Here's the thing: individual energy use is fairly insignificant. Turning off the light leads to a miniscule reduction of total energy use because: residential energy use is only 14% of humanity's total energy use [ Source: http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/... ], you are just 1 person out of 1 billion people living in the developed world (i.e. people with high-energy consumption), and turning off a light or two leads to a small reduction in your individual use. In other words: a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.
If people are concerned about global warming and humanity's energy use, you can do totally ineffective things like turning off a light or two more often, or you can push for more effective means of curbing global emissions: change the source of our energy (for residential energy, industrial/commercial energy, and transportation), push for more energy-efficient devices (e.g. a lot of Western European countries use about half as much energy per-capita as the US), and throw taxes on carbon-based energy sources to influence consumers via their pocketbook and influence the market towards forms of energy without all those carbon-emission externalities.
I can see that the conservatives are out in droves on this Slashdot story, flaunting their ignorance and conspiracy theories. You guys should really be ashamed of yourselves because you're only making yourselves look like cavemen.
I can't find the article right now, but I've read that porn studios have seen a revenue drop of something like 50%. From what I've heard, they're very concerned about it.
That's a nice theory, but you haven't addressed the elephant in the room: virtually all resumes for tech jobs are from white men. I don't even know how they came up with this 35% number. I've never worked at a tech company where 1/3rd of the technical workers were women (usually, HR is very female and that's about it). I think my Comp Sci classes were around 90-95% male.
Wow. That article is all over the place. I swear some three-sentence paragraphs had three different thoughts. I think part of the problem with these kinds of essays is that guys get tired of being blamed for everything. (For comparison, just try to think back to any mainstream article that blamed women for anything.) That's why guys are always getting defensive - because guys are always getting the blame. Rather than this essay, I recommend Mark Manson's article: http://markmanson.net/school-s...
Where the Pirate Bay was started. They seem to have quite a few freeloading idiots who feel they shouldn't have to pay for things, and don't understand how economics works.
The *should* in that original sentence is a bit excessive, but it's true that many men are fine working by themselves, while women tend to like working with other people -- have you ever noticed that female-dominated jobs tend to be jobs interacting with other people (e.g. nurse, teacher) and get people-related degrees (e.g. communications, psychology, sociology, education,...)?
The only way that ice can be below sea level is if it's pushed down by something. In this case, the ice below sea level is pushed down by ice on top of it. (Which is why an iceberg is 90% below water and 10% above water.)
> "Since water uses more volume as ice than as a liquid, the amount of liquid held in the bowl, should be more than the amount of ice it previously had, before melting."
I think the mistake that you're making is that you think there are icebergs which are below the surface of the water, but they are less dense than the water. Of course, this can't happen. It's like having a helium-filled balloon that falls to the floor, even though helium is less dense than the surrounding atmosphere.
You have to take into account the fact that 10% is above water to begin with. As it turns out, those two things cancel out - i.e. the volume used up by ice which is below sea-level is exactly the volume of water that the a melted iceberg will use-up (after it's melted). This is the same principle used in ship-building: the weight of water which is displaced by a ship is equal to the weight of a ship. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... ) Similarly, the weight of water which is displaced by an iceberg is equal to the weight of an iceberg.
You can test this easily enough with a glass of water. Fill the glass with ice. Now, fill the glass to the brim with water. Some ice will stick out above the top of the glass (because ice is slightly lighter than water, so part of it will float above the surface of the water). Wait for it to melt. The water level will remain constant (it won't go down and it won't overflow).
> "Seems to me that the net result of this should be lower global sea level..."
No. That would only be true if you ignore the fact that some of the ice is located above sea-level. When you calculate all of it together, you'll find that ice in the water won't cause a sea-level change when it melts. (And the sea-level change that global warming people worry about is caused by ice melting which is currently located on top of land.)
Somehow, I imagine you sitting at home chain-smoking cigarettes and complaining about all those "chicken little" idiots who believe smoking causes cancer.
In the US, gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV cases. But, among heterosexuals, women outnumber men in the number of new HIV cases. For whatever reason (perhaps because semen sticks around longer in the vagina than female wetness stays around on the penis after sex), it's known that a woman's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive male is higher than the chances of a man's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive female. If I remember correctly, the chances of an infection are about double for women compared to men.
