"Students are demanding housing that graduates couldn't even afford in the past."
My university has three students living in rooms that were built for one. This is true for most of the state college system (which also happens to be one of the best in the nation and the world).
But let's not let facts get in the way of a good "cardboard box in the middle of the road" rant.
I got asked in January of 2010 if I'd be willing to move from Los Angeles to a tiny rural town on the East Coast where the home office was being transferred to. I said no and started looking for a new job (the new CIO was a pompous jerk and someone I wanted nothing to do with; luckily he was back east, so I rarely encountered him). My boss knew about it; I trained a few people to take over my systems, but she was my primary backup (I was the DBA among other things; she had been at one point).
Came to work the week I was expecting the formal offer from my current job. CIO from the east coast was in town; they laid off my boss on Tuesday, then approached me on Wednesday and said, "We'll be relying on you more for the next several months." I was tempted to just keep quiet, but I decided to be honest and said, "No, you won't. I'm putting in my notice on Friday."
Best part, this was the first week of December, and I had the last two weeks off as vacation: my formal last day was 1/2, with my new job officially starting 1/3. One of the systems I managed was the HR system, and they knew about the whole thing and were actually really supportive (I'm still friends with a couple of them).
So, CIO got 1 week of cross training from me and that was that. I ended up doing some consulting for HR, but didn't lift a finger for the CIO. If he'd bothered talking to anyone, he'd have known I was leaving and could have changed his plans.
Actually, the research article itself covers this. From the abstract:
"The primary outcomes were all-cause mortality and mortality due to cardiovascular disease (CVD). Prevalent disease was also compared among the chronotype groups. Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, sleep duration, socioeconomic status and comorbidities. Greater eveningness, particularly being a definite evening type, was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of all comorbidities." [Emphasis mine]
Association is of course not causation, and the abstract doesn't imply causation at all beyond the obvious and already-stated: "Mortality risk in evening types may be due to behavioural, psychological, and physiological risk factors, many of which may be attributable to chronic misalignment between internal physiological timing and externally imposed timing of work and social activities. These findings suggest the need for researching possible interventions aimed at either modifying circadian rhythms in individuals or at allowing evening types greater working hour flexibility."
The association of early adolescent development/pubertal onset and a more evening-type circadian phase preference (ie, preferred timing of sleep and wake as well as daytime activities) has been documented since the 1990s.36 The behavioral result of this biological process is most clear in the timing of sleep, particularly for weekends. For example, Roenneberg et al37 measured the midpoint of weekend sleep in European schoolchildren and revealed a marked linear delay of 2 (girls) to 3 (boys) hours across the second decade, roughly 12 to 18 minutes later with each year of age. The reversal of this delayed weekend sleep pattern may be a “biological marker for the end of adolescence.”
Recent data have indicated that another process involved in regulating sleep timing seems to be altered to favor late nights across adolescent development. This process, called sleep–wake homeostasis, can be thought of as the system that accounts for greater pressure to sleep as one stays awake longer. Data collected with 2 different paradigms to estimate the rate of buildup of sleep pressure in prepubertal versus postpubertal adolescents indicate that more mature adolescents accumulate this sleep pressure at a slower rate.38,39
Similar to the other reply. I'm a STEM major. For many of my classes at the local CC (I'm transferring this fall), there was one slot any given semester, and often the same slot every semester. In my case, this is a complication more because I also work full time; I've been lucky enough to juggle my hours at work (I'm salaried), but others might not be. This kind of thing is especially true for low-enrollment-but-necessary classes with labs (like modern physics or more advanced engineering classes).
I mean, I'm definitely the kind of person who prefers to sleep in until 9-10, but I've been getting up between 6 and 7 for work for 20 years now. I can do it, but I'm not going to pretend my performance in the early morning is the same as what it is by noon or in the afternoon.
People who are depressed or sad often seek out others for support or just commiseration. That doesn't mean that being on social media is bad or making them depressed but that, perhaps, they're on social media because they're depressed or sad already.
As soon as I read the post, I assumed this was what was happening. Especially for something larger, the shipping will likely be more than $10, so signing up for Prime to get, say, a lawn mower or something big delivered (especially around the holidays) and then cancelling again would be a fiscally smart way to (ab)use the system.
There's an important difference between screening for a condition and testing for it.
Screening tools like the PHQ-9 are a great way to narrow down the list of people who may be depressed or are at risk for depression, but they don't say definitively whether or not someone is actually clinically depressed. That takes a far more detailed process, usually conducted by a psychologist or psychiatrist. The point is to screen out those who are not at all likely to have the given condition and focus on those who are more likely to have it. In this case, many organizations (Kaiser does this when I visit my psych for my ADHD meds refill) administer a screening tool like the PHQ9 to prospectively identify patients who might be depressed and get them to resources that can help.
