Unfortunately, our mass media's ridiculous "pedophile" scares have taken care of that. Do a cursory internet search sometime for male teachers in elementary or daycare -- you'll inevitably find a bunch of articles about how parents are convinced that any man who might want to spend some time with small children MUST be a pedophile. Nevermind that pedophilia is incredibly rare, and your son or daughter is probably a hundred times more likely to be sexually abused by as a teenager by a high school teacher or coach than by a pedophile.

So, even if men wanted to get into this profession, we have huge hurdles -- and I agree it's really not right. (As a father, I've even occasionally seen the suspicious looks and odd concern when I would take my young child to the playground or even just for a walk around the neighborhood.)

All of that said, most primary school teachers I know would be happy to have more male colleagues. Most of them know the benefits of having male teachers around small kids -- unfortunately, for us to start a campaign for male teachers, we'd have to overcome the inaccurate media fear campaign about pedophiles... and "Think of the children!" always overrides logic or reason.

I posted on this above with links, so I'll just briefly say that there are in fact organizations trying to get more men into nursing -- and given the growing nursing shortage, just about any place would be thrilled if the numbers of male nurses went up.

There are. For example, have a look at organizations devoted to recruiting more men, like the American Assembly for Men in Nursing or the "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" campaign. Also see various studies and concerns about the issue on the Minority Nurse page. It's really a complicated issue, and organizations like this have really been trying to figure out recruitment efforts.

Maybe there should be more "people complaining" about this issue, but your assertion that "there aren't any" is just untrue. The fact is that we have a shortage of qualified nurses that is only projected to get worse, and many of these organizations, many hospitals, etc. would be extremely happy if they could get more male nurses, or get more men who are currently unemployed or in crappy jobs in this economy to go to nursing school. But it doesn't help the stereotype when just about every portrayal of a male nurse on television or film is usually made to be the butt of jokes and ridicule.

First of all, we also need to consider the possibility that it could be BOTH. I.e., that certain gender stereotypes have some relationship to biological facts, and thus gender stereotypes end up having other effects which are not necessarily biological (but may be partly rooted in them).

The reason I bring this up is because it makes an interesting conundrum for these sorts of arguments. If something is entirely biological, there's supposedly no sense fighting it. (Of course, not all women are exactly the same, and some may have those "natural" biological elements emphasized to more or less degree in their talents and personalities.) But if something is entirely social, it's perceived as a gross injustice.

But what if we combine these? For example, someone earlier in this thread brought up the biological fact that women bear children and thus may need to take significant time off of work to have a kid and especially in the first year or two do things that only women can do (particularly nursing). If a woman wants to have more than one child, that can easily add up to 5-10 years of absence from the job force. In a fast-paced field, it may be difficult for women to then hop immediately back in to the job force with skills that are already starting to be outdated.

So, the issue here is not entirely biological (women could choose to forego children or dump their kid into daycare when he/she is a couple months old or women could actively try to keep up their skills even while not working full-time), but it's not entirely social either (men don't have the same hormones driving them to have children or nurse or be with infants). Yet we're still stuck with the problematic effects -- women will often get behind in their jobs or have trouble keeping up or returning to the workforce. We can't just blame it on biology, but it seems impossible to completely eliminate social issues that arise either.

Obviously we need to eliminate actual ignorant prejudice. But the problems are often a lot more subtle than that these days. I know a lot of professional women who "came up through the ranks" in the 1970s, and they have horrific stories to tell about the kinds of indignities women suffered in the workforce back then. Let's not forget all the amazing progress we've made in a few decades... it's important to keep that in perspective.

Nowadays, we're mostly confronting those harder problems I mentioned earlier, like how to figure out a way to be "fair" in a workplace (and all the related decisions like salary, promotion, etc.) where one gender is more likely than the other to disappear from their career for 5-10 years at a time.

And we also have to deal with cases where "social self-regulation" actually does serve some important purpose. Sure, is it biologically possible for a woman to have a child and dump the infant in daycare almost immediately to be fed with formula? Yes, obviously. And lots of women do it because they have to.

