Here's an idea - if you're going to shit on scientists for using animal testing for research, maybe next time you go to the hospital for a procedure you can decline anything that is the result of animal testing. Which, by the way, is practically all of modern medicine.
I have a couple friends who worked in some of these labs. They said that you very quickly:
1) Felt sorry for the monkeys, because it is a pretty awful life. and 2) Hated the fuckers, because they are meanest, nastiest things on the planet. They'll try to lure you to the cage then bite your arm off, if they could. Not that they don't have reason.
They also said that they have to do any transfers of animals in the middle of the night because of death threats by animal rights activists.
All that said, I have no problem with having to ethically justify testing on apes as a last resort, not something that you can just do whatever the hell you want to. I just hope these regulations actually do that, instead of just being another weird hoop to jump through.
I'm completely willing to admit that "libertopia" does not and cannot exist. That some degree of regulation is probably not a bad idea.
But that doesn't mean that the libertarians don't have a decent concept of what's *wrong* with regulation. Regulatory capture is a real thing that obviously affects nearly every single form of government regulation. It's a natural consequence of economics and human nature. But no one *but* libertarians seem to care.
Mostly, to me, what that means is that when you are considering regulations as a solution, you have to be aware of the limits of what they can accomplish, how the system can be gamed, and what the incentives are to distort those regulations.
In general, regulations often end up just as rigged against the little guy as the court system is, they end up having little to no practical effect, or they become so onerous as to make complying with them nearly impossible.
You will find very few libertarians who have actually considered their position who are against any and all environmental regulation. But there's a very strong diminishing returns. And some forms of regulation are less harmful and less subject to being gamed than others.
And the law is so complex that having 1000x the lawyering is an advantage, because...?
Look, if we're going to assume a libertopia hypothetical, assume it all the way.
Actually, the more educated libertarians (not the internet nut/strawmen type) do have better (or at least more developed) solutions to this problem then "take them to court in this system that is completely rigged in favor of the big companies." Mostly involving more highly developed property rights and protections. But it's a bit long to go into in slashdot comment.
It's fairly frustrating. Most of my political conversations, if I want to defend my point at all, risk turning into a lengthy lecture on libertarian theory. Because there *is* more to it than just "government bad", but if you haven't read the economic arguments it doesn't really work...
I have actual had multiple people argue to me that teachers, nurses, and secretaries are low-paying non-valued fields specifically because women normally work in them. So I don't know that is actually the only place the complaint exists.
I don't disagree with anything you said. I was just commenting on the degree to which people get caught up in a social injustice that they miss their own blind spots.
The only reason that it matters how men and women relate biologically to math is that the notion has been abused by those in power. Because we are fighting against that abuse, any evidence in favor of the abuser's theory, even scientific evidence, is immediately discarded or attacked.
But because no one is trying to oppress men by saying they have suboptimal social abilities, we leave studies supporting that theory unchallenged.
I don't really care if men or women are biologically inclined toward one area of study or another. The differences any of the studies show are so minimal, and the distributions so wide ranging on either side of those averages, that for daily life it really doesn't matter. I'm going to hire an engineer if he or she demonstrates their competence, not because of the average performance of their gender.
But really I just want to know what the science says, and rejecting it because of the implications of the science, in any direction, just gets messy.
I honestly think that something resembling fourth gen is what most people in the US take as their baseline, even the conservatives. Which is a *huge* accomplishment.
Sure, there are some differences... but even among the hard-core bible-thumping conservatives I grew up with, there was a strong assumption among my generation that 1) Women are as innately capable of competence and intelligence as men. 2) Women should go to college and have a career. 3) Women should be considered equal to men at large in society.
Now, this was still tempered by some horrible outdated notions of how a woman should interact with her husband specifically, but among men who were *not* her husband, she was considered a complete equal and no one was surprised at all when she excelled in math, science, or any other academic discipline.
Which, to me, is absolutely amazing. Feminists in general should sit back and appreciate it more than they do, I think.
Just because both sides favor corporatism does not mean that they do not differ in other ways. Corporatism may be the most important aspect to *you*, but not to everyone.
Moreover, there are factions within each party with different goals. The Tea Party is one example, even if you don't agree with them. Voting for president is never going to be meaningful - the office is representing too many different people. But between your senator, representative, governor, state representative, mayor, and city councilmen you have a decent chance of at least someone you electing have a viewpoint you can agree with.
Just because the presidential candidates are bullshit doesn't mean the whole system is.
The earth (in nothing close to its current form for much of that time) has existed for 4.5 billion years.
