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College admissions could really do with some sort of objective criteria
Like GPA and SAT/ACT scores? Because they tried that. Secondary education is too easy and variable in the US, and Harvard can't really do much about that.
If your work harder than anyone else you'll still not get recognized because you're not claimed to be smart, cultured, pretty or interesting enough.
Err, that's not at all what she said or even implied.
That's the point: they didn't work harder than anyone else applying to Harvard. They can't make decisions based on GPA/ACT/SAT scores, because everyone has the same top scores.
Hypothetically, and probably not that far off: So you have 10,000 applicants for a class of 2,000 and 8,000 of those applicants are valedictorians with extremely high SAT/ACT scores and they've managed to check all the regular boxes (played sports, instruments, etc.). How are you going to cull 6,000 applicants?
It was a similar story in Seattle. Frequently you'd call both yellow cab and orange cab (the two major cab companies) because you only expected one of them to show up within a reasonable time frame (which of course only exacerbated the problem).
It's probably not too different from the other statements, e.g.
"Shit, I'm really sorry, I'll get that done soon"
"Yeah, I'll talk to the other team and tell them to get their shit done"
"No problem, I'll tell Bill his shit's not that important, and I'll get this done"
(But, since it's Enron, there was probably an inordinate amount of just "Shit Shit Shit Shit Shit The books aren't adding up")
Post teens were adults with adult incomes but not adult responsibilities, like kids, for quite a few years, usually.
Hmm, not sure I agree with that really.
I agree with most of your sentiment about elimination of entry-level jobs and extended education, but I think the natural response (and the response we see) is for women to have children at older ages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_maternal_age).
It used to be the case that you'd graduate high school and start having children in your early 20s, so I'm not sure I agree that there was ever a time when it was "socially acceptable" to be an adult with an adult income and no children for several years.
IIRC the federal government really doesn't offer plea bargains, right? And federal sentencing is pretty rigid, so he probably would have served ~80 years.
As I mentioned above, that's definitely not the case in the outer boroughs of New York (Manhattan in some cases too, depending on where you are, though I don't know that for certain).
There have been weeks at a time where I've had to walk in the street because the sidewalks were just inaccessible or sheets of ice, which makes proximity to the train station all the more important.
And yes, it took twice as long
Yeah, that sucks. If it takes you 12 minutes normally to walk 1 km (assuming 5 km/h, which is a normal walking speed), now it takes you 24 minutes to and from the station in the winter.
So you're spending 45 minutes a day just walking to and from the station. If the rest of your commute is 30 minutes (train + walking to work from train), you're commuting for nearly two hours (1:48) every day vs. 1:24 during the summer.
That's assuming you don't also walk slower from the train station to work, which would make it even more of a timesink.
If you lived right near the station, it would be 60 minutes every day, winter or summer.
I mean yeah, it's only an extra 30-60 minutes a day (and your point was really only about winter so we'll be fair and say 30 minutes a day), but shit, I'm not going to turn my nose up at that. I'd definitely pay a small premium to get that time back every single weekday.
Walking sucks in the winter. It's never ridiculously cold (certainly not midwest or Canada cold), but windchill is frequent and kinda nasty if you have literally any skin exposed.
Especially in the outer boroughs (not so much in Manhattan), snow doesn't get cleaned up very quickly either. Walking can definitely be a bit of an obstacle course - ice, snow banks blocking the sidewalk, etc.
Anyway blah blah blah first world problems, just my perspective on it.
Funding schools through property taxes is an easy explanation for that one
Though if it wasn't for that it would be through a local school levy, or a fundraiser, or any number of other seemingly harmless methods of transferring money from parents to the school.
Even dumb ideas off the top of my head like "Wealthy parent A purchases 300 textbooks and donates them to the school so the school can spend that money on higher salaries for teachers" are probably legal ways for wealthy parents to supplement their local school.
Like a wise princess once said, "The more you tighten your grip, the more [wealthy parents] will slip through your fingers."
As soon as the elite can segregate them-self from public systems like schools and hospitals
Ehh, I mostly agree with your first point but I think it's kind of a pipe dream to think it could be otherwise. Go visit a public school in a place like Greenwich, CT and then go visit a public school in the Bronx. Both technically public schools, but students have a clear advantage in one vs the other.
Sure, Bill Gates's kids aren't going to public school probably even in Greenwich. Still, let's not pretend that the elite only go to private schools, or that they wouldn't congregate in wealthy areas to make public schools essentially private.
Inequalities will always exist as long as people can use their assets to gain advantages for themselves/their families, and trying to force it otherwise against an unwilling populace is likely to just exacerbate the problem in other ways (see: Suburban flight).
Oh god, please don't do this. This is worse than "We decided to go a different direction," because at least that takes less time to read.
If you're not going to provide substantive feedback ("we felt like your performance on the nearest-neighbor problem was pretty rough and were looking for a more optimized solution") then just give the one liner and be done with it.
We get it: you're hamstrung because of legal liabilities. That's fine. Don't make it worse by making us read a paragraph that isn't going to be helpful for the future.
