You seem very concerned about the "biologic process". Please explain why this is so important to you. Which do you feel is more important, the biologic process or the social contract? You seem to be trying to switch tacks but you can't have it both ways.
If the biologic process is what is most important, then a single woman who decides to get pregnant by sperm donation, from a man who you've argued above was involved in the decision making process by the choice to donate sperm, will provide just as good an environment for the child as a married heterosexual couple. Because it's the biologic process that matters, not the social situation.
If the social situation is what's important, then please provide your argument as to why a same-sex couple is inferior to a heterosexual couple. And it better be a good argument because i have living proof that a same-sex couple can successfully raise children in a healthy manner just as well as a heterosexual couple while all you've done so far is state that it's "silly" to believe that.
In particular be sure to detail how a same-sex couple that can't (currently) have children without someone else supplying one or more of the gametes in inferior to an infertile heterosexual couple who can't (currently) have children without someone else supplying one or more of the gametes. Do you believe that heterosexual couples in which one or both members are infertile should not choose to have children?
If the spouse hadn't agreed then they would not have had the children. How do you argue that she wasn't part of the decision making process?
Your original argument is that children are better off with two parents raising them. That is a matter of sociology, not biology. The "biology of 'choice'", whatever that is, is not relevant at all. The man consented to donate sperm. He was not involved at all in the social decision by the women to have and raise children as a couple.
He was not involved in the decision making process that this couple made about having children. His choice to donate sperm was indeed a choice, but not a choice in the context in which you originally phrased the question: "I would suggest that children should be a choice made by a man, and a woman together in mutual agreement whenever possible."
The man was not there for the discussion. Yes he also made a decision prior to that and you could "technically" say he was therefore involved. However the grandparents also made the decision to have the kids who would become the parents, so you could technically say they were involved. And friends made the decision to introduce the couple to each other, so you could technically say they were involved. And if you keep extending the chain of causality to people who made a decision at some point that impacted the final decision to have the kids then technically the entire planet was involved.
So i would argue your "technically" argument is incorrect, and even if i'm incorrect about its incorrectness, it's still entirely beside the point.
That's funny, i know a lesbian couple that got married and then had two kids. No man was involved in the decision making process. (Yes, a man donated sperm in each case, but if that man hadn't been willing there were plenty of others who would be, and those men weren't part of the decision making process. And pretty soon such families won't even need a sperm donor anymore.) It's a two income family (as most families around here are, regardless of whether they're hetrosexual or homosexual) but the parents spend as much time with the kids as they can and the kids seem to be doing pretty well.
So while i agree with some parts of your argument your foundation is built on quicksand.
This is stupid! Why don't they have a standard way of doing things!?!
Standards have a way of biting you in the ass, for example this standard way of abbreviating the year.
It seems ironic that an abbreviated name was used for a problem caused by abbreviations.
But that's a perfectly normal abbreviation!
No it's not! This other system of abbreviation makes much more sense!
No, the first kind of abbreviation makes more sense in some contexts because of these reasons.
And so we have come full circle to why we can't just have one method of doing things, and thus why we can't have nice things.
Where are you getting the impression that the heat is going to be transferred to a liquid which will be used to perform work? Both the MIT page and the wikipedia page on thermophotovoltaics seem to indicate the conversion is pretty much straight from heat to electricity. The wikipedia page in particular uses the same heat engine equation as you but comes up with a result of 83%. I'm not sure what the difference is between their number and yours is, but even if your 70% is correct a 70% conversion into electricity is still a lot better than the 40% for regular photovoltaics that you cite.
A robot programmed to eliminate "unpure" food based on the standards set by a bunch of critics. In their arrogance the critics will have provided standards of purity that no food can match, and the robot will go wild, destroying all food everywhere.
Of course given that the end is inevitable, i for one welcome our new robotic food tasting overlords.
Despite Microsoft supposedly saying that won't be the case, i'm more concerned that this will mean the end of Minecraft on PS3 and PS4. Either directly or through neglect. Microsoft may be behind in this console generation but they're definitely not out yet, and a "the only place where you can play the latest version of Minecraft" tagline might sell 100,000 or more extra consoles.
