Still: women are more likely to be displayed in roles perceived as *de*grading, whereas men are portrayed with attributes perceived as positive

I'd like to see empirical evidence of this. Off the cuff, it doesn't ring true, and hasn't for a long time. The leading man in almost every comedy and drama is someone who needs to learn life lessons from his wife or another leading female role. In suspense, the villain is usually a man. Granted, there are certainly genres, most notably action, where women are damsels in distress and nothing more, but that idea does not uniquely appeal to men -- it also appeals to women who like the idea of having their own knight in shining armor. And, aside from some olympic events, most sports don't glorify women. Not sure what to do about that, or why the public doesn't like to watch women compete head-on, but is fine watching men try to stomp each other. I'm also not sure why we're squeamish about seeing women in combat. Why men are expected to earn more in dating, but the same on average, as if one were separable from the other. Why violence against women is generally considered to be *more* wrong, but violence against men is less wrong, despite being a larger problem statistically. Why men under 30 are less educated and earn less than women in the US. Why women's health issues dominate the media and popular culture despite the fact that women live more than 6% longer than men -- and that gap grew last year. Why men are punished more severely and women are forgiven more readily for the same offenses. Why men are less likely to pass on their genes than women, but are treated as if they were surreptitious philanderers, despite the fact that rates of infidelity are roughly equal, and that women are, in fact, more likely to have a child with someone other than their alleged mate. Why we ignore domestic violence and verbal abuse against men; indeed, we seem to expect men to tolerate and excuse bad behavior by women. Why child custody is overwhelmingly awarded to women. Why men are more than twice as likely to be homeless.

Thanks for posting an actual response to this!

I feel that artificial insemination is essentially the same thing, and that's conventionally accepted, and even encouraged in everything from ranching to rescuing species. Would the author have the same qualms about inseminating the elephant to increase elephant numbers? I suspect not. The only difference with mammoths is that we extincted them thousands of years ago.

The ethical concerns I would focus on (not that I am the arbiter of ethical concerns or anything) is whether and how to reintroduce them into the wild, since a) study in captivity would be of limited value, and b) that seems like the most noble and worthwhile end game.

That's relevant to, but not the full story of, the ethical controversy over human cloning, but we're talking about mammoths. I don't think anyone's proposing that we insert mammoth DNA into human eggs.

My co-worker had the exact same issue. I'll go ahead and attribute it to incompetence rather than malice, but that doesn't make it much better. The harm is the same.

My personal views don't affect the process of the legal system any more than yours do; I was just trying to explain that not all threats are crimes in the eyes of the law. How and where that distinction is made is outside the scope of my post.

That was

1) Not a stranger.
2) Posted after the fact, not a threat before the fact.
3) Not premeditated.
4) Not an online conflict that spilled over into "real life."
5) Related to GG in exactly the same way, and to the same degree, as it was related to Syria. (Which is to say, not at all.)

But other than those things, you're spot on.

Or aren't a women, who, coincidentally, happen to be a bit physically smaller and weaker on average than men and therefore are more vulnerable to physical assaults.

Stop. The only times that physical strength is the difference in who wins are in arm wrestling and weight lifting, neither of which are frequently used in attacks or to settle interpersonal conflicts.

Incidentally, men are the victims of violent crime significantly more often than women, so being female makes one less likely to be a target of violence. (Page 6, Table 5. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...)

It depends on the state, but generally it has to be a credible threat of violence, where a reasonable person would interpret it as such. I think most reasonable people would dismiss threats of violence on the internets, particularly given the very low (zero?) rate of historic follow-through from utter strangers.

Why do we allow that, though? It's ok for companies to lie to you, as long as someone smart enough (i.e., someone who's learned through experience that advertising claims are unreliable) knows that they're lying. Sure, it makes the people who say such things feel better/superior for being "smarter than a gnat," but, at the heart of it, we're still saying it's ok for companies to mislead in order to take money, as long as they're cagey enough about it. Boo.

Eisner (the president of Disney at the time) was driving in Florida. He saw a small daycare where someone had painted Disney characters on the walls.

Close, but not quite.

The controversy over the cartoon characters began when Hallandale city officials realized the 5-foot-high painted figures violated the city's sign code. The cartoons are considered signs by city officials, and as such they cannot cover more than 20 square feet of wall space, Growth Management Director Ron Muscarella said.

After learning about the figures from the news media, Disney sent an investigator to photograph the murals. The photographs were reviewed by Disney attorneys, who agreed that the figures too closely resembled Disney's famous characters, Champlin said.

http://articles.chicagotribune...

It's still AI, just not leading edge anymore (unless you're doing something completely novel, like doing it on a quantum computer).

Indeed. The headline here shouldn't be AI; it should be that the algorithm ran in logarithmic time instead of polynomial time, as hypothesized.

Can we take Carl off the pedestal yet? I know, it's hard to let go of childhood heroes, but almost all of his "contributions" to science were of a metaphysical nature, which is to say, not really scientific contributions at all. These writings included.

Poo is #2. #1 is something else entirely.

Read your own link: entrapment isn't not a crime; it's a defense.

And to the above poster who wrote, "courts used to take a very dim view of it,": Au contraire! Per your sibling poster's link:

Courts took a dim view of the defense at first. "[It] has never availed to shield crime or give indemnity to the culprit, and it is safe to say that under any code of civilized, not to say Christian, ethics, it never will" a New York Supreme Court said in 1864.[7] Forty years later, another judge in that state would affirm that rejection, arguing "[courts] should not hesitate to punish the crime actually committed by the defendant" when rejecting entrapment claimed in a grand larceny case.[8]

We humans find it much more satisfying to "find" and point out the evil in others than to look for the good, let alone encourage it. We like to admonish people for things we'd "never do," having never been tested to see if our morals really match our rhetoric, and knowing full well that we probably never will. I believe Jesus is quoted with words to that effect, though it doesn't take a self-proclaimed deity to realize that we're all capable of being shitty.