Unfortunately, you're right, and while men and women should have equal rights and equal treatment it will never mean that men and women are somehow completely the same. Biology alone should tell us that and pretending otherwise is naive at best.

I find it ironic that people who tell us to celebrate diversity exclude gender diversity. There is nothing wrong with the idea that men and women are different and why shouldn't we celebrate and enjoy that diversity too?

I think it's fair to look for the reasons why women are not making the team. I think it's terrible to detract from the team's achievement by saying, 'Yeah, but there were no women' as if that somehow negates their victory or casts a bad light on it.

In looking for reasons why more women are not making the team, please don't tell me it's discrimination, either. If there are societal factors that cause women (as a general thing) not to choose to pursue math, look to those factors.

I suppose, though, that until the team is 6 men and 6 women there will be detractors, regardless of how well the team does. Or maybe that's 7 women and 5 men to make up for past injustices. Isn't that how it's said?

Good luck with that!

That's not what I mean when I say decent lossless recording. I am referring to decent recording technique. There are a lot of bad recordings out there because they were done poorly.

I guess I started a storm by mentioning Bose, but some of their gear is good. However I never used them to mix; I had JBL Professional studio monitors for that. I had Bose 10.2s in a listening room but they did overemphasize bass. Clients loved the sound, though.

Someone else mentioned headphones. While you may hate Sony, their professional headphone line is top notch and great for location work. But headphones are not suited for final mixdown for the most part.

While I'm hardly a denier, I have to point out that the reverse is true as well. Anyone who tries to demonstrate that AGW isn't real is shouted down pretty fast without much of a hearing.

Honest science lets the facts speak for themselves. If we removed the hype and just looked at the facts, I think we'd see the obvious conclusion that man affects the environment. We might even answer the vital question of 'how much'.

Meanwhile, I'll be writing checks to neither Al Gore nor the Republican Party, neither of whom seem to me to be particularly adept at unbiased science.

I'm 66 and I *definitely* can hear the difference between a bad MP3 and a decent lossless recording. But I'm fortunate to have mostly kept my hearing this far.

But the discussion raises a question. Are people satisfied with poorer sound than they once were? I see people listening all the time on cheap earbuds. I've done reviews on Amazon of dozens of earbuds and headphones, and I know what those things sound like. (I also ran a small recording studio and location recording business for quite a few years, so I've done professional audio work.)

Listening to earbuds connected to your phone, playing an MP3, is hardly the same experience as listening in a living room to carefully placed Bose (or similar) speakers driven by a decent set of adequately powered amplifiers, if you see my point.

Some streaming that I've listened to is indeed terrible, and although some is pretty good, it's still at least something of a degraded experience most of the time.

Does that mean Neil Young's music is so good that some loss of fidelity ruins the listening experience? I can't answer that from an artistic standpoint, but quality trends do seem to be in a downward rather than upward direction.

"That would be 0% administrative fees (except for NASA overhead, of course)"

Which runs, what? 99.99% or so?

Not completely kidding here .....

NASA's staff does amazing things and this is another one. Imagine what they could do with adequate funding, non-politicized leadership, and freedom from overwhelming bureaucracy. It's a huge credit to the staff that despite enormous obstacles they do a lot of great science.

It's hard to believe that Obama and Kerry are dumb enough to actually trust the Iranians to stick to a "deal" but .... the facts speak for themselves.

So why DO they want a "deal" at all costs? Do they think it will win political capital? Is this to be another of Obama's great "accomplishments"?

Maybe, but whenever I read about Julia McWilliams' role in WWII, I find myself admiring the courage of her and people like her.

You don't (I wouldn't think as a typical case) do 2 GB from a single point to a single point. 2 GB gives you multiple fast connections to multiple external points for an office full of users who all share that bandwidth.

Don't omit the all-important words, UP TO. Oh, you're only getting 10 megabits today? Well, we said UP TO two gigabits didn't we? I remember when I was sadly on Comcast some years back and they offered UP TO 3 megabits, I'd get 1 megabit on a good day. That's a maximum, not a guarantee, they'd flatly say. And they were the only game in that small town so it was take it or leave it.

You probably know that Mr. Magoo as a show has been found offensive in that it makes fun of people that have poor eyesight. Today, I think just about anything offends someone in the LTBO crowd (looking to be offended).

I have terrible eyesight and I find Mr. Magoo hilarious. I'm actually able to laugh at myself instead of having a chip on my shoulder.

Your post makes good points in an articulate manner. I don't doubt for a moment that there has been white male dominance during many times and in many places; that's a fact of history. What I do doubt is the generalization that some people make from this, that all or even a majority of white males today in Western society are the "enemy" or are "evil" or "bad" in some way.

I don't and won't apologize for being a white male. As I said above, I live in Hawaii (where white male dominance, by the way, is long a thing of the past) and I married an Asian. I love and would never give up either the diversity of this part of the world or the multicultural richness that my marriage has brought me. I also try to do everything I can to treat people fairly. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly in return, and not be categorized and stigmatized because I happen to be a white male?

In other words, "you didn't build that."