People have used hidden cams (in bags etc) for years to record people in secrecy. Look for "upskirt" on your favorite search engine and you'll see what I mean.
And I disagree with your conclusion - I think the more this stuff happens the less people will worry about their personal eccentricities being caught on film.
Don't believe me? Make a fake Facebook account, go on FB and just browse through people's public profiles and pics - people are sharing things without blinking an eye that would have been horribly taboo just a few years back.
Then don't use this product and don't associate with anyone who is using this product and don't do anything private in a space where people who use this product can record you without your permission, or accept that you can't control everything and that trying to or worrying much about it is a losing battle.
Privacy as we know it is dead, and the best we can do is a kind of anonymity through saturation. As more and more people get caught doing stupid shit on camera, fewer and fewer people will give a shit about it because it will be understood that EVERYONE does stupid shit, so unless it's particularly egregious it won't be a blip.
Mind you, I understand missing it - I, personally, don't feel like I want everyone to know absolutely everything about me - but I've stopped worrying about that since it's a totally losing battle and instead spend my efforts on things where I can make a difference.
Let me completely destroy your "insightful" argument:
1) I love it when people invoke "It's just human nature!" as some kind of support for their argument. There ain't no such thing as human nature - or, rather, I should say that human nature is literally anything that humans do, which makes it as a term completely meaningless. It's human nature to be like Ghandi, and it's human nature to be like Stalin, and it's human nature to be like everyone in between. What a useless term.
2) You say that different genders are attracted to different work. Why? What basis is there for that attraction? Why shouldn't men be just as interested in how children are raised and educated, or in caring for the sick and infirm as women? Why shouldn't women be just as interested in advancing human knowledge as men? What's the origin of this difference? What empirical evidence is there to support some kind of biological argument that "they're just different" as opposed to it being a social construct past "well, most girls play with dolls and most boys play with guns"? Lay it out for me - after all, if it's so blindingly obvious and so incredibly important that it's "idiotic" to try and find proportional representation in various fields, you shouldn't have any problem creating a persuasive argument that relies on facts and evidence as opposed to stupid prejudices.
3) Your argument that men aren't being recruited for teaching and nursing positions is factually incorrect. There is a very, very strong recruitment push for getting men into nursing and elementary school teaching, as well as many other fields that have traditionally been more heavily skewed to women. Trying to recruit more male secretaries is about the same as trying to recruit more female dishwashers in restaurants - it's a scut job that, with the advent of computers and relatively smart digital assistants, is usually staffed by people looking to get a toe-hold in an industry rather than a career. There are a few exceptions - special assistants to extremely highly placed executives certainly have interesting and challenging work (and quite a bit of power in their own right) but calling them "secretaries" is about the same as comparing the job of running a lemonade stand to the President of the United States.
Now that I've pointed out why everything you said is wrong, here's why the opposite of what you said is important:
1) If there is a massive disparity in gender, racial or ethnic representation in a field compared to the proportion in the general population, it could very well mean *gasp* that there are artificial barriers to entry for people under-represented, and why shouldn't we look for ways to remove those artificial barriers? In some cases, historically, those barriers were obvious (racial segregation, religious segregation going back into european history), and in some cases they were just as present but less obvious to those not experiencing them (institutional racism and sexism). Most men I work with don't like making mistakes, but they don't seem to feel as if they are representing literally every male on the planet and making all males look bad when they do make a mistake. I, on the other hand, have personally been told that I'm "pretty good at math, for a woman" and in another case that a potential employer was really nervous about hiring me because what if I get pregnant, like another woman he worked with did, or what if I'm moody, like his wife? I have to answer for the behavior of all women in those cases - I don't know why his wife is moody, but I would have had to answer for her if I wanted that job. (I didn't, and I explained that the reason for her moods was likely sitting across the desk from me).
2) People with different backgrounds often come with very different ways of thinking about problems, and often what seems completely opaque to one person will be obvious and easily understood by another. I do research in public health and social and community psychology. I can assure you that a bunch of affluent, highly-educated,
If you really can't understand the difference without someone on Slashdot explaining it to you, I would suggest never, ever, having or being around kids or, for that matter, other human beings.
Let me ask a roughly equivalent question that might give you some insight:
Why do we lock up rapists, kidnappers and murderers but not people engaging in sex acts where all parties are deemed capable of, and have given, their consent?
Most parents do the intentional exposure thing as a rite of passage. My brother was taken hunting and had to dress a kill, I was taken to my grandparents ranch and shown where meat came from after I gave cutesy names to all the cattle they had and tried to make them into pets.
It really isn't about eliminating risk, but trying to reduce it with reasonable precautions. I don't, for example, refuse to drive anywhere (to reduce the risk of a traffic accident) but I do make sure my car is safe, kids are in car seats, I'm not intoxicated, I'm driving appropriately, I avoid obviously risky drivers, etc. that won't be perfect, there's always something, but it's better than doing nothing.
You are right that kids will test limits and will do what they can to get around any barriers. The way I handle this is to never punish if they come tell me, only if they lie about it or I find it before they tell me. I want them to feel safe to come to me, I want to encourage them to come to me. And, if I am watching them try to cirumvent a protective measure, I will actually watch them try and only step in if it looks like they're going to get hurt as a result. But the moment they start trying is the moment I start watching like a hawk. So far it works.
It isn't just human sexuality, and in fact, I will say that human sexuality is the least offensive of the things people try to keep kids safe from online.
There's a video floating around of a couple of Russian teens literally murdering a man on camera. There are numerous videos showing extreme violence to people and animals. CNN had a video of a man having his head sawed off readily available, and another news site showed one being hanged while a crowd cheered.
While I wouldn't want my children exposed to a gangbang video or something, that's so far down on the list of "awful shit children shouldn't see" as to not bear mentioning except in reply to your post.