Well even if we still haven't cleared up the mystery of the reason for the abbreviation, and despite the fact we clearly differ in opinion on the social issues involved, i thank and congratulate you for being the only person to respond to the original question in a reasonable manner with an attempt at an actual explanation (albeit with some confusion and fumbling around on both our parts before arriving at that point.)
Although it's a little sad that in this case an AC is setting the standard that so many of the pseudonym users ought to be aspiring to.
See my above response. It's not the name i disagree with. (I disagree with the assumptions behind it, and it seems a bit over the top, but it's a reasonably adequate name for its purposes.) It's the choice to consistently use the acronym instead that seems bizarre to me.
Saying "I don't like people who are enthusiastic about rape threats" doesn't sound paranoid. However if a bunch of people started going on about the "RTEs" and questioning what the RTEs were responsible for and if the RTEs had submitted this slashdot article, etc. Well, that would sound both stupid and a little paranoid.
Though i disagree with your interpretations, that's a perfectly adequate description of how the name might have come about, however it does nothing to explain the choice at acronym-ize it.
I have heard people complain about the War on Drugs many times (and i often agree with those criticisms.) However i can't ever recall anyone complaining about the "WoD". Certainly not for the first reference to the name in any case. In contrast i've seen "SJW" used dozens or scores of times, but can't recall "Social Justice Warrior" being used at all except on the rare occasion to explain what SJW actually stands for. (Notably in your explanation above you just assumed everyone already knew what SJW stood for when you explained the derivation.)
So to get back to the original comment that prompted the question in this thread, why is it:
"Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and SJWs."
instead of:
"Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and social justice warriors."?
or to use your own definition, why not just:
"Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and militant misandric idiots."?
To me, #1 sounds stupid, #2 sounds a little hokey but okay, and #3 sounds perfectly reasonable (given the viewpoint of the person supposedly saying it.) I would certainly have gone with "militant misandric idiots" myself but would be boggled by the idea if anyone suggested abbreviating it to "MMI".
(I was originally going to suggest "militant misandric assholes" as an alternative, but then realized that if you tried to abbreviate that everyone would think you were talking about martial arts. Although perhaps choosing a term that can't be acronym-ized without confusion would be a good way to help prevent that from happening.)
You're right, that was a mistake on my part and i apologize. What i should have said was "Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump many or all of the people who disagree with you together into one group [...]"
The "or all" part is because it's possible that the set of people that are, in general, included in the group "professional victims" is actually a subset of the group "SJWs". If that were the case my original question would still be correct, however since i don't know if that is the case or not the rewording is justified. Carry on.
#1: I never said that i've seen anyone on/. or any other forum say that rape or death threats are cool. I have seen people make such threats elsewhere, and perhaps it is a bit of jump to assume that the people who made those threats think that they are cool, but i think it's reasonable to believe so until proven otherwise. If you wish to debate the point however for the moment i will settle for "i mentally categorize everyone who makes rape or death threats into the same group."
#2: You specifically left out the bit immediately following the part you quoted, in which i clarified that i was not accusing anyone here "(and just to be clear, as far as i know that is not the exact same group as the people who like to use the term "SJW")".
#3: The part where you say that you do not take conversations on slashdot seriously (or at least that's my interpretation of your statement) and post here "only for fun": http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
No, i have no problem with that. If you wanted to take everyone you currently lump under the label "SJW" and call them "misandrists" instead i would disagree with your definition, but i wouldn't think it sounded stupid. It's not that you disagree with those people and have a less than complimentary name for them, it's that the name you (collectively) chose sounds like it came out of a paranoid conspiracy. Why construct stupid sounding acronyms to make it sound like there's some organized group out to get you when there are so many other perfectly normal words you could use?
It's interesting that so far there have been over a half-dozen replies in this thread and there's been a lot of dodging the question (sometimes with insults thrown in, free of charge) but no actual attempt to explain why "SJW" seemed like a good idea at the time.
No, i got it all from three letters written by you, and the context of all the other people who have used those same three letters. I realize the definition is a bit redundant, but the group of people who use "SJW" to refer to people in a serious context just end up sounding well... to put it politely, "strange." My faith in humanity, battered though it may be, insists that they're not all just crazy and there must be some reason why they choose to do that, so what is it?
As for your knee, it sounds like you hurt it. I can say that in just six words because in this case i can say the first thing that comes to mind without sounding like i'm trying to insult you outright.