You'll also note that, on the graph shown on this article, if you ignore the gay and bisexual men graphs (listed as "MSM" or "men who have sex with men"), women outnumber men in new infections. For example, in the US, about twice as many heterosexual black women (5300/year) are diagnosed with HIV each year as the number of heterosexual black males (2700/year).
Perhaps what's going on in Africa is that homosexual males are less likely to get HIV - because so many of them are in the closet or keep to a small number of sexual partners for fear of attacks. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Or maybe HIV is just so common in Africa that transmissions among heterosexuals has surpassed the homosexual rate (which, given the two risk factors of "gay" and "in Africa" has got to be putting homosexual HIV rates near 100%, but you can't get higher than 100%).
Or maybe there's just a lot more sleeping around in Africa among heterosexuals. Afterall, the reason the homosexual HIV rates are so high is because gay men tend to have a lot of sexual partners.
The important thing to keep in mind here is that, if you ignore the homosexual male population, the rates of HIV infection among heterosexual women is naturally higher than the HIV infection rate among heterosexual men.
I'd bet it's hard to break-even once you've done the work of converting them. First, almost nobody is going to pay $60 for them, like people did decades ago. The bar for computer games has been raised, and the market is full of people trying to sell games. (It's also possible that the developers of those old games created them because they liked making games, even if the pay was bad. For someone wanting to make a decent living-wage, this type of game might not be the way to go - i.e. only create them if you've got lots of interest, a day-job, and lots of free time.) Second, it's hard to find your target audience. A few years back, I had written a strategy-wargame ( http://www.empiresofsteel.com/ ) which was inspired in many ways by an old computer game called "Empire" ( http://www.classicempire.com/ ). My revenue was nowhere near paying my development costs -- I recouped about 20%.
My publisher told me that strategy games are tough to make money on (unless you're Sid Meier, I assume). They published quite a few strategy games. They had a hard time figuring out a good way to market them that actually had a good ROI. At one point, I tried Google AdWords (because targeted advertising would work, wouldn't it?) I didn't make back the money I spent. My publisher had invested a bunch of money (a lot more than I did) promoting their games with Google AdWords, as well, because they wanted to test the targeted-advertising market. They eventually decided that they couldn't get a net-positive ROI from AdWords.
It's just a hard market out there. I suspect the only way to really make it as an indie developer is to make something super innovative and addictive (and get really lucky on top of it).
That's easy: nutrition. It's known that both intelligence and height are heritable. We also know that nutrition in childhood is also a factor for height (and most likely intelligence, as well). If you look at the average height of, say, Japanese people over the 20th century, you'll find that their height increased (on average) by several inches. Was this due to genetics? Or was this due to better nutrition (more specifically, more protein in their diet)? The fact that the Flynn effect happened (probably due to better nutrition) doesn't tell us anything about whether or not there is a genetic component to intelligence (just like the increasing height of Japanese people doesn't allow us to conclude that height isn't heritable).
Considering that the ISS does an orbit around the earth every 90 minutes, compared to the earth rotation every 24 hours, almost 95% of the motion you see is due to the ISS' orbiting the earth rather than the earth spinning on its axis.
You forgot to mention that Sebastian Anthony also submits his own articles to Slashdot in an attempt to get more page-views - i.e. Ad revenue. He's had other articles appear on Slashdot using this strategy. I wouldn't be surprised if this post is another example of that.
Really? Here's a fact-check. Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?
"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list."
In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.
How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, and it wasn't entirely to democrats - 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?
"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list."
In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.
How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Imagine this: A poor person goes to an auction where they sell something that rich people really want. The rich don't want this. They mount a psy-ops campaign to convince poor people that it will never work because there's only two possible outcomes, and both of them are bad for rich people: (1) if the poor people don't manage to out-bid them, it'll still drive up the price for the rich people, (2) the poor people might actually manage to outbid them. It's important to nip the whole idea in the bud - convince people that it'll serve no good purpose, because killing hope is the best way of undermining both of those "bad" outcomes. Congratulations, Todd Palin.