Think of it as a Tier-1 tech support checklist - it's not likely to tell you what's actually wrong, but it can narrow things down a bit to determine whether or not you really need to talk to Tier-2.
As an example: during the outbreak a few years ago, many places including airports screened for Ebola using a simply checklist (have you traveled to the outbreak regions recently, do you have a fever, etc.). Anyone who was identified as at-risk of actually having Ebola then underwent diagnostic testing for the disease; most didn't actually have it, of course, and some people who were screened did have it but were asymptomatic at the time and thus were missed by the screening process (the couple of individuals who ended up infected in the US, for example). Screening isn't perfect, but it's about probabilities; diagnostic testing is far, far more accurate but also more intensive (both personally and in terms of resources).
An example of bad screening is the blood donation restriction for Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). In reality, the screening should be related to most recent HIV test, most recent unprotected sex or intravenous drug use, and any other specific at-risk behavior (regardless of sexual orientation). A gay man in a multi-year monogamous relationship is still actively having sex with men but poses far less an HIV risk than a straight woman who has sex with multiple partners in a year.
(Disclosure: I am the honest broker for a database of patient responses to screening and satisfaction questionnaires, including the PHQ-9.)
(Second disclosure: I'm also annoyed with the FDA, in case you couldn't tell.)
I would venture that a big percentage of WF clientele shop there *because* of its high-price reputation. There are studies showing that people feel like they're getting a better quality product when they pay more for something, and that is almost certainly a big part of why people shop at WF. I suspect that trying to compete with Walmart is going to destroy the chain.
I'm sorry, I assumed anyone discussing gender and pay would be informed on the relevant science. Two supporting links from the last two years since you don't seem to be up on the conversation; you can find dozens if not hundreds on the same subject. Constrained by Emotion: Women, Leadership, and Expressing Emotion in the Workplace
"For instance, women incur social and economic penalties for expressing masculine-typed emotions because they violate proscriptions against dominance for women. At the same time, when women express female-typed emotions, they are judged as overly emotional and lacking emotional control, which ultimately undermines women’s competence and professional legitimacy."
The Price Women Leaders Pay for Assertiveness—and How to Minimize It
"To test this popular view, my colleague Larissa Tiedens, of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and I recently synthesized 71 studies testing reactions to people who behave assertively. We found that women, on average, were disparaged more than men for identical assertive behaviors. Women were particularly penalized for direct, explicit forms of assertiveness, such as negotiating for a higher salary or asking a neighbor to turn down the music. Dominance that took a verbal form seemed especially tricky for women, compared with men making identical requests."
In order to determine that there's no pay gap, the only relevant information is the current pay controlled for other factors. I will almost guarantee that a pay gap exists, although it could be very small.
This is beyond the "life decisions" canard that a lot of people like to play. If men are more likely to be offered internships, and I offer increased pay for internship experience, then I'm introducing a pay gay based on sex - indirectly, certainly, but the result is still the same. Given the massive amount of cultural and sociopolitical discrimination that have been present historically, it's extremely unlikely that the criteria Google chooses are entirely free of sex bias.
In a more practical and yet simple example, Google claims to account for performance ratings in their salary calculation. Yet women are more often given lower performance ratings for the same behavior in competitive environments; for example, men who are assertive are praised, whereas women who are assertive are penalized. Therefore, unless we can show that performance ratings themselves don't have a sex bias, we can't assume that any system that includes performance rating as a criteria doesn't have a sex bias. I won't even get into the ambiguity of "other variables".
Google may very well be right and their system eliminates gender bias, but simply saying it doesn't prove it.
Like others have said, the issue is complicated. However, I think in balance that this action at the state level is bad.
In many areas, the primary issues with AirBNB are twofold: it bypasses hospitality regulation when it is in fact part of the hospitality industry, and it disrupts the residential rental market in the area. Both of these are legitimate concerns for any area, though for different populations.
For the first, it's a similar issues as with Uber and Lyft: regardless of what libertarians and others like to claim, regulations on insurance and such such for professional organizations exist largely to protect consumers as well as companies. Someone renting a room or a property through AirBNB almost certainly doesn't have the necessary insurance to protect a renter in the event of an incident nor to protect themselves in the case of a bad tenant. Further, without any kind of health or safety inspection, the quality and safety of the rentals are extremely suspect; yes, some of that is handled by word-of-mouth and ratings, but the average person doesn't know the finer points on pool treatment and the like.
