Is distributing vaccines to people in Africa really causing an increase in autism there? Or is having medical professionals coming into a region that has little to no health care system allowing for people to be screened and that screening is what is causing the rise in reported cases?
The graph in the article is misleading. 1 in 68 should be twice as high as 1 in136, but instead it's well more than twice as high as the 1 in 125 point.
The taught us how to do that in marketing class to emphasize a difference that really isn't there by manipulating the scale. One can make a 1% variance look alarming if the right (or actually wrong) scale is used. In marketing the purpose is to manipulate the consumer. One would think in research it would be to acurately portray what the data shows. It would seem, however, that somebody got the two confused.
How about stress... the high levels of stress-associated hormones that come with it... mothers that have children at later and later ages... driving pregnant to work up to the last month... in the ever worsening commute grind....
That would be an interesting analysis, charting the occurrence of autism with the age of the mother at conception. It probably wouldn't be stress related, but the risk of other disorders increase with the mother's age, so one could hypothesize that so would the risk of autism.
More research is needed on the rise of autism reports. Statistical research, not medical, that is. The definition of autism has been expanded dramatically over the past 50 years, from what once were only the most severe cases, to cases that a casual observer would never notice.
Not to diminish the impact that autism, in all of its forms, has on people's lives, but to tell if there is an increase or not, one would need to use the same screening criteria as in the past. The 1 in 68 figure could simply be the definition of what is autism has been expanded. This is important to know, because if the increase is real, then something, most likely environmental, is causing it. OTOH, if it is just from expanding the definition, nothing has really changed.
Do you know if dropbox is trying to determine what is a DMCA violation and stopping the share or if they have received actual takedown notices? I ask because if somebody shares something and dropbox recieves a takedown notice, then I would be okay with that. On the other hand, if they are trying to police what is out there, I'm not sure how they can make that determination or why they would stop at just shared content.
Not trying to troll or inflame the discussion, just actually wondering how the process works.
Beveled Keys have been in use since the HP 35 calculator. The HP35 was HP's very first calculator and the first iterations only had printing on a few of the keys -- the rest of the key designations were printed on the board the keys protruded through. The HP41 (early to mid 1980's) had a full alphabet keyboard as well as punctuation and all the keys were beveled. As I understand the patent, it should be thrown out due to prior art or at least obviousness since all the HP keys were beveled.
The desktop HP 9100 was HP's first calculator. The HP35 was their first portable calculator (basically the 9100 that fit in a shirt pocket), but otherwise, what you say about HP is correct. As for your conclusion on the patent, I will defer to others.
From the article (which is really a veiled advertisement for an upcoming tv show), researchers found the bacteria on the teeth of the skeletons and use this as proof that the plague spread by humans and not rats (the article actually calls it a virus, but that the black plague was bacterial, not viral).
It is reasonable that if people died from a bacterial infection y.pesis, that said bacteria would remain on their dead bodies and be burried with them. The fact that they found DNA of the bacteria on the teeth and bones doesn't tell us anything as only the teeth and bones remain.
There is also no doubt that if the plague spread by infect fleas from rats, that those fleas would also go from other mamnalian hosts including humans.
Ultimately what probably did in so many back then were complications (most likely pneumonia) to a population already weakened by difficult living conditions made worse by the famine. People today are more succeptable to infection if they are already in a compromised state, there is no reason to suspect people back then weren't.
While interesting, the article, in making the bold claim that it spread because of humans, leaves out how it got to Europe in the first place. People couldn't just hop on a plane and get from point a to b in a matter of hours. The length of journey, if spread by humans, would have meant they carriers would have died off, prior to ever making it to Europe. That wouldn't be the case for a host animal with immunity to the bacteria, say like, rats.
Again, while interesting, it seems dangerous to rewrite all of history related to the plague, ignoring first hand reports, because some skeletons, but not all, from plague victims had y.pestis on their teeth and bones. But, it does make for good publicity for an upcoming tv show.
Is this causation or correlation or just a bad use of statistics?
For instance, the clock changes on Saturday night (Sunday morning to be exact), As such, there is no loss of sleep on Sunday night for the heart attack on Monday. Even more perplexing, is the drop in heart attack doesn't occur until the following Tuesday, even though again the clock change is Saturday night.
This would be easy enough to verify, take any other night, when one traditionally looses sleep, say New Year's Eve. Is there a rise in heart attacks on January 2nd?
