And when will *you* realize that the war is over. Congratulations, you won! Women in America and most western countries have 100% legal rights! They're going to college in more numbers than men, they're doing great in the workplace, and sexual harassment is the quickest way to end your career. Pretty much everything that's left is not a gender issue - it's a class issue, or a human rights issue in general. You've been so successful that modern women are free and reasonable to think that continuing to fight is ridiculous.
Either pick some new issues or start working on changing cultures in other parts of the world, where women still *are* oppressed, instead of browbeating the women you worked to give rights to when they freely exercise those rights without seeming properly grateful.
*note: This is a rant directed at the modern feminist movement in general, not necessarily at you personally. Also, I am completely 100% in favor of equal rights for women. I see no real evidence that we have failed to attain this in any reasonable way. I will agree 100% that there are still inequalities in society that could be improved, but I see as many of them at this point in time on the masculine side as on the feminine side (date rape vs prison rape, spousal abuse goes both way, gender roles are still assumed for all, abortion vs child support and custody), and approaching these problems as feminist or masculinist just obscures any meaningful solution.
Definitely agree on the fatigue. I've driven a fair amount of level and/or joystick controlled equipment (lawn mowers, construction equipment, robots) and your arms get tired a lot faster than driving with a wheel, where it mostly stays straight without any input from you.
Definitely. On the included earbuds and computer speakers, I never noticed what bitrate my mp3's were encoded in. Then I bought some Grado SR-80's and had to rerip half of my library.
College costs are increasing across the board. I agree 100% that this sucks. However:
State college costs, on average, $6,500 a year. Out of state or private colleges average closer to $25,000 a year. There's a bit of a difference. A community college drops it down to $2,500 a year, and if you line things up right you can go there for 2 years for your GRE's and then transfer to a state college.
If you come out of four years of that with $30k in debt it means you either weren't working or were living within the means of your loans, not your income. Both of these are your own damn fault.
Why can't you get a job? Do you have a bad work ethic? Are you too stupid to hold one? Or are you so set on doing exactly what *you* want to do in life that you are willing to ignore the fact that no one is willing to pay you to do it?
Everyone who is close to physically and/or mentally normal can hold down a job that will pay for a small share of housing and (with some saving) a couple years at community college, at least.
People should be able to choose whatever they can afford - because if they can't afford it, then they are *stealing* from someone else to get it. If someone isn't willing to work to pay for their own education why should anyone *else* be willing to do so?
The government subsidy on college loans is being able to get a loan in the first place. How else can you get a loan for $30-60k (or more) as an 18 year old with no credit history, no job, and no skills! You're an idiot to place yourself in that much debt with a very clear understanding of the terms and a strong plan on how exactly you're going to pay them off. The job market is weak right now, but companies are still hiring - go train yourself up and find one.
If you can live cheap you should be able to pay off state college as you go. If you do Co-ops or internships all the way through you can pay a quarter work a quarter and graduate with no debt and a better chance of getting a full time job when you get out.
Someone (god only knows why) decided that simply because you wanted to go to college you were worth tens of thousands of dollars at honestly a really low interest rate, compared to if you wanted that money to do anything else (go try to get a signature loan for ten grand from a bank and see what interest they give you, if they don't laugh in your face).
You got yourself in debt and you alone. If you decided to spend that money you acquired on something that isn't going to allow you to pay it back, it's nobody's fault but your own.
Nearly 50% of all fortune 100 CEO's graduated from a state university. There's no reason to think you need any better if you can't afford it.
I'd actually love it if someone more legitimate than 4chan put that sort of picture out just to bring out the supreme court case to show how ridiculous the law is.
You break your own argument with your example. A woman in charge of hiring a man *does* have power over him in that relationship. I think your real argument was for a society-wide power arrangement.
I would argue that access to social acceptance carries a fair amount of power as well. Women can be just as "sexist" against women - if you can't get hired by another woman because you don't conform to gender norms, but are otherwise competent? If that is not sexism, then we're going to have to start inventing a bunch of new 'isms.
So why do normal human interactions stop at the worksite? At every job I have had, I have had friendships that extended beyond work hours. A girlfriend is just someone who meets the "friend" requirements while also being attractive to you.