The latter is a bigger issue in some places than in others, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid concern. San Francisco, for example, is notorious for its high housing costs, and AirBNB is just making it worse by taking a percentage (however small) of potential properties off the rental market. While other areas of California aren't as bad, many still have a similar housing crunch. These properties are not zoned for short-term rental and were granted development permits with the explicit intent of providing long-term housing; AirBNB essentially negates that permit process. Since permits are all handled at the local municipal level, it seems counter-intuitive to have the state step in and essentially tell municipalities what they can or cannot permit. I cannot say if the same issues exist in Indiana, but the principle isn't any different.
While the state has a vested interest in keeping regulatory environments similar for the entire state, it's hard to argue that the municipalities are doing anything to hinder AirBNB *as it was meant to be used by its creators*; instead, the state is supporting behavior that AirBNB itself as well as the municipalities are against. That makes it rather hard to justify.
The highest PM2.5 in Los Angeles is estimated (it wasn't measured back then) to have been about 100 ppm (from the LA times last year: http://www.latimes.com/world/a...). In recent times, the max was 79, and the daily average is 18 or so. That puts Beijing at 2.5x the worst LA has ever seen and about 15x worse than LA on any given day.
Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp
on
Let's Not Go To Mars
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· Score: 1
You're applying the logic backwards. Contractors do not receive benefits *because they are contractors*. The definition of a contractor according to the state of California:
" 1. Whether the person performing services is engaged in an occupation or business distinct from that of the principal;
2. Whether or not the work is a part of the regular business of the principal or alleged employer;
3. Whether the principal or the worker supplies the instrumentalities, tools, and the place for the person doing the work;
4. The alleged employee’s investment in the equipment or materials required by his or her task or his or her employment of helpers;
5. Whether the service rendered requires a special skill;
6. The kind of occupation, with reference to whether, in the locality, the work is usually done under the direction of the principal or by a specialist without supervision;
7. The alleged employee’s opportunity for profit or loss depending on his or her managerial skill;
8. The length of time for which the services are to be performed;
9. The degree of permanence of the working relationship;
10. The method of payment, whether by time or by the job; and
11. Whether or not the parties believe they are creating an employer-employee relationship may have some bearing on the question, but is not determinative since this is a question of law based on objective tests."
Uber pretty clearly violates 1, 2, most of 3, 6, and 7. Arguments can be made on others. A follow-up states:
"Even where there is an absence of control over work details, an employer-employee relationship will be found if (1) the principal retains pervasive control over the operation as a whole, (2) the worker’s duties are an integral part of the operation, and (3) the nature of the work makes detailed control unnecessary. (Yellow Cab Cooperative v. Workers Compensation Appeals Board (1991) 226 Cal.App.3d 1288)"
In this case, designating drivers as contractors is explicitly to get around legal requirements, such as needing to insure the drivers as commercial operators, being responsible for criminal actions of drivers during rides, paying employment taxes, etc. Some of those requirements are specifically created for exactly this kind of business activity (namely, taxi service), so in effect Uber wants to operate in a privileged position in an existing business environment for the reasons of "because".
This is roughly analogous to so many companies designating IT workers (especially programmers) as "salaried exempt" in order to get around overtime laws. That went on for years until a few high-profile cases (specifically IBM) finally scared employers into obeying the law. Employers - or contract negotiators - don't get to decide these things unilaterally.
Ironically, it was Boehner and the GOP who voted to link TPA to TAA; only 8 Dems voted for that rule change, and it only passed by two votes. So, I'm not at all sure why they did it, as both the rule change that stalled TPA and TPA itself passed by similar margins with all but a few votes coming from the GOP. They deliberately set this up to depend on TAA, which less than half of the GOP voted for. Unless there was some arcane requirement somewhere, I'm at a loss as to their reasoning.
... a flaw which is explicitly pointed out early on in the paper and stated pretty plainly, but that would take actually reading it to know.
I'm actually kind of interested in this. We've got a few data sets we do that have highly-correlated variables, and I'll be curious to apply one or two of the methods here (once I figure them out - I'm not a statistician, my boss is) to see if there's any difference in the noise between them. Won't tell me anything definitively, but could suggest which if any might be more likely to be causal. That in turn would suggest future avenues of study.
... it severely lessens my anticipation of the movie.
It's "the Battle of Five Armies" as stated in the book - there's no second "the". Might seem minor, but there are far more than 5 armies in Middle Earth, so the second "the" is misleading. Plus, the way Tolkien wrote it flows better - and he was a language specialist, after all. Changing the name, even in this minor way, just seems really asinine and/or egotistical to me.
