I understand that many may not need much math in their day-to-day work, but I think society as a whole would benefit greatly from a better understanding of math(and logic as well). I agree that the higher-level concepts may not be necessary, but perhaps a general class about the application of math to life would be useful?
A lot of people don't know how to budget properly. They don't know how to calculate compound interest rates for retirement, how and where to save in proportion to thir need, how to pay down debt for maximum efficiency. They see big numbers and have no idea how to get those numbers into perspective. They get scared off by numbers and are too afraid to peek at the federal budget and get a real understanding of how much money is "a lot" of money. Statistics can mislead people who don't understand how easily statistics are manipulated. We're all connected in this society in one way or another, and if we lose proficiency in math, our society will suffer in many small but significant ways.
Many tax professionals have been clamoring for exactly this, but unfortunately taxes are the product of an intersection between theory, necessity, and politics.
Those tax breaks have come about through specific agendas set forth by both parties. Each party has certain behaviors that they want to make easier, or incentivize. While the tax code is complex, the individual pieces were put in place for a reason. Tax reform would require Congress to reset all the small political victories that they’ve won over their years for the groups who support them. The first thing they’d bargain for in return for voting for a reform, is to make sure that the reform retains their particular tax legislation victorywhich defeats the purpose of the reform.
This is a problem that is truly party-agnostic, and really is just a product of our democratic republic. We vote or donate to those who would promote our interests, and they in turn advocate on behalf of those who keep them in power. It's just the way it all works out.
The legal system works the same way. Insanely complex, but somebody somewhere felt they had good reason for writing the law that way at the time.
At this point, tax reform can only hope for the simple removal of redundancies, laws that just aren't relevant to anything anymore.
That graph shows the US as having a 40% corporate tax rate.
This tells the reader that the graph is meaningless because no corporation actually pays their statutory rate (That'd wipe out the entire tax accounting profession!). The US tax code relatively speaking, is jam-packed with tax breaks. A lot of companies do business in the US because the actual tax they pay is not that scary. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08950.pdf
The GAO estimates average corporate income tax to be ~25%.
Corporations know what their effective tax rate is (because they have to pay it!). Part of the due diligence in setting up a corporation in the US is tax planning to determine what the actual tax impact will be. Any corporation large enough to have an accountant (i.e just about any corporation larger than one-person) is taking advantages of these tax breaks. Perhaps not all, depending on the experience of their accountant(s), but they will have no problem identifying the majority of their tax savings.
So if someone tells you that the US has high corporate tax and says that it's at 40%, they are either unaware of the effective tax rate, or they are deliberately trying to spin the issue with misleading information.
The government and IRS are well aware of these tax loopholes. The court system is also, and landmark court cases have established precedent that essentially says, "Taxpayers(corporations in this case) will not be blamed for trying to minimize their tax exposure." the remainder of the judge's opinion explained that you only have to pay the taxes you owe, and the taxpayer has no obligation to pay more than that. This is essentially placing the responsibility of extracting additional tax revenue upon congress. If Congress wants companies to pay more taxes, they need to structure the tax code such that more taxes will be due.
But Congress knows how much money it's getting, and how much tax is being avoided. The only part that matters in the end is how much tax revenue collected. If Congress wanted to stop these transfer payments, they could simply legislate tax law to do so. As noted in the artcile, google filed this tax plan in advance to get pre-approval for it (a common practice for companies getting into these complex transfer price structures).
Closing a tax loophole is effectively equivalent to an increase in tax. Congress would never close all of them at once without simultaneously lowering corporate taxes to achieve either an equivalent or similar effective level in the end. Otherwise, there would be a corporate exodus as taxes rise suddenly and astronomically. (How high taxes ought to be is a separate issue)
Essentially, the tax loopholes are not secret escapes, but just another part of the unnecessarily complex landscape of tax code that is due for new reform to ensure sensible and clear tax application.
That's a silly argument. A single student in the class turning into an attacker invalidates the educational process?
Shit, I'm sure some TV shows or movies have been used as a reason for violence, but I don't think we should ban TV or movies.
