Funny -- TFA actually argues that "being a cheap date" was a disadvantage and selected against:

But then the next paragraph makes a 180-degree turn and claims that alcoholism evolved to be associated with pleasure because, I guess, being drunk is fun (and, apparently, tasty). So, apparently "being a cheap date" is also something that is selected FOR in evolution, or alcoholism doesn't evolve, accroding to TFA:

Argh. Wasn't it just yesterday that I was complaining about evolutionary biologists making up random "just-so" stories that conveniently show how anything could evolve?

In TFA, wanting to get drunk is bad for natural selection, until it's good for natural selection... in the freakin' next paragraph. Really, guys?

I actually know multiple people now whose budgets have been saved by using credit cards. Yes, you heard me right.

Why? Because of financial tracking software. A credit card charge gets registered -- anywhere from instantly to a day later or so -- and it immediately shows an impact on your "running balance" of available money in your accounts.

Cash? When you spend that stuff, you need to keep track of it yourself. Once you withdraw cash from an account, it goes into a "black hole" in terms of financial software. Your financial software doesn't know whether you have $5 in your wallet or $500, unless you tell it. And when you spend $5 or $500, it doesn't know until you tell it.

So, for many people -- especially younger people -- credit card (or debit card) becomes the default, since you can actually track your balances automatically. I know someone who just got into this habit of withdrawing cash from the ATM whenever her wallet got empty. Those little lunches and coffees and scones and random little purchases can add up to many thousands of dollars per year, and cash is not easy to track, unless you choose to keep your own detailed record by hand (or input it manually).

This woman's husband was going nuts looking at the bank balances draining every month, so he asked for one simple thing -- put everything on a credit card, and get overall financial balance updates daily sent to her phone. Suddenly, she saw her numbers dropping every day, and the reality of what was happening set in. Granted, a similar thing could have been achieved by just using the financial software, since her cash withdrawal habits would register, but once the software was there and giving her updates, she'd be more interested in checking in occasionally and realizing the daily latte habit was costing hundreds of dollars per month, which her credit card told her.

Of course, the couple I'm talking about had enough money to go around so they were never in danger of starving, but when it came time to move out of the apartment and buy a home and have a couple kids, they needed to rein in the spending. A credit card which could track purchases and give immediate feedback in financial tracking software was what worked.

I know other people who say the same thing, and I follow that same principle now. Credit cards are magical devices that tabulate my purchases and give me hundreds of dollars in bonus money every year. Cash is this weird thing that I usually have some of in my wallet, but I use it so rarely that it's the "funny money." The credit card registers an immediate impact to my finances -- the cash could have sat in my wallet for weeks or months, so I basically see it as just stuff that could be spent whenever.

I'm not saying this method works best for everyone. But the idea that credit cards are "funny money" that buys stuff and you never see the bad part until you get the statement just isn't true anymore. Credit cards can now be the ultimate financial tracking tool, and the means to achieve financial discipline, while cash...

... It's a great idea if you run a tight budget and have the discipline to do it... [by tracking everything yourself]

Sure, cash prevents you from running your account balances below zero, but keeping your account balances above zero is only the first minimal step to financial health. You need to be monitoring what you do, trimming out things that are unnecessary or eating up excessive parts of your budget, making sure the balances in the right accounts are constantly going up, so you can do things like save for retirement, have an emergency fund, pay off other debts, etc. Credit cards can actually make that effort easier and more straightforward, rather than hinder it.

Yeah, unfortunately... as Master Yoda might say, "Tilting at windmills you are."

The larger context here isn't sociology, it's "evolution." Note that I put that in quotation marks for a reason -- there's a whole network of yahoos out there who spend time thinking up "just so" stories for their pet explanations of some evolved trait. They call it "evolutionary biology" or "evolutionary psychology" or "evolutionary sociology," but a lot of the practitioners do the same crap.

