I did the buy 8 get 8 free CD's deal from columbia house in the 1990's... but then I only bought 7 CD's after getting the 8 free. There is a collection agency still chasing me for $15 20 years later.
Yes, obviously homo sapiens has not been around long enough for evolution to cause any meaningful changes in our species. It's a little known fact that if you take a black child and raise him in a white family, his skin will actually turn white too as a result of his environment. Similarly, his intelligence will more closely match that of his adoptive parents, rather than his genetic parents.
I've seen studies saying this is not the case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
but of course this study was done by white people, so the results showing black children regressing to the IQ of their genetic parents is either due to racism on the part of the adoptive parents or racism by the researchers themselves.
I think gifted kids growing up in the richest country in the world will be just fine...
We need to shovel more money at trying narrow the achievement gap between men and women, also minorities. That's not to say we shouldn't have gifted programs. We should. We just need to fill them with people who lack the natural talent and drive to succeed in those fields. And then focus on hiring better teachers to narrow the gap. I'm not sure exactly how much money this will take, but let's just call it "a lot more". Until teachers are better paid than professional athletes and wall street bankers it makes no sense to argue whether teachers are overpaid.
We need to understand that when we see someone excel at something, it's merely the result of gender/racial bias, in need of correction. All humans have equal potential, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, which I will simply assume is the result of unconscious bias. Though I fully believe in evolution, I don't think any selection pressure could cause different populations of humans to be naturally more or less bright as a group, nor could there be any inherent differences between males and females, because this would make me feel bad about the world in which I live.
This result would fully explain why men are thought to be better at math. They are overrepresented among high achievers (and low achievers). I went to MIT where you can clearly see this in science and math classes there. I went there when the admit rate was 50/50, the final matriculating class was 60/40 male, but in any hard science or math class you would see something closer to 80/20 male.
You're right that the averages are about equal, but there is far more variance in male ability, and that variance is likely due to biology.
Men outnumber women at both extremes and that is never going to change. The only extreme most people care about is the high achieving one, but if they cared to look they'd find that men are overrepresented at the low end as well.
I lived and worked in downtown SF for 10 years. It's a complete shithole on market st. near the tenderloin and SOMA. I witnessed several daytime muggings, had my car window smashed and items stolen more than once while working late. Someone menaced me with a knife while walking home one night which prompted me to start carrying a 6 in folding knife with me everywhere. The worst thing is that it's never going to change as long as the city has tax dollars. Local government is corrupt and works closely to with corrupt non-profits to ensure the homeless/crime problems in the downtown area never get fixed.
I don't blame tech companies for not wanting to locate in a city like San Francisco.
Consider that VISA and other payment networks charge ~3% transaction fees, whereas with bitcoin transactions are optionally free (with slower confirmation time) or cost a flat few pennies regardless of transaction size for faster confirmation. That could be a big difference in the bottom line of companies like ebay, amazon, or any business that accepts electronic payments.
The arguments that bitcoin mining is wasteful are without merit. Ripping apart the earth's crust to get gold or minting coins and notes of physical currency is wasteful. A little perspective please.
Thanks for ruining my day. I don't expect to see idiotic stories like "ebay had a role in the VT shooting" on slashdot.
Go join the socialist party and protest out in the street with like minded morons where you can safely be ignored. Better yet go to the library and read some books on capitalism and individualism so you can learn why ebay does such a great service by facilitating commerce around the world, and why individual gun ownership is required as a last defense against tyranny.
This is exactly the problem with the current socialist school system. We have no way to value language teachers versus math or any other kinds of teachers because we have destroyed the pricing system that would let us do so.
Only when we have for-profit schools free of government interference will we be able to correctly answer simple questions like:
How many math teachers do we need?
How much should they be paid?
Until then we face shortages (50 students per classroom) and many ridiculous arguments over how much is the right amount to pay a teacher (pay them all the same, pay them double, pay math teachers more, pay them based on GDP of their respective field...).
