That's about right. Why does the child molestation by members of a church make the news? I mean it's not usually something that makes it past the police report section of the newspaper. Given that the victim is, by definition, underage then there isn't usually a whole lot of detail that is released publicly to make a story. But because it's a follower of Christ therefore it's news.
There were dozens of incidents of rapes on New Year's Eve in Germany and did this make the news? Of course not, because the assailants were all Muslim immigrants. Rapes by Muslim immigrants in Europe is a serious problem and almost no one even knows about it. A Christian church elder "hacks" into the e-mail of a fellow professor and that's national news.
Then again, I think I figured out why Christians committing a felony is news, and Muslims committing a felony is not. Because a Christian elder breaking the law is rare, and a Muslim immigrant breaking the law is not. We report on what's rare, not on the common events. Just like we'll hear about a dozen people killed in a small town church but nothing about a dozen people killed in the same time frame in Chicago. People getting shot dead in a church is a rare event, getting shot dead in Chicago is not.
The fact that this person was a former Jeopardy champion, or the fact that she may have been recognized as an elder of some church is entirely irrelevant except insomuch as it might make some people who wouldn't otherwise give two shits about what this person did to instead click on the link to read about it.
I agree, somewhat. A former Jeopardy champion, and therefore a minor celebrity, breaking the law is perhaps news. A church elder breaking the law doesn't sound like news to me, how many people even know what a "church elder" does?
I'd think what would be more interesting of a headline is a college professor was caught trying to blackmail a fellow professor. I'd think a more appropriate headline would be, "Professor/'Jeopardy' Champ Caught Hacking College E-mails", or something like that. I'm sure some pedant might not like my grammar in my example but it's a headline, I'm trying to keep it short. Being a Jeopardy champ shows this is something of a famous person, and the mention of being a professor shows the relationship to the victim, the college where she worked.
I'll occasionally hear on the radio about some legal troubles of a local guy that was also on some game show. I don't care enough to remember the guy's name or what show he was on but it seems someone cares or it would not be news.
It's a measure of education. If you only barely know how to read, it's going to affect how well you understand the question being presented. IQ is intended to measure strictly raw capability rather than training/knowledge.
A reading comprehension test involves the one examined to read a paragraph or three and then answer questions based on the information contained within. The words used are very basic and in the language the person presumably already knows. So, yes, there is a basic level of prior knowledge of the language in which the test was written to take this test but the questions will be based not on anything known prior but was in the text given.
I remember some of these tests I've taken in the past, one involved a short biology lesson on how the body turns sunlight into vitamin D and another had a short lesson on the history of road construction. Everything I needed to know to answer the questions were in the text. I guess that the people taking the test had to know what sunlight was and what a road is but that's very basic knowledge one would have to know to get to that point of testing for intelligence. This is not the kind of intelligence exam that would be given to someone that did not speak the language at perhaps a grade school level but calling these tests a measure of prior knowledge and not intelligence is far from correct. All of these tests are timed and so it measures one's ability to gather information, process it, and relate that back. The time it takes to complete and the correctness of the answers measures one's intelligence.
If a person barely knows how to read then there are still IQ tests that can accurately measure one's verbal ability. This can use a made up language, pictures to go along with the words, verbal instructions, and so on. I've taken those kinds of tests too. Depending on the intent of the intelligence test these can be taken with very little grasp of one's native language.
There's no question that there's correlations between IQ and skin colour, the question is whether that's the characteristic of the ethnicity or race or due to socio-economic factors.
Does it matter what the cause might be? If we can show that people of a different ethnic background have a higher tendency to commit crimes then shouldn't that be considered when predicting criminal behavior?
Let's assume we can prove that starbelly sneetches have a statistically significant higher criminal tendency for re-offending, compared to sneetches without stars on their bellies. If we catch a few sneetches committing crimes and we only have room for perhaps half of them then shouldn't we look to see if they have a star on their belly as part of the decision to release them? There will be other factors as well, like age, prior record, and so on. It may turn out that we let all the sneetches with stars on their bellies go because the sneetches without stars have prior records and such that says they'd be a greater risk.
Locking up sneetches without stars to avoid hurting the feelings of the starbelly sneetches is still racism.
They won't do that because you'd be denying people bail for being dumb. Anyway, you're probably not getting useful data because we're already dealing with convicted criminals and we have data on their criminal history.
Denying bail for scoring poorly in an IQ test is not denying them just because they are dumb. Bail would be denied because we know low IQ correlates to criminal behavior. Don't call it an IQ test, call it a personality test. People that score poorly will show to have the personality traits of a tendency to re-offend.
From what I read there are personality aspects that indicate criminal tendencies but those can be "gamed" for people that learn what the test is doing. An intelligence test is very hard to game. Have personality as part of the test too, as that might be useful. Have the test be part of a medical exam, where people that score poorly have to remain for "medical observation".
The point is that we have a pile of evidence that criminal behavior and intelligence are highly correlated. It's not a perfect indicator, and nothing is, but it should be part of the decision process as it is highly likely to improve results.
But the thing that will get you labelled racist is you took a discussion about a really crappy software product, jumped completely past the discussion of racial bias, and instead entered a bizarrely long discussion on the low IQs of certain minorities.
Well, you just pointed out why we can't have a rational discussion of the correlation on intelligence to crime. To have this discussion we will have to admit to ourselves that some ethnic backgrounds will tend to have a lower average IQ. This correlation will appear at some point and then cries of racism come up and the discussion ends. We cannot solve this problem until we can identify it.
If we can show that intelligence correlates to criminal behavior, and the testing can be shown to be applied equally, and it happens to catch more dark skinned people then we are just going to have to look at the data instead of the skin color. Ending racism means we judge people based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. If we cannot look past skin color then we will always get crappy algorithms to allow bail.
And the part of IQ that isn't genetics is probably correlated with nutrition (which would be the main difference between populations).
Claiming that malnutrition is a cause of poor intelligence among certain populations in the USA is going to be difficult to prove. With all the programs now on making sure no one goes hungry there is really no excuse for any significant intelligence deficiency from a lack of nutrition. I'm sure that there's still people in the USA with severe malnutrition but that's not going to show up on any major scale.