I don't think a kid catching a glimpse of goatse is going to be scarred for life, but I can assure you, as an adult, I've been unintentionally exposed, with no warning (or by being told a video was something else) to videos and pictures that by the time I realized what I was seeing, it was staying with me for awhile and I can only imagine what some of those would do to a kid.
Further, people use the real-life equivalent of net nanny software all the time: agencies testing food products and medicines to make sure they're safe, regulations about toys and clothing to make them safe, building codes and structural inspections to make sure the home is safe, the list goes on and on.
Adding some software to a machine to reduce the risk that your kids will be exposed to videos of people being mutilated or killed isn't the be-all-end-all of good parenting, but it's certainly not a bad component to add to the picture.
Your anecdotes are irrelevant. Intoxication is statistically linked with higher rates of accidents. That's why it should be an aggravating factor - you are statistically increasing the risk of other people in a way that I can most assuredly say they are not consenting to. And you say 99% of drug users drive just fine every day - well, gee, that means 1% of them don't, in your mind. Do you really think 1 out of 100 sober people have an accident every day?
For someone who cheers on freedom, you seem to be forgetting the flip side: responsibility. If you get intoxicated you are increasing the likelihood you will injure another person, but you want to avoid having to take responsibility for your choice to get intoxicated and the aftermath.
Grow up and take responsibility for your choices, and recognize that you aren't the center of the universe. You sound like pretty much every sorry sack of shit I've ever met who swears that the other 20 times they got tanked and drove it was ok, so really this one time they hit someone was totally not their fault.
You wanna get lit up and get behind the wheel? Fine, do it on your own private property where its just you at risk, but not on roads you share with everyone else. Your right to be a stupid fucking idiot doesn't trump my right not to have a fucked up, selfish asshole put me at greater risk of an accident.
Life expectancy is one, not particularly great, measure of health, and it ignores things like quality of life.
The US currently has over 2 million people in prisons, and most estimates say about half of those are there for drug related offenses. In some communities, it is more likely for a male to go to prison or be murdered than to go to college. Previously incarcerated individuals have an incredibly hard time finding work after release, and consequently reoffend for lack of real options. That's the immediate effect. The ripple effect is that children in those communities are often lacking a parent nd are much more likely to follow the same ath as their parents (prison or death). Even among the individual's who don't go to prison, you still see much increased rates of poverty and related health issues, leading t further ripple effects.
Long term you wind up with a highly segregated society with a large disparity in pretty much any health outcome you care to name, as well as wide disparities in many other outcomes that are indirectly related to health.
Drug related incarcerations are not he only factor here, but they are a really, really, really huge one. Changing that would have a vast impact.
Further, there is very little evidence tht incarceration actually reforms individuals who have been to prison, while there is substantial information showing that drug treatment programs can be very effective.
Further, drug enforcement in this country currently costs about 5 billion a year in direct costs, Another 2 billion a year in incarceration costs, and then further costs rippling out from there in the form of various support structures related to this. A drop in the bucket in some senses, but those savings, plus reasonable taxes applied to now-legal drug sales would be a nice savings that could be used for treatment programs and other community building efforts. Spend half of it on teaching newly released inmates necessary life skills and the other half on treatment.d
Finally, the US is not the same as the former Soviet Union. While there may be a short-term spike in drug related health issues as we achieve some form of equilibrium, there are numerous differences when looking at different populations.
Yeah, life expectancy might take a hit, but actual life will be vastly improved in many, many ways, and not just for people in the communities I mention, but for everyone.
Let people smoke, shoot, drink, or otherwise ingest anything they want. Tax drugs, use part of the tax to pay for the societal costs of drug abuse, and go from there.
Intoxication should be considered an aggravating factor in any crime, and should be made a crime in and of itself in certain situations (see driving under the influence).
Making better tests is interesting in an academic way, and possibly useful for certain professions where sobriety is absolutely essential (law enforcement, for one example), but honestly, who gives a fuck for most anything else? If drug use affects your work you'll get fired in time anyway, and if you do harm to another person while high you're screwed anyway.
I'm saying this as someone who works in public health - the damage done by this kind of prohibition VASTLY outweighs the societal benefit of restricting drug use. There's absolutely no question about it.
I'm sure you were attempting humor, but it would have been cool if you actually contributed something to the discussion instead of just taking pot-shots at obvious typos.
For one of my graduate degrees, about half of the classes were on-line (public health, and the on-line classes were largely because all of us were scattered throughout the world working in various relevant capacities). The other half were more or less seminar style classes focusing on discussion of various topics relating to our more narrow focus within public health.
The on-line classes were not bad, and were certainly challenging, especially when we had to collaborate in teams, but there was an interpersonal dimension that wass lacking. I couldn't learn as much from my classmates as I would have in a classroom environment because we didn't have all of those incidental discussions that come about from running into each other outside of class. My in-person classes gave me a richer appreciation of the field and different elements of it, different perspectives on it, because there was so much conversation that wasn't just about coursework and didn't take any real effort to have.
Sme of the best ideas I had - ideas which I have integrated into my current work in the field - came about because I ran into one of my classmates in the university cafeteria and we started taking about how absolutely disgusting some of the food presentation areas must be, given several thousand people per day coming throu there and pawing everything, picking it up and putting it back if they don't want it. That kind of interaction wouldn't have happened online because it actually takes effort to communicate online, you don't randomly bump into each other, and often times there's such a delay between missives that only the essentials are put into it.
Online courses are great for pure data dumps, but I think they are seriously lacking when it comes to inspiring real collaboration.
A college degree should show those things, but in reality, at least in the US these days, it seems more and more it's just a vocational certificate.