If they're actually saying the same product, is this not fraud?
They aren't saying it is the same product. They are saying they will price-match if you find the same product elsewhere. Effectively, though, their products are all house brands, because even though they may say RCA, for instance, the model sold is only sold through Walmart. KMart, or anybody else has the equivalent model, but the promise is for the "same" model, not an "equivalent" one.
Benefits, at least health insurance became company paid because during WWII, there were wage freezes. Business, not being able to increase wages for additional compensation, compensated their employees by adding health insurance.
As such, from the very beginning, the practice was seen as part of the compensation package. If they could have increased wages, they probably would have, but then everybody would be making more money today, too, because of it.
Looking at wages is wrong. One must look at the total compensation package. If you want to quit paying health insurance, fine, don't pay it, but realize that you will need to pay your workers an additional $X so they can purchase their own health insurance or they will go elsewhere.
Because that is their business model. If the win they lower prices which diverts more business from Target and KMart and the rest. A lot of shoppers buy primarily on price and go where they are likely to get the best deal. For all the bitching people engage in over Walmart, when push comes to shove they tend to vote for low prices and overlook everything else.
No, that is their advertising slogan. Their business model is to maximize profits by using their massive purchasing power to get discounted prices from vendors and to undersell their competition. So, unless their competition lowers prices, Walmart won't.
I'd add that they also maintain this illusion by sometimes (often?) selling similar-but-inferior products. For instance, a vacuum that is identical to a top-rated cordless vacuum, but with a smaller motor and battery. If you run through there with a bar code scanner on your phone you can see just how many of the products are actually different than the ones available through Amazon and friends.
They are notorious for advertising they will meet any advertised price for the same product. The problem is that many of their products, while similar, are only a model that Walmart sells, at least in electronics.
Wal-Mart competes primarily on the illusion of price through loss leaders on a minority of items. The majority of their stock is actually the same or more expensive than many of their competitors. The company's actual strengths are logistics and marketing.
This is essentially correct. When a new Walmart opens, that store operates at a loss with really low prices. Then after the consumer base has built up and other competition reduced, prices start rising until they are not significantly lower than that of their competition. They still use loss-leaders to get people in the store, but, they are no less expensive than the rest of the mega market stores.
...lower costs tends to get at least partially passed on to customers...
Including my taxes to cover their worker's government assistance.
...might actually end up benefiting customers.
You shouldn't have to do either. Walmart could pay a just wage. Of course that would lower dividends paid to shareholders. So, think of paying higher taxes because many Walmart workers needing assistance as another government transfer payment - from you to Walmart's shareholders.
I'd rather pay more up front and have my taxes be put to better use elsewhere. Pay them a living wage already, FFS.
If they win, why would they lower prices? It is apparent, given their growth during the period in question, that sales continue to increase, meaning people are willing to purchase goods at the higher prices. As such, a much more likely scenario would be to pass the savings on to shareholders instead of consumers.
yeah, meanwhile all the heroic family owned businesses in NYC are fighting a new proposed law to give employees at any business with more than 5 employees 5 paid sick days per year separate from vacation days
and i hear they all offer at least some health, pension benefits and the ability to be promoted into management of the family business
Walmart is no longer a family owned business. It is one of the worlds largest publicly traded companies. It's been a long time since Sam Walton and his values ran Walmart. As for benefits, they have been charged, repeatedly, about how they intentionally hold rank and file employees below the hours needed to qualify for benefits. So, if they have those great benefits that you list, it's not for the majority of the employees of the largest employer in the US.
After a week or so of design work and printing out many items, I think I've picked up a few skills and I can actually see myself making a little money on the side creating and selling items. I don't think I'd trade my current job for one designing and printing items, but it is nice to have a little income on the side if I choose to do that.
It's only called making money if you cover the cost of production, including the printer, supplies, computer, etc. And remember, that little income on the side is reportable to the IRS as hobby income in total, whereas the expenses come from itemized deductions, unless you truly start a side business doing this. If so, you probably aren't going to be using one of the below $500 printers as they are pretty slow.
Most of the people I know are using 3D printers as part of one of their hobbies, such as model railroading to make custom parts for themselves. They then make parts for others to offset their initial investment, but very few of them would ever say they are making money. I look at it this way, my father-in-law used to hunt raccoons. He would always say the sale of the fur helped offset the cost of the food and vet care for the dogs, but you never really made money, just reduced the costs of his hobby. The same would apply for 3D printing, at least from the small consumer printers.