Do you consider it horribly insulting if *you* ask a co-worker or classmate out? When are people allowed to approach each other - only in specific dating zones? Is being attracted to someone in and of itself sexist?
I think the bigger problem here is that people need to remember that co-workers are only people who are *paid* to deal with you for 8 hours a day until proven otherwise.
But all men and women are human, and sexism cuts well both ways. I'd think (given the stereotypes, at least) that those posting on slashdot would appreciate the difficulties of not meeting one's gender requirements.
Is it "sexist" to expect a man to be competitive? To mock him for being sensitive, or crying, or needing his wife to handle stressful times for him? What about not wanting to play sports, or not being particularly successful at sex or good looking? What happens to a boy who likes sewing and painting and dancing or intellectual pursuits instead of football? Is it therefore impossible for women to understand the horrible sexism men face?
Our culture raises men and women to different goals - women only have a worse start if you are judging them against "manly" goals, which is, somewhat ironically, what most feminists do. A woman today has her own choice of which traditional role she wants to fill - a man does not. For every strong, independent, competent woman I know, I know two who would be laughed out of their social circles as a wimp and a failure were they actually held to the standards a man is.
Most people respond poorly when they are insulted with little or no proof, and their objections described as "denial." It is, among other things, condescending.
More Balanced Answer: I think it's an example of setting rules for the few bad cases. Most girls would find it flattering if a guy asked her out, took no for an answer, and went back to work. They find it less flattering when no one can talk about circuits because they're staring at her chest, or constantly try to impress her in annoying ways, or just refuse to leave her alone. In a field where most of the employees are male, you're assured a fair number of assholes, even if the overall percentage of them is low. So we set rules to keep everyone in line.
I also think that some people who throw around the terms "sexist" or "racist" either fail to realize or ignore how insulting those terms are when they are "surprised" at the reactions they get. In today's society, there are few worse insults from a defamation standpoint. You can be considered a liar, corrupt, incompetent, and generally and asshole, but if you're publicly racist/sexist you'll get kicked out of office.
Agreed 100%. Also, do most people only work with one contracting agency when they're in that tenuous of a relationship? Last time I was looking for a job, I had 10-15 headhunters calling me about positions they had available that might fit, and I stayed in a basic (but open) relationship with all of them - whoever found the right fit first got the commission. As long as you aren't lying to any of them I didn't see a problem with it, and none of them expressed a concern with me about it.
I'm really curious which projects like this (and there were many that *I* think could be considered prior art) Microsoft chose to use in their defense.
I guess I know a fair number of urban conservatives who are approaching it more from the "government regulation is making it hard to run my business" direction than what I hear now where I live in the country, where it is more attached to religious tradition and just a general sense of "leave us alone."
I think a fair amount of the media bias is really an urban bias.
Most major news networks are based in and around large cities. Most major news stories reported on come from those cities, and most viewers and reporters are from those cities.
However, it's still largely a national media. The people in rural Ohio watch the same national news broadcast as do the people in Manhattan.
Some issues of right or left, this isn't a big deal. Others it is - just as an example, a reporter from New York City or DC (where guns are almost completely banned for personal, law-abiding use, and no one grows up hunting) is going to have a very different perspective, regardless of any intended bias, from someone who lives were hunting and target shooting are a large part of their life, and that's going to show up when they cover a gun control related issue or a shooting.
You can call it a left versus right bias, but I think that implies consistency on more issues than what you actually see. There are conservatives living in urban areas - but their conservatism is likely to be of a very different kind than those living in small towns. News programs are speaking to a national audience, but they still can only really know a local culture, no matter how many different polls they take. Even if someone is trying to be neutral, his viewpoint of what is "normal" is going to affect which viewpoints he feels he needs to be neutral toward.
I have a brother laser I've been using for seven years now. only cost $200 new back then. It even puts up with my cat sleeping on it. Completely happy with this printer, if you all you need is black and white.
The US's lower life expectancy has nothing to do with its healthcare being poor, and everything to do with our having 2x as many car accidents and 12x as many homicides as most of the western world. You factor that out and the US actually has a higher life expectancy.