However, IQ tests don't just test IQ - they test reading comprehension and literacy.
Have you taken an intelligence test? Reading comprehension and literacy is a portion of any intelligence test given to teens and adults, because reading comprehension is in fact a measure of intelligence.
If someone cannot read by the age of, just picking a number, 15 years then there is perhaps a failure of intelligence so severe that getting an accurate read is difficult and perhaps irrelevant. There are intelligence tests that do not require a person to read and they can determine IQ on a level to see if one is suited for schooling. They'll test pattern matching, reflexes, and so on, and not require any ability to read. There will always be a need to communicate for a proper intelligence test. If the person cannot be given verbal or written instruction then the test will be very crude but still accurate enough to find if one is mentally capable of things like going to school or holding a job.
One measure of intelligence is the speed at which one can make a decision. A very basic intelligence test is the speed at which a person can match patterns. A test like this run over perhaps 15 minutes will get a very high correlation to a pen and paper test run over an hour or two where one must perform mathematics problems or word comprehension.
So, if speed of making a decision is defined as intelligence then we can define the criteria for a decision, put that in a way a machine can compute quickly, then we know have a machine that is highly intelligent on the one task it was programmed to perform.
We can train people in this algorithm, give them a stack of papers to sort through in making this decision, and get the same results as the computer. But the computer will do this same decision process with greater speed and accuracy.
Bear in mind that this system performs as well as untrained humans. If humans with correctional or psychological expertise perform better than untrained humans (which I assume is true), then this system is embarrassingly bad. It's doing a worse job than the people it's supposed to help.
With this software they'd need a handful of trained people to author the algorithm and then many more lesser trained people can apply this software without introducing personal bias. It's also a kind of double blind testing. The people writing the algorithm don't see the offenders, and the people applying the algorithm don't know the algorithm to introduce a bias to it. This is presumably more fair as personal biases cannot be applied to individual offenders. If someone involved in creating the algorithm has some kind of bias then this will show in the code and others looking at the code can likely see this and correct it in the development process.
This should keep things consistent and improve the rate that offenders can be processed. As people are not machines this algorithm cannot take into account things it does not know, so even with 137 items of data to deal with there will be false positives and false negatives.
Is this process "fair"? Nothing is fair. The parole board cannot take into account things they do not know, and they cannot know the "soul" of the offenders they may be releasing. If age and prior offenses is all they need to be as accurate as this complex algorithm then they need to compute this on a chart, give the trained people some discretion on the decision, within some range, and that's likely to be as "fair" and consistent as any computer. If the person doing the decision is not trained on how to apply this "X factor" that they have control over then they can simply rely on the pre-computed chart that's based on age and prior record.
This "dongle madness" is spreading. I'm looking for a new laptop and it seems that most anything that's even close to the size of an Apple will have only USB-C, headphones, and a power port (if it doesn't use USB-C for power), and maybe a SD card slot.
I'm not complaining. I like it really. I don't have to look for the video port to plug in a monitor, the Ethernet port to connect to the network, the serial port to the router (or whatever I need to program at the time), and the mouse port for a mouse. It's just one port does it all and the adapter circuitry is so small it's part of the plug or cord. The MacBook Pro with it's two or four ports means I'm not likely to need a hub or dock in most cases. With just one port then I'll need a dongle of some sort but with the power bricks and adapters so much smaller now I'm still ahead on space in my bag. For most things I expect I'll need just a cheap USB 2.0 A to C adapter which can be had in three packs for $10 or so.
I've had people complain about not knowing what kind of port or cable to use since one USB-C port can be for power, video, Thunderbolt devices, and USB devices. After some research in this I see that the specifications require iconography on the cable end to indicate the capability of the cable. Sometimes the icon might be hard to read or otherwise a bit ambiguous but I'm not sure I still see a problem. Maybe I'll change my tune once I get my new computer.
You say that but I remember a couple very long and hot summers where Dad sat by the TV watching the weather channel on satellite, waiting for the wind to blow and the rains to start. Crops won't grow without the rain, and the winds bring the rain.
So we sat in the farmhouse, and watched the weather channel. Weeks at a time. My brothers and I would play with our Lego blocks almost afraid to talk to Dad since he was oddly quiet everyday.
Oh, I'm sure someone will point out that if it was the summer and there's no clouds then for sure then solar panels would make a lot of electricity.
I can recall some relatively warm and calm winters. I tried to make a flight but the fog hanging over the Midwest was not moving. Planes had to be diverted for the fog. Many flights were cancelled. Even taking buses was not advised with such heavy fog. This was around Christmas time and a lot of people wanted to travel. The air was so still that air quality advisories were everywhere. It was warm for winter but people still needed heat. People were burning wood for heat, coal power plants were working hard. Some farmers ventured in the fields to dispose of melting manure. Everything stank.
No sun. No wind. Days at a time. Covering entire states.
Oh, then the wind blows. Along with the wind comes, hail, snow, sand, rain, and whatever else it can pick up from the ground. Then there are tornadoes, ice storms, lightning. All kinds of fun in the Midwest.
Give me nuclear power. Nuclear power doesn't care what the weather is like. It's cheap, safe, reliable, and we would not be reliant on Arabian oil or Chinese solar collectors.
It seems you may have come to one of the answer as to why Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other oil rich nations are investing in nuclear power. They are investing in solar power too, it seems. Why would they invest in nuclear power if solar power holds so much promise on providing cheap energy?
Here's something the US Marines figured out. Solar panels are difficult to protect in a time of war. They can't be put in a concrete bunker and still provide power. They spent a lot of money on developing flexible and durable solar panels that can be part of their protective structures in the field. They also know that as durable as they are they are still vulnerable to things like rain, snow, and sand.
The US Navy has long been researching means to synthesize fuel from seawater using nuclear reactors to drive the process. They've been very successful and it seems that the only thing stopping them from moving faster is interference from the Department of Energy. We can't have the Department of Defense outshining the Department of Energy on developing energy solutions, can we? We'll probably get this process in the Navy fleets, fueling up Marine tankers that drive out to field hospitals and such, once the DOE can put enough fingerprints on it to call it a "joint effort".
What might this process do for oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia? This process of synthetic fuel doesn't much care where the carbon and hydrogen comes from. It can take crude oil and process it into refined fuels. Fuels without lead, sulfur, and other nasty stuff that gets people sick.
Oh, byproducts of this synthetic fuel process is drinkable water, oxygen, heat, and perhaps some excess hydrogen. Heat, hydrogen, and nitrogen means ammonia fertilizer. Saudi Arabia knows that they will run out of oil some day. A few young princes see nuclear power as a way to keep exporting valuable commodities and not revert to tribes warring over hills of sand and sources of clear water. Water and fertilizer means food to eat and export. They'll probably be exporting oil for a long time yet, but it will most likely come from olives in the future.
Natural Gas is still a lot safer and solar is cheaper.
Do you have citations for that? I did a quick Google search and nuclear power is the safest, by far. I also saw that solar is the cheapest source of energy with the caveat that it applies in only 60 nations, and the USA is not one of them. I'm sure it's nice in Egypt to have access to cheap solar energy but I don't live in Egypt. What are cheap energy sources in the USA? Looks like wind, natural gas, and nuclear. Prices vary across the USA but for most places one of those three will have the lowest cost. Even in California wind seems to be cheaper than solar.
You listed the same thing 8 times, that nuclear power is expensive. What costs more? Nuclear power, or seeing the seas rise, more powerful storms, and larger wildfires?
Nuclear power has a smaller carbon footprint than any energy source we have, except hydroelectric. Nuclear power has a smaller carbon footprint than even solar and wind energy. If the problem is CO2 and the costs upon society then nuclear power looks cheap by comparison.
If nuclear power can be dismissed so easily then so can the threat of global warming. If we can't have nuclear power then global warming is a lie.
GLOBAL WARMING IS A LIE IF WE CANNOT HAVE NUCLEAR POWER!!
You say that I should prove next generation nuclear power will solve our problems? Great! Let's do that. To do that means the US federal government must issue licenses to build. That is the real problem right there, without a license the cost of building a new nuclear reactor is effectively infinite. You say that nuclear power is too expensive? Of course it is, the government declared it so by law. The government can just as easily declare nuclear power as cheap as coal by holding coal and nuclear to the same standards. If they were then every coal plant would be shutdown as a superfund site overnight based on radioactive material waste alone.
Nuclear power is the safest energy source we have today. We don't need to wait for the next generation designs. We won't have either unless the government issues licenses. You want me to prove anything to you? Then we need licenses to build to prove anything.
What I heard, and I think that they were serious, is that we're seeing the warming in the poles because that cold shifted towards the equators.
I guess the winds, driven by the warming, are blowing over the poles to warm them up but cause record cold, ice, and snow everywhere else. It got so cold with this last storm because the ice caps are melting.
And, indeed, I don't believe it either.
Last winter was pretty dry around here. Not much for snowfall. I expect another mild winter, not as mild though, we'll likely see some significant snowfall. Maybe a couple 4 inch snowfalls like we saw a few years ago. Strange that, winter being cyclical like that. I remember in grade school the snow drifts were as high as the school bus. In high school we had some pretty windy and ice storms but not near as much snow. In college the snows came back and we had a bunch of cold and wet winters where no one without 4WD would dare go anywhere. Had a few warm winters, lots of fog. People could at least drive but flying anywhere was a coin toss on if you'd make it to your intended destination or have to land elsewhere and finish the trip on a bus. Then the snow came again. Entire buildings were encased in snow. The buildings were built for this so no damage was done but they could not be occupied until the fire exits were cleared. That took nearly all day for many people and so not many people worked during that first blast of the storm.
So, my prediction is based on the cycles we've seen here over the decades. Last winter was about as mild as they ever got. So, we're expecting a moderate to mild winter this year. Next year though, that one is likely to be very heavy snow.
If this is the third warmest on record then it's getting cooler? Must be.
Of course claiming that having the third warmest on record does not mean it is getting cooler, any more than saying that greater costs from storms and wildfires proves it is getting warmer.
Want to know what would convince me that the world is in fact getting warmer? Or, more accurately, that the powers that be are convinced global warming is more than just a theory? I'd be convinced of this being a real deal if the powers that be started to act like this was a problem.
Instead of flying everywhere to meet then maybe the people in government might figure out ways to make phone calls and such to discuss issues. Maybe they don't need to take so many vacations, or appear in person on late night television. I can hear it now, "But Trump does it too!" Yes, indeed he does. The difference is that Trump isn't telling me that I can't do it too. We need leadership by example.
Also on leadership I'd like to see some action where regulations are keeping the market from reducing CO2 output on their own. Not drilling for oil and natural gas in the USA only means burning more fuel oil on ships and trains to import it. Natural gas produces half the CO2 as coal for the same energy. Drill, baby, drill!! That's not just generally good advice but it's also how we are going to reduce our carbon output almost overnight.
In the near term we'd need to see more safe, low cost, reliable, plentiful, and "green" energy. I'm sure most of you now know what I'm talking about. Nuclear power. We should be building a new nuclear power reactor every month in the USA to replace the (supposedly) old and unsafe nuclear power plants as well as the old coal plants. If the government wants to convince me I need to change my ways then they need to lead by example and change their ways. Build nuclear power plants or I'm calling this all bullshit. Not just one or two in a decade. We need 100 new nuclear power plants in a decade. There are 100 (at my last count) operating nuclear power plants in the USA and all of but a handful are operating well beyond their intended lifespan. After we build 100 new plants to replace the old then we need 100 more to replace the coal plants. Then 100 more to replace the natural gas plants. After that we'll need 100 more to replace the now old nuclear power plants from when we started and to account for growth.
We'll never really be done building nuclear power plants because they wear out. Well, the ones we built decades ago are worn out and we stopped building them. We need to start again, and build them at a rate of 10 or 12 per year like we did then. If we don't build nuclear power at this rate then, in my mind, the government is telling me that man made global warming is bullshit.
Global warming must be bullshit because the government is not allowing the building of nuclear power at the rate we need to stop it.
Which is why we call everyone who practices medicine for a living, "chemist".
Actually, in much of the world a "chemist" is a person that dispenses or sells medicine. It's almost as if "medicine" and "chemical" are synonymous.
A person that practices medicine, and usually prescribes the chemicals a chemist would sell, is a physician or surgeon.
I do wish that Americans would learn some proper English. I say this as an American. A "doctor" is someone with a doctoral degree, not necessarily a doctorate in medicine. I don't go to a "doctor" for my medicine, I go to a pharmacist or chemist. When I need medical care I don't necessarily see a "doctor" either, but I'll go see a physician, surgeon, or nurse.
I could go on with my language lesson but it's so depressing to see how badly we've all mangled our words.
If EVs are so great in the cold then why must the government pile on incentives like free parking, about $10,000 lower taxes on their sales, and more, to sell them?
Maybe EVs aren't so great. Maybe people are putting up with the poor performance of EVs to get the "free" money from the government. ("Free" in quotes because that money comes from their own pockets in taxes they pay.)
Here's an idea. Let's make an electric car that not only performs great in the snow but is cheaper than a comparable ICE powered car. That way we would not need the government to pay people to buy them. Not so easy, is it?
I'm sure that 2018 will be the year of the EV, just like it will be for Linux on the desktop.
Right, it's almost as if people in congested cities are buying new electric cars to avoid the parking fees that non-EV owners must pay.
I'd buy an electric car tomorrow at almost any price if that meant I could park almost anywhere for free. Oh, and hybrids get this benefit too? Then I'd buy a hybrid but never bother to plug it in. I don't need an expensive charger at home, I'd just keep going to the filling station like I always did. It's like I'm getting paid to not pay the parking fees.
This is considered a success for electric cars? What would a failure look like?
Not only that, look at the top ten leading causes of death for men. We have in order from highest rate to tenth, heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory illness, stroke, diabetes, suicide, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia, chronic liver disease.
I expect things like diabetes and heart disease is the result of an unhealthy diet, and this shows highly in women too. What doesn't make the top ten for women? Suicide.
What about "unintentional injuries" which ranks third for men? I could not find this defined right quick but I think it's safe to assume this is made up of a lot of automotive accidents and workplace injuries. How does this rank for women? Sixth, between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.
Also think of what might drive liver disease and lung disease. Men are drinking and smoking themselves to death. Lifespans, and quality of life, for men has been decreasing lately. Why isn't that brought up more often? I'm pretty sure that "suicide" is a preventable condition. Maybe we should invest some money to investigate the causes of that?
Apparently there's a video going around lately showing someone coming across a man that hung himself to death in some woods. I have not seen it and I don't want to. The discussion of this video though has brought this problem of men's health to light for me. I just saw how men's health has declined while that of women and children has improved. Shouldn't we get some equality here? Men are people too.
You'll note that Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing now, but on an even larger scale.
You'll note that Saudi Arabia is planning to build 17 GWe of nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. Total electrical capacity is now about 90 GWe. That's over 15% of their electricity from nuclear power.
Given that Saudi Arabia is a monarchy and the relatively youthful crown prince is behind this effort there is a reasonable assurance that this will come to fruition.
The fact that major oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Norway are clearly planning for a post-oil future ought to tell you something.
I hear what they are saying, but are you? I did a quick internet search and found there's plenty of nations building nuclear power now to replace fossil fuels. Much like Norway I suspect this it to reduce domestic consumption so they can increase income from oil exports. Take UAE as another example, they plan to meet 1/4 of their expected electrical consumption in 2020 with nuclear power.
Are these nations also investing in wind and solar? Sure, Saudi Arabia has plans for 10 GWe of wind and solar while they build their 16 nuclear power plants. If you want to make points on how nations like Saudi Arabia are investing in carbon free energy then leaving out nuclear power only tells half the story. Or more like 1/3rd.
Gas Turbine and Small Scale category consists of gas turbine, internal combustion, photovoltaic, and wind plants.
That chart is in mills/kWh. A mill is a tenth of a cent. So, yes, according to that chart wind and solar is quite likely 3 cents/kWh. Also according to that chart nuclear is 2.5 cents/kWh. Fossil steam is not defined on that chart but I assume that lumps coal and natural gas boilers together so we cannot see if coal or natural gas is cheaper from this chart. Hydroelectric is cheapest of all, which is not surprising, but we just can't build more dams unless there is a river that's, wait for it... worth a dam. (See what I did there?)
If we are looking for cheap and "green" energy then, according to the chart you cited, we should build as many dams we can and then build nuclear. As we build more nuclear then we can shut down the expensive energy, like wind and solar.
You may have proven me wrong but that doesn't mean you are right. You just convinced me we should invest in more nuclear power.
Let's assume what you say is true, and I won't say that it is or isn't. For now.
How long have we seen solar and wind cheaper than coal? Wind got to be cheaper than coal when? 5 years ago? 10? 25? What about solar? When did that become cheaper than coal? Last week?
In Norway coal never really caught on, hydro was just too cheap to not use. In the USA we've been burning coal for 150 years until the economics shifted. It's going to take time for the electrical industry to shift. A coal power plant is designed to last decades, a century even, no one is just going to throw those away. Not just because they still have to pay off the loans they took out to build them but because it takes time to put up enough windmills so they can shut down that plant and not have the lights go out.
Now I'll say something about the truth of your claims. Nothing is cheaper than natural gas.
I did about 2 minutes of searching on this and found that dioxins are destroyed when they reach temperatures of about 850 C. Another 2 minutes tells me that steel melts at about 1500 C. It's not that hard to get something hot enough to destroy the toxins, people have been melting steel for a very long time.
Okay, got it, any solution that is so simple has to be wrong. Is that what you are saying? Maybe it really isn't that hard. Burn the stuff but do so in a way that it's too hot for the toxins to get out.
We know how to burn stuff, and how to get that fire really hot. I still think that burning the stuff is easier, cheaper, and more ecological than recycling.
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Christophobic leftards.
That's about right. Why does the child molestation by members of a church make the news? I mean it's not usually something that makes it past the police report section of the newspaper. Given that the victim is, by definition, underage then there isn't usually a whole lot of detail that is released publicly to make a story. But because it's a follower of Christ therefore it's news.