Life as we recognize it (mostly microscopic) has existed for roughly 3.5 billion years.
Humans have existed for 200,000 years.
Humans who could send or receive radio signals have existed for about 100 years.
That is is.00000000008% of the lifetime of the universe that earth has been producing anything that could possibly be detected with our current technology as intelligent life.
Moreover, given that the universe is really, really big, it's only travelled 100 light years in that time. Which is such a tiny fraction of the total known universe that I'm not even sure how to run the math.
So, our chances of finding *ourselves,* would require that we be lucky enough to have evolved in the same miniscule potential time frame, in the same tiny corner of the universe, and happen to point our antennas in the right direction. It's like throwing a ball in the air, and then saying that no other balls in the world exist because it didn't randomly hit another ball.
All premises of finding other life are making the huge assumption that intelligent life will be able to continue to survive at at least our current tech level, and possibly even travel the stars, for many thousands of years after inventing the radio. Which is a huge jump, considering we've only managed to sustain our one example of this happening for 100 years.
I've heard people compare CG to early film, I think that the comparison is very apt. There were a ton of films that did nothing but show a guy talking or singing on stage, or doing silly effects by reversing video. The expectation was that novelty was a valid substitute for art.
And that's the problem with a lot of CG shots. There's even a standard camera movement I associate with it, the "oh wowee, look at our CG scene that I just flew a camera through and then rotated around."
Similarly, there's a tendency to push CG farther than it can go. Maybe your tech is good enough that you can fill a background with a bunch of fake people, or show quick shots of a monster in the dark... but there's a big difference between that and a slow-motion closeup.
The choice of medium has far less to do with the quality than the art direction of how it is applied.
I have multiple family members in the post office. Their stories are the perfect example of horrible management meeting a horrible union. Routes that are physically impossible for employees to complete in the time expected, regulations that only decrease efficiency, and mandated work hours that mean any gains realized from improvements are completely thrown out. If someone combines a route and reduces the total number of jobs, they aren't allowed to lay off the employees, so they sit around doing nothing but getting paid.
You have route times that are impossible to meet while following the rules you are required to follow on them. If you violate a stupid rule, you can be fired immediately, but if you are just plain incompetent it's impossible to get rid of you.
It's the worst combination of mismanagement and overzealous union power I've ever seen. So of course everyone hates the job - the only reason they're there is because if they go anywhere else they won't get a proper pension.
I think the two reasons to play it now if you're new are
a) The story. Which is really, really good, but if you play for just a bit to get the feel of the game, you can go read it all on marathon.bungie.org/story. And it will probably actually make some more sense then.
b) Seeing how ahead of its time it was. Marathon came out about a year after Doom, but it has so many elements of a modern FPS. More realistic weapon physics, multiple attacks on weapons, mouselook... in some ways it feels very modern compared to its contemporaries.
Did I mention the story? Still some of my favorite sci-fi. Even if you don't play the game you should go read through Marathon's Story.
Actually one of the interesting ways Marathon was ahead of its time. It wasn't the default, but modern-style mouselook was a real option in the original, largely because it was one of the first FPS's that didn't auto-aim up and down for you.
Programming is already cool. It's programmers that aren't, and most people don't want to become a programmer in order to get to the cool programming part.
We're like a colony of Leper Wizards. Everyone's in awe of the fact that we can create fire, but no one really wants to hang out with us long enough to learn how to do it themselves.
There was an American who was given a tour of a Chinese government work project. The project consisted of the construction of several dams, canals and a series of highways that were to join various isolated portions of the vast country together. The American observer, upon seeing the vast army of workers, asked the Chinese officials why there were so many shovels and no tractors. The official responded to this question by explaining that they were not building a dam but instead were creating jobs. The American, seeing the government officials great pride at just how many jobs they were creating, asked the obvious question; âoeWhy donâ(TM)t you give them spoons?â
This was actually pretty similar to my college experience, really... My favorite story is the day I had to ask my TA where our normal classroom was, so I could show up to take the midterm.
But then, for whatever reason, our college didn't use the science and math courses for the weed out. They left that for the courses after you'd been in the major for a year.
Does the iPad handle entry into web text fields in a way that doesn't completely suck?
I have a Xoom from work, and it's great for *browsing* the web, but if I want to interact on a forum or comment thread it is absolutely painful. The keys are easy to miss, editing mistakes takes forever to get the cursor in exactly the right spot, and somehow the responsiveness in these fields is absolutely terrible. I could hunt and a peck on a keyboard faster.