Well as i said, my initial presumption would be that people who always resort to blaming things on groups with three letter acronym names are just crazy. However i am trying not to fall prey to the simple "well those people are just crazy" impulse, so i'm trying to understand instead. Why do you feel that's appropriate? Do you not realize it sounds... strange to people who aren't versed in your sub-culture? Or do you not care? Do you believe you're trying to educate the rest of us about what "those people" are really like?
Even though i do mentally categorize everyone who thinks rape and death threats are cool into the same group (and just to be clear, as far as i know that is not the exact same group as the people who like to use the term "SJW") i don't feel the need to give them a name any more specific than "misogynist assholes." I don't understand the appeal of coming up with some fancy name with a three letter acronym and bandying it about all over the place. Honestly i'd think that anyone who felt compelled to do so would sound... well, a little crazy. So what's the appeal? (I'd think the people who keep going on about "MRA"s are crazy, except i had the impression the "MRA"s gave that name/acronym to themselves, which again, i don't understand the appeal.)
Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump all the people who disagree with you together into one group, give that group a sarcastic name, and then abbreviate that name into an acronym which you can then use as a accusatory label whenever the subject comes up for discussion?
It sounds like the kind of thing my old paranoid-schizophrenic girlfriend would do when talking about "them", but i presume you are not mentally ill, so there must be some other reason for it. Is it some kind of bonding thing between people who feel threatened by others? Or do you believe that by creating the appearance of some kind of organized opposition that you will sway "neutral" parties toward your side? It just sounds dumb to me, but maybe i'm not the intended audience?
Well if California was actually betrayed by anyone, the first blame would have to fall at the feet of the state legislature, which failed to vote on the incentive package before the latest session ended. When the California governor promised Tesla the incentives the company responded with interest, and a few days after those incentives disappeared in puff of legislative smoke Tesla announced their decision to go with Nevada.
When the topic first came up on Slashdot a number of people seemed to think offering such incentives was a bad idea. Maybe the California legislature agreed with that reasoning, but if they've made any statements about why they did what they did i haven't heard about it.
"A dowser is less effective than a geologist and bears, at the minimum, a higher opportunity cost over the average (of instances of people searching for water with a dowser instead of a geologist)."
Wait, a dowser is less effective than bears, at the minimum? What kind of low bar do bears set? Where does one go to hire a bear to find water and how do they go about it?
Sorry, but decisions about what version control software we use are made by Management. I'm not entirely sure they're even human, much less in possession of either a male or female gender.
As someone else put it, Putin is aspiring to be a Dune character. Or more prosaically, he's learned a lot from watching US corporations and the US government manipulate the news cycle. Do something that will outrage the public, wait for the new furor, pull back a little, wait for the news to move on to some other subject, and try again.
Why yes, i do like to fuck women! And seeing as how i'm not into rape (for personal and ethical reasons as well as legal ones) i've found the best way to get women to want to fuck me in return is to treat them like respectable human beings. As such i listen to what they have to say, generally believe them unless i have some specific reason not to, and am appalled when other people choose not to treat them like respectable human beings.
(And just for the record, i certainly believe i would treat women in the same manner even if i didn't want to fuck them, but it's always nice when the practical aligns with the moral.)
I'm curious, which past Hugo winners did you think were pretentious?
2013 - Redshirts - John Scalzi: Not the best in the field, I wanted Blackout or Captain Vorpatril's Alliance to win, but i'm not sure what was pretentious about it.
2012 - Among Others - Jo Walton: I didn't think this one was pretentious. Just kind of boring and pandering. Should have gone to Leviathan Wakes or Deadline.
2011 - Blackout/All Clear - Connie Willis: Again, doesn't seem pretentious, but i've been disappointed with all the Connie Willis i've read since To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Cryoburn, and Feed were all better than this.
2010 - Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl and China Mieville's The City & the City: I had some serious concerns about the economics underlying the Windup Girl but thought it was otherwise okay. I've never really gotten people's fascination with China Mieville's works however. But neither seemed especially pretentious to me. Robert J Sawyer's Wake really should have won.
