When I think of people I know, the ones with diverse ethnic backgrounds are invariably taller than either of their parents and very often good-looking.
Nutrition is also a pretty strong influence on height. I don't know where you live, but where I'm from there is a high immigrant population, and children are frequently much taller than their parents who grew up in developing nations. If the people of 'diverse ethnic background' have one or both parents in the same scenario, the availability of food is probably contributing to the child's height.
As for attractiveness, you might be right, but don't forget about the effects of the observer. We may prefer (i.e. assign 'beauty' to) people whose appearance we consider exotic, perhaps partly because reproducing with them would result in increased genetic diversity for the offspring.
Moreover, a teacher who is constantly disciplining the same group of 5-7 has some serious classroom management problems. I don't mean to divert attention from the students' responsibility to exercise some self-control, but teenagers are not adults, and part of the job description for a good teacher is engaging a cognitively unique age group. This factor is strongly emphasized in elementary eduction, but nearly ignored in secondary.
Speaking from my own high school experience, there were teachers who would get flustered, angry, or severely distracted by disruptive behavior. We pushed those teachers to the limits of their sanity, because we had no respect for them and resented their supposed role of authority.
Conversely, there were several teachers in whose classes we didn't blink our eyes out of turn. Our behavior wasn't a result of any fear of retribution. For the rare serious infraction, these teachers would stop everything, calmly ask the offender to leave his/her classroom immediately, and move on. We recognized the domain of these teachers and worked to earn their respect by showing them the same.
My guess would be that shoe designers are working around the existing problem that people tend run on their heels. As you pointed out, this behavior probably generates a lot of the knee damage that runners face later... and then they come back to Nike and say "make me a shoe that will protect my knees!" Nike accommodates by adding extra padding, or some of those ridiculous-looking springs, to the heel to absorb a bit more of the shock. Runner buys shoes with the assurance that they divert X% of the impact off the knees.
I've found the same thing with running: that running on the balls of my feet is less painful, faster, and requires substantially less effort... even if I look a bit unusual. Humans don't seem particularly suited to this form of running, though. Mammals known for their running ability [theequinest.com] often have an ankle positioned significantly higher, effectively forcing them to run on the balls of their feet. Walking erect doesn't work so well in this condition, and I would imagine that primate ankles migrated downward for that reason.
After reading the surrounding portions of text in the Book of Joshua, a few quick corrections:
- I recall the professor explaining the geography suggests the positions of the Sun and Moon:
"O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."
- The Book of Jashar actually appears to be an earlier account of the same event (at least judging by the way it's used in the Book of Joshua)... so disregard the point about it being a seperate reference.
I'm going to do this off the top of my head here based on a vague memory from a lecture in college, so take it with the appropriate portion of salt...
I believe there is a naturalistic explanation that is considerably less ridiculous than Earth and Venus colliding (and somebody surviving to retell the event).
I've heard the referenced biblical passage explained in these terms: Many ancient cultures attributed special significance to the sun and the moon appearing simultaneously toward the same horizon (or was it opposite horizon, or something like that...). This arrangement gave the temporary illusion that the sun had stopped in its path while the night (the moon) proceeded, and was described as such. It was interpreted by some Middle Eastern cultures as an omen of certain disaster. Using this explanation, some historians suggest that the Israelites were emboldened by this event (and went on to record it) because they knew their enemy would see it as a sign of imminent defeat and be crippled by fear. The reference to a long-since lost "Book Of Jashar" may reinforce that this sun/moon behavior had special meaning before it was recorded in the context of this battle.
It stands to reason that people all over the world would witness the described astronomical event at some point in their histories, and many may incorporate it into their literature. It's no creepy coincidence the observation is recorded by many distant cultures any more than recording an eclipse would be.
More than the hazard of electrical current, I'd be concerned about the effects of inductance. All those high-voltage lines running through a relatively small region (as these turbines tend to be clustered), seems like it might mess with migratory patterns for any sea life that depend on the earth's magnetic field to navigate. Has this been demonstrated/disproven for birds and high-voltage terrestrial power lines?
In college, the entire freshman class of several hundred was subscribed to an email list to which anybody could submit (whatever the original benefit was supposed to be, it quickly drowned in the blantant misuse).