I know I live in Southern California and, thus, the demographic is slightly skewed, but I'm having trouble thinking of *any* gamer I know IRL who is obese or depressed; yes, most are probably at the higher end of "average", but they're not obese.
Also the paragraph:
Both male and female video game players spend more time than nonplayers seeking friendship and support on the Internet, the study found, "a finding consistent with prior research pointing to the willingness of adult video-game enthusiasts to sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games."
Well, yes. Soemone who spends time playing games is going to seek out other people who spend time playing games; the most logical place to do so is in the game. I bet if you studied sports enthusiasts, you'd find they sacrifice non-sports-related social activities to meet people who play and/or talk about sports. Whether it takes place in person or digitally is really secondary. In the days when arcades were everywhere, you had most of these gamers meeting up in the "real-world" there; it's simply that, now, we do most of our gaming at home instead of in arcades. The method of communication is simply less important than the target or subject.
The whole thing sounds a little odd, though that could just be the reporter's summary and not the actual data.
And I bet not a single one of those astronauts from Columbia, or Challenger, or the Apollo program would have changed his or her mind about going if you told them that.
Every person who has ever strapped his- or herself to the top of one of those Roman candles knew what the risks were - and they went anyway. Not for fame or fortune, not for wealth or power, not even for scientific discovery. They went because it's what we do: we explore, we discover, and we push further. Life grows, advances, adapts - or it dies. As a species, we must continue to grow, to advance, to adapt - or we may as well fire off all those nukes and kill ourselves now, because that'll be the result in the end. Sending robots is a first step, but it's not the goal: the goal is shifting the limits on humanity, gaining new insight, new experience, and new perspective on both the universe and ourselves - and then finding the next frontier and pushing into that.
That's not something that can be written on a profit/loss statement or presented at a congressional hearing, but it's something felt by every one of us who knows instinctively that when we look at the sky at night, we're looking out, not up.
Am I the only one who gets a little misty-eyed when I think about these little guys?
I grew up with the space program; we watched the Challenger explode live on television in the 3rd grade. Space, and space exploration, have always been (to me) man's greatest hope and frontier.
I realize they're mechanical objects, just as I realize that Voyager is just a satellite and the ISS is basically a double-wide in space. These things still represent the future of our species and life as we know it. Every time I hear that the rovers are still going, almost 5 years on now, I can't but think of what we can do *right* when we put our minds - and money - to it.
Some day, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, we'll be able to retrieve these guys. My earnest hope is that they're split up - one returned to Earth to the Smithsonian, and one enshrined forever in a monument on Mars itself. Sort of a new version of the Resolute desks, only this time bridging dreams instead of cultures.
One of the principles of mathematics is that it forms a common abstract basis for discussions between disparate fields. "1" doesn't *mean* anything, intrinsicly, so it can be referenced by widely varying applications or concepts. Mathematics helps to unify science in a very important way.
Aside from the actual expressions and functions used in various applications (which ones depends on what you're doing, obviously), I've always believed that the most important aspect of mathematics was this abstraction. It is, in a sense, the only pure implementation of logic without taint of meaning; mathematics can be used to describe relationships without worrying about the application of the relationships. It's a fundamental kind of logic that, in my memory at least , is touched at in Geometric proofs but first really becomes apparent in Calculus (where process becomes more important than result), and that most laymen never really grasp.
The reason why I've always believed that CS as a degree concept fails is that I've never seen a course for teaching people how to think in this kind of abstraction, and it's completely fundamental to programming. If you've (successfully) been through a certain level of mathematics, you've *probably* got the ability to think this way, but it's not a guarantee; there's also a certain kind of personality that develops, at a young age, the ability to abstract in this way freely, and those tend to be the young programmers.
I also think that's why a lot of folks hate math at the Calculus level and beyond, and why most people I know don't understand the basics of computer operation: no one has ever taught them how to step outside the practical into the conceptual and think in terms of generic processes rather than specifics. How many techies here have been astonished at how people can't take principles learned in one application - say, a word processor - and apply them in a different application? How many times have we sat down at something we've never seen before but been able to "play with it" and get it figured out, simply because we can apply concepts we've learned in other systems or programs? The classic examples are table-type data grids. Generally, as concepts, these are applied in similar ways across a huge variety of applications even when the actual function is completely different.
The few people I've tried to teach abstraction to who have "gotten" it suddenly found that mathematics - and programming - were a lot easier, but I really do believe it's a skill that needs to be taught at a younger age. The earlier someone learns abstraction, the easier it is for them to see how to apply abstraction in new situations. You *can* teach old dogs new tricks, but they won't have the benefit of having practiced it for their whole lives.