I definitely believe there is indeed an acceptable casualty rate for certain freedoms.
Look, even in middle-school, pre-911, without being asked. I had worked out that with enough savings, I could take a knife, stab random strangers and ride across America on an unstoppable pattern-less killing spree. This strategy still rings true in the age of terrorism. This doesn't happen because I'm not a batshit crazy murderer, not because anybody can stop me, or because I didn't think about it.
If the teacher was advocating terrorism, then there is a problem, but just trying to get kids to think and gain perspective is a worthwhile cause (Even if he probably could have accomplished it with a less inflammatory method).
It's not restricted to criminal actions, disincentive judgements can occur in civil suits as well. (The burden of proof is relaxed in civil court as opposed to criminal)
There's compensatory damage (as you described, for compensation), and beyond that is punitive damage (for punishment). Punitive damages are harder to get because it's mostly restricted to intentional damage.
Recent research says that "phytosteroids" in spinach improves muscle growth but I consider any new research with big claims to be bullshit until enough time has passed for it to be vetted.
In general, it really does have a lot of nutrition and a lot of flavor. If you've gotta eat your leafy greens, might as well down some tasty spinach. Raw is good. Cooking enables better digestion. I like to just wilt them a bit rather than render them down into goo.
Yeah, the security companies don't do anything for you because they're not THERE to do anything about the robbery in progress. The cops aren't going to do anything but take notes after the robbery is over because they're not THERE to do anything about the robbery in progress.
1) A gun 2) motion-detection system with an alarm. 3) A dog would work in the same way, but that's a lot of upkeep.
Just hope you don't get robbed, and be prepared to shoot anyone that does rob you (If you want to take the extra risk you can try to warn them before shooting). Nobody else will help you because they're all too late.
Precisely! This sort of thing is why I get so damn nervous when somebody takes my credit card. Waiters charging a card at the back, or reception making a photocopy of my card in the backroom. Credit cards should at least have pin numbers. Even for online purchases. It wouldn't be too much trouble for them to place a hold on my card, then for me to go release payment after logging into my credit card account. When they receive the payment, then they ship the product/start their service.
Far far far superior to only needing to read the numbers off the front, and the last 3 off the back. Weak security is at least a step up from no security at all.
I wish they could offer the same thing for in-person or over-the-phone purchases. I really don't like having to hand over my credit card to strangers. Perhaps one day security technology will catch up. Anybody could easily come up with a half-dozen ways to improve security in the process. Sure there are obstacles for implementation, but they're far from insurmountable. It seems like the risks and occurrences have to get worse before they get better.
You can face the same issues even when attending school in person.
The educational benefit you reap will always rely on how much you want to extract from it. Motivated individuals can get competitive educations from crappy schools from their efforts on their own time. They can do this by just buying the books on their own without a college program. Others need college programs to guide their studies and their education.
The college offers a degree, its reputation, and its network. If these aren't useful to your career, then attending that college may have limited benefit.
FYI, this is exactly how Dead Space came to exist. They made 1 level, pitched it, and they came back and told them to make the rest of the game.
Force Unleashed developers did something similar, they animated conceptual scenes for Lucas to look at that demonstrated how the resulting game should feel. It wasn't interactive, but the idea is the same, try to get them to see what the final game will look like by using one complete picture.
You get 1 piece of the game prepared. Get all the core things working just for this single scenario, and show them what the final product looks like in this one scenario.
It's up to you how detailed you want it to be, but the idea is to get it as close as you can to the final product. It's hard to get everything in a working status so pick your scenario carefully to avoid complex problems in implementation (Don't generate tough pathing, excessively detailed environments, game-breaking dilemmas).
Get that working and the investor can imagine what the actual game might be like. The less he has to imagine, the easier it is to invest. Also, and/most importantly/ it shows that you are organized and disciplined enough to produce a working product top to bottom. One of the biggest risks for new games is developers who don't know how to finish something. They get caught up in the big fun ideas and forget about critical details like making it work and meeting a deadline.
OTOH, it either restrains consumption of oil, or increases investment in alternate energy.
