Before you mod me down, read my post (and the article)!
What really surprised me was that the article text actually states that women's math scores were below that of men in every country tested:
Although the female test-takers lagged behind males on the math portion of the test, the size of the gap closely tracked the degree of gender inequality in their countries, shrinking to nearly zero in emancipated countries like Sweden and Norway. That suggests that cultural biases rather than biology may be the better explanation for the math gender gap.
So apparently, it is entirely objective to state that the test results indicate that women are worse at basic math than men. Except in Iceland.
Woman apparently are also always better at reading comprehension than men. (See the article.)
The authors argue this results from misogynistic prejudice. However, if you look at the actual article, the correlation is not exact. Norway and Sweden are more emancipated than Iceland, yet have lower female math scores relative to the males. Portugal, France and Poland also introduce a deviation from the trend. Thus, 5 of the 10 countries evaluated do not correlate well with the authors' suggested trend, indicating that the emancipation index is probably not the right metric to be comparing to.
Actually, you do learn math by rote memorization. Those of us who were interested in math from the beginning were training it all the time by playing around with numbers or geometrical objects, which is just rote memorization with spices on top. And you get really good at math by doing math chores all the time.
That's not really true at all. Rote memorization just teaches you the sets of numbers that you have memorized. Actual understanding of the addition process allows one to add any set of numbers, even if they have never seen them before. In fact, with proper teaching, you should be able to add properly, at first attempt, with no memorization required.
Teaching the method rather than memorization is much more efficient given that there are, by definition, an infinite set of numbers.
Sadly, the US teaching methodology forces everyone to memorize basic concepts first. Most teachers then muddle through the theory so poorly that only students with good aptitude and home lives are able to extract the general methodology in a decent amount of time. The rest fall back on memorization for a few years until they forget entirely. Then they spend the rest of their lives terrified of math.
Gallons-to-tons as the metric? What happened to meters and kilograms?
Let's look at the energy content for some different meat and vegetable products: Lean steak: 1.86 cal/g Lard: 8.85 cal/g Broccoli: 0.34 cal/g Beets: 0.31 cal/g Meat products appear to contain between 5 and 29 times more energy per unit gram than the vegetables while requiring 47-77 times more water using the author's unchecked (but I assume biased!) stated water usage values).
So the ratio of energy/water usage ratio for meat versus vegetables is about 3.5:1. That isn't as egregious as the OP makes it sound.
Also, many meateaters will not replace their meat diets with legumes, nuts and tubers. Just like many vegetarians will not replace their legumes, nuts and tubers diets with meat.
I generally just yell "Whoooooooooosh!" really loudly as I erase. As for different visual effects, I sometimes use the small eraser, while other times I use the big eraser. I've even used a cloth rag every once in a while. If I'm feeling really snazzy, I'll use two erasers at once (one in each hand!)!
You know what is really awesome?
To start with a powerpoint slide displayed on the screen with a graph and a blank space. Then take your marker and derive your equations in the blank space! Of course, it only works well for one slide.
I guarantee that if you do this: (1) you audience will pay attention and (2) you will never be invited for another lecture at that room.
If you have any experimental data to show, you are going to need some sort of viewgraph projector or computer display. I don't think that many of ones colleagues would be content to trust that your hand-drawn data points agree perfectly with your hand-drawn "theory" curve!
That said, it is fantastic to see people going back to the chalkboard. What is really unfortunate is that most places have ripped out their chalkboards, replaced them with dry erase boards, and then stopped stocking them with fresh markers.
(I took data for the paper, but am not an author.)
It's pretty sad when the 35 authors can take paper space acknowledge the culturally significant role that the observatory site has for the indigenous Hawaiians, but can't specifically acknowledge the people who took the data.
I find it incredibly offensive to say that women should be forced to condemn their children to suffer from a preventable disease,
Then don't have kids. It's still an elective choice.
or be prevented from bearing genetically-related children, simply because some people think the cure is "unnatural".
By its very definition of how it's done is unnatural and the long term consequences to the gene pool unknown.
How about you don't have kids? We don't need any more AC trolls in the world.
We started messing with the "gene pool" when we started giving people things like glasses, surgery, antibiotics, and immunizations to enhance their lives.
Most people will have children regardless. Your stance is effectively condemning those children to a diseased life.
My elective choice would be to take all the people like you, ship them to an island that was devoid of any modern medicine, and let you "evolve" naturally. Enjoy dying at 35!
And here is where IMHO, the wrong decision was made. They elected to not take images to see the damage. If they did, and saw the damage, instead of trying to rush Atlantis back into orbit, could they not have...
