Actually, we don't show graphic images from the war on the news. That's part of the problem. If we did, maybe people would be less inclined to support it.
The body of psychological evidence indicates that children are suggestible, that memory is malleable, and that kids will report sexual abuse even when it did not occur. I'm remembering a famous experiment described in intro psychology courses: The setup was this: A toddler was taken into a mock doctor's office for a "checkup," in which the experimenter did nothing more than tie a small red string around the child's finger; this was videotaped by a hidden camera. Then, the child was interviewed in the manner common in sex-abuse legal cases at the time, in which she was presented with a doll and asked to indicate whether the doctor had touched her, and where. After repeated, gentle, innocuous-seeming questioning, the child reported obscene things that I could have not come up with myself; among other things, she reported that the doctor had rammed a stick into her vagina, which she pantomimed violently (the interview was also videotaped). What seems to have happened is that she responded subliminally to subtle, unintentional cues from the interviewer, and reported whatever the interviewer was afraid to (or wanted to?) hear. It's essentially the same phenomenon as what occurred with Clever Hans, the horse that could "do arithmetic." The horse was posed questions in the form of marks on the ground, and would tap out the answer -- one tap to say "one," two taps to say "two," etc -- in response. It astounded all observers, but what was actually happening is that the horse was picking up on the crowd's reaction to his tapping: Tension would build as he approached the right number, and then immediately release; this is when he would stop. In any event, the point is that apparently cut-and-dry testimonies are anything but, and people -- especially, but not just, children -- are hugely suggestible, and can honestly remember things that never happened as a subliminal response to unintentional bias in the interviewer.
The conclusion you're forced to draw is that there are hundreds of innocent men now in jail for sex crimes, especially crimes against children, that they didn't commit. The sad irony is that sexual abuse really is now happening -- in jail, and these men are the victims.
You used the phrase, "protect kids in their care." The court used the phrase "risk of injury to a minor." Will people please stop this disingenuous rhetoric? What injury was risked? "Mental trauma" associated with seeing boobies? From what did these children need protecting?
The 'poor little children' involved were 7th graders. That makes them about 13 years old, which puts some of them at the beginning and some of them at the middle of puberty. Now look at some data which indicates that the median age of first intercourse in the U.S. is just under 17, and realize that if that's the median, then half of people first had sex earlier than this, and there is likely a non-negligible portion of the histogram that is nonzero at the 7th grade level.
For many of the children in that classroom, do you really believe that this was their first exposure to porn?
Now let's look at the balance of harms. On the one hand, we have a woman who lost her job and, in all likelihood, her ability to teach anywhere else ever again. And on the other -- some pubescent students saw things a good portion of them have likely already seen anyway.
To play devil's advocate, there's nothing fundamentally "right" about the heliocentric model for the solar system. It just happens to be the reference frame in which the equations are simplest, and most decoupled.
It's funny: If libraries weren't a long-standing cultural tradition and somebody tried to start History's First Library in the year 2008, they'd probably be a brought up on charges by the media cartels.
Let f(theta) be the function that, given the dial angle, outputs an image of the dial with the dial at that angle. Since it's easy to generate images with code, this isn't particularly hard. Then, simply estimate df/dtheta by finite differences and perform gradient descent (or use Nelder-Meade). It's possible that you'll need a good initial guess for this to converge. However, once you have this guess, then provided that the dial moves slowly relative to the framerate, each previous frame should make exactly such a "good guess" for the next frame, and you'll track the needle successfully.
It's possible, I suppose, to start a fire with a current-limited 5V or 15V breadboard supply -- but I think it'd take some effort. I've never seen a serious fire happen. Worst case, a chip melts and leaves a scar on the breadboard -- not a problem. So really, I wouldn't worry about it. Riding a bicycle is more dangerous.
And breadboards are great things. If his son wants to build something permanent or high frequency, then, sure, bring out the soldering iron. But I think that, as educational tools and as toys, breadboards put the emphasis on the right things -- tinkering, experimentation, and component reuse -- rather than fabrication, painstaking care, and permanence. I'm afraid that what happens all too often when electronics are approached from the second point of view is that the hobbyist treats doing an electronics project as (1) finding a schematic, and (2) building it. And while it's true that you learn things that way, I think that breadboards are better educational tools and better toys because they encourage experimentation and creativity more, and put the focus on the circuits rather than the fabrication thereof. The OP's son is more likely to come up with his own circuits on a breadboard than with a soldering iron in hand.
