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Comment My personal experioence (Score 3, Interesting) 197

What loses them is when STEM-topics require actual boring work on a topic and involves more than just gathering social approval. Those feel-good campaigns are just a waste of money.

Around the globe and across time, women went in more into STEM only in countries where they were forced to by economic necessity. Check out Eastern Europe during communism, India, China. In countries with most gender equality, like the Scandinavian countries, women tend to avoid STEM careers if they can choose.

My personal experience confirms this: my daughter had the grades to go into STEM and decided against it, my son went into STEM. She was actually more qualified than him, but she didn't want to waste her life in an office in front of a computer.

Comment Re:Wasn't that predicted for 2016? (Score 1) 67

Their paper suggests that regardless of emissions scenario, "we may experience an unprecedented ice-free Arctic climate in the next decade or two."

Just like all those previous predictions did: they tweaked the data and came to a prediction that fitted the existing data than any before. If the prediction is vague, it's worthless, if it's precise and didn't occur the way it predicted, it's wrong. Up to now all those dramatic doomsday predictions turned out to be wrong.

The only sane approach is to shelf the predictions until they prove their mettle - in this case for another 7 odd years and then check whether they were better than the rest. But this won't make any juicy headlines and allow to get you spot on the podium on a conference.

Comment Wasn't thatpredicgted for 2016? (Score 0, Troll) 67

Going by various articles from the 2012 (eg: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fen... ) the arctic should have been ice-free by 2016 latest. Didn't happen. What makes this different now?

Another case of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It doesn't matter whether they're going to really, really be right this time because they're so much more clever now, they already used up all credibility in the past decades.

There were such predictions earlier too, but I can't be arsed to look those up.

Comment Re:Same old, same old (Score 4, Interesting) 54

Exactly.
Before the widespread adoption of the telephone, people weren't usually able to remember 7-digit numbers. This by the way is on the way out again because all contacts are stored by name.
Before everything had a schedule, punctuality was mostly guesswork and people didn't think in minutes.
Before cars on highways became widespread, people had a harder time with dealing with speeds over 40 miles per hour. They didn't focus far enough ahead.

So the whole article, while probably totally true, documents just yet another iteration of evolution. If it's needed, it will be learned, if not people will focus on things they care more about.

Comment Misinformation in a democracy (Score 1) 248

In this case it sounds really bad when a good thing has been stopped because of misinformation. Brexit may have been (depending on which side of the debate you stand) the same, that misinformation (which is uncontested) cause a lot of damage (debatable).

However, this is part of democracy. Voters have the right to make their decision for the most stupid reasons. When this has limited impact - like in this case - this is unfortunate, with worse cases people will suffer. This is the price of democracy!

Get used to it and hope people will learn when they have suffered enough because of it. There's no reason to worry. Everything is just as designed.

Comment Re:Just tax everyone for the roads (Score 1) 324

As I wrote, it depends what you want to sponsor or achieve.
If it's important politically to you to prevent people going hungry in your community, it makes a lot of sense to have everyone sponsor food-stamps even if not everyone needs them. That's all fine.

The important point is to understand first, who benefits from the taxes and then decides whether this is a subsidiary you want. If you maintain your local roads so that all the people from the states up north can travel more quickly to the beaches in states down south and you're just left with the pollutions and the repair bill, it might be worth asking whether it's really best for your local citizens to spend money for the comfort of the states up north and the profit of the hotels and bars down south. Same if everyone is commuting by car from the cheap suburbs and you end up having all the traffic but no property taxes, it's worth considering whether maintaining the roads for free is benefiting the community paying for it.

TANSTAAFL

Comment Re:Just tax everyone for the roads (Score 1) 324

Not everyone is benefiting the same amount. Someone commuting every day 50 miles and back on the highway benefits more than the guy living and working in the same neighbourhood, going shopping by bicycle. Thus a flat tax wouldn't be fair in many people's eyes. It also reduced the benefits of living locally instead of driving over to Walmart across town.

So overall, this is a very political decision and depends on which development the government wants to promote.

Comment What a surprise! (Score 1) 324

What a surprise! When the government incentivised a certain behaviour with tax-breaks, people take advantage of them and the tax-revenues drop.
Who would ever have thought about this? This must be a totally new concept!

And how surprised are we, that now there's a hole in the budget, they want to fill it with taxes on the stuff they promoted? That never happened before, hasn't it?

In short, things happen as predicted.

Next surprise will be the totally unpredictable development that all those electric vehicles need power to charge and the overall electric consumption rises.

Comment At sea you're free, but fair isn't there. (Score 1) 387

maybe we should really consider that there is no place a person can go to avoid being ruled by other people

You forget that not only you can you do what you want, others may also do what they want too. If a government decides it wants to send over a gunboat full of armed marines to discuss their wishes with you, who's going to stop them? Are you going to run back crying to the your government complaining how unfair they are? If so, all your talk about freedom is just "I want! I want! I want!" from a spoiled brat.

At sea you're free,
but fair isn't there.

Comment Archery was made easier to let women compete (Score 1) 340

You forgot to mention, that archery was made easier to give women a chance.

In the past with the FITA 1440 rounds, women had no chance on the 90m range because they couldn't draw heavy enough bows to keep up. With the new format - which is basically the women's round capping out at 70m, women now can keep up and a close enough that one might set a record..

Comment Re:Don't make it too green (Score 1) 81

It cost nothing to let a tree grow and not cut it down. Why are trees and shrubs more common in more affluent areas? Leaves literally grow on trees, they are hardly a luxury item.

Not really true. Trees take up space, which is a cost factor in urban environment. And the upkeep of a tree in a city adds cost too.

Also you need to consider, that many less well of areas are in undesirable or ugly locations, where development just trying to cramming as many people as possible in the cheapest boxes possible. Or in places that became so desolate, that nobody would want to live there if they can avoid it.

In both cases, there was no effort spent to make the area nicer by - for example adding some parks or planting trees.

Comment Re: Don't make it too green (Score 1) 81

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would purposefully live in the city and pay a premium for trees. If you want trees, move out to the country. You'll save a fortune and have a better quality of life.

Three reason:

* A daily commute of an hour each direction is an enormous drag on quality of life compared to 15 minutes.
* Having a well paying job in the city compared to a minimum wage job or no job is a also improving the quality of life.
* If you are single or just a couple, living out in the boonies might not give you the social life you hope for.

Having bought an old farm in a small village where the median age was over 50, I can attest that the last point can become a serious problem if you're not the kind of person or family that can cope with this.

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