The wrong decision was made decades earlier when the US chose to rest on their laurels and not improve the shuttle design by increasing the safety margin or the turnaround time:
-The turnaround time between shuttle launches should not exceed the crew's air supply.
-The cockpit should have been contained in a module that could be ejected during reentry.
There are no technical hurdles to meeting either of those goals... NASA did not design the original shuttles to accommodate these factors due to cost. They could have redesigned the shuttles to be safer after 20 years of technology development and flight experience, but that also was deemed to cost too much.
This is the reason the astronauts died. Their lives were not worth the cost of incorporating full redundancy into the shuttle systems.
I actually did a science fair project once testing whether the moon's gravity led to Earth getting hit with fewer asteroids. The effect was statistically insignificant.
Was it peer reviewed? Because then this would be interesting... especially if you posted a link to the details.
Not sure what your point is: The island was still built by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Navy base idea came after Pearl Harbor, when the Navy needed an area to stage its ships before sending them out to war. They requested that San Francisco submit a purchase price. After San Francisco decided that the island was not for sale, the Navy seized it. They then traded Mills Field for the island. (Mills Field eventually became the San Francisco International Airport, which probably would not have fit under the Bay Bridge anyway!)
The city still got to hold its exposition, which is why the island was built. They then got land elsewhere for their airport. It's not like they got screwed, especially since most of the island creation and subsequent development cost was funded by New Deal funds (Works Public Administration and Public Works Administration). The rest was supported by exhibition funds and the local governments.
And keep in mind, that this was during WWII. The priorities were a little bit different then.
... now the corporate sector is getting impatient that they can't profit off of it! Ridiculous.
The most cost efficient solution would be to just remove the highway exit leading to the island.
Build a new island if you want to build high-priced condos to continue to overpopulate San Francisco. Or let the corporations that will profit off of the condos actually pay to cleanup the island.
People flashing headlights make other drivers slow down. In fact, flashing lights make more people slow down than a cop giving out a few tickets.
Any cop living up to the motto "To serve and protect" should be happy about this.
Personally, I would rather see less ticketing for speeding and more ticketing for left-lane cloggers who refuse to move over and let faster traffic by.
While this solar farm is idle at night and unreliable by day, the transmission infrastructure must be built to handle the full capacity of the equivalent four nuclear plants, and it will sit idle most of the time. The solar option makes no economic sense, when instead they could purchase two actual 1GWe nuclear plants, and have 15 TW-hours/year of reliable power for more than twice as long.
That's not really a fair assessment, even if your numbers were correct.
It makes economic sense to diversify ones energy portfolio and to invest in developing technology if you want to become a world leader. It's called a long term investment. India is clearly trying to head this direction.
Also, I would argue that not taking advantage of free energy that is incident on the Earth's surface for most of the day makes no economic sense. Once the infrastructure is in place, they can always find other ways to utilize it.
We hold the purse strings AND the votes. Either one alone is enough to eliminate the TSA. But we have said, en-mass, that the TSA is acceptable in our society. So it will continue.
Brave words from an anonymous coward!
Please tell me who I can vote for to eliminate the TSA?
All 100 of the E4s know that they need points to get rank and if they plan to make the military a career they all do the same things. They all go to airborne school, air assault school, work to shoot well and do well on their PT tests. It's little things like these BS tests and ass kissing that get the next rank and let a person continue at their desired career.
Bullshit. The US has been involved in overseas combat/security operations for the past 10+ years. If you wanted a fast track method to distinguish yourself, you can get yourself deployed.
These guys aren't assigned to the nuclear missile wing, they apply because it is a highly competitive military position that requires good academic background AND ensures a physically comfortable work environment if you can handle being isolated underground with another person for days at a time. Your chance of being shot at is zero percent.
It's clearly an avenue towards the more policy based side of the military as opposed to the operational side. And that is why it is particularly egregious that they are slacking on their studies. Since they aren't involved in combat ops, their studies are their only asset. Serving in the US armed forces is about having strong personal honor and ethics, even in the face of adversity; these guys should be court-marshalled immediately and dishonorably discharged.
It's currently already brighter than magnitude 12, and may get to mag 8, easy to see in small telescopes.
That's a pretty optimistic statement given the rampant state of light pollution around the world!
The naked eye limit is Mag. 3 for most of us who live near any streetlights. Magnitude 8 objects require a 6-8" telescope, preferably with tracking if you want to find the Mag. 8 galaxy.
I don't think of telescopes above 4" as "small."
I type this not to be annoying, but because a lot of people are going to waste a lot of time at night trying to see this thing when it is likely beyond their equipment (or patience) limit.
