Nope. Brain development doesn't vary noticeably across the world. Whatever pressures there were worked more or less equally on Homo Sapiens. Obviously, there had been pressure, but it doesn't show significant variations over peoples.
I'm not going to play "my citation is bigger than yours" with you since there's enough noise on both sides to muddy the waters. Maybe we can just agree to disagree.
Which is why the Siberians and Inuit rule the world, right?
There's a tendency for populations that experience winter to develop greater intelligence, just like there is a tendency for males to choose engineering as a profession. That does not mean all cultures that experienced winter developed greater intelligence at the same rates. Not all engineers are male, and not all males are engineers. On the whole though we see more males choosing engineering, and being successful doing it, than females. This also shows in formalized testing that males are generally better than females in mathematics and abstract reasoning, again as a trend and not an absolute. We might debate over the evolutionary pressures on what made this happen but it seems clear that this is not due to any gender discrimination, past or present. Women have had equal opportunity to go into engineering for a long time now, no one is preventing women from getting into engineering any more. Quite the opposite really, just ask my sister. She's a professional engineer considering going into business on her own, there's all kinds of government grants and subsidized loans she could get to do so. These same opportunities do not apply to men.
If there is discrimination now it's against white straight Christian men.
insurance should cover birth control, and HSAs and FSAs should cover condoms (to control the spread of STDs).
Should car insurance cover oil changes, tires, and fuel? That's a serious question.
Health insurance, at least at one time, was to cover unexpected health costs that are too expensive for a person to cover out of pocket with ease. I remember someone commenting that treating a broken arm used to cost maybe $200. The poor kid would be driven to a hospital by a parent, school nurse, or other responsible adult, the visit with the physician would be about $50, maybe an x-ray would be taken for $50, $50 for the cast, and the rest of the $200 for any medications and to pay for the nurses' time.
Now treating a broken arm can cost $2000, a tenfold increase. Treating a broken bone on a dog still costs about $200. The x-ray equipment is really no different. The training of the people doing the treatment isn't really all that different. The medications are also pretty much the same. So what's different? The difference is that people would not tolerate $2000 to treat a broken bone on an animal. People tolerate $2000 to treat a broken arm on their child because they aren't paying for it, insurance is. Well, they are still paying for it in through their insurance costs but the cost of any single incident is invisible to them.
Would I have been able to get my brakes fixed for $80 if insurance was paying for it? Would a new set of tires still cost $400? Not likely. With insurance there's a new overhead on having to manage the paperwork. It's not just me, the shop owner, and the mechanic now making a deal any more. Now we have an insurance company involved, staff at the auto shop filling out paperwork, more government oversight, and so much more.
Go pay for your own damned condoms, I hear you can get them for a dollar at a truck stop. If that's too much then just hop into the lobby of any college health clinic, I hear they just keep them in a bowl by the door for horny students to grab. Someone might give you a funny look for doing it but I doubt anyone would stop you. If you make this a habit then invest in a t-shirt with the college mascot on it to blend in a little, it will pay for itself in time.
If you make insurance pay for condoms then you'll have to follow new rules. There's likely going to be requirements on visiting a physician, so they can tell you how they are used and to check for any STD you might have. Then you'll get a prescription. Now a pharmacist has to check the prescription, get you your condoms and file the proper paperwork with the insurance company. Oh, wait, are you allergic to latex? I'm sure the insurance company will want to check for that too. Maybe they'll just buy the more expensive vinyl ones just in case, why should they care? They aren't paying for the condoms in the end, you are, I am, and so is everyone else that have insurance.
Now you have people that can't afford insurance, or condoms. Pregnancies and STDs rise and treating a broken arm now costs $20,000.
We could see species adaptions there that don't exist anywhere else.
So, once we pollute the environment we have to keep doing it or risk a population failure?
I'm only half serious. If we have humans that evolve to thrive in an environment laced with steroids in the water, antibiotics in the meat, and ammonia in the air and then later take that all away then we might have people getting sick from diseases that would normally have been killed off before.
I remember my sister telling me about places that began fertilizing crops with human sewage seeing a reduction in cases of vitamin B deficiency. Okay, human shit has more vitamin B than non-human shit. Not sure that this makes the practice of using human sewage to fertilize the growing of the peas and carrots I eat a good idea. Let's assume this practice continues for a long period, many generations. We'll have a population that has a gene pool and culture (a traditional diet mostly) that relies on the use of human sewage for it's nutrition. Suppose someone comes along and says that this is a bad idea, perhaps they discover people getting sick from improper handling of sewage and the fruits and vegetables grown from it, so the practice ends. Now you have people getting sick from not getting enough vitamin B. Now this population of people have a choice, return to the previous practice, adjust their diet, or find some new balance with the environment they've created.
I'm not saying that soot in the air is something we should keep around and allow people to adapt to it. I'm only saying that this is an interesting concept of the population of people changing to suit the environment, the people changing the environment to suit them, and this iterating over long periods. I suspect we'd see this just jump out at us if we stop to look for it. Humans are not separate from the environment, we are as much a part of it as any other creatures living on this planet.
If natural gas furnaces are good, why not just leave the heat pumps in place, and have the furnaces kick in once it drops below a certain temperature?
Because there is a cost of maintaining and operating these heat pumps that has to be borne by someone. Just the thermostat that can control two heat sources is not cheap. I have a system like this, the control unit (calling it a thermostat is almost insulting) cost $200, while a common digital programmable thermostat can be had for about $20. Even a cheap dual heat control unit is easily $100, and then you have to have the wiring for it, and pay people to install it.
I learned with my heat pump and furnace that the temperature range in which the heat pump is cheaper to operate than the natural gas is very small. This temperature range can vary greatly with the relative differences in prices of natural gas and electricity where you are, of course, but given the prices of natural gas around the world right now I have to imagine that there are few places where heat pumps are cheaper to run than natural gas.
Then there is a matter of just having the space for both the furnace and heat pump. My sister lived in an apartment where the heat pumps kept breaking down. People asked why they weren't simply replaced. The reply was that the mechanical space was too small for any kind of new unit on the market. They'd repair the heat pumps as renters complained but that didn't change the fact that the occupants had to deal with cold nights and high bills from the back up resistance heat.
In short, there's lots of reasons to not keep the heat pumps in place and all of them coming down to the costs.
I made a very simplistic explanation of the conditions on the ISS in an attempt to set up a pun as best I could without being too wordy. It's a stupid joke, lighten up.
The condition is called "missile toe", get it? Say it out loud if you have to. It rhymes with "mistletoe". Get it now?
People will talk of being in orbit as being in "zero-g" but they experience gravity like everyone else but the forces from traveling at such incredible speeds cancels out the gravity. Think of throwing a ball and how at the top of it's arc of travel all the forces equal and for a small period of time all forces on it are nearly zero. The higher a ball is thrown the longer this period. Put something on top of a missile and get it high and fast enough this period of time of where all forces acting on it are near zero lasts a very long time. This changes how the microbes grow and where they grow.
This makes things we don't think of as much of a deal on Earth quite the problem in orbit. These microbes on the skin of the astronauts feed off their dead skin. Because we here on the surface of Earth walk to get around this skin is worn off our feet and gets scattered by gravity and convective air currents off our warm bodies. I was a bit grossed out by this realization once in high school as we were filing out to get on the buses. I'd see the janitor would be sweeping the cafeteria floor and picking up this thin film of dust over the entire floor. Most of that is dead skin as people walk and our shoes and clothes wear it away.
Athlete's that get their feet sweaty and the skin wears off will have problems with a disease we know as "athlete's foot". This is just those microbes finding an environment to grow. When in space the astronaut's suffer from a similar disease. The microbes don't grow as much on the bottom of the foot like on athletes but more between the toes. This disease has come to get it's own name to differentiate it from the Earthly affliction of athlete's foot, they've come to call it "missile toe".
You appear to not consider the question of why certain groups score better in certain areas, and the implications.