The one tool that is wonderful in an electronics lab is an oscilloscope, and I imagine that trying to do a lot without one would get very frustrating very quickly. So we're not talking sub-$50 range. But if the OP himself is interested in hobbyist electronics, then perhaps he could think of some of the more expensive purchases as "the family's" rather than just as "toys" for his son, in the same way that my dad had a toolbox that I used.
Mindstorms and such are also very cool. I kind of want a set myself.;-)
Finally, a message to the OP himself: Stuff for tinkering is better than "science-themed gadgets." Mindstorms, capsela, electronics kits, and the like (even a QBASIC interpreter) spur creativity and are actually fun to play with (or, they were for me). Whereas I think that gadgets that demonstrate a particular physical effect end up being short-lived novelties more than anything else. And above all, expose him to lots of things: Erector sets, musical instruments, athletic equipment. See what sticks, and encourage whatever he likes.
Most people will have a very hard time coping with hazardous waste in a proper fashion, and the temptation to cut corners will be irresistible.
That's the best point anybody's made. I'm afraid most household experimenters just dump crap in the sink. That said, keeping this sort of stuff out in the open rather than criminalizing it would tend to encourage proper disposal, I would think.
Stump remover is sold in many hardware and gardening stores (I've found it reliably in Wal-Mart, of all places), and is usually 100% potassium nitrate. It's a little coarse, but good enough (and if you really want it fine, a mortar and pestle or equivalent stone-age technology will solve the problem easily). Be warned that there also exists another kind of stump remover which I think (?) is some sort of nasty petrochemical concoction, but it's less common. What you want is a white powder. Fun trick: Mix it with sugar (crystallized is ok; confectioner's is better) and ignite it in an aluminum can outdoors.
...in Pooler, GA, a suburb of Savannah. (I was surprised to be sure; Pooler is more a loose federation of strip malls than it is a town, and I wasn't expecting to see anything like this that implies a communal identity.)
I'm making a commonsense point about error margins, not kicking your puppy. Of course the past is past; there's no need to be angrily partisan about it. I wasn't even the one who brought up the 2000 election; you were. My only point was that, at the time, you didn't need to be a whiny sore loser to be skeptical. It was a simple matter of, "the error bars overlapped."
If it helps you to understand what I'm saying, you should know that I am no rabid Obama supporter. The world is not just good Republicans and nasty Democrats out to get them. Some people don't have a kneejerk party affiliation. There's plenty about Obama about which I'm skeptical. Just not the fact that he got more popular and electoral votes than McCain.
Compare the electoral and popular votes in this election with those of the 2000 election. There was reason to contest that election. There is no reason to contest this election.
The US is the most racially sensitive country on earth [... But y]ou want racial progress? Let's all exhale and say that honest discussions of race [...] are not racist.
My girlfriend is Polish, and she laughs at the American penchant for walking on eggshells -- on race, on gender, on sexuality. But I bring up the race part of this because it goes directly to your point.
Conversely, I, who was hypersensitized to this crap in college, and who try to be "sensitive" in conversations, just end up being awkward. Whereas it's she who actually ends up making friends with people.
"Racial sensitivity" can get everyone to be polite to each other, but it gets in the way of actual meaningful relationships.
Once upon a time, a company did this, and sold their product to another corporation so that they could monitor employees' email. If I recall correctly, it ended in tears when somebody got sent baby pictures.
Your assumption is on pre-tax earnings - what I focus on and what most other people focus on is POST tax ( NET not GROSS).
My assumption is only that post-tax ("net") earnings are a monotonically-increasing function of pre-tax ("gross") earnings. In what way does this differ from your focus, and how is it flawed?
all i'm doing is asking questions or pointing out flaws.
I think they're worth considering.
why won't the media press these guys? especially obama? they give him a free pass on everything. it's insane.
