They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.

That's not even the salary of a manager at Google (and don't even talk about benefits -- free food is amazing) -- and this is the highest of salaries. For a lawyer (law school is will run you over $100K by itself). Can you imagine why they may not have the best and brightest? With the new patent office opening in San Jose, why would anyone actually want to work for the USPO who has any amount of talent?

I can name some more: Halliburton, Shell, and Pixar.* One application I worked on made over $1 million a week last I heard.

For anyone doing serious 3D scientific computing on Linux, Qt is the de facto standard. Motif is simply awful and Gnome doesn't solve portability.

(*I wrote code that shipped for 2/3 the three companies.)

Whedon's quality issue with Avengers is the same one we find with Scott's "Prometheus", Aronofsky's "Noah", or Lucas's "Anal Excretions with Jar Jar Binx".

Too many SFX. I enjoy tech demos as much as the next person, but part of the charm of Firefly was that a low budget forced the team to focus on story, personality, and acting to do what they were trying to do with their special effects. It also forces the creative folk to manage a larger team -- which takes time away from the developing the "soul" of the project.

Hamas and Israel both don't recognize their mutual rights to exist at the moment -- Hamas uses rockets and Israel uses bombs to demonstrate this.

At least Hamas is honest about its intentions.

Based on my discussions in the past, I'm guessing the mostly male audience here will say something like "not here" or "I've never seen that". I am reminded of a (financially struggling) friend of mine who posted on her blog talking about the myth of white priviledge and her other (entirely white) friends saying "Right on!". In casting herself as a vicitm, she tried to say that the experiences of minorities were not unique.

No one here, unless you've been a woman, knows what it's like to work in an overwhelmingly male (and foul-mouthed;)) culture. And yes, it's possible to overcome that treatment -- but that doesn't it right.

I don't think at this point that they really have any valid position in the hardware business.

82 million xBox 360 owners can't be wrong right?

So, you are trying to explain the entire disparity with mistreatment by males. I don't buy it...

I follow the data. In numerous other countries, this is not the case. Again, if you have better data, please share (as I did in GP). Otherwise -- buying into the idea of female inferiority with no data to support your assertion -- is precisely the kind of prejudice I'm talking about and you are the perfect example.

I'm really not sure how sports fits into this. Yes, testosterone gives better performance in sports. Barry Bonds was fined for it. As was the Chinese women's swim team.

As far as chess, first mandatory xkcd. Another good reason is how women are treated in mostly male fields. There's very few women who play Magic: The Gathering or chess for this reason (yes, I've been to the tournies). On the other hand, more women are interested in studying academic subjects -- there must be some reason more women go to college than men right?

Men must be biologically weaker!;)

Scientist A: Show me pictures of your boobies!
Scientist B: They're really big

My hobby: Making clean jokes.

There's a "skills gap" present in Math aptitude tests that appears in countries where the status of women is worse. There are countries where the gap is lower or even reversed -- which seems to suggest culture rather than biology.

If you can find an alternative explanation beyond "American Culture", feel free to suggest it.

...anyone who has tried to migrate cobol code can tell you this. The cobol code will never go away as it is future-proof. Further, anyone who can code in cobol will always have a job since no one is learning cobol, for the same reason that no one learns medieval torture techniques.

Being the largest climate controlled dome of its kind, perhaps the engineering "lessons learned" could be applicable to creating a self-sustaining space colony -- one of the chief challenges being climate control. ..or else, I've just been playing too much Kerbal Space Program and reading too much Heinlein;)

There's evidence about a number of consipiracy theories in these documents:
* That Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill JFK
* The story that the AIDS virus was manufactured by US scientists at the US Army research station at Fort Detrick
* Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination had been planned by the US government

Of course, the real conspiracy was the disinformation campaign by the KGB to spread these false rumors. Which makes me wonder: what theories does a certain former KGB agent turned dic^H^H^Hpresident want spread now?

Steve Jobs didn't need a God for his wacky religious delusions involving getting treatment for cancer.

God!=Religion and similarly Atheism!=Non-religious.

Thanks for the nicely written reply -- I was being snarky out of frustration.

The recent SCOTUS decisions have been overwhelmingly negative from my (liberal) perspective -- perhaps reading Ginsberg's fiery dissent made matters worse;)

Cheers mate.