Ouch, this is clearly meant to be (at least somewhat) tongue-in-cheek. Calling it "drug abuse" is a little extreme unless you're familiar personally with the author.
It doesn't seem like it's affecting his life in an incredibly detrimental way, supposing that at some point when the hoopla of a book release dies down he stops drinking every night (and even then, the quantity consumed is an incredibly important component).
It's just jokes.
The tensions arise, such as with firearms laws, because states don't see eye to eye on those issues so they get to dictate exactly how things work in their own states
That causes some AWFUL problems for people traveling between states, which is incredibly common nowadays because of air travel.
Google for the myriad of really terrible stories involving people accidentally traveling to New Jersey with a firearm. In at least a few cases they were forced to travel to New Jersey because of an airline mistake (unexpected layovers, misplaced luggage, etc.). Reciprocity is a much bigger issue than you're making it out to be.
The extreme example counter response is never far behind in political discourse.
"States Rights" almost always comes up as an argument in the context of human rights violations. I don't think it's too extreme to remind people of that.
There's a whole host of other policies that don't though.
Where's that line get drawn? If I frame marijuana as a human rights issue (see: the racial discrepancies in conviction rates for drug offenses), does it become ok for the federal government to resolve then?
They are crises because they have to be balanced.
Errr no? There are plenty of states that are "balanced" only because the federal government gives them copious amounts of money, well in excess of their GSP.
They're "balanced" but to call it anything other than artificially balanced is silly.
There's a wide gap between those issues and virtually every other policy in the country being effected by a broad reading of the interstate commerce clause.
Those are the primary issues anti-federalists bring up when States' rights comes up as a discussion, both historically and currently (not slavery obviously, but same-sex marriage is an incredibly recent one).
If you're talking about things like the drinking age (which isn't even really a mandate, just an extreme carrot on a stick), then sure, whatever - but who cares? Those are trivial issues in comparison.
This approach creates a more unified country because people are able to make their own decisions and live with them.
I don't know why you would assume that: There's a whole host of tensions that come with decisions made at the state level. Reciprocity is a huge one that comes up semi-frequently (for example with firearm laws).
People are able to move within the country to states with policies more in line with their own views.
"Just move" is an ok answer if your beef is, say, with Oregon's gas pumping laws.
It's a really awful answer if your problem is that your state allows "separate but equal" bathrooms for black people. Those suffering at the hands of those extreme policies are also the least likely to have the means to move.
States have to have balanced budgets
I don't know why you think that. State budget crises aren't unknown or even all that uncommon.
There's a push in this country lately to do everything at a Federal level though
Because for most of the history of the United States, human rights issues have only been resolved at the federal level. Slavery, segregation, women's suffrage, and same-sex marriage have all been framed as "States Rights" issues.
Incest - maybe. There's a clear harm involved there (inbreeding depression) that's much more substantive than anything used to argue against gay marriage.
Polygamy - We probably will revisit our stance on polygamy in decades to come. Historically it's been used in a way that's profoundly imbalanced towards women (i.e. almost exclusively polygyny), but it's not hard to imagine a future where that's not the case.
Wait can animals consent to marriage? Isn't that a pretty necessary component?
It's almost assuredly a "States Rights" argument. I'd be really shocked if it wasn't.
Maybe. I think it would cause a very serious disruption to bring a guy like Terry into a normal team dynamic. The CIA delusions alone would make most people understandably uncomfortable, to say nothing of the racism.
With a very patient and understanding manager, a very isolated workspace or maybe a couple very patient and understanding coworkers, and probably someone filtering all of his communication, it would be workable. I can see why Terry would not want to be an environment like that, of course.
That's not to say that someone wouldn't take a chance on him given his strong technical ability, but I'm not sure most people would look on that decision in retrospect as a good one.
Hey! I'm sorry to hear that people treated you poorly. That's really shitty and in an ideal world people would treat you as an individual, and not as a representative of a disease.
John Forbes Nash Jr
That's not really fair - John Nash was an exceptional person in a myriad of different ways. He's very much an exceptional case in the same way that Stephen Hawking is very much an exception when it comes to ALS.
In general, it's a pretty poor idea to confront someone suffering from disorganized thinking caused by schizophrenia about that disorganized thinking (maybe not in a clinical context, I wouldn't know). Just because John Nash was able to function to a high degree without medication doesn't mean that everyone will be able to, or that it's fair to hold everyone to that standard.
That wasn't really my intention, and I apologize if it came across that way.
What I meant to say is that confronting a schizophrenic about their delusions or disorganized thinking is almost assuredly a futile exercise, save maybe if you're a very well-trained professional. He clearly suffers from some paranoid delusions[0][1], and I don't think talking to him about the perils of racism is going to prove fruitful anytime soon.
"he's schizophrenic so we sadly can't employ him"
In some cases, that's probably true - Terry Davis very likely being one of those cases. Conversely, my uncle is quite schizophrenic (pretty severe delusions and paranoia) but responds well to medication and is now gainfully employed, mostly because he hasn't said anything like "Spoiler alert, CIA. Guess how this ends? I have God. I win. You unconditionally surrender and suck my fucken dick. That's how this ends." [2] in quite some time.
Some people will require a large amount of care and probably aren't well-suited for the workforce. Why is that a bad thing? Your employment status doesn't reflect your worth as a person. We can, and should (not that we always do) take care of people unable to work. We have more than enough productive surplus to support their needs.
0: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/38u4zc/flight_s...
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/38u4zc/flight_s...
2: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/38u4zc/flight_s...
It's a weird conundrum. He's obviously extremely mentally ill.
On the one hand that doesn't give someone carte blanche to do whatever they want. If he started stabbing people we'd (hopefully) put him in a place where he couldn't do that anymore, e.g. some sort of inpatient program.
On the other hand, it's a little hard to take anything he writes/says with any sort of gravity given the obvious schizophrenia. It's a little like if a very small (like, just learned to speak) child dropped an N bomb. I don't think most of us would attribute any malice to it, more just see it as a reflection of mental immaturity. Unfortunately, whereas you can correct a child, you can't really correct a schizophrenic.
So I guess the solution is just to draw attention to it but take it with a grain of salt? I dunno.
Heh, that's fair.
With the wisdom of hindsight, I should have said, "Hold it. Wait a second. I'm riding on this spacecraft. Just go out and replace that tank."
That's crazy. I didn't realize the tank was acting funny before they even took off. To me, the risk-adverse non-astronaut, that seems like something that would've triggered big ominous "DANGER" signs going off in my head.
I guess that's the benefit of hindsight, though.
Well, that depends.
I don't know if it really does in this case, because...
are you black and joking about athleticism
To extend our metaphor, the guy in the article is not black. He's very white and making a joke about segregation. To a public audience. While drunk. Then he decides to slip in a little slavery joke (i.e. the "you're lucky he didn't put a vibrator in your ear" part).
Again, if an adult is unable to see why it's a dumb decision to make that joke to a public, anonymous audience, then that person probably shouldn't be allowed to make any important decisions. They're clearly severely lacking in situational awareness.
Of course you don't want someone that disagrees with you over X making decisions on Y and Z... Everyone is going to draw their interpretations from different value systems...
Ah, the old moral relativism argument. I think we're done here if that's what it's coming down to. You're right: That is a boring conversation to have.
Idk, that seems kinda specious to me (though I realize you're not necessarily defending the reasoning). If I yelled something racist into the microphone instead of "baba booey", very few people would shrug it off as "oh hah hah he's just being fun with the uptight reporter."
Which I guess proves my point even further - if you can't see the difference between the two and then decide to go on and vocalize this ignorance in front of a television reporter (rather than just keeping it contained to your social circle), maybe you shouldn't be in charge of anything important.
"At some point, millennials are going to grow up. They’ll start caring about stability for the sake of their families, and they’ll make decisions that likely look more and more like that of their parents."
Uhhh why? Wasn't the whole point of the article that you're basically better off job-hopping?
If I live in or around any sizable metro area, it's incredibly likely that I can find another job in the same area. No need to uproot the family, and in fact changing jobs often increases the financial stability of my family (one notable reason millenials job-hop is it's an incredibly effective way to get a salary increase).
In many cases, it's not even about the content of their messages. It's about a total lack of awareness, especially concerning their medium of speech. To me that's far more damning than an off-kilter joke or a moment of drunken stupidity.
Why would you say something really stupid like "FHRITP" to a reporter with a microphone? Or defend someone else saying that? Especially to a NEWS reporter?
Sure, blah blah blah, alcohol. If you're out of college and can't be drunk without saying some really monumentally stupid shit in a very public manner, that's worrisome. Are you going to act that way in front of a client or business partner if you go out drinking with them one night? Are you also going to say stupid shit like that at the company holiday party?
Admittedly some of these are out-of-context tweets or photos. That sucks to have your inside jokes taken out of context, for sure. At first, I think many of us internalize things like Twitter as "public-but-not-really", until things like this happen that remind us: If you don't intentionally make it private, social media like Twitter is VERY public. You probably wouldn't make that joke while giving a public speech - probably shouldn't make it on Twitter, unless you're extremely careful about the context.
Capitalism is actually a pretty efficient antidote to that.
Ehh I'm not really sure how that applies here, especially since the market of "javascript libraries" is probably about as free as you can get (in many senses of the word).
There isn't much going on in the way of financial return in that market, probably because people are seeing the benefit of implicit financial return (via the "office politicking" we're discussing here) and banking on that.
In which case, I'm not sure how capitalism will help.
libraries are a bit like office politics for front-end web developers -- basically something that feels like work and "advances your career", while in truth it's just a way to avoid doing the real work with actual customers.
That's pretty scary, if true. That sounds very analogous to academic research and the "publish or perish" state of affairs in academia today.
Office politics often will advance your career in any sizable organization. That's why people engage in it. If publishing libraries is an extension of that, then we should be worried about the precedent that's setting for software development as a whole (because it'd be silly to assume that this remains siloed to front-end developers).