There were dozens of incidents of rapes on New Year's Eve in Germany and did this make the news? Of course not, because the assailants were all Muslim immigrants. Rapes by Muslim immigrants in Europe is a serious problem and almost no one even knows about it. A Christian church elder "hacks" into the e-mail of a fellow professor and that's national news.
Then again, I think I figured out why Christians committing a felony is news, and Muslims committing a felony is not. Because a Christian elder breaking the law is rare, and a Muslim immigrant breaking the law is not. We report on what's rare, not on the common events. Just like we'll hear about a dozen people killed in a small town church but nothing about a dozen people killed in the same time frame in Chicago. People getting shot dead in a church is a rare event, getting shot dead in Chicago is not.
The fact that this person was a former Jeopardy champion, or the fact that she may have been recognized as an elder of some church is entirely irrelevant except insomuch as it might make some people who wouldn't otherwise give two shits about what this person did to instead click on the link to read about it.
I agree, somewhat. A former Jeopardy champion, and therefore a minor celebrity, breaking the law is perhaps news. A church elder breaking the law doesn't sound like news to me, how many people even know what a "church elder" does?
I'd think what would be more interesting of a headline is a college professor was caught trying to blackmail a fellow professor. I'd think a more appropriate headline would be, "Professor/'Jeopardy' Champ Caught Hacking College E-mails", or something like that. I'm sure some pedant might not like my grammar in my example but it's a headline, I'm trying to keep it short. Being a Jeopardy champ shows this is something of a famous person, and the mention of being a professor shows the relationship to the victim, the college where she worked.
I'll occasionally hear on the radio about some legal troubles of a local guy that was also on some game show. I don't care enough to remember the guy's name or what show he was on but it seems someone cares or it would not be news.
It's a measure of education. If you only barely know how to read, it's going to affect how well you understand the question being presented. IQ is intended to measure strictly raw capability rather than training/knowledge.
A reading comprehension test involves the one examined to read a paragraph or three and then answer questions based on the information contained within. The words used are very basic and in the language the person presumably already knows. So, yes, there is a basic level of prior knowledge of the language in which the test was written to take this test but the questions will be based not on anything known prior but was in the text given.
I remember some of these tests I've taken in the past, one involved a short biology lesson on how the body turns sunlight into vitamin D and another had a short lesson on the history of road construction. Everything I needed to know to answer the questions were in the text. I guess that the people taking the test had to know what sunlight was and what a road is but that's very basic knowledge one would have to know to get to that point of testing for intelligence. This is not the kind of intelligence exam that would be given to someone that did not speak the language at perhaps a grade school level but calling these tests a measure of prior knowledge and not intelligence is far from correct. All of these tests are timed and so it measures one's ability to gather information, process it, and relate that back. The time it takes to complete and the correctness of the answers measures one's intelligence.
If a person barely knows how to read then there are still IQ tests that can accurately measure one's verbal ability. This can use a made up language, pictures to go along with the words, verbal instructions, and so on. I've taken those kinds of tests too. Depending on the intent of the intelligence test these can be taken with very little grasp of one's native language.
There's no question that there's correlations between IQ and skin colour, the question is whether that's the characteristic of the ethnicity or race or due to socio-economic factors.
Does it matter what the cause might be? If we can show that people of a different ethnic background have a higher tendency to commit crimes then shouldn't that be considered when predicting criminal behavior?
Let's assume we can prove that starbelly sneetches have a statistically significant higher criminal tendency for re-offending, compared to sneetches without stars on their bellies. If we catch a few sneetches committing crimes and we only have room for perhaps half of them then shouldn't we look to see if they have a star on their belly as part of the decision to release them? There will be other factors as well, like age, prior record, and so on. It may turn out that we let all the sneetches with stars on their bellies go because the sneetches without stars have prior records and such that says they'd be a greater risk.
Locking up sneetches without stars to avoid hurting the feelings of the starbelly sneetches is still racism.
They won't do that because you'd be denying people bail for being dumb. Anyway, you're probably not getting useful data because we're already dealing with convicted criminals and we have data on their criminal history.
Denying bail for scoring poorly in an IQ test is not denying them just because they are dumb. Bail would be denied because we know low IQ correlates to criminal behavior. Don't call it an IQ test, call it a personality test. People that score poorly will show to have the personality traits of a tendency to re-offend.
From what I read there are personality aspects that indicate criminal tendencies but those can be "gamed" for people that learn what the test is doing. An intelligence test is very hard to game. Have personality as part of the test too, as that might be useful. Have the test be part of a medical exam, where people that score poorly have to remain for "medical observation".
The point is that we have a pile of evidence that criminal behavior and intelligence are highly correlated. It's not a perfect indicator, and nothing is, but it should be part of the decision process as it is highly likely to improve results.
But the thing that will get you labelled racist is you took a discussion about a really crappy software product, jumped completely past the discussion of racial bias, and instead entered a bizarrely long discussion on the low IQs of certain minorities.
Well, you just pointed out why we can't have a rational discussion of the correlation on intelligence to crime. To have this discussion we will have to admit to ourselves that some ethnic backgrounds will tend to have a lower average IQ. This correlation will appear at some point and then cries of racism come up and the discussion ends. We cannot solve this problem until we can identify it.
If we can show that intelligence correlates to criminal behavior, and the testing can be shown to be applied equally, and it happens to catch more dark skinned people then we are just going to have to look at the data instead of the skin color. Ending racism means we judge people based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. If we cannot look past skin color then we will always get crappy algorithms to allow bail.
And the part of IQ that isn't genetics is probably correlated with nutrition (which would be the main difference between populations).
Claiming that malnutrition is a cause of poor intelligence among certain populations in the USA is going to be difficult to prove. With all the programs now on making sure no one goes hungry there is really no excuse for any significant intelligence deficiency from a lack of nutrition. I'm sure that there's still people in the USA with severe malnutrition but that's not going to show up on any major scale.
However, IQ tests don't just test IQ - they test reading comprehension and literacy.
Have you taken an intelligence test? Reading comprehension and literacy is a portion of any intelligence test given to teens and adults, because reading comprehension is in fact a measure of intelligence.
If someone cannot read by the age of, just picking a number, 15 years then there is perhaps a failure of intelligence so severe that getting an accurate read is difficult and perhaps irrelevant. There are intelligence tests that do not require a person to read and they can determine IQ on a level to see if one is suited for schooling. They'll test pattern matching, reflexes, and so on, and not require any ability to read. There will always be a need to communicate for a proper intelligence test. If the person cannot be given verbal or written instruction then the test will be very crude but still accurate enough to find if one is mentally capable of things like going to school or holding a job.
One measure of intelligence is the speed at which one can make a decision. A very basic intelligence test is the speed at which a person can match patterns. A test like this run over perhaps 15 minutes will get a very high correlation to a pen and paper test run over an hour or two where one must perform mathematics problems or word comprehension.
So, if speed of making a decision is defined as intelligence then we can define the criteria for a decision, put that in a way a machine can compute quickly, then we know have a machine that is highly intelligent on the one task it was programmed to perform.
We can train people in this algorithm, give them a stack of papers to sort through in making this decision, and get the same results as the computer. But the computer will do this same decision process with greater speed and accuracy.
Bear in mind that this system performs as well as untrained humans. If humans with correctional or psychological expertise perform better than untrained humans (which I assume is true), then this system is embarrassingly bad. It's doing a worse job than the people it's supposed to help.
With this software they'd need a handful of trained people to author the algorithm and then many more lesser trained people can apply this software without introducing personal bias. It's also a kind of double blind testing. The people writing the algorithm don't see the offenders, and the people applying the algorithm don't know the algorithm to introduce a bias to it. This is presumably more fair as personal biases cannot be applied to individual offenders. If someone involved in creating the algorithm has some kind of bias then this will show in the code and others looking at the code can likely see this and correct it in the development process.
This should keep things consistent and improve the rate that offenders can be processed. As people are not machines this algorithm cannot take into account things it does not know, so even with 137 items of data to deal with there will be false positives and false negatives.
Is this process "fair"? Nothing is fair. The parole board cannot take into account things they do not know, and they cannot know the "soul" of the offenders they may be releasing. If age and prior offenses is all they need to be as accurate as this complex algorithm then they need to compute this on a chart, give the trained people some discretion on the decision, within some range, and that's likely to be as "fair" and consistent as any computer. If the person doing the decision is not trained on how to apply this "X factor" that they have control over then they can simply rely on the pre-computed chart that's based on age and prior record.
This "dongle madness" is spreading. I'm looking for a new laptop and it seems that most anything that's even close to the size of an Apple will have only USB-C, headphones, and a power port (if it doesn't use USB-C for power), and maybe a SD card slot.
I'm not complaining. I like it really. I don't have to look for the video port to plug in a monitor, the Ethernet port to connect to the network, the serial port to the router (or whatever I need to program at the time), and the mouse port for a mouse. It's just one port does it all and the adapter circuitry is so small it's part of the plug or cord. The MacBook Pro with it's two or four ports means I'm not likely to need a hub or dock in most cases. With just one port then I'll need a dongle of some sort but with the power bricks and adapters so much smaller now I'm still ahead on space in my bag. For most things I expect I'll need just a cheap USB 2.0 A to C adapter which can be had in three packs for $10 or so.
I've had people complain about not knowing what kind of port or cable to use since one USB-C port can be for power, video, Thunderbolt devices, and USB devices. After some research in this I see that the specifications require iconography on the cable end to indicate the capability of the cable. Sometimes the icon might be hard to read or otherwise a bit ambiguous but I'm not sure I still see a problem. Maybe I'll change my tune once I get my new computer.
You say that but I remember a couple very long and hot summers where Dad sat by the TV watching the weather channel on satellite, waiting for the wind to blow and the rains to start. Crops won't grow without the rain, and the winds bring the rain.
So we sat in the farmhouse, and watched the weather channel. Weeks at a time. My brothers and I would play with our Lego blocks almost afraid to talk to Dad since he was oddly quiet everyday.
Oh, I'm sure someone will point out that if it was the summer and there's no clouds then for sure then solar panels would make a lot of electricity.
I can recall some relatively warm and calm winters. I tried to make a flight but the fog hanging over the Midwest was not moving. Planes had to be diverted for the fog. Many flights were cancelled. Even taking buses was not advised with such heavy fog. This was around Christmas time and a lot of people wanted to travel. The air was so still that air quality advisories were everywhere. It was warm for winter but people still needed heat. People were burning wood for heat, coal power plants were working hard. Some farmers ventured in the fields to dispose of melting manure. Everything stank.
No sun. No wind. Days at a time. Covering entire states.
Oh, then the wind blows. Along with the wind comes, hail, snow, sand, rain, and whatever else it can pick up from the ground. Then there are tornadoes, ice storms, lightning. All kinds of fun in the Midwest.
Give me nuclear power. Nuclear power doesn't care what the weather is like. It's cheap, safe, reliable, and we would not be reliant on Arabian oil or Chinese solar collectors.
It seems you may have come to one of the answer as to why Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other oil rich nations are investing in nuclear power. They are investing in solar power too, it seems. Why would they invest in nuclear power if solar power holds so much promise on providing cheap energy?
Here's something the US Marines figured out. Solar panels are difficult to protect in a time of war. They can't be put in a concrete bunker and still provide power. They spent a lot of money on developing flexible and durable solar panels that can be part of their protective structures in the field. They also know that as durable as they are they are still vulnerable to things like rain, snow, and sand.
The US Navy has long been researching means to synthesize fuel from seawater using nuclear reactors to drive the process. They've been very successful and it seems that the only thing stopping them from moving faster is interference from the Department of Energy. We can't have the Department of Defense outshining the Department of Energy on developing energy solutions, can we? We'll probably get this process in the Navy fleets, fueling up Marine tankers that drive out to field hospitals and such, once the DOE can put enough fingerprints on it to call it a "joint effort".
What might this process do for oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia? This process of synthetic fuel doesn't much care where the carbon and hydrogen comes from. It can take crude oil and process it into refined fuels. Fuels without lead, sulfur, and other nasty stuff that gets people sick.
