True, but I'm not sure it's worth the baggage.

Not quite, I'd say there's something inherently shameful about inserting porn into a technical field not caring or realizing that there's people who won't want to view it in a professional setting. I would call that asshole-ish.

But not appropriate for a computer vision class regardless of the age.

Kids aren't stupid, they'll figure out the source of the photo and everyone will know. The nature of the photo creates the context.

And if a lot of people shared your strong objections to car pictures than I'd agree schools should avoid unnecessary photos of cars.

You've missed the point entirely.

The problem isn't that me or a woman in the class is objectifying women because of the picture.

The problem is that there are men in the class who are objectifying women, or thinking it's appropriate to objectify women, because of the picture.

Whether or not I'm one of those men is irrelevant, merely the fact women have a reasonable expectation that those men are there objectifying them makes it an issue.

Which is one of the reasons that Western women are more sexually liberated, but the differences persist.

Ask any woman, it's still something they have to be aware of, I know many girls who won't trail run by themselves because they're worried about guys attacking them. That's a concern that never even crossed my mind.

And it's not just rape, spousal abuse is still terrifyingly common and there's certainly a sexual component to that.

There's no technical reason for that to be true. It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines, its continued usage suggests that hasn't really changed. I don't think that's a message you want to send about a technical field.

That's art, the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value.

I don't think the standard computer vision test image should be making provocative artistic statements.

It's not any worse. But neither image should be used as a standard test image.

So what? Just like it's not the role of the school to fix your attitudes towards sexuality it's not the role of the CS class to "fix" theirs.

And it's very disingenuous to say it's just a picture of a face, kids aren't morons, someone will figure out the source and spread the news. And even as just a face it's very obviously a sexualized picture.

It's the same reason why many of the oppose geothermal power, keeping Hawaii reliant on burning oil for most of its electricity. Also why there's opposition to even trying to redirect lava flows as most countries do when their people are threatened (with a number of successful redirects having been achieved).

Apparently Pele wants people to be ignorant of the cosmos, to destroy the climate, and to lose their dearest possessions without putting up a fight.

Judging others is a surprisingly worthless enterprise.

One of the underlying problems governments face is they refuse to understand use of force to preserve "freedom for all" only works against outliers.

Illicit drug trade is one of the worlds largest enterprises. Millions of people use illicit drugs in the USA. Governments everywhere are squandering their legitimacy to create artificial scarcity fueling a self-destructive feedback loop. As a result entire countries have or are on the verge of loosing their monopoly on the use of force.

Oh and by the way capitalism, technology and global labor markets are not free. If winners (those who have means) are not serious about helping losers don't expect resulting society to not suck.

We can all walk and chew gum at the same time. Unprofessional behavior of LEA causes real injury and death. Preparing for the next apocalypse is in and of itself mostly harmless.

The more you find yourself having to rely on force, rise of police agencies indistinguishable from military and associated panopticon bullshit that would make NSA proud the more you are losing. The focus should be on winning not losing.

I have a nasty habit of blaming the media. Full of tired, utterly lazy and stupid talking heads who increasingly only cares about itself.. willing to accept no responsibility for the aggregate effect of deliberate intentional selection of train wreck narratives propagated 24x7.

Media promotion of FUD and strife is doing real damage poisoning the minds of voters into seeking out counterproductive policy decisions and dividing rather than uniting tribes.

Context.

Context.

That looks like you're criticizing my grammar or something, I think you're incorrect.

1) Every picture is also part of a larger instantaneous image of the world in which millions of people are currently having being tortured to death. Do you think those pictures belong in the classroom as well?

2) There are students, particularly female ones, who find it both objectionable and threatening. That is completely relevant to its use in a high school class.

Wow, you're the second person in this thread to try that horrible BS debating tactic.

You have no idea how difficult it is for me to respond civilly after you claimed I'm a sexist that objectifies women.

There are two very obvious gender differences. One males are, on average, far stronger than women. Second pregnancies are far more costly to women.

This means that men are far more likely to be interested in casual sex than women because they have far fewer things to fear from casual sex. Both because men feel less consequence from potential pregnancies but also because men have far less to fear about being physically overpowered.

It is not true for everyone, there's a cultural component as well, and there's nothing shameful or unfeminine about a woman interested in casual sex. But the fact the genders do have very different attitudes is backed up by virtually every study ever done.

You're seriously using the "if you're criticizing X because you think it leads to Y then that means you have a strong tendency to Y" argument? I'm sorry but I think that's a very insulting tactic.

Lets look at the definition:

Sexual objectification involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person.

This isn't nude photography, this is pornography, it is a woman being portrayed in the nude as an object of male sexual desire. This is literally the definition of objectification of women!

