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Comment Re:Risk = Reward (Score 2) 224

Wait, you mean there's a life-threatening behavior gap? This is unacceptable, we must encourage women to do stupid things that may risk their lives. To not do so is sexist!

Actually, this is mostly done. The lifespan of women and men is quickly converging, as is pay (if you take into account lifetime hours worked - for professional women who haven't had a kid, I believe women are slightly ahead under 35 now).

Does Slashdot have to have a "gender gap story" every 2 Bennett stories or something? I guess it's out with "news for nerds" and in with "Reddit envy".

Comment Re:Action movies are boring. (Score 2) 332

One of them would be the Borg...
The Borg (sounds Swedish) didn't see themselves as evil or believe that their mission was unjust. They wanted to add other civilizations to their own, making both sides better. The Borg did not have the problems most civilizations have such as crime, starvation, jealousy, etc. Who wouldn't want that?

Another good example is the Emperor...
The Emperor wanted to bring order to a chaotic galaxy. Sometimes, the only way is with an iron fist.

The Reapers is one more...
Reapers were changed against their will. What they became was not their fault.

Any position can change depending on the perspective. People... or cyborgs... don't see themselves as evil They are doing what they think is best, twisted as it may be.

Education

Tech's Gender Gap Started At Stanford 224

JCallery writes: The New York Times has an in-depth look at the gender gap in tech through the eyes of Stanford's class of 1994. The article surveys the culture of the school and its attempts at changing the equation on diversity. It also examines Stanford's impact on the big companies (Yahoo, PayPal, WhatsApp, Stella & Dot) and big names (Peter Theil, Rachel Maddow, Brian Acton) that came of age during the pioneering era of the early web.

Comment Re:I never have understood (Score 3, Interesting) 265

It seems people don't get this, so let's spell it out:

Inflation requires both demand and supply of money. You can't cause inflation simply by increasing the money supply, unless you go totally crazy with it - however, if that supply is there when the economy heats up and demand appears, look out.

Hpwever, 5-10% inflation during a good economy isn't per se a problem: high inflation is a symptom of a bubble economy but may be there without the bubble. And it's the malinvestment associated with a bubble that hurts everyone - "medium" inflation only really hurts people who made the wrong bet on the future value of the dollar.

As long as you don't actually crater the currency, inflation is merely a warning sign of the real problem, and the real problem is people working on things no one wants: from bubbles to government make-work, the stuff we have is just the stuff we make, and if we're not working to make stuff we want or need, we'll all suffer for it.

Comment Re:I never have understood (Score 3, Interesting) 265

I wish I knew a good one! Most places are as crazy as ZeroHedge, in one direction or another. I read MarketWatch, but more to keep abreast of market fashion than reality (never read a stock market site for economic news).

The most useful stuff I've ever read on economics was the old-school stuff: on the business cycle, not just boom-bust but which sectors recover in which order - what leads recovery, and what's big when the end of the boom is near, and what survives best during the bust. The history of different kinds of currencies and the problems the had. The various big name economists from the first half of the 20th century, now that we can see the actual economic growth in various countries that seem to follow on or another of them. Everything old is new again.

Comment Re:I never have understood (Score 4, Interesting) 265

The dollar is much like capitalism and democracy: it's the worst imaginable choice, except for everything else that's ever been tried. That's really it: the US government is just less effective at ruining the dollar than every other central bank for a major currency. Much of the current value of the euro is simply it's position as "second lest awful currency", a hedge against a reckless Fed.

When the dollar looked rough a few years back, interest in gold perked up, and interest in the Swiss franc bloomed, but the Swiss were apparently uncomfortable with the idea of becoming a reserve currency, and committed explicitly to falling with the euro. Odd choice, but there it was.

If the EU ever finishes collapsing, all the sovereign debt in the region blows up taking the Euro with it (it's only a question of when), and then finally recovers and regains financial credibility, then finally the dollar might be displaced, Or if China has it's inevitable revolution, and happens to emerge as a capitalist democracy, or when India or Brazil finally reach first-world status nation-wide. we might also have other credible currencies. But for now, the dollar is pretty much it.

That's not to say the dollar can't be destroyed if the Fed tries hard enough. But over the past downturn they were actually quite clever: while they were printing ~$2 T in no money via QE, they were removing ~$2T in money supply via bank reserves (while we continue with a 0 reserve banking system, the Fed paid attractive-enough interest that banks voluntarily increased their reserves to unprecedented levels). And the Fed did actually wind down QE. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, when that ~$2T in "Excess reserves" comes back into the money supply and turbo-charges inflation, but hopefully that will just be Carter-like, and not a currency collapse.

Comment Re:"Looms" is not a transitive verb (Score 3, Informative) 265

It can, however, stand on its own, making the "Hamming-correct" headline read as follows:

"Serious Economic Crisis Looms; Russian China May Help".

So clearly, flatware manufactured in Russia might just save us all from the looming non-specific economic crisis. Time to open a Pottery Barn in Moscow!

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