When it gets more expensive, people find ways of using less oil to cut costs. When oil prices flew past $100/barrel, people drove 20% less. There is a certain point where you just/have/ to buy oil because you don't have any alternative.
But when it gets relatively expensive, having an alternative energy source sounds like a better and better idea. Investment money flows into research and we get to viable alternatives faster.
I don't expect global collapse from a peak oil crisis because as prices for oil go up, alternative energy investment goes up. HOWEVER, if oil supply runs out quickly before we have viable alternatives, that's when we run into severe issues. In a way, having the supply of oil restricted may be good for us all in the end, even though it depresses economic efficiency.
Those OPEC countries will be pretty screwed once we break free from oil-dependency. Their economies are horribly unbalanced in favor of oil. Even small falls in the price of oil will destroy them because they haven't diversified into other industries.
No worries, they would only would only stop people if they have "reasonable" suspicion. As long as you make sure you appear reasonably white you'll be fine.
You're not convinced of this, but you spend the entire post providing a pretty reasonable explanation of why you should be convinced that the incidence of pedophilia is higher in the priesthood than in the general community.
The contention quoted in the post isn't that priests have a predisposition to diddling kids, just a higher incidence rate. Describing conditions that might induce normal people into that kind of behavior doesn't argue against the possibility of a higher incidence rate.
Evolutionary psychologists would say that it's a holdover from tribal societies. By supporting your own group, you can improve your chances of survival when the group comes to support you at a time of need. The definition of the group changes and can have multiple levels. For example, support for local institutions, support for my country, support for my race, etc. Some people even identify with their college or their favorite sport teams.
When I see a homeless old woman of the same race as me, I imagine that she could have been my grandmother and I might buy her a sandwich. If it's an old woman from a different race, I don't care as much. It's racist I know, I'm not proud of it either, but that's just the truth. If I see poor little black kids starving in the Hulu ads, I don't really care, but when the "1 in 8" program for feeding hungry Americans comes on, I find myself sympathizing.
As for the limbless, they're weird because their body doesn't conform to my mind's concept of normal human body. They become strange and alien, and a little scary due to the obvious reminder of the frailty of the human condition, specifically, my own. I'd rather have as little direct association with them as possible. Again, not proud of it, it's just the truth.
Every time I see someone bring up the question of "How much is a life worth?" I recall this event.
Ford was aware of a flaw in design that placed the fuel tank close to the rear bumper. This meant that relatively-low impact rear-end collisions would rupture the tank and set the car ablaze. The corrective action would involved installation of a dividing plate, however they measured the probability of occurence, the amount of potential losses in litigation, and the costs involved and decided that it just wasn't worth doing a recall.
Their reputation took a pretty severe hit, but it has more or less recovered since then(Toyota will be fine too in the end). When you see this, you have to imagine that some companies have made similar cost-benefit analysis regarding human lives and managed to avoid the same kind of publicity.
It can be argued that some companies valued the cost of a human life too little by reducing it to the amount of dollars involved in the lawsuit. Perhaps the cost benefit should be adjusted to involve the value of the life itself. However, when you put that number in, you've already established that there is a price on human life, and from that moment on, you're just haggling over how much.
At some point, there's a limit. Is a human life worth more than 1 million? I think many would say yes. 1 Billion? Probably not as many, but sure there'd be plenty. Multiple-billions? The number of people is going to drop. I think few people would argue that a life is worth 1 trillion dollars (assuming they have any notion of scale). After all, a trillion dollars could probably save many lives, just from the economic externalties alone, let alone what it might do if applied directly to life-saving measures.
Even more simply, calculate the cost of personal luxuries against the amount of donations needed to save a human life somewhere in the world. My American dollars can stretch pretty far in those desperate countries. But ultimately, that's not how I decide how much I give. There's a discount rate involved, not based upon time, but proximity. I'm not necessarily talking about literal physical distance, but mental immediacy. If the person in need is presented to me through video with a detailed documentary about how human this person is, I'm much more likely to sympathize and give money. Especially if that person looks similar to me.
But anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the initial statement by saying that human lives can be priced. An airplane carries quite a lot of people, and I think that number of people being lost simultaneously would certain be more damaging than few billion dollars. The government was just being cautious, which they should be. Those airlines are just fishing for money.
Sure, some parts are more useful for some than for others, but I think I've used everything taught from K-12 at one point or another. Perhaps they could find more effective ways of teaching and generating interest, but I think the current breadth of material should remain a minimum level of coverage.
I don't need to use music to earn my bread, but I am happy that I was exposed to it so that I can enjoy the personal value that it brings to me. Perhaps someone else will discover they're talented enough to make a living on it by bringing that value to others. I didn't need any math in my first job, but I definitely needed it in my second job(in an entirely new field).
Kids don't know what they need to learn, or even want they want to learn. We should make sure they can be exposed to these subjects so that they learn what they need to, and discover what they want to learn. After school gets out (at only 2:30pm!) their learning doesn't need to stop, and I think there's plenty of opportunity in the rest of the day for them to explore. The current academic burden on kids is much lighter than what they're capable of shouldering. My parents made sure I got lots of additional homework several grades ahead, but I still had plenty of free time for hobbies.
I think some kids could learn to love learning in a cash-reward system too.
Short-term rewards could motivate them to apply themselves to the material. Successfully applying themselves to the material may result in them discovering that it feels good to really know a subject. If they never try, they'll never know that it feels so good to excel.
I'm just speculating of course, but I think this is a reasonable possibility.
They're thinking, "Why would I want a job in the first place?"(they don't know what it's like to have to provide for themselves) "I don't have to go to work for another 4 years anyway, that's like forever!" (They're young and their awareness of time is extremely short)
Jobs are intangible and distant rewards. Not many people respond well to this kind of reward system.
If you can motivate them with intrinsic rewards, that'd be great, but failing that, motivating them with external rewards is better than not motivating them at all.
No offense, but I have trouble accepting the proposition that you can "have a life" while having copious amount of free time for gaming.
No wife interrupting you to get your opinion on what to eat for dinner? What to cook next week? What to paint the walls? Discuss the kid's behavior? Plan the weekend? No kids needing your help with study? Supervision? Company and/or affection? No friends calling to see what's up? Asking you to go out? Planning for the weekend? No relatives to visit? Or be visited by? No responsibilities like upkeep of your apartment, house, bills, etc. No exercise? And this is all taking place in the space between 5pm and 12pm since I've got to assume you're working through the day.
There's no need to have all of these items, but I just find it hard to imagine having none of them. When people talk about having a "life" they generally not referring to the state of being "alive". They mean having all these connections to things other than yourself.
Society should have class mobility I agree. It would be a shame for someone to never realize his true potential because he was never given the opportunity to realize it.
It's a problem that's already with us in the world today, but we have improved on it a great deal. Educational opportunity is the social equalizer of our times, but not all countries have produced 99% literacy and readily available public education. There are success stories like my teacher whose parents were migrant workers picking fruit, while she obtained a PHD and tenured position in a university and her sister became a lawyer. On the other hand, you have Ugandan children learning the alphabet from goat droppings shaped into letters on the ground(but it's good they are at least able to learn English!)
As for genetic engineering, the solution is similar. Provide public genetic engineering so everyone at least gets a basic foundation from which to leverage upward. It will be expensive and complex, but the public education system wasn't always around either. It won't be perfect, and neither is our public education system, because there are always the privileged few. I certainly wouldn't be where I am today if my parents weren't middle class. The roadblock for it in the future won't be economic, since given a long enough maturation period, we'll be able to do basic changes cheaply. It'll come down to politics in the end, since there are both strong pros and cons to consider.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that many may not need much math in their day-to-day work, but I think society as a whole would benefit greatly from a better understanding of math(and logic as well). I agree that the higher-level concepts may not be necessary, but perhaps a general class about the application of math to life would be useful?
