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Comment Re:Drop it on Europa (Score 1) 119

I'm confused, and you seem to know something or another. why would the rate of heat loss be low? titan is extremely cold, and heat loss goes as the gradient of the temperature correct? Or are you saying there are obvious choices of gas which have very high levels of thermal expansion at those temperatures to make it that the temperature gradient isn't very large?

Comment Re:Testing != Teaching (Score 1) 252

if your career involved physics, you would run across that integral all the damn time. And just understanding the trick of squaring the integral and then implementing a change of variables can help later on with different problems. I always found that question to be the simplest way to check if you have learned about the value of doing a change of variables.

but then, (and I'm reaching into the way back machine here) I don't recall AP Calc of either level ever testing a gaussian integral. Maybe you really mean e^x^2 and they were just checking if you knew to ignore any work and just realize it is divergent and positive in both directions?

Comment Re:Wrong Koch (Score 1) 222

wait, you are so ignorant of the candidates the Koch brothers have supported in the last 3 election cycles you actually need someone to show you each candidate and their stance on the above policies? I am including the PAC money and which candidates it is deployed to support as well, of course.

Maybe you should actually start opening your eyes to what different candidates stand for. You seem to have fallen for the theory as compared to the political realities.

Here is what 3 minutes of searching did. Both Tom Cotton and Joni Ernst have said the Koch brothers funding was instrumental in getting them elected.

Both supported and continue to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Both are strongly against gay marriage

But if you have a list of candidates who were well supported by the Koch political machine that actually opposed the wars, the drug war, restrictions on gay marriage, and civil asset forfeiture, I'll happily reconsider.

Comment Re: No way! (Score 1) 514

I understand what you are saying but no country(that i know of) has full disarmament. In almost all cases, cops can carry even while off duty and usually folks with high levels of training can have a gun with minimal issues. Most countries set rules that prevent the ignorant, unstable, or of lesser moral standing from getting one.

The safety is it is so hard to get a gun, basically all criminals don't try(and unlike the US system there aren't glaring holes). An example is Japan. Anyone who shows competence with a gun,passes background checks, and gets licensed can get a shotgun (and after a couple years, a rifle), but handguns are completely limited to police (and military). The outcome is violent crime rates are rock bottom, especially gun based ones.

This is a country that has extremely powerful organized crime (yakuza) and even they don't risk having a gun. The penalties are egregious. And of course, most gun owners are continually monitored (as they are registered) for their mental health and if you start showing signs of instability,they pull your license and you are no longer allowed a gun at home.

I could go through the limits in a couple other countries, but home defense, target shooting, and hunting are usually all protected and it bares out to a society with a MUCH lower murder rate. Many of these countries do almost nothing extravagant to care for mentally unstable individuals, and have similar underclass and diversity to the US (not Japan on diversity) but have done a great job wiping out a lot of deaths and injuries perpetrated by criminals.

I'm not saying its great for everything (I've lived a short while in the UK and a long while in Japan, and I've seen the outcomes first hand), but the idea of the armed civilian who pulls a handgun and stops public crime has long been an exaggeration, and it is made needless if criminals also can't get guns.

And all this doesn't mean I think you have to support more gun regulations or an amendment to the constitution. But it does go back to the original point: common sense in most of the developed world is strong restrictions on guns makes sense, but that isn't the common sense in the US.

Comment Re: No way! (Score 1) 514

I'd love to see a link. So far, EVERY mass shooter incident where a "civilian" intervened had 1 of 3 asterisk next to it:

1: The gun wielding civilian was either a current off duty police officer or a former police officer (the best example had a police officer who had just quit to go back to school for a higher degree)

2: The shooter was ALREADY DONE SHOOTING,something that is extremely important

3: and in one case, of a true civilian, the man happened to be a former US marine.

The only cases of a regular Joe pulling his gun and trying I have found had the regular joe getting severely injured or killed.

And we can always use occam's razor. We can assume there is a huge media coverup of these incidents, AND groups such as the NRA have been unable to pierce this incredibly well built web of intrigue hiding the truth. Or, far more likely, it just doesn't happen in any way that supports wide, easily purchased guns so it's nicer to bring up cases where it happens and leave out the fact the "civilian" was a police officer or the shooter was out of ammo or had completely left the scene of the crime and was hanging out elsewhere waiting.

Comment Re: No way! (Score 1) 514

Actually, I'm all for the second amendment and personal firearms (I enjoy target shooting), but the facts bear out a very different case. Even though the US is a well armed country not once have we heard of a mass shooter being stopped by a citizen with a gun.

And he is right, common sense across most developed nations is strict gun control reduces violence, especially murder and frankly, the data in all countries that implemented these changes agrees. Second amendment supporters would do well to recognize that banning firearms does reduce murders, deaths, and the need for an armed and over sensitive police, and that you can go one step less severe making procurement hard and get most of the same benefits. And the general data shows you can have almost all the benefits just making hand guns completely illegal but make rifles and shotguns pretty easy to get.

So his point was common sense (and experience) dictate getting rid of guns massively reduces gun violence. And so it's hard to understand (from those other country perspectives) why its so hard to pass laws to do this in the US (even amendments)

Comment Re:nanny state (Score 1) 784

for some reason almost every other country in the world has a government that can help control the inefficiencies in the health care market, set educational standards, have minimum wages (and laws about time off), non-discrimination hiring standards, and ISP regulations, all far more strictly than the US, and all of which provide far higher quality for far less money than the US. And yet, in every country, a 10 year old getting on the train to go to school miles from home is considered par for the course.

don't conflate the stupidity that goes on in the US with a functioning government.

Comment Re:Families (Score 1) 218

wow, you didn't even read the article then. The point of the article, to summarize is:

Fields in which inborn ability or unteachable talents are prized produce fewer female PhDs than those where sustained effort and hardwork are valued (believed to be important by participants in that field).

The study in no way links brilliance or that inborn talent with long work hours.

Comment Re:self esteem is not competence (Score -1) 218

men may be more represented at both ends, but anonymous cowards seem to be over-represented on the "I lack reading comprehension" end.

It wasn't that a person should get a job because they show more work ethic, or that your success or failure are determined by some measure of how hard you try.

The point was marketing of the job. Instead of saying being a theoretical physicist requires you to be born brilliant , say "theoretical physics requires you to work your ass off to build the required skills to get good" when talking to your freshman class.

Seeing as how there are many theoretical physics PhDs who are not "brilliant", but everyone who gets a PhD has to work their ass off for years, it would also be truthful in this particular field.

Marketing matters. You would know this if you had worked on the hiring end in a field that traditionally was very one sided. We actually were able to increase our selectivity and minimum requirements by changing how we marketed certain jobs in finance, because we didn't discourage any men but we were able to convince a lot more women to TRY rather than write it off as "not for them". I was gung ho for this not because I'm a feminist (in fact, I'm pretty extremely sexist), but because I wanted the absolute best analysts so that we made more money and my bonus went up.

Comment Re:It worked on me (Score 1) 218

I don't know. I meet a lot of folks (even physics PhDs) who are just super impressed with my ability to see mathematical answers. I've always been very good, but then, when I was 2 or 3 I wanted to learn how to count to a million in different languages and I was lucky to be surrounded by people who here and there helped nurture that interest.

Then I have met a few folks who are so unbelievably fluent that I just fall over watching them work. But after years of going both ways, I have realized that ability is not a predictor of success. In fact, the folks who are actually that good by nature and not hard work are so few and far between as to be almost irrelevant. I had a lot of smart, capable professors in college. And some did NOT impress me as math geniuses.

People overvalue that kind of brilliance. By definition a Michael Jordan or Einstein like talent is not something an industry of any sort can be built on. They are too few and far between. Sure Jordan was amazing, but a lot of other players far less amazing had amazingly impactful careers and the same is true in every other field. It's why I always try to encourage folks to just do what they love. If you love it, you are willing to put in the long hours to get good,and that means you will be successful, even if you aren't going into the record books.

Comment Re:Families (Score 4, Interesting) 218

THIS!

Tons of my female friends, all extremely smart and hard working, decided to or are deciding to leave the workforce because they want to be the one to raise their kids. As one friend said, once your kids hit elementary school they will have their own friends and social circle and will be busy; the time until their 5 is precious, and you only get to go around once.

Every friend who had a chance to stay at home has done it. Do I (a man) feel jealous? You bet your ass. All my female friends have been able to find work after 3-7 years out of the work force. Sure, they aren't as senior as they could have been, but there was very little negative association with their choice. Could I do that? Not in any country I Have lived so far. Everyone would assume I was wasting my time. I've been lucky, I've been in the midst of changing careers, had have been able to take quite a bit of time at home while my first born is really young but I know I won't be able to do that with his brothers and sisters. If I could just push pause on my career for the next several years and stay at home, I'd happily do that.

Comment Re: Not a problem (Score 5, Insightful) 393

There is also an incredible lack of knowledge about other systems. The choice isn't between working people starving on the streets and French style socialism where every job and employer has tons of regulation and tons of worker classifications along with huge welfare payments.

I've come to enjoy the Japanese system. It has a fundamental thread of responsibilitythat resonates with me and a strong sense of EVERYONE pays something, even the guy with 0 income for an extended period. It may not be much (20 bucks a month for health insurance) but you are legally required to get it and pay for it. The state will watch out for you, as long as you always fulfill your own responsibilities to society.

And yeah, if you go cheap and try to save 20 bucks don't get sick because you are expected to show an ability to pay immediately (but you can always get back into the state program by paying all your owed back premiums).

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