I work as a researcher at a university and recently was auditing several courses I was interested in outside of my discipline, and I ran into so many students (both grad and undergrad) who were incredibly limited in their knowledge of anything outside of their major or graduate concentration or even, in many cases, inside their major/concentration that wasn't very, very closely related to their primary interest. Even worse, many of the students I encountered we're absolutely horrible writers and very, very poor readers as well, unable to do more than barely functional writing and often unable to appreciate nuance in a text, preferring instead to be hit over the head with bald statements. And worse than all of that, most of the students seemed to not care about, or even resent, any coursework that wasn't immediately relevant to heir major/concentration or vocational goals. They wanted to be highly specialized insects, and we're proud of it!
We very much need to reform education in the US. What is often taught in high-schools really should have been covered in elementary schools, and what is taught in the first two years of mst undergrad educations should be covered in high-school. We need also to have a more formalized step between hi-school and university that is focused on vocational programs, leaving university for those who wish to actually get a broad education, and graduate school for more academically inclined types who want to actually study the field. Our current system serves most people poorly, though it does make some institutions very wealthy.
How is trying to mold your daughter into a geekgrrrrrl any better than trying to mold her into anything else when it seems like you really could give a shit about what your daughter wants.
My niece plays roller derby in a semi-pro way, works days at a warehouse packing books, and at night goes to classes to become a physical therapist. Would I rather she had some kind of totally safe hobby (a woman on her team was crippled 3 years back)? Would I rather she had a job doing something that a machine can't do? Would I rather she went to school for something that would expand her intellectual horizons more than physical therapy?
No to all of the above because the things she does make her happy. She says she feels more alive with the risk and likes playing rough sports. When she is packing boxes all day she's composing songs and writing poems. Working towards physical therapy makes her feel like she is doing something useful to help other people recover from horrible accidents like the one her teammate had.
I want her to be happy, even if that means she isn't a clone of me. When my daughter grows up to that point I want her to be a fully self-actualized human being capable of choosing what works for her rather than meekly submitting to what society says she should be.
It's you, not the industry, that's trying to shape women into something other than they may wish to be.
Also, if you've been here so long, you really should learn to cope with downmods better.
Why can't it be "dads it's up to you to raise sons who don't patronize strip clubs"?
Or are you saying that somehow its shameful for women to make hundreds of dollars in a night by showing some skin and flirting, but totally a-ok for a dude to blow half his paycheck fantasizing that these women are into them when they obviously see him as little more than a source of tips?
If you raised a daughter who worked as a booth babe because she had literally no options due to lack of ability, education, skill, or interest, then you would be a fuck up parent because you raised someone who is merely a shell of a person. If you raised a child who couldn't do anything else once they were no longer able to be a booth babe, that would mean you had failed them.
But if you raise a well rounded, balanced and capable human being who intentionally makes the choice to work that kind of job and enjoys it, how exactly is that being a fuck up parent?
Some people - some women - actually enjoy being attractive, enjoy the attention, find the work amusing or interesting, and do it because they can, not because that's all they have going for them.
I wouldn't take her just because of the incredibly fucking creepy dudes who would hit on her because they have no social graces what-so-ever.
But as far as the booth babe concept, I don't have a problem with it, and actually look at a lot of conversation here as a kind of slut shaming or trying to find some way to diminish these women just because they happen to be desirable and willing to make a living providing something men want.
I would want my daughter to learn the lesson that she should be proud of who she is, should feel able to make her own choices about how she will get by in the world, and to understand that there are lots of different choices she might make, but that she should be the one making those choices and do what she can to maximize her options. I would also want my daughter to be capable of understanding the complexi of that kind of situation, rather than trying to shut her away from things.
For the record, I'm a 30+ year old woman who is average to cute, so I'd never make it as a booth babe, but I sure as hell won't begrudge a woman who can make a living doing that from doing it, and my only gripe with it would be when it is exploitative, both on the part of the booth babe or her target. I find it repugnant to imagine a woman being beaten down until she imagines all she is good for is to appeal to men, but I likewise find it repugnant when an attractive woman plays on the insecurities and fears of a socially awkward manchild in order to get him to buy something. I do believe there is a happy medium between these two exploitative extremes, however.
There is a pretty big difference between intellectually knowing yu will be treated in one way and then actually being treated that way. Often that difference can be quite jarring and discomfiting.
For example, someone who works in support might know, intellectually, that people will get mad at them for things they didn't cause like a computer crashing or whatever. One knows this and expects this, and may be prepared for it.
But then actually working an 8 hour shift with the constant stream of calls, abusive people, supervisors riding your ass, being called every name in the book, and having people simply behave like irrational children all the while holding you responsible for everything wrong in the world is a vastly different experience than what one imagined it might be.
Not in my personal experience, which is all that is relevant to me.
I switched from a regular desk to a standing desk and I've noticed that I have more energy throughout the day, less pain from things like sciatica, and feel the need to take fewer breaks. I've also noted that I am getting more work done in less time, and the work is generally the same to slightly higher quality by a number of metrics. My workday winds up being about an hour shorter than before, but I am a little more productive, basically.
And, my exercise routine has actually gotten a boost as well. Because I am using my legs more during the day, I would think - my running speed is a bit faster (my mile has steadily improved since the shift to a standing desk after plateauing for over a year) and my flexibility has also been improving a bit.
I don't walk at my desk, though I may incorporate a treadmill, but rather I kind of hop around and dance a bit, do basic squats, etc. looks dumb, but I don't really care. The more active things are done when I'm reading email, but I am still pretty active when doing more mentally challenging stuff.
For the record, about 75% of my day involves writing code, designing software, or analyzing data. It was a bit distracting for the first 2 days or so; I was consciously thinking of standing and remembering to move around, but after that it just became a habit and takes no real attention.
So maybe your advice is good for some, but it is wrong for me, for sure.
That's a really great approach - when I work with young and often volatile young people in my research we take that kind of tack, but we're only working with one person at a time. I imagine this would be super effective at handling lids pine issues if you have the staff to spare. Thanks for the link.