Slashdot Mirror
"Students are demanding housing that graduates couldn't even afford in the past." My university has three students living in rooms that were built for one. This is true for most of the state college system (which also happens to be one of the best in the nation and the world). But let's not let facts get in the way of a good "cardboard box in the middle of the road" rant.
I got asked in January of 2010 if I'd be willing to move from Los Angeles to a tiny rural town on the East Coast where the home office was being transferred to. I said no and started looking for a new job (the new CIO was a pompous jerk and someone I wanted nothing to do with; luckily he was back east, so I rarely encountered him). My boss knew about it; I trained a few people to take over my systems, but she was my primary backup (I was the DBA among other things; she had been at one point).
Came to work the week I was expecting the formal offer from my current job. CIO from the east coast was in town; they laid off my boss on Tuesday, then approached me on Wednesday and said, "We'll be relying on you more for the next several months." I was tempted to just keep quiet, but I decided to be honest and said, "No, you won't. I'm putting in my notice on Friday."
Best part, this was the first week of December, and I had the last two weeks off as vacation: my formal last day was 1/2, with my new job officially starting 1/3. One of the systems I managed was the HR system, and they knew about the whole thing and were actually really supportive (I'm still friends with a couple of them).
So, CIO got 1 week of cross training from me and that was that. I ended up doing some consulting for HR, but didn't lift a finger for the CIO. If he'd bothered talking to anyone, he'd have known I was leaving and could have changed his plans.
Actually, the research article itself covers this. From the abstract:
"The primary outcomes were all-cause mortality and mortality due to cardiovascular disease (CVD). Prevalent disease was also compared among the chronotype groups. Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, sleep duration, socioeconomic status and comorbidities. Greater eveningness, particularly being a definite evening type, was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of all comorbidities." [Emphasis mine]
Association is of course not causation, and the abstract doesn't imply causation at all beyond the obvious and already-stated: "Mortality risk in evening types may be due to behavioural, psychological, and physiological risk factors, many of which may be attributable to chronic misalignment between internal physiological timing and externally imposed timing of work and social activities. These findings suggest the need for researching possible interventions aimed at either modifying circadian rhythms in individuals or at allowing evening types greater working hour flexibility."
Here's a start; the lit review at the beginning is rather thorough.
Insufficient Sleep in Adolescents and Young Adults: An Update on Causes and Consequences
The association of early adolescent development/pubertal onset and a more evening-type circadian phase preference (ie, preferred timing of sleep and wake as well as daytime activities) has been documented since the 1990s.36 The behavioral result of this biological process is most clear in the timing of sleep, particularly for weekends. For example, Roenneberg et al37 measured the midpoint of weekend sleep in European schoolchildren and revealed a marked linear delay of 2 (girls) to 3 (boys) hours across the second decade, roughly 12 to 18 minutes later with each year of age. The reversal of this delayed weekend sleep pattern may be a “biological marker for the end of adolescence.”
Recent data have indicated that another process involved in regulating sleep timing seems to be altered to favor late nights across adolescent development. This process, called sleep–wake homeostasis, can be thought of as the system that accounts for greater pressure to sleep as one stays awake longer. Data collected with 2 different paradigms to estimate the rate of buildup of sleep pressure in prepubertal versus postpubertal adolescents indicate that more mature adolescents accumulate this sleep pressure at a slower rate.38,39
Similar to the other reply. I'm a STEM major. For many of my classes at the local CC (I'm transferring this fall), there was one slot any given semester, and often the same slot every semester. In my case, this is a complication more because I also work full time; I've been lucky enough to juggle my hours at work (I'm salaried), but others might not be. This kind of thing is especially true for low-enrollment-but-necessary classes with labs (like modern physics or more advanced engineering classes). I mean, I'm definitely the kind of person who prefers to sleep in until 9-10, but I've been getting up between 6 and 7 for work for 20 years now. I can do it, but I'm not going to pretend my performance in the early morning is the same as what it is by noon or in the afternoon.
People who are depressed or sad often seek out others for support or just commiseration. That doesn't mean that being on social media is bad or making them depressed but that, perhaps, they're on social media because they're depressed or sad already.
As soon as I read the post, I assumed this was what was happening. Especially for something larger, the shipping will likely be more than $10, so signing up for Prime to get, say, a lawn mower or something big delivered (especially around the holidays) and then cancelling again would be a fiscally smart way to (ab)use the system.
There's an important difference between screening for a condition and testing for it.
