Well, he is getting advice from "cyber engineers", so you gotta consider the source.
In all seriousness - I get that we want to make a differentiation between this and electrical or civic engineering, but please pick something better than "cyber". Otherwise don't be surprised when everyone expects you to look like a Borg drone in a suit.
Cochlear implants are not restoring hearing as an hearing person believes it is. I have a friend with two deaf daughters and both of them are having cochlear implants since they are young and they cannot communicate normally even with cochlear implants. Many people believe the cochlear implants are correcting the audition like glasses are correcting vision. The correction glasses can be made to exactly compensate for the vision defect. The cochlear implants cannot be adjusted to compensate the hearing loss exactly.
Fair enough. But are you truly suggesting that hearing something is worse than hearing nothing?
Reading the article (I know, I'm terrible, I read TFA), the message I get is that the implants give options. Maybe they'll be unlucky and it won't help much, and they'll go the signing route. Maybe they'll be lucky and have little or no issues. But either way, they have *choices*. If it was my kid, I wouldn't have blinked before going for the implants.
Culture is entered, not inherited. Tell me my infant kid "belongs" to your culture? I'll show you where to shove your culture - my kid will decide for herself, thank you very much.
Here is a more in depth report on the psychological effects. Those effects are non-trivial.
Even that doesn't look that terrible for an early attempt.
"Only two of the men adapted well to the mission. Of the other four, there was at least one major reason for concern, where we would ask, should we really send someone like this on a long mission," Basner said.
So, you have two well-adapted, three with issues, and one major problem. So, 1-in-3 did fine (which amusingly, is also roughly the early success rate of the rockets themselves). And that's before pointing out that the problems are attributed as much to *boredom* as isolation.
I read that, and I see useful research - they need useful things to do on the inbound and outbound trips. (I mean, if there's nothing to do - literally, nothing to do - wouldn't you sleep a bit more?)
Psychology being important is a good point as well - but that's a slightly different issue from "should we send one-way people". The problem is that some people just aren't suited to long trips with nothing to do. They'd probably have the same response if snowed in.
Fair enough on the food, but you're conflating "we fed them enough to survive and do work" with "the food was crap". (i.e. there's a reason we don't all eat healthy sludge three times a day). And you forgot the air issue.
As for Mars 500, amusingly the same article has at the bottom
Psychological effects According to official results, the crew of 520-day isolation underwent the trial as the single unit. There were no conflict situations noted, nor any situations requiring interference of the ground-based services.[38] The difficulties encountered during the performance of some complicated activities were overcome by the crew together. It is worth saying that cultural differences and language difficulties did not bare any significant influence. A friendly and constructive communication is said to have prevailed throughout the experiment. The crew spent enough time together, watching films in different languages, as an opportunity to see and discuss the seen films together. The crew prepared surprises for birthdays, major state holidays and informal holidays (on October 31st, they celebrated Halloween). It is possible to notice that the crew members somehow increased the time spent on individual activities, which did not hamper communication. There were no division of the crew along language lines or other interests to be noted. The commander exercised his authority as both a formal and informal leader.
Which seems to treat the solitude as a side-effect not worth worrying about. (One makes it sound like they're going loopy, while the other sounds like a natural response to being stuck in a oversized closet for years on end.)
I don't think anyone's saying we're ready to do Mars *today*. But you have to start somewhere, and part of that start is people willing to make the attempt. The will is the important part. Everything else is engineering.
Here is a good example. They even had sunlight and trees.
Might want to read your own link: it also points out that they were suffering from lack of oxygen and food. Which, while illuminating the need to get those areas right (no good to have pretty trees if you can't breath properly!), doesn't really preclude the possibility of making it work.
That's not a "fix this bug first" message... That's a much more general and sweeping "you suck, so you're fired," message.
Bit of both, I'd say. There's the obvious layer of "I'm tired of other people having to patch your crap, so I'm not taking more of your code until you show that you're willing to do your own homework".
And then there's the subtext of "Redhat isn't likely to keep paying you to develop if none of your code ever sees daylight again. So, if you're enjoying your cushy open source job you might want to get your shit together."
And I'll add my voice to the "I will happily work for a boss who tells me when I fucked up *and* when he fucked up, over a boss who whitewashes everything" club. Life's too short for three hour warm-fuzzy meetings.
There was one good game show: The Mole.
FTFY. (Show me anywhere where Survivor is "reality", and then I'll start thinking about calling them reality shows. Best you'll get from me today is "long form game show")
But agreed - The Mole was a high-water mark of what the format could do. Anderson was also a brilliant host for the format.
Same here. I have many more interesting things to watch than game development, even with added drama by Pepsi. Between TV and web series, there's already more available to keep me entertained than I can possibly watch.
The irony is that if Mr. Pepsi would have likely got his arguments if he had just kept the cameras rolling. Give them several days, and you'll easily get a half-hour of "good parts" while they argue over some detail.
Hell, dude shoulda ran in, shouted "emacs sucks!" and then run out before the bullets started flying...
The latter.
A little gender diversity (and diversity of any and all kinds, really) goes a long way to not only keeping group-think out, but keeping the worst impulses of humanity out.
Up here in Alberta, distracted driving laws say I'm not allowed to watch video while driving. So I'm not sure what good a video feed that I can't legally watch is.
Barring that, judging from how few licence plates I can read once the snow falls, I imagine that video camera is gonna show a lovely white screen. Wonder if that sets off the alarms?
A Minnesota school district has agreed that the taxpayer will pay $70,000
FTFY.
Pity it won't come out of the individuals' pockets.
Well, it might have. The principal who is quoted in the article isn't the one who was there at the time, and the article doesn't talk about what happened to the Previous Administration. So in my happy world, the jackass who did this got quietly disappeared into a research taskforce on ant populations in kindergarten sandboxes.
And when you consider that a well-funded lawyer would still be pocket change for the Internet Tycoons?
I've said it before, I'll say it again - if I ever come into Crazy Stupid Money like those folks, I will keep a room full of Trained Attack Lawyers on call, solely for these sorts of "public service opportunities".
There's an argument that certain off-campus behaviours should be covered by school rules; cheating (i.e. hiring someone to do a school project, etc), kids on a school team using performance enhancing drugs, possibly bullying.
Most of those still involve on-school activities.
Once my kid leaves the school ground, that's not the school's problem anymore.
"One of the items they wanted us to sign stated that we waive the right to sue if our child was killed during a field trip. Only three parents refused to sign, and those students stayed at school while the rest of the class went on the field trip."
As a parent, my first question would be - what the hell are you doing wrong that your first concern on a permission form is "don't sue us"?
My kid's permission slips are things like "I agree to pay the cab fare if she's a little shit and we send her home early" (and useful things like permission to administer first aid and call doctors and things). I'd be asking questions if they wanted blanket immunity before taking my kid to the park too.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra
