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Comment Re:Gender and sex (Score 1) 514

There is a fundamental difference between anecdotes and evidence. A scientific study with a large enough selection size is evidence, like my reference

Meh. Firstly, observation is the core of science. Secondly one only needs a single counterexample to disprove a claim along the lines of the ones you made.

You keep mentioning your reference, but you never say what's in it. The way citing normally works is something along the lines of:

there is an arument which says blah blah blah[cite].

Or

there is data[cite] which implies blah blah clah.

The way you don't cite something is: I'm right because [cite].

You can't provide a citation for your claim that there is evidence that supports the idea that human gender roles are exceptions from the norm because "noone[sic] has argued it with me"?

Nope, despite your claims that I'm a special kind of stupid, you're the one who appears to be unable to read. Try going back and reading what I wrote. You'd look an awful lot silly if you argued against real points rather than making up ones you prefer.

Anyway, what we can observe is the following:

Humans are largely, but not exclusively serially monagmous.

Humans usually, but not always couple up and raisd offspring as a pair, where both adults pool resources to raise children.

Sometimes this doesn't work and the mother is left to raise the children alone.

Sometimes (more rarely) that doesn't work and a father raises the children alone.

Sometimes, neither works and humans collectively pool resources to raise children.

That is what we can observe. What is your point?

the thing is you can't even decide if you're talking about eukariotes, animalia, craniates, vertibrates, mammals, or great apes. You keep swinging wildly between different ones cherry picking the stories that best fit what you already believe.

So how about you choose here and now which gender roles you consider the norm. You have to chose any one of the following, otherwise you're just cherry picking:

Homo
Hominini
Hominidae
Hominoidea
Primates
Placental mammals
Mammals
Amniotes
Stem land animals
Lobe-finned fish
Bony fish
Vertibrates
Craniates
Chordates
Deuterostomia
Animalia
Eukariotes
All life

So which is it? Which subgrouping are you going to chose to define "gender norms", and why do you think it is more valid than the supergroup or subgroup.

Until you define a grouping, then your claims of "gender norms" are more or less meaningless.

You need a Citation for the bolded claim.

There was no bolded claim. Would you care to restate?

Comment Re:What the Hell? (Score 0) 262

The phone company isn't selling DSL, they're selling FiOS in many areas. So the cablecos are in competition with the phone companies.

At my last residence, I had two choices for high-speed data: Comcrap cable and Verizon FiOS. I chose Comcrap, because the monthly cost was lower. My neighbor had Verizon, and had constant problems with it: he had to constantly reset the outside box to get it to work; he moved out and a new guy moved in, got Verizon service too, and again had no end of trouble with his internet service being out for days at a time, and Verizon techs having to make personal visits. At least my Comcrap service was actually quite reliable.

The problem with Comcrap, it seems, is the customer service, not the technical part, at least not in my experience, and all the horror stories I read are about customer service and billing, such as them not canceling peoples' service when asked and continuing to bill them. So to avoid this, when I had to move out, I called and canceled the service (which took forever, most of it on hold), and then I went to my bank which issued the debit card which Comcrap was billing every month, and had them cancel that card and give me a new one (which cost me nothing luckily). So if Comcrap had tried to continue billing me, it was have been unsuccessful. However, I had no sign of that happening: I got a final bill a bit later which I paid (it was for the service at the end of my term), and then another bill for $0.00 after that, and that was the end.

I will say though, I did have a lot of problems with Comcrap service for a while when I was trying to watch Netflix on it. After that highly publicized peering agreement, the issues went away.

Comment Re:Hyperbole Sunday (Score 2) 227

TV these days is pretty bad. I can't remember the last time a show caught my interest.

I can: Firefly was excellent.

Actually, there's a few more that are more recent that I've found interesting as well:
- (Star Trek) Enterprise: this was surprisingly good (I only watched it last year, after it was already 10 years old), except for the 3rd season Xindi plot arc which I found rather annoying. The first two seasons were very good though.
- Big Bang Theory: I've only watched the first two seasons so far, but it's actually very funny, something I've never really found in a sitcom before. I guess it being about physicists instead of typical average morons helps a lot this way.
- Game of Thrones: this one really shouldn't require an explanation.

Comment Re:Double Irish? TAX ALL FOREIGNERS!!! (Score 1) 825

No, there's plenty of rationale for such a tax. There are one trillion such reasons - our annual cash deficit

Arbitrary and confiscatory taxation will indeed raise money in the short term. In the long run, it will push businesses, investment, and jobs, out of America. America is a business friendly country, and we have prospered because of that. But many other countries are working hard to be more business friendly, while America is moving in the opposite direction. We are in the process of killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

America as a whole, should learn from what happened in California. It used to be one of the most business friendly states. But California pushed more and more taxes and regulation on to business, and ramped up social spending. Today it is considered one of the least business friendly. Most semiconductor manufacturing is gone, many moves are made elsewhere, businesses are leaving, and unemployment is stuck several percentage points above the national average.

Comment Re:In other words, you're doing it wrong. (Score 4, Insightful) 60

This is what scares most people, or at least me, about ideas of using big data to predict criminals or otherwise mess up people's lives.

It's not a problem to use big data to try to figure out where to focus. But you have to subject the results to some sanity checking, and before you actually impact someone's life, perhaps even some common sense. Shocking idea, I know, and the reason why it's still a problem.

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