Gauss was indeed a child prodigy, but he didn't start university extremely abnormally young (about 16, I think).
When I was a normal-age college junior (20) I briefly dated a second year grad student who was 18.
It was like dating an incredibly smart, very well-behaved 15 year old. He lived in his own apartment and was able to take care of himself, but had very little life experience.
Unlike most college graduates, he had never lived away from his parents, with peers.
He finished his PhD in Comp Sci in five years, then went to law school at age 22, the same age as a lot of the other first year students.
He's never been happier in his life than he is now, despite having to study like crazy.
*************
Should I end up being mother to, say, a math prodigy, I'd certainly supply her with whatever challenges I could in that subject, but would also encourage her to set her mind to something completely unrelated, like learning a foreign language. Seeing the vast difference between what bright kids can do around 8 versus what they can do at 16 or 20 learning another language, I think it's crazy not to start foreign languages earlier. Spanish at 13 clicked a whole lot better than German did at 18.
The cards here in Mongomery County looked like SmartCards. The election judges have little devices they use to authorize the cards for each voter, and these devices give whether a particular authorization has been used yet or not.
Ok, I was wondering about that when I saw a speciman machine here in Montgomery Co., MD. I asked the county elections guy giving the demonstration what would happen if I brought a really strong magnet with me in my purse and set my purse down on the machine. He wasn't sure. I told him that a magnet I'd used to erase hard drives at an old job would have fit into my medium-sized purse.
I'm guessing this has not been pursued, or he felt that not revealing what kind of shielding was being used was a security measure.
Maybe I should have voted absentee in case he drops by my precinct or something "funny" happens there...
As companies functioning on small margins seem unwilling to pay for competent tech support, the trick seems to be convincing customers to do it on their own. The best plan I can see is for several dozen of us to band together, become a Dell/HP/etc. certified shop so we can dispense parts and take calls at an hourly (quarter-hourly?) rate. If we charge about $60/hr, the people with simple questions only get stuck for $15, while those requiring the time pay more.
The small matter of getting consumers to pay for independent support or buy support contracts, on the other hand... I got nothin.
This is also present among semi-rural Texans. My parents are solidly middle-middle class (construction foreman and HS teacher).
My parents, who have always lived there, and I, who went to college in the Mid-Atlantic and currently work near DC, frequently had arguments about school and my jobs (and, to some extent, still do). They very much think that I need to be a "good soldier," not trying to prod my boss into letting me do more challenging things that I think would be good for me career-wise and more interesting. Males from my culture are encouraged to be a bit more vocal with their bosses. (I'm female.)
One of my close friends (male, upper-middle-class upbringing in upstate NY), on the other hand, frequently harps upon me to ask my boss for more challenging work and encourages me to go up the chain to *his* boss to address the problem. Said friend feels like I have a lack of motivation because I have a lack of assertiveness towards people I perceive to be authority figures.
I'm trying to balance the culture I came from with the one I've joined. I can't imagine what it must be like for someone crossing a larger divide than I did.
I've wondered why my 2001 Volvo S40 (5 gear auto trans, 1.9L 160hp turbocharged engine) gets about 30mpg on the highway if I drive 60-65 like I'm supposed to, but got 39 when I was driving home between 75-85 late one night with my eye on the immediate fuel economy, and gets about 32-33 if I drive about 80, ignoring fuel economy. I don't go anywhere terribly hilly. Does this have anything at all to do with the turbo? Any other rational explanation?
Doesn't quite work that way... 28% was your *marginal* tax rate, which is now 25%. A lot of people seem to miss that point entirely. The income tax rates you see given for various ranges of income are the marginal rates. If you make $100k and I make $50k, and we have otherwise equal dependant and deduction conditions, I pay just as much tax on my whole $50k as you do on your first $50k. It's the $50k after it that you're taxed more on (and that doesn't kick in until Dollar #70k or so)
Using an annual income of $50k, and assuming no dependants:
There was a new 10% bracket introduced; I'm not sure where the cut-off is, but let's be really generous and say $20k. Remember that you do get a personal exemption (I believe around $5-7k, let's use $5k).
Your previous total: First $5k * 0% = $0 Next $25k * 15% = $3750 Final $20k * 28% = $5600
2002 Total: $9350 Net tax rate: $9350/$50k = 18.7% (excludes Soc. Sec. and Medicare, which are non-trivial for those of us pulling down less than $100k)
Your new total: First $5k * 0% = $0 Next $15k * 10% = $1500 Next $10k * 15% = $1500 Final $20k * 25% = $5000
2003 Total: $8000 Net tax rate: $8k/$50k = 16%
If you're getting that $50k in semimonthly installments, your difference per paycheck would be about $56. Given that I didn't see that big a difference, the personal deduction I used was a serious underestimate and/or I extended the 10% bracket too high.