A lot of people don't know how to budget properly. They don't know how to calculate compound interest rates for retirement, how and where to save in proportion to thir need, how to pay down debt for maximum efficiency. They see big numbers and have no idea how to get those numbers into perspective. They get scared off by numbers and are too afraid to peek at the federal budget and get a real understanding of how much money is "a lot" of money. Statistics can mislead people who don't understand how easily statistics are manipulated. We're all connected in this society in one way or another, and if we lose proficiency in math, our society will suffer in many small but significant ways.
Many tax professionals have been clamoring for exactly this, but unfortunately taxes are the product of an intersection between theory, necessity, and politics.
Those tax breaks have come about through specific agendas set forth by both parties. Each party has certain behaviors that they want to make easier, or incentivize. While the tax code is complex, the individual pieces were put in place for a reason. Tax reform would require Congress to reset all the small political victories that they’ve won over their years for the groups who support them. The first thing they’d bargain for in return for voting for a reform, is to make sure that the reform retains their particular tax legislation victorywhich defeats the purpose of the reform.
This is a problem that is truly party-agnostic, and really is just a product of our democratic republic. We vote or donate to those who would promote our interests, and they in turn advocate on behalf of those who keep them in power. It's just the way it all works out.
The legal system works the same way. Insanely complex, but somebody somewhere felt they had good reason for writing the law that way at the time.
At this point, tax reform can only hope for the simple removal of redundancies, laws that just aren't relevant to anything anymore.
That graph shows the US as having a 40% corporate tax rate.
This tells the reader that the graph is meaningless because no corporation actually pays their statutory rate (That'd wipe out the entire tax accounting profession!). The US tax code relatively speaking, is jam-packed with tax breaks. A lot of companies do business in the US because the actual tax they pay is not that scary.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08950.pdf
The GAO estimates average corporate income tax to be ~25%.
Corporations know what their effective tax rate is (because they have to pay it!). Part of the due diligence in setting up a corporation in the US is tax planning to determine what the actual tax impact will be. Any corporation large enough to have an accountant (i.e just about any corporation larger than one-person) is taking advantages of these tax breaks. Perhaps not all, depending on the experience of their accountant(s), but they will have no problem identifying the majority of their tax savings.
So if someone tells you that the US has high corporate tax and says that it's at 40%, they are either unaware of the effective tax rate, or they are deliberately trying to spin the issue with misleading information.
IAAA (I am an accountant).
The government and IRS are well aware of these tax loopholes. The court system is also, and landmark court cases have established precedent that essentially says, "Taxpayers(corporations in this case) will not be blamed for trying to minimize their tax exposure." the remainder of the judge's opinion explained that you only have to pay the taxes you owe, and the taxpayer has no obligation to pay more than that. This is essentially placing the responsibility of extracting additional tax revenue upon congress. If Congress wants companies to pay more taxes, they need to structure the tax code such that more taxes will be due.
But Congress knows how much money it's getting, and how much tax is being avoided. The only part that matters in the end is how much tax revenue collected. If Congress wanted to stop these transfer payments, they could simply legislate tax law to do so. As noted in the artcile, google filed this tax plan in advance to get pre-approval for it (a common practice for companies getting into these complex transfer price structures).
Closing a tax loophole is effectively equivalent to an increase in tax. Congress would never close all of them at once without simultaneously lowering corporate taxes to achieve either an equivalent or similar effective level in the end. Otherwise, there would be a corporate exodus as taxes rise suddenly and astronomically. (How high taxes ought to be is a separate issue)
Essentially, the tax loopholes are not secret escapes, but just another part of the unnecessarily complex landscape of tax code that is due for new reform to ensure sensible and clear tax application.
That's a silly argument. A single student in the class turning into an attacker invalidates the educational process?
Shit, I'm sure some TV shows or movies have been used as a reason for violence, but I don't think we should ban TV or movies.
I definitely believe there is indeed an acceptable casualty rate for certain freedoms.
Look, even in middle-school, pre-911, without being asked. I had worked out that with enough savings, I could take a knife, stab random strangers and ride across America on an unstoppable pattern-less killing spree. This strategy still rings true in the age of terrorism. This doesn't happen because I'm not a batshit crazy murderer, not because anybody can stop me, or because I didn't think about it.