Yes, but sometimes it's over responsive. In this case, allergies. The only true long-term healthy solution to allergies is to physically move somewhere else; even if that means another city/state/country.
That's actually not true. People who tend to be allergic will develop allergies to their new environment in less than five years. It's an immune system response.
I've played MMORPGs on and off since 2003. If anything, the trend these days in MMOs in the West is very much against needing the kind of time commitment that was common in the early days of the genre.
In the days before WoW, MMOs generally required a very, very serious investment of time if you really wanted to get much out of them. In Final Fantasy XI, which was (by the most reliable metrics) the most successful pre-WoW MMORPG, simply reaching maximum level would require many months of playtime, most of which was spent grinding (killing enemies over and over again in a repetitive cycle). The end-game content would require many, many consecutive hours spent waiting for rare monsters to spawn. I was working a job with more or less 9-to-5 hours when I played it, which meant I could never get to the top ranks. But for the 18 months or so I played it seriously, it was by far my most time consuming leisure activity (probably peaking at around 30 hours a week).
When I was a kid, we had to walk 1,000,000,000,000,000 miles to school....
Seriously, I have played computer games since before personal computers had hard drives and many others here have too. Grinding is not a new concept.
Every RPG has an element of grinding. When you bring people together online, the grinding has to be magnified to increase the level competition among the larger player set.
FPS games became almost identical once they added online server scoreboards.
Before computer games, kids collected baseball cards. You had to by thousands of cards to get the special one. This would take MONTHS of dedicated income (as a 5 year old) to obtain the cards and tons of free time to sort and rank the cards. (Anything sound familiar?)
Companies have always been really effective at profiting over human's innate competitive drive and need to be special relative to one's peers.
Slashdot Mirror
Before you mod me down, read my post (and the article)!
What really surprised me was that the article text actually states that women's math scores were below that of men in every country tested:
Although the female test-takers lagged behind males on the math portion of the test, the size of the gap closely tracked the degree of gender inequality in their countries, shrinking to nearly zero in emancipated countries like Sweden and Norway. That suggests that cultural biases rather than biology may be the better explanation for the math gender gap.
So apparently, it is entirely objective to state that the test results indicate that women are worse at basic math than men. Except in Iceland.
Woman apparently are also always better at reading comprehension than men. (See the article.)
The authors argue this results from misogynistic prejudice. However, if you look at the actual article, the correlation is not exact. Norway and Sweden are more emancipated than Iceland, yet have lower female math scores relative to the males. Portugal, France and Poland also introduce a deviation from the trend. Thus, 5 of the 10 countries evaluated do not correlate well with the authors' suggested trend, indicating that the emancipation index is probably not the right metric to be comparing to.
Actually, you do learn math by rote memorization. Those of us who were interested in math from the beginning were training it all the time by playing around with numbers or geometrical objects, which is just rote memorization with spices on top. And you get really good at math by doing math chores all the time.
That's not really true at all. Rote memorization just teaches you the sets of numbers that you have memorized. Actual understanding of the addition process allows one to add any set of numbers, even if they have never seen them before. In fact, with proper teaching, you should be able to add properly, at first attempt, with no memorization required.
Teaching the method rather than memorization is much more efficient given that there are, by definition, an infinite set of numbers.
Sadly, the US teaching methodology forces everyone to memorize basic concepts first. Most teachers then muddle through the theory so poorly that only students with good aptitude and home lives are able to extract the general methodology in a decent amount of time. The rest fall back on memorization for a few years until they forget entirely. Then they spend the rest of their lives terrified of math.
Gallons-to-tons as the metric? What happened to meters and kilograms?
Let's look at the energy content for some different meat and vegetable products:
Lean steak: 1.86 cal/g
Lard: 8.85 cal/g
Broccoli: 0.34 cal/g
Beets: 0.31 cal/g
Meat products appear to contain between 5 and 29 times more energy per unit gram than the vegetables while requiring 47-77 times more water using the author's unchecked (but I assume biased!) stated water usage values).
So the ratio of energy/water usage ratio for meat versus vegetables is about 3.5:1. That isn't as egregious as the OP makes it sound.
Also, many meateaters will not replace their meat diets with legumes, nuts and tubers. Just like many vegetarians will not replace their legumes, nuts and tubers diets with meat.
I generally just yell "Whoooooooooosh!" really loudly as I erase. As for different visual effects, I sometimes use the small eraser, while other times I use the big eraser. I've even used a cloth rag every once in a while. If I'm feeling really snazzy, I'll use two erasers at once (one in each hand!)!
You know what is really awesome?
To start with a powerpoint slide displayed on the screen with a graph and a blank space. Then take your marker and derive your equations in the blank space! Of course, it only works well for one slide.
I guarantee that if you do this: (1) you audience will pay attention and (2) you will never be invited for another lecture at that room.
If you have any experimental data to show, you are going to need some sort of viewgraph projector or computer display. I don't think that many of ones colleagues would be content to trust that your hand-drawn data points agree perfectly with your hand-drawn "theory" curve!
That said, it is fantastic to see people going back to the chalkboard. What is really unfortunate is that most places have ripped out their chalkboards, replaced them with dry erase boards, and then stopped stocking them with fresh markers.
To my (admittedly untrained) eye, I'm not sure what Microsoft could have done differently.
Well, putting out software that worked would have definitely been a good start!
(I took data for the paper, but am not an author.)
It's pretty sad when the 35 authors can take paper space acknowledge the culturally significant role that the observatory site has for the indigenous Hawaiians, but can't specifically acknowledge the people who took the data.
... but maybe I'm an outlier.
Also, when was prison in the US ever about rehabilitation?
I find it incredibly offensive to say that women should be forced to condemn their children to suffer from a preventable disease,
Then don't have kids. It's still an elective choice.
or be prevented from bearing genetically-related children, simply because some people think the cure is "unnatural".
By its very definition of how it's done is unnatural and the long term consequences to the gene pool unknown.
How about you don't have kids? We don't need any more AC trolls in the world.
We started messing with the "gene pool" when we started giving people things like glasses, surgery, antibiotics, and immunizations to enhance their lives.
Most people will have children regardless. Your stance is effectively condemning those children to a diseased life.
My elective choice would be to take all the people like you, ship them to an island that was devoid of any modern medicine, and let you "evolve" naturally. Enjoy dying at 35!
Two of the three links in the summary are broken.
And here is where IMHO, the wrong decision was made. They elected to not take images to see the damage. If they did, and saw the damage, instead of trying to rush Atlantis back into orbit, could they not have...
The wrong decision was made decades earlier when the US chose to rest on their laurels and not improve the shuttle design by increasing the safety margin or the turnaround time:
-The turnaround time between shuttle launches should not exceed the crew's air supply.
-The cockpit should have been contained in a module that could be ejected during reentry.
There are no technical hurdles to meeting either of those goals... NASA did not design the original shuttles to accommodate these factors due to cost. They could have redesigned the shuttles to be safer after 20 years of technology development and flight experience, but that also was deemed to cost too much.
This is the reason the astronauts died. Their lives were not worth the cost of incorporating full redundancy into the shuttle systems.
Thanks for taking one for the team.
I actually did a science fair project once testing whether the moon's gravity led to Earth getting hit with fewer asteroids. The effect was statistically insignificant.
Was it peer reviewed? Because then this would be interesting... especially if you posted a link to the details.
Not sure what your point is: The island was still built by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Navy base idea came after Pearl Harbor, when the Navy needed an area to stage its ships before sending them out to war. They requested that San Francisco submit a purchase price. After San Francisco decided that the island was not for sale, the Navy seized it. They then traded Mills Field for the island. (Mills Field eventually became the San Francisco International Airport, which probably would not have fit under the Bay Bridge anyway!)
The city still got to hold its exposition, which is why the island was built. They then got land elsewhere for their airport. It's not like they got screwed, especially since most of the island creation and subsequent development cost was funded by New Deal funds (Works Public Administration and Public Works Administration). The rest was supported by exhibition funds and the local governments.
And keep in mind, that this was during WWII. The priorities were a little bit different then.
... now the corporate sector is getting impatient that they can't profit off of it! Ridiculous.
The most cost efficient solution would be to just remove the highway exit leading to the island.
Build a new island if you want to build high-priced condos to continue to overpopulate San Francisco. Or let the corporations that will profit off of the condos actually pay to cleanup the island.
...why can't they just get their slaves, I mean graduate students, to check its validity by hand?
People flashing headlights make other drivers slow down. In fact, flashing lights make more people slow down than a cop giving out a few tickets.
Any cop living up to the motto "To serve and protect" should be happy about this.
Personally, I would rather see less ticketing for speeding and more ticketing for left-lane cloggers who refuse to move over and let faster traffic by.
While this solar farm is idle at night and unreliable by day, the transmission infrastructure must be built to handle the full capacity of the equivalent four nuclear plants, and it will sit idle most of the time. The solar option makes no economic sense, when instead they could purchase two actual 1GWe nuclear plants, and have 15 TW-hours/year of reliable power for more than twice as long.
That's not really a fair assessment, even if your numbers were correct.
