "conquer" this challenge yourself
Neither do the Stanley Cup Champions.
as you might by biking up the col de ventoux
Or riders in the Tour De France.
There is great expense involved, and you would need support from what is practically an aboriginal people.
Climbing without support would be a greater accomplishment, and as I said there's some very dubious expeditions, but they're still accomplishing an extremely difficult task.
(You also cannot actually survive the summit, so you need all of industrialized society behind you to supply you with air/gear).
So? Is scuba diving also immoral?
This is just bad ethics.
You know what is actually bad ethics? Accusing other people of being unethical for relatively arbitrary reasons because you disapprove of their subculture.
See how many chin ups you can do, or what your fastest run of X distance is, or the fastest bike or swim at some interesting location. Climbing everest proves only that you had about 65 thousand dollars to set on fire, and are sadly lacking in imagination.
Oddly enough I find the list of typical everyday activities to be lacking in imagination.
No, because some asshole that did nothing of praise but was latched to a big "tech" biz "living the life" "doing what he loved!" is worthy of front page news unlike the common native peasant carrying his luggage on donkeys up the camp, because "those "weren't living the life" and "doing what they love", but who cares, they are poor because they chose to.
Yes! Lets show off our empathy and great social conscience by calling a dead person an asshole!
Slashdot Mirror
If you think the 512x512 Lena image used in image processing for 40+ years is "a pornographic picture" then you're a Puritan lunatic.
The full Lena picture, which many of the kids will find and know they're working on, is most definitely pornographic. That carries an important context.
On top of that, you have spoken for Lena in assigning the "sexual object" label to her; it was never your choice, it was hers, and she chose to have that picture taken. You don't get to speak for her or be offended on her behalf. Take five seconds to actually understand what you are talking about before you spout off and look like a fool.
Why do you claim I was trying to speak on her behalf? I never attempted such a thing.
But what would you say to the girls in the class who are made offended and/or uncomfortable by the image and its origin? Do they have a right to feel uncomfortable? What's the big deal with using a different image and removing the problem?
Except it's not porn. it's an image of a face cropped from a larger image that happened to feature softcore nudity.
Even if it were only the face it would still be creepy since the expression is clearly suggestive, but a lot of the kids are going to find the original and that changes the context.
So, there are two implicit assertions here: first, that softcore nudity is porn and unprofessional (unless it's at least a couple hundred years old, in which case it's merely 'art').
This is playboy, I'd consider it professional softcore pornography.
Nudity in art regardless of age can have pornographic aspects or not.
The second assertion is that softcore nudity is so horrendously unprofessional that it taints even derivative works where no nudity is detectable or implied.
Here I'm assuming you mean "unprofessional" as in don't bring it into the workplace. I don't know what "softcore nudity" is but softcore pornography should not be brought into the workplace. Cropping helps, I doubt having the cropped Lena photo as a desktop background would be an issue, but using it in a presentation? I'd say that's unprofessional.
It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines
As a "tradition", there is surely some value in being able to compare current vs .historical efforts to analyze the same image.
True, but I'm not sure it's worth the baggage.
Also, you are implying (very un-subtly) that there is something inherently shameful, or at least "non-proud" in guys looking at porn. I would call that prudish and potentially misandric.
Not quite, I'd say there's something inherently shameful about inserting porn into a technical field not caring or realizing that there's people who won't want to view it in a professional setting. I would call that asshole-ish.
1) Every picture is also part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having being tortured to death. Do you think those pictures belong in the classroom as well?
Do I think pictures of individuals being tortured should be included in a classroom setting? If a history class, or current affairs, carefully presented in context, and the children were sufficiently mature - it may be appropriate.
But not appropriate for a computer vision class regardless of the age.
Should CROPPED pictures be included of such out of context? No. Because the subject suffered, unlike in this case, where the subject has no problem being seen.
Kids aren't stupid, they'll figure out the source of the photo and everyone will know. The nature of the photo creates the context.
2) There are students, particularly female ones, who find it both objectionable and threatening. That is completely relevant to its use in a high school class.
I find cars objectionable and threatening - they've killed way more people than consensual, safe, softcore pornography
And if a lot of people shared your strong objections to car pictures than I'd agree schools should avoid unnecessary photos of cars.
You have no idea how difficult it is for me to respond civilly after you claimed I'm a sexist that objectifies women.
YOU are the one arguing that objectification is inevitable. When you see that image, do you think less of the model, or of women in general? If yes, YOU have a problem. If no, you've blown a hole in your own argument.
You've missed the point entirely.
The problem isn't that me or a woman in the class is objectifying women because of the picture.
The problem is that there are men in the class who are objectifying women, or thinking it's appropriate to objectify women, because of the picture.
Whether or not I'm one of those men is irrelevant, merely the fact women have a reasonable expectation that those men are there objectifying them makes it an issue.
There are two very obvious gender differences. One males are, on average, far stronger than women.
True, but of fuck all relevance here.
Second pregnancies are far more costly to women.
True, but in most civilised nations, contraceptive pills and implants and morning-after pills and early terminations and (as a very last resort) adoption are universally available.
Which is one of the reasons that Western women are more sexually liberated, but the differences persist.
but also because men have far less to fear about being physically overpowered.
Utterly, utterly false. Non-consensual sex / sexual assault is rarely about being physically overpowered. This is one of the main rape myths that (proper, i.e. egalitarian rather than anti-penis) feminists have tried to dispell.
Ask any woman, it's still something they have to be aware of, I know many girls who won't trail run by themselves because they're worried about guys attacking them. That's a concern that never even crossed my mind.
And it's not just rape, spousal abuse is still terrifyingly common and there's certainly a sexual component to that.
I'm seeing the context of the "Lena" image as being a standard test for image processing.
There's no technical reason for that to be true. It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines, its continued usage suggests that hasn't really changed. I don't think that's a message you want to send about a technical field.
As for art, a lot of it appears to have a sexualized component when it was created (some of it very explicit), but in the context of a class, it's being studied for its place in art history.
That's art, the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value.
I don't think the standard computer vision test image should be making provocative artistic statements.
So what am I missing? Tell me how a cropped Lena picture is any worse than (say) Goya's The Nude Maja, which Wikipedia notes was probably created to hang in a private collection, and whose subject, just like the Lena photograph, looks directly at the viewer (and unlike the Lena photograph, "Nude Maja" tends not to be cropped).
It's not any worse. But neither image should be used as a standard test image.
If someone finds a picture of a face offensive or threatening, then they've got problems no amount of preaching is going to fix.
So what? Just like it's not the role of the school to fix your attitudes towards sexuality it's not the role of the CS class to "fix" theirs.
And it's very disingenuous to say it's just a picture of a face, kids aren't morons, someone will figure out the source and spread the news. And even as just a face it's very obviously a sexualized picture.
How exactly does it create a hostile environment?
Context.
For bonus points, explain how nudity in classic art (paintings, sculptures, etc) does not create a hostile environment in the classroom.
Context.
women's concerns
Which women's concerns?
That looks like you're criticizing my grammar or something, I think you're incorrect.
And yes students will figure out it's a pornographic image
1) Every picture is a small part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having sex.
2) What is wrong with softcore porn, please? Answer in a way that's relevant to the use of it in this circumstance.
1) Every picture is also part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having being tortured to death. Do you think those pictures belong in the classroom as well?
2) There are students, particularly female ones, who find it both objectionable and threatening. That is completely relevant to its use in a high school class.
shows a woman as a sexual object
The full picture shows a woman as sexual. It does not show a woman as a sexual object, unless you're seriously suggesting something like porn makes you think women aren't human?
Wow, you're the second person in this thread to try that horrible BS debating tactic.
where women would be expected to have different attitudes
So your whole argument is based on your ignorant sexism?
You have no idea how difficult it is for me to respond civilly after you claimed I'm a sexist that objectifies women.
There are two very obvious gender differences. One males are, on average, far stronger than women. Second pregnancies are far more costly to women.
This means that men are far more likely to be interested in casual sex than women because they have far fewer things to fear from casual sex. Both because men feel less consequence from potential pregnancies but also because men have far less to fear about being physically overpowered.
It is not true for everyone, there's a cultural component as well, and there's nothing shameful or unfeminine about a woman interested in casual sex. But the fact the genders do have very different attitudes is backed up by virtually every study ever done.
Don't you think that using a picture that shows a woman as a sexual object is going to add to the objectification of women?
No. I don't see pretty and/or nude women as objects. Why the hell would you ?
You're seriously using the "if you're criticizing X because you think it leads to Y then that means you have a strong tendency to Y" argument? I'm sorry but I think that's a very insulting tactic.
Lets look at the definition:
Sexual objectification involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person.
This isn't nude photography, this is pornography, it is a woman being portrayed in the nude as an object of male sexual desire. This is literally the definition of objectification of women!
The fact you can view and enjoy pornography without objectifying women doesn't mean there aren't a lot of women and men who find it very objectifying.
You may not agree with them but why not take their concerns into account?
No she doesn't. ITS A FACE, not a nude body.
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES ...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
So are you in favour of prayer in the classroom? Having endless religious speakers and abstinence only advocates come in to speak?
Because your comment suggests you think it's perfectly appropriate for teachers to push their personal views on the classroom. I take the converse view, they don't get to preach their beliefs and we don't get to preach ours. And yes, using an image you know many students will find offensive or threatening just because you think they should feel otherwise is preaching.
The problem is a RELIGIOUS legacy of people being ashamed of their bodies. Women, especially, are taught to feel ashamed of their bodies.
No, the problem is guys who are so oblivious about women's concerns that they'd use a pornographic picture as an assignment for a high school classroom. And yes students will figure out it's a pornographic imagine.
And guys who think that such images are an excuse to objectify women are behaving equally awfully, but this is not the problem right here.
Don't you think that using a picture that shows a woman as a sexual object is going to add to the objectification of women?
And it's not just some religious legacy or shame at work here, sexuality is one of those rare instances where women would be expected to have different attitudes than men. Using a pornographic image in the classroom will create an environment that makes women feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, there's no reason to have it.
While I see many challenges to geoengineering, talks breaking down into nuclear war is not one of them. I mean, I have challenging talks with my wife all the time about the budget, but I never think going into it that she's going to burn down the house in response to a dispute.
Part of the reason that happens is you're both aware of the consequences of things getting out of hand.
This kind of speculation is a balance, talking about nuclear war too much is just fearmongering and people won't take you seriously.
On the other hand part of the reason it's probably not going to happen is people are aware of it. One of the reasons the West isn't taking a stronger response to Russia in Ukraine is the possibility that things will escalate and you'll end up in a war that could go nuclear.
The issue with geoengineering is you've added a dial on the planet that many people will want to control, that's very likely to increase international tensions among big powers. The more tensions you have the more likely a war is going to break out.
Geoengineering probably isn't going to lead to a nuclear war, but that's partially because we sometimes remind ourselves that it's a possible outcome.
Sorry what? Generously, they make 1.6b in revenue, allowing them a net margin equal to google and they need to increase revenue by 15X and somehow salvage 25% of that into net income.
Huh? Why are you comparing their margin to Google's? There are sub-Google levels of profitability.
But $577,820,000 in 2014 losses (and they've never made a profit)? Sell at a loss, and make it up in volume?
Believe it or not, but some companies actually make a profit on their revenue.
The thing with a massive amount of revenue is a proportionally small amount growth in revenues or drop in costs can make them extremely profitable.
Twitter is still a very young and growing company, the future has a a lot of potential profit.
The thing is wall street speculation is now highly automated. ... and cause a sell-off run much more efficiently than humans reading twitter ever could.
This is exactly what triggered it. The page was up for forty five seconds. 45 seconds is not enough for humans to read and understand it, but that is plenty of time for bots.
During that 45 seconds, assorted stock-trading bots picked up on it, scanned it, and sold over 3M units, or $153M, of their stock. That's over 30x their normal trading levels.
This doesn't quite make sense to me. Assuming the bots are smart enough to parse the earnings reports (highly plausible) wouldn't they react the same as if it were a proper release?
Why is the early release difference? Would this same drop have happened when the bots saw the news overnight and reacted the next morning, or would the human investors have done something that would have changed the bots behaviour?
How is something as useless and stupid as Twitter be worth more than $8bn in the first place?
By making 100's of millions in revenue every quarter.
It's one of the biggest sites on the Internet and is used by people constantly, it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't be worth more than $8bn.
The article is kind of vague on the dropoff but it seems to be the real benefit isn't in the speed, it's the dropoff location.
As someone who lives in an apartment getting a parcel looks like me checking the main entrance (which I don't use) for delivery notices of parcels they tried to deliver while I was at work then heading to the parcel depot during the 6 hours window on Saturday when I'm not at work and they're open.
But Uber can get the current GPS location of its customers, so could do the dropoff directly to the person and skip the game of depot tag.
The traditional delivery companies might have a real hard time responding to that.
The entire class fell so far short of expectations that they should be failed?
I think the Professor probably just needs to take some management classes. Once he gets a better handle on leading groups this shouldn't happen again.
Designing and building a dam that provides drinking water and electricity to millions is not "societally meaningful"?
Likewise, designing a weathersat that improves predictions of hurricanes and such is not "societally meaningful"?
Interesting that the argument being used is that "most of what engineers do does nothing for society, so women don't want to do that sort of thing"....
Look at the summary: affordable solutions for clean drinking water, inventing medical diagnostic equipment for neglected tropical diseases and enabling local manufacturing in poor and remote regions.
I think both lists are societally meaningful. Yes there's more money in your list, but that's also because big showy things like dams and satellites appeal to men, so some of the money is because when all the engineers are men they're going to go out and work on those male-appealing things and that's where the money and innovation will go.
For instance I think a lot of construction engineers might find a sports stadium to be "societally meaningful" and they'd make a ton of money building them. But I suspect those have worse economics than any of the more female appealing projects mentioned in the summary.
They just made the courses more interesting to female students and they signed up of their own free will.
Hold the phone! Are you saying that women didn't previously sign up for this course because (gasp) they were not interested in engineering just for engineering's sake? That certainly puts paid to your previous unsubstantiated theories of sexism being responsible for the lower numbers of females in STEM.
You're acting as if the current engineering curriculum is a canonical implementation of some ideal definition of engineering and any alteration means it's further from true engineering.
But those old courses were designed with the same objective of every other course, to attract students. And the people who designed them were male instructors who naturally designed them for the audience they understood best, male students. The difference here is they're redesigning them to expand the population to which they appeal.
They are just as valid an expression of engineering, they're just an expression that's designed to also reach the other half of the population.
I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for.
Assuming the artificial sweetener itself doesn't cause obesity (or doesn't help much) due to some mechanism like triggering further hunger or screwing with gut bacteria.
In that case drinking the soda makes them think they did something healthy, and it gives them license to either indulge or not do anything further.
If they only had the option of a sugary beverage they knew was unhealthy they may have responded by reducing the size of the beverage and meal and actually losing weight.
The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.
The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).
This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.
I'm not actually sure if the insulin response is as big a deal as it's made out to be, it seems like insulin has become a bit of a diet bogeyman over the last few years and I'm not sure how well it's backed up.
Personally I suspect it's a lot more psychological than most people let on, I know from experience that when I eat something sweet (cake, doughnut, sugary beverage) I often end up hungrier than when I started. The speed of the reaction makes me suspect this has nothing to do with insulin or fake vs real sugar but has more to do with the sweet taste hitting my tongue. Simply put when I taste yummy food I want more! And my understanding is that palatability is a well established cause of overeating.
There does seem to be evidence that artificial sweeteners are actually promoting obesity, but from what I've seen it's still really preliminary.
There's no chance of dying from a video game and I start on normal because I play to have fun, not to prove anything to anyone.
How arrogant are you to presume you know what motivated him?
If I play on hard, it's just to see if I can do it and because I got better at the game. But I'm glad you think he "earned" the right (aka he's a stuck up rich asshole who can afford the travel costs and expensive gear) to climb Everest. I think he earned the right to have an avalanche fall on his head.
There are poor people living in awful neighborhoods who wish they could afford a security system or a gun or to move and they're in danger every day. Then there's this rich asshole who's just so bored with his career and life, he has to travel around the world and climb a mountain. He got what he deserved and frankly every poor person he offended agrees with me.
Are you posting this from a poor village in Africa where you're volunteering to give subsistence farmers a better life or are you posting from a nice home in the West working a typical Western job?
You probably spend a similar portion of your wealth on recreational activities as he did. The only difference is he had a lot more money so could spend more. You're a rich asshole who's just so bored with his career and life, he has to surf the Internet on his fancy computer posting on forums. I think you earned the right to have a router fall on your head.
This is not such a good comparison. For one thing, a video game gives you continues
Fine, mountain biking, martial arts, skydiving. There's risk in all of those, I assume you disapprove?
and, other than a factory worker in korea, doesn't exploit poorer cultures in dangerous ways.
Working as a Sherpa can pay an order of magnitude more than other occupations in that economy. That doesn't mean there isn't an ethical dilemma involved but your argument is almost like saying we can't pay them Western salaries so we shouldn't hire them at all.
There's a more subtle problem with your line of thinking that slashmydots pointed out, that the pursuit of everest is selfish. You do not "conquer" this challenge yourself
Neither do the Stanley Cup Champions.
as you might by biking up the col de ventoux
Or riders in the Tour De France.
There is great expense involved, and you would need support from what is practically an aboriginal people.
Climbing without support would be a greater accomplishment, and as I said there's some very dubious expeditions, but they're still accomplishing an extremely difficult task.
(You also cannot actually survive the summit, so you need all of industrialized society behind you to supply you with air/gear).
So? Is scuba diving also immoral?
This is just bad ethics.
You know what is actually bad ethics? Accusing other people of being unethical for relatively arbitrary reasons because you disapprove of their subculture.
See how many chin ups you can do, or what your fastest run of X distance is, or the fastest bike or swim at some interesting location. Climbing everest proves only that you had about 65 thousand dollars to set on fire, and are sadly lacking in imagination.
Oddly enough I find the list of typical everyday activities to be lacking in imagination.
No, because some asshole that did nothing of praise but was latched to a big "tech" biz "living the life" "doing what he loved!" is worthy of front page news unlike the common native peasant carrying his luggage on donkeys up the camp, because "those "weren't living the life" and "doing what they love", but who cares, they are poor because they chose to.
Yes! Lets show off our empathy and great social conscience by calling a dead person an asshole!