They're too busy "analyzing" it as a horse-race. They make it entirely about politics, and not at all about issues. If I see one more talking head who is a "political strategist" instead of a legitimate policy expert, I'll scream. As for Obama: He has run an incredibly slick campaign, and his low-on-substance style has helped him in this (forgive me; I'm analyzing politics): The less substantively that you speak, the less risk you run of pissing someone off and bringing down the media's scorn. Better to repeat platitudes and look different.
I am dissatisfied with both.
Mostly, I'd just like a candidate who would repeal the Bush tax cuts, reduce military spending, and pay down the debt. What little spending I would support would be aimed at investing in infrastructure, particularly energy.
I do support mildly redistributive economic policies, since earning power has decreased for most Americans while the Gini coefficient (which measures inequality) has climbed. Since I suspect that the natural tendency of economies is to concentrate wealth, I think this is a necessary counterweight.
But most importantly I think that our key goals should be paying down the debt and investing in energy independence -- since they are our chief strategic weaknesses. (Fix those problems, and you solve many of your foreign policy issues as well.) So get in the black, and then buy everyone a pony -- don't try to do both at the same time.
(Also: We don't need a 'balanced' budget. We need a cash-flow-positive budget. We need a budget that does more than pay the interest on our debt; it needs to pay down the debt too.)
there is no substance whatsoever. it's all style. obama's style is to give the impression of empathy. but that's just a communication technique.
I may agree with you more than you were expecting me to.
Your above quote summarizes my chief complaint with Obama. Plus, if he were an old white guy saying the exact same things, he wouldn't have anywhere near the popularity that he does. To me that's unearned.
One good thing about Obama: I like his tax plan vs. McCain's. This is one area that seems more realistic. On energy, however, I prefer McCain's stance -- particularly on nuclear plants, and especially on reprocessing; it's about time we resumed that. As for the war: I expect a somewhat more rapid withdraw from Obama, but nothing dramatically different. Health care, I'm not sure about. McCain's plan is bad, but Obama's isn't entirely realistic (to the extent that he has a 'plan'). So it's hard to choose one way or the other.
(Not that my vote matters either way. My state is heavily blue anyway.)
Where is the incentive for the guy working from the bottom to climb up the ladder knowing full well he is going to get screwed as he gets closer to the top?
So long as "Making more money" <==> "Taking home more money," there is incentive to try to make more.
Here's a simple model that I just made up: Let x be your before-tax earnings, and let the function f(x) return the amount of taxes that you are required to pay; e.g., for a flat tax, f(x) = k x for some k in (0,1).
Then, the amount that you take home after taxes is given by,
g(x) = x - f(x).
So long as g(x) increases monotonically, there is always, instantaneously, incentive to make a little more. And this does not require that f(x) be linear, like the "flat tax" people say. The only requirement is that dg/dx = 1 - df/dx > 0 for all x. This can be achieved, e.g., by the progressive (the larger the n, the more progressive) tax defined by the piecewise function,
f(x) = kx^n if x < c, and kc^n + knc^(n-1) (x - c) if x > kc^n
where
c = 1/(nk)^(1/(n-1)).
Tada! Progressive taxes don't kill the incentive to make more money.
(Obviously, real economists have more complicated models than what I just made up here, but I think that what I gave above is good enough for our purposes.)
Smart people do not commit the equivalent to breaking and entering.
Depends on your definition of "smart." If by "smart" you mean "good at self-preservation and covering your ass," then sure -- but I've got a sneaking suspicion that these aren't the people who actually contribute anything to civilization.
On the other hand, if you mean someone truly brilliant -- and subversive enough to matter -- then I would have to disagree. You see, one of Feynman's hobbies was safe-cracking -- something explicitly illegal (given that it was other peoples' safes!) And he'd do this all around the top-secret military installation known as Los Alamos, no less!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, we don't show graphic images from the war on the news. That's part of the problem. If we did, maybe people would be less inclined to support it.