Screening tools like the PHQ-9 are a great way to narrow down the list of people who may be depressed or are at risk for depression, but they don't say definitively whether or not someone is actually clinically depressed. That takes a far more detailed process, usually conducted by a psychologist or psychiatrist. The point is to screen out those who are not at all likely to have the given condition and focus on those who are more likely to have it. In this case, many organizations (Kaiser does this when I visit my psych for my ADHD meds refill) administer a screening tool like the PHQ9 to prospectively identify patients who might be depressed and get them to resources that can help.
Think of it as a Tier-1 tech support checklist - it's not likely to tell you what's actually wrong, but it can narrow things down a bit to determine whether or not you really need to talk to Tier-2.
As an example: during the outbreak a few years ago, many places including airports screened for Ebola using a simply checklist (have you traveled to the outbreak regions recently, do you have a fever, etc.). Anyone who was identified as at-risk of actually having Ebola then underwent diagnostic testing for the disease; most didn't actually have it, of course, and some people who were screened did have it but were asymptomatic at the time and thus were missed by the screening process (the couple of individuals who ended up infected in the US, for example). Screening isn't perfect, but it's about probabilities; diagnostic testing is far, far more accurate but also more intensive (both personally and in terms of resources).
An example of bad screening is the blood donation restriction for Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). In reality, the screening should be related to most recent HIV test, most recent unprotected sex or intravenous drug use, and any other specific at-risk behavior (regardless of sexual orientation). A gay man in a multi-year monogamous relationship is still actively having sex with men but poses far less an HIV risk than a straight woman who has sex with multiple partners in a year.
(Disclosure: I am the honest broker for a database of patient responses to screening and satisfaction questionnaires, including the PHQ-9.)
(Second disclosure: I'm also annoyed with the FDA, in case you couldn't tell.)
I would venture that a big percentage of WF clientele shop there *because* of its high-price reputation. There are studies showing that people feel like they're getting a better quality product when they pay more for something, and that is almost certainly a big part of why people shop at WF. I suspect that trying to compete with Walmart is going to destroy the chain.
I'm sorry, I assumed anyone discussing gender and pay would be informed on the relevant science. Two supporting links from the last two years since you don't seem to be up on the conversation; you can find dozens if not hundreds on the same subject.
Constrained by Emotion: Women, Leadership, and Expressing Emotion in the Workplace
"For instance, women incur social and economic penalties for expressing masculine-typed emotions because they violate proscriptions against dominance for women. At the same time, when women express female-typed emotions, they are judged as overly emotional and lacking emotional control, which ultimately undermines women’s competence and professional legitimacy."
The Price Women Leaders Pay for Assertiveness—and How to Minimize It
"To test this popular view, my colleague Larissa Tiedens, of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and I recently synthesized 71 studies testing reactions to people who behave assertively. We found that women, on average, were disparaged more than men for identical assertive behaviors. Women were particularly penalized for direct, explicit forms of assertiveness, such as negotiating for a higher salary or asking a neighbor to turn down the music. Dominance that took a verbal form seemed especially tricky for women, compared with men making identical requests."
In order to determine that there's no pay gap, the only relevant information is the current pay controlled for other factors. I will almost guarantee that a pay gap exists, although it could be very small. This is beyond the "life decisions" canard that a lot of people like to play. If men are more likely to be offered internships, and I offer increased pay for internship experience, then I'm introducing a pay gay based on sex - indirectly, certainly, but the result is still the same. Given the massive amount of cultural and sociopolitical discrimination that have been present historically, it's extremely unlikely that the criteria Google chooses are entirely free of sex bias.
In a more practical and yet simple example, Google claims to account for performance ratings in their salary calculation. Yet women are more often given lower performance ratings for the same behavior in competitive environments; for example, men who are assertive are praised, whereas women who are assertive are penalized. Therefore, unless we can show that performance ratings themselves don't have a sex bias, we can't assume that any system that includes performance rating as a criteria doesn't have a sex bias. I won't even get into the ambiguity of "other variables".
Google may very well be right and their system eliminates gender bias, but simply saying it doesn't prove it.