Note: the new 25% bracket ends around $60-70k for the single earner.
You can look up the specific numbers at www.irs.gov, if you're so inclined.
However, that I'm theoretically saving $1350 per year in federal income taxes doesn't make me feel that much better when my state has a yawning budget gap that's going to get filled somehow, and my state tax rates are NOT progressive; they're absolutely flat.
If I were making $25k (I have friends making about this who are first year teachers in a poor school district and journalists with smallish papers), my situation would be:
Savings = $250, which is less than $300, and this person is certainly not unusually poor.
Since I think I underestimated the personal deduction and overestimated where the 10% bracket ends, someone making $30k or more might only be saving $300.
And given that pretty much all the states have painful budget gaps and relatively flat tax structures, I'm going to get hit almost as hard per dollar as my friends making twice what I do, but I've gotten about half per dollar in federal tax savings.
And that is why some of us didn't think this was such a great idea... well, that and the whole business of ginormous budget deficits this year and for several to come.
Although the "official" Lutheran church of Germany went along with the Nazis, there were many pastors of conscience (like Niemoeller) who spoke out and acted against them. I can't remember if he was one of the ones imprisoned and/or killed; I'm pretty sure he was at least put into a camp at some point.
US companies have no-bid contracts on rebuilding and various oil-field operations. Halliburton (Dick Cheney's alma mater) and Bechtel come to mind most quickly.
The US *taxpayers* are being soaked on this, but several US companies are making out quite nicely.
I, too, plan to never be on welfare or to be dependent on social security (I'm 23 and already socking away 7% of my income into my 401k, and am upping it another percentage point every quarter till I get to 20%), but I gladly pay into both, as I feel it's part of the price of living in a civilized society, as opposed to a banana republic. Maryland is a MUCH nicer place to live than Alabama (which is undergoing huge budget cuts due to their unwillingness to tax the timber industry as much as they tax their working poor), whether you're a minimum wage worker or a $200k/yr doctor or lawyer. Montgomery County is an especially nice place no matter where you fall on the earnings scale, and we have one of the highest tax rates in the state.
Would I like a good deal of extra money in my pay envelope? Of course. Would I like it if my state were only able to field 8 highway patrolmen at night and cutting what little safety net the poor have? Not at all; ignoring any sort of moral arguments and only focusing on the selfish, that sort of thing would make my state less safe and therefore my life less comfortable.
If my $5k/yr is my portion to keep stable the system that keeps millions of seniors from abject poverty, so be it. But I do think that Soc. Security taxes should not be capped; if I made more than the $84k or so required to put me over, I'd still gladly pay my share, happy that I was making more than $84k.
If even 50% of my federal income taxes were going towards AFDC, WIC and Medicaid, which they most certainly are not; too much making its way to agribusiness and military bloat (much military spending: necessary. Bilking by Halliburton, Bechtel and friends: not necessary), I would accept it as my fair share, given that I'm so fortunate as to have a nice job in a fairly safe society. If we could get Netherlands-esque safety and assurance for the poor, I'd gladly pay their taxes.
I gladly pay for these services (when rendered well) not because I ever plan to use them, but I prefer to live in a society where those who need them can get them.
I was a testing intern in MacBU (Macintosh Business Unit) last summer. We found lots of OS X bugs and spent a good deal of time pin-pointing them. I spoke with Apple developers about what I'd found a couple of times. If OS X had significant problems, Office v.X sales would be hurt, simple as that.
MacBU is a small (~150 employees, $50 million in expenses) but profitable ($100 million+ in sales in FY2000 or 2001, as I recall) division that is also good publicity. One of the nicer parts of MS to work in, from what I saw that summer.
Nothing like dating a guy who has different ideas about how much physicality is appropriate at what point in the relationship than you do to give you a bit of a window on why abusive relationships can happen to intelligent women, too.... Women don't seek out abusers. As Jenny said, they put on great faces at the beginning of the relationship and in public.
Yes, having grown up among peers who read _Seventeen_ in high school and graduated to _Cosmo_ and such, I'll agree with that. My roommate was reading that particular issue to find ads to critique for her Intro to Feminism paper on how the media affects our images of our physical selves. Sadly, she found plenty of fodder.