By the way, an election isn't like an auction. It isn't always won by the person with the most money. Hell, one of the Koch brothers tried to run for vice-president on the Libertarian ticket back in the 1980s, and failed miserably. It just goes to show that winning elections isn't based on some deterministic function based on the amount of money you throw at it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
My first thought reading that was, "I'd take that quote with a grain of salt". Unless they actually have a full audio recording (with context) of it being said, I'm just going to assume it's he-said-she-said crap (i.e. it didn't happen or it was in a larger context that made more sense - like "scanning physical mail and sending photographs in digital format is a fad", which makes a lot of sense, since it seems like the final result will be a complete shift to email).
"Kildall, who passed away in 1994... I think if he were around for the open-source movement, he would be such a huge proponent of it."
Doesn't the open-source movement go back to the 1970s? Admittedly, I'm not sure how easy it would be to get involved with open-source projects (other than open-sourcing your own private projects) before the age of the internet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
And people still assert this is in spite of decades of the Flynn Effect.
Here's the thing: the Flynn effect seems to be a real thing, but the Flynn effect seems to have stopped in the past decade or two in developed countries. "Recent research suggests that the Flynn effect may have ended in at least a few developed nations, possibly allowing national differences in IQ scores[4] to diminish if the Flynn effect continues in nations with lower average national IQs." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
There's even been some reports that IQs have begun declining in developed countries. (I wouldn't put too much stock in this just yet, but it might be a good indicator that the Flynn Effect is a relic of the 20th century.)
Scores on cognitive tests have been very widely reported to have increased through the decades of the last century, a generational phenomenon termed the ‘Flynn Effect’since it was most comprehensively documented by James Flynn in the 1980's. There has, however, been very little evidence concerning any continuity of the effect specifically into the present century. We here report data from a population, namely young adult males in Denmark, showing that whereas there were modest increases between 1988 and 1998 in scores on a battery of four cognitive tests–these constituting a diminishing continuation of a trend documented back to the late 1950's–scores on all four tests declined between 1998 and 2003/2004. For two of the tests, levels fell to below those of 1988. Across all tests, the decrease in the 5/6 year period corresponds to approximately 1.5 IQ points, very close to the net gain between 1988 and 1998. The declines between 1998 and 2003/4 appeared amongst both men pursuing higher academic education and those not doing so.
There's an important genetic component to intelligence, but everything we've see recently suggests fetal development, nutrition, and education make such tremendously larger difference that the "idiocricy effect" could at most be considered a momentary blip.
Or maybe we should treat the Flynn Effect as a momentary blip.
So, what's going on? One possibility is that, in poorer countries, a substantial portion of the population is failing to get sufficient nutrition and stimulation to their children. This would have the effect of creating a portion of the population which is cognitively harmed - thus reducing the average intelligence of the population as a whole. As you get better nutrition across the entire population, you see the average IQ increase - but only because the bottom segments of society are improving (not because everyone is improving).
This would explain why poorer countries are continuing to see Flynn-effect improvements, but developed countries saw it's effect in the mid-20th century but isn't seeing any improvements lately (because the poverty that was harming childrens' brain development isn't happening anymore in developed countries).
Whatever the case, it's time to stop relying on the "Flynn Effect" as some kind of prediction that our future will continue to be bright. Here's an analogy: in the 20th century, we saw the average height of Japanese people increase significantly. This was due to better nutrition (protein, in particular, during childhood is important). We can also say that height is a strongly heritable trait. At this point, I think we should just accept that the Flynn Effect has topped-out in developed countries.
I don't think questions about declining IQs based on genetics is a bad question to ask, and I don't think 'trust the flynn effect' should be treated like it's an adequate answer. I realize I could be opening a whole can of worms, though, with this comment, becau
'If a student wants football and Greek life and not doing any work for class, they have every single Ivy League university to choose from,' Nelson says.
Yeah, I'm sure that's an accurate portrayal of Ivy League schools, and not some capitalist's attempt at devaluing the competition.
That's not actually true. There are a lot more males working as prostitutes in the developed world than people realize.
"Most astonishing to the researchers was the demographic profile teased out by the study. Published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2008, Curtis and Dank's findings thoroughly obliterated long-held assumptions about underage prostitution: Nearly half of the kids — about 45 percent — were boys."
http://www.westword.com/2011-1...
