All genders (and indeed all gender self-identifications) are entitled to equal protection, but not all genders *require as much*. As women move into representative numbers in jobs and supervisory positions, that situation is changing.

My wife once worked in a division of a state agency where the division and departmental management happen by chance to be women; a few years earlier the leadership had been entirely men but they'd moved on and the agency promoted from within. One day she was recounting how she and another scientist coworker had good-naturedly teased one of their male colleagues for having a habit of "man-splaining" (something which in my experience female geeks do as well). "Wait a minute," I said. "You can't do that anymore. It's called 'creating a hostile work environment'."

Now some men are still not willing to be seen complaining about higher ranking women taking the piss out of them, but the number of sexual harassment suits filed by men has been on the rise, doubling from 8% of all cases in 1990 to 16.4% in 2010. If that guy who'd been teased for "man-splaining" had complained the women could well been disciplined. Telling somebody their long-winded explanations sound condescending is being assertive and it's a good thing. Attributing their behavior to their *gender identity* is harassment.

What is the non-evil choice?

We have copper land line POTS from Verizon. I got a phone call from a Verizon operator who told me that they would be in my neighborhood next week doing "network upgrades", and could I please schedule an appointment for when a technician could be onsite. I said, "sure," and thought nothing of it until I got the "Welcome to FiOS" letter in the mail a few days later. When the technician called me to tell me he was on the way I told him not to bother. He said, "Yeah, I get that a lot," so apparently I'm not the only one who was pissed off by the trick.

The thing is I wouldn't mind switching to FiOS; we don't watch broadcast or cable TV, and Comcast's Internet service is pretty unreliable, so there's no reason not to. But Verizon was so sleazy about trying to trick me into a service upgrade I refuse to give them any more business.

Well, it's an interesting analogy, because as you push performance with any technology, the less practical that feat becomes.

For example the Veryon can go 252 MPH, but only for about 12 minutes before it runs out of gas. Then you have to stop to put another 100 liters of gas in the tank. You'll also have to replace the $42,000 tire set because they've only got three minutes of life left in them.

I actually find the Formula-e races fun to watch, even though the speeds aren't that impressive the driving skill required is. Fan boost, however, is a total crock.

I've never had anyone working for me who I'd call lazy. I'd go further and say that I've never met anyone who'd rather spend all day accomplishing nothing rather than to accomplish something. I *have* met people who are in a position where futility leads to a kind of learned helplessness but in that case wasting time is a defense mechanism; people don't do it because they prefer wasting time to accomplishing stuff. And since people are social animals when we're accomplishing stuff it's more rewarding to accomplish it with other people around.

Now I've done the telecommuting thing, and it's great once or occasionally twice a day, but after we sold our company I was telecommuting five days a week as a consultant, and it sucked. I missed seeing my colleagues, who were also my friends. And I'm pretty extreme on the introversion scale. I'm perfectly happy to spend two or three weeks working alone, but as the weeks stretched into months it was too much for even me.

I can't help but think that for most people who want to commute 100% of the time, that'd run a distant second from having a different job altogether. Ideally a job is something you look forward to going to. Granted there are some jobs that are more interesting than others, but when you dream of not going to an *interesting* job like programming, something is wrong with the organization.

I have several teapots in my cupboard, which I am fairly certain is currently orbiting the sun.

Russell made more stipulations than that of course.

That's only true if you see education's function as solely to prepare you for a specific vocation.

No I don't. I agree there are cold, hard things in the world, but *you* choose to focus on that.

Oh, him. After I donated in 2008 he kept sending me emails. It does occasionally come in handy, like when my wife tells to mow the grass. "Not right now, honey, Barack Obama just sent me an email."

It is your choice to make your eventual obliteration the focus of your life. That's something you can either try to change (good luck with that), or it's something you can choose to accept. But choosing to accept that doesn't mean you have to sit around being miserable and resentful while you wait for the Grim Reaper. The world is only as cold and hard as the things in it you choose to focus on. There's also more wondrous and amazing and even funny things in the world than you an get around to thinking about in a lifetime.

It's like summer vacation when you're in school. You only get ten weeks or so of it, not nearly enough to get to all the things you want to do. And there are some people who will react to that by spending the whole time from day 1 unhappy about going back to school. What a waste of existence! But that's definitely a choice open to you.

Imagine your last few seconds of consciousness before you die. How would you like to spend them? Being angry? Sad? I think that's a waste of precious time. I'd like to have someone I love very much tell me a very funny joke.

No, we all make the choice of the kind of world we want -- or maybe it'd be better to say the kind of world we can live with. It just so happens that some people can live with a world that they don't like very much, so long as that doesn't demand very much of them.

Anyone can by choice have an immense effect on the world around them. Maybe they can't change the *whole* world very noticeably, but they can transform their own neighborhood.

The world is cold and hard as we allow it to be. It is a *choice*, albeit one made by default for people who think like you.

Oh, yeah. The rational actor theory. But by the same postulates that underly that theory there should be no human being who eats unhealthy, boozes or gambles excessively, or picks fights he obviously can't win.

I have an alternative theory which states that going by actual behavior most people discount their future welfare to zero when there's an immediate reward, even a trivial one. It's almost impossible to resist an immediate burst of pleasure a nasty habit's got you hooked, whether it's a relaxing smoke or that glow of self-righteousness you get when you act on your bigotry.

People will literally kill themselves for a little short-term reward. Forgoing a little profit is nothing compared to that. If you look at places where segregation was historically sanctioned, you'll see you're entirely right: it's economically irrational. That didn't stop people from doing it.

I also mulled laying off gambling before I went broke.

Therefore I am, morally speaking, thin and rich.

Which makes sense. Sea level rise in the last 50 years has amounted to about 4 inches, probably not enough to make drains run backwards.

The way sea level rise will make itself known isn't through changes in day to day phenomena, but in exceptional phenomena like storm surge flooding. This is a place where inches may well matter. People plan around concepts like a "ten year flood" or a "hundred year flood", and this creates a sharp line on the map where there is no sharp line in reality. Depending where on the domain of the bell curve their chosen planning horizon is, a few inches could turn a ten year flood into a five year flood, which has immense practical implications.

When people way that there is nothing intrinsically worse about a globe that's four degrees hotter they're right. But *change* that undermines human plans represents a big challenge. Change also represents a big challenge to species populations that can't relocate on the timescale of change.

She can't hear reality over the roar of the hundred million dollars she was paid for halving the shareholder value of HP. Clearly she isn't deluded; she just lives in an alternate reality from the rest of us.