If the teacher was advocating terrorism, then there is a problem, but just trying to get kids to think and gain perspective is a worthwhile cause (Even if he probably could have accomplished it with a less inflammatory method).
It's not restricted to criminal actions, disincentive judgements can occur in civil suits as well. (The burden of proof is relaxed in civil court as opposed to criminal)
There's compensatory damage (as you described, for compensation), and beyond that is punitive damage (for punishment). Punitive damages are harder to get because it's mostly restricted to intentional damage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_tort
List of nutrition and benefits:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=43
Recent research says that "phytosteroids" in spinach improves muscle growth but I consider any new research with big claims to be bullshit until enough time has passed for it to be vetted.
In general, it really does have a lot of nutrition and a lot of flavor. If you've gotta eat your leafy greens, might as well down some tasty spinach. Raw is good. Cooking enables better digestion. I like to just wilt them a bit rather than render them down into goo.
Yeah, the security companies don't do anything for you because they're not THERE to do anything about the robbery in progress. The cops aren't going to do anything but take notes after the robbery is over because they're not THERE to do anything about the robbery in progress.
1) A gun
2) motion-detection system with an alarm.
3) A dog would work in the same way, but that's a lot of upkeep.
Just hope you don't get robbed, and be prepared to shoot anyone that does rob you (If you want to take the extra risk you can try to warn them before shooting). Nobody else will help you because they're all too late.
Precisely! This sort of thing is why I get so damn nervous when somebody takes my credit card. Waiters charging a card at the back, or reception making a photocopy of my card in the backroom. Credit cards should at least have pin numbers. Even for online purchases. It wouldn't be too much trouble for them to place a hold on my card, then for me to go release payment after logging into my credit card account. When they receive the payment, then they ship the product/start their service.
Far far far superior to only needing to read the numbers off the front, and the last 3 off the back. Weak security is at least a step up from no security at all.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/07/09/1232214/Hotels-Lead-the-Industry-In-Credit-Card-Theft?from=rss
I love this service as well.
I wish they could offer the same thing for in-person or over-the-phone purchases. I really don't like having to hand over my credit card to strangers. Perhaps one day security technology will catch up. Anybody could easily come up with a half-dozen ways to improve security in the process. Sure there are obstacles for implementation, but they're far from insurmountable. It seems like the risks and occurrences have to get worse before they get better.
You can face the same issues even when attending school in person.
The educational benefit you reap will always rely on how much you want to extract from it. Motivated individuals can get competitive educations from crappy schools from their efforts on their own time. They can do this by just buying the books on their own without a college program. Others need college programs to guide their studies and their education.
The college offers a degree, its reputation, and its network. If these aren't useful to your career, then attending that college may have limited benefit.
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-pictures/
An examination of 7000 dating profiles, looking at the number of contacts from the opposite sex based on their picture.
Slashdotters, don't forget the standard caveats of examining the results of any study, but this is an interesting read nonetheless.
FYI, this is exactly how Dead Space came to exist. They made 1 level, pitched it, and they came back and told them to make the rest of the game.
Force Unleashed developers did something similar, they animated conceptual scenes for Lucas to look at that demonstrated how the resulting game should feel. It wasn't interactive, but the idea is the same, try to get them to see what the final game will look like by using one complete picture.
It's called the "vertical slice".
You get 1 piece of the game prepared. Get all the core things working just for this single scenario, and show them what the final product looks like in this one scenario.
It's up to you how detailed you want it to be, but the idea is to get it as close as you can to the final product. It's hard to get everything in a working status so pick your scenario carefully to avoid complex problems in implementation (Don't generate tough pathing, excessively detailed environments, game-breaking dilemmas).
Get that working and the investor can imagine what the actual game might be like. The less he has to imagine, the easier it is to invest. Also, and /most importantly/ it shows that you are organized and disciplined enough to produce a working product top to bottom. One of the biggest risks for new games is developers who don't know how to finish something. They get caught up in the big fun ideas and forget about critical details like making it work and meeting a deadline.