On the related topic of sex trafficing, here's an article:
"In my visit to Care Corner Orphanage in Thailand I was shocked that most of the HIV-infected sex slave survivors were boys under the age of ten. I saw and learned of something similar in the Philippines and in Bangladesh. Upon reflection, I think part of the reason for my shock was because I was conditioned through the media, literature, photo and film to believe that this was a crime perpetrated against only girls and women. The photo above actually came from a video released a few days ago by Reuters titled The Trafficking Business in which the entire focus is females as victims and how millions of them are forced into the sex trade or sweat shops. While not untrue, it’s not painting a full picture either.
Speaking broadly on the topic of human trafficking – boys and men are trafficked far more than girls and women because, in part, strong bodies are needed for labor. And as it relates to sex trafficking, girls and women are victims to a larger extent. Many other crimes have such disparities but few place the disparity so high in their definition. All this is to say let’s define human trafficking and sex trafficking for what they are: horrific crimes against the most vulnerable populations. There are loads of ways to be vulnerable. Yes, one of many vulnerabilities is being a woman. ...
As I mentioned in The Other 20%, men raping boys is still a taboo topic. Even filmmakers who document the horrors of sex trafficking have told me they feel their work wouldn’t be accepted if it instead highlighted the abuse of boys. “The public isn’t ready for it,” I’ve been told. Truth is, we only speak about the victimization of boys when it’s forced on us by breaking-news scandals like those of Jerry Sandusky or The Boys Scouts of America. As the news story fades so too does the conversation. This makes it tough, then, to even entertain the idea of discussing, as I’ve heard from several high-ranking women in anti-trafficking organizations, that the sex traffickers, the actual criminals in the crime, are about 65% men. Such a statistic has a hard time taking root because there’s already the perceived and ingrained idea that men and men-only are the criminals."
http://goodmenproject.com/feat...
Women are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic abuse.
When asked, "Has your significant other hit you within the last month?", men and women are about equally likely to reply to that question with "yes". The difference is that women are more likely to be severely injured (because men are stronger) and women are more likely to be taken seriously as victims of domestic abuse. There's a prevailing belief that men should be capable of defending themselves - which leads to dismissal of female-on-male domestic violence, shame, and an unwillingness to admit that they are victims of domestic abuse.
"The Guardian: More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals"
Campaign group Parity claims assaults by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media http://www.theguardian.com/soc...
On The Media just put out some audio on this topic. They came to the conclusion that politicians on both sides (Democrat and Republican) are using some really questionable numbers. Harry Reid (Democrat) claimed 10 million, while John Boehner (Republican) was claiming that there was a *decline* in the number of people with health insurance over the past three months.
http://www.onthemedia.org/stor... (7 minutes)
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the thing: individual energy use is fairly insignificant. Turning off the light leads to a miniscule reduction of total energy use because: residential energy use is only 14% of humanity's total energy use [ Source: http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/... ], you are just 1 person out of 1 billion people living in the developed world (i.e. people with high-energy consumption), and turning off a light or two leads to a small reduction in your individual use. In other words: a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.
If people are concerned about global warming and humanity's energy use, you can do totally ineffective things like turning off a light or two more often, or you can push for more effective means of curbing global emissions: change the source of our energy (for residential energy, industrial/commercial energy, and transportation), push for more energy-efficient devices (e.g. a lot of Western European countries use about half as much energy per-capita as the US), and throw taxes on carbon-based energy sources to influence consumers via their pocketbook and influence the market towards forms of energy without all those carbon-emission externalities.
I can see that the conservatives are out in droves on this Slashdot story, flaunting their ignorance and conspiracy theories. You guys should really be ashamed of yourselves because you're only making yourselves look like cavemen.
I can't find the article right now, but I've read that porn studios have seen a revenue drop of something like 50%. From what I've heard, they're very concerned about it.
That's a nice theory, but you haven't addressed the elephant in the room: virtually all resumes for tech jobs are from white men. I don't even know how they came up with this 35% number. I've never worked at a tech company where 1/3rd of the technical workers were women (usually, HR is very female and that's about it). I think my Comp Sci classes were around 90-95% male.
Wow. That article is all over the place. I swear some three-sentence paragraphs had three different thoughts. I think part of the problem with these kinds of essays is that guys get tired of being blamed for everything. (For comparison, just try to think back to any mainstream article that blamed women for anything.) That's why guys are always getting defensive - because guys are always getting the blame. Rather than this essay, I recommend Mark Manson's article: http://markmanson.net/school-s...
Where the Pirate Bay was started. They seem to have quite a few freeloading idiots who feel they shouldn't have to pay for things, and don't understand how economics works.
The *should* in that original sentence is a bit excessive, but it's true that many men are fine working by themselves, while women tend to like working with other people -- have you ever noticed that female-dominated jobs tend to be jobs interacting with other people (e.g. nurse, teacher) and get people-related degrees (e.g. communications, psychology, sociology, education, ...)?
The only way that ice can be below sea level is if it's pushed down by something. In this case, the ice below sea level is pushed down by ice on top of it. (Which is why an iceberg is 90% below water and 10% above water.)
> "Since water uses more volume as ice than as a liquid, the amount of liquid held in the bowl, should be more than the amount of ice it previously had, before melting."
I think the mistake that you're making is that you think there are icebergs which are below the surface of the water, but they are less dense than the water. Of course, this can't happen. It's like having a helium-filled balloon that falls to the floor, even though helium is less dense than the surrounding atmosphere.
You have to take into account the fact that 10% is above water to begin with. As it turns out, those two things cancel out - i.e. the volume used up by ice which is below sea-level is exactly the volume of water that the a melted iceberg will use-up (after it's melted). This is the same principle used in ship-building: the weight of water which is displaced by a ship is equal to the weight of a ship. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... ) Similarly, the weight of water which is displaced by an iceberg is equal to the weight of an iceberg.
You can test this easily enough with a glass of water. Fill the glass with ice. Now, fill the glass to the brim with water. Some ice will stick out above the top of the glass (because ice is slightly lighter than water, so part of it will float above the surface of the water). Wait for it to melt. The water level will remain constant (it won't go down and it won't overflow).
> "Seems to me that the net result of this should be lower global sea level..."
No. That would only be true if you ignore the fact that some of the ice is located above sea-level. When you calculate all of it together, you'll find that ice in the water won't cause a sea-level change when it melts. (And the sea-level change that global warming people worry about is caused by ice melting which is currently located on top of land.)
Do you think that Antarctica is a continent floating on top of water?
Somehow, I imagine you sitting at home chain-smoking cigarettes and complaining about all those "chicken little" idiots who believe smoking causes cancer.
In the US, gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV cases. But, among heterosexuals, women outnumber men in the number of new HIV cases. For whatever reason (perhaps because semen sticks around longer in the vagina than female wetness stays around on the penis after sex), it's known that a woman's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive male is higher than the chances of a man's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive female. If I remember correctly, the chances of an infection are about double for women compared to men.
"Women have a much higher risk for getting HIV during vaginal sex without a condom than men do" - http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/ge...
You'll also note that, on the graph shown on this article, if you ignore the gay and bisexual men graphs (listed as "MSM" or "men who have sex with men"), women outnumber men in new infections. For example, in the US, about twice as many heterosexual black women (5300/year) are diagnosed with HIV each year as the number of heterosexual black males (2700/year).
Perhaps what's going on in Africa is that homosexual males are less likely to get HIV - because so many of them are in the closet or keep to a small number of sexual partners for fear of attacks. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Or maybe HIV is just so common in Africa that transmissions among heterosexuals has surpassed the homosexual rate (which, given the two risk factors of "gay" and "in Africa" has got to be putting homosexual HIV rates near 100%, but you can't get higher than 100%).
Or maybe there's just a lot more sleeping around in Africa among heterosexuals. Afterall, the reason the homosexual HIV rates are so high is because gay men tend to have a lot of sexual partners.
The important thing to keep in mind here is that, if you ignore the homosexual male population, the rates of HIV infection among heterosexual women is naturally higher than the HIV infection rate among heterosexual men.
I'd bet it's hard to break-even once you've done the work of converting them. First, almost nobody is going to pay $60 for them, like people did decades ago. The bar for computer games has been raised, and the market is full of people trying to sell games. (It's also possible that the developers of those old games created them because they liked making games, even if the pay was bad. For someone wanting to make a decent living-wage, this type of game might not be the way to go - i.e. only create them if you've got lots of interest, a day-job, and lots of free time.) Second, it's hard to find your target audience. A few years back, I had written a strategy-wargame ( http://www.empiresofsteel.com/ ) which was inspired in many ways by an old computer game called "Empire" ( http://www.classicempire.com/ ). My revenue was nowhere near paying my development costs -- I recouped about 20%.