Like others have said, the issue is complicated. However, I think in balance that this action at the state level is bad. In many areas, the primary issues with AirBNB are twofold: it bypasses hospitality regulation when it is in fact part of the hospitality industry, and it disrupts the residential rental market in the area. Both of these are legitimate concerns for any area, though for different populations. For the first, it's a similar issues as with Uber and Lyft: regardless of what libertarians and others like to claim, regulations on insurance and such such for professional organizations exist largely to protect consumers as well as companies. Someone renting a room or a property through AirBNB almost certainly doesn't have the necessary insurance to protect a renter in the event of an incident nor to protect themselves in the case of a bad tenant. Further, without any kind of health or safety inspection, the quality and safety of the rentals are extremely suspect; yes, some of that is handled by word-of-mouth and ratings, but the average person doesn't know the finer points on pool treatment and the like. The latter is a bigger issue in some places than in others, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid concern. San Francisco, for example, is notorious for its high housing costs, and AirBNB is just making it worse by taking a percentage (however small) of potential properties off the rental market. While other areas of California aren't as bad, many still have a similar housing crunch. These properties are not zoned for short-term rental and were granted development permits with the explicit intent of providing long-term housing; AirBNB essentially negates that permit process. Since permits are all handled at the local municipal level, it seems counter-intuitive to have the state step in and essentially tell municipalities what they can or cannot permit. I cannot say if the same issues exist in Indiana, but the principle isn't any different. While the state has a vested interest in keeping regulatory environments similar for the entire state, it's hard to argue that the municipalities are doing anything to hinder AirBNB *as it was meant to be used by its creators*; instead, the state is supporting behavior that AirBNB itself as well as the municipalities are against. That makes it rather hard to justify.
/EOM
The highest PM2.5 in Los Angeles is estimated (it wasn't measured back then) to have been about 100 ppm (from the LA times last year: http://www.latimes.com/world/a...). In recent times, the max was 79, and the daily average is 18 or so. That puts Beijing at 2.5x the worst LA has ever seen and about 15x worse than LA on any given day.
... else what's a heaven for? --Robert Browning
You're applying the logic backwards. Contractors do not receive benefits *because they are contractors*. The definition of a contractor according to the state of California: " 1. Whether the person performing services is engaged in an occupation or business distinct from that of the principal; 2. Whether or not the work is a part of the regular business of the principal or alleged employer; 3. Whether the principal or the worker supplies the instrumentalities, tools, and the place for the person doing the work; 4. The alleged employee’s investment in the equipment or materials required by his or her task or his or her employment of helpers; 5. Whether the service rendered requires a special skill; 6. The kind of occupation, with reference to whether, in the locality, the work is usually done under the direction of the principal or by a specialist without supervision; 7. The alleged employee’s opportunity for profit or loss depending on his or her managerial skill; 8. The length of time for which the services are to be performed; 9. The degree of permanence of the working relationship; 10. The method of payment, whether by time or by the job; and 11. Whether or not the parties believe they are creating an employer-employee relationship may have some bearing on the question, but is not determinative since this is a question of law based on objective tests." Uber pretty clearly violates 1, 2, most of 3, 6, and 7. Arguments can be made on others. A follow-up states: "Even where there is an absence of control over work details, an employer-employee relationship will be found if (1) the principal retains pervasive control over the operation as a whole, (2) the worker’s duties are an integral part of the operation, and (3) the nature of the work makes detailed control unnecessary. (Yellow Cab Cooperative v. Workers Compensation Appeals Board (1991) 226 Cal.App.3d 1288)" In this case, designating drivers as contractors is explicitly to get around legal requirements, such as needing to insure the drivers as commercial operators, being responsible for criminal actions of drivers during rides, paying employment taxes, etc. Some of those requirements are specifically created for exactly this kind of business activity (namely, taxi service), so in effect Uber wants to operate in a privileged position in an existing business environment for the reasons of "because". This is roughly analogous to so many companies designating IT workers (especially programmers) as "salaried exempt" in order to get around overtime laws. That went on for years until a few high-profile cases (specifically IBM) finally scared employers into obeying the law. Employers - or contract negotiators - don't get to decide these things unilaterally.
Ironically, it was Boehner and the GOP who voted to link TPA to TAA; only 8 Dems voted for that rule change, and it only passed by two votes. So, I'm not at all sure why they did it, as both the rule change that stalled TPA and TPA itself passed by similar margins with all but a few votes coming from the GOP. They deliberately set this up to depend on TAA, which less than half of the GOP voted for. Unless there was some arcane requirement somewhere, I'm at a loss as to their reasoning.
... a flaw which is explicitly pointed out early on in the paper and stated pretty plainly, but that would take actually reading it to know. I'm actually kind of interested in this. We've got a few data sets we do that have highly-correlated variables, and I'll be curious to apply one or two of the methods here (once I figure them out - I'm not a statistician, my boss is) to see if there's any difference in the noise between them. Won't tell me anything definitively, but could suggest which if any might be more likely to be causal. That in turn would suggest future avenues of study.
... it severely lessens my anticipation of the movie. It's "the Battle of Five Armies" as stated in the book - there's no second "the". Might seem minor, but there are far more than 5 armies in Middle Earth, so the second "the" is misleading. Plus, the way Tolkien wrote it flows better - and he was a language specialist, after all. Changing the name, even in this minor way, just seems really asinine and/or egotistical to me.