2009 - The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman: Okay, this year just sucked. I failed to inherit whatever gene it is that makes so many people like Neil Gaiman, nor have i yet found anything to like about Cory Doctorow or Charles Stross yet. I used to like Neal Stephenson, but his more recent work is just too... i dunno. And i haven't actually read Scalzi's Zoe's Tale yet because i just get annoyed by "let's tell the same story from a different perspective" books.
2008 - The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon: This was before i started going to WorldCon/voting in Hugos, and the only one i've read from that year so far is Scalzi's The Last Colony. Which was okay, but not something i'd have voted on myself. (I tend not to be a big fan of books from the middle of a long series for Hugo consideration in general.)
2007 - Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge: This on the other hand was a great year. I totally agree with the winner, but Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon and Michael Flynn's Eifelheim were both great as well (though admitedly it took me a little while to get into Eifelheim.)
2006 - Spin - Robert Charles Wilson: I think John Scalzi's Old Man's War gave Spin a run for its money, but i don't think this was a poor choice.
2005 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke: Okay, i liked the book, but my opinion of it suffered from over-hype. I also thought at the time she seemed like a one-hit wonder, and i'm not sure if i should be sad or gloating about being (so far) correct. I haven't read The Algebraist yet, but in retrospect it's kind of sad Ian M Banks didn't win this year.
2004 - Paladin of Sould - Lois McMaster Bujold: Not her best book, but it was pretty good and it was definitely better than the other contenders that i've read, so this seems fine to me.
So that's ten years of Hugos. There are definitely some authors whose appeal i don't get, or at least haven't gotten yet (Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow) but none of them really jump out at me as pretentious.
"When was the last time some woman wrote a single line of code ?"
Hmm, let's see *checks SVN logs*
Okay, i'm not sure who's currently using the "Tester" or "Build" accounts at our company, but the last line of code written by someone who was definitely a woman was checked in at 12:34 AM, about 8 hours ago. (Hey, it's still pretty early in the morning right now, _i_ haven't written any code yet, much less checked it in.)
Of course i can look around the office and see a lot of other women who _might_ be writing code right now. Or they might be reading slashdot at work like me *cough*
Slashdot Mirror
You seem very concerned about the "biologic process". Please explain why this is so important to you. Which do you feel is more important, the biologic process or the social contract? You seem to be trying to switch tacks but you can't have it both ways.
If the biologic process is what is most important, then a single woman who decides to get pregnant by sperm donation, from a man who you've argued above was involved in the decision making process by the choice to donate sperm, will provide just as good an environment for the child as a married heterosexual couple. Because it's the biologic process that matters, not the social situation.
If the social situation is what's important, then please provide your argument as to why a same-sex couple is inferior to a heterosexual couple. And it better be a good argument because i have living proof that a same-sex couple can successfully raise children in a healthy manner just as well as a heterosexual couple while all you've done so far is state that it's "silly" to believe that.
In particular be sure to detail how a same-sex couple that can't (currently) have children without someone else supplying one or more of the gametes in inferior to an infertile heterosexual couple who can't (currently) have children without someone else supplying one or more of the gametes. Do you believe that heterosexual couples in which one or both members are infertile should not choose to have children?
If the spouse hadn't agreed then they would not have had the children. How do you argue that she wasn't part of the decision making process?
Your original argument is that children are better off with two parents raising them. That is a matter of sociology, not biology. The "biology of 'choice'", whatever that is, is not relevant at all. The man consented to donate sperm. He was not involved at all in the social decision by the women to have and raise children as a couple.
He was not involved in the decision making process that this couple made about having children. His choice to donate sperm was indeed a choice, but not a choice in the context in which you originally phrased the question: "I would suggest that children should be a choice made by a man, and a woman together in mutual agreement whenever possible."
The man was not there for the discussion. Yes he also made a decision prior to that and you could "technically" say he was therefore involved. However the grandparents also made the decision to have the kids who would become the parents, so you could technically say they were involved. And friends made the decision to introduce the couple to each other, so you could technically say they were involved. And if you keep extending the chain of causality to people who made a decision at some point that impacted the final decision to have the kids then technically the entire planet was involved.
So i would argue your "technically" argument is incorrect, and even if i'm incorrect about its incorrectness, it's still entirely beside the point.