-------------------

Typical day at the office:

"Scientist" X sits at his desk, bored: "Oh, woe is I! I am an evolutionary biologist, but I have too little funding to do any real experiments in my lab. What shall I do?!"

"Scientist" Y, turning suddenly: "Lo, but we can 'do evolution research' without funding. Let us consider a question, like 'How did music evolve in humans and why?' That is a good question."

"Scientist" X: "Yes! Yes! Yes! That is a great question! And since other primates don't really have musical culture in the same way, our 'findings' don't even need to be based on cross-species trends! We can just make up a story, a 'thought experiment,' just like the great Einstein!"

"Scientist" Y: "Suppose one day a mother early hominid descended from her tree and went to gather food. Her infant baby hominid might be sad. Perhaps the mother would sing to let the infant know she was still there!"

"Scientist" X: "Indeed. How I can see them now, in my 'thought experiment'! 'Tis a fantastic tale. Tell it to me again, please!"

"Scientist" Y: "But shan't we publish it now? After all, our 'experiment' has proven the way music could have evolved!"

"Scientist" X: "By golly, you're right. I'm already typing it up. Let's make up a few more stories like that, and publish it as a book on the 'origins of music', and we'll call it 'evolutionary musicology'!"

"Scientist" Y: "Huzzah! Huzzah! We have 'done research'! Our book will sell!"

And, lo -- the book did sell, and others did join this movement. Thence to all the corners of the Earth went the good news of the true story of music's evolution....

-----------

You think I'm joking. The book is out there. There are plenty of random made-up stories about stuff like this, that are supposedly to "explain" how things evolved. Even if the guys you're criticizing here are as bad as you say -- I haven't looked at their research in detail -- they got nothin' on a lot of stuff evolutionary biology people tend to do these days.

(P.S. This post should NOT in any way be construed as attacking the general theory of evolution, which I do not mean to criticize in any way. I'm just criticizing all the awful crap that has begun to accumulate around the field as lots of folks jump on the "Let's plan the 'how could that have evolved' game!" bandwagon.)

Hmm... somewhat of a non sequitur, don't ya think? The parent was talking about a sport that is known to cause permanent brain damage in minors. I'm not sure if I agree with parent's approach to that issue, but it's a legitimate concern.

How exactly do ALL other sports, the arts, music, home ec, etc. cause serious and permanent injuries to teenagers? Unless you can answer that question, I think your analogy is invalid.

There are plenty of reasons to argue for all sorts of activities, including many varieties of sports with their various benefits for education, physical activity, teamwork, etc. Or are you claiming that somehow football is a unique endeavor whose absence will lead to the ruination of the human education? Seems unlikely.

Well, it's 95% your plan, since the parent was only talking about football. So it's interesting that you're praising your own inventiveness (or hyperbole, I assume).

[Citation needed]

If you look at the history of the U.S., you'll find that it's very rarely the Supreme Court (at least not until the past 50 years or so) as the branch of government who has tried to grab power most often. Ever hear of judicial review? SCOTUS actually came up with what was originally a somewhat controversial power of invalidating actions of Congress and the Executive in order to PRESERVE the Constitution and prevent accretion of federal power.

For the first 150 years or so of the U.S., that's generally what SCOTUS did. They invalidated overreaching statutes on many occasions to rein in federal power. It was only about the time that they were threatened to be overruled by a President (FDR) threatening to enlarge the Court (per his Constitutional prerogative) and pack it with his cronies that SCOTUS finally caved in and basically said, "Uh... yeah, I guess the federal government can do whatever it wants... please don't pack our court with your cronies, Mr. President!"

Even since then, you'd be hard pressed to find lots of places where it's SCOTUS who is modifying the meaning of Constitution -- they are generally letting the legislative and executive overreaches get by them. In other words, it's the OTHER BRANCHES generally who are "modifying the Constitution with invisible ink in order to give the government more power"; the Supreme Court has just stopped saying "no" to such things as often, a power which was never actually expressed in the original Constitution directly, by the way...