Well, I have followed this debate for some time now. I have considered why this might be. I will concede that many factors can contribute to the IQ of a person or population. These factors can include nutrition, education, and cultural pressures. People will admit that a lack of nutrition can diminish a person's adult height. There's little dispute that genetics defines the maximum height a person will attain if given proper nutrition. People will not dispute that ethnicity can create differences in height of a population because of genetics, and that the genetics of the population was due to survival pressures over long periods. If I replace "height" in those sentences with "intelligence" though people start to get upset. It baffles me why this would be of such dispute.
If a group is discriminated against (like women and blacks), those people will tend to be better than their scores indicate.
That makes no sense. If I give a person a mathematics test then I'll get a score. This would tend to correlate to a non-testing environment like perhaps doing accounting, would it not? If people would do better than their scores would indicate then we've simply made a poor test. We've had a lot of time to improve our testing, seems difficult to believe that after all this time we're still seeing tests that are biased the same way, by the same proportions, time after time.
How do you propose we create a more representative testing process? Where have we failed for so long in properly assessing intelligence?
I'll also hear something like this, that these groups aren't less intelligent only that their intelligence is in different areas. I'll go with that. If one group has greater mathematical ability and another group greater verbal ability then let's use this to our advantage. Put the mathematically skilled people in the group doing engineering and have the verbally skilled people doing documentation, advertising, public relations, and human resources.
Claiming discrimination as a cause for this "diversity" disparity anymore has become laughable. No one DARES discriminate on race or gender now. Doing so is just asking to get owned in court.
Have you considered the implications of enforcing "diversity" for the sake of it? We can try as hard as we can to improve the scores that girls achieve on mathematics tests. We can try so hard that it may come at the detriment of boys scoring well. If there is a genetic basis for boys scoring better than girls in mathematics then how can we ever close this gap in math testing scores? The solution is easy but also horrifying. We can deprive boys of the education and nutrition needed to achieve their best scores on mathematics tests.
We can in fact close this intelligence gap. I have little doubt. Have you considered the implications of that?
If you manage all that by accident, it's probably a good idea to stay away from any nuclear missile launch operation centers, just in case.
I don't remember all the steps, and it's quite likely I don't recall all the security measures to keep people from doing a "Drop In" on my Echo. Just the ability for the Echo to "drop in" on people as a feature is something I think is creepy. I can see someone being engineered to enable this feature, or someone setting it up without the owner's knowledge. I believe that feature is something that can be abused and I'd feel better if it didn't even exist. Now that I know it's possible to enable the microphone from afar with my deliberate actions I have suspicions this can happen from afar without deliberate action on my part.
I suspect much of my distrust of the Echo is that I am not familiar with it and the documentation on what it does and can do is slim. I know it can do a lot of things since my brother likes to show off what he's done to automate his house with his Echo.
Your explanation of needing specific apps and following certain steps doesn't ease my fears much. The device is pretty much useless until given some very personal information. It's quite easy to give it too much information and there's no way to be sure it can be taken back. This is so common that it's become a joke among the general public very quickly. People know now that a television voice can order toys for people. Is it really all that inconceivable that someone might abuse this for more than ordering an expensive dollhouse?
Until quite recently, succeeding in Europe required the ability to work well enough. It didn't require brains in evolutionarily significant quantities.
In the 1500s Europeans were exploring the world, and the other people's of the world were not. That seems to indicate some sort of "evolutionarily significant" pressure to develop the brain. Surviving winter is hard enough. Surviving months at sea is nearly impossible without some ability to perform some mathematics, abstract thought, planning, teamwork, and so on. Just building a boat that can stay afloat that long is quite the engineering feat.
The people in Europe, northern Africa, and many parts of Asia were building huge structures from stone blocks and masonry for centuries before 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That seems to indicate some intellectual development. Centuries earlier the Europeans were living in mud huts, and tents held up by sticks, like much of the rest of the world.
You also seem to be clueless about what people in the New World, Africa, and Australia were doing.
They weren't building cathedrals. When it comes to explaining the superiority of Europeans over other ethnic groups in their ability to be good in engineering that seems to be a good indicator of why that might be.
So let's summarize....
Question: What might explain the ability of European males to be superior at computer engineering?
Answer (in one sentence): It probably has something to do with European males doing large engineering projects for centuries, and perhaps millennia.
My brother gave me an Echo Dot in exchange for helping him fix up some stuff at his house. He said something about buying it and realizing he didn't need it so he gave it to me for my time and gas to come over.
I get it home and start playing with it and it's kind of nice, it's a lot like Siri on my phone in that I can ask Alexa random questions and it searches the internet for answers. It can also do things like initiate phone calls to people in my contact list, and stream music over the internet. This didn't seem so bad, it's like my iPhone but it stays at home and lets me use my phone for other stuff while I have Echo do things like music streaming instead.
My brother calls me up to ask how I like the Echo and wants to test this "Drop In" feature. I didn't know what it was, what it did, or if my Echo supported this. We play with our respective Echo devices and I find out that to "drop in" means immediately turning on the microphone of a remote device. That was a bit too much. I'm fine with people requesting to talk to me over Echo, that's not much different than a speaker phone ringing and I allow the call to come through. Drop In doesn't allow for the refusal of the connection, it just comes on. I can ask the connection to drop but that's after the fact.
Once I realized what "Drop In" did I disabled it. Finding this feature enabled by default is a bit disconcerting. Something that let's people listen in on me without some announcement is a problem, maybe there was an announcement but I don't recall there being one. I'm not going to enable it again to verify my recollections either. Perhaps I would not be so upset by this if it wasn't on by default.
I'll keep the Echo but I'm going to think carefully about where I put it and if I want to keep it plugged in all the time. It's nice to have to listen to podcasts, music streams, and such. I know it can do more if I get things that are "Alexa aware", or whatever they call Echo compatible stuff, and set it up but that's just buying more stuff that I don't think I need.
I had no intention of ever buying an Echo but now that I have one I'll use it. If I find more creepy behavior then I'll give it back to my brother, chuck it in the trash, or take it to the shotgun range and toss it like a clay pigeon.
I don't expect too much creepy behavior from these things, it's too easy for the people making these devices to get a bad reputation and losing all kinds of business over it. Of course that means some damage has already been done. That's why I'm treating this thing with some suspicion. I might place more trust in these once some of the creepier aspects of them get filtered out in future iterations from customer feedback.
No, but the discussion, while it would be fun, is off topic (topic was community colleges).
Then why bring up my signature line at all? By mentioning it I thought that meant you wanted to discuss it. If it's off topic, and you don't want to discuss it in spite of it being off topic, then you should have just let it go in the first place.
Usually, if a country says that you're an engineer, you are. Apparently Sweden claims he is, so he is.
Does Sweden claim to be a country?:^) I kid.
This comes up for people that have medical certifications from some nations and wish to practice medicine in the USA. Sure, you might have a license to practice medicine from Cuba but that means little here. People that were well recognized surgeons in Cuba will flee the country and if they are lucky they will get a license to drive an ambulance. Those not so lucky will get a license to drive a taxicab.
I do not claim that the professional engineering license from Sweden makes this man unable to call himself an engineer. I only want to point out that not all certifications are equal and sometimes these documents can be forged, or obtained under circumstances that do not meet the rigor of where the person has immigrated to.
It's sad to see people that have dedicated their lives to learning medicine and helping people be left to survive on driving a car for a living. I don't know of any simple resolution to this when the people come from nations known to be bad actors, who would gladly falsify licenses to practice medicine if it suited their needs.
Is this man an engineer? Sure. I'm an engineer. I have two engineering degrees from an accredited university and at least ten years of experience doing engineering. I have no certification as an engineer, not even from Sweden, but I am an engineer.
When I lived in Texas I saw a bit of an argument over the use of the word "engineer", or even the terms "professional engineer", "licensed engineer". or "certified engineer". What prompted this was the Microsoft certifications that had become popular with the software developers that were coming to the state. People started putting "Microsoft Certified Engineer" on their resume. It turns out that there is an old law in the state that only two people may lawfully call themselves an "engineer". They must either: - Have an engineering degree from an accredited university and passed the state issued exams for a professional engineer, or - Drive a train
So, in your search for engineers how many people showed up for the interview in their best looking steel toed boots, freshly pressed coveralls, a bright bandana around their neck, with leather gloves neatly tucked in their belt, and a coal shovel in their hand?
Yes, I know that's not what a modern train engineer looks like, but just put that image in your mind and think of how ridiculous it is to demand some kind of state protections on the use of any word. If you are looking for state certified engineers then state that in your job qualifications. Is it that hard to figure that out?
I am an engineer. (And no, I don't drive a train.)
The local community college district is run by the State.
That might explain it but that oath still seems unusual.
If you are armed, then you are not free from arms. The slogan makes no logical sense.
Either you are thinking this over too hard or not hard enough.
Imagine a gazelle on the savanna, is this animal free? Sure, it can roam far and wide if it chooses. What it is not free from is other gazelles. For the gazelles to get along there must be a hierarchy, which they defend with their horns. If we take away their horns does that free them from horns? Sure. They might still get along but that will be short lived, this peaceful coexistence will be broken when a lion comes. Those horns are not only used to keep the peace among the gazelles but also to defend the gazelles from the lions. The lions would love to see gazelles without horns, if they could take the horns then the gazelles would no longer be free to roam the savanna.
Freeing the gazelles of their horns does not free them of the claws of the lion. The gazelles are free to roam only to the point their horns keep the lions away.
Disarming myself might free me from my own guns but that does not disarm the thugs around me. So long as I stay with my "herd" I'm quite safe. We have a, perhaps informal and unspoken, hierarchy and order we maintain amongst ourselves. This is in part from a desire to be left alone and in part from a, perhaps also unspoken, promise to defend our desire to be left alone with potentially lethal force. The other gazelles know of this, as do the lions.
If the herd is threatened from the outside then I'm only as free as my ability to defend my herd. I might be able to rely on the other "gazelles" in my herd that chose to keep their horns but maybe not. I don't know if those gazelles also chose to "dehorn" themselves since unlike horns on a gazelle the weapons we carry are not as prominent. We can't always see the lions, and the lions cannot always see our horns. That is what keeps us gazelles free, or as free as we could possibly be in any real world.
Sure you can, but you'll be fined $500 for it. Not for calling yourself an engineer, but for walking around with an unlicensed erection.
If you are going to erect anything around here we need prior notification of said erection sent to the traffic commission, fire marshal's office, city council, engineering office, and public utilities board. Draft reports will have to be filed on traffic and parking, fire safety, property tax estimates, structural stability, and water and sewage requirements before the erection license may be issued. The erection may not be occupied until final reports have been filed and an occupancy license issued. Issuance of any license may require payment of estimated fees and taxation at time of issuance.
Yeah, I already mentioned how the report on militarist extremism was a problem in the ranks.
You did? I get forgetful sometimes.
But you should look up Moore's behavior.
Why? I'm not voting for this guy. I can't vote for this guy. I'm also quite certain the signal to noise ratio on anything I find will be quite low. Maybe if someone posts some links to something relevant I might click to read. I only know about Al Franken because it was kind of hard to not hear about that somewhere, that was kind of big news. The goings on for Moore must be more local so far, I don't see much about that here.
It can also be self-denial.
No, I'm pretty sure it's my opioid addled brain. I get forgetful sometimes.
No, you're thinking of Brock Turner, who isn't running for office, and the aforementioned Donald Trump.
Who are these people? I get forgetful sometimes.
Going to be really funny if word gets out about paternity tests.
Oh, we don't believe in those things around here. Just ask my wife, sister, and cousin. She's right over there.
Happened right on this thread. You, Moore, and Trump, all citizens of the state of Denial in the Republic of Delusion.
We're you asked to join the National Guard? That's highly unusual for anything else. The oath would also include things like obeying lawful order of superior officers and recognition of the Governor and POTUS as the ultimate authority.
What genetic trait will makes the White male superior to do Computer Engineering? It seems to be too new of a skill for evolution to deal with it.
While European nations were doing skilled trades, banking, and farming for generations the people in sub-Sahara Africa, Australia, and the Americas were still largely hunter-gatherer tribes.
For someone to be successful in Europe they'd have to be able to do some math. Perhaps pretty basic math, like count the number of months for winter, then the number of steers had to be slaughtered for each month to feed the family and the number of bundles of wood that needed to be burned to heat the cabin, and make the appropriate calculations. A few winters of people starving or freezing to death will have a considerable effect on the ability of the next generation to perform these computations.
While the women were in the cabin breastfeeding the infant the husband will be out and about tending to the cattle. Women didn't need to count heads of steers to survive, they had to tend to the cabin and the children to survive. Women poor at performing these tasks meant children that were malnourished and sickly, and would die off even if the men were able to properly compute the necessary provisions for winter. Again, many generations of this meant women that were motherly tended to survive and men that were... manly?... tended to survive.
The people of Japan, Korea, and China had similar pressures on survival. They had winters and farming like in Europe. They had to go to sea for much of their protein and so skills in navigation would be important. As would general engineering skills to build the ships. Europe had sailors too, meaning those good at figuring out the math of speed vs. distance was important. Management skills like captaining a boat, figuring out pay for the crew, rationing provisions, and figuring out complex relations like what kept scurvy at bay.
There were people's of other parts of the world that sailed but their skills at it weren't nearly as important for their survival. Few sailed out of sight of land. Few had large crews to manage. With enough protein hopping, jumping, and sprinting about the land they didn't need to go out to sea to get enough to eat. Oh, and not much of winter to kill off some of the less intelligent.
But for a software engineer, just as long as you are able to interact with the computer and have average inelegance, with appropriate training, there isn't any real reason why people of different genders or races can do the job.
I agree, there is no real reason these positions cannot be filled by people of either gender or any race. What we do see is that people of certain races and genders will, on the average, tend to score higher than average. If the seat is filled competitively then people of these races and genders will tend to fill those positions over other races and genders. Companies that wish to ignore this tendency will hire based on race and gender over their intelligence will likely be able to fill that seat, and also be at a competitive disadvantage with other companies on their final products.
I saw an interview a while back where the people were discussing South Africa and the racial tensions there. That is a nation, due to its location on a major shipping route going way back, where Europeans immigrated in much larger numbers than other African nations. Even so the indigenous Blacks still make up 80% of the population with the rest being mostly European and mixed ancestry. That nation has never seen any major engineering project until the Europeans showed up, not even so much as a two story building. This ability for the immigrants to do so much better angered the locals.
Testing for intelligence among the population shows that those of European or mixed ancestry will have 50% score above 100 IQ. Those of pure indigenous ancestry will have 20% of the population score above 100 IQ. So, sure, you can find people in South Africa of any ancestry to fill a position that requires an average intelligence and appropriate training. What you will also find is that the qualified applicants will be made up of about 4 Whites to every 1 Black.
Imagine a company that needs people with average intelligence, or above, and appropriate training to fill thousands of jobs. In fact let's ignore the training part, and assume it's only about intelligence and the training is obtained on the job. Filling that first 5 seats with a proportion matching the general population will be easy, find 4 Blacks that score above 100 on an IQ test and 1 White, then hire them all. Now iterate this. This company is pulling from a pool where 50% of Whites can pass the test but only 20% of Blacks will. With each iteration the pool of Blacks that can pass the test gets far smaller on proportion than the Whites.
Assuming the highest scoring of the applicants are selected the quality of applicants of each iteration will be lower. Also, the quality of Black applicants will fall far faster than the White applicants. What happens after years of this and many many other companies hire people based on proportion of the race of the general population rather than the proportion of the population that can pass the IQ test with a score above 100? Something has to give.
To make this work the hiring practice has to start ignoring the racial makeup of the general population, and hire more Whites. I suppose the hiring criteria can change to have this racial proportion continue, but then you have people with below average intelligence tasked with work that may be beyond their abilities. What happens then? Is the company supposed to keep these people hired even though they cannot do the work they've been hired to do? Perhaps the work can be divided up, so more complex work is given to the more capable people and the less complex work given to the less capable people. Now you have "senior" engineers and "junior" engineers to differentiate between the more capable and less capable. In the larger group of "engineer" the racial composition is 80% Black and 20% White but the senior engineers is now flipped with 80% White and 20% Black. What happens then?