That's funny, i know a lesbian couple that got married and then had two kids. No man was involved in the decision making process. (Yes, a man donated sperm in each case, but if that man hadn't been willing there were plenty of others who would be, and those men weren't part of the decision making process. And pretty soon such families won't even need a sperm donor anymore.) It's a two income family (as most families around here are, regardless of whether they're hetrosexual or homosexual) but the parents spend as much time with the kids as they can and the kids seem to be doing pretty well.
So while i agree with some parts of your argument your foundation is built on quicksand.
This is stupid! Why don't they have a standard way of doing things!?!
Standards have a way of biting you in the ass, for example this standard way of abbreviating the year.
It seems ironic that an abbreviated name was used for a problem caused by abbreviations.
But that's a perfectly normal abbreviation!
No it's not! This other system of abbreviation makes much more sense!
No, the first kind of abbreviation makes more sense in some contexts because of these reasons.
And so we have come full circle to why we can't just have one method of doing things, and thus why we can't have nice things.
Also, obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/927/
Where are you getting the impression that the heat is going to be transferred to a liquid which will be used to perform work? Both the MIT page and the wikipedia page on thermophotovoltaics seem to indicate the conversion is pretty much straight from heat to electricity. The wikipedia page in particular uses the same heat engine equation as you but comes up with a result of 83%. I'm not sure what the difference is between their number and yours is, but even if your 70% is correct a 70% conversion into electricity is still a lot better than the 40% for regular photovoltaics that you cite.
A robot programmed to eliminate "unpure" food based on the standards set by a bunch of critics. In their arrogance the critics will have provided standards of purity that no food can match, and the robot will go wild, destroying all food everywhere.
Of course given that the end is inevitable, i for one welcome our new robotic food tasting overlords.
Power companies hate Apple for this one weird trick!ï
Despite Microsoft supposedly saying that won't be the case, i'm more concerned that this will mean the end of Minecraft on PS3 and PS4. Either directly or through neglect. Microsoft may be behind in this console generation but they're definitely not out yet, and a "the only place where you can play the latest version of Minecraft" tagline might sell 100,000 or more extra consoles.
Well even if we still haven't cleared up the mystery of the reason for the abbreviation, and despite the fact we clearly differ in opinion on the social issues involved, i thank and congratulate you for being the only person to respond to the original question in a reasonable manner with an attempt at an actual explanation (albeit with some confusion and fumbling around on both our parts before arriving at that point.)
Although it's a little sad that in this case an AC is setting the standard that so many of the pseudonym users ought to be aspiring to.
See my above response. It's not the name i disagree with. (I disagree with the assumptions behind it, and it seems a bit over the top, but it's a reasonably adequate name for its purposes.) It's the choice to consistently use the acronym instead that seems bizarre to me.
Saying "I don't like people who are enthusiastic about rape threats" doesn't sound paranoid. However if a bunch of people started going on about the "RTEs" and questioning what the RTEs were responsible for and if the RTEs had submitted this slashdot article, etc. Well, that would sound both stupid and a little paranoid.
Though i disagree with your interpretations, that's a perfectly adequate description of how the name might have come about, however it does nothing to explain the choice at acronym-ize it.
I have heard people complain about the War on Drugs many times (and i often agree with those criticisms.) However i can't ever recall anyone complaining about the "WoD". Certainly not for the first reference to the name in any case. In contrast i've seen "SJW" used dozens or scores of times, but can't recall "Social Justice Warrior" being used at all except on the rare occasion to explain what SJW actually stands for. (Notably in your explanation above you just assumed everyone already knew what SJW stood for when you explained the derivation.)
So to get back to the original comment that prompted the question in this thread, why is it:
"Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and SJWs."
instead of:
"Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and social justice warriors."?
or to use your own definition, why not just:
"Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and militant misandric idiots."?
To me, #1 sounds stupid, #2 sounds a little hokey but okay, and #3 sounds perfectly reasonable (given the viewpoint of the person supposedly saying it.) I would certainly have gone with "militant misandric idiots" myself but would be boggled by the idea if anyone suggested abbreviating it to "MMI".
(I was originally going to suggest "militant misandric assholes" as an alternative, but then realized that if you tried to abbreviate that everyone would think you were talking about martial arts. Although perhaps choosing a term that can't be acronym-ized without confusion would be a good way to help prevent that from happening.)
