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Comment What a meandering article (Score 1) 1198

Wow. That article is all over the place. I swear some three-sentence paragraphs had three different thoughts. I think part of the problem with these kinds of essays is that guys get tired of being blamed for everything. (For comparison, just try to think back to any mainstream article that blamed women for anything.) That's why guys are always getting defensive - because guys are always getting the blame. Rather than this essay, I recommend Mark Manson's article: http://markmanson.net/school-s...

Comment Re:you've got male (Score 1) 315

The *should* in that original sentence is a bit excessive, but it's true that many men are fine working by themselves, while women tend to like working with other people -- have you ever noticed that female-dominated jobs tend to be jobs interacting with other people (e.g. nurse, teacher) and get people-related degrees (e.g. communications, psychology, sociology, education, ...)?

Comment Re:An article that suggests a counter-effect.... (Score 1) 784

The only way that ice can be below sea level is if it's pushed down by something. In this case, the ice below sea level is pushed down by ice on top of it. (Which is why an iceberg is 90% below water and 10% above water.)

> "Since water uses more volume as ice than as a liquid, the amount of liquid held in the bowl, should be more than the amount of ice it previously had, before melting."
I think the mistake that you're making is that you think there are icebergs which are below the surface of the water, but they are less dense than the water. Of course, this can't happen. It's like having a helium-filled balloon that falls to the floor, even though helium is less dense than the surrounding atmosphere.

You have to take into account the fact that 10% is above water to begin with. As it turns out, those two things cancel out - i.e. the volume used up by ice which is below sea-level is exactly the volume of water that the a melted iceberg will use-up (after it's melted). This is the same principle used in ship-building: the weight of water which is displaced by a ship is equal to the weight of a ship. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... ) Similarly, the weight of water which is displaced by an iceberg is equal to the weight of an iceberg.

You can test this easily enough with a glass of water. Fill the glass with ice. Now, fill the glass to the brim with water. Some ice will stick out above the top of the glass (because ice is slightly lighter than water, so part of it will float above the surface of the water). Wait for it to melt. The water level will remain constant (it won't go down and it won't overflow).

> "Seems to me that the net result of this should be lower global sea level..."
No. That would only be true if you ignore the fact that some of the ice is located above sea-level. When you calculate all of it together, you'll find that ice in the water won't cause a sea-level change when it melts. (And the sea-level change that global warming people worry about is caused by ice melting which is currently located on top of land.)

Comment The Numbers (Score 1) 118

In the US, gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV cases. But, among heterosexuals, women outnumber men in the number of new HIV cases. For whatever reason (perhaps because semen sticks around longer in the vagina than female wetness stays around on the penis after sex), it's known that a woman's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive male is higher than the chances of a man's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive female. If I remember correctly, the chances of an infection are about double for women compared to men.

"Women have a much higher risk for getting HIV during vaginal sex without a condom than men do" - http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/ge...

You'll also note that, on the graph shown on this article, if you ignore the gay and bisexual men graphs (listed as "MSM" or "men who have sex with men"), women outnumber men in new infections. For example, in the US, about twice as many heterosexual black women (5300/year) are diagnosed with HIV each year as the number of heterosexual black males (2700/year).

Perhaps what's going on in Africa is that homosexual males are less likely to get HIV - because so many of them are in the closet or keep to a small number of sexual partners for fear of attacks. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Or maybe HIV is just so common in Africa that transmissions among heterosexuals has surpassed the homosexual rate (which, given the two risk factors of "gay" and "in Africa" has got to be putting homosexual HIV rates near 100%, but you can't get higher than 100%).

Or maybe there's just a lot more sleeping around in Africa among heterosexuals. Afterall, the reason the homosexual HIV rates are so high is because gay men tend to have a lot of sexual partners.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that, if you ignore the homosexual male population, the rates of HIV infection among heterosexual women is naturally higher than the HIV infection rate among heterosexual men.

Comment Re:Multi user games (Score 2) 115

I'd bet it's hard to break-even once you've done the work of converting them. First, almost nobody is going to pay $60 for them, like people did decades ago. The bar for computer games has been raised, and the market is full of people trying to sell games. (It's also possible that the developers of those old games created them because they liked making games, even if the pay was bad. For someone wanting to make a decent living-wage, this type of game might not be the way to go - i.e. only create them if you've got lots of interest, a day-job, and lots of free time.) Second, it's hard to find your target audience. A few years back, I had written a strategy-wargame ( http://www.empiresofsteel.com/ ) which was inspired in many ways by an old computer game called "Empire" ( http://www.classicempire.com/ ). My revenue was nowhere near paying my development costs -- I recouped about 20%.

My publisher told me that strategy games are tough to make money on (unless you're Sid Meier, I assume). They published quite a few strategy games. They had a hard time figuring out a good way to market them that actually had a good ROI. At one point, I tried Google AdWords (because targeted advertising would work, wouldn't it?) I didn't make back the money I spent. My publisher had invested a bunch of money (a lot more than I did) promoting their games with Google AdWords, as well, because they wanted to test the targeted-advertising market. They eventually decided that they couldn't get a net-positive ROI from AdWords.

It's just a hard market out there. I suspect the only way to really make it as an indie developer is to make something super innovative and addictive (and get really lucky on top of it).

Comment Re:Explain Flynn Effect then. (Score 2) 199

That's easy: nutrition. It's known that both intelligence and height are heritable. We also know that nutrition in childhood is also a factor for height (and most likely intelligence, as well). If you look at the average height of, say, Japanese people over the 20th century, you'll find that their height increased (on average) by several inches. Was this due to genetics? Or was this due to better nutrition (more specifically, more protein in their diet)? The fact that the Flynn effect happened (probably due to better nutrition) doesn't tell us anything about whether or not there is a genetic component to intelligence (just like the increasing height of Japanese people doesn't allow us to conclude that height isn't heritable).

Comment Re:Who has the biggest Koch? (Score 1) 465

Really? Here's a fact-check. Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?

"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list." In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.

How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Comment Re:Who has the biggest Koch? (Score 3, Informative) 465

Really?

Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, and it wasn't entirely to democrats - 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?

"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list."
In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.

How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Comment Re:elections are bought (Score 2) 465

Imagine this: A poor person goes to an auction where they sell something that rich people really want. The rich don't want this. They mount a psy-ops campaign to convince poor people that it will never work because there's only two possible outcomes, and both of them are bad for rich people: (1) if the poor people don't manage to out-bid them, it'll still drive up the price for the rich people, (2) the poor people might actually manage to outbid them. It's important to nip the whole idea in the bud - convince people that it'll serve no good purpose, because killing hope is the best way of undermining both of those "bad" outcomes. Congratulations, Todd Palin.

By the way, an election isn't like an auction. It isn't always won by the person with the most money. Hell, one of the Koch brothers tried to run for vice-president on the Libertarian ticket back in the 1980s, and failed miserably. It just goes to show that winning elections isn't based on some deterministic function based on the amount of money you throw at it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

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