The body of psychological evidence indicates that children are suggestible, that memory is malleable, and that kids will report sexual abuse even when it did not occur. I'm remembering a famous experiment described in intro psychology courses: The setup was this: A toddler was taken into a mock doctor's office for a "checkup," in which the experimenter did nothing more than tie a small red string around the child's finger; this was videotaped by a hidden camera. Then, the child was interviewed in the manner common in sex-abuse legal cases at the time, in which she was presented with a doll and asked to indicate whether the doctor had touched her, and where. After repeated, gentle, innocuous-seeming questioning, the child reported obscene things that I could have not come up with myself; among other things, she reported that the doctor had rammed a stick into her vagina, which she pantomimed violently (the interview was also videotaped). What seems to have happened is that she responded subliminally to subtle, unintentional cues from the interviewer, and reported whatever the interviewer was afraid to (or wanted to?) hear. It's essentially the same phenomenon as what occurred with Clever Hans, the horse that could "do arithmetic." The horse was posed questions in the form of marks on the ground, and would tap out the answer -- one tap to say "one," two taps to say "two," etc -- in response. It astounded all observers, but what was actually happening is that the horse was picking up on the crowd's reaction to his tapping: Tension would build as he approached the right number, and then immediately release; this is when he would stop. In any event, the point is that apparently cut-and-dry testimonies are anything but, and people -- especially, but not just, children -- are hugely suggestible, and can honestly remember things that never happened as a subliminal response to unintentional bias in the interviewer.
The conclusion you're forced to draw is that there are hundreds of innocent men now in jail for sex crimes, especially crimes against children, that they didn't commit. The sad irony is that sexual abuse really is now happening -- in jail, and these men are the victims.
I also imagine she received better treatment than if she were a male
Indeed. Had she been male, she'd be going door to door nowadays introducing herself as the friendly neighborhood sex offender.
You used the phrase, "protect kids in their care." The court used the phrase "risk of injury to a minor." Will people please stop this disingenuous rhetoric? What injury was risked? "Mental trauma" associated with seeing boobies? From what did these children need protecting?
The 'poor little children' involved were 7th graders. That makes them about 13 years old, which puts some of them at the beginning and some of them at the middle of puberty. Now look at some data which indicates that the median age of first intercourse in the U.S. is just under 17, and realize that if that's the median, then half of people first had sex earlier than this, and there is likely a non-negligible portion of the histogram that is nonzero at the 7th grade level.
For many of the children in that classroom, do you really believe that this was their first exposure to porn?
Now let's look at the balance of harms. On the one hand, we have a woman who lost her job and, in all likelihood, her ability to teach anywhere else ever again. And on the other -- some pubescent students saw things a good portion of them have likely already seen anyway.
So was this really fair?
To play devil's advocate, there's nothing fundamentally "right" about the heliocentric model for the solar system. It just happens to be the reference frame in which the equations are simplest, and most decoupled.
Q: "You wouldn't steal a car. So why would you steal music?"
A: "I would if I could fucking download one."
It's funny: If libraries weren't a long-standing cultural tradition and somebody tried to start History's First Library in the year 2008, they'd probably be a brought up on charges by the media cartels.
Another approach:
Let f(theta) be the function that, given the dial angle, outputs an image of the dial with the dial at that angle. Since it's easy to generate images with code, this isn't particularly hard. Then, simply estimate df/dtheta by finite differences and perform gradient descent (or use Nelder-Meade). It's possible that you'll need a good initial guess for this to converge. However, once you have this guess, then provided that the dial moves slowly relative to the framerate, each previous frame should make exactly such a "good guess" for the next frame, and you'll track the needle successfully.
It's possible, I suppose, to start a fire with a current-limited 5V or 15V breadboard supply -- but I think it'd take some effort. I've never seen a serious fire happen. Worst case, a chip melts and leaves a scar on the breadboard -- not a problem. So really, I wouldn't worry about it. Riding a bicycle is more dangerous.
And breadboards are great things. If his son wants to build something permanent or high frequency, then, sure, bring out the soldering iron. But I think that, as educational tools and as toys, breadboards put the emphasis on the right things -- tinkering, experimentation, and component reuse -- rather than fabrication, painstaking care, and permanence. I'm afraid that what happens all too often when electronics are approached from the second point of view is that the hobbyist treats doing an electronics project as (1) finding a schematic, and (2) building it. And while it's true that you learn things that way, I think that breadboards are better educational tools and better toys because they encourage experimentation and creativity more, and put the focus on the circuits rather than the fabrication thereof. The OP's son is more likely to come up with his own circuits on a breadboard than with a soldering iron in hand.