But aren't there also psychological and perhaps social benefits to allowing women to choose to stay home and take care of a small child as they are biologically programmed to do? Moreover, aren't there also social benefits to having communities where children are raised by some parent (male or female) who can spend more time with them, rather than getting kids out of the home as quickly as possible and into large groups of kids often taken care of by people paid minimum wage? (Of course, some might argue the reverse -- that many parents are bad parents, and daycare may be helpful to the kids. Perhaps that's true in some cases, but shouldn't there be a choice? Shouldn't women feel that choice is reasonable too? But there are many feminists who go too far and actively discourage women from pursuing their own choices about wanting to raise a family more actively.)

These are difficult questions. And there aren't just a couple nice and neat categories where we can either say, "That's not a problem" or "We need to solve this and check off the social justice box for this issue."

It depends on what you mean by "weren't even things." If you mean that most people didn't know about them, well, that's still true. If you mean that NO ONE -- even at research labs and in grad school projects, etc. -- was doing this stuff, well, you're wrong. Even if you just do some searches in Google Books restricting sources to 1984 or earlier, you'll find the use of the term "bioinformatics" going back to the early 1970s (the first shared protein databases go back to the early 70s, and gene sequencing software to the late 70s), and entire books devoted to mathematical programming and computational modeling in economics from the 1970s.

As for "quantitative anthropology," there are a few sources out there that mention applying quantitative methods back then, but I doubt there was as much computer use as in, say, economics. On the other hand, I know a number of people who did their doctoral dissertations in the humanities in the 1960s and early 1970s who were making use of computers to try things similar to what we'd called "digital humanities" today. And I've read papers in the humanities using computer-aided analysis going back to at least the early 1960s. Perhaps it was the "space race" era or something that influenced those projects, but computers were around particularly at universities.

I'd absolutely agree with that. But there's a difference between saying that "you weren't missing out on much" and "those ideas/fields didn't exist" (and sometimes made significant use of computers) in 1984.

I will qualify what I said slightly -- I do recall seeing some sort of "People who bought what you recently ordered also bought..." after I've gone through check out. So, I assume some of those are based on my recent order history (maybe not just the last order) and have general recommendations. That's about the closest I can recall to seeing the regular Amazon "Recommended for you" stuff in years.

What version of Amazon's page do you visit? If I go to an Amazon product page, I see links to "Items Frequently Bought Together," "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." and "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed..." and things like that. Perhaps those are personalized to some extent, but those products are mostly based on what product page you're actually on and on what others have bought -- not on whether you bought a random unrelated "Hello Kitty" product.

To get to see personalized recommendations for random products, I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page past just about any content I normally would want to see. Frankly, until just now when you pointed this out to me, I never even noticed they were down there... because I would have no reason to scroll down past all the other random stuff on product pages unless I specifically wanted to see them.

I think most people, if they want to see their personalized recommendations, either go to Amazon's homepage, or they click on a link to see information on your account, where you can find "Recommended for you" or whatever. I NEVER seek these things out myself, so the only time I've seen these is occasionally when I've clicked on some "My account" link for something else that took me to a page with them.

Bottom line: I can't recall actually even SEEING what Amazon recommends for me based on my purchases in at least a couple years. GP obviously seems to notice this on a regular basis since he bought his flash drives.

So, either he (and you?) visit some alternate reality version of Amazon's website, or you're both seeking out these recommendations... because I can't remember the last time I even saw the recommendations, let alone "noted" what might have been in them.

GP wasn't complaining about advertising. He was talking about recommendations -- and he obviously wants to have better recommendations or he wouldn't bother looking at them at all. So, if he's looking at recommendations, chances are he would like to improve them -- and if that requires just a few clicks, it might actually be worth it to him.

I, personally, haven't looked at Amazon's recommendations in years. I don't care what they say or how accurate they are. If they were listing a bunch of Hello Kitty products, I wouldn't go around complaining about it, because I never even notice the recommendations. GP obvious does, which implies he pays some attention to them. If he wants to improve them, Amazon has a mechanism for doing so.

As to your assertion that regular people wouldn't help advertising companies, I'm not so sure about that. Slashdot is full of a bunch of people who never want to see ads. (I'm one of them.) I'm never going to even look at an ad, so the only thing I ever want to see on an ad is the quickest way to close it.

But, believe it or not, there are people in the world who look at ads. And some companies have been moving to a model that forces people to watch ads. In those cases, assuming I'd actually use the service at all (which I probably wouldn't, but others might), I'd appreciate a little box that says, "I don't want to see ads like this one again." If I'm being forced to look at an ad anyway, I might as well take that time to click something that will make that ad go away and put something better next time.