You can teach kids appropriate boundaries while also acknowledging that their actual performance on tasks may be hampered by outside factors, and taking that into consideration when evaluating performance.
Let me give you an example from your comment: Being on time. Please explain to me how a 7 year old child is expected to show up on time to classes when their parent or guardian doesn't bother waking them up, doesn't bother making sure they have clothes to wear or food to eat, doesn't bother being a *parent* in any meaningful sense of the word? Are you expecting this child, who may have to walk to school in inclement weather, or through an unsafe area, or face any number of hurdles to getting to school, to be on time? Should this child be penalized if they don't show up on time through no fault of their own?
That's a hell of a burden to put on a kid who already has much, much, MUCH bigger problems facing them at home, and I don't know about you, but I would be willing to cut them some slack.
I would tell a child in that situation that because of their home life I wasn't going to penalize them for being tardy, but that I expected, once they did show up, that they would do the best they could and behave correctly. I'd also look into ways to help remedy whatever the problems they have at home, so that they had fewer obstacles to learning, but know that a teacher can only do so much.
As a mental exercise though, let me ask you - how would you, as an adult, do at regulating your behavior if you only got to eat a handful of french fries and a slice of pizza per day for an entire week? How would you, as an adult, do if you only got 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night because your home environment was unsafe or loud? I would expect most adults to be an absolute wreck in those circumstances, and we're talking now about people who have much more agency in their circumstances than a child does.
On topic: I agree with you that any kind of measurement system must offer a meaningful form of compensation, and find it absurd that a workplace would have a system like you mention in place without some kind of reward. What were they thinking?
Being in the field I'm in I often work with not-for-profit groups that have very little money for bonuses, but even those places find some way to meaningfully recognize achievement of staff members, whether it's something like a paid day off, taking someone out for lunch (even if it's just at Subway), or even just a specific shout-out at a staff meeting. Even as poorly funded as some of these places were, I can't even imagine any of them doing something dumb like that point system you mention, and definitely never one with negatives. Sounds like leaving there was a good thing.
It's worse in a school system - there, you have people at various levels of development and who have very differing levels of support at home. Yet, because it is a school and because they are children, you have to take into account those differences and handle each child on an individual basis. Is it fair to give Jimmy gold stars because he does his homework every day (with help from his caring and dedicated mom), but give Johnny only one or two silver stars because he wasn't able to bring in his homework (because his mom has to work nights and half the time he winds up going to bed hungry and has bigger things to worry about than whether he gets homework done)?
As someone who works in an academic environment and who is friends with many teachers at all levels, it's really a vexing problem. How do you account for the fact that from one kid turning in homework every day is the minimum one can expect, while for another kid just showing up most days is a serious accomplishment while not being generally unfair?
At one school I know of they handle this by giving report cards that aren't grades but rather written evaluations of each student and what they're doing well and what they need to work on, which take whatever factors they are aware of into consideration. Takes a lot more effort for all involved, but it's generally fair and it avoids the problem of a kid being judged by a system that has no way to account for his or her particular obstacles to success.
Personally, I think ranking kids is absolutely stupid because it assumes some kind of even playing field in all areas outside of school, which just isn't so. I know that sentiment will piss off people who think that kids being given a trophy just for participating is enabling a generation of special snowflakes, but those same people really have no fucking clue just how bad it can be for many kids./rant
In the workplace, at least, people are ostensibly adults and there's a general rule that your personal shit isn't relevant since it's business.
That is absolutely a problem. Or what about the very charismatic and friendly person that the customers absolutely love, but who is completely incompetent? They may be great at getting customers to like them but absolutely horrible at actually helping customers with their real problems.
I use Sprint for my cell service, and literally every time I speak to anyone with that company they let me know I'll be getting a customer service survey in a day or two and that they want me to give them the best scores. They specifically ask, "Will you do that for me?" because that kind of "pressure" will often work, and customers will feel like liars if they say yes then don't.
I have told the people asking me that kind of question that despite their performance being excellent, I will simply refuse to take the survey because that kind of "pressure" will wind up skewing the results and lead to real problems being hidden. I've told managers at stores the same thing, and did my little stick-it-to-the-man thing by emailing the Sprint CEO directly (since he has an allegedly public email address that he claims to read). It's a shame, actually, because by and large my interactions with their customer service have been really great, but there's no way for them to distinguish between someone who actually performs well and someone who guilts customers into saying they did.
The only metrics that are useful are ones where social engineering, sandbagging, and other kinds of artificial manipulation are removed from the equation. Unfortunately, for pretty much any job these days, those kinds of foolproof metrics are completely worthless since they don't measure anything worthwhile.
One way I've seen the problem addressed is a zero tolerance policy. A friend of mine works in the customer service group for a largish firm and they have stated that they will terminate, immediately, any employee found to be requesting good ratings or even mentioning that there will be a customer evaluation contact. Evaluations are handled by an entirely separate group so there isn't an opportunity for friends to fudge the numbers for other people, etc.
But even so, performance metrics are REALLY hard to create - much better to have managers who are actually good managers and good at evaluating performance than to have arbitrary systems.
I don't get people who feel like some part of an in group because of which company they gave their money to. Fortunately I don't know any people who are like that (or, at least, are willing to admit they are like that) so I haven't had to have an awkward conversation with a friend wherein I explain that they are a choad for being the kind of person who gets involved in platform holy wars.
Really, the whole thing reminds me of the way very small children will become enraged when one person doesn't like the same things they do - it's almost as if these people believe that by having a different need case than they do you are somehow repudiating their entire way of being. Immature to say the least.
Slashdot Mirror
People have used hidden cams (in bags etc) for years to record people in secrecy. Look for "upskirt" on your favorite search engine and you'll see what I mean.
