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Comment Re:What kind of a "study" is this? (Score 1) 312

Using every tool in the tool box seems objectively better than only using one tool in the tool box.

If someone wrote a C++ or Java program only using "if then" statements with no objects and ignored objects, case statements, while statements, for loops with conditional exits, etc., I would judge their code to be worse and their mastery of the language to be lower on an objective basis.

If someone writes an adventure with a tool kit that has 7 tools and they only use the one tool over and over, I objectively judge their mastery to be lower. I agree that whether the adventure they create is fun or not is subjective.

A wider use of tools is more likely to result in a better scenario however. I say that from experience writing adventure scenarios for decades.

Comment Re:What kind of a "study" is this? (Score 1) 312

I can't see how you come to the conclusion that a richer experience would be a more boring game. Your statement here seems biased to me. You might want to reconsider it.

I agree with your comments on the article. Someone posted just above here that the actual results were more what I would have expected to see from past experience.

* Worst was a boy.
* Average of girls was better than the average of boys.
* Best was a boy.

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They also posted the actual triggers above too.

When the player arrives in area
When someone says a line
When someone gets and item
When someone is killed
When something walks into trigger
When something walks out of trigger
Every six seconds

I think several of them would make for a more interesting game. In the scenarios I write, I use...

When a player is in an area, when someone gets an item, when someone is killed, when someone walks into a trigger, When someone walks out of a trigger, and every X seconds. My X varies from 8 seconds to 90 seconds. I don't use "when someone says a line" because minecraft isn't amenable to that or I haven't learned how to do that yet if there is a way.

Comment Re:What kind of a "study" is this? (Score 1) 312

What I meant was... why did 100% of the girls do better than 100% of the boys?

I would have expected overlap between the two populations.

In similar studies, the average of the females was higher than the average of the males but the extremes of the males were lower and higher than the extremes of the females.

Comment Re:What kind of a "study" is this? (Score 3, Informative) 312

I'm guessing they had things like...

Trigger
Character says "Xxxxx".
Character attacks.
Character is damaged.
Character places objects on table.
Character gives objects to NPC.
Character is hungry.
Character is wielding X when close to a spot.

For some reason, the boys only used the 1st trigger and the result was a stereotypical "prompt/respond" roleplaying game.

Using the other triggers would provide a less stereotypical experience.

Not sure why all the girls did well and all the boys did badly. That seems off.

Perhaps there was a particular girl who "got it" and showed the other girls how to use the other triggers or shared code and made it easier for them to figure it out. Perhaps the teacher prompted the girls in some way.

In any case, the girls did better in this case-- perhaps some will turn out to be major names and the experience has to bolster their confidence.

Comment Interesting. Could be several causes (Score 1) 312

Interesting result.

It will be interesting to see if any of the girls in the class go on to be the next Caitlin Colgrove, Adele Goldberg or Barbara Liskov.

However, I'd expect more of a bell curve in both genders with the average for girls being better than the average for boys. If the girls uniformly did better and the boys uniformly did worse, that sounds strange.

Comment Re:Did at least one black vote not to indict? (Score 1) 1128

Never admit to knowing what jury nullification is.

The prosecutor will ask. It's not really a fair question for them to ask so you should ignore the question. Any honest answer means you lose your right to jury nullification as a counterbalance for unjust/unfair laws.

Likewise, if you are actually on a jury and decide to use jury nullfication...
Do not tell any other jury about it.
Do not say you have decided on nullification. Simply say based on the facts, you have reasonable doubt. Stick with it until the judge ends the case due to a hung jury.

Comment Re:Did at least one black vote not to indict? (Score 1) 1128

Different people with different personal experiences can look at the same facts and come to different conclusions.*

If you are part of a group who regularly sees and reads about the police beating and killing other members of your group including 12 year old children (and a 7 year old girl was shot in the head and killed by police in a raid on an incorrect address in the last couple months) then you are going to WEIGHT facts regarding the GOOD INTENT of the police officer differently.