That's not the behavior I would want. When I first get interested in something new, I'll often buy one or two related items to "try things out." If I've gotten to the stage that I'm actually buying anything, chances are that I'm probably going to become interested in seeing more (at least considering it -- whether or not I will follow up and continue buying things depends on a lot of factors).

So, no, I don't want that behavior in a "good system." I'd frankly prefer a system that defaults to showing me related products to the more unusual products I've purchased, since I'm less likely to know what is popular among things I haven't bought a lot of. If I'm already ordering a dozen things per year in one category, chances are that I already know it pretty well, and I'm going to find the things I want whether I see recommendations or not. (Obviously, there should probably be some sort of "half-life" to recommendations for unusual items; if you order one thing out of the norm, and you don't order anything else like that in your next few dozen items, those recommendations should gradually fade.)

The key to the system is also having a button you can click to say "Don't use this one particular product for recommendations," because I might be buying a one-off gift or a one-off product, and I don't want more. Amazon has a button like that explicitly designed into their system, so, to me, that's exactly the behavior I want in a "good system." (Not saying it couldn't be improved, but I don't want your "good system" policy either.)

Mod parent up! GP is complaining about a problem that actually has a known solution, which Amazon has been reasonable enough to implement.

GP is complaining about the precise behavior that allowed him to accomplish his goal in ordering the flash drive. Amazon obviously profiled people and predicts that the demographic who will buy "Hello Kitty" products is very specific, and most people do NOT want that stuff.

GP's argument is thus actually proof that Amazon's algorithm is probably working well. GP chose a product that would be undesirable for most of his coworkers for the very reason that it's something of a niche product. By buying such a product, GP identified himself to the algorithm as one of those few people (unlike his coworkers) who would want such a product.

Now he expects Amazon to just intuit that he's some sort of exception to that general rule (which in this case, is probably a very good rule, or someone would have stolen GP's flash drives by now).

I'm not saying Amazon's recommendations couldn't be improved -- but this particular example is very poor. And if GP wants to fix his recommendations, Amazon has a system specifically designed to allow this.

Sounds like those "intelligent kids" are actually kinda dumb, then. Truly intelligent people find ways to succeed despite obstacles, including "being bored."

Yeah, you know which kid is ahead of both of them? The intelligent kid who finds everything easy but is also motivated and THUS seeks out his/her own challenges.

You've identified a problem, but it's not the one you think. If we want to select for true intelligence, we want to avoid a system where kids only respond to external rewards.

When I was in high school, I was often leagues ahead of the rest of the students in the class, but there was no point in just sitting there and "being bored." While the teacher was yammering on about whatever in math class and going over a half-dozen basic repeitive examples that I already understood in one pass, I'd be sitting there working on the "challenge problem" (which was almost never assigned) at the end of the exercises in the textbook. While the rest of the class was working on algebra problems which I finished in a few minutes, I'd pull out a calculus textbook I borrowed from the library and work on it by myself. The teacher didn't care, because I wasn't being disruptive and had already done my work. And frankly, most teachers are often happy to help kids who are self-directed and express curiosity... so if I ran into trouble with my self-motivated extra activities, I might ask about them after class. Most of the teachers really enjoyed this, because they appreciated (1) having a somewhat intelligent conversation for a change with a student, and (2) doing something outside the repetitive everyday stuff. A few teachers didn't seem to enjoy it, and I usually wouldn't bother them again... but they rarely bothered me as long as I did well on tests and handed in work. And in the process, I created a lot of strong relationships that paid off later in getting me awards, having teachers write strong recommendations for college, etc.

The reality is that in life you will come up against many obstacles. One very common one is being able to take care of boring simple tasks in most jobs. Another very common one is figuring out ways to make your job enjoyable and find ways to be creative and more productive, even if things seem somewhat "boring."

Truly intelligent people will find ways to succeed despite such obstacles. What you are describing as "intelligent kids" are spoiled brats who have been told they are smart and don't care about doing more than the minimum they are required to. They haven't discovered how to find their own internal motivation to succeed -- and, frankly, many of them DESERVE to fail more than those who are motivated but less "gifted" with natural intelligence. In the real world, motivation and being able to seek out your own goals is often much more important to success than some abstract "intelligence."