And I disagree with your conclusion - I think the more this stuff happens the less people will worry about their personal eccentricities being caught on film.
Don't believe me? Make a fake Facebook account, go on FB and just browse through people's public profiles and pics - people are sharing things without blinking an eye that would have been horribly taboo just a few years back.
Then don't use this product and don't associate with anyone who is using this product and don't do anything private in a space where people who use this product can record you without your permission, or accept that you can't control everything and that trying to or worrying much about it is a losing battle.
Privacy as we know it is dead, and the best we can do is a kind of anonymity through saturation. As more and more people get caught doing stupid shit on camera, fewer and fewer people will give a shit about it because it will be understood that EVERYONE does stupid shit, so unless it's particularly egregious it won't be a blip.
Mind you, I understand missing it - I, personally, don't feel like I want everyone to know absolutely everything about me - but I've stopped worrying about that since it's a totally losing battle and instead spend my efforts on things where I can make a difference.
How about letting teachers beat parents instead? It might actually be more effective.
Who is John Galt?
A stupid character from a hilariously bad book that espouses ideas even a child would find simplistic and misguided.
Happy to help if it means I saved you the time of reading that tripe!
Let me completely destroy your "insightful" argument:
1) I love it when people invoke "It's just human nature!" as some kind of support for their argument. There ain't no such thing as human nature - or, rather, I should say that human nature is literally anything that humans do, which makes it as a term completely meaningless. It's human nature to be like Ghandi, and it's human nature to be like Stalin, and it's human nature to be like everyone in between. What a useless term.
2) You say that different genders are attracted to different work. Why? What basis is there for that attraction? Why shouldn't men be just as interested in how children are raised and educated, or in caring for the sick and infirm as women? Why shouldn't women be just as interested in advancing human knowledge as men? What's the origin of this difference? What empirical evidence is there to support some kind of biological argument that "they're just different" as opposed to it being a social construct past "well, most girls play with dolls and most boys play with guns"? Lay it out for me - after all, if it's so blindingly obvious and so incredibly important that it's "idiotic" to try and find proportional representation in various fields, you shouldn't have any problem creating a persuasive argument that relies on facts and evidence as opposed to stupid prejudices.
3) Your argument that men aren't being recruited for teaching and nursing positions is factually incorrect. There is a very, very strong recruitment push for getting men into nursing and elementary school teaching, as well as many other fields that have traditionally been more heavily skewed to women. Trying to recruit more male secretaries is about the same as trying to recruit more female dishwashers in restaurants - it's a scut job that, with the advent of computers and relatively smart digital assistants, is usually staffed by people looking to get a toe-hold in an industry rather than a career. There are a few exceptions - special assistants to extremely highly placed executives certainly have interesting and challenging work (and quite a bit of power in their own right) but calling them "secretaries" is about the same as comparing the job of running a lemonade stand to the President of the United States.
Now that I've pointed out why everything you said is wrong, here's why the opposite of what you said is important:
1) If there is a massive disparity in gender, racial or ethnic representation in a field compared to the proportion in the general population, it could very well mean *gasp* that there are artificial barriers to entry for people under-represented, and why shouldn't we look for ways to remove those artificial barriers? In some cases, historically, those barriers were obvious (racial segregation, religious segregation going back into european history), and in some cases they were just as present but less obvious to those not experiencing them (institutional racism and sexism). Most men I work with don't like making mistakes, but they don't seem to feel as if they are representing literally every male on the planet and making all males look bad when they do make a mistake. I, on the other hand, have personally been told that I'm "pretty good at math, for a woman" and in another case that a potential employer was really nervous about hiring me because what if I get pregnant, like another woman he worked with did, or what if I'm moody, like his wife? I have to answer for the behavior of all women in those cases - I don't know why his wife is moody, but I would have had to answer for her if I wanted that job. (I didn't, and I explained that the reason for her moods was likely sitting across the desk from me).
2) People with different backgrounds often come with very different ways of thinking about problems, and often what seems completely opaque to one person will be obvious and easily understood by another. I do research in public health and social and community psychology. I can assure you that a bunch of affluent, highly-educated,
If you really can't understand the difference without someone on Slashdot explaining it to you, I would suggest never, ever, having or being around kids or, for that matter, other human beings.
Let me ask a roughly equivalent question that might give you some insight:
Why do we lock up rapists, kidnappers and murderers but not people engaging in sex acts where all parties are deemed capable of, and have given, their consent?
Most parents do the intentional exposure thing as a rite of passage. My brother was taken hunting and had to dress a kill, I was taken to my grandparents ranch and shown where meat came from after I gave cutesy names to all the cattle they had and tried to make them into pets.
It really isn't about eliminating risk, but trying to reduce it with reasonable precautions. I don't, for example, refuse to drive anywhere (to reduce the risk of a traffic accident) but I do make sure my car is safe, kids are in car seats, I'm not intoxicated, I'm driving appropriately, I avoid obviously risky drivers, etc. that won't be perfect, there's always something, but it's better than doing nothing.
You are right that kids will test limits and will do what they can to get around any barriers. The way I handle this is to never punish if they come tell me, only if they lie about it or I find it before they tell me. I want them to feel safe to come to me, I want to encourage them to come to me. And, if I am watching them try to cirumvent a protective measure, I will actually watch them try and only step in if it looks like they're going to get hurt as a result. But the moment they start trying is the moment I start watching like a hawk. So far it works.
It isn't just human sexuality, and in fact, I will say that human sexuality is the least offensive of the things people try to keep kids safe from online.
There's a video floating around of a couple of Russian teens literally murdering a man on camera. There are numerous videos showing extreme violence to people and animals. CNN had a video of a man having his head sawed off readily available, and another news site showed one being hanged while a crowd cheered.