The fact you can view and enjoy pornography without objectifying women doesn't mean there aren't a lot of women and men who find it very objectifying.

You may not agree with them but why not take their concerns into account?

Wow. Give us what we want or we will fuck you even harder.

Are you in the habit of erecting obvious strawmen, or was this particular bit of off-target re-interpretation just special for me?

Although it does apply to this group -- they're telling the government, "give us what we want, or we'll try to hose some good science" So perhaps your post wasn't a strawman after all. Perhaps you're just confused as to who the culprit is in this situation.

Many schools ban bare-shoulder outfits, anyway.

That's like saying "many people try to force others into doing stupid things, so anything I want to try to force you into is good, right and holy."

Some dumb-ass school rule stands as absolutely no legitimate justification for pop-culture repression of personal and consensual choice.

All this particular interest group is doing by going against good science is making is less likely they'll get what they want.

The world goes the way the most powerful choose it shall go. So it has ever been, and likely will continue to go for the foreseeable future. Going against the good things the powerful do is just one more very efficient way to get them to consider your desires irrelevant -- a really poor way of trying to get the powerful to use said power in your favor.

These people are not "natives", either. They didn't evolve there. They're immigrants and descendants of immigrants. just like all of us on the US mainland, basically anywhere but (probably) Africa. Perhaps what you meant to say was "descendents of the earliest known settlers." Or perhaps "invaders" is more accurate.

Another thought along the lines of the powerful do what the powerful want to do... do you think the earliest of these folks took the time to see if the other local life forms wanted them and their changes on and around these islands? Did the fish want to be speared, for instance?

It's all a matter of perspective and power. These people seem to have neither.

So are you in favour of prayer in the classroom? Having endless religious speakers and abstinence only advocates come in to speak?

Because your comment suggests you think it's perfectly appropriate for teachers to push their personal views on the classroom. I take the converse view, they don't get to preach their beliefs and we don't get to preach ours. And yes, using an image you know many students will find offensive or threatening just because you think they should feel otherwise is preaching.

No, the problem is guys who are so oblivious about women's concerns that they'd use a pornographic picture as an assignment for a high school classroom. And yes students will figure out it's a pornographic imagine.

Don't you think that using a picture that shows a woman as a sexual object is going to add to the objectification of women?

And it's not just some religious legacy or shame at work here, sexuality is one of those rare instances where women would be expected to have different attitudes than men. Using a pornographic image in the classroom will create an environment that makes women feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, there's no reason to have it.

I've seen plenty of work on accelerator-drive heavy isotope reactors but nothing for light isotope reactors like lithium. Accelerator driven heavy isotope reactors still deal with many of the problems of conventional fission reactors - they're greatly improved in many regards, but still problematic (you still have some plutonium, you still have some fuel availability/cost limitations, you still have some long-lived waste, you still have some harder to shield radiation, you still have a wide range of daughter products making corrosion control more challenging, etc - just not to the degree of a regular fission reactor). A light isotope reactor using lithium would virtually eliminate all of these problems. And it has a higher burnup ratio, which is of course critical for space uses.

And while everything I've seen about past improvements in accelerator efficiencies and spallation process improvements, and what's being worked on now, suggests no limit any time soon on neutron production efficiencies - at least that's how it looks from the papers I've read. Plus, even if efficiencies couldn't be improved any further (there's not that much further one needs to go), one could hybridize a heavy isotope and light isotope reactor, using a heavy isotope target as a neutron multiplier to bombard the lithium. You'd require significantly reduced quantities of heavy isotopes relative to a pure heavy isotope reactor, and most of the energy from the lithium side could be as mentioned captured without Carnot losses, which is a big bonus. Any non-thermalized neutrons of sufficient energy would produce tritium as a byproduct, which of course would be a value-added product - in fact, given that the tritium-breeding reaction with 7Li and a high energy neutron yields a lower-energy neutron, the thermalization could potentially be done via tritium breeding in the first place. And tritium is a valuable product whether one has interest in D-T fusion or not.

I just think it's weird that I've not come across any work on a lithium-based accelerator-driven spallation reactor, and was just wondering if there's a reason for that. It certainly looks appealing to my non-expert eyes. I mean, it looks even cleaner and more fuel-available than D-T fusion, and looks closer to being viable on a full-system perspective. Versus accelerator-driven heavy isotope fission you get less power per neutron (about a quarter as much), of course, even accounting for Carnot losses in the former - but that's not what matters. Cost is what matters, and if you're eliminating the use of super-expensive fuel, not producing any costly-to-manage waste, have no incident radiation, no proliferation concerns, etc, you're completely changing the cost picture - without even considering the possible joint production of saleable tritium.