On one particularly horrific occasion, the Student Affairs office wrote a very detailed email to a student's parent about the student's repeated misconduct and likely consequences. Then they proceeded to accidentally send it to the freshman list. Five minutes later we all received a second email with profuse apologies, imploring us not to open the previous message. OOPS!
the idea is to seed very large areas of the ocean with less intensity than this experiment. I.E slowly release Fe off the back of shipping vessels for 100's of miles
Honest question here: How does the amount carbon sequestered by this process compare to the carbon released by mining/processing the iron and by the ships travelling across the ocean spreading the iron? That seems like a problem.
Maybe I came across as griping in the GP-post. That wasn't the intention. I'm enjoying my current job and certainly making a contribution that is unique from the skills of my coworkers. I just think students have been led astray by the evangelists of higher education. As multiple posters have pointed out, we should expect to enter low on the totem-pole and have to prove ourselves to advance. That is hardly the message that students are receiving from an institution in which an outstanding amount of trust (and money, of course) is invested.
I went to a small but highly-respected liberal arts college (I know, I did this to myself... but I didn't major in liberal arts, at least). Year after year, the career services staff preached the opportunities that awaited anyone with a liberal arts education, "It doesn't matter what you major in! your degree can take you anywhere!" What I found was that they really meant, "It doesn't matter what you major in! Your degree will take you to whatever bizarre job opportunity you can hope to find..." For me, that worked out OK and I'm in a decent government job that would have a good opportunity for advancement if I didn't have other plans.
Ultimately, the point I'm trying to make here is that recent graduates are repeating the supposedly educated opinion of those in whom they have an economic interest in trusting. Just as any salesman is exaggerating the benefits of his product, the universities are exaggerating the outcomes of their education. We all have to learn the buyer's remorse at some point, but like the ongoing credit/mortgage disaster, this case in unique in its magnitude. Like you suggested, youth is a disease we will all grow out of, but it's also a particularly vulnerable status in terms of the knowledge/experience needed to make a wise investment of money and trust.
While I think you're right about the attitudes of many parents, a greater contributor to this problem is in academia. If I had a dime for every skill that the Career Services department told me was instant top-of-the-stack material... well, I wouldn't have had to spend months searching for a job below my level of education.
Universities are still businesses, and one major source of income is bright-eyed young freshman who believe they will be able to conquer the world in four years, if only they invest $120,000 in a bachelor's degree. It doesn't benefit the universities (in the short run) to dispell that illusion.
And the solution would have hinged on noticing an minor inconsistency in the villain's story.
Thanks to Encyclopedia Brown, every time I see a baby walking across the hood of a car, I can't help but think "That car must not have driven a long distance in the last several minutes..."
I call BS. If you were really from the future, your UID would be *way* higher. And if you think "I used my time machine to get a lower one" is a defense, think again. Anybody with a time machine would have gone back for 3-digits or better.
Particularly egregious is the author's attempt to connect this poorly designed research to addiction. If this held, then the more something costs the more addictive it should be, and the less valuable it is the less addictive: free heroin is not habit forming.
On the contrary, heroin is addictive because it directly stimulates reward pathways, instead of using a secondary reinforcer (such as money). The researchers used money because it's a relatively universal secondary reinforcer, which is easier and more ethical than rounding up a dozen heroine addicts and giving them heorin as a reward. This study may open some doors for research on addictive behavior: How does visual perception for an addict differ from a non-addict, specifically with relationship to items/locations associated with the addictive agent?
Actually, we call them "cash incentives." TFA states that the values of objects (or, rather, pictures of said objects) were directly manipulated by associating monetary rewards with each one.
"Though it is too early to say how this relates to perception," said Serences, "it raises the intriguing possibility that we see things we value more clearly - much like the way the brain responds to a bright object versus a dimly lit one."
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by sorting mechanism, but I'm thinking that these results suggest varying detail in encoding. It's already well known that we 'store' very little about the things we see, and largely employ categories and expectations when reconstructing memories. It would stand to reason that identifying something valuable is more useful than identifying the usual junk, and so more detail is stored for future comparison.
If real, widespread injustice was being perpetrated, on a subset of society as numerous as teens, there would be more protest even from older people.
You're probably (hopefully) right about that. But the magnitude of an injustice is rather subjective. Abolition and aborition elicit passionate responses because involved parties see them as life-and-death matters. For whatever reason, that makes them margainally more urgent to unthreatened parties.