And yet, AT&T wants more money because they think they have the right to charge Netflix more to pass through their tollbooth.
- it's not their 'tollbooth', it's their road. On a road you can charge different rates for different types of vehicles, this is the same situation. An eighteen wheeler can cause more damage to the road that requires more maintenance than a motorcycle, this is the same thing: a movie that needs to be streamed a million times takes up much more capacity and energy and basically uses the system much more than millions of small individual requests do.
See, I even used an appropriate car analogy.
Except this isn't about cars and eighteen wheelers. A bit is a bit is a bit and it costs just as much to send 1GB of data as it does 1GB of movie. AT&T wants to charge more to popular services instead of charging more to the consumer of those services. Their thinking is that Netflix can pass on the higher fee whereas if they raise their fee to the consumer for the added bandwidth, the concern is that the consumer will go to a different provider and they don't want that.
We wouldn't need net neutrality if there were true competition. But there is not. The only real consumer choices are DSL through your phone company, a regulated monopoly or cable modem through your cable company, another regulated monopoly. Have mediacom and want comcast, too bad, not an option. Don't like your DSL provider, too bad, there, too.
Maybe it is time to look at the information highway like any other highway. Highways are built and operated by the government for the benefits of all citizens and businesses. Maybe it's time to get private interests out of providing public infrastructure.
Only in theoretical physics is one allowed to say that the immutable laws of physics somehow changed as a way to blend the theories of the early universe after the big bang to the expanding universe we see today. The speed of light is a constant, oops, only from this point forward, same with the effects of gravity, motion and everything else.
If all of that is true, that the laws of physics, of nature, itself, can mysteriously change with no rhyme or reason, it's almost as if some external force were directing the formation of the universe. Oh, wait, that sounds too much like a deity, so that can't be correct. No, instead, we have to accept that somehow, everything around was was created in an instantaneous blink of an eye. Well everything, that is except physics. That was created separately some time later.
Or maybe, the physics didn't change, but math did. Maybe in the earliest universe it was permissible to divide by zero. I'm not sure who would have granted that permission, but if you are allowed to divide by zero, you can pretty much prove anything mathematically, so anything goes at the moment of the big bang! After all, dividing by zero just yields infinity and at the point of the big bang, the universe was an infinitesimally small place, so infinity was a lot smaller, too. So, like the speed of light, maybe infinity is relative, too, in which case it turtles all the way down (and up).
Are journalists and marketing directors equal? Are journalists and advertisers equal? After all, they all produce digital copy to inform the public. OTOH, if there is something that separates journalists from these other information producing groups, then there is probably something that also separates them from your run of the mill bloggers.
As to what that something may be, I will leave to others to determine.
Only if you want to broaden the definition of "discrimination: in the legal sense so widely that everyone can claim to be a victim, sure. I'll concede that the trial lawyers of this country would agree wholeheartedly with you.
If I need someone to routinely reach something 8' high, I'm not hiring a little person. That'd be stupid. Is that heightist of me? If I need someone to routinely lift 80lb boxes, I'm going to tend to hire the strong dude that's 25 rather than the feeble 75 year old woman. Even if they both CAN do it, it's just logical that the 25 year old is going to be able to do it faster, longer, with fewer breaks and medical consequences.
If I want to hire someone for a job, and want to pay as little as possible to get as much work as possible, I'd tend to hire someone younger.* It's not 'discrimination', it's common sense.
*Now, I'd argue that millenials as a group are so repellent, lazy, unmotivated, and self-obsessed that they probably are the best argument against age discrimination. Even if a millenial is physically more capable of doing a job, I'd probably get more PRODUCTIVE work out of a middle-of-the-bell-curve 40 year old than that middle-of-the-bell-curve 20-something.
Height isn't a protected classification, age is, so normal rules don't apply. If you think a younger worker is faster and work speed is a requirement, fine, then give all the applicants a speed test and only select the fast ones, regardless of age. If you purposely ignore older workers (over 40) for the things listed, it's age discrimination. Why? Because you aren't basing it on qualifications and abilities AND age is a protected class.
Slashdot Mirror
Is distributing vaccines to people in Africa really causing an increase in autism there? Or is having medical professionals coming into a region that has little to no health care system allowing for people to be screened and that screening is what is causing the rise in reported cases?