It somehow manages to be even more annoying than commenting on my iPod, despite being 3x the size. I'm not sure if it actually *is* worse, or if I'm just being frustrated because I expect it to be better...
It's making it a real pain to use it as an actual browsing replacement, though.
Even in this economy, companies will (and have to) pay for above average white collar workers. I've been able to up argue up every job offer I've ever had. And I'm a competent programmer, but I'm not that special.
And works out to an 80-hour work week. Sounds tough but possible.
Not to mention that you should spend the first two years at a community college doing your gen eds (cut that tuition in half), and should live at home or with a group of friends in similar circumstances (cut room and board to a quarter).
Then figure that, with half of a degree, several years of experience, and being young, you should be able to get something paying better than minimum wage (I worked manual labor for $10 an hour, then got an internship for $15 an hour. Even if you aren't majoring in CS and getting nice internships, getting up to a shift manager level at a fast food restaurant will give you $10). So that drops the amount you have to work a fair amount.
And suddenly it doesn't look so impossible. Oh, wait, it *is* really hard to be a poor person with no savings and go to college the same way someone from the upper class whose parents are paying their way goes to college. But that's a far cry from "it's impossible to go to college."
And all of this, of course, ignores military service, going to trade school first and then using that job to pay for night classes for a college degree, alternating years of work and years of school, or any of the other myriad possibilities other than "take out subsidized loans equal to twenty times your personal net worth."
It has been my personal experience, at least, that people of Jobs's or Hemingway's intelligence, work ethic, and personality will find someplace to succeed regardless of their credentials.
A reasonable middle ground might be to cap loans at the cost of four years at a state school.
Most of the people I know who are in trouble regarding their loans are taking them out at a much higher rate than $7k/year. You don't end up $100k in debt borrowing $7k a year to get a bachelor's degree.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an idea - if you're going to shit on scientists for using animal testing for research, maybe next time you go to the hospital for a procedure you can decline anything that is the result of animal testing. Which, by the way, is practically all of modern medicine.
I have a couple friends who worked in some of these labs. They said that you very quickly:
1) Felt sorry for the monkeys, because it is a pretty awful life.
and
2) Hated the fuckers, because they are meanest, nastiest things on the planet. They'll try to lure you to the cage then bite your arm off, if they could. Not that they don't have reason.
They also said that they have to do any transfers of animals in the middle of the night because of death threats by animal rights activists.
All that said, I have no problem with having to ethically justify testing on apes as a last resort, not something that you can just do whatever the hell you want to. I just hope these regulations actually do that, instead of just being another weird hoop to jump through.
I'm completely willing to admit that "libertopia" does not and cannot exist. That some degree of regulation is probably not a bad idea.
But that doesn't mean that the libertarians don't have a decent concept of what's *wrong* with regulation. Regulatory capture is a real thing that obviously affects nearly every single form of government regulation. It's a natural consequence of economics and human nature. But no one *but* libertarians seem to care.
Mostly, to me, what that means is that when you are considering regulations as a solution, you have to be aware of the limits of what they can accomplish, how the system can be gamed, and what the incentives are to distort those regulations.
In general, regulations often end up just as rigged against the little guy as the court system is, they end up having little to no practical effect, or they become so onerous as to make complying with them nearly impossible.
You will find very few libertarians who have actually considered their position who are against any and all environmental regulation. But there's a very strong diminishing returns. And some forms of regulation are less harmful and less subject to being gamed than others.
This is why there is a difference between libertarians and anarchists.
Libertarians believe in *limited* government, not no government.
I would hope that we can agree that there are many possible governments between our current level of government, and no government at all.
And the law is so complex that having 1000x the lawyering is an advantage, because...?
Look, if we're going to assume a libertopia hypothetical, assume it all the way.
Actually, the more educated libertarians (not the internet nut/strawmen type) do have better (or at least more developed) solutions to this problem then "take them to court in this system that is completely rigged in favor of the big companies." Mostly involving more highly developed property rights and protections. But it's a bit long to go into in slashdot comment.
It's fairly frustrating. Most of my political conversations, if I want to defend my point at all, risk turning into a lengthy lecture on libertarian theory. Because there *is* more to it than just "government bad", but if you haven't read the economic arguments it doesn't really work...
I have actual had multiple people argue to me that teachers, nurses, and secretaries are low-paying non-valued fields specifically because women normally work in them. So I don't know that is actually the only place the complaint exists.