Oh, byproducts of this synthetic fuel process is drinkable water, oxygen, heat, and perhaps some excess hydrogen. Heat, hydrogen, and nitrogen means ammonia fertilizer. Saudi Arabia knows that they will run out of oil some day. A few young princes see nuclear power as a way to keep exporting valuable commodities and not revert to tribes warring over hills of sand and sources of clear water. Water and fertilizer means food to eat and export. They'll probably be exporting oil for a long time yet, but it will most likely come from olives in the future.
Natural Gas is still a lot safer and solar is cheaper.
Do you have citations for that? I did a quick Google search and nuclear power is the safest, by far. I also saw that solar is the cheapest source of energy with the caveat that it applies in only 60 nations, and the USA is not one of them. I'm sure it's nice in Egypt to have access to cheap solar energy but I don't live in Egypt. What are cheap energy sources in the USA? Looks like wind, natural gas, and nuclear. Prices vary across the USA but for most places one of those three will have the lowest cost. Even in California wind seems to be cheaper than solar.
California used to be 4th until the Democrats took over. Go ahead, prove me wrong.
You listed the same thing 8 times, that nuclear power is expensive. What costs more? Nuclear power, or seeing the seas rise, more powerful storms, and larger wildfires?
Nuclear power has a smaller carbon footprint than any energy source we have, except hydroelectric. Nuclear power has a smaller carbon footprint than even solar and wind energy. If the problem is CO2 and the costs upon society then nuclear power looks cheap by comparison.
If nuclear power can be dismissed so easily then so can the threat of global warming. If we can't have nuclear power then global warming is a lie.
GLOBAL WARMING IS A LIE IF WE CANNOT HAVE NUCLEAR POWER!!
You say that I should prove next generation nuclear power will solve our problems? Great! Let's do that. To do that means the US federal government must issue licenses to build. That is the real problem right there, without a license the cost of building a new nuclear reactor is effectively infinite. You say that nuclear power is too expensive? Of course it is, the government declared it so by law. The government can just as easily declare nuclear power as cheap as coal by holding coal and nuclear to the same standards. If they were then every coal plant would be shutdown as a superfund site overnight based on radioactive material waste alone.
Nuclear power is the safest energy source we have today. We don't need to wait for the next generation designs. We won't have either unless the government issues licenses. You want me to prove anything to you? Then we need licenses to build to prove anything.
What I heard, and I think that they were serious, is that we're seeing the warming in the poles because that cold shifted towards the equators.
I guess the winds, driven by the warming, are blowing over the poles to warm them up but cause record cold, ice, and snow everywhere else. It got so cold with this last storm because the ice caps are melting.
And, indeed, I don't believe it either.
Last winter was pretty dry around here. Not much for snowfall. I expect another mild winter, not as mild though, we'll likely see some significant snowfall. Maybe a couple 4 inch snowfalls like we saw a few years ago. Strange that, winter being cyclical like that. I remember in grade school the snow drifts were as high as the school bus. In high school we had some pretty windy and ice storms but not near as much snow. In college the snows came back and we had a bunch of cold and wet winters where no one without 4WD would dare go anywhere. Had a few warm winters, lots of fog. People could at least drive but flying anywhere was a coin toss on if you'd make it to your intended destination or have to land elsewhere and finish the trip on a bus. Then the snow came again. Entire buildings were encased in snow. The buildings were built for this so no damage was done but they could not be occupied until the fire exits were cleared. That took nearly all day for many people and so not many people worked during that first blast of the storm.
So, my prediction is based on the cycles we've seen here over the decades. Last winter was about as mild as they ever got. So, we're expecting a moderate to mild winter this year. Next year though, that one is likely to be very heavy snow.
If this is the third warmest on record then it's getting cooler? Must be.
Of course claiming that having the third warmest on record does not mean it is getting cooler, any more than saying that greater costs from storms and wildfires proves it is getting warmer.
Want to know what would convince me that the world is in fact getting warmer? Or, more accurately, that the powers that be are convinced global warming is more than just a theory? I'd be convinced of this being a real deal if the powers that be started to act like this was a problem.
Instead of flying everywhere to meet then maybe the people in government might figure out ways to make phone calls and such to discuss issues. Maybe they don't need to take so many vacations, or appear in person on late night television. I can hear it now, "But Trump does it too!" Yes, indeed he does. The difference is that Trump isn't telling me that I can't do it too. We need leadership by example.
Also on leadership I'd like to see some action where regulations are keeping the market from reducing CO2 output on their own. Not drilling for oil and natural gas in the USA only means burning more fuel oil on ships and trains to import it. Natural gas produces half the CO2 as coal for the same energy. Drill, baby, drill!! That's not just generally good advice but it's also how we are going to reduce our carbon output almost overnight.
In the near term we'd need to see more safe, low cost, reliable, plentiful, and "green" energy. I'm sure most of you now know what I'm talking about. Nuclear power. We should be building a new nuclear power reactor every month in the USA to replace the (supposedly) old and unsafe nuclear power plants as well as the old coal plants. If the government wants to convince me I need to change my ways then they need to lead by example and change their ways. Build nuclear power plants or I'm calling this all bullshit. Not just one or two in a decade. We need 100 new nuclear power plants in a decade. There are 100 (at my last count) operating nuclear power plants in the USA and all of but a handful are operating well beyond their intended lifespan. After we build 100 new plants to replace the old then we need 100 more to replace the coal plants. Then 100 more to replace the natural gas plants. After that we'll need 100 more to replace the now old nuclear power plants from when we started and to account for growth.
We'll never really be done building nuclear power plants because they wear out. Well, the ones we built decades ago are worn out and we stopped building them. We need to start again, and build them at a rate of 10 or 12 per year like we did then. If we don't build nuclear power at this rate then, in my mind, the government is telling me that man made global warming is bullshit.
Global warming must be bullshit because the government is not allowing the building of nuclear power at the rate we need to stop it.
Have you considered that the cost to manufacture is on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars per dose?
If they offer it for the cost to manufacture, and the cost of manufacture is still a half million bucks, then it's still godawful expensive.
Which is why we call everyone who practices medicine for a living, "chemist".