We also spend more on elective and cosmetic surgeries, as well as drugs like viagra and prozac that can improve for quality of life, but do nothing for life expectancy.
Also, insurance companies and drug manufacturers are BACKING the government insurance plans. They want their slice of the pork.
Our current health insurance system was created by a government tax loophole that caused in the current employer-paid system, which is a large cause of increased costs and the reason most people who want insurance and can't get it don't have it.
Finally, the horrible profit-driven medical industry in the US spends more on new treatment research than the entire EU combined.
I dunno, with what it does have going for it, I'm a little concerned about turning over 15% of the economy to the government to run, considering they do so well with what they already do.
Except for those who enjoy/excel at both athletics and other activities, and go on to have productive lives while not being a lardass/100 lb weakling.
What I hate most about the culture that has grown around schools is how it encourages this antagonism between physical and mental development. It is a good thing to be smart, well read, and intellectual. It is *also* a good thing to be in good shape, athletic, and physically attractive! Why do we encourage this false dichotomy?
I was co-valedictorian of my high school. I also lettered three years in a varsity sport, would have play another had it not interfered with band, and now play sports recreationally to go along with my well-paying programming job. All of my nerdy/intellectual friends in high school played sports every year until they graduated - I was amazed when I got to engineering college that the stereotypes of nerds who had never done anything physical actually existed! We weren't anything special physically - we just played for fun. Sometimes serious fun, but working hard for an achievement and competing are rewards in their own right.
Sorry, I will agree 100% that American culture does not value and promote educational excellence well enough, but I in no way believe that we have to devalue athletic achievement to change this.
Slashdot Mirror
And when will *you* realize that the war is over. Congratulations, you won! Women in America and most western countries have 100% legal rights! They're going to college in more numbers than men, they're doing great in the workplace, and sexual harassment is the quickest way to end your career. Pretty much everything that's left is not a gender issue - it's a class issue, or a human rights issue in general. You've been so successful that modern women are free and reasonable to think that continuing to fight is ridiculous.
Either pick some new issues or start working on changing cultures in other parts of the world, where women still *are* oppressed, instead of browbeating the women you worked to give rights to when they freely exercise those rights without seeming properly grateful.
*note: This is a rant directed at the modern feminist movement in general, not necessarily at you personally. Also, I am completely 100% in favor of equal rights for women. I see no real evidence that we have failed to attain this in any reasonable way. I will agree 100% that there are still inequalities in society that could be improved, but I see as many of them at this point in time on the masculine side as on the feminine side (date rape vs prison rape, spousal abuse goes both way, gender roles are still assumed for all, abortion vs child support and custody), and approaching these problems as feminist or masculinist just obscures any meaningful solution.
What really amazes me is how ahead of its time Marathon still seems today.
Play Marathon and Doom, then play a modern shooter. Tell me which one seems closer to the modern gameplay. You even had mouselook in Marathon.
Definitely agree on the fatigue. I've driven a fair amount of level and/or joystick controlled equipment (lawn mowers, construction equipment, robots) and your arms get tired a lot faster than driving with a wheel, where it mostly stays straight without any input from you.
Definitely. On the included earbuds and computer speakers, I never noticed what bitrate my mp3's were encoded in. Then I bought some Grado SR-80's and had to rerip half of my library.
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html
College costs are increasing across the board. I agree 100% that this sucks. However:
State college costs, on average, $6,500 a year.
Out of state or private colleges average closer to $25,000 a year. There's a bit of a difference.
A community college drops it down to $2,500 a year, and if you line things up right you can go there for 2 years for your GRE's and then transfer to a state college.
If you come out of four years of that with $30k in debt it means you either weren't working or were living within the means of your loans, not your income. Both of these are your own damn fault.
Why can't you get a job? Do you have a bad work ethic? Are you too stupid to hold one? Or are you so set on doing exactly what *you* want to do in life that you are willing to ignore the fact that no one is willing to pay you to do it?
Everyone who is close to physically and/or mentally normal can hold down a job that will pay for a small share of housing and (with some saving) a couple years at community college, at least.