I know what happens. We'll have a bunch of people complain of racial discrimination and demand that senior engineers hav
Oh, pretending you have little memory, or admitting your inability to recall even your own words?
That tends to happen when I wash down an Ambien with some Bailey's on ice.
Read the whole thread over. It isn't hard.
I did and I found little of value in it.
Plenty do, actually. Documented ones like McVeigh, Rudolph, and James Harris Jackson.
There's outliers in everything, doesn't do much for the larger trend.
Nope! You have no photos and no confessions to any crimes.
I typed "Al Franken admissions" into Google, clicked on the "news" tab, and the top two results show Al Franken admitted to doing what he was accused of doing. He does not dispute this.
You forget, you've been apologizing for him all along.
I do get forgetful sometimes. That happens when I wash down my Vicoden with some red wine. Wait, did I forget to take my Ambien? I better do that now.
Ah, cute, you want to imprison Al Franken without a trial.
No, I expect he'll make a plea deal to avoid prison. Kind of hard to now claim innocence when he knows he's been caught on film molesting a woman as she slept, and has admitted publicly to doing it.
Nope, it's up to you, and you voted for him.
I'm quite certain I didn't since I don't live in Alabama. Perhaps I did and I forgot. I get forgetful after taking my allergy medicine with a beer. Oh, and I need to take my Ambien now. I don't want to forget that.
Listen, I'd go on but I'm felling reel tyred now. The kaybnord is gettying all blurring and stufff so its becomming dificilt to tope the wirds. amybe ill cime bsck later qith moore to sey.
Let's assume we have known populations A, B, C, D, and E. Each population is roughly equally divided between populations X and Y. We've done testing on intelligence and psychological tendencies on all these groups. We can say that A has the highest intelligence, B the lowest, C about average, D slightly above average, and E slightly below average. When grouped by X and Y we can see that, on average, Y scores higher in intelligence but X is lower. This is not generally disputed. People may argue if this is genetic, cultural, learned behavior, a result of nutrition (or lack thereof) between the populations, but generally this testing is not disputed.
Further we can see that group D might be generally average in intelligence taken as a whole they score higher in verbal skills. Group A scores highly in mathematical skills, but perhaps lower in verbal skill. Groups B and E may test poorly generally in intelligence but they score better than average on spacial comprehension. People in group C tend to be good planners, capable of abstract thought, long term planning, and an ability to multi-task. People in group X tend to be able to work better in groups, have a tendency for showing greater concern for others, and those in group Y tend to be more competitive and combative, and while able to work well in groups these people will want to shine above the rest.
Given all of this we'd expect these traits to show in their abilities within their chosen professions, and also the professions they choose. People in group A being analytical thinkers might choose things like law, engineering, and accounting. People in groups B and E might tend to be technicians, athletes, and mechanics. People in group C might tend to be managers, farmers/ranchers, and police/fire/first-responders. Those in group D might be sales, public relations, actors/authors/entertainers. When it comes to a specific field, take medicine for example, you might find group Y tend to be specialists and X generalists. In medicine you might also find X tending towards pediatric medicine, and Y tending towards adult medicine.
In an army you might find more foot soldiers and other front line troops fitting into groups Y, C, B, and E. The support troops are more likely to be X, A, and D. On a sports team, the team captains, coaches, and specialist are more likely to be A, C, and D. The other spots on the team will tend to be filled with groups B and E. Individual and aggressive sports will be favored by Y and X prefers sports demanding teamwork and dexterity.
So, in a business we might have the different groups tending to gravitate to the spots in the company where they feel comfortable, where they can excel. This is somehow a problem. So we must "force" this diversity into groups where they might not fit? Why must we do this? Oh, diversity. Because diversity is good. But if these groups bring different skills to the table then would not these different skills bring them to be in different positions within the company? If group A tends to be good at accounting then let them be in accounting. If C excels in engineering then let them be in engineering. If B and E do well as technicians then let them be technicians. If D excels in advertising and PR then let them do that. Forcing diversity for the sake of diversity means forcing people into positions where they may not excel, and that's not good for anyone.
Then we'll see people breaking this "diversity" down further into a third dimension of Q, R, S, and T. Now we're into defining diversity to where it might be considered absurd. If this is not considered going into the absurd then creating a fourth dimension of diversity might come into play, and if we don't consider these four dimensions of diversity in hiring then somehow we are just bad people.
How about we ignore these largely arbitrary classifications of people and hire those best suited for the job?
These demands for "diversity" have become more dangerous to society than the discrimination it's supposed to prevent. We're still discriminating but now that we're supposedly discriminating "equally" that's somehow okay.
Makes me think that some people are more equal that others.
I come back to my computer this morning and see you've replied, assuming I'm conversing with the same AC. After reading all of that I had to go back and figure out what this was all about because your post is all over the place. This was started with my comment that the Republican running in Alabama was merely accused of improper and creepy, but likely not illegal, behavior. If Moore did break the law then it would seem easier to press charges before he gets elected to the US Senate. Once seated then the rules change, which is probably why Al Franken isn't in prison right now.
If Moore broke the law then I expect charges to be brought. Since it seems no one has formally charged him with a crime then I am inclined to think this is just a Democrat smear campaign.
Makes me wonder why you hate the USA so much.
I hate America so much that I volunteered for the Army. Oh, wait, that's not what America haters do.
I love America enough that I'd rather the Republicans found someone else to run in Alabama. I also want Franken removed from office for his crimes, and I can say that because we have photographic evidence of his crimes and he's admitted to committing these crimes. Franken is a criminal and Moore is accused. That doesn't mean either should be in office, neither should. If the people of Alabama want Moore in office then it's up to the Senate to decide if they want Moore there.
I suspect that Moore will win because the case of any improper or criminal behavior seems quite weak and based on partisanship. It's probably a coin toss on if he actually takes a seat, assuming he wins the election, because it seems that while enough Republicans and Democrats don't want him there it may come down to being the devil they know.
Maybe I should pay more attention to the race. I'm going to catch up on this some more, I'll go turn on the radio, Rush Limbaugh is on now.
I'm pretty sure that Mr. Whiskers and Fluffy aren't taking down bald eagles. A quick internet search tells me that current windmills kill somewhere between 400 and 4000 eagles every year, reporting varies. This is of an estimated population of about 140,000 bald eagles and 40,000 golden eagles.
Then there are other large birds put at risk by windmills, owls, ospreys, vultures, hawks, falcons, and so on. These are large birds with little fear of domestic cats, quite the contrary actually since they've been known to hunt cats for food.
If we lose 400 eagles every year now, and people expect to grow wind energy production tenfold, then would we not see 4000 eagles lost every year? What if we see losses on the top end of the estimate now? Could that mean losses of 40,000 eagles every year? With a total eagle population of maybe 200,000? Someone check my math please.
I read that windmill operators are working to reduce these deaths of birds of prey. One method has a radar of some sort which can detect the birds and shutdown the windmills when they are in the area. That's great but the windmills can't produce electricity if they aren't spinning. These birds of prey share territory but are active at different times of day. Golden eagles hunt at dusk and dawn, bald eagles are most active in the middle of the day, and owls hunt at night. Then the windmills can only spin if the wind is blowing and no large birds trigger the radar. So when can these windmills produce energy and not threaten some species of bird that isn't protected by law?
If you have a cat that's hunting owls and eagles then you've got a cat that's big enough to hunt you.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Brain development doesn't vary noticeably across the world. Whatever pressures there were worked more or less equally on Homo Sapiens. Obviously, there had been pressure, but it doesn't show significant variations over peoples.
I'm not going to play "my citation is bigger than yours" with you since there's enough noise on both sides to muddy the waters. Maybe we can just agree to disagree.
Which is why the Siberians and Inuit rule the world, right?
There's a tendency for populations that experience winter to develop greater intelligence, just like there is a tendency for males to choose engineering as a profession. That does not mean all cultures that experienced winter developed greater intelligence at the same rates. Not all engineers are male, and not all males are engineers. On the whole though we see more males choosing engineering, and being successful doing it, than females. This also shows in formalized testing that males are generally better than females in mathematics and abstract reasoning, again as a trend and not an absolute. We might debate over the evolutionary pressures on what made this happen but it seems clear that this is not due to any gender discrimination, past or present. Women have had equal opportunity to go into engineering for a long time now, no one is preventing women from getting into engineering any more. Quite the opposite really, just ask my sister. She's a professional engineer considering going into business on her own, there's all kinds of government grants and subsidized loans she could get to do so. These same opportunities do not apply to men.
If there is discrimination now it's against white straight Christian men.
insurance should cover birth control, and HSAs and FSAs should cover condoms (to control the spread of STDs).
Should car insurance cover oil changes, tires, and fuel? That's a serious question.
Health insurance, at least at one time, was to cover unexpected health costs that are too expensive for a person to cover out of pocket with ease. I remember someone commenting that treating a broken arm used to cost maybe $200. The poor kid would be driven to a hospital by a parent, school nurse, or other responsible adult, the visit with the physician would be about $50, maybe an x-ray would be taken for $50, $50 for the cast, and the rest of the $200 for any medications and to pay for the nurses' time.
Now treating a broken arm can cost $2000, a tenfold increase. Treating a broken bone on a dog still costs about $200. The x-ray equipment is really no different. The training of the people doing the treatment isn't really all that different. The medications are also pretty much the same. So what's different? The difference is that people would not tolerate $2000 to treat a broken bone on an animal. People tolerate $2000 to treat a broken arm on their child because they aren't paying for it, insurance is. Well, they are still paying for it in through their insurance costs but the cost of any single incident is invisible to them.
Would I have been able to get my brakes fixed for $80 if insurance was paying for it? Would a new set of tires still cost $400? Not likely. With insurance there's a new overhead on having to manage the paperwork. It's not just me, the shop owner, and the mechanic now making a deal any more. Now we have an insurance company involved, staff at the auto shop filling out paperwork, more government oversight, and so much more.
Go pay for your own damned condoms, I hear you can get them for a dollar at a truck stop. If that's too much then just hop into the lobby of any college health clinic, I hear they just keep them in a bowl by the door for horny students to grab. Someone might give you a funny look for doing it but I doubt anyone would stop you. If you make this a habit then invest in a t-shirt with the college mascot on it to blend in a little, it will pay for itself in time.
If you make insurance pay for condoms then you'll have to follow new rules. There's likely going to be requirements on visiting a physician, so they can tell you how they are used and to check for any STD you might have. Then you'll get a prescription. Now a pharmacist has to check the prescription, get you your condoms and file the proper paperwork with the insurance company. Oh, wait, are you allergic to latex? I'm sure the insurance company will want to check for that too. Maybe they'll just buy the more expensive vinyl ones just in case, why should they care? They aren't paying for the condoms in the end, you are, I am, and so is everyone else that have insurance.
Now you have people that can't afford insurance, or condoms. Pregnancies and STDs rise and treating a broken arm now costs $20,000.
We could see species adaptions there that don't exist anywhere else.
So, once we pollute the environment we have to keep doing it or risk a population failure?
I'm only half serious. If we have humans that evolve to thrive in an environment laced with steroids in the water, antibiotics in the meat, and ammonia in the air and then later take that all away then we might have people getting sick from diseases that would normally have been killed off before.
I remember my sister telling me about places that began fertilizing crops with human sewage seeing a reduction in cases of vitamin B deficiency. Okay, human shit has more vitamin B than non-human shit. Not sure that this makes the practice of using human sewage to fertilize the growing of the peas and carrots I eat a good idea. Let's assume this practice continues for a long period, many generations. We'll have a population that has a gene pool and culture (a traditional diet mostly) that relies on the use of human sewage for it's nutrition. Suppose someone comes along and says that this is a bad idea, perhaps they discover people getting sick from improper handling of sewage and the fruits and vegetables grown from it, so the practice ends. Now you have people getting sick from not getting enough vitamin B. Now this population of people have a choice, return to the previous practice, adjust their diet, or find some new balance with the environment they've created.
I'm not saying that soot in the air is something we should keep around and allow people to adapt to it. I'm only saying that this is an interesting concept of the population of people changing to suit the environment, the people changing the environment to suit them, and this iterating over long periods. I suspect we'd see this just jump out at us if we stop to look for it. Humans are not separate from the environment, we are as much a part of it as any other creatures living on this planet.
That's part of the joke.
If natural gas furnaces are good, why not just leave the heat pumps in place, and have the furnaces kick in once it drops below a certain temperature?
Because there is a cost of maintaining and operating these heat pumps that has to be borne by someone. Just the thermostat that can control two heat sources is not cheap. I have a system like this, the control unit (calling it a thermostat is almost insulting) cost $200, while a common digital programmable thermostat can be had for about $20. Even a cheap dual heat control unit is easily $100, and then you have to have the wiring for it, and pay people to install it.
I learned with my heat pump and furnace that the temperature range in which the heat pump is cheaper to operate than the natural gas is very small. This temperature range can vary greatly with the relative differences in prices of natural gas and electricity where you are, of course, but given the prices of natural gas around the world right now I have to imagine that there are few places where heat pumps are cheaper to run than natural gas.
Then there is a matter of just having the space for both the furnace and heat pump. My sister lived in an apartment where the heat pumps kept breaking down. People asked why they weren't simply replaced. The reply was that the mechanical space was too small for any kind of new unit on the market. They'd repair the heat pumps as renters complained but that didn't change the fact that the occupants had to deal with cold nights and high bills from the back up resistance heat.
In short, there's lots of reasons to not keep the heat pumps in place and all of them coming down to the costs.
I made a very simplistic explanation of the conditions on the ISS in an attempt to set up a pun as best I could without being too wordy. It's a stupid joke, lighten up.
The condition is called "missile toe", get it? Say it out loud if you have to. It rhymes with "mistletoe". Get it now?
Have a Merry Christmas.
People will talk of being in orbit as being in "zero-g" but they experience gravity like everyone else but the forces from traveling at such incredible speeds cancels out the gravity. Think of throwing a ball and how at the top of it's arc of travel all the forces equal and for a small period of time all forces on it are nearly zero. The higher a ball is thrown the longer this period. Put something on top of a missile and get it high and fast enough this period of time of where all forces acting on it are near zero lasts a very long time. This changes how the microbes grow and where they grow.
This makes things we don't think of as much of a deal on Earth quite the problem in orbit. These microbes on the skin of the astronauts feed off their dead skin. Because we here on the surface of Earth walk to get around this skin is worn off our feet and gets scattered by gravity and convective air currents off our warm bodies. I was a bit grossed out by this realization once in high school as we were filing out to get on the buses. I'd see the janitor would be sweeping the cafeteria floor and picking up this thin film of dust over the entire floor. Most of that is dead skin as people walk and our shoes and clothes wear it away.
Athlete's that get their feet sweaty and the skin wears off will have problems with a disease we know as "athlete's foot". This is just those microbes finding an environment to grow. When in space the astronaut's suffer from a similar disease. The microbes don't grow as much on the bottom of the foot like on athletes but more between the toes. This disease has come to get it's own name to differentiate it from the Earthly affliction of athlete's foot, they've come to call it "missile toe".
You appear to not consider the question of why certain groups score better in certain areas, and the implications.
Well, I have followed this debate for some time now. I have considered why this might be. I will concede that many factors can contribute to the IQ of a person or population. These factors can include nutrition, education, and cultural pressures. People will admit that a lack of nutrition can diminish a person's adult height. There's little dispute that genetics defines the maximum height a person will attain if given proper nutrition. People will not dispute that ethnicity can create differences in height of a population because of genetics, and that the genetics of the population was due to survival pressures over long periods. If I replace "height" in those sentences with "intelligence" though people start to get upset. It baffles me why this would be of such dispute.
If a group is discriminated against (like women and blacks), those people will tend to be better than their scores indicate.
That makes no sense. If I give a person a mathematics test then I'll get a score. This would tend to correlate to a non-testing environment like perhaps doing accounting, would it not? If people would do better than their scores would indicate then we've simply made a poor test. We've had a lot of time to improve our testing, seems difficult to believe that after all this time we're still seeing tests that are biased the same way, by the same proportions, time after time.
How do you propose we create a more representative testing process? Where have we failed for so long in properly assessing intelligence?
I'll also hear something like this, that these groups aren't less intelligent only that their intelligence is in different areas. I'll go with that. If one group has greater mathematical ability and another group greater verbal ability then let's use this to our advantage. Put the mathematically skilled people in the group doing engineering and have the verbally skilled people doing documentation, advertising, public relations, and human resources.
Claiming discrimination as a cause for this "diversity" disparity anymore has become laughable. No one DARES discriminate on race or gender now. Doing so is just asking to get owned in court.
Have you considered the implications of enforcing "diversity" for the sake of it? We can try as hard as we can to improve the scores that girls achieve on mathematics tests. We can try so hard that it may come at the detriment of boys scoring well. If there is a genetic basis for boys scoring better than girls in mathematics then how can we ever close this gap in math testing scores? The solution is easy but also horrifying. We can deprive boys of the education and nutrition needed to achieve their best scores on mathematics tests.
We can in fact close this intelligence gap. I have little doubt. Have you considered the implications of that?
I think I would have legally changed my name to "Engineer Smith" just to be a pain in their ass.
No, you're not thinking big enough. Change your middle name to Electrical. Last name, Engineer. First name? Anne.
"Hi, I'm Anne Electrical Engineer."
Don't want to go by "Anne"?
Last name still Engineer. Middle name as Structural. First name as Arnold or something but just abbreviate it. "Hi, I'm A. Structural Engineer."
Open a dental practice. Call it something catchy, like "A. Structural Engineer Bridgeworks"
Go into the arts, have a shop called "Structural Engineer's Drawings"
Anyone have better ideas? I'd like to have some fun with this.
If you manage all that by accident, it's probably a good idea to stay away from any nuclear missile launch operation centers, just in case.
I don't remember all the steps, and it's quite likely I don't recall all the security measures to keep people from doing a "Drop In" on my Echo. Just the ability for the Echo to "drop in" on people as a feature is something I think is creepy. I can see someone being engineered to enable this feature, or someone setting it up without the owner's knowledge. I believe that feature is something that can be abused and I'd feel better if it didn't even exist. Now that I know it's possible to enable the microphone from afar with my deliberate actions I have suspicions this can happen from afar without deliberate action on my part.
I suspect much of my distrust of the Echo is that I am not familiar with it and the documentation on what it does and can do is slim. I know it can do a lot of things since my brother likes to show off what he's done to automate his house with his Echo.
Your explanation of needing specific apps and following certain steps doesn't ease my fears much. The device is pretty much useless until given some very personal information. It's quite easy to give it too much information and there's no way to be sure it can be taken back. This is so common that it's become a joke among the general public very quickly. People know now that a television voice can order toys for people. Is it really all that inconceivable that someone might abuse this for more than ordering an expensive dollhouse?
Until quite recently, succeeding in Europe required the ability to work well enough. It didn't require brains in evolutionarily significant quantities.
In the 1500s Europeans were exploring the world, and the other people's of the world were not. That seems to indicate some sort of "evolutionarily significant" pressure to develop the brain. Surviving winter is hard enough. Surviving months at sea is nearly impossible without some ability to perform some mathematics, abstract thought, planning, teamwork, and so on. Just building a boat that can stay afloat that long is quite the engineering feat.
The people in Europe, northern Africa, and many parts of Asia were building huge structures from stone blocks and masonry for centuries before 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That seems to indicate some intellectual development. Centuries earlier the Europeans were living in mud huts, and tents held up by sticks, like much of the rest of the world.
You also seem to be clueless about what people in the New World, Africa, and Australia were doing.
They weren't building cathedrals. When it comes to explaining the superiority of Europeans over other ethnic groups in their ability to be good in engineering that seems to be a good indicator of why that might be.
So let's summarize....
Question: What might explain the ability of European males to be superior at computer engineering?
Answer (in one sentence): It probably has something to do with European males doing large engineering projects for centuries, and perhaps millennia.
Answer (in one word): Winter.
My brother gave me an Echo Dot in exchange for helping him fix up some stuff at his house. He said something about buying it and realizing he didn't need it so he gave it to me for my time and gas to come over.
I get it home and start playing with it and it's kind of nice, it's a lot like Siri on my phone in that I can ask Alexa random questions and it searches the internet for answers. It can also do things like initiate phone calls to people in my contact list, and stream music over the internet. This didn't seem so bad, it's like my iPhone but it stays at home and lets me use my phone for other stuff while I have Echo do things like music streaming instead.
My brother calls me up to ask how I like the Echo and wants to test this "Drop In" feature. I didn't know what it was, what it did, or if my Echo supported this. We play with our respective Echo devices and I find out that to "drop in" means immediately turning on the microphone of a remote device. That was a bit too much. I'm fine with people requesting to talk to me over Echo, that's not much different than a speaker phone ringing and I allow the call to come through. Drop In doesn't allow for the refusal of the connection, it just comes on. I can ask the connection to drop but that's after the fact.
Once I realized what "Drop In" did I disabled it. Finding this feature enabled by default is a bit disconcerting. Something that let's people listen in on me without some announcement is a problem, maybe there was an announcement but I don't recall there being one. I'm not going to enable it again to verify my recollections either. Perhaps I would not be so upset by this if it wasn't on by default.
I'll keep the Echo but I'm going to think carefully about where I put it and if I want to keep it plugged in all the time. It's nice to have to listen to podcasts, music streams, and such. I know it can do more if I get things that are "Alexa aware", or whatever they call Echo compatible stuff, and set it up but that's just buying more stuff that I don't think I need.
I had no intention of ever buying an Echo but now that I have one I'll use it. If I find more creepy behavior then I'll give it back to my brother, chuck it in the trash, or take it to the shotgun range and toss it like a clay pigeon.
I don't expect too much creepy behavior from these things, it's too easy for the people making these devices to get a bad reputation and losing all kinds of business over it. Of course that means some damage has already been done. That's why I'm treating this thing with some suspicion. I might place more trust in these once some of the creepier aspects of them get filtered out in future iterations from customer feedback.
No, but the discussion, while it would be fun, is off topic (topic was community colleges).
Then why bring up my signature line at all? By mentioning it I thought that meant you wanted to discuss it. If it's off topic, and you don't want to discuss it in spite of it being off topic, then you should have just let it go in the first place.
Usually, if a country says that you're an engineer, you are. Apparently Sweden claims he is, so he is.
Does Sweden claim to be a country? :^) I kid.
This comes up for people that have medical certifications from some nations and wish to practice medicine in the USA. Sure, you might have a license to practice medicine from Cuba but that means little here. People that were well recognized surgeons in Cuba will flee the country and if they are lucky they will get a license to drive an ambulance. Those not so lucky will get a license to drive a taxicab.
I do not claim that the professional engineering license from Sweden makes this man unable to call himself an engineer. I only want to point out that not all certifications are equal and sometimes these documents can be forged, or obtained under circumstances that do not meet the rigor of where the person has immigrated to.
It's sad to see people that have dedicated their lives to learning medicine and helping people be left to survive on driving a car for a living. I don't know of any simple resolution to this when the people come from nations known to be bad actors, who would gladly falsify licenses to practice medicine if it suited their needs.
Is this man an engineer? Sure. I'm an engineer. I have two engineering degrees from an accredited university and at least ten years of experience doing engineering. I have no certification as an engineer, not even from Sweden, but I am an engineer.