Also, our entire system is based the trust of the governed. Why the hell should blacks trust our system when they are under represented and when black st louis police officers say in interviews that st louis police are racist?

Why should they trust police when the police pick up a mixed group of young black and white children and then arrest the black children while calling the parents of the white girl to pick her up tell the black children that "trash goes in the back." (again recently within the last few months).

---
*(also consider discussion be tween religious and irreligious people who view the same facts and come to wildly different conclusions).

Comment Re:Discovery nightmare (Score 1) 79

I think this is a new level. Considering they can see pre-drafts, edits, etc. which previously were lost and all you saw was what was sent or saved.

It may be suitable for banks, but it is going to raise the cost of business for everyone.
It's probably overkill for many businesses AND will simply drive people who have ill intent to other communications methods.

Comment Re:Did at least one black vote not to indict? (Score 1) 1128

You said: "I am plenty white, and the assertion that I am unable to listen to evidence and come to an impartial decision is ridiculous."

That's not the point man. and it's not what I wrote.

If all blacks on the jury voted to indict, then the white votes against indictment will have no credibility with the population. Especially if ALL of them voted against indictment.

Use your head, man.

Comment Did at least one black vote not to indict? (Score 2) 1128

Because otherwise, I don't think the answer of a 67% white grand jury is acceptable to a town that is 67% black and patrolled by a police force that's about 94% white and which hires people who are from other police departments which were shut down because they were too racist.

If at least one black voted not to indict then it gives the process some legitimacy.
If all three voted not to indict then the answer will probably be accepted eventually.

Comment Re:Standing (Score 1, Interesting) 203

If you are wealthy and conservative, it's just to be expected as it is in your own self interest.

If you are poor and conservative, what the hell are you thinking? Why are you cutting your own throat so a few wealthy people can have lower taxes, lower estate taxes, and ship your jobs overseas if not ask you to build a stage so they can climb up on it and fire you?

Comment Re:Owning stock (Score 1) 203

Stock prices are ultimately related to related earnings than demand.

If a move like this suppresses stock prices such that the stock price vs earnings returns a predictably higher annual rate of return, then others will buy the stock until it returns to an the stock price vs earnings returns to an average annual rate of return.

Comment Japanese can't digest seaweed without microbes (Score 1) 297

So this just makes sense.

You can get various illnesses that will devastate your microbes but not really affect you much. The only thing you can do is to repopulate using some kind of active culture.

Yogart has some strains but not all that many. You can get a couple dozen from health food store culture pills. They sell them in bottles but unless you have an ongoing problem, one will do.

Some autistic children appear to respond favorably to ongoing doses of probiotics.

I think I read some people are being treated successfully with fecal mater pills. Kinda disgusting but sort of like the parasitic worm treatment which permanently fixes people's stomach problems (sterile worms).

Comment Re:Well, let's criminalize Du Pont Nylon now. (Score 1) 588

In 1937, Hearst (who owned a chain of newspapers AND a company that made wood based paper) felt marijuana was a threat. He ran a series of "Yellow Journalism" articles demonizing marijuana as the "killer weed" associated with mexicans and backed laws to ensure that hemp was made illegal. There are many credible books on this subject. It's well known.

Until recently, the US had a huge portion of the entire world market and if you wanted to trade with them, you couldn't risk hemp products.

Given a high income for 80 years and 80 years of research, paper products have had many improvements and a lot of paper mills are paid off and have resultant low costs.

Given a small market and no economies of scale, hemp paper is currently ridiculously expensive. However, hemp fabric is comparably priced to cotton fabric so as soon as you had a large hemp paper plant, it's reasonable it would have similar cost to wood pulp paper.

As far as hemp vs cotton-- today's cotton isn't equal to even 20 year's ago cotton. It is very fragile compared to what used to be sold as cotton.

Don't get me wrong tho. I agree with your underlying point that some hemp supporters may exaggerate it's qualities.

But it's a pretty good product if we can remove the legal and image burdens.

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