Gay marriage may not have been a good example, though. In my experience the number of straights actively interested in gay rights is rather low by comparison. Most folks I've talked to don't so much support gay rights as they are disinterested in prohibiting it.* Draw the parallel to teen driving. Much of America lives in a car-centric world. Unless you live downtown in a major city, most resources are not walking-distance from home and public transportation is a fantasy. My parents were anti-teen-driving until they realized how unbearable it was to have a active, involved teenager who they had to pick up from club meetings and drive across town to the hobby shop all the time. Driving seems like small beans until you're deprived of it. I would argue that many children's rights fall in this category and are therefore ignored.
I won't blockquote your whole paragraph on age-discrimination, but I want to make a few quick points. As far as driving goes, much tougher exams seem like the ethical solution. Granted that is probably politically infeasible, but I don't think that further extending the age-discrimination is warranted.
*Please note, I am in no way appraising the value or importance of the movement, just the reaction of the populous.
OK, I started out modding, but I'll give up the mod points to reply here...
How many times do we have to go through the tired "Group A is a higher risk for X, therefore Group A should be systematically banned from it" solution? If dangerous driving is the problem, address it with a solution that targets unsafe drivers, not the group that has a higher proportion of unsafe drivers. How many Slashdotters suddenly fall on the other side of this issue when we're talking about airport screening? Racial profiling and age profiling are equally dirty games to play.
Teens are also one of a few groups that everyone has been a member of at one point. You'd think with all of us former teens, still scarred from society's relentless abuse, would rally around the cause of eliminating teenage oppression. But we don't.
This is also a tired argument. The other side of your point here is that none of us ever have to worry about being teenagers ever again. The level of personal risk is a *much* more salient factor for most people, I suspect, and in this case, it's zero. How many of the extravagantly wealthy are looking back on their humble beginnings and championing the causes of the poor? Some notable examples, yes, but not as many as those of us who know it could be our names on the welfare applications next year.
Well, I suppose this story is too old and the thread too long for my comment to get much visibility, but maybe I've at least enriched one person's perspective?
Not fast enough for driving or catching falling objects
Well, that depends on how far these objects are falling:)
As for driving, it might be more plausible than you think. A full reaction-time circuit (sensory->cognitive->motor) takes in the neighborhood of 200ms for most folks anyway. Certainly this is considerably slower, but probably not less than 1/3 speed. Impaired driving? Yes. Moreso than the elderly or others with normal reaction time handicaps? Maybe not.
Slashdot Mirror
Minor quibble: Penn State University is located in Centre County.
Nutrition is also a pretty strong influence on height. I don't know where you live, but where I'm from there is a high immigrant population, and children are frequently much taller than their parents who grew up in developing nations. If the people of 'diverse ethnic background' have one or both parents in the same scenario, the availability of food is probably contributing to the child's height.
As for attractiveness, you might be right, but don't forget about the effects of the observer. We may prefer (i.e. assign 'beauty' to) people whose appearance we consider exotic, perhaps partly because reproducing with them would result in increased genetic diversity for the offspring.
Moreover, a teacher who is constantly disciplining the same group of 5-7 has some serious classroom management problems. I don't mean to divert attention from the students' responsibility to exercise some self-control, but teenagers are not adults, and part of the job description for a good teacher is engaging a cognitively unique age group. This factor is strongly emphasized in elementary eduction, but nearly ignored in secondary.
Speaking from my own high school experience, there were teachers who would get flustered, angry, or severely distracted by disruptive behavior. We pushed those teachers to the limits of their sanity, because we had no respect for them and resented their supposed role of authority.
Conversely, there were several teachers in whose classes we didn't blink our eyes out of turn. Our behavior wasn't a result of any fear of retribution. For the rare serious infraction, these teachers would stop everything, calmly ask the offender to leave his/her classroom immediately, and move on. We recognized the domain of these teachers and worked to earn their respect by showing them the same.
My guess would be that shoe designers are working around the existing problem that people tend run on their heels. As you pointed out, this behavior probably generates a lot of the knee damage that runners face later... and then they come back to Nike and say "make me a shoe that will protect my knees!" Nike accommodates by adding extra padding, or some of those ridiculous-looking springs, to the heel to absorb a bit more of the shock. Runner buys shoes with the assurance that they divert X% of the impact off the knees.
I've found the same thing with running: that running on the balls of my feet is less painful, faster, and requires substantially less effort... even if I look a bit unusual. Humans don't seem particularly suited to this form of running, though. Mammals known for their running ability [theequinest.com] often have an ankle positioned significantly higher, effectively forcing them to run on the balls of their feet. Walking erect doesn't work so well in this condition, and I would imagine that primate ankles migrated downward for that reason.