The graph in the article is misleading. 1 in 68 should be twice as high as 1 in136, but instead it's well more than twice as high as the 1 in 125 point.
The taught us how to do that in marketing class to emphasize a difference that really isn't there by manipulating the scale. One can make a 1% variance look alarming if the right (or actually wrong) scale is used. In marketing the purpose is to manipulate the consumer. One would think in research it would be to acurately portray what the data shows. It would seem, however, that somebody got the two confused.
How about stress... the high levels of stress-associated hormones that come with it... mothers that have children at later and later ages... driving pregnant to work up to the last month... in the ever worsening commute grind....
That would be an interesting analysis, charting the occurrence of autism with the age of the mother at conception. It probably wouldn't be stress related, but the risk of other disorders increase with the mother's age, so one could hypothesize that so would the risk of autism.
More research is needed on the rise of autism reports. Statistical research, not medical, that is. The definition of autism has been expanded dramatically over the past 50 years, from what once were only the most severe cases, to cases that a casual observer would never notice.
Not to diminish the impact that autism, in all of its forms, has on people's lives, but to tell if there is an increase or not, one would need to use the same screening criteria as in the past. The 1 in 68 figure could simply be the definition of what is autism has been expanded. This is important to know, because if the increase is real, then something, most likely environmental, is causing it. OTOH, if it is just from expanding the definition, nothing has really changed.
Do you know if dropbox is trying to determine what is a DMCA violation and stopping the share or if they have received actual takedown notices? I ask because if somebody shares something and dropbox recieves a takedown notice, then I would be okay with that. On the other hand, if they are trying to police what is out there, I'm not sure how they can make that determination or why they would stop at just shared content.
Not trying to troll or inflame the discussion, just actually wondering how the process works.
kills the virus as well...
If that were true then coroners wouldn't need to worry about Hep-C. The virus can live on long after the host is dead.
Beveled Keys have been in use since the HP 35 calculator. The HP35 was HP's very first calculator and the first iterations only had printing on a few of the keys -- the rest of the key designations were printed on the board the keys protruded through. The HP41 (early to mid 1980's) had a full alphabet keyboard as well as punctuation and all the keys were beveled. As I understand the patent, it should be thrown out due to prior art or at least obviousness since all the HP keys were beveled.
The desktop HP 9100 was HP's first calculator. The HP35 was their first portable calculator (basically the 9100 that fit in a shirt pocket), but otherwise, what you say about HP is correct. As for your conclusion on the patent, I will defer to others.
If they vomited, and the vomitus contained the bacteria, would that account for these findings?
Only if one came into direct contact with the vomit.
From the article (which is really a veiled advertisement for an upcoming tv show), researchers found the bacteria on the teeth of the skeletons and use this as proof that the plague spread by humans and not rats (the article actually calls it a virus, but that the black plague was bacterial, not viral).
It is reasonable that if people died from a bacterial infection y.pesis, that said bacteria would remain on their dead bodies and be burried with them. The fact that they found DNA of the bacteria on the teeth and bones doesn't tell us anything as only the teeth and bones remain.
There is also no doubt that if the plague spread by infect fleas from rats, that those fleas would also go from other mamnalian hosts including humans.
Ultimately what probably did in so many back then were complications (most likely pneumonia) to a population already weakened by difficult living conditions made worse by the famine. People today are more succeptable to infection if they are already in a compromised state, there is no reason to suspect people back then weren't.
While interesting, the article, in making the bold claim that it spread because of humans, leaves out how it got to Europe in the first place. People couldn't just hop on a plane and get from point a to b in a matter of hours. The length of journey, if spread by humans, would have meant they carriers would have died off, prior to ever making it to Europe. That wouldn't be the case for a host animal with immunity to the bacteria, say like, rats.
Again, while interesting, it seems dangerous to rewrite all of history related to the plague, ignoring first hand reports, because some skeletons, but not all, from plague victims had y.pestis on their teeth and bones. But, it does make for good publicity for an upcoming tv show.
Is this causation or correlation or just a bad use of statistics?
For instance, the clock changes on Saturday night (Sunday morning to be exact), As such, there is no loss of sleep on Sunday night for the heart attack on Monday. Even more perplexing, is the drop in heart attack doesn't occur until the following Tuesday, even though again the clock change is Saturday night.
This would be easy enough to verify, take any other night, when one traditionally looses sleep, say New Year's Eve. Is there a rise in heart attacks on January 2nd?