And I wish they'd just go ahead and get rid of legislated affirmative action. It's been 30 years, and laws aren't going to fix things. I'm tired of people insinuating that I am where I am just because I'm female, and I doubt that minorities are, on the whole, feeling better about themselves because employers and schools are being compelled to take them.
I'm a female Computer Engineering major and, after observing my (decidely non-techie) friends, one of the biggest reasons girls don't enter CS or EE as often as the guys do is that we're just more afraid of breaking things. We aren't as likely to drive extremely fast and we're more worried about damaging property. Something in our culture and/or something in our nature causes us to be more careful.
The way I encourage my friends to take more risks with their machines is to constantly remind them that the worst thing they can do without opening the box is to wipe out their hard drives, and that they'd have to be fairly deliberate about that (and this is without introducing them to fdisk or other such partitioning items), and that running the restore CD will fix most of that (well, except for the MP3s they'd lose.)
We (women) do it to ourselves in many ways, though. My roommate was skimming an issue of _Cosmo_ a few months back, and I glanced over her shoulder at an article listing 30 practical things women really should be able to do (change flats, set VCR clocks, etc.) I nearly hit the roof when it listed "trying to add memory to your computer" under a sidebar of 5 things *not* to try!
Have an old machine? Give it to a girl to play with, and tell her not to worry about breaking it. I think that having only a TRS-80 Model 4 until 1995 and then having a 386 until last summer pushed me to learn more about the hardware, since I wanted to do BBS stuff (early 90's) and then actually use Netscape (late 90's).
From what I've seen of the few female techs and programmers I know, American industry is missing out on a vast resource. I think that one of the best ways to tap it would be to remind girls/women that practically anything that can be done to a machine while the case is closed can be remedied by formatting and reinstalling the operating system and programs and that they can install their own hard drives and memory upgrades using the instructions provided.
Entschuldigung. This "very Catholic" Hitler and Germany *did* make a promise with the Vatican to leave the Catholic Church in Germany alone, but he quickly broke it (arrested thousands of priests and nuns, had Gestapo listening in on confessions, etc.) And btw, the Reich Church was "Protestant" (but a very poor reflection on what most practicing Protestant Christians believe) You are correct that Hitler was Catholic, but "very" Catholic? Hitlerian Germany sure wasn't.
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Gauss was indeed a child prodigy, but he didn't start university extremely abnormally young (about 16, I think).
When I was a normal-age college junior (20) I briefly dated a second year grad student who was 18.
It was like dating an incredibly smart, very well-behaved 15 year old. He lived in his own apartment and was able to take care of himself, but had very little life experience.
Unlike most college graduates, he had never lived away from his parents, with peers.
He finished his PhD in Comp Sci in five years, then went to law school at age 22, the same age as a lot of the other first year students.
He's never been happier in his life than he is now, despite having to study like crazy.
*************
Should I end up being mother to, say, a math prodigy, I'd certainly supply her with whatever challenges I could in that subject, but would also encourage her to set her mind to something completely unrelated, like learning a foreign language. Seeing the vast difference between what bright kids can do around 8 versus what they can do at 16 or 20 learning another language, I think it's crazy not to start foreign languages earlier. Spanish at 13 clicked a whole lot better than German did at 18.
The cards here in Mongomery County looked like SmartCards. The election judges have little devices they use to authorize the cards for each voter, and these devices give whether a particular authorization has been used yet or not.
Ok, I was wondering about that when I saw a speciman machine here in Montgomery Co., MD. I asked the county elections guy giving the demonstration what would happen if I brought a really strong magnet with me in my purse and set my purse down on the machine. He wasn't sure. I told him that a magnet I'd used to erase hard drives at an old job would have fit into my medium-sized purse.
I'm guessing this has not been pursued, or he felt that not revealing what kind of shielding was being used was a security measure.
Maybe I should have voted absentee in case he drops by my precinct or something "funny" happens there...
As companies functioning on small margins seem unwilling to pay for competent tech support, the trick seems to be convincing customers to do it on their own. The best plan I can see is for several dozen of us to band together, become a Dell/HP/etc. certified shop so we can dispense parts and take calls at an hourly (quarter-hourly?) rate. If we charge about $60/hr, the people with simple questions only get stuck for $15, while those requiring the time pay more.
The small matter of getting consumers to pay for independent support or buy support contracts, on the other hand... I got nothin.
This is also present among semi-rural Texans. My parents are solidly middle-middle class (construction foreman and HS teacher).
My parents, who have always lived there, and I, who went to college in the Mid-Atlantic and currently work near DC, frequently had arguments about school and my jobs (and, to some extent, still do). They very much think that I need to be a "good soldier," not trying to prod my boss into letting me do more challenging things that I think would be good for me career-wise and more interesting. Males from my culture are encouraged to be a bit more vocal with their bosses. (I'm female.)