Actually, in much of the world a "chemist" is a person that dispenses or sells medicine. It's almost as if "medicine" and "chemical" are synonymous.
A person that practices medicine, and usually prescribes the chemicals a chemist would sell, is a physician or surgeon.
I do wish that Americans would learn some proper English. I say this as an American. A "doctor" is someone with a doctoral degree, not necessarily a doctorate in medicine. I don't go to a "doctor" for my medicine, I go to a pharmacist or chemist. When I need medical care I don't necessarily see a "doctor" either, but I'll go see a physician, surgeon, or nurse.
I could go on with my language lesson but it's so depressing to see how badly we've all mangled our words.
If you have a strong immune system, you should never need antibiotics.
Apropos of nothing, where can I get one of those?
I heard that they are available with gene therapy treatment for about $850K. It's probably cheaper to just use the antibiotics.
If EVs are so great in the cold then why must the government pile on incentives like free parking, about $10,000 lower taxes on their sales, and more, to sell them?
Maybe EVs aren't so great. Maybe people are putting up with the poor performance of EVs to get the "free" money from the government. ("Free" in quotes because that money comes from their own pockets in taxes they pay.)
Here's an idea. Let's make an electric car that not only performs great in the snow but is cheaper than a comparable ICE powered car. That way we would not need the government to pay people to buy them. Not so easy, is it?
I'm sure that 2018 will be the year of the EV, just like it will be for Linux on the desktop.
Right, it's almost as if people in congested cities are buying new electric cars to avoid the parking fees that non-EV owners must pay.
I'd buy an electric car tomorrow at almost any price if that meant I could park almost anywhere for free. Oh, and hybrids get this benefit too? Then I'd buy a hybrid but never bother to plug it in. I don't need an expensive charger at home, I'd just keep going to the filling station like I always did. It's like I'm getting paid to not pay the parking fees.
This is considered a success for electric cars? What would a failure look like?
Not only that, look at the top ten leading causes of death for men. We have in order from highest rate to tenth, heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory illness, stroke, diabetes, suicide, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia, chronic liver disease.
I expect things like diabetes and heart disease is the result of an unhealthy diet, and this shows highly in women too. What doesn't make the top ten for women? Suicide.
What about "unintentional injuries" which ranks third for men? I could not find this defined right quick but I think it's safe to assume this is made up of a lot of automotive accidents and workplace injuries. How does this rank for women? Sixth, between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.
Also think of what might drive liver disease and lung disease. Men are drinking and smoking themselves to death. Lifespans, and quality of life, for men has been decreasing lately. Why isn't that brought up more often? I'm pretty sure that "suicide" is a preventable condition. Maybe we should invest some money to investigate the causes of that?
Apparently there's a video going around lately showing someone coming across a man that hung himself to death in some woods. I have not seen it and I don't want to. The discussion of this video though has brought this problem of men's health to light for me. I just saw how men's health has declined while that of women and children has improved. Shouldn't we get some equality here? Men are people too.
I guess some people are more equal than others.
You'll note that Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing now, but on an even larger scale.
You'll note that Saudi Arabia is planning to build 17 GWe of nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. Total electrical capacity is now about 90 GWe. That's over 15% of their electricity from nuclear power.
Given that Saudi Arabia is a monarchy and the relatively youthful crown prince is behind this effort there is a reasonable assurance that this will come to fruition.
The fact that major oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Norway are clearly planning for a post-oil future ought to tell you something.
I hear what they are saying, but are you? I did a quick internet search and found there's plenty of nations building nuclear power now to replace fossil fuels. Much like Norway I suspect this it to reduce domestic consumption so they can increase income from oil exports. Take UAE as another example, they plan to meet 1/4 of their expected electrical consumption in 2020 with nuclear power.
Are these nations also investing in wind and solar? Sure, Saudi Arabia has plans for 10 GWe of wind and solar while they build their 16 nuclear power plants. If you want to make points on how nations like Saudi Arabia are investing in carbon free energy then leaving out nuclear power only tells half the story. Or more like 1/3rd.
Did you even read that chart? Look at the bottom.
Gas Turbine and Small Scale category consists of gas turbine, internal combustion, photovoltaic, and wind plants.
That chart is in mills/kWh. A mill is a tenth of a cent. So, yes, according to that chart wind and solar is quite likely 3 cents/kWh. Also according to that chart nuclear is 2.5 cents/kWh. Fossil steam is not defined on that chart but I assume that lumps coal and natural gas boilers together so we cannot see if coal or natural gas is cheaper from this chart. Hydroelectric is cheapest of all, which is not surprising, but we just can't build more dams unless there is a river that's, wait for it... worth a dam. (See what I did there?)
If we are looking for cheap and "green" energy then, according to the chart you cited, we should build as many dams we can and then build nuclear. As we build more nuclear then we can shut down the expensive energy, like wind and solar.
You may have proven me wrong but that doesn't mean you are right. You just convinced me we should invest in more nuclear power.
Let's assume what you say is true, and I won't say that it is or isn't. For now.
How long have we seen solar and wind cheaper than coal? Wind got to be cheaper than coal when? 5 years ago? 10? 25? What about solar? When did that become cheaper than coal? Last week?
In Norway coal never really caught on, hydro was just too cheap to not use. In the USA we've been burning coal for 150 years until the economics shifted. It's going to take time for the electrical industry to shift. A coal power plant is designed to last decades, a century even, no one is just going to throw those away. Not just because they still have to pay off the loans they took out to build them but because it takes time to put up enough windmills so they can shut down that plant and not have the lights go out.
Now I'll say something about the truth of your claims. Nothing is cheaper than natural gas.
I did about 2 minutes of searching on this and found that dioxins are destroyed when they reach temperatures of about 850 C. Another 2 minutes tells me that steel melts at about 1500 C. It's not that hard to get something hot enough to destroy the toxins, people have been melting steel for a very long time.
Okay, got it, any solution that is so simple has to be wrong. Is that what you are saying? Maybe it really isn't that hard. Burn the stuff but do so in a way that it's too hot for the toxins to get out.
We know how to burn stuff, and how to get that fire really hot. I still think that burning the stuff is easier, cheaper, and more ecological than recycling.