My publisher told me that strategy games are tough to make money on (unless you're Sid Meier, I assume). They published quite a few strategy games. They had a hard time figuring out a good way to market them that actually had a good ROI. At one point, I tried Google AdWords (because targeted advertising would work, wouldn't it?) I didn't make back the money I spent. My publisher had invested a bunch of money (a lot more than I did) promoting their games with Google AdWords, as well, because they wanted to test the targeted-advertising market. They eventually decided that they couldn't get a net-positive ROI from AdWords.
It's just a hard market out there. I suspect the only way to really make it as an indie developer is to make something super innovative and addictive (and get really lucky on top of it).
That's easy: nutrition. It's known that both intelligence and height are heritable. We also know that nutrition in childhood is also a factor for height (and most likely intelligence, as well). If you look at the average height of, say, Japanese people over the 20th century, you'll find that their height increased (on average) by several inches. Was this due to genetics? Or was this due to better nutrition (more specifically, more protein in their diet)? The fact that the Flynn effect happened (probably due to better nutrition) doesn't tell us anything about whether or not there is a genetic component to intelligence (just like the increasing height of Japanese people doesn't allow us to conclude that height isn't heritable).
Considering that the ISS does an orbit around the earth every 90 minutes, compared to the earth rotation every 24 hours, almost 95% of the motion you see is due to the ISS' orbiting the earth rather than the earth spinning on its axis.
I've said it before: Sebastian Anthony is submitting his own articles to Slashdot to get page views. Stop giving this guy ad-revenue money.
You forgot to mention that Sebastian Anthony also submits his own articles to Slashdot in an attempt to get more page-views - i.e. Ad revenue. He's had other articles appear on Slashdot using this strategy. I wouldn't be surprised if this post is another example of that.
Really? Here's a fact-check. Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?
"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list." In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.
How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Really?
Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, and it wasn't entirely to democrats - 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?
"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list."
In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.
How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Imagine this: A poor person goes to an auction where they sell something that rich people really want. The rich don't want this. They mount a psy-ops campaign to convince poor people that it will never work because there's only two possible outcomes, and both of them are bad for rich people: (1) if the poor people don't manage to out-bid them, it'll still drive up the price for the rich people, (2) the poor people might actually manage to outbid them. It's important to nip the whole idea in the bud - convince people that it'll serve no good purpose, because killing hope is the best way of undermining both of those "bad" outcomes. Congratulations, Todd Palin.
By the way, an election isn't like an auction. It isn't always won by the person with the most money. Hell, one of the Koch brothers tried to run for vice-president on the Libertarian ticket back in the 1980s, and failed miserably. It just goes to show that winning elections isn't based on some deterministic function based on the amount of money you throw at it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
My first thought reading that was, "I'd take that quote with a grain of salt". Unless they actually have a full audio recording (with context) of it being said, I'm just going to assume it's he-said-she-said crap (i.e. it didn't happen or it was in a larger context that made more sense - like "scanning physical mail and sending photographs in digital format is a fad", which makes a lot of sense, since it seems like the final result will be a complete shift to email).
Doesn't the open-source movement go back to the 1970s? Admittedly, I'm not sure how easy it would be to get involved with open-source projects (other than open-sourcing your own private projects) before the age of the internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
Here's the thing: the Flynn effect seems to be a real thing, but the Flynn effect seems to have stopped in the past decade or two in developed countries. "Recent research suggests that the Flynn effect may have ended in at least a few developed nations, possibly allowing national differences in IQ scores[4] to diminish if the Flynn effect continues in nations with lower average national IQs." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
There's even been some reports that IQs have begun declining in developed countries. (I wouldn't put too much stock in this just yet, but it might be a good indicator that the Flynn Effect is a relic of the 20th century.)
http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe...
Or maybe we should treat the Flynn Effect as a momentary blip.
So, what's going on? One possibility is that, in poorer countries, a substantial portion of the population is failing to get sufficient nutrition and stimulation to their children. This would have the effect of creating a portion of the population which is cognitively harmed - thus reducing the average intelligence of the population as a whole. As you get better nutrition across the entire population, you see the average IQ increase - but only because the bottom segments of society are improving (not because everyone is improving).