(Don't get me wrong: I agree with you that we could organize our educational system better to reward and motivate kids who have more natural talent. On the other hand, my experience has shown that those who whine about how they didn't do very well in school because they were bored generally turn into whiny adult workers who complain and don't do their jobs well because they are bored -- regardless of their natural "intelligence.")

Despite the wording here, Stone was questioned at the school. See this article, for example, for clarification:

I agree that the response to all of this sounds rather crazy, and there seems to be little reason that this should have escalated to an arrest. However, let's keep to the facts here. Whatever Stone is accused of doing in terms of "disorderly conduct" happened at the school.

By the way -- I'm NOT at all saying I agree with the actions by the police in this situation. The outcome certainly sounds ridiculous. But just because his parents weren't present doesn't make the police questioning "illegal."

I don't know anything about what happened in this particular case, but in general, your assertion about the law is not true. Minors may be questioned by police without parents present. However, what the Supreme Court has said is that police may have to adjust their standard of when to issue a Miranda warning, depending on the subject's age. The normal standard is that Miranda is not required for questioning when a reasonable person in that situation would feel free to leave at any point. However, minors may sometimes assume they must be more obedient to authority figures and therefore may not feel they are free to leave -- thus, in some cases the Miranda standard should be altered to take that into account. Minors may therefore need to be advised of their rights earlier, or offered an opportunity to speak with parents or counsel to help them understand their rights in that situation.

But there's no legal requirement in the U.S. that parents always need to be present for police to talk to a minor or ask him questions. You haven't presented any evidence of an "illegal interrogation."

Agreed. I don't think I ever saw one here until around the year 2000. I've just been seeing them a lot in recent years.

I agree with that too. For years, my grandparents used to heat up their water for their morning tea in a teacup in the microwave. I suppose for me the change happened around the same time I switched from teabags directly in a cup to loose-leaf tea brewed in a pot. When you're brewing your single-serving tea in a teacup, it makes sense to just boil the water in the cup in the microwave.

I wasn't saying that everyone uses electric kettles in the U.S. -- but I do think they have become a lot more popular in the U.S. in the past 10-15 years. Also, I've noticed with members of my family and friends who have asked me about my electric kettle that once they try one, they tend to use it regularly (unlike a lot of other kitchen gadgets).

I don't know if you also remember this, but there was a fad back in the 1990s for "iced tea makers," which were essentially like a drip coffee maker, except the tea would drip into a large pitcher over ice. (They're still around, though I don't know how popular they are.) Americans may not, as a whole, drink as much hot tea as some other countries, but they certainly drink a LOT of iced tea. I think one of my initial rationales for trying an electric water kettle myself is because I realized I could use it to brew iced tea too on hot days, without paying for a dedicated gadget.

I know you're sort of joking here, but I think it may depend on you and your group of friends. I use an electric water kettle daily -- it's one of the most useful devices in my kitchen.... particularly on hot summer days when you don't want to inefficiently heat up the whole kitchen with wasted gas heat or poorly-sized electric elements on your stove just to boil water when you can do it in a small insulated container. Also, it shuts off automatically at the right temperature, so I don't need to come running to shut off the stove with some high-pitched whistle blowing.

Many (most?) of the people I know seem to have them in their kitchens. I switched when I first saw a very cheap one in a catalog maybe 15 years ago, and I have only used my stovetop kettle a few times per year since. (Yes, I'm American, and I'm talking about Americans who live in the use, not immigrants.)

Also, many of the Americans I know who actually care about the flavor of their coffee prefer to make it in a French press. I'm not a regular coffee drinker, but that's about the only way I make it at home these days when I do. But I agree with you that most people in the U.S. do tend to use drip coffee pots, and for that matter many Europeans will make "stovetop espresso" in their Bialetti rather than using a French press (and thus may not use an electric kettle to brew coffee).

Actually, most of the Americans I know who don't care that much about coffee flavor seem to have moved on from "coffee pots" into the world of single-serving wasteful expensive options like K-cups, which are effectively an "electric kettle" combined with a pump. I feel like in the past few years, when I'm visiting someone, that's often the option I'm given for coffee -- either a French press (for coffee fanatics), or "you can choose whatever flavor you want because we have a Keurig." (I can understand the convenience, but the per-cup cost is insane -- it often comes out to greater than $50 per pound, often for pretty cheap crappy ground coffee.)