This basic argument against socialism was first put forward in 1920 (predicting the economic collapse of socialist countries), but is still largely unfamiliar to most people. Read it here:
http://www.mises.org/econcalc.asp
Slashdot Mirror
Ebola Reston is a Filovirus and it is airborne (deadly to monkeys but harmless to humans), so it's not that far fetched.
I did the buy 8 get 8 free CD's deal from columbia house in the 1990's... but then I only bought 7 CD's after getting the 8 free. There is a collection agency still chasing me for $15 20 years later.
indeed, the bitcoins I bought at $13 have fallen all the way down to $450. I don't know how much more pain I can take...
If I had only looked at the version number I could have saved myself from making $50,000
I've seen studies saying this is not the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... but of course this study was done by white people, so the results showing black children regressing to the IQ of their genetic parents is either due to racism on the part of the adoptive parents or racism by the researchers themselves.
We need to shovel more money at trying narrow the achievement gap between men and women, also minorities. That's not to say we shouldn't have gifted programs. We should. We just need to fill them with people who lack the natural talent and drive to succeed in those fields. And then focus on hiring better teachers to narrow the gap. I'm not sure exactly how much money this will take, but let's just call it "a lot more". Until teachers are better paid than professional athletes and wall street bankers it makes no sense to argue whether teachers are overpaid.
We need to understand that when we see someone excel at something, it's merely the result of gender/racial bias, in need of correction. All humans have equal potential, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, which I will simply assume is the result of unconscious bias. Though I fully believe in evolution, I don't think any selection pressure could cause different populations of humans to be naturally more or less bright as a group, nor could there be any inherent differences between males and females, because this would make me feel bad about the world in which I live.
</liberal>
As a start they need to get all vaccine research out from behind paywalls in the public interest.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
This result would fully explain why men are thought to be better at math. They are overrepresented among high achievers (and low achievers). I went to MIT where you can clearly see this in science and math classes there. I went there when the admit rate was 50/50, the final matriculating class was 60/40 male, but in any hard science or math class you would see something closer to 80/20 male.
You're right that the averages are about equal, but there is far more variance in male ability, and that variance is likely due to biology. Men outnumber women at both extremes and that is never going to change. The only extreme most people care about is the high achieving one, but if they cared to look they'd find that men are overrepresented at the low end as well.
Shouldn't it be "Pine Forest Vapor Particles Can *Cause* Climate Change"?
I lived and worked in downtown SF for 10 years. It's a complete shithole on market st. near the tenderloin and SOMA. I witnessed several daytime muggings, had my car window smashed and items stolen more than once while working late. Someone menaced me with a knife while walking home one night which prompted me to start carrying a 6 in folding knife with me everywhere. The worst thing is that it's never going to change as long as the city has tax dollars. Local government is corrupt and works closely to with corrupt non-profits to ensure the homeless/crime problems in the downtown area never get fixed. I don't blame tech companies for not wanting to locate in a city like San Francisco.
The arguments that bitcoin mining is wasteful are without merit. Ripping apart the earth's crust to get gold or minting coins and notes of physical currency is wasteful. A little perspective please.
Thanks for ruining my day. I don't expect to see idiotic stories like "ebay had a role in the VT shooting" on slashdot.
Go join the socialist party and protest out in the street with like minded morons where you can safely be ignored. Better yet go to the library and read some books on capitalism and individualism so you can learn why ebay does such a great service by facilitating commerce around the world, and why individual gun ownership is required as a last defense against tyranny.This is exactly the problem with the current socialist school system. We have no way to value language teachers versus math or any other kinds of teachers because we have destroyed the pricing system that would let us do so.
Only when we have for-profit schools free of government interference will we be able to correctly answer simple questions like:
How many math teachers do we need?
How much should they be paid?
Until then we face shortages (50 students per classroom) and many ridiculous arguments over how much is the right amount to pay a teacher (pay them all the same, pay them double, pay math teachers more, pay them based on GDP of their respective field...).
This basic argument against socialism was first put forward in 1920 (predicting the economic collapse of socialist countries), but is still largely unfamiliar to most people. Read it here: http://www.mises.org/econcalc.asp