Just a bit of speculation from a non-biology guy.
After reading the surrounding portions of text in the Book of Joshua, a few quick corrections: - I recall the professor explaining the geography suggests the positions of the Sun and Moon: "O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon." - The Book of Jashar actually appears to be an earlier account of the same event (at least judging by the way it's used in the Book of Joshua)... so disregard the point about it being a seperate reference.
I'm going to do this off the top of my head here based on a vague memory from a lecture in college, so take it with the appropriate portion of salt...
I believe there is a naturalistic explanation that is considerably less ridiculous than Earth and Venus colliding (and somebody surviving to retell the event).
I've heard the referenced biblical passage explained in these terms: Many ancient cultures attributed special significance to the sun and the moon appearing simultaneously toward the same horizon (or was it opposite horizon, or something like that...). This arrangement gave the temporary illusion that the sun had stopped in its path while the night (the moon) proceeded, and was described as such. It was interpreted by some Middle Eastern cultures as an omen of certain disaster. Using this explanation, some historians suggest that the Israelites were emboldened by this event (and went on to record it) because they knew their enemy would see it as a sign of imminent defeat and be crippled by fear. The reference to a long-since lost "Book Of Jashar" may reinforce that this sun/moon behavior had special meaning before it was recorded in the context of this battle.
It stands to reason that people all over the world would witness the described astronomical event at some point in their histories, and many may incorporate it into their literature. It's no creepy coincidence the observation is recorded by many distant cultures any more than recording an eclipse would be.
That, sir, is worthy of a sig. I'll now conveniently ignore the irony-potential of substituting "Slashdot" for "WoW"...
More than the hazard of electrical current, I'd be concerned about the effects of inductance. All those high-voltage lines running through a relatively small region (as these turbines tend to be clustered), seems like it might mess with migratory patterns for any sea life that depend on the earth's magnetic field to navigate. Has this been demonstrated/disproven for birds and high-voltage terrestrial power lines?
Similar story:
In college, the entire freshman class of several hundred was subscribed to an email list to which anybody could submit (whatever the original benefit was supposed to be, it quickly drowned in the blantant misuse).
On one particularly horrific occasion, the Student Affairs office wrote a very detailed email to a student's parent about the student's repeated misconduct and likely consequences. Then they proceeded to accidentally send it to the freshman list. Five minutes later we all received a second email with profuse apologies, imploring us not to open the previous message. OOPS!
Honest question here:
How does the amount carbon sequestered by this process compare to the carbon released by mining/processing the iron and by the ships travelling across the ocean spreading the iron? That seems like a problem.
Maybe I came across as griping in the GP-post. That wasn't the intention. I'm enjoying my current job and certainly making a contribution that is unique from the skills of my coworkers. I just think students have been led astray by the evangelists of higher education. As multiple posters have pointed out, we should expect to enter low on the totem-pole and have to prove ourselves to advance. That is hardly the message that students are receiving from an institution in which an outstanding amount of trust (and money, of course) is invested.
I went to a small but highly-respected liberal arts college (I know, I did this to myself... but I didn't major in liberal arts, at least). Year after year, the career services staff preached the opportunities that awaited anyone with a liberal arts education, "It doesn't matter what you major in! your degree can take you anywhere!" What I found was that they really meant, "It doesn't matter what you major in! Your degree will take you to whatever bizarre job opportunity you can hope to find..." For me, that worked out OK and I'm in a decent government job that would have a good opportunity for advancement if I didn't have other plans.
Ultimately, the point I'm trying to make here is that recent graduates are repeating the supposedly educated opinion of those in whom they have an economic interest in trusting. Just as any salesman is exaggerating the benefits of his product, the universities are exaggerating the outcomes of their education. We all have to learn the buyer's remorse at some point, but like the ongoing credit/mortgage disaster, this case in unique in its magnitude. Like you suggested, youth is a disease we will all grow out of, but it's also a particularly vulnerable status in terms of the knowledge/experience needed to make a wise investment of money and trust.
While I think you're right about the attitudes of many parents, a greater contributor to this problem is in academia. If I had a dime for every skill that the Career Services department told me was instant top-of-the-stack material... well, I wouldn't have had to spend months searching for a job below my level of education.
Universities are still businesses, and one major source of income is bright-eyed young freshman who believe they will be able to conquer the world in four years, if only they invest $120,000 in a bachelor's degree. It doesn't benefit the universities (in the short run) to dispell that illusion.