When I lived in Texas I saw a bit of an argument over the use of the word "engineer", or even the terms "professional engineer", "licensed engineer". or "certified engineer". What prompted this was the Microsoft certifications that had become popular with the software developers that were coming to the state. People started putting "Microsoft Certified Engineer" on their resume. It turns out that there is an old law in the state that only two people may lawfully call themselves an "engineer". They must either:
- Have an engineering degree from an accredited university and passed the state issued exams for a professional engineer, or
- Drive a train
So, in your search for engineers how many people showed up for the interview in their best looking steel toed boots, freshly pressed coveralls, a bright bandana around their neck, with leather gloves neatly tucked in their belt, and a coal shovel in their hand?
Yes, I know that's not what a modern train engineer looks like, but just put that image in your mind and think of how ridiculous it is to demand some kind of state protections on the use of any word. If you are looking for state certified engineers then state that in your job qualifications. Is it that hard to figure that out?
I am an engineer. (And no, I don't drive a train.)
The local community college district is run by the State.
That might explain it but that oath still seems unusual.
If you are armed, then you are not free from arms. The slogan makes no logical sense.
Either you are thinking this over too hard or not hard enough.
Imagine a gazelle on the savanna, is this animal free? Sure, it can roam far and wide if it chooses. What it is not free from is other gazelles. For the gazelles to get along there must be a hierarchy, which they defend with their horns. If we take away their horns does that free them from horns? Sure. They might still get along but that will be short lived, this peaceful coexistence will be broken when a lion comes. Those horns are not only used to keep the peace among the gazelles but also to defend the gazelles from the lions. The lions would love to see gazelles without horns, if they could take the horns then the gazelles would no longer be free to roam the savanna.
Freeing the gazelles of their horns does not free them of the claws of the lion. The gazelles are free to roam only to the point their horns keep the lions away.
Disarming myself might free me from my own guns but that does not disarm the thugs around me. So long as I stay with my "herd" I'm quite safe. We have a, perhaps informal and unspoken, hierarchy and order we maintain amongst ourselves. This is in part from a desire to be left alone and in part from a, perhaps also unspoken, promise to defend our desire to be left alone with potentially lethal force. The other gazelles know of this, as do the lions.
If the herd is threatened from the outside then I'm only as free as my ability to defend my herd. I might be able to rely on the other "gazelles" in my herd that chose to keep their horns but maybe not. I don't know if those gazelles also chose to "dehorn" themselves since unlike horns on a gazelle the weapons we carry are not as prominent. We can't always see the lions, and the lions cannot always see our horns. That is what keeps us gazelles free, or as free as we could possibly be in any real world.
Does that make sense?
Sure you can, but you'll be fined $500 for it. Not for calling yourself an engineer, but for walking around with an unlicensed erection.
If you are going to erect anything around here we need prior notification of said erection sent to the traffic commission, fire marshal's office, city council, engineering office, and public utilities board. Draft reports will have to be filed on traffic and parking, fire safety, property tax estimates, structural stability, and water and sewage requirements before the erection license may be issued. The erection may not be occupied until final reports have been filed and an occupancy license issued. Issuance of any license may require payment of estimated fees and taxation at time of issuance.
Yeah, I already mentioned how the report on militarist extremism was a problem in the ranks.
You did? I get forgetful sometimes.
But you should look up Moore's behavior.
Why? I'm not voting for this guy. I can't vote for this guy. I'm also quite certain the signal to noise ratio on anything I find will be quite low. Maybe if someone posts some links to something relevant I might click to read. I only know about Al Franken because it was kind of hard to not hear about that somewhere, that was kind of big news. The goings on for Moore must be more local so far, I don't see much about that here.
It can also be self-denial.
No, I'm pretty sure it's my opioid addled brain. I get forgetful sometimes.
No, you're thinking of Brock Turner, who isn't running for office, and the aforementioned Donald Trump.
Who are these people? I get forgetful sometimes.
Going to be really funny if word gets out about paternity tests.
Oh, we don't believe in those things around here. Just ask my wife, sister, and cousin. She's right over there.
Happened right on this thread. You, Moore, and Trump, all citizens of the state of Denial in the Republic of Delusion.
I don't remember. I get forgetful sometimes.
We're you asked to join the National Guard? That's highly unusual for anything else. The oath would also include things like obeying lawful order of superior officers and recognition of the Governor and POTUS as the ultimate authority.
What genetic trait will makes the White male superior to do Computer Engineering? It seems to be too new of a skill for evolution to deal with it.
While European nations were doing skilled trades, banking, and farming for generations the people in sub-Sahara Africa, Australia, and the Americas were still largely hunter-gatherer tribes.
For someone to be successful in Europe they'd have to be able to do some math. Perhaps pretty basic math, like count the number of months for winter, then the number of steers had to be slaughtered for each month to feed the family and the number of bundles of wood that needed to be burned to heat the cabin, and make the appropriate calculations. A few winters of people starving or freezing to death will have a considerable effect on the ability of the next generation to perform these computations.
While the women were in the cabin breastfeeding the infant the husband will be out and about tending to the cattle. Women didn't need to count heads of steers to survive, they had to tend to the cabin and the children to survive. Women poor at performing these tasks meant children that were malnourished and sickly, and would die off even if the men were able to properly compute the necessary provisions for winter. Again, many generations of this meant women that were motherly tended to survive and men that were... manly?... tended to survive.
The people of Japan, Korea, and China had similar pressures on survival. They had winters and farming like in Europe. They had to go to sea for much of their protein and so skills in navigation would be important. As would general engineering skills to build the ships. Europe had sailors too, meaning those good at figuring out the math of speed vs. distance was important. Management skills like captaining a boat, figuring out pay for the crew, rationing provisions, and figuring out complex relations like what kept scurvy at bay.
There were people's of other parts of the world that sailed but their skills at it weren't nearly as important for their survival. Few sailed out of sight of land. Few had large crews to manage. With enough protein hopping, jumping, and sprinting about the land they didn't need to go out to sea to get enough to eat. Oh, and not much of winter to kill off some of the less intelligent.
Does that answer your question?
But for a software engineer, just as long as you are able to interact with the computer and have average inelegance, with appropriate training, there isn't any real reason why people of different genders or races can do the job.
I agree, there is no real reason these positions cannot be filled by people of either gender or any race. What we do see is that people of certain races and genders will, on the average, tend to score higher than average. If the seat is filled competitively then people of these races and genders will tend to fill those positions over other races and genders. Companies that wish to ignore this tendency will hire based on race and gender over their intelligence will likely be able to fill that seat, and also be at a competitive disadvantage with other companies on their final products.
I saw an interview a while back where the people were discussing South Africa and the racial tensions there. That is a nation, due to its location on a major shipping route going way back, where Europeans immigrated in much larger numbers than other African nations. Even so the indigenous Blacks still make up 80% of the population with the rest being mostly European and mixed ancestry. That nation has never seen any major engineering project until the Europeans showed up, not even so much as a two story building. This ability for the immigrants to do so much better angered the locals.
Testing for intelligence among the population shows that those of European or mixed ancestry will have 50% score above 100 IQ. Those of pure indigenous ancestry will have 20% of the population score above 100 IQ. So, sure, you can find people in South Africa of any ancestry to fill a position that requires an average intelligence and appropriate training. What you will also find is that the qualified applicants will be made up of about 4 Whites to every 1 Black.
Imagine a company that needs people with average intelligence, or above, and appropriate training to fill thousands of jobs. In fact let's ignore the training part, and assume it's only about intelligence and the training is obtained on the job. Filling that first 5 seats with a proportion matching the general population will be easy, find 4 Blacks that score above 100 on an IQ test and 1 White, then hire them all. Now iterate this. This company is pulling from a pool where 50% of Whites can pass the test but only 20% of Blacks will. With each iteration the pool of Blacks that can pass the test gets far smaller on proportion than the Whites.
Assuming the highest scoring of the applicants are selected the quality of applicants of each iteration will be lower. Also, the quality of Black applicants will fall far faster than the White applicants. What happens after years of this and many many other companies hire people based on proportion of the race of the general population rather than the proportion of the population that can pass the IQ test with a score above 100? Something has to give.