One of my close friends (male, upper-middle-class upbringing in upstate NY), on the other hand, frequently harps upon me to ask my boss for more challenging work and encourages me to go up the chain to *his* boss to address the problem. Said friend feels like I have a lack of motivation because I have a lack of assertiveness towards people I perceive to be authority figures.
I'm trying to balance the culture I came from with the one I've joined. I can't imagine what it must be like for someone crossing a larger divide than I did.
I've wondered why my 2001 Volvo S40 (5 gear auto trans, 1.9L 160hp turbocharged engine) gets about 30mpg on the highway if I drive 60-65 like I'm supposed to, but got 39 when I was driving home between 75-85 late one night with my eye on the immediate fuel economy, and gets about 32-33 if I drive about 80, ignoring fuel economy. I don't go anywhere terribly hilly. Does this have anything at all to do with the turbo? Any other rational explanation?
Doesn't quite work that way... 28% was your *marginal* tax rate, which is now 25%. A lot of people seem to miss that point entirely. The income tax rates you see given for various ranges of income are the marginal rates. If you make $100k and I make $50k, and we have otherwise equal dependant and deduction conditions, I pay just as much tax on my whole $50k as you do on your first $50k. It's the $50k after it that you're taxed more on (and that doesn't kick in until Dollar #70k or so)
Using an annual income of $50k, and assuming no dependants:
There was a new 10% bracket introduced; I'm not sure where the cut-off is, but let's be really generous and say $20k. Remember that you do get a personal exemption (I believe around $5-7k, let's use $5k).
Your previous total:
First $5k * 0% = $0
Next $25k * 15% = $3750
Final $20k * 28% = $5600
2002 Total: $9350
Net tax rate: $9350/$50k = 18.7% (excludes Soc. Sec. and Medicare, which are non-trivial for those of us pulling down less than $100k)
Your new total:
First $5k * 0% = $0
Next $15k * 10% = $1500
Next $10k * 15% = $1500
Final $20k * 25% = $5000
2003 Total: $8000
Net tax rate: $8k/$50k = 16%
If you're getting that $50k in semimonthly installments, your difference per paycheck would be about $56. Given that I didn't see that big a difference, the personal deduction I used was a serious underestimate and/or I extended the 10% bracket too high.
Note: the new 25% bracket ends around $60-70k for the single earner.
You can look up the specific numbers at www.irs.gov, if you're so inclined.
However, that I'm theoretically saving $1350 per year in federal income taxes doesn't make me feel that much better when my state has a yawning budget gap that's going to get filled somehow, and my state tax rates are NOT progressive; they're absolutely flat.
If I were making $25k (I have friends making about this who are first year teachers in a poor school district and journalists with smallish papers), my situation would be:
Old:
$5k * 0% = $0
$20k * 15% = $3000
Total = $3000
New:
$5k * 0% = $0
$20k * 10% = $2000
$5k * 15% = $750
Total = $2750
Savings = $250, which is less than $300, and this person is certainly not unusually poor.
Since I think I underestimated the personal deduction and overestimated where the 10% bracket ends, someone making $30k or more might only be saving $300.
And given that pretty much all the states have painful budget gaps and relatively flat tax structures, I'm going to get hit almost as hard per dollar as my friends making twice what I do, but I've gotten about half per dollar in federal tax savings.
And that is why some of us didn't think this was such a great idea... well, that and the whole business of ginormous budget deficits this year and for several to come.
Although the "official" Lutheran church of Germany went along with the Nazis, there were many pastors of conscience (like Niemoeller) who spoke out and acted against them. I can't remember if he was one of the ones imprisoned and/or killed; I'm pretty sure he was at least put into a camp at some point.
US companies have no-bid contracts on rebuilding and various oil-field operations. Halliburton (Dick Cheney's alma mater) and Bechtel come to mind most quickly.
The US *taxpayers* are being soaked on this, but several US companies are making out quite nicely.
I, too, plan to never be on welfare or to be dependent on social security (I'm 23 and already socking away 7% of my income into my 401k, and am upping it another percentage point every quarter till I get to 20%), but I gladly pay into both, as I feel it's part of the price of living in a civilized society, as opposed to a banana republic. Maryland is a MUCH nicer place to live than Alabama (which is undergoing huge budget cuts due to their unwillingness to tax the timber industry as much as they tax their working poor), whether you're a minimum wage worker or a $200k/yr doctor or lawyer. Montgomery County is an especially nice place no matter where you fall on the earnings scale, and we have one of the highest tax rates in the state.