People should be able to choose whatever they can afford - because if they can't afford it, then they are *stealing* from someone else to get it. If someone isn't willing to work to pay for their own education why should anyone *else* be willing to do so?
Grow up, go to state college, get a job.
The government subsidy on college loans is being able to get a loan in the first place. How else can you get a loan for $30-60k (or more) as an 18 year old with no credit history, no job, and no skills! You're an idiot to place yourself in that much debt with a very clear understanding of the terms and a strong plan on how exactly you're going to pay them off. The job market is weak right now, but companies are still hiring - go train yourself up and find one.
If you can live cheap you should be able to pay off state college as you go. If you do Co-ops or internships all the way through you can pay a quarter work a quarter and graduate with no debt and a better chance of getting a full time job when you get out.
Someone (god only knows why) decided that simply because you wanted to go to college you were worth tens of thousands of dollars at honestly a really low interest rate, compared to if you wanted that money to do anything else (go try to get a signature loan for ten grand from a bank and see what interest they give you, if they don't laugh in your face).
You got yourself in debt and you alone. If you decided to spend that money you acquired on something that isn't going to allow you to pay it back, it's nobody's fault but your own.
Nearly 50% of all fortune 100 CEO's graduated from a state university. There's no reason to think you need any better if you can't afford it.
The matrix drives like shit anyway. Feels like a van in a car's body.
If you want a little wagon that you can stand driving, we strongly preferred the Mazda3's in our test drives.
Or for people who don't live in a major city, but hey, thanks for telling me I don't matter! :)
Still wished they'd used a lithium ion battery, though, just to make the form factor fit a pocket better.
I'd actually love it if someone more legitimate than 4chan put that sort of picture out just to bring out the supreme court case to show how ridiculous the law is.
You break your own argument with your example. A woman in charge of hiring a man *does* have power over him in that relationship. I think your real argument was for a society-wide power arrangement.
I would argue that access to social acceptance carries a fair amount of power as well. Women can be just as "sexist" against women - if you can't get hired by another woman because you don't conform to gender norms, but are otherwise competent? If that is not sexism, then we're going to have to start inventing a bunch of new 'isms.
So why do normal human interactions stop at the worksite? At every job I have had, I have had friendships that extended beyond work hours. A girlfriend is just someone who meets the "friend" requirements while also being attractive to you.
Do you consider it horribly insulting if *you* ask a co-worker or classmate out? When are people allowed to approach each other - only in specific dating zones? Is being attracted to someone in and of itself sexist?
I think the bigger problem here is that people need to remember that co-workers are only people who are *paid* to deal with you for 8 hours a day until proven otherwise.
It also raises the fun question - is porn inherently sexist? There was some male near-nudity there as well.
But all men and women are human, and sexism cuts well both ways. I'd think (given the stereotypes, at least) that those posting on slashdot would appreciate the difficulties of not meeting one's gender requirements.
Is it "sexist" to expect a man to be competitive? To mock him for being sensitive, or crying, or needing his wife to handle stressful times for him? What about not wanting to play sports, or not being particularly successful at sex or good looking? What happens to a boy who likes sewing and painting and dancing or intellectual pursuits instead of football? Is it therefore impossible for women to understand the horrible sexism men face?
Our culture raises men and women to different goals - women only have a worse start if you are judging them against "manly" goals, which is, somewhat ironically, what most feminists do. A woman today has her own choice of which traditional role she wants to fill - a man does not. For every strong, independent, competent woman I know, I know two who would be laughed out of their social circles as a wimp and a failure were they actually held to the standards a man is.
Most people respond poorly when they are insulted with little or no proof, and their objections described as "denial." It is, among other things, condescending.
Sexist answer: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/sexual-harassment/258532/
More Balanced Answer: I think it's an example of setting rules for the few bad cases. Most girls would find it flattering if a guy asked her out, took no for an answer, and went back to work. They find it less flattering when no one can talk about circuits because they're staring at her chest, or constantly try to impress her in annoying ways, or just refuse to leave her alone. In a field where most of the employees are male, you're assured a fair number of assholes, even if the overall percentage of them is low. So we set rules to keep everyone in line.