So how you're blaming the Supreme Court for not asserting a right (judicial review) which was unclear in the original Constitution to justify your Originalist position is beyond me. That's quite some logical fallacy hoops you're jumping through to blame one branch of the government, rather than the ones actually asserting AND exercising that power.

Wow. This must be one of the looniest arguments I've heard in a while.

Look, the Constitution was ratified and enacted in 1789. The first Congress began meeting on March 4, 1789. The Bill of Rights was debated and passed by Congress to be sent to the states for approval on September 25, 1789. The first Copyright Act (i.e., the very first time Congress decided to exercise its power to create a federal copyright system) was approved by Congress on May 25, 1790.

So, what you're telling me is that Congress approved a Bill of Rights in September, and then a few months later Congress (composed of THE SAME PEOPLE) voted to approve a copyright act that went against the very principles they had voted for in the Bill of Rights just a few months before?

WHY? Explain that. WHY? Why would Congress vote away power in proposed amendments and then assert it -- without comment -- just a few months later?

The only RATIONAL conclusion is that the people who actually voted to enact the First Amendment did NOT think they had invalidated the copyright clause of their brand-new Constitution.

Umm, many places in the U.S. which still teach cursive teach variants (e.g., Palmer script) that still contain fundamentally Spencerian flourishes (e.g., with extra loops on capitals, etc.). These aren't just for looks -- they also aid in legibility, like making it easier to spot capitals in written script, etc. The ornate capitals in older letters and manuscripts often served the same purpose -- a reader could easily locate the beginnings of main sections, so they serve some function.

But for personal note-taking (which is all that cursive is useful for these days), these Spencerian/Palmer traits really seem about ornamentation -- and they've only started to die away in the past 2-3 decades in the U.S. with variants like D'Nealian.

Speed of writing is not the only relevant factor. Speed and ease of reading is another.

I'm well-versed in the art of cursive, including basic calligraphy. I've spent time with a number of different 19th-century writing manuals trying to master the old more ornate forms of writing.

So, I'm not stranger to cursive. I've practiced it a LOT.

And yet at some point during my undergraduate years, I switched to printing for my note-taking. I've never gone back. Why? Because while I can undoubtedly write faster with cursive because I don't pick up the pen, the distinctness in the letterforms of printing caused BY picking up the pen allow my writing to be more legible later (and more legible for other people).

I'm a very fast writer when I want to be, and I have no patience for legibility issues while trying to jot something down fast. But if I print it, I can guarantee it will be easier and faster to read later, simply because the letterforms are more distinct.

Thus, while I love the beauty of cursive and can do it with all the flourishes very slow or write very fast and sloppily, I take most of my quick notes with printing and have for quite a few years. It's the best balance of speed and legibility for me; others may have different opinions, but I don't think your statements have universal applicability about which is the best way to write fast.

You actually want to write REALLY fast? Learn shorthand. Standard cursive wasn't designed for super-fast writing -- it was designed for mildly ornate but rather quick writing that is LEGIBLE (e.g., why are all those little loops present on many of the capitals? to make it easier to spot capitals while reading, not because it's faster).

Well, that's probably good, since I actually agreed with 90% of what the parent said.

Logical fallacies 101: " If someone says something that's 90% true, but then includes demonstrably false assertions or makes unnuanced analogies, you should still act like that person is 100% correct. If anyone attempts to present a more nuanced perspective, you should immediately level an ad hominem attack, asserting that the person is obviously stupid and brainwashed."

I live in the U.S. I've also spent significant time living outside of the U.S. I agree with you that there are many, many things about the U.S. to criticize, and elements of its foreign policy are quite criminal.

However, your statement there is more than a little extreme. Many U.S. citizens do recognize that there are serious flaws (a lot of them post frequently on Slashdot, for example), though admittedly the pro-American rhetoric is stupid and ignorant at times.