Personally, I'd vote for a bad use of statistics.
If they're actually saying the same product, is this not fraud?
They aren't saying it is the same product. They are saying they will price-match if you find the same product elsewhere. Effectively, though, their products are all house brands, because even though they may say RCA, for instance, the model sold is only sold through Walmart. KMart, or anybody else has the equivalent model, but the promise is for the "same" model, not an "equivalent" one.
Benefits, at least health insurance became company paid because during WWII, there were wage freezes. Business, not being able to increase wages for additional compensation, compensated their employees by adding health insurance.
As such, from the very beginning, the practice was seen as part of the compensation package. If they could have increased wages, they probably would have, but then everybody would be making more money today, too, because of it.
Looking at wages is wrong. One must look at the total compensation package. If you want to quit paying health insurance, fine, don't pay it, but realize that you will need to pay your workers an additional $X so they can purchase their own health insurance or they will go elsewhere.
If they win, why would they lower prices?
Because that is their business model. If the win they lower prices which diverts more business from Target and KMart and the rest. A lot of shoppers buy primarily on price and go where they are likely to get the best deal. For all the bitching people engage in over Walmart, when push comes to shove they tend to vote for low prices and overlook everything else.
No, that is their advertising slogan. Their business model is to maximize profits by using their massive purchasing power to get discounted prices from vendors and to undersell their competition. So, unless their competition lowers prices, Walmart won't.
I'd add that they also maintain this illusion by sometimes (often?) selling similar-but-inferior products. For instance, a vacuum that is identical to a top-rated cordless vacuum, but with a smaller motor and battery. If you run through there with a bar code scanner on your phone you can see just how many of the products are actually different than the ones available through Amazon and friends.
They are notorious for advertising they will meet any advertised price for the same product. The problem is that many of their products, while similar, are only a model that Walmart sells, at least in electronics.
Wal-Mart competes primarily on the illusion of price through loss leaders on a minority of items. The majority of their stock is actually the same or more expensive than many of their competitors. The company's actual strengths are logistics and marketing.
This is essentially correct. When a new Walmart opens, that store operates at a loss with really low prices. Then after the consumer base has built up and other competition reduced, prices start rising until they are not significantly lower than that of their competition. They still use loss-leaders to get people in the store, but, they are no less expensive than the rest of the mega market stores.
...lower costs tends to get at least partially passed on to customers...
Including my taxes to cover their worker's government assistance.
...might actually end up benefiting customers.
You shouldn't have to do either. Walmart could pay a just wage. Of course that would lower dividends paid to shareholders. So, think of paying higher taxes because many Walmart workers needing assistance as another government transfer payment - from you to Walmart's shareholders.
I'd rather pay more up front and have my taxes be put to better use elsewhere. Pay them a living wage already, FFS.
If they win, why would they lower prices? It is apparent, given their growth during the period in question, that sales continue to increase, meaning people are willing to purchase goods at the higher prices. As such, a much more likely scenario would be to pass the savings on to shareholders instead of consumers.
yeah, meanwhile all the heroic family owned businesses in NYC are fighting a new proposed law to give employees at any business with more than 5 employees 5 paid sick days per year separate from vacation days
and i hear they all offer at least some health, pension benefits and the ability to be promoted into management of the family business
Walmart is no longer a family owned business. It is one of the worlds largest publicly traded companies. It's been a long time since Sam Walton and his values ran Walmart. As for benefits, they have been charged, repeatedly, about how they intentionally hold rank and file employees below the hours needed to qualify for benefits. So, if they have those great benefits that you list, it's not for the majority of the employees of the largest employer in the US.
After a week or so of design work and printing out many items, I think I've picked up a few skills and I can actually see myself making a little money on the side creating and selling items. I don't think I'd trade my current job for one designing and printing items, but it is nice to have a little income on the side if I choose to do that.
It's only called making money if you cover the cost of production, including the printer, supplies, computer, etc. And remember, that little income on the side is reportable to the IRS as hobby income in total, whereas the expenses come from itemized deductions, unless you truly start a side business doing this. If so, you probably aren't going to be using one of the below $500 printers as they are pretty slow.
Most of the people I know are using 3D printers as part of one of their hobbies, such as model railroading to make custom parts for themselves. They then make parts for others to offset their initial investment, but very few of them would ever say they are making money. I look at it this way, my father-in-law used to hunt raccoons. He would always say the sale of the fur helped offset the cost of the food and vet care for the dogs, but you never really made money, just reduced the costs of his hobby. The same would apply for 3D printing, at least from the small consumer printers.