To make this work the hiring practice has to start ignoring the racial makeup of the general population, and hire more Whites. I suppose the hiring criteria can change to have this racial proportion continue, but then you have people with below average intelligence tasked with work that may be beyond their abilities. What happens then? Is the company supposed to keep these people hired even though they cannot do the work they've been hired to do? Perhaps the work can be divided up, so more complex work is given to the more capable people and the less complex work given to the less capable people. Now you have "senior" engineers and "junior" engineers to differentiate between the more capable and less capable. In the larger group of "engineer" the racial composition is 80% Black and 20% White but the senior engineers is now flipped with 80% White and 20% Black. What happens then?
I know what happens. We'll have a bunch of people complain of racial discrimination and demand that senior engineers hav
Oh, pretending you have little memory, or admitting your inability to recall even your own words?
That tends to happen when I wash down an Ambien with some Bailey's on ice.
Read the whole thread over. It isn't hard.
I did and I found little of value in it.
Plenty do, actually. Documented ones like McVeigh, Rudolph, and James Harris Jackson.
There's outliers in everything, doesn't do much for the larger trend.
Nope! You have no photos and no confessions to any crimes.
I typed "Al Franken admissions" into Google, clicked on the "news" tab, and the top two results show Al Franken admitted to doing what he was accused of doing. He does not dispute this.
You forget, you've been apologizing for him all along.
I do get forgetful sometimes. That happens when I wash down my Vicoden with some red wine. Wait, did I forget to take my Ambien? I better do that now.
Ah, cute, you want to imprison Al Franken without a trial.
No, I expect he'll make a plea deal to avoid prison. Kind of hard to now claim innocence when he knows he's been caught on film molesting a woman as she slept, and has admitted publicly to doing it.
Nope, it's up to you, and you voted for him.
I'm quite certain I didn't since I don't live in Alabama. Perhaps I did and I forgot. I get forgetful after taking my allergy medicine with a beer. Oh, and I need to take my Ambien now. I don't want to forget that.
Listen, I'd go on but I'm felling reel tyred now. The kaybnord is gettying all blurring and stufff so its becomming dificilt to tope the wirds. amybe ill cime bsck later qith moore to sey.
Let's assume we have known populations A, B, C, D, and E. Each population is roughly equally divided between populations X and Y. We've done testing on intelligence and psychological tendencies on all these groups. We can say that A has the highest intelligence, B the lowest, C about average, D slightly above average, and E slightly below average. When grouped by X and Y we can see that, on average, Y scores higher in intelligence but X is lower. This is not generally disputed. People may argue if this is genetic, cultural, learned behavior, a result of nutrition (or lack thereof) between the populations, but generally this testing is not disputed.
Further we can see that group D might be generally average in intelligence taken as a whole they score higher in verbal skills. Group A scores highly in mathematical skills, but perhaps lower in verbal skill. Groups B and E may test poorly generally in intelligence but they score better than average on spacial comprehension. People in group C tend to be good planners, capable of abstract thought, long term planning, and an ability to multi-task. People in group X tend to be able to work better in groups, have a tendency for showing greater concern for others, and those in group Y tend to be more competitive and combative, and while able to work well in groups these people will want to shine above the rest.
Given all of this we'd expect these traits to show in their abilities within their chosen professions, and also the professions they choose. People in group A being analytical thinkers might choose things like law, engineering, and accounting. People in groups B and E might tend to be technicians, athletes, and mechanics. People in group C might tend to be managers, farmers/ranchers, and police/fire/first-responders. Those in group D might be sales, public relations, actors/authors/entertainers. When it comes to a specific field, take medicine for example, you might find group Y tend to be specialists and X generalists. In medicine you might also find X tending towards pediatric medicine, and Y tending towards adult medicine.
In an army you might find more foot soldiers and other front line troops fitting into groups Y, C, B, and E. The support troops are more likely to be X, A, and D. On a sports team, the team captains, coaches, and specialist are more likely to be A, C, and D. The other spots on the team will tend to be filled with groups B and E. Individual and aggressive sports will be favored by Y and X prefers sports demanding teamwork and dexterity.
So, in a business we might have the different groups tending to gravitate to the spots in the company where they feel comfortable, where they can excel. This is somehow a problem. So we must "force" this diversity into groups where they might not fit? Why must we do this? Oh, diversity. Because diversity is good. But if these groups bring different skills to the table then would not these different skills bring them to be in different positions within the company? If group A tends to be good at accounting then let them be in accounting. If C excels in engineering then let them be in engineering. If B and E do well as technicians then let them be technicians. If D excels in advertising and PR then let them do that. Forcing diversity for the sake of diversity means forcing people into positions where they may not excel, and that's not good for anyone.
Then we'll see people breaking this "diversity" down further into a third dimension of Q, R, S, and T. Now we're into defining diversity to where it might be considered absurd. If this is not considered going into the absurd then creating a fourth dimension of diversity might come into play, and if we don't consider these four dimensions of diversity in hiring then somehow we are just bad people.
How about we ignore these largely arbitrary classifications of people and hire those best suited for the job?
These demands for "diversity" have become more dangerous to society than the discrimination it's supposed to prevent. We're still discriminating but now that we're supposedly discriminating "equally" that's somehow okay.
Makes me think that some people are more equal that others.
I come back to my computer this morning and see you've replied, assuming I'm conversing with the same AC. After reading all of that I had to go back and figure out what this was all about because your post is all over the place. This was started with my comment that the Republican running in Alabama was merely accused of improper and creepy, but likely not illegal, behavior. If Moore did break the law then it would seem easier to press charges before he gets elected to the US Senate. Once seated then the rules change, which is probably why Al Franken isn't in prison right now.
If Moore broke the law then I expect charges to be brought. Since it seems no one has formally charged him with a crime then I am inclined to think this is just a Democrat smear campaign.
Makes me wonder why you hate the USA so much.
I hate America so much that I volunteered for the Army. Oh, wait, that's not what America haters do.
I love America enough that I'd rather the Republicans found someone else to run in Alabama. I also want Franken removed from office for his crimes, and I can say that because we have photographic evidence of his crimes and he's admitted to committing these crimes. Franken is a criminal and Moore is accused. That doesn't mean either should be in office, neither should. If the people of Alabama want Moore in office then it's up to the Senate to decide if they want Moore there.
I suspect that Moore will win because the case of any improper or criminal behavior seems quite weak and based on partisanship. It's probably a coin toss on if he actually takes a seat, assuming he wins the election, because it seems that while enough Republicans and Democrats don't want him there it may come down to being the devil they know.
Maybe I should pay more attention to the race. I'm going to catch up on this some more, I'll go turn on the radio, Rush Limbaugh is on now.
I'm pretty sure that Mr. Whiskers and Fluffy aren't taking down bald eagles. A quick internet search tells me that current windmills kill somewhere between 400 and 4000 eagles every year, reporting varies. This is of an estimated population of about 140,000 bald eagles and 40,000 golden eagles.
Then there are other large birds put at risk by windmills, owls, ospreys, vultures, hawks, falcons, and so on. These are large birds with little fear of domestic cats, quite the contrary actually since they've been known to hunt cats for food.
If we lose 400 eagles every year now, and people expect to grow wind energy production tenfold, then would we not see 4000 eagles lost every year? What if we see losses on the top end of the estimate now? Could that mean losses of 40,000 eagles every year? With a total eagle population of maybe 200,000? Someone check my math please.
I read that windmill operators are working to reduce these deaths of birds of prey. One method has a radar of some sort which can detect the birds and shutdown the windmills when they are in the area. That's great but the windmills can't produce electricity if they aren't spinning. These birds of prey share territory but are active at different times of day. Golden eagles hunt at dusk and dawn, bald eagles are most active in the middle of the day, and owls hunt at night. Then the windmills can only spin if the wind is blowing and no large birds trigger the radar. So when can these windmills produce energy and not threaten some species of bird that isn't protected by law?
If you have a cat that's hunting owls and eagles then you've got a cat that's big enough to hunt you.