If you're unable to express disapproval clearly without being rude and telling people to "shut the fuck up", then maybe you're not qualified to manage people? Also, it sounds a lot like what Linus criticized this guy for doing, blaming the other party for your own failings. What's the difference between breaking the kernel and blaming userspace apps, and failing to communicate your point clearly and blaming the other person for misunderstanding? As an employee, I don't have to suffer the consequences of your not being able to express a simple point clearly.

You can be "nice" (or even simply not a total ass) to people AND tell them that what they're doing is wrong. For instance, tell them "I don't think this is the right way to do it because of Y and Z, and I'd rather you do X instead. We will not be able to accept this contribution unless you make these changes". How on earth could anyone construe this as an encouragement to continue in this direction? No need for profanities, no need for personal attacks. State the facts clearly and calmly. And perhaps people won't be looking for another job because of the hostile work environment that you're creating.

But you can also decide to forego this return on investment for the good of mankind. Which, arguably, is what universities should be pursuing in the first place, not trying to maximize their ROI, as private companies do very well.

Profits are very useful because you get valuable information about what you're doing and it allows resources to be put to the most valuable use. But it doesn't really apply to basic research. That kind of research is not meant to create products that can be sold for a profit, but to increase our collective knowledge. This may or may not give rise to new applications, technologies, and products, but that's not main point. And if something does prove valuable, wouldn't it be better if it were freely licensed to all interested parties to allow for cheap production, for other people to freely improve upon it, etc.?

That's the whole point behind endowments. Give universities so much money that their survival doesn't depend on their monetizing their discoveries. CMU has a $1 billion endowment that makes it very unlikely that it'll have to stop innovating because they failed to secure a patent on everything they discover. Especially since much of the research conducted in universities is actually funded by the government, as a public good.

Easy. 100,000 cases of polio is much much worse. The kids didn't ask to be born to parents who have strange ideas and there are many aspects of the local culture (honor killings? Systematic and systemic discrimination against women?) that should disappear. Cultural eradication is a good thing if it means that mistaken beliefs about the world get rooted out, and especially if it causes active harm to others. I won't be shedding any tears if a "culture" that rejects something as innocuous as vaccination disappears.

That being said, I agree that imperialism is a bad idea, and much of the backlash against "the West" is due to real grievances. For instance, bombing weddings and killing children is not a good way to show how great Western civilization is. Neither can you shove your values down people's throats and expect them to embrace them. But if some cultural practices (genital mutilation for instance) were to be abandoned, I'd be very happy. And, when it involves children whose only mistake was to be born in the wrong part of the world, cultural relativism doesn't seem very appropriate to me.

Not to forget that appealing to "culture" is often a way for the powerful to cement their privileges and continue to exploit marginalized groups. Thus the various dictators who explain that human rights are a Western construct and that authoritarianism is part of the local culture. Or people who want to keep girls ignorant and submissive because their culture/religion says women are inferior to men.

Communication is challenging because Chinese and English are completely different. Why do we expect him to do a better job learning Chinese than the Chinese developers did of learning English, even though they had a lot more incentive to do so? Maybe, occasionally, it might help him if he can clarify things in Chinese. But you have to weigh it against the risk that what he'll be misunderstood because his Chinese is too poor. When things go wrong, do you want him or the Chinese developers to be blamed? If he communicates something very clearly in English, they're at fault if they mess up. If he tries to speak Chinese, there's a good chance that he'll eventually get blamed.

In IT, there's little need for foreign-language skills, unless you happen to live in bilingual country (and even there, it's mostly used as a filter by HR departments). Everyone speaks English and there's a reason why he's a mid-career developer and never had to speak a foreign language.

That being said, learning another language can be a valuable experience. Just don't expect it to be useful on the job.

That's a bit misleading. I'd rather be in the bottom 20% in a high-income country such as the United States or Sweden, than in the top 10% in a Sub-Saharan country. Even with substantially more money than the average person, quality of life is much lower. Which means that you can't just look at income inequality. Median income and living standards, as well as their absolute range also matters. Even if wealth is more and more concentrated (which is not exactly accurate, the Gini coefficient is about the same as it was in the 1860s, and fluctuated a lot throughout the 20th century), living standards have improved a lot, which is what really matters. Money is only the green stuff that we need to buy what we really want.

I agree, they don't. The yellow light has to be on for at least three seconds under 50 kph (31 mph), 3s to 4s between 50 kph and 70 kph (43 mph), and 4s-5s above 70. The Flemish region, where the vast majority of the red light cameras are, always uses the largest of these values. And 4 seconds is a long time in a car. With a 4 second yellow light, there really is no way to run a red light unless you were able to stop safely and chose not to. Impossible.