You're right, that was a mistake on my part and i apologize. What i should have said was "Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump many or all of the people who disagree with you together into one group [...]"
The "or all" part is because it's possible that the set of people that are, in general, included in the group "professional victims" is actually a subset of the group "SJWs". If that were the case my original question would still be correct, however since i don't know if that is the case or not the rewording is justified. Carry on.
Hmm,
/. or any other forum say that rape or death threats are cool. I have seen people make such threats elsewhere, and perhaps it is a bit of jump to assume that the people who made those threats think that they are cool, but i think it's reasonable to believe so until proven otherwise. If you wish to debate the point however for the moment i will settle for "i mentally categorize everyone who makes rape or death threats into the same group."
#1: I never said that i've seen anyone on
#2: You specifically left out the bit immediately following the part you quoted, in which i clarified that i was not accusing anyone here "(and just to be clear, as far as i know that is not the exact same group as the people who like to use the term "SJW")".
#3: The part where you say that you do not take conversations on slashdot seriously (or at least that's my interpretation of your statement) and post here "only for fun": http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
So nice job troll, thanks for playing?
No, i have no problem with that. If you wanted to take everyone you currently lump under the label "SJW" and call them "misandrists" instead i would disagree with your definition, but i wouldn't think it sounded stupid. It's not that you disagree with those people and have a less than complimentary name for them, it's that the name you (collectively) chose sounds like it came out of a paranoid conspiracy. Why construct stupid sounding acronyms to make it sound like there's some organized group out to get you when there are so many other perfectly normal words you could use?
It's interesting that so far there have been over a half-dozen replies in this thread and there's been a lot of dodging the question (sometimes with insults thrown in, free of charge) but no actual attempt to explain why "SJW" seemed like a good idea at the time.
No, i got it all from three letters written by you, and the context of all the other people who have used those same three letters. I realize the definition is a bit redundant, but the group of people who use "SJW" to refer to people in a serious context just end up sounding well... to put it politely, "strange." My faith in humanity, battered though it may be, insists that they're not all just crazy and there must be some reason why they choose to do that, so what is it?
As for your knee, it sounds like you hurt it. I can say that in just six words because in this case i can say the first thing that comes to mind without sounding like i'm trying to insult you outright.
Well as i said, my initial presumption would be that people who always resort to blaming things on groups with three letter acronym names are just crazy. However i am trying not to fall prey to the simple "well those people are just crazy" impulse, so i'm trying to understand instead. Why do you feel that's appropriate? Do you not realize it sounds... strange to people who aren't versed in your sub-culture? Or do you not care? Do you believe you're trying to educate the rest of us about what "those people" are really like?
Even though i do mentally categorize everyone who thinks rape and death threats are cool into the same group (and just to be clear, as far as i know that is not the exact same group as the people who like to use the term "SJW") i don't feel the need to give them a name any more specific than "misogynist assholes." I don't understand the appeal of coming up with some fancy name with a three letter acronym and bandying it about all over the place. Honestly i'd think that anyone who felt compelled to do so would sound... well, a little crazy. So what's the appeal? (I'd think the people who keep going on about "MRA"s are crazy, except i had the impression the "MRA"s gave that name/acronym to themselves, which again, i don't understand the appeal.)
Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump all the people who disagree with you together into one group, give that group a sarcastic name, and then abbreviate that name into an acronym which you can then use as a accusatory label whenever the subject comes up for discussion?
It sounds like the kind of thing my old paranoid-schizophrenic girlfriend would do when talking about "them", but i presume you are not mentally ill, so there must be some other reason for it. Is it some kind of bonding thing between people who feel threatened by others? Or do you believe that by creating the appearance of some kind of organized opposition that you will sway "neutral" parties toward your side? It just sounds dumb to me, but maybe i'm not the intended audience?
Well if California was actually betrayed by anyone, the first blame would have to fall at the feet of the state legislature, which failed to vote on the incentive package before the latest session ended. When the California governor promised Tesla the incentives the company responded with interest, and a few days after those incentives disappeared in puff of legislative smoke Tesla announced their decision to go with Nevada.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
When the topic first came up on Slashdot a number of people seemed to think offering such incentives was a bad idea. Maybe the California legislature agreed with that reasoning, but if they've made any statements about why they did what they did i haven't heard about it.