While I wouldn't want my children exposed to a gangbang video or something, that's so far down on the list of "awful shit children shouldn't see" as to not bear mentioning except in reply to your post.
I don't think a kid catching a glimpse of goatse is going to be scarred for life, but I can assure you, as an adult, I've been unintentionally exposed, with no warning (or by being told a video was something else) to videos and pictures that by the time I realized what I was seeing, it was staying with me for awhile and I can only imagine what some of those would do to a kid.
Further, people use the real-life equivalent of net nanny software all the time: agencies testing food products and medicines to make sure they're safe, regulations about toys and clothing to make them safe, building codes and structural inspections to make sure the home is safe, the list goes on and on.
Adding some software to a machine to reduce the risk that your kids will be exposed to videos of people being mutilated or killed isn't the be-all-end-all of good parenting, but it's certainly not a bad component to add to the picture.
Your anecdotes are irrelevant. Intoxication is statistically linked with higher rates of accidents. That's why it should be an aggravating factor - you are statistically increasing the risk of other people in a way that I can most assuredly say they are not consenting to. And you say 99% of drug users drive just fine every day - well, gee, that means 1% of them don't, in your mind. Do you really think 1 out of 100 sober people have an accident every day?
For someone who cheers on freedom, you seem to be forgetting the flip side: responsibility. If you get intoxicated you are increasing the likelihood you will injure another person, but you want to avoid having to take responsibility for your choice to get intoxicated and the aftermath.
Grow up and take responsibility for your choices, and recognize that you aren't the center of the universe. You sound like pretty much every sorry sack of shit I've ever met who swears that the other 20 times they got tanked and drove it was ok, so really this one time they hit someone was totally not their fault.
You wanna get lit up and get behind the wheel? Fine, do it on your own private property where its just you at risk, but not on roads you share with everyone else. Your right to be a stupid fucking idiot doesn't trump my right not to have a fucked up, selfish asshole put me at greater risk of an accident.
Life expectancy is one, not particularly great, measure of health, and it ignores things like quality of life.
The US currently has over 2 million people in prisons, and most estimates say about half of those are there for drug related offenses. In some communities, it is more likely for a male to go to prison or be murdered than to go to college. Previously incarcerated individuals have an incredibly hard time finding work after release, and consequently reoffend for lack of real options. That's the immediate effect. The ripple effect is that children in those communities are often lacking a parent nd are much more likely to follow the same ath as their parents (prison or death). Even among the individual's who don't go to prison, you still see much increased rates of poverty and related health issues, leading t further ripple effects.
Long term you wind up with a highly segregated society with a large disparity in pretty much any health outcome you care to name, as well as wide disparities in many other outcomes that are indirectly related to health.
Drug related incarcerations are not he only factor here, but they are a really, really, really huge one. Changing that would have a vast impact.
Further, there is very little evidence tht incarceration actually reforms individuals who have been to prison, while there is substantial information showing that drug treatment programs can be very effective.
Further, drug enforcement in this country currently costs about 5 billion a year in direct costs, Another 2 billion a year in incarceration costs, and then further costs rippling out from there in the form of various support structures related to this. A drop in the bucket in some senses, but those savings, plus reasonable taxes applied to now-legal drug sales would be a nice savings that could be used for treatment programs and other community building efforts. Spend half of it on teaching newly released inmates necessary life skills and the other half on treatment.d
Finally, the US is not the same as the former Soviet Union. While there may be a short-term spike in drug related health issues as we achieve some form of equilibrium, there are numerous differences when looking at different populations.
Yeah, life expectancy might take a hit, but actual life will be vastly improved in many, many ways, and not just for people in the communities I mention, but for everyone.
Let people smoke, shoot, drink, or otherwise ingest anything they want. Tax drugs, use part of the tax to pay for the societal costs of drug abuse, and go from there.
Intoxication should be considered an aggravating factor in any crime, and should be made a crime in and of itself in certain situations (see driving under the influence).
Making better tests is interesting in an academic way, and possibly useful for certain professions where sobriety is absolutely essential (law enforcement, for one example), but honestly, who gives a fuck for most anything else? If drug use affects your work you'll get fired in time anyway, and if you do harm to another person while high you're screwed anyway.
I'm saying this as someone who works in public health - the damage done by this kind of prohibition VASTLY outweighs the societal benefit of restricting drug use. There's absolutely no question about it.
I'm sure you were attempting humor, but it would have been cool if you actually contributed something to the discussion instead of just taking pot-shots at obvious typos.
For one of my graduate degrees, about half of the classes were on-line (public health, and the on-line classes were largely because all of us were scattered throughout the world working in various relevant capacities). The other half were more or less seminar style classes focusing on discussion of various topics relating to our more narrow focus within public health.
The on-line classes were not bad, and were certainly challenging, especially when we had to collaborate in teams, but there was an interpersonal dimension that wass lacking. I couldn't learn as much from my classmates as I would have in a classroom environment because we didn't have all of those incidental discussions that come about from running into each other outside of class. My in-person classes gave me a richer appreciation of the field and different elements of it, different perspectives on it, because there was so much conversation that wasn't just about coursework and didn't take any real effort to have.
Sme of the best ideas I had - ideas which I have integrated into my current work in the field - came about because I ran into one of my classmates in the university cafeteria and we started taking about how absolutely disgusting some of the food presentation areas must be, given several thousand people per day coming throu there and pawing everything, picking it up and putting it back if they don't want it. That kind of interaction wouldn't have happened online because it actually takes effort to communicate online, you don't randomly bump into each other, and often times there's such a delay between missives that only the essentials are put into it.
Online courses are great for pure data dumps, but I think they are seriously lacking when it comes to inspiring real collaboration.
A college degree should show those things, but in reality, at least in the US these days, it seems more and more it's just a vocational certificate.