I don't disagree with anything you said. I was just commenting on the degree to which people get caught up in a social injustice that they miss their own blind spots.
The only reason that it matters how men and women relate biologically to math is that the notion has been abused by those in power. Because we are fighting against that abuse, any evidence in favor of the abuser's theory, even scientific evidence, is immediately discarded or attacked.
But because no one is trying to oppress men by saying they have suboptimal social abilities, we leave studies supporting that theory unchallenged.
I don't really care if men or women are biologically inclined toward one area of study or another. The differences any of the studies show are so minimal, and the distributions so wide ranging on either side of those averages, that for daily life it really doesn't matter. I'm going to hire an engineer if he or she demonstrates their competence, not because of the average performance of their gender.
But really I just want to know what the science says, and rejecting it because of the implications of the science, in any direction, just gets messy.
I honestly think that something resembling fourth gen is what most people in the US take as their baseline, even the conservatives. Which is a *huge* accomplishment.
Sure, there are some differences... but even among the hard-core bible-thumping conservatives I grew up with, there was a strong assumption among my generation that
1) Women are as innately capable of competence and intelligence as men.
2) Women should go to college and have a career.
3) Women should be considered equal to men at large in society.
Now, this was still tempered by some horrible outdated notions of how a woman should interact with her husband specifically, but among men who were *not* her husband, she was considered a complete equal and no one was surprised at all when she excelled in math, science, or any other academic discipline.
Which, to me, is absolutely amazing. Feminists in general should sit back and appreciate it more than they do, I think.
Just because both sides favor corporatism does not mean that they do not differ in other ways. Corporatism may be the most important aspect to *you*, but not to everyone.
Moreover, there are factions within each party with different goals. The Tea Party is one example, even if you don't agree with them. Voting for president is never going to be meaningful - the office is representing too many different people. But between your senator, representative, governor, state representative, mayor, and city councilmen you have a decent chance of at least someone you electing have a viewpoint you can agree with.
Just because the presidential candidates are bullshit doesn't mean the whole system is.
I find it interesting how many people are apparently completely willing to accept that women's superiority in language ability is biological.
The universe has existed for 13 billion years.
The earth (in nothing close to its current form for much of that time) has existed for 4.5 billion years.
Life as we recognize it (mostly microscopic) has existed for roughly 3.5 billion years.
Humans have existed for 200,000 years.
Humans who could send or receive radio signals have existed for about 100 years.
That is is .00000000008% of the lifetime of the universe that earth has been producing anything that could possibly be detected with our current technology as intelligent life.
Moreover, given that the universe is really, really big, it's only travelled 100 light years in that time. Which is such a tiny fraction of the total known universe that I'm not even sure how to run the math.
So, our chances of finding *ourselves,* would require that we be lucky enough to have evolved in the same miniscule potential time frame, in the same tiny corner of the universe, and happen to point our antennas in the right direction. It's like throwing a ball in the air, and then saying that no other balls in the world exist because it didn't randomly hit another ball.
All premises of finding other life are making the huge assumption that intelligent life will be able to continue to survive at at least our current tech level, and possibly even travel the stars, for many thousands of years after inventing the radio. Which is a huge jump, considering we've only managed to sustain our one example of this happening for 100 years.
I've heard people compare CG to early film, I think that the comparison is very apt. There were a ton of films that did nothing but show a guy talking or singing on stage, or doing silly effects by reversing video. The expectation was that novelty was a valid substitute for art.
And that's the problem with a lot of CG shots. There's even a standard camera movement I associate with it, the "oh wowee, look at our CG scene that I just flew a camera through and then rotated around."
Similarly, there's a tendency to push CG farther than it can go. Maybe your tech is good enough that you can fill a background with a bunch of fake people, or show quick shots of a monster in the dark... but there's a big difference between that and a slow-motion closeup.
The choice of medium has far less to do with the quality than the art direction of how it is applied.
They need new management first.
I have multiple family members in the post office. Their stories are the perfect example of horrible management meeting a horrible union. Routes that are physically impossible for employees to complete in the time expected, regulations that only decrease efficiency, and mandated work hours that mean any gains realized from improvements are completely thrown out. If someone combines a route and reduces the total number of jobs, they aren't allowed to lay off the employees, so they sit around doing nothing but getting paid.
You have route times that are impossible to meet while following the rules you are required to follow on them. If you violate a stupid rule, you can be fired immediately, but if you are just plain incompetent it's impossible to get rid of you.
It's the worst combination of mismanagement and overzealous union power I've ever seen. So of course everyone hates the job - the only reason they're there is because if they go anywhere else they won't get a proper pension.
