No, I got it exactly right. The aggregate data "shows a clear but misleading pattern of bias against female applicants." That's the "let's see if the percentages match the general population and claim discrimination if they don't match, ignoring all possible reasons why." It wasn't until someone considered the specific instances that they decided "The bias in the aggregated data stems not from any pattern of discrimination on the part of admissions committees". That's looking at the actual "agency X" and figuring out that there are plenty of opportunities for girls to play sports but they don't want to, and "agency X" isn't actually violating Title 9 by failing to provide the opportunities.

Nonsense. If you choose to have a child, you should accept the responsibility to raise it. That include feeding, clothing, housing, and nurturing. If you can't afford any of that, don't have a child.

There is a significant difference between what is being discussed here, which is taxpayer funded child support for anyone who wants to go back to work, and welfare. By the way, this legislation was signed by Bill Clinton.

People who can afford to pay for child care should do so, and if they allow their children to run amok in the streets they should be charged with child abandonment or endangerment. It is not everyone else's responsibility to pay for raising your children.

And I'd rather have them in parent-funded programs, or in the home where the parents can monitor them personally and maybe create some emotional bonding that would keep them from becoming sociopaths.

Yes, let's put all children in jail. That's exactly what I've been suggesting. You win.

"We Americans" don't have a system for maternity leave. If you look carefully in our Constitution, you won't find one of the powers of government to be "give every woman who wants to have a baby paid time off". It isn't a disease that needs mandatory time off or sick leave. In other words, the government has no business deciding.

I'm sure it has been. Does your government pay you for taking time off for everything that is "awesome"? Can you get them to pay for a trip to Disneyland, for example?

Hardly.

Well, the woman is pregnant all nine months. