I'm not replying on my degree to get me anywhere (and I'm somewhere relatively good now, making over twice the median income), but replying to the AC who suggested that anyone working a low-paying job in tech must be some kind of stupid. I don't know what better evidence against stupidity one can offer than academic grades, unless we want to get into an IQ dick-measuring contest...
(And to cut it off before it begins: "success is the best evidence of intelligence" is not a valid response because it begs the question.)
"Middle class" does not just mean "an average person". It is possible for (and the actual case that) most people, and the average person (which are different things themselves), are not middle class.
A middle class person is someone who has assets enough that he's not dependent on borrowing them from others to survive (which would make him lower class), and yet not enough that he doesn't have to work (which would make him upper class). I've had trouble finding statistics on things like how many people own their homes (seems its always about how many homes are owner-occupied, which is not the same thing), but a quick look at the median income and median housing price makes it pretty clear that the vast majority of Americans are not homeowners and thus not even middle-class.
Even among the vast lower-class majority, most of them are not even average in terms of income. The average (i.e. mean) American makes around $50,000/yr; that's about the national GDP per capita, all our incomes divided up across all of us to get the theoretical average American. But the median American makes more like $25,000/yr; that is, half of the country makes half of less of what the theoretical "average" American makes. It's hard to find data on the mode income, that is, what the typical American, or the largest group of Americans, make, but the bad sources I can find suggest it's under $10,000/yr.
Most Americans are so fucking far from middle class it's not even funny, and even the theoretical "average American" barely has hope of maybe eventually reaching the middle class before they die.
You don't have to work in a tech company to work a tech job, and there are plenty of tech jobs that can easily pay less than $15/hr.
I've worked a tech job of some sort or another my entire life (fixing computers at a local computer shop, network administration for small businesses, web development, etc) and until three and a half years ago I had never made more than $15/hr. And that's with a bachelor's degree with highest honors and a 4.0GPA, so intelligence has nothing to do with it.
The job market fucking sucks. (And it's goddamn expensive just to live in California).
It wouldn't stay a one-party system. This has happened before. The first party system in the US was Democratic-Republicans vs Federalists. The former completely destroyed the latter eventually, and then split into what became the Democrats, and the Whigs; the latter of whom were eventually destroyed in turn and replaced by the Republicans.
If the Democrats destroyed the Republicans, either another party (the Libertarians most likely) would just rise up to replace them the way the Republicans replaced the Whigs, or the Democrats would split into two parties (I would expect a libertarian-leaning party and a socialist-leaning party, both of them socially liberal).
The rich want teeming masses of poor people. If all the people who really can't afford kids did the smart thing and didn't have them, and within a generation or two the lower classes vanished due to not reproducing, it would be terrible for the rich, who depend on a desperate and entirely replaceable labor force to serve them for cheap. If there were fewer poor people, it would mean the ones who remained had greater leverage, and wouldn't be kept poor and subservient as easily.
Not every gain is someone else's loss. If we each need a widget and a sprocket, I have two widgets and no sprockets, and you have no widgets and two sprockets, we can both gain by trading each other one widget for one sprocket.
But a large class of gains, namely rents, certainly are at someone else's loss, and those, not merely free trade as above, are the defining characteristics of capitalism and the finance industry.
Also, even if it's not arable or otherwise productive land, you need a place just to exist, and if you don't have one of your own, others will demand payment to exist in their places. Having land first and foremost saves you from servitude to someone else; its productive use is secondary, and its resale value merely tertiary.
Freedom of religion, separation of church and state, means that "But my religion...!" should neither be a reason for a law nor an excuse from the law. The laws should not respect (in the sense of "regard" or "concern themselves with") religion in any way at all. The law should be blind to religions and not care who is what if any religion.
California is a microcosm of the United States as a whole: liberal around the coasts, except for the south coast; and conservative inland, except near the large body of water on the border.
They also tend to run liberal in federal elections and conservative in state elections.
This split personality is behind a lot of California's budget problems, as one part of the populace with a majority vote has mandated spending on certain programs, and another part of the populace with a majority vote has prohibited raising certain taxes, leaving the legislature tightly bound between the rock of having to spend money and the hard place of not being able to raise it, requiring them to borrow it.
Which, come to think of it, is another microcosm of the United States as a whole, and the reason for the constant debt crises we keep having. Congress mandates spending, doesn't authorize the necessary taxes, and then blames the president for coming to the unavoidable necessity of borrowing to pay for what they've required him to spend and not allowed him to raise.
The thought that a lot of well-behaved people out there only don't do bad things because they are happy friendly people and don't feel like doing bad things.
Because that implies that if they felt like doing bad things, if they had enough shit that made them upset enough, then they would do bad things, because they are driven by their emotions.
I'd rather know that people had the ability to do what they think is the right thing to do regardless of how they feel about the situation. That is a much higher form of morality than the vapid and selfish "I like people and want them to like me" that seems to drive a lot of people.
"Eir", not "eirs". You wouldn't say "covered by theirs medical plan", and Spivak pronouns are almost entirely just singular "they" pronouns with the "th" dropped.
You speak as though "societal norms" are something that comes from beyond the people in society.
"Their standards" in aggregate, and the societal norms, are the same thing. If enough individuals shift their standards, the societal norm for standards shifts in aggregate.
I'm not one of the people who stays indoors all the time. I don't even play video games. I spend most of my daylight free time hiking, and if I can ever manage to get rid of the constant barrage of stressors leaving me too mentally exhausted and paralyzed, I'd like to spend my nighttime free time writing again like I used to.
I am about twice as well off as the median American, which coincidentally is also about as well off as the mean American. (Which says something right there about the terrible distribution of prosperity even in this country). I have a glimmer of hope that keeps me trying. (And a motto that literally translates as "it may be hopeless but I'm trying anyway"). But it's still just a glimmer of hope, and a terrible uphill battle to actually attain the peace and security I have hope of.
And then I look down at the majority of Americans who don't even have that, and I can understand why they would stay in playing video games all day, especially if they weren't within walking distance of mountains or rivers or something nice outside like you and I are.
Because going outside and doing interesting things costs a lot more than a video game, has a more limited selection, and in many cases is not available during the hours one has free, given the long hours or multiple jobs a lot of people have to work to make ends meet.
Like most "crises", this one is really economic at its root. For most people life is hopeless and the best thing you can do it just alleviate the mental anguish and wait to die. The rich nerds with comfortable lives who don't have to work their asses off just to barely make ends meet don't have to deal with that crippling hopelessness, and are out there doing awesome amazing things and having a great time. The rest of them are in their dumpy rented bedroom (or mom's basement) playing video games because it's the only thing that makes life hurt a little bit less for a little while.
This so much! I've long thought that if I ever ran for political office, high up on my platform bullet-point list would be decriminalization of non-violent activities like drug use... and redirecting that money toward preventing and remedying violent ones, including property crime under that umbrella.
It's not really copyright infringement either because the information stolen is not a creative work that copyright pertains to. Secrets are copy-protected by being secret, not by having laws against copying them.
Also, that information is not your identity; it is, at best, identifying information.
How's this for an idea: some form of visual media (video or drawings, whatever) depicting Muhammad and Islam in a very positive light, marketed and clearly honestly intended to educate westerners about the positive elements of the Muslim community and their history.
Then see if the kind of people who try to shoot people for drawing Muhammad throw a fit over even something like that.
Please note that I didn't say anything at all about men not getting a fair shake.
I said that people would be rightly skeptical of an article that was written entirely by men claiming men were not getting a fair shake, regardless of the rest of the article's merits. The fact that it's coming from an all-male source would raise some eyebrows, and quite understandably. Now apply gender equality to that and ask why it's wrong that that should be true with all the genders reversed, as is the case here.
I also suggested that if a reviewer said, of such a hypothetical gender-swapped scenario, "maybe the reason why men aren't apparently aren't getting a fair shake isn't due to bias against them but just because men generally don't measure up in this area" -- suggesting an alternative hypothesis, as academic reviewers frequently do -- that would (and I think should) be considered a sound critique, something that at least should be addressed in the paper. Now flip the genders again and you get the second part of this story, and suddenly that's an atrocity?
I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact, implicitly because of the assumed tacit bias of the all-male authors (a plausible concern to be fair, but in both directions), and, if it was in fact the case that women had more articles published than men, suggesting that perhaps an alternative conclusion to systematic bias could be that women just are better in that respect would be a perfectly acceptable critique of the paper.
As an American who agrees that the American view of the political possibilities is myopic, there is still a difference. To put it figuratively: one side thinks all kittens should be fed to vicious ravenous dogs to be maimed and devoured as the dogs see fit; the other side thinks there should be some limits on how much the dogs can maim most kittens and how many can be devoured in what circumstances, and further special protections for certain classes of kitten.
What do you mean, lets not feed kittens to the dogs in the first place? What are you, some kind of communist?
given science really cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang, or what's outside the universe
Yeah, it really is quite hard to explain answers to incoherent questions. Science can't even answer a simple math question like what do you get when you multiply 37 times the square root of giraffes?
Slashdot Mirror
Black, but it's covered in a bunch of transparent hairs that scatter white light something awful, obscuring its true color.
I'm not replying on my degree to get me anywhere (and I'm somewhere relatively good now, making over twice the median income), but replying to the AC who suggested that anyone working a low-paying job in tech must be some kind of stupid. I don't know what better evidence against stupidity one can offer than academic grades, unless we want to get into an IQ dick-measuring contest...
(And to cut it off before it begins: "success is the best evidence of intelligence" is not a valid response because it begs the question.)
"Middle class" does not just mean "an average person". It is possible for (and the actual case that) most people, and the average person (which are different things themselves), are not middle class.
A middle class person is someone who has assets enough that he's not dependent on borrowing them from others to survive (which would make him lower class), and yet not enough that he doesn't have to work (which would make him upper class). I've had trouble finding statistics on things like how many people own their homes (seems its always about how many homes are owner-occupied, which is not the same thing), but a quick look at the median income and median housing price makes it pretty clear that the vast majority of Americans are not homeowners and thus not even middle-class.
Even among the vast lower-class majority, most of them are not even average in terms of income. The average (i.e. mean) American makes around $50,000/yr; that's about the national GDP per capita, all our incomes divided up across all of us to get the theoretical average American. But the median American makes more like $25,000/yr; that is, half of the country makes half of less of what the theoretical "average" American makes. It's hard to find data on the mode income, that is, what the typical American, or the largest group of Americans, make, but the bad sources I can find suggest it's under $10,000/yr.
Most Americans are so fucking far from middle class it's not even funny, and even the theoretical "average American" barely has hope of maybe eventually reaching the middle class before they die.
You don't have to work in a tech company to work a tech job, and there are plenty of tech jobs that can easily pay less than $15/hr.
I've worked a tech job of some sort or another my entire life (fixing computers at a local computer shop, network administration for small businesses, web development, etc) and until three and a half years ago I had never made more than $15/hr. And that's with a bachelor's degree with highest honors and a 4.0GPA, so intelligence has nothing to do with it.
The job market fucking sucks. (And it's goddamn expensive just to live in California).
It wouldn't stay a one-party system. This has happened before. The first party system in the US was Democratic-Republicans vs Federalists. The former completely destroyed the latter eventually, and then split into what became the Democrats, and the Whigs; the latter of whom were eventually destroyed in turn and replaced by the Republicans.
If the Democrats destroyed the Republicans, either another party (the Libertarians most likely) would just rise up to replace them the way the Republicans replaced the Whigs, or the Democrats would split into two parties (I would expect a libertarian-leaning party and a socialist-leaning party, both of them socially liberal).
The rich want teeming masses of poor people. If all the people who really can't afford kids did the smart thing and didn't have them, and within a generation or two the lower classes vanished due to not reproducing, it would be terrible for the rich, who depend on a desperate and entirely replaceable labor force to serve them for cheap. If there were fewer poor people, it would mean the ones who remained had greater leverage, and wouldn't be kept poor and subservient as easily.
Not every gain is someone else's loss. If we each need a widget and a sprocket, I have two widgets and no sprockets, and you have no widgets and two sprockets, we can both gain by trading each other one widget for one sprocket.
But a large class of gains, namely rents, certainly are at someone else's loss, and those, not merely free trade as above, are the defining characteristics of capitalism and the finance industry.
Also, even if it's not arable or otherwise productive land, you need a place just to exist, and if you don't have one of your own, others will demand payment to exist in their places. Having land first and foremost saves you from servitude to someone else; its productive use is secondary, and its resale value merely tertiary.
This exactly.
Freedom of religion, separation of church and state, means that "But my religion...!" should neither be a reason for a law nor an excuse from the law. The laws should not respect (in the sense of "regard" or "concern themselves with") religion in any way at all. The law should be blind to religions and not care who is what if any religion.
California is a microcosm of the United States as a whole: liberal around the coasts, except for the south coast; and conservative inland, except near the large body of water on the border.
They also tend to run liberal in federal elections and conservative in state elections.
This split personality is behind a lot of California's budget problems, as one part of the populace with a majority vote has mandated spending on certain programs, and another part of the populace with a majority vote has prohibited raising certain taxes, leaving the legislature tightly bound between the rock of having to spend money and the hard place of not being able to raise it, requiring them to borrow it.
Which, come to think of it, is another microcosm of the United States as a whole, and the reason for the constant debt crises we keep having. Congress mandates spending, doesn't authorize the necessary taxes, and then blames the president for coming to the unavoidable necessity of borrowing to pay for what they've required him to spend and not allowed him to raise.
You know what makes me wary?
The thought that a lot of well-behaved people out there only don't do bad things because they are happy friendly people and don't feel like doing bad things.
Because that implies that if they felt like doing bad things, if they had enough shit that made them upset enough, then they would do bad things, because they are driven by their emotions.
I'd rather know that people had the ability to do what they think is the right thing to do regardless of how they feel about the situation. That is a much higher form of morality than the vapid and selfish "I like people and want them to like me" that seems to drive a lot of people.
"Eir", not "eirs". You wouldn't say "covered by theirs medical plan", and Spivak pronouns are almost entirely just singular "they" pronouns with the "th" dropped.
You speak as though "societal norms" are something that comes from beyond the people in society.
"Their standards" in aggregate, and the societal norms, are the same thing. If enough individuals shift their standards, the societal norm for standards shifts in aggregate.
I'm not one of the people who stays indoors all the time. I don't even play video games. I spend most of my daylight free time hiking, and if I can ever manage to get rid of the constant barrage of stressors leaving me too mentally exhausted and paralyzed, I'd like to spend my nighttime free time writing again like I used to.
I am about twice as well off as the median American, which coincidentally is also about as well off as the mean American. (Which says something right there about the terrible distribution of prosperity even in this country). I have a glimmer of hope that keeps me trying. (And a motto that literally translates as "it may be hopeless but I'm trying anyway"). But it's still just a glimmer of hope, and a terrible uphill battle to actually attain the peace and security I have hope of.
And then I look down at the majority of Americans who don't even have that, and I can understand why they would stay in playing video games all day, especially if they weren't within walking distance of mountains or rivers or something nice outside like you and I are.
Because going outside and doing interesting things costs a lot more than a video game, has a more limited selection, and in many cases is not available during the hours one has free, given the long hours or multiple jobs a lot of people have to work to make ends meet.
Like most "crises", this one is really economic at its root. For most people life is hopeless and the best thing you can do it just alleviate the mental anguish and wait to die. The rich nerds with comfortable lives who don't have to work their asses off just to barely make ends meet don't have to deal with that crippling hopelessness, and are out there doing awesome amazing things and having a great time. The rest of them are in their dumpy rented bedroom (or mom's basement) playing video games because it's the only thing that makes life hurt a little bit less for a little while.
This so much! I've long thought that if I ever ran for political office, high up on my platform bullet-point list would be decriminalization of non-violent activities like drug use... and redirecting that money toward preventing and remedying violent ones, including property crime under that umbrella.
It's not really copyright infringement either because the information stolen is not a creative work that copyright pertains to. Secrets are copy-protected by being secret, not by having laws against copying them.
Also, that information is not your identity; it is, at best, identifying information.
It's really just fraud, plain and simple.
The word you want for "non-abstract" is "concrete". Literally "pulled apart" and "stuck together" in latin.
How's this for an idea: some form of visual media (video or drawings, whatever) depicting Muhammad and Islam in a very positive light, marketed and clearly honestly intended to educate westerners about the positive elements of the Muslim community and their history.
Then see if the kind of people who try to shoot people for drawing Muhammad throw a fit over even something like that.
Please note that I didn't say anything at all about men not getting a fair shake.
I said that people would be rightly skeptical of an article that was written entirely by men claiming men were not getting a fair shake, regardless of the rest of the article's merits. The fact that it's coming from an all-male source would raise some eyebrows, and quite understandably. Now apply gender equality to that and ask why it's wrong that that should be true with all the genders reversed, as is the case here.
I also suggested that if a reviewer said, of such a hypothetical gender-swapped scenario, "maybe the reason why men aren't apparently aren't getting a fair shake isn't due to bias against them but just because men generally don't measure up in this area" -- suggesting an alternative hypothesis, as academic reviewers frequently do -- that would (and I think should) be considered a sound critique, something that at least should be addressed in the paper. Now flip the genders again and you get the second part of this story, and suddenly that's an atrocity?
You're right, the comma after the second parenthetical should have been a semicolon for improved readability.
I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact, implicitly because of the assumed tacit bias of the all-male authors (a plausible concern to be fair, but in both directions), and, if it was in fact the case that women had more articles published than men, suggesting that perhaps an alternative conclusion to systematic bias could be that women just are better in that respect would be a perfectly acceptable critique of the paper.
I think GP meant the denialists should just invest in green energy instead of spending so much money money protecting their fossil fuel interests.
As an American who agrees that the American view of the political possibilities is myopic, there is still a difference. To put it figuratively: one side thinks all kittens should be fed to vicious ravenous dogs to be maimed and devoured as the dogs see fit; the other side thinks there should be some limits on how much the dogs can maim most kittens and how many can be devoured in what circumstances, and further special protections for certain classes of kitten.
What do you mean, lets not feed kittens to the dogs in the first place? What are you, some kind of communist?
given science really cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang, or what's outside the universe
Yeah, it really is quite hard to explain answers to incoherent questions. Science can't even answer a simple math question like what do you get when you multiply 37 times the square root of giraffes?