Would I like a good deal of extra money in my pay envelope? Of course. Would I like it if my state were only able to field 8 highway patrolmen at night and cutting what little safety net the poor have? Not at all; ignoring any sort of moral arguments and only focusing on the selfish, that sort of thing would make my state less safe and therefore my life less comfortable.
If my $5k/yr is my portion to keep stable the system that keeps millions of seniors from abject poverty, so be it. But I do think that Soc. Security taxes should not be capped; if I made more than the $84k or so required to put me over, I'd still gladly pay my share, happy that I was making more than $84k.
If even 50% of my federal income taxes were going towards AFDC, WIC and Medicaid, which they most certainly are not; too much making its way to agribusiness and military bloat (much military spending: necessary. Bilking by Halliburton, Bechtel and friends: not necessary), I would accept it as my fair share, given that I'm so fortunate as to have a nice job in a fairly safe society. If we could get Netherlands-esque safety and assurance for the poor, I'd gladly pay their taxes.
I gladly pay for these services (when rendered well) not because I ever plan to use them, but I prefer to live in a society where those who need them can get them.
One word: ADVERTISING.
I was a testing intern in MacBU (Macintosh Business Unit) last summer. We found lots of OS X bugs and spent a good deal of time pin-pointing them. I spoke with Apple developers about what I'd found a couple of times. If OS X had significant problems, Office v.X sales would be hurt, simple as that.
MacBU is a small (~150 employees, $50 million in expenses) but profitable ($100 million+ in sales in FY2000 or 2001, as I recall) division that is also good publicity. One of the nicer parts of MS to work in, from what I saw that summer.
Nothing like dating a guy who has different ideas about how much physicality is appropriate at what point in the relationship than you do to give you a bit of a window on why abusive relationships can happen to intelligent women, too.... Women don't seek out abusers. As Jenny said, they put on great faces at the beginning of the relationship and in public.
Yes, having grown up among peers who read _Seventeen_ in high school and graduated to _Cosmo_ and such, I'll agree with that. My roommate was reading that particular issue to find ads to critique for her Intro to Feminism paper on how the media affects our images of our physical selves. Sadly, she found plenty of fodder.
And I wish they'd just go ahead and get rid of legislated affirmative action. It's been 30 years, and laws aren't going to fix things. I'm tired of people insinuating that I am where I am just because I'm female, and I doubt that minorities are, on the whole, feeling better about themselves because employers and schools are being compelled to take them.
I'm a female Computer Engineering major and, after observing my (decidely non-techie) friends, one of the biggest reasons girls don't enter CS or EE as often as the guys do is that we're just more afraid of breaking things. We aren't as likely to drive extremely fast and we're more worried about damaging property. Something in our culture and/or something in our nature causes us to be more careful.
The way I encourage my friends to take more risks with their machines is to constantly remind them that the worst thing they can do without opening the box is to wipe out their hard drives, and that they'd have to be fairly deliberate about that (and this is without introducing them to fdisk or other such partitioning items), and that running the restore CD will fix most of that (well, except for the MP3s they'd lose.)
We (women) do it to ourselves in many ways, though. My roommate was skimming an issue of _Cosmo_ a few months back, and I glanced over her shoulder at an article listing 30 practical things women really should be able to do (change flats, set VCR clocks, etc.) I nearly hit the roof when it listed "trying to add memory to your computer" under a sidebar of 5 things *not* to try!
Have an old machine? Give it to a girl to play with, and tell her not to worry about breaking it. I think that having only a TRS-80 Model 4 until 1995 and then having a 386 until last summer pushed me to learn more about the hardware, since I wanted to do BBS stuff (early 90's) and then actually use Netscape (late 90's).
From what I've seen of the few female techs and programmers I know, American industry is missing out on a vast resource. I think that one of the best ways to tap it would be to remind girls/women that practically anything that can be done to a machine while the case is closed can be remedied by formatting and reinstalling the operating system and programs and that they can install their own hard drives and memory upgrades using the instructions provided.
Entschuldigung. This "very Catholic" Hitler and Germany *did* make a promise with the Vatican to leave the Catholic Church in Germany alone, but he quickly broke it (arrested thousands of priests and nuns, had Gestapo listening in on confessions, etc.) And btw, the Reich Church was "Protestant" (but a very poor reflection on what most practicing Protestant Christians believe)
You are correct that Hitler was Catholic, but "very" Catholic? Hitlerian Germany sure wasn't.