And the solution would have hinged on noticing an minor inconsistency in the villain's story.
Thanks to Encyclopedia Brown, every time I see a baby walking across the hood of a car, I can't help but think "That car must not have driven a long distance in the last several minutes..."
Imagine how I was freaking out, reading your post with a mouth full of fresh parsley.
I call BS. If you were really from the future, your UID would be *way* higher. And if you think "I used my time machine to get a lower one" is a defense, think again. Anybody with a time machine would have gone back for 3-digits or better.
On the contrary, heroin is addictive because it directly stimulates reward pathways, instead of using a secondary reinforcer (such as money). The researchers used money because it's a relatively universal secondary reinforcer, which is easier and more ethical than rounding up a dozen heroine addicts and giving them heorin as a reward. This study may open some doors for research on addictive behavior: How does visual perception for an addict differ from a non-addict, specifically with relationship to items/locations associated with the addictive agent?
Actually, we call them "cash incentives." TFA states that the values of objects (or, rather, pictures of said objects) were directly manipulated by associating monetary rewards with each one.
I know Congress isn't in session now, but don't you have work to do?
Hope that clears up my bumbly explanation
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by sorting mechanism, but I'm thinking that these results suggest varying detail in encoding. It's already well known that we 'store' very little about the things we see, and largely employ categories and expectations when reconstructing memories. It would stand to reason that identifying something valuable is more useful than identifying the usual junk, and so more detail is stored for future comparison.
Just my 2 cents worth of speculation...
If your surmise is correct, those cables will cling to the cutters' necks like a pair of Tiberian bats...
If real, widespread injustice was being perpetrated, on a subset of society as numerous as teens, there would be more protest even from older people.
You're probably (hopefully) right about that. But the magnitude of an injustice is rather subjective. Abolition and aborition elicit passionate responses because involved parties see them as life-and-death matters. For whatever reason, that makes them margainally more urgent to unthreatened parties.
Gay marriage may not have been a good example, though. In my experience the number of straights actively interested in gay rights is rather low by comparison. Most folks I've talked to don't so much support gay rights as they are disinterested in prohibiting it.* Draw the parallel to teen driving. Much of America lives in a car-centric world. Unless you live downtown in a major city, most resources are not walking-distance from home and public transportation is a fantasy. My parents were anti-teen-driving until they realized how unbearable it was to have a active, involved teenager who they had to pick up from club meetings and drive across town to the hobby shop all the time. Driving seems like small beans until you're deprived of it. I would argue that many children's rights fall in this category and are therefore ignored.
I won't blockquote your whole paragraph on age-discrimination, but I want to make a few quick points. As far as driving goes, much tougher exams seem like the ethical solution. Granted that is probably politically infeasible, but I don't think that further extending the age-discrimination is warranted.
*Please note, I am in no way appraising the value or importance of the movement, just the reaction of the populous.
How many times do we have to go through the tired "Group A is a higher risk for X, therefore Group A should be systematically banned from it" solution? If dangerous driving is the problem, address it with a solution that targets unsafe drivers, not the group that has a higher proportion of unsafe drivers. How many Slashdotters suddenly fall on the other side of this issue when we're talking about airport screening? Racial profiling and age profiling are equally dirty games to play.
Teens are also one of a few groups that everyone has been a member of at one point. You'd think with all of us former teens, still scarred from society's relentless abuse, would rally around the cause of eliminating teenage oppression. But we don't.
This is also a tired argument. The other side of your point here is that none of us ever have to worry about being teenagers ever again. The level of personal risk is a *much* more salient factor for most people, I suspect, and in this case, it's zero. How many of the extravagantly wealthy are looking back on their humble beginnings and championing the causes of the poor? Some notable examples, yes, but not as many as those of us who know it could be our names on the welfare applications next year.
Well, I suppose this story is too old and the thread too long for my comment to get much visibility, but maybe I've at least enriched one person's perspective?
You must have managed in the 80s, or the 3000s...
"Don't you worry about Planet Express, let me worry about blank."
Not fast enough for driving or catching falling objects
Well, that depends on how far these objects are falling :)
As for driving, it might be more plausible than you think. A full reaction-time circuit (sensory->cognitive->motor) takes in the neighborhood of 200ms for most folks anyway. Certainly this is considerably slower, but probably not less than 1/3 speed. Impaired driving? Yes. Moreso than the elderly or others with normal reaction time handicaps? Maybe not.