It makes economic sense to diversify ones energy portfolio and to invest in developing technology if you want to become a world leader. It's called a long term investment. India is clearly trying to head this direction.
Also, I would argue that not taking advantage of free energy that is incident on the Earth's surface for most of the day makes no economic sense. Once the infrastructure is in place, they can always find other ways to utilize it.
The problem with that is that black holes need the mass they suck in to exist.
The mass cannot both be in the black hole and shot out the other side into a new universe.
So unless you can come up with a theory that has black holes creating mass out of nothing, that is simply impossible.
You make it seem so black and white, but you're logic is flawed:
Black holes just need a minimum (critical) amount of mass to exist. Anything over that limit is mass that can be lost.
Take binary stars as an analogy. They also need mass to exist, yet trade mass back and forth all the time.
The TSA exists because Americans tolerate it.
It's that simple.
We hold the purse strings AND the votes. Either one alone is enough to eliminate the TSA. But we have said, en-mass, that the TSA is acceptable in our society. So it will continue.
Brave words from an anonymous coward!
Please tell me who I can vote for to eliminate the TSA?
All 100 of the E4s know that they need points to get rank and if they plan to make the military a career they all do the same things. They all go to airborne school, air assault school, work to shoot well and do well on their PT tests. It's little things like these BS tests and ass kissing that get the next rank and let a person continue at their desired career.
Bullshit. The US has been involved in overseas combat/security operations for the past 10+ years. If you wanted a fast track method to distinguish yourself, you can get yourself deployed.
These guys aren't assigned to the nuclear missile wing, they apply because it is a highly competitive military position that requires good academic background AND ensures a physically comfortable work environment if you can handle being isolated underground with another person for days at a time. Your chance of being shot at is zero percent.
It's clearly an avenue towards the more policy based side of the military as opposed to the operational side. And that is why it is particularly egregious that they are slacking on their studies. Since they aren't involved in combat ops, their studies are their only asset. Serving in the US armed forces is about having strong personal honor and ethics, even in the face of adversity; these guys should be court-marshalled immediately and dishonorably discharged.
It's currently already brighter than magnitude 12, and may get to mag 8, easy to see in small telescopes.
That's a pretty optimistic statement given the rampant state of light pollution around the world!
The naked eye limit is Mag. 3 for most of us who live near any streetlights. Magnitude 8 objects require a 6-8" telescope, preferably with tracking if you want to find the Mag. 8 galaxy.
I don't think of telescopes above 4" as "small."
I type this not to be annoying, but because a lot of people are going to waste a lot of time at night trying to see this thing when it is likely beyond their equipment (or patience) limit.
Yes, but sometimes it's over responsive. In this case, allergies. The only true long-term healthy solution to allergies is to physically move somewhere else; even if that means another city/state/country.
That's actually not true. People who tend to be allergic will develop allergies to their new environment in less than five years. It's an immune system response.
I've played MMORPGs on and off since 2003. If anything, the trend these days in MMOs in the West is very much against needing the kind of time commitment that was common in the early days of the genre.
In the days before WoW, MMOs generally required a very, very serious investment of time if you really wanted to get much out of them. In Final Fantasy XI, which was (by the most reliable metrics) the most successful pre-WoW MMORPG, simply reaching maximum level would require many months of playtime, most of which was spent grinding (killing enemies over and over again in a repetitive cycle). The end-game content would require many, many consecutive hours spent waiting for rare monsters to spawn. I was working a job with more or less 9-to-5 hours when I played it, which meant I could never get to the top ranks. But for the 18 months or so I played it seriously, it was by far my most time consuming leisure activity (probably peaking at around 30 hours a week).
When I was a kid, we had to walk 1,000,000,000,000,000 miles to school....
Seriously, I have played computer games since before personal computers had hard drives and many others here have too. Grinding is not a new concept.
Every RPG has an element of grinding. When you bring people together online, the grinding has to be magnified to increase the level competition among the larger player set.
FPS games became almost identical once they added online server scoreboards.
Before computer games, kids collected baseball cards. You had to by thousands of cards to get the special one. This would take MONTHS of dedicated income (as a 5 year old) to obtain the cards and tons of free time to sort and rank the cards. (Anything sound familiar?)
Companies have always been really effective at profiting over human's innate competitive drive and need to be special relative to one's peers.
Before, teens needed to have a car to impress the girls ...
Now, they just need an internet connection and some hand-cream.
I'm not entirely sure a porn habit and one arm twice the size of the other impresses the girls much.
That's why you (1) alternate and (2) do twice as many reps. Plus, you always have soft hands.
Am I the only one who sees the word SCROTUM every time /. uses SCOTUS?