On the other hand, I think compared to many years of life under the USSR, Americans are not "trapped in a hellhole." The USSR was in existence for roughly 70 years. Of those 70 years, the first 30 under Stalin experienced not only random purges and murders from the government, but largescale famines, along with economic and political uncertainty. For the last 15 years or so of the USSR, there was a gradual decline that saw economic conditions, shortages, etc. that are unlike anything generally seen in the U.S.

So, yeah, basically if by the "USSR" you want to only count the 25 years or so from the late 50s to the early 70s when conditions were pretty good, yeah the U.S. currently isn't much better than that.

But to say that U.S. people are gullible or dumb because they don't recognize -- unlike the USSR -- that the government is bad... well, we don't have random purges of people we know happening every other week... ya know, like Stalin did. In case you're unaware, Stalin ordered the murder of what historians estimate to be between 20 and 60 million people, most of them his own countrymen.

When everybody knows someone who "was disappeared" by the government, you can bet that citizens would become more suspicious of anything that government says.

In contrast, it's only in the past few years that it's become somewhat acceptable for the President of the U.S. to outright kill American citizens without a trial. Our leaders haven't deliberately killed tens of millions of citizens.

The only similar period in the U.S. that experienced turmoil on the level of most of the history of the USSR was probably during the Great Depression. So 10-15 years of the past century, compared to most years in the entire history of the USSR. And even then, the government wasn't going around killing people.

So yeah, I think some Americans are deluded about how "great" their country is, and they don't realize how many things have decayed or what rights have been restricted. But to call it a "hellhole" compared to the USSR where the citizens were smart enough to recognize how bad they had it... well, if the U.S. actually ever gets as bad as the world of Stalinist purges, I bet the American people would be smart enough to have the kind of cynicism you expect.

Well, yes, obviously that's a better way of saying it (and more accurate). The effect is somewhat similar, though. The model basically ignores the fact that differences between individual candidates might matter (or candidate's actions, or campaigning, or whatever). While it may not be strictly equivalent to "straight ticket" voting, it assumes voters behave in similar ways, i.e., their party choices would never change (collectively) no matter which candidates were running or how those candidates acted.

While such an assumption may be true for many and likely a majority of voters in many areas, many elections are also won on much thinner margins. If even 10-20% of the electorate might actually vote for a different party if the candidate changes, it could sway this model significantly in many races.

Who said I'm not? Of course I recognize racial disparities in the U.S. Of course I recognize the need to change the system to avoid racism -- both overt and systemic -- now.

My post wasn't about judging the validity of arguments for redressing racism or preventing racist political actions. My post is bringing up the obvious point that if you gerrymander a bunch of Democrats (of whatever race) into one district for whatever reason, you may end up making it more difficult for Democrats to win surrounding districts.

Hence, if we gerrymander to allow minorities a chance to get someone elected to Congress, but in the process we also gather together a lot of Democrats in one place, we can SIMULTANEOUSLY enhance the minority effect of voting while diluting the overall effect of Democratic voters.

At no point did I say we haven't had significant racial problems in the U.S., nor did I in any way imply we still don't have a long way to go to overcome various racist parts of our political system. But even if you find the creation of majority-minority districts a good idea, you still have to recognize that it can also potentially set-back the Democratic cause at large. That's the tension I was actually pointing out.

False. Legislators are required to draw districts in such a way that minority votes will NOT be diluted. Thus, if they are forced to redraw districts (say, due to new allocations of the number of representatives after a census), they are REQUIRED to take minority distribution into account and produce a new set of districts which will not negatively affect minority voters.

It has been easier for these issues to end up in the courts in places that have a history of suppressing minority votes -- but the restrictions are binding on all states, regardless of past wrongs.

Who the hell modded this as "troll"?? Not only have other posts cited examples of how the VRA has frequently been used for it, the issue is specifically discussed in one of the linked articles in TFS:

You don't mod someone as "troll" for bringing up a legitimate issue that's actually discussed in TFA.