"A dowser is less effective than a geologist and bears, at the minimum, a higher opportunity cost over the average (of instances of people searching for water with a dowser instead of a geologist)."
Wait, a dowser is less effective than bears, at the minimum? What kind of low bar do bears set? Where does one go to hire a bear to find water and how do they go about it?
Sorry, but decisions about what version control software we use are made by Management. I'm not entirely sure they're even human, much less in possession of either a male or female gender.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/27/6...
As someone else put it, Putin is aspiring to be a Dune character. Or more prosaically, he's learned a lot from watching US corporations and the US government manipulate the news cycle. Do something that will outrage the public, wait for the new furor, pull back a little, wait for the news to move on to some other subject, and try again.
"Fuck women! :)"
Why yes, i do like to fuck women! And seeing as how i'm not into rape (for personal and ethical reasons as well as legal ones) i've found the best way to get women to want to fuck me in return is to treat them like respectable human beings. As such i listen to what they have to say, generally believe them unless i have some specific reason not to, and am appalled when other people choose not to treat them like respectable human beings.
(And just for the record, i certainly believe i would treat women in the same manner even if i didn't want to fuck them, but it's always nice when the practical aligns with the moral.)
I'm curious, which past Hugo winners did you think were pretentious?
2013 - Redshirts - John Scalzi: Not the best in the field, I wanted Blackout or Captain Vorpatril's Alliance to win, but i'm not sure what was pretentious about it.
2012 - Among Others - Jo Walton: I didn't think this one was pretentious. Just kind of boring and pandering. Should have gone to Leviathan Wakes or Deadline.
2011 - Blackout/All Clear - Connie Willis: Again, doesn't seem pretentious, but i've been disappointed with all the Connie Willis i've read since To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Cryoburn, and Feed were all better than this.
2010 - Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl and China Mieville's The City & the City: I had some serious concerns about the economics underlying the Windup Girl but thought it was otherwise okay. I've never really gotten people's fascination with China Mieville's works however. But neither seemed especially pretentious to me. Robert J Sawyer's Wake really should have won.
2009 - The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman: Okay, this year just sucked. I failed to inherit whatever gene it is that makes so many people like Neil Gaiman, nor have i yet found anything to like about Cory Doctorow or Charles Stross yet. I used to like Neal Stephenson, but his more recent work is just too... i dunno. And i haven't actually read Scalzi's Zoe's Tale yet because i just get annoyed by "let's tell the same story from a different perspective" books.
2008 - The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon: This was before i started going to WorldCon/voting in Hugos, and the only one i've read from that year so far is Scalzi's The Last Colony. Which was okay, but not something i'd have voted on myself. (I tend not to be a big fan of books from the middle of a long series for Hugo consideration in general.)
2007 - Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge: This on the other hand was a great year. I totally agree with the winner, but Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon and Michael Flynn's Eifelheim were both great as well (though admitedly it took me a little while to get into Eifelheim.)
2006 - Spin - Robert Charles Wilson: I think John Scalzi's Old Man's War gave Spin a run for its money, but i don't think this was a poor choice.
2005 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke: Okay, i liked the book, but my opinion of it suffered from over-hype. I also thought at the time she seemed like a one-hit wonder, and i'm not sure if i should be sad or gloating about being (so far) correct. I haven't read The Algebraist yet, but in retrospect it's kind of sad Ian M Banks didn't win this year.
2004 - Paladin of Sould - Lois McMaster Bujold: Not her best book, but it was pretty good and it was definitely better than the other contenders that i've read, so this seems fine to me.
So that's ten years of Hugos. There are definitely some authors whose appeal i don't get, or at least haven't gotten yet (Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow) but none of them really jump out at me as pretentious.
So what is it about them that bothers you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"When was the last time some woman wrote a single line of code ?"
Hmm, let's see *checks SVN logs*
Okay, i'm not sure who's currently using the "Tester" or "Build" accounts at our company, but the last line of code written by someone who was definitely a woman was checked in at 12:34 AM, about 8 hours ago. (Hey, it's still pretty early in the morning right now, _i_ haven't written any code yet, much less checked it in.)
Of course i can look around the office and see a lot of other women who _might_ be writing code right now. Or they might be reading slashdot at work like me *cough*