Please note that I didn't say anything at all about men not getting a fair shake.

I said that people would be rightly skeptical of an article that was written entirely by men claiming men were not getting a fair shake, regardless of the rest of the article's merits. The fact that it's coming from an all-male source would raise some eyebrows, and quite understandably. Now apply gender equality to that and ask why it's wrong that that should be true with all the genders reversed, as is the case here.

I also suggested that if a reviewer said, of such a hypothetical gender-swapped scenario, "maybe the reason why men aren't apparently aren't getting a fair shake isn't due to bias against them but just because men generally don't measure up in this area" -- suggesting an alternative hypothesis, as academic reviewers frequently do -- that would (and I think should) be considered a sound critique, something that at least should be addressed in the paper. Now flip the genders again and you get the second part of this story, and suddenly that's an atrocity?

You're right, the comma after the second parenthetical should have been a semicolon for improved readability.

I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact, implicitly because of the assumed tacit bias of the all-male authors (a plausible concern to be fair, but in both directions), and, if it was in fact the case that women had more articles published than men, suggesting that perhaps an alternative conclusion to systematic bias could be that women just are better in that respect would be a perfectly acceptable critique of the paper.

Or does that thing look like giant space sex toy?

I think GP meant the denialists should just invest in green energy instead of spending so much money money protecting their fossil fuel interests.

As an American who agrees that the American view of the political possibilities is myopic, there is still a difference. To put it figuratively: one side thinks all kittens should be fed to vicious ravenous dogs to be maimed and devoured as the dogs see fit; the other side thinks there should be some limits on how much the dogs can maim most kittens and how many can be devoured in what circumstances, and further special protections for certain classes of kitten.

What do you mean, lets not feed kittens to the dogs in the first place? What are you, some kind of communist?

Yeah, it really is quite hard to explain answers to incoherent questions. Science can't even answer a simple math question like what do you get when you multiply 37 times the square root of giraffes?

There is simply no way human beings can sort through that much data. That means relying on gadgets and software to do the sorting for the humans. Anyone who manages big data can tell you how corrupt most data sets really are. Names spelled different ways, bits of information incorrectly transcribed, copy errors, format errors, import errors are all low probability events but, when you're dealing with billions of records, there are a lot of them. Just in general, gadget security doesn't work.

In nearly every terrorist event that's happened in the U.S., the FBI had tips from alert citizens. That was true for 9/11 and almost all of them in between. The FBI even interviewed the Boston Marathon bombers. HUMINT works.

Funny that the FBI screw ups don't get more media attention. In nearly every case they didn't effectively use the information they had, so how is more information going to make things better?

If anything points out that software patents should be completely thrown out it's this kind of nonsense. The computer world used to joke about the "Microsoft tax" on new computers due to the cost of Windows. This is, literally, a Microsoft tax on Android devices. At least with Windows you got something, this is money for nothing. This is not what the patent system was designed to do.

That sounds like a good time for a duress password.

I always took the time to make two containers with one accessed through a duress password. I felt silly for doing it...less so now. It was something I did because I used to travel a lot internationally. That was before Customs started cloning people's device drives.

he'll be prosecuted for manslaughter, right?

Sure, we should stop fighting terrorists because they hide behind hostages. That's a brilliant strategy. And then prosecute the people launching attacks against terrorist bases overseas. Another brilliant plan! Pure genius.

Maybe a better plan is for civilians to stay the fuck out of conflict zones or face the fact there's a risk of getting killed.

This so much!

I am always ranting on the injustices of how we do housing in the world today and so many people reply that poor people should just move somewhere cheaper if they ever want to escape the cycle of working their asses off and not keeping a cent of it because it all goes to paying for rental housing because they can't save to buy because all their money goes to paying for rental housing ad nauseum.

I like to retort that if all the poor people really should move out of nice places, then the rich people living in nice places had better get used to waiting each other's tables and bagging each other's groceries. Of course, if they did have to do that, then they would either not be rich for long, or else those jobs would have to pay enough to afford to live there, in which case the poor people who left could come back to work them and then afford to live there again.

Either wages go up or prices come down, either way, the people working the shit jobs no rich person wants to work have to be able to afford to live where they're needed otherwise those jobs just won't get done.

Is this industry BS, or is there something to this claim?

The power companies do actually have somewhat of a point but, in many ways, the issues are very similar to what's going on with internet technologies.

Part of your electric bill goes to maintaining the electric grid and the LV (Low Voltage) network that serves your neighborhood. Suppose there are 10 homes on an LV network and 2 of them install 7,000 watt solar arrays. Now the cost of maintaining the LV network has to be split among 8 homes instead of 10. At first that wasn't any big deal but, as more people add solar power, the power companies still have to maintain the grid and enough excess capacity to make up the shortfall on a cloudy day. As the use of solar power starts going up geometrically, it is really pounding the snot out of your local power company (not that they don't deserve a little of it).

So let's suppose we charge everyone a connect fee for grid maintenance. That covers the cost of maintaining transmission systems, LV networks and excess unused capacity. It will also raise the cost of utilities for the poorest fraction of society. I was shocked to learn that there is a large segment of utility customers who use very little electricity. A connect fee would, for many of them, be a significant price increase.

Some of these problems can be mitigated by smart grid technologies. Now we get into a pissing contest between utility companies and regulators about who is going to pay for the upgrade. Utility companies want the government to pick up the tab, even though that wasn't the deal when they were granted a monopoly. Just like telecos want the government to upgrade the internet so they can step back in and reap the profits. Free market corporate welfare. Utilities are hesitant to invest money in a rapidly diminishing market.

This points out one of the big reasons why privatizing utilities is such a monstrously bad idea. Once profit becomes the prime driver of utilities, the greater good is completely out the window.

I'm sure he does, but nevertheless employers withhold taxes from your checks via a formula that assumes you get that kind of check regularly all year long, so if you DON'T, the taxes withheld will be higher than necessary and you get a refund whether you wanted to do it that way or not.

Oh and I guess I forgot to tie it back in to the topic at hand: the average person only needed to work two hours a day to live a comfortable lifestyle, there'd be a lot more need for more people working the rest of the day to keep up productivity, labor would be more in demand, and more people would be employed for the few hours a day they'd need to get by, so there wouldn't really be the need to worry about either a right to employment or a right to welfare because work would be plentiful and easily cover one's own needs.