Bay 12 Games Forum

... Salmon. Salmon. You completely failed to mention that the title of that article is "Solar panels made with ion cannon are cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels."

I mean. What? You missed mentioning the best part!

Seriously though, extreme science and green energy? Score. That's cheering.

Wasn't the UK projected to basically ice over when the atlantic currents shift around? Was several years back when I heard that, so it's probably changed but hey.

Anyway, I'm basically in the "Hope to hell it hits the fan after I die" crowd. I'm pretty much completely convinced I'm not going to be able to make meaningful short-term impact (Though I do try to do better than my fellow Americans, where and when I can) and that any long-term impact is, well, long term (and probably going to be too little, too late.). Aiming for that, but I doubt I'll manage anything notable in the grand scheme of things.

So I'm hoping I'm dead before it all goes to hell. Barring that, suicide before starvation or slaughter. Still, I figure I won't live 'till 80 so it's only got to hold off a bit more than 50 years. I'm hopeful the current inertia will keep my area stable until then

But yeah, barring either something incredible coming out of the scientific fields or the bastards up top finally getting bit by the Let's-not-be-the-cause-of-our-species'-extinction bug, we're pretty much screwed. At the very least, we're going to lose a significant amount of our population and the societal aftershocks from that is going to frak everything right the bugger up. But hey, folks have been saying this for a few decades now, haha. At least we'll be able to point at everyone else and say, "I frakking told you so, you ignorant bastards." It's a cold solace, but I'll take what I can get.

Homeschooling is just creepy. Sorry. Very few countries even allow it. Almost all of them are from us in-bred English-speaking nations. Most non-English speaking nations aren't crazy enough to allow it, except for some third-world places which haven't invented school yet.

I... what? "Creepy" and "Used by few countries" isn't exactly a stunning defeat of the merits of homeschooling, nor is homeschooling somehow "crazy." If the parents are capable of teaching the material and understand (and compensate for) the issues (generally re: socialization) involved with homeschooling, there's no big reasons I'm aware of to not homeschool (and depending on the area, possibly a number of reasons to.). If there are, I'd love to hear about it.

I can understand if you're leery about homeschooling (the sentiment's fairly common in the states, too, if generally unmerited) but I've personally met a number of partially and fully homeschooled individuals -- my mother did some teaching for several, actually -- who were no more maladjusted than most of the people I've met that weren't homeschooled.

The biggest issue I know of with homeschooling is ensuring the quality of education; making sure the teacher (read: the parent(s)) knows what they're talking about. That's usually pretty easy to pull off, though, from what I've seen. In the US, at least, most states (at the very least the ones I'm semi-familiar with) have a pretty specific test standard even for homeschooled kids and it's quite easy to hire teachers for temporary supplementary tutoring (especially considering how shitty teacher salaries are), to make sure the student's on top of the material.

Basically, I'll give that maybe the Australian situation is such that public schooling is notably better than home, but in the states... no. Public schools in most areas are varying shades of shit. It's not even remotely difficult to match or surpass them with alternative education methods. What are your reasons to distrust homeschooling in particular, Reel?

Median is $5, according to that article, Reel. Careful about that, the average is probably quite different. Average is also a pretty pisspoor measure of wealth in a large population, but that's neither here nor there.

As for the article itself... I'unno. To be honest, it doesn't exactly surprise me. The thing in particular is that $5 is for a particular age bracket (36 to 49) -- but a wider picture (18-64) isn't much better (at $100, which is still pretty g'damn bad ). The tentative explanation given in the article doesn't trigger any bullshit detection either, which means -- unless the study's methodology is screwed pretty badly -- I wouldn't have much trouble accepting those numbers as fact. It's certainly possible.

MSH, out of curiosity, why do you doubt the how of it? What are we missing?

This is covered in several books, e.g. Susan Pinkers book The Sexual Paradox. The idea that the two genders are exactly the same and that only socialization makes a difference was in vogue 40 years ago, there's little clinical evidence to state we're identical.

Question isn't, in my mind anyway, whether the genders are identical. It's whether whatever physiological differences that do exist are sufficient to warrant different (often extremely so) treatment.

Beyond that, it's whether outliers can exist. If it's oxytocin that engenders empathy, then we should formulate what parts of our society that are enhanced by empathy around oxytocin levels (perhaps finding ways to safely maintain a heightened level for those deficient in the chemical, but otherwise particularly capable of whatever role is in question), not reproductive organs. It stands to reason that it's possible for males to have heightened levels of the chemical, after all. Should we deny a heightened oxytocin male access to the potential oxytocin enabled social/professional roles, simply because of his sex? It goes both ways, of course, and even then we risk a sort of tyranny of the chemical...

I'm very strongly in favor of that sort of research, but we need to be really damn careful what we take away from it.

Whatever model we settle on in the future needs to account for both biology and socialization.

I may be (mis)reading to much into this, but just to be sure: Always be careful with this. Remember the naturalistic fallacy -- is does not entail should be. It may turn out we've got biological influences that are violently societally (or at least morally, if one's willing to go that route) maladaptive, after all.

Reminds me of a discussion we had once in the DF boards, why do more males play dwarf fortress than females. "The game is inherently sexist" was one answer, after further debate that'd shifted to "if only we brought females up properly they'd love dwarf fortress as much as men".

Properly is the wrong word, obviously, but it's equally obvious that some women do love DF as much as men. DF's radiance should be spread to all that can stomach it and all its lovers embraced equally by their brethren, yeah. But let us not deny that even if others dislike DF, that makes them no less human

Anyway, I'unno. There's potential for both great good and horrific misuse in the whole research-into-biological-gender-differences thing. All I really know is that the biological influences of the human body should be viewed with great care, and possibly suspicion. There is a tremendous amount of work necessary to say something like women are biologically more empathic than men, ferex. On average, maybe, but that leaves us a lot of outlying individuals that deserve a great deal of incredibly careful consideration.

All things are possible.

All I know is I now have a ravening thirst for that bit of music

Rodeo vs Lighting music.

Compare

I'll give that nyan cat may be able to be easily remixed into something sounding like Copland's hoedown, though!