Why raises the question. If it's so profitable for the private contractor and is a big loss for the city, why don't cities in the US do what most other places do and get rid of the middleman? Especially when I see that the company referenced in the article actually touts "maximizing prosecutions" as a benefit of the system, when the only reason for red-light cameras would be improving safety. A well-designed system is one that results in as few prosecutions as possible. The ideal number of prosecutions is close to zero because that would mean the camera is doing its job of preventing people from doing dangerous things and that only the worst offenders are prosecuted. Here (European country), it's all done in-house by the police, with stringent legislation (minimum yellow time based on the speed limit for the road, safety margin) that ensures that only people who deliberately run the red light get caught. I've never been in a situation where I *had* to run the red light because the yellow phase lasts long enough for everyone to either be able to stop safely or to cross the stop line before the light turns red.

Note that I'm not against outsourcing if it's really more cost effective. But if it ends up wasting money, it's not a good idea.

But that's true for every traffic violation. The only way to make sure that the owner is the driver would be to stop every single vehicle that is seen breaking the law, which might very well be much more dangerous (high-speed chases don't always end so well and people sometimes react bizarrely when they feel threatened and/or are intoxicated).

I think it makes sense to say that the owner of the car is presumed to be the driver. It'd be too easy to claim that a friend happened to borrow your car but that, of course, they won't say they were the ones driving. The way is see it is this:
- You were driving the car: no problem if you got a ticket
- Your spouse was driving the car: then, figure it out amongst yourselves. I mean, they'll really let you get a fine and a bad driving record when they were driving? If so, you got bigger problems that a ticket.
- Your child was driving the car: see above.
- A friend was driving the car: just write down their name on the form. Or don't lend your car to friends you can't trust.

Then, perhaps it's the rule that you have to clear the intersection before the light turns red that needs to be changed. Just introduce a slight delay before the other lights go green (all-ways left) to allow people to turn left, problem solved. That's how virtually all lights work in European countries that I've visited. You stop in the intersection and you wait until there's an opening. No opening? You just wait for the red light and you exit the intersection before the light turns green in the other direction. You can't? Then you probably shouldn't have entered the intersection in the first place. You should have realized that there were already too many cars for all of them to clear the intersection in time and that it was ok to wait at the stop line for the next cycle. Plus, red-light cameras in these countries only capture people who cross the stop line on red, not people who are already in the intersection.

Of course, it doesn't mean that it can work in the US. But it reflects poorly on US governance that something that works pretty well in advanced democracies is impossible there. And that the main concern is corrupt local authorities taking advantage of drivers, which sounds more like what happens in a third-world country ("you broke this traffic law, please pay a 'fine' to me in cash or you'll be taken down to the station").

Have you encountered many 18-year-olds with such a cunning plan? I'm afraid that you're ascribing sinister designs to people just because they happen to disagree with you. It sounds a bit like the fundamentalists who think that they have to make students sign an über-detailed statement of faith, because we all know that atheists have nothing better to do than pretend to be Christians to ruin a seminary.

Perhaps some people come up with such schemes. But, then, once they get their PhD (assuming they weren't found out or gave up before), they find a job with a creationist organization and never produce real research anymore. They'll just be a nobody with a PhD, and there are many of those around. It only impresses the gullible who don't know that a PhD is not meant to be the end of the journey but the beginning.

Isn't it much more likely that young people from a religious background might develop an interest in science, despite the greatly warped education that they might have received? In college, they learn about real evolutionary biology for the first time but, unwilling to let go of the bad ideas that they still have, they begin to compartmentalize their thinking. As you say, they'll write the right things on the exam but they'll still be conflicted about it. Fortunately, soon enough, they're able to specialize in a sub-field where the cognitive dissonance is not as great, and they might even be competent researchers.

Most of the these people will never publish a creationist book or be involved in the creationist movement. I'm sure there are more creationists in research labs than we think. They've just learned not to talk about it (not this one apparently).

But that's exactly why we let courts handle such matters. It's impossible to have standards that deal with every possible situation and draw a clear line in the sand between innocuous lunch time conversation (so, what do you think about proposition whatever) and inappropriate behaviors. So, if someone thinks that their dismissal was unfair, they're free to challenge it. Then an unbiased third-party can decide if their conduct warranted dismissal or not.