OTOH, it either restrains consumption of oil, or increases investment in alternate energy.
When it gets more expensive, people find ways of using less oil to cut costs. When oil prices flew past $100/barrel, people drove 20% less. There is a certain point where you just /have/ to buy oil because you don't have any alternative.
But when it gets relatively expensive, having an alternative energy source sounds like a better and better idea. Investment money flows into research and we get to viable alternatives faster.
I don't expect global collapse from a peak oil crisis because as prices for oil go up, alternative energy investment goes up. HOWEVER, if oil supply runs out quickly before we have viable alternatives, that's when we run into severe issues. In a way, having the supply of oil restricted may be good for us all in the end, even though it depresses economic efficiency.
Those OPEC countries will be pretty screwed once we break free from oil-dependency. Their economies are horribly unbalanced in favor of oil. Even small falls in the price of oil will destroy them because they haven't diversified into other industries.
No worries, they would only would only stop people if they have "reasonable" suspicion. As long as you make sure you appear reasonably white you'll be fine.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-26-2010/law---border
You're not convinced of this, but you spend the entire post providing a pretty reasonable explanation of why you should be convinced that the incidence of pedophilia is higher in the priesthood than in the general community.
The contention quoted in the post isn't that priests have a predisposition to diddling kids, just a higher incidence rate. Describing conditions that might induce normal people into that kind of behavior doesn't argue against the possibility of a higher incidence rate.
Evolutionary psychologists would say that it's a holdover from tribal societies. By supporting your own group, you can improve your chances of survival when the group comes to support you at a time of need. The definition of the group changes and can have multiple levels. For example, support for local institutions, support for my country, support for my race, etc. Some people even identify with their college or their favorite sport teams.
When I see a homeless old woman of the same race as me, I imagine that she could have been my grandmother and I might buy her a sandwich. If it's an old woman from a different race, I don't care as much. It's racist I know, I'm not proud of it either, but that's just the truth. If I see poor little black kids starving in the Hulu ads, I don't really care, but when the "1 in 8" program for feeding hungry Americans comes on, I find myself sympathizing.
As for the limbless, they're weird because their body doesn't conform to my mind's concept of normal human body. They become strange and alien, and a little scary due to the obvious reminder of the frailty of the human condition, specifically, my own. I'd rather have as little direct association with them as possible. Again, not proud of it, it's just the truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Safety_problems_and_scandal
Every time I see someone bring up the question of "How much is a life worth?" I recall this event.
Ford was aware of a flaw in design that placed the fuel tank close to the rear bumper. This meant that relatively-low impact rear-end collisions would rupture the tank and set the car ablaze. The corrective action would involved installation of a dividing plate, however they measured the probability of occurence, the amount of potential losses in litigation, and the costs involved and decided that it just wasn't worth doing a recall.
Their reputation took a pretty severe hit, but it has more or less recovered since then(Toyota will be fine too in the end). When you see this, you have to imagine that some companies have made similar cost-benefit analysis regarding human lives and managed to avoid the same kind of publicity.
It can be argued that some companies valued the cost of a human life too little by reducing it to the amount of dollars involved in the lawsuit. Perhaps the cost benefit should be adjusted to involve the value of the life itself. However, when you put that number in, you've already established that there is a price on human life, and from that moment on, you're just haggling over how much.
At some point, there's a limit. Is a human life worth more than 1 million? I think many would say yes. 1 Billion? Probably not as many, but sure there'd be plenty. Multiple-billions? The number of people is going to drop. I think few people would argue that a life is worth 1 trillion dollars (assuming they have any notion of scale). After all, a trillion dollars could probably save many lives, just from the economic externalties alone, let alone what it might do if applied directly to life-saving measures.
Even more simply, calculate the cost of personal luxuries against the amount of donations needed to save a human life somewhere in the world. My American dollars can stretch pretty far in those desperate countries. But ultimately, that's not how I decide how much I give. There's a discount rate involved, not based upon time, but proximity. I'm not necessarily talking about literal physical distance, but mental immediacy. If the person in need is presented to me through video with a detailed documentary about how human this person is, I'm much more likely to sympathize and give money. Especially if that person looks similar to me.
But anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the initial statement by saying that human lives can be priced. An airplane carries quite a lot of people, and I think that number of people being lost simultaneously would certain be more damaging than few billion dollars. The government was just being cautious, which they should be. Those airlines are just fishing for money.
Which part was useless?
Sure, some parts are more useful for some than for others, but I think I've used everything taught from K-12 at one point or another. Perhaps they could find more effective ways of teaching and generating interest, but I think the current breadth of material should remain a minimum level of coverage.
I don't need to use music to earn my bread, but I am happy that I was exposed to it so that I can enjoy the personal value that it brings to me. Perhaps someone else will discover they're talented enough to make a living on it by bringing that value to others. I didn't need any math in my first job, but I definitely needed it in my second job(in an entirely new field).
Kids don't know what they need to learn, or even want they want to learn. We should make sure they can be exposed to these subjects so that they learn what they need to, and discover what they want to learn. After school gets out (at only 2:30pm!) their learning doesn't need to stop, and I think there's plenty of opportunity in the rest of the day for them to explore. The current academic burden on kids is much lighter than what they're capable of shouldering. My parents made sure I got lots of additional homework several grades ahead, but I still had plenty of free time for hobbies.
I think some kids could learn to love learning in a cash-reward system too.
Short-term rewards could motivate them to apply themselves to the material. Successfully applying themselves to the material may result in them discovering that it feels good to really know a subject. If they never try, they'll never know that it feels so good to excel.
I'm just speculating of course, but I think this is a reasonable possibility.
They're thinking, "Why would I want a job in the first place?"(they don't know what it's like to have to provide for themselves) "I don't have to go to work for another 4 years anyway, that's like forever!" (They're young and their awareness of time is extremely short)
Jobs are intangible and distant rewards. Not many people respond well to this kind of reward system.
If you can motivate them with intrinsic rewards, that'd be great, but failing that, motivating them with external rewards is better than not motivating them at all.
No offense, but I have trouble accepting the proposition that you can "have a life" while having copious amount of free time for gaming.
No wife interrupting you to get your opinion on what to eat for dinner? What to cook next week? What to paint the walls? Discuss the kid's behavior? Plan the weekend?
No kids needing your help with study? Supervision? Company and/or affection?
No friends calling to see what's up? Asking you to go out? Planning for the weekend?
No relatives to visit? Or be visited by?
No responsibilities like upkeep of your apartment, house, bills, etc.
No exercise?
And this is all taking place in the space between 5pm and 12pm since I've got to assume you're working through the day.
There's no need to have all of these items, but I just find it hard to imagine having none of them. When people talk about having a "life" they generally not referring to the state of being "alive". They mean having all these connections to things other than yourself.
How many people are on at peak in the legitimate servers? It's important to know for the statistic to make any comparative sense.
The bulk of the game is oriented around large teams of players which are extremely hard to form without a large base to draw from.
Society should have class mobility I agree. It would be a shame for someone to never realize his true potential because he was never given the opportunity to realize it.
It's a problem that's already with us in the world today, but we have improved on it a great deal. Educational opportunity is the social equalizer of our times, but not all countries have produced 99% literacy and readily available public education. There are success stories like my teacher whose parents were migrant workers picking fruit, while she obtained a PHD and tenured position in a university and her sister became a lawyer. On the other hand, you have Ugandan children learning the alphabet from goat droppings shaped into letters on the ground(but it's good they are at least able to learn English!)
As for genetic engineering, the solution is similar. Provide public genetic engineering so everyone at least gets a basic foundation from which to leverage upward. It will be expensive and complex, but the public education system wasn't always around either. It won't be perfect, and neither is our public education system, because there are always the privileged few. I certainly wouldn't be where I am today if my parents weren't middle class. The roadblock for it in the future won't be economic, since given a long enough maturation period, we'll be able to do basic changes cheaply. It'll come down to politics in the end, since there are both strong pros and cons to consider.