I work as a researcher at a university and recently was auditing several courses I was interested in outside of my discipline, and I ran into so many students (both grad and undergrad) who were incredibly limited in their knowledge of anything outside of their major or graduate concentration or even, in many cases, inside their major/concentration that wasn't very, very closely related to their primary interest. Even worse, many of the students I encountered we're absolutely horrible writers and very, very poor readers as well, unable to do more than barely functional writing and often unable to appreciate nuance in a text, preferring instead to be hit over the head with bald statements. And worse than all of that, most of the students seemed to not care about, or even resent, any coursework that wasn't immediately relevant to heir major/concentration or vocational goals. They wanted to be highly specialized insects, and we're proud of it!
We very much need to reform education in the US. What is often taught in high-schools really should have been covered in elementary schools, and what is taught in the first two years of mst undergrad educations should be covered in high-school. We need also to have a more formalized step between hi-school and university that is focused on vocational programs, leaving university for those who wish to actually get a broad education, and graduate school for more academically inclined types who want to actually study the field. Our current system serves most people poorly, though it does make some institutions very wealthy.
How is trying to mold your daughter into a geekgrrrrrl any better than trying to mold her into anything else when it seems like you really could give a shit about what your daughter wants.
My niece plays roller derby in a semi-pro way, works days at a warehouse packing books, and at night goes to classes to become a physical therapist. Would I rather she had some kind of totally safe hobby (a woman on her team was crippled 3 years back)? Would I rather she had a job doing something that a machine can't do? Would I rather she went to school for something that would expand her intellectual horizons more than physical therapy?
No to all of the above because the things she does make her happy. She says she feels more alive with the risk and likes playing rough sports. When she is packing boxes all day she's composing songs and writing poems. Working towards physical therapy makes her feel like she is doing something useful to help other people recover from horrible accidents like the one her teammate had.
I want her to be happy, even if that means she isn't a clone of me. When my daughter grows up to that point I want her to be a fully self-actualized human being capable of choosing what works for her rather than meekly submitting to what society says she should be.
It's you, not the industry, that's trying to shape women into something other than they may wish to be.
Also, if you've been here so long, you really should learn to cope with downmods better.
Why can't it be "dads it's up to you to raise sons who don't patronize strip clubs"?
Or are you saying that somehow its shameful for women to make hundreds of dollars in a night by showing some skin and flirting, but totally a-ok for a dude to blow half his paycheck fantasizing that these women are into them when they obviously see him as little more than a source of tips?
Let me correct something for you:
If you raised a daughter who worked as a booth babe because she had literally no options due to lack of ability, education, skill, or interest, then you would be a fuck up parent because you raised someone who is merely a shell of a person. If you raised a child who couldn't do anything else once they were no longer able to be a booth babe, that would mean you had failed them.
But if you raise a well rounded, balanced and capable human being who intentionally makes the choice to work that kind of job and enjoys it, how exactly is that being a fuck up parent?
Some people - some women - actually enjoy being attractive, enjoy the attention, find the work amusing or interesting, and do it because they can, not because that's all they have going for them.
I wouldn't take her just because of the incredibly fucking creepy dudes who would hit on her because they have no social graces what-so-ever.
But as far as the booth babe concept, I don't have a problem with it, and actually look at a lot of conversation here as a kind of slut shaming or trying to find some way to diminish these women just because they happen to be desirable and willing to make a living providing something men want.
I would want my daughter to learn the lesson that she should be proud of who she is, should feel able to make her own choices about how she will get by in the world, and to understand that there are lots of different choices she might make, but that she should be the one making those choices and do what she can to maximize her options. I would also want my daughter to be capable of understanding the complexi of that kind of situation, rather than trying to shut her away from things.
For the record, I'm a 30+ year old woman who is average to cute, so I'd never make it as a booth babe, but I sure as hell won't begrudge a woman who can make a living doing that from doing it, and my only gripe with it would be when it is exploitative, both on the part of the booth babe or her target. I find it repugnant to imagine a woman being beaten down until she imagines all she is good for is to appeal to men, but I likewise find it repugnant when an attractive woman plays on the insecurities and fears of a socially awkward manchild in order to get him to buy something. I do believe there is a happy medium between these two exploitative extremes, however.
There is a pretty big difference between intellectually knowing yu will be treated in one way and then actually being treated that way. Often that difference can be quite jarring and discomfiting.
For example, someone who works in support might know, intellectually, that people will get mad at them for things they didn't cause like a computer crashing or whatever. One knows this and expects this, and may be prepared for it.
But then actually working an 8 hour shift with the constant stream of calls, abusive people, supervisors riding your ass, being called every name in the book, and having people simply behave like irrational children all the while holding you responsible for everything wrong in the world is a vastly different experience than what one imagined it might be.
Not in my personal experience, which is all that is relevant to me.
I switched from a regular desk to a standing desk and I've noticed that I have more energy throughout the day, less pain from things like sciatica, and feel the need to take fewer breaks. I've also noted that I am getting more work done in less time, and the work is generally the same to slightly higher quality by a number of metrics. My workday winds up being about an hour shorter than before, but I am a little more productive, basically.
And, my exercise routine has actually gotten a boost as well. Because I am using my legs more during the day, I would think - my running speed is a bit faster (my mile has steadily improved since the shift to a standing desk after plateauing for over a year) and my flexibility has also been improving a bit.
I don't walk at my desk, though I may incorporate a treadmill, but rather I kind of hop around and dance a bit, do basic squats, etc. looks dumb, but I don't really care. The more active things are done when I'm reading email, but I am still pretty active when doing more mentally challenging stuff.
For the record, about 75% of my day involves writing code, designing software, or analyzing data. It was a bit distracting for the first 2 days or so; I was consciously thinking of standing and remembering to move around, but after that it just became a habit and takes no real attention.
So maybe your advice is good for some, but it is wrong for me, for sure.