The key here is that, while it's true that employees have the right to freedom of opinion, especially if they're employed by the government, employers should also have the right to dismiss them if their behavior in the workplace is a source of problem that can affect the smooth operation of the company/department. For instance, it would be a problem if someone's aggressive proselytizing made it difficult for other employees to work with them. This should of course apply equally to all worldviews: it's just as unacceptable for an atheist to constantly bother religious people on the job. This is not what they're getting paid for.

Now, I also think that those who say "serve him well" have a point. It's unfortunate that Christians in the US are often the first to complain about discrimination, yet are completely silent when they are on the other side of it all. There have been over the past decade many cases of professors at Christian universities and seminaries being dismissed, against the advice of other faculty, because they endorsed evolution. And rank-and-file evangelicals find it perfectly normal, when they're not actively trying to get people fired. Because these institutions are religious institutions and the 1st amendment protects them, they're free to do so. But how is not hypocritical to then complain when something similar happens to you?

Never doubt the ability that people have to compartmentalize their thinking. You can actually have a lot of technical skills, and even a lot of science knowledge, yet hold fairly bizarre views that are directly contradicted by the evidence that you know. It's kinda hard to do if you actually have to use the principles that directly contradict your beliefs (i.e., you usually won't find young-earth creationists doing research in evolutionary biology), but most scientific fields are broad enough that you can easily specialize in something that won't threaten your bizarre beliefs.

You obviously didn't get the memo that a woman's sexuality is something to be controlled by men? That she has to go from being under the authority of her father, to being under the authority of her husband, who will each in turn be in charge of her sexuality?

If you want to be shocked, read up on "purity balls", where fathers pledge that they will be "the authority and protector" of their daughter's virginity, and daughters "pledge their purity" to their father. Are they common? No. But the very fact that they can exist in 21st century America is shocking. And the same noxious ideology is also peddled in diluted forms in the culture. Haven't you noticed that, in more conservative art forms (think: country music, conservative "family values" movies, etc.), marriage is always about "asking for her hand" (sub-text: her father has control over her sexuality and her person, and must relinquish it for it to be a "good" wedding)? What about "giving away the bridge" (who, apparently, is not autonomous enough to give herself away)? Patriarchy is alive and well in America.

Facebook is broken and should add a setting that don't let people add you to groups without your consent. I'm a coder and I didn't know that it was possible, so it's a good bet that the average user is even more clueless.

However, in this case, Facebook seems to have acted only as a catalyst. Living a double life is hard, Facebook or no Facebook. If you want to live as an openly gay person in Austin, to the extent that you are singing in a lesbian choir, it's gonna be very, very hard to make sure that no-one hears about it Newton, NC. All it takes is someone posting a video on Youtube and someone else recognizing you, or someone who enjoyed your performance writing about you on their blog and your family googling your name. What makes me think that their secret would have been revealed sooner or later is that, unless their families already suspected something, they wouldn't have reacted the way they did. If someone added me to, say, a radical Communist or fundie Muslim group, I wouldn't get a worried call from my family asking me if I've gone radical. They'd just think that someone messed up or that there must be a good reason. Likewise, being included in a 'queer' themed group shouldn't make your family leave bigoted messages on your voice-mail unless they're already suspecting something. For all we know, you could have a gay friend who sings in that choir whom you're trying to convince of the truth of Christianity. But, no, they immediately assume that you must be gay yourself? The man in the story had already told his mother that he was gay. How long would it have taken for his father to find out?

Bottom line: if your dad is a jerk and a bigot, and you happen to be gay, you're in trouble Facebook or not.

But looking at countries that do use proportional representation, we don't really witness such things happening. There are several reasons for this:

1) Your example still assumes that, as in a first-past-the-post system, there are two main parties organized along a left-right axis, and that the vote would be almost evenly split between these two parties. However, looking at what happens in actual countries, we see that there is much more diversity in terms of political parties and ideology. It's first-past-the-post that gives rise to the two-party system, not the fact that, say, paleo-conservatives and free-marketers necessarily have to form one party, and environmentalists and auto workers have to form another one. Countries in Europe that use proportional representation typically have many parties: classical liberal parties, social-democratic parties, green parties, more radical left-wing parties, conservative parties, religious (usually Christian-Democratic) parties, etc.

2) There are thresholds that ensure that crazy people do not get seats. Even a 5% threshold does the trick quite well.

3) There are informal norms that say that, when truly crazy people do get seats, the other parties should not enter into a coalition with them ("cordon sanitaire"). Any party that violates these norms would be punished by voters at the next election.

4) Countries with proportional representation seem to have less partisan politics. Yes, there are still tensions between political parties. But bipartisanship is much more common. At the local level especially, it's not uncommon for social-democratic (nominally socialist) and classical liberal parties to enter into a coalition.