... and I don't mean the gamers.
I know I live in Southern California and, thus, the demographic is slightly skewed, but I'm having trouble thinking of *any* gamer I know IRL who is obese or depressed; yes, most are probably at the higher end of "average", but they're not obese.
Also the paragraph:
Well, yes. Soemone who spends time playing games is going to seek out other people who spend time playing games; the most logical place to do so is in the game. I bet if you studied sports enthusiasts, you'd find they sacrifice non-sports-related social activities to meet people who play and/or talk about sports. Whether it takes place in person or digitally is really secondary. In the days when arcades were everywhere, you had most of these gamers meeting up in the "real-world" there; it's simply that, now, we do most of our gaming at home instead of in arcades. The method of communication is simply less important than the target or subject.
The whole thing sounds a little odd, though that could just be the reporter's summary and not the actual data.
And I bet not a single one of those astronauts from Columbia, or Challenger, or the Apollo program would have changed his or her mind about going if you told them that. Every person who has ever strapped his- or herself to the top of one of those Roman candles knew what the risks were - and they went anyway. Not for fame or fortune, not for wealth or power, not even for scientific discovery. They went because it's what we do: we explore, we discover, and we push further. Life grows, advances, adapts - or it dies. As a species, we must continue to grow, to advance, to adapt - or we may as well fire off all those nukes and kill ourselves now, because that'll be the result in the end. Sending robots is a first step, but it's not the goal: the goal is shifting the limits on humanity, gaining new insight, new experience, and new perspective on both the universe and ourselves - and then finding the next frontier and pushing into that. That's not something that can be written on a profit/loss statement or presented at a congressional hearing, but it's something felt by every one of us who knows instinctively that when we look at the sky at night, we're looking out, not up.
Am I the only one who gets a little misty-eyed when I think about these little guys?
I grew up with the space program; we watched the Challenger explode live on television in the 3rd grade. Space, and space exploration, have always been (to me) man's greatest hope and frontier.
I realize they're mechanical objects, just as I realize that Voyager is just a satellite and the ISS is basically a double-wide in space. These things still represent the future of our species and life as we know it. Every time I hear that the rovers are still going, almost 5 years on now, I can't but think of what we can do *right* when we put our minds - and money - to it.
Some day, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, we'll be able to retrieve these guys. My earnest hope is that they're split up - one returned to Earth to the Smithsonian, and one enshrined forever in a monument on Mars itself. Sort of a new version of the Resolute desks, only this time bridging dreams instead of cultures.
Sorry, first slash-dot post, and it came out HTML instead of text. Excuse the bad formatting, please.
One of the principles of mathematics is that it forms a common abstract basis for discussions between disparate fields. "1" doesn't *mean* anything, intrinsicly, so it can be referenced by widely varying applications or concepts. Mathematics helps to unify science in a very important way. Aside from the actual expressions and functions used in various applications (which ones depends on what you're doing, obviously), I've always believed that the most important aspect of mathematics was this abstraction. It is, in a sense, the only pure implementation of logic without taint of meaning; mathematics can be used to describe relationships without worrying about the application of the relationships. It's a fundamental kind of logic that, in my memory at least , is touched at in Geometric proofs but first really becomes apparent in Calculus (where process becomes more important than result), and that most laymen never really grasp. The reason why I've always believed that CS as a degree concept fails is that I've never seen a course for teaching people how to think in this kind of abstraction, and it's completely fundamental to programming. If you've (successfully) been through a certain level of mathematics, you've *probably* got the ability to think this way, but it's not a guarantee; there's also a certain kind of personality that develops, at a young age, the ability to abstract in this way freely, and those tend to be the young programmers. I also think that's why a lot of folks hate math at the Calculus level and beyond, and why most people I know don't understand the basics of computer operation: no one has ever taught them how to step outside the practical into the conceptual and think in terms of generic processes rather than specifics. How many techies here have been astonished at how people can't take principles learned in one application - say, a word processor - and apply them in a different application? How many times have we sat down at something we've never seen before but been able to "play with it" and get it figured out, simply because we can apply concepts we've learned in other systems or programs? The classic examples are table-type data grids. Generally, as concepts, these are applied in similar ways across a huge variety of applications even when the actual function is completely different. The few people I've tried to teach abstraction to who have "gotten" it suddenly found that mathematics - and programming - were a lot easier, but I really do believe it's a skill that needs to be taught at a younger age. The earlier someone learns abstraction, the easier it is for them to see how to apply abstraction in new situations. You *can* teach old dogs new tricks, but they won't have the benefit of having practiced it for their whole lives.