This would explain why poorer countries are continuing to see Flynn-effect improvements, but developed countries saw it's effect in the mid-20th century but isn't seeing any improvements lately (because the poverty that was harming childrens' brain development isn't happening anymore in developed countries).
Whatever the case, it's time to stop relying on the "Flynn Effect" as some kind of prediction that our future will continue to be bright. Here's an analogy: in the 20th century, we saw the average height of Japanese people increase significantly. This was due to better nutrition (protein, in particular, during childhood is important). We can also say that height is a strongly heritable trait. At this point, I think we should just accept that the Flynn Effect has topped-out in developed countries.
I don't think questions about declining IQs based on genetics is a bad question to ask, and I don't think 'trust the flynn effect' should be treated like it's an adequate answer. I realize I could be opening a whole can of worms, though, with this comment, becau
Yeah, I'm sure that's an accurate portrayal of Ivy League schools, and not some capitalist's attempt at devaluing the competition.
Why wouldn't it be foreshadowing if, at some point in the future, the bullied kid in the story got a gun and shot his bullies?
That's not actually true. There are a lot more males working as prostitutes in the developed world than people realize.
...
"Most astonishing to the researchers was the demographic profile teased out by the study. Published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2008, Curtis and Dank's findings thoroughly obliterated long-held assumptions about underage prostitution: Nearly half of the kids — about 45 percent — were boys." http://www.westword.com/2011-1...
On the related topic of sex trafficing, here's an article:
"In my visit to Care Corner Orphanage in Thailand I was shocked that most of the HIV-infected sex slave survivors were boys under the age of ten. I saw and learned of something similar in the Philippines and in Bangladesh. Upon reflection, I think part of the reason for my shock was because I was conditioned through the media, literature, photo and film to believe that this was a crime perpetrated against only girls and women. The photo above actually came from a video released a few days ago by Reuters titled The Trafficking Business in which the entire focus is females as victims and how millions of them are forced into the sex trade or sweat shops. While not untrue, it’s not painting a full picture either.
Speaking broadly on the topic of human trafficking – boys and men are trafficked far more than girls and women because, in part, strong bodies are needed for labor. And as it relates to sex trafficking, girls and women are victims to a larger extent. Many other crimes have such disparities but few place the disparity so high in their definition. All this is to say let’s define human trafficking and sex trafficking for what they are: horrific crimes against the most vulnerable populations. There are loads of ways to be vulnerable. Yes, one of many vulnerabilities is being a woman.
As I mentioned in The Other 20%, men raping boys is still a taboo topic. Even filmmakers who document the horrors of sex trafficking have told me they feel their work wouldn’t be accepted if it instead highlighted the abuse of boys. “The public isn’t ready for it,” I’ve been told. Truth is, we only speak about the victimization of boys when it’s forced on us by breaking-news scandals like those of Jerry Sandusky or The Boys Scouts of America. As the news story fades so too does the conversation. This makes it tough, then, to even entertain the idea of discussing, as I’ve heard from several high-ranking women in anti-trafficking organizations, that the sex traffickers, the actual criminals in the crime, are about 65% men. Such a statistic has a hard time taking root because there’s already the perceived and ingrained idea that men and men-only are the criminals." http://goodmenproject.com/feat...
When asked, "Has your significant other hit you within the last month?", men and women are about equally likely to reply to that question with "yes". The difference is that women are more likely to be severely injured (because men are stronger) and women are more likely to be taken seriously as victims of domestic abuse. There's a prevailing belief that men should be capable of defending themselves - which leads to dismissal of female-on-male domestic violence, shame, and an unwillingness to admit that they are victims of domestic abuse.
"The Guardian: More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals"
Campaign group Parity claims assaults by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media
http://www.theguardian.com/soc...
On The Media just put out some audio on this topic. They came to the conclusion that politicians on both sides (Democrat and Republican) are using some really questionable numbers. Harry Reid (Democrat) claimed 10 million, while John Boehner (Republican) was claiming that there was a *decline* in the number of people with health insurance over the past three months. http://www.onthemedia.org/stor... (7 minutes)