"And it came into Hooch's mind that when both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth." -Orson Scott Card, Red Prophet

Very nice reference. Dan is amazing.

In the words of Bill Hicks, "you're not a human until you're in my phone book."

That's a sucker's bet. These people are PROFESSIONALS. They'll go with the tried-and-true method and round up some scapegoats, of course.

You really are a dense, humorless, asshole, aren't you? I think it's safe to say that most people think life is sacred and important. The fact that lives were in peril wasn't the funny part... the funny part was situational. For instance, if you were severely beaten by a gang of feral comedians, that would (at first blush) be funny. Yes, we are all terribly sad that you had 4 ribs broken and your jaw wired shut--that's not the funny part. It's a fucking riot that a gang of comedians was responsible for randomly beating the shit out of a humorless stick in the mud, though. It would be less funny if you were beaten by accountants.

High pressure water has been used to disperse crowds and break up riots for longer than I've been alive. It's very effective and relatively safe, but here in America we've been reluctant to use it because of it's ties to the race riots of the 1960s. So we shun a cheap, effective, and easy to deploy system of crowd control because nobody wants to be seen as a ruthless dictator as they clamp down on the masses, and yet we pursue other less-well-tested methods of doing the exact same thing.

Does no one else see the irony?

In all seriousness, I think the really far out there geeks (not your average, run of the mill slashdotter, but maybe close!) would make EXCELLENT space travelers. The only real downside is that after years of increasingly disturbing porn, a COMPLETE lack of social interaction (and this is coming from someone who once thought "dressing up" was putting on pants so the drive-through people won't freak out), and the subsequent lack of feedback about their behavior and thoughts, they'll leave a very rough impression on the first person they run into afterward. Alien or cosmonaut.

"Greetings people of earth! We have met with your represenative and found him wholly agreeable with our culture! Where's the women at, bitches?"

Oh, shi---

Just as an aside: Condoms don't necessarily prevent exposure to HPV. They reduce the chances, but obviously not all that much (as you said, HPV is a raging epidemic, with something like 90% of sexually active women getting some strain or other eventually). It can be transferred by contact with a lot of surface area that condoms don't cover at all (like the scrotum), and as such doesn't even require actual intercourse to transmit from person to person.

Weapons and training are "VERY expensive?" How about the cost of stolen cargo, is that cheap? The ransom paid for kidnapped crewmembers, how cheap is that?

This whole "anti-gun" argument seems to revolve around the fact that it's hard to dock a merchant ship in international ports if it's armed. It's a bullshit argument. Either change the laws (and any nation that doesn't want to cooperate can find out how nice not having any commerce is), or.... Put the anti-pirate people on a smaller craft that does not enter sovereign waters. Easy solution. Contractors can be hired to escort your ships through danger zones armed to the fucking teeth. Problem solved.

Dr. Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal!
Dr. Peter Venkman: That's bad. Okay. All right, important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

I think I sort of see where you're going, but you're not quite there. For most instruments, the score is only valid when compared to others of the same age / grade. Being a 40 year old with an IQ of 120 is very different than being a 6 year old with an IQ of 120, since they're being compared against two different cohorts.

Also noteworthy is that fluid intelligence (if you're into CHC theory) declines steadily as you move out of your 20s, while crystallized intelligence, or things like your general knowledge base, continues to increase as you experience more of the world. So yeah, on average a 45 year old probably can't solve as many algebra problems in 2 minutes as the average 18 year old, or be able to find Waldo in the images nearly as quickly. But the average 45 year old is going to know much more about the world and will do much better on those knowledge heavy parts of the instrument.

That is a common argument... but just because a test is not "culture free" doesn't mean it's worthless. If we measure the IQ of the son of an immigrant Kalahari bushman and it's, say, 79, that is an important measure despite being "ethnocentric" (and quite frankly not everything that is specific to one culture is bad). It is still useful information when you want to know things like how well the boy will do in an American school system.

Does it mean he's stupid? Not at all... A skill set valued in the desert (let's say, fast reaction time and a concrete approach to problem solving) is simply undervalued in the school system here. Should we redefine the tests to suit his cultural background, where in all likelihood he will score higher, just to assuage whatever bad feelings we have? I think that would be pointless--whereas knowing that the child is NOT using those skills that we value in our society, those skills that tend to go along with good grades and a good job, is a useful thing indeed.

So yeah, if the ultimate goal of IQ tests is to put value judgments on people you're absolutely right. It is not fair to label the kid. But if the goal is to devise teaching interventions to help him succeed in our schools and in our culture it is kind of nice to be able to see where he is deviating from the norm.

It's even more complicated than what you've described. Most modern intelligence tests (WJ-III Cog, WAIS, SB) incorporate WIS (as you've described it, Gc / knowledge) as a component of intelligence. And in actuality that kind of general knowledge has stronger links to general intelligence than just about any other measure on those tests. What it boils down to is that how much you know about the world is a pretty good indicator of intelligence, and by extension, is a pretty good indicator of your _ability_ to thrive.

So yes, IQ is an aggregate measure of lots of diverse qualities, but WIS is definitely one of them. And it happens to be one of the best.

Personally I always liked Heinlein's take on what a man should be able to do... It's very similar to Wechsler's definition of intelligence, only described in example behaviors:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Heinlein, Time Enough For Love