I think the two reasons to play it now if you're new are
a) The story. Which is really, really good, but if you play for just a bit to get the feel of the game, you can go read it all on marathon.bungie.org/story. And it will probably actually make some more sense then.
b) Seeing how ahead of its time it was. Marathon came out about a year after Doom, but it has so many elements of a modern FPS. More realistic weapon physics, multiple attacks on weapons, mouselook... in some ways it feels very modern compared to its contemporaries.
Did I mention the story? Still some of my favorite sci-fi. Even if you don't play the game you should go read through Marathon's Story.
Both of the Myth games were cross platform releases, and Marathon 2 had a PC port before that.
Actually one of the interesting ways Marathon was ahead of its time. It wasn't the default, but modern-style mouselook was a real option in the original, largely because it was one of the first FPS's that didn't auto-aim up and down for you.
But if it makes financial sense to do it, they should offer service to pick it up for a cheaper rate than the service to take it to a landfill.
Programming is already cool. It's programmers that aren't, and most people don't want to become a programmer in order to get to the cool programming part.
We're like a colony of Leper Wizards. Everyone's in awe of the fact that we can create fire, but no one really wants to hang out with us long enough to learn how to do it themselves.
There was an American who was given a tour of a Chinese government work project. The project consisted of the construction of several dams, canals and a series of highways that were to join various isolated portions of the vast country together. The American observer, upon seeing the vast army of workers, asked the Chinese officials why there were so many shovels and no tractors. The official responded to this question by explaining that they were not building a dam but instead were creating jobs. The American, seeing the government officials great pride at just how many jobs they were creating, asked the obvious question; âoeWhy donâ(TM)t you give them spoons?â
Copied from http://andrewkboyle.com/2011/06/21/digging-with-spoons/, but he probably copied it from somewhere else.
This was actually pretty similar to my college experience, really... My favorite story is the day I had to ask my TA where our normal classroom was, so I could show up to take the midterm.
But then, for whatever reason, our college didn't use the science and math courses for the weed out. They left that for the courses after you'd been in the major for a year.
Does the iPad handle entry into web text fields in a way that doesn't completely suck?
I have a Xoom from work, and it's great for *browsing* the web, but if I want to interact on a forum or comment thread it is absolutely painful. The keys are easy to miss, editing mistakes takes forever to get the cursor in exactly the right spot, and somehow the responsiveness in these fields is absolutely terrible. I could hunt and a peck on a keyboard faster.
It somehow manages to be even more annoying than commenting on my iPod, despite being 3x the size. I'm not sure if it actually *is* worse, or if I'm just being frustrated because I expect it to be better...
It's making it a real pain to use it as an actual browsing replacement, though.
Define "rockstar."
Even in this economy, companies will (and have to) pay for above average white collar workers. I've been able to up argue up every job offer I've ever had. And I'm a competent programmer, but I'm not that special.
"repeat cycles of poverty could be putting poor children at a serious disadvantage for heart disease, diabetes and lung disorders."
Another way of saying the same thing.
"Rich people actually are genetically superior"
And works out to an 80-hour work week. Sounds tough but possible.
Not to mention that you should spend the first two years at a community college doing your gen eds (cut that tuition in half), and should live at home or with a group of friends in similar circumstances (cut room and board to a quarter).
Then figure that, with half of a degree, several years of experience, and being young, you should be able to get something paying better than minimum wage (I worked manual labor for $10 an hour, then got an internship for $15 an hour. Even if you aren't majoring in CS and getting nice internships, getting up to a shift manager level at a fast food restaurant will give you $10). So that drops the amount you have to work a fair amount.
And suddenly it doesn't look so impossible. Oh, wait, it *is* really hard to be a poor person with no savings and go to college the same way someone from the upper class whose parents are paying their way goes to college. But that's a far cry from "it's impossible to go to college."
And all of this, of course, ignores military service, going to trade school first and then using that job to pay for night classes for a college degree, alternating years of work and years of school, or any of the other myriad possibilities other than "take out subsidized loans equal to twenty times your personal net worth."
It has been my personal experience, at least, that people of Jobs's or Hemingway's intelligence, work ethic, and personality will find someplace to succeed regardless of their credentials.
A reasonable middle ground might be to cap loans at the cost of four years at a state school.
Most of the people I know who are in trouble regarding their loans are taking them out at a much higher rate than $7k/year. You don't end up $100k in debt borrowing $7k a year to get a bachelor's degree.