The one tool that is wonderful in an electronics lab is an oscilloscope, and I imagine that trying to do a lot without one would get very frustrating very quickly. So we're not talking sub-$50 range. But if the OP himself is interested in hobbyist electronics, then perhaps he could think of some of the more expensive purchases as "the family's" rather than just as "toys" for his son, in the same way that my dad had a toolbox that I used.
Mindstorms and such are also very cool. I kind of want a set myself. ;-)
Finally, a message to the OP himself: Stuff for tinkering is better than "science-themed gadgets." Mindstorms, capsela, electronics kits, and the like (even a QBASIC interpreter) spur creativity and are actually fun to play with (or, they were for me). Whereas I think that gadgets that demonstrate a particular physical effect end up being short-lived novelties more than anything else. And above all, expose him to lots of things: Erector sets, musical instruments, athletic equipment. See what sticks, and encourage whatever he likes.
British vs. American spellings (like honor vs. honour, etc).
Most people will have a very hard time coping with hazardous waste in a proper fashion, and the temptation to cut corners will be irresistible.
That's the best point anybody's made. I'm afraid most household experimenters just dump crap in the sink. That said, keeping this sort of stuff out in the open rather than criminalizing it would tend to encourage proper disposal, I would think.
Stump remover is sold in many hardware and gardening stores (I've found it reliably in Wal-Mart, of all places), and is usually 100% potassium nitrate. It's a little coarse, but good enough (and if you really want it fine, a mortar and pestle or equivalent stone-age technology will solve the problem easily). Be warned that there also exists another kind of stump remover which I think (?) is some sort of nasty petrochemical concoction, but it's less common. What you want is a white powder. Fun trick: Mix it with sugar (crystallized is ok; confectioner's is better) and ignite it in an aluminum can outdoors.
...in Pooler, GA, a suburb of Savannah. (I was surprised to be sure; Pooler is more a loose federation of strip malls than it is a town, and I wasn't expecting to see anything like this that implies a communal identity.)
Am I and this guy the only ones who've seen this?
I'm making a commonsense point about error margins, not kicking your puppy. Of course the past is past; there's no need to be angrily partisan about it. I wasn't even the one who brought up the 2000 election; you were. My only point was that, at the time, you didn't need to be a whiny sore loser to be skeptical. It was a simple matter of, "the error bars overlapped."
If it helps you to understand what I'm saying, you should know that I am no rabid Obama supporter. The world is not just good Republicans and nasty Democrats out to get them. Some people don't have a kneejerk party affiliation. There's plenty about Obama about which I'm skeptical. Just not the fact that he got more popular and electoral votes than McCain.
Compare the electoral and popular votes in this election with those of the 2000 election. There was reason to contest that election. There is no reason to contest this election.
The US is the most racially sensitive country on earth [... But y]ou want racial progress? Let's all exhale and say that honest discussions of race [...] are not racist.
My girlfriend is Polish, and she laughs at the American penchant for walking on eggshells -- on race, on gender, on sexuality. But I bring up the race part of this because it goes directly to your point.
Conversely, I, who was hypersensitized to this crap in college, and who try to be "sensitive" in conversations, just end up being awkward. Whereas it's she who actually ends up making friends with people.
"Racial sensitivity" can get everyone to be polite to each other, but it gets in the way of actual meaningful relationships.
Plus, "ssh -X" (or -Y) just sends drawing commands over the link -- whereas VNC JPEG-compresses everything. Me, I like vector graphics, personally.
Once upon a time, a company did this, and sold their product to another corporation so that they could monitor employees' email. If I recall correctly, it ended in tears when somebody got sent baby pictures.
Your assumption is on pre-tax earnings - what I focus on and what most other people focus on is POST tax ( NET not GROSS).
My assumption is only that post-tax ("net") earnings are a monotonically-increasing function of pre-tax ("gross") earnings. In what way does this differ from your focus, and how is it flawed?
you from california too? :-p
Nope; east coast!
all i'm doing is asking questions or pointing out flaws.