I also think that some people who throw around the terms "sexist" or "racist" either fail to realize or ignore how insulting those terms are when they are "surprised" at the reactions they get. In today's society, there are few worse insults from a defamation standpoint. You can be considered a liar, corrupt, incompetent, and generally and asshole, but if you're publicly racist/sexist you'll get kicked out of office.
Lisa would put them in federal prison.
Agreed 100%. Also, do most people only work with one contracting agency when they're in that tenuous of a relationship? Last time I was looking for a job, I had 10-15 headhunters calling me about positions they had available that might fit, and I stayed in a basic (but open) relationship with all of them - whoever found the right fit first got the commission. As long as you aren't lying to any of them I didn't see a problem with it, and none of them expressed a concern with me about it.
I'm really curious which projects like this (and there were many that *I* think could be considered prior art) Microsoft chose to use in their defense.
I guess I know a fair number of urban conservatives who are approaching it more from the "government regulation is making it hard to run my business" direction than what I hear now where I live in the country, where it is more attached to religious tradition and just a general sense of "leave us alone."
As always, though, YMMV.
I think a fair amount of the media bias is really an urban bias.
Most major news networks are based in and around large cities. Most major news stories reported on come from those cities, and most viewers and reporters are from those cities.
However, it's still largely a national media. The people in rural Ohio watch the same national news broadcast as do the people in Manhattan.
Some issues of right or left, this isn't a big deal. Others it is - just as an example, a reporter from New York City or DC (where guns are almost completely banned for personal, law-abiding use, and no one grows up hunting) is going to have a very different perspective, regardless of any intended bias, from someone who lives were hunting and target shooting are a large part of their life, and that's going to show up when they cover a gun control related issue or a shooting.
You can call it a left versus right bias, but I think that implies consistency on more issues than what you actually see. There are conservatives living in urban areas - but their conservatism is likely to be of a very different kind than those living in small towns. News programs are speaking to a national audience, but they still can only really know a local culture, no matter how many different polls they take. Even if someone is trying to be neutral, his viewpoint of what is "normal" is going to affect which viewpoints he feels he needs to be neutral toward.
I have a brother laser I've been using for seven years now. only cost $200 new back then. It even puts up with my cat sleeping on it. Completely happy with this printer, if you all you need is black and white.
People keep mentioning that statistic about spending more for lower life expectancy, but it's kind of bullshit.
http://reason.com/news/show/135458.html
The US's lower life expectancy has nothing to do with its healthcare being poor, and everything to do with our having 2x as many car accidents and 12x as many homicides as most of the western world. You factor that out and the US actually has a higher life expectancy.
We also spend more on elective and cosmetic surgeries, as well as drugs like viagra and prozac that can improve for quality of life, but do nothing for life expectancy.
Also, insurance companies and drug manufacturers are BACKING the government insurance plans. They want their slice of the pork.
Our current health insurance system was created by a government tax loophole that caused in the current employer-paid system, which is a large cause of increased costs and the reason most people who want insurance and can't get it don't have it.
Finally, the horrible profit-driven medical industry in the US spends more on new treatment research than the entire EU combined.
I dunno, with what it does have going for it, I'm a little concerned about turning over 15% of the economy to the government to run, considering they do so well with what they already do.
Except for those who enjoy/excel at both athletics and other activities, and go on to have productive lives while not being a lardass/100 lb weakling.
What I hate most about the culture that has grown around schools is how it encourages this antagonism between physical and mental development. It is a good thing to be smart, well read, and intellectual. It is *also* a good thing to be in good shape, athletic, and physically attractive! Why do we encourage this false dichotomy?
I was co-valedictorian of my high school. I also lettered three years in a varsity sport, would have play another had it not interfered with band, and now play sports recreationally to go along with my well-paying programming job. All of my nerdy/intellectual friends in high school played sports every year until they graduated - I was amazed when I got to engineering college that the stereotypes of nerds who had never done anything physical actually existed! We weren't anything special physically - we just played for fun. Sometimes serious fun, but working hard for an achievement and competing are rewards in their own right.
Sorry, I will agree 100% that American culture does not value and promote educational excellence well enough, but I in no way believe that we have to devalue athletic achievement to change this.