Wasn't that methodology disproved and the results of the original research shown to be fabricated? I thought /. had an article about that already.
And yet, AT&T wants more money because they think they have the right to charge Netflix more to pass through their tollbooth.
- it's not their 'tollbooth', it's their road. On a road you can charge different rates for different types of vehicles, this is the same situation. An eighteen wheeler can cause more damage to the road that requires more maintenance than a motorcycle, this is the same thing: a movie that needs to be streamed a million times takes up much more capacity and energy and basically uses the system much more than millions of small individual requests do.
See, I even used an appropriate car analogy.
Except this isn't about cars and eighteen wheelers. A bit is a bit is a bit and it costs just as much to send 1GB of data as it does 1GB of movie. AT&T wants to charge more to popular services instead of charging more to the consumer of those services. Their thinking is that Netflix can pass on the higher fee whereas if they raise their fee to the consumer for the added bandwidth, the concern is that the consumer will go to a different provider and they don't want that.
We wouldn't need net neutrality if there were true competition. But there is not. The only real consumer choices are DSL through your phone company, a regulated monopoly or cable modem through your cable company, another regulated monopoly. Have mediacom and want comcast, too bad, not an option. Don't like your DSL provider, too bad, there, too.
Maybe it is time to look at the information highway like any other highway. Highways are built and operated by the government for the benefits of all citizens and businesses. Maybe it's time to get private interests out of providing public infrastructure.
Only in theoretical physics is one allowed to say that the immutable laws of physics somehow changed as a way to blend the theories of the early universe after the big bang to the expanding universe we see today. The speed of light is a constant, oops, only from this point forward, same with the effects of gravity, motion and everything else.
If all of that is true, that the laws of physics, of nature, itself, can mysteriously change with no rhyme or reason, it's almost as if some external force were directing the formation of the universe. Oh, wait, that sounds too much like a deity, so that can't be correct. No, instead, we have to accept that somehow, everything around was was created in an instantaneous blink of an eye. Well everything, that is except physics. That was created separately some time later.
Or maybe, the physics didn't change, but math did. Maybe in the earliest universe it was permissible to divide by zero. I'm not sure who would have granted that permission, but if you are allowed to divide by zero, you can pretty much prove anything mathematically, so anything goes at the moment of the big bang! After all, dividing by zero just yields infinity and at the point of the big bang, the universe was an infinitesimally small place, so infinity was a lot smaller, too. So, like the speed of light, maybe infinity is relative, too, in which case it turtles all the way down (and up).
Just one question. If the display server is of such minimal importance in the big scheme of things, then why did Canonical develop their own?
Are journalists and marketing directors equal? Are journalists and advertisers equal? After all, they all produce digital copy to inform the public. OTOH, if there is something that separates journalists from these other information producing groups, then there is probably something that also separates them from your run of the mill bloggers.
As to what that something may be, I will leave to others to determine.
Only if you want to broaden the definition of "discrimination: in the legal sense so widely that everyone can claim to be a victim, sure. I'll concede that the trial lawyers of this country would agree wholeheartedly with you.
If I need someone to routinely reach something 8' high, I'm not hiring a little person. That'd be stupid. Is that heightist of me?
If I need someone to routinely lift 80lb boxes, I'm going to tend to hire the strong dude that's 25 rather than the feeble 75 year old woman. Even if they both CAN do it, it's just logical that the 25 year old is going to be able to do it faster, longer, with fewer breaks and medical consequences.
If I want to hire someone for a job, and want to pay as little as possible to get as much work as possible, I'd tend to hire someone younger.* It's not 'discrimination', it's common sense.
*Now, I'd argue that millenials as a group are so repellent, lazy, unmotivated, and self-obsessed that they probably are the best argument against age discrimination. Even if a millenial is physically more capable of doing a job, I'd probably get more PRODUCTIVE work out of a middle-of-the-bell-curve 40 year old than that middle-of-the-bell-curve 20-something.
Height isn't a protected classification, age is, so normal rules don't apply. If you think a younger worker is faster and work speed is a requirement, fine, then give all the applicants a speed test and only select the fast ones, regardless of age. If you purposely ignore older workers (over 40) for the things listed, it's age discrimination. Why? Because you aren't basing it on qualifications and abilities AND age is a protected class.