That's a really great approach - when I work with young and often volatile young people in my research we take that kind of tack, but we're only working with one person at a time. I imagine this would be super effective at handling lids pine issues if you have the staff to spare. Thanks for the link.
You can teach kids appropriate boundaries while also acknowledging that their actual performance on tasks may be hampered by outside factors, and taking that into consideration when evaluating performance.
Let me give you an example from your comment: Being on time. Please explain to me how a 7 year old child is expected to show up on time to classes when their parent or guardian doesn't bother waking them up, doesn't bother making sure they have clothes to wear or food to eat, doesn't bother being a *parent* in any meaningful sense of the word? Are you expecting this child, who may have to walk to school in inclement weather, or through an unsafe area, or face any number of hurdles to getting to school, to be on time? Should this child be penalized if they don't show up on time through no fault of their own?
That's a hell of a burden to put on a kid who already has much, much, MUCH bigger problems facing them at home, and I don't know about you, but I would be willing to cut them some slack.
I would tell a child in that situation that because of their home life I wasn't going to penalize them for being tardy, but that I expected, once they did show up, that they would do the best they could and behave correctly. I'd also look into ways to help remedy whatever the problems they have at home, so that they had fewer obstacles to learning, but know that a teacher can only do so much.
As a mental exercise though, let me ask you - how would you, as an adult, do at regulating your behavior if you only got to eat a handful of french fries and a slice of pizza per day for an entire week? How would you, as an adult, do if you only got 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night because your home environment was unsafe or loud? I would expect most adults to be an absolute wreck in those circumstances, and we're talking now about people who have much more agency in their circumstances than a child does.
On topic: I agree with you that any kind of measurement system must offer a meaningful form of compensation, and find it absurd that a workplace would have a system like you mention in place without some kind of reward. What were they thinking?
Being in the field I'm in I often work with not-for-profit groups that have very little money for bonuses, but even those places find some way to meaningfully recognize achievement of staff members, whether it's something like a paid day off, taking someone out for lunch (even if it's just at Subway), or even just a specific shout-out at a staff meeting. Even as poorly funded as some of these places were, I can't even imagine any of them doing something dumb like that point system you mention, and definitely never one with negatives. Sounds like leaving there was a good thing.
It's worse in a school system - there, you have people at various levels of development and who have very differing levels of support at home. Yet, because it is a school and because they are children, you have to take into account those differences and handle each child on an individual basis. Is it fair to give Jimmy gold stars because he does his homework every day (with help from his caring and dedicated mom), but give Johnny only one or two silver stars because he wasn't able to bring in his homework (because his mom has to work nights and half the time he winds up going to bed hungry and has bigger things to worry about than whether he gets homework done)?
As someone who works in an academic environment and who is friends with many teachers at all levels, it's really a vexing problem. How do you account for the fact that from one kid turning in homework every day is the minimum one can expect, while for another kid just showing up most days is a serious accomplishment while not being generally unfair?
At one school I know of they handle this by giving report cards that aren't grades but rather written evaluations of each student and what they're doing well and what they need to work on, which take whatever factors they are aware of into consideration. Takes a lot more effort for all involved, but it's generally fair and it avoids the problem of a kid being judged by a system that has no way to account for his or her particular obstacles to success.
Personally, I think ranking kids is absolutely stupid because it assumes some kind of even playing field in all areas outside of school, which just isn't so. I know that sentiment will piss off people who think that kids being given a trophy just for participating is enabling a generation of special snowflakes, but those same people really have no fucking clue just how bad it can be for many kids. /rant
In the workplace, at least, people are ostensibly adults and there's a general rule that your personal shit isn't relevant since it's business.
That is absolutely a problem. Or what about the very charismatic and friendly person that the customers absolutely love, but who is completely incompetent? They may be great at getting customers to like them but absolutely horrible at actually helping customers with their real problems.
I use Sprint for my cell service, and literally every time I speak to anyone with that company they let me know I'll be getting a customer service survey in a day or two and that they want me to give them the best scores. They specifically ask, "Will you do that for me?" because that kind of "pressure" will often work, and customers will feel like liars if they say yes then don't.
I have told the people asking me that kind of question that despite their performance being excellent, I will simply refuse to take the survey because that kind of "pressure" will wind up skewing the results and lead to real problems being hidden. I've told managers at stores the same thing, and did my little stick-it-to-the-man thing by emailing the Sprint CEO directly (since he has an allegedly public email address that he claims to read). It's a shame, actually, because by and large my interactions with their customer service have been really great, but there's no way for them to distinguish between someone who actually performs well and someone who guilts customers into saying they did.
The only metrics that are useful are ones where social engineering, sandbagging, and other kinds of artificial manipulation are removed from the equation. Unfortunately, for pretty much any job these days, those kinds of foolproof metrics are completely worthless since they don't measure anything worthwhile.
One way I've seen the problem addressed is a zero tolerance policy. A friend of mine works in the customer service group for a largish firm and they have stated that they will terminate, immediately, any employee found to be requesting good ratings or even mentioning that there will be a customer evaluation contact. Evaluations are handled by an entirely separate group so there isn't an opportunity for friends to fudge the numbers for other people, etc.
But even so, performance metrics are REALLY hard to create - much better to have managers who are actually good managers and good at evaluating performance than to have arbitrary systems.
I don't get people who feel like some part of an in group because of which company they gave their money to. Fortunately I don't know any people who are like that (or, at least, are willing to admit they are like that) so I haven't had to have an awkward conversation with a friend wherein I explain that they are a choad for being the kind of person who gets involved in platform holy wars.
Really, the whole thing reminds me of the way very small children will become enraged when one person doesn't like the same things they do - it's almost as if these people believe that by having a different need case than they do you are somehow repudiating their entire way of being. Immature to say the least.