I think they're worth considering.
why won't the media press these guys? especially obama? they give him a free pass on everything. it's insane.
They're too busy "analyzing" it as a horse-race. They make it entirely about politics, and not at all about issues. If I see one more talking head who is a "political strategist" instead of a legitimate policy expert, I'll scream. As for Obama: He has run an incredibly slick campaign, and his low-on-substance style has helped him in this (forgive me; I'm analyzing politics): The less substantively that you speak, the less risk you run of pissing someone off and bringing down the media's scorn. Better to repeat platitudes and look different.
I am dissatisfied with both.
Mostly, I'd just like a candidate who would repeal the Bush tax cuts, reduce military spending, and pay down the debt. What little spending I would support would be aimed at investing in infrastructure, particularly energy.
I do support mildly redistributive economic policies, since earning power has decreased for most Americans while the Gini coefficient (which measures inequality) has climbed. Since I suspect that the natural tendency of economies is to concentrate wealth, I think this is a necessary counterweight.
But most importantly I think that our key goals should be paying down the debt and investing in energy independence -- since they are our chief strategic weaknesses. (Fix those problems, and you solve many of your foreign policy issues as well.) So get in the black, and then buy everyone a pony -- don't try to do both at the same time.
(Also: We don't need a 'balanced' budget. We need a cash-flow-positive budget. We need a budget that does more than pay the interest on our debt; it needs to pay down the debt too.)
there is no substance whatsoever. it's all style. obama's style is to give the impression of empathy. but that's just a communication technique.
I may agree with you more than you were expecting me to.
Your above quote summarizes my chief complaint with Obama. Plus, if he were an old white guy saying the exact same things, he wouldn't have anywhere near the popularity that he does. To me that's unearned.
One good thing about Obama: I like his tax plan vs. McCain's. This is one area that seems more realistic. On energy, however, I prefer McCain's stance -- particularly on nuclear plants, and especially on reprocessing; it's about time we resumed that. As for the war: I expect a somewhat more rapid withdraw from Obama, but nothing dramatically different. Health care, I'm not sure about. McCain's plan is bad, but Obama's isn't entirely realistic (to the extent that he has a 'plan'). So it's hard to choose one way or the other.
(Not that my vote matters either way. My state is heavily blue anyway.)
McCain has also promised more tax cuts and a longer stay in Iraq. These cost. Who's cheaper in the end? I'm not sure.
Where is the incentive for the guy working from the bottom to climb up the ladder knowing full well he is going to get screwed as he gets closer to the top?
So long as "Making more money" <==> "Taking home more money," there is incentive to try to make more.
Here's a simple model that I just made up: Let x be your before-tax earnings, and let the function f(x) return the amount of taxes that you are required to pay; e.g., for a flat tax, f(x) = k x for some k in (0,1).
Then, the amount that you take home after taxes is given by,
g(x) = x - f(x).
So long as g(x) increases monotonically, there is always, instantaneously, incentive to make a little more. And this does not require that f(x) be linear, like the "flat tax" people say. The only requirement is that dg/dx = 1 - df/dx > 0 for all x. This can be achieved, e.g., by the progressive (the larger the n, the more progressive) tax defined by the piecewise function,
f(x) = k x^n if x < c, and k c^n + k n c^(n-1) (x - c) if x > k c^n
where
c = 1/(n k)^(1/(n-1)).
Tada! Progressive taxes don't kill the incentive to make more money.
(Obviously, real economists have more complicated models than what I just made up here, but I think that what I gave above is good enough for our purposes.)
It's pretty cold in space....
With the only way to lose heat being blackbody radiation, it's also, however, a good insulator.
Smart people do not commit the equivalent to breaking and entering.
Depends on your definition of "smart." If by "smart" you mean "good at self-preservation and covering your ass," then sure -- but I've got a sneaking suspicion that these aren't the people who actually contribute anything to civilization.
On the other hand, if you mean someone truly brilliant -- and subversive enough to matter -- then I would have to disagree. You see, one of Feynman's hobbies was safe-cracking -- something explicitly illegal (given that it was other peoples' safes!) And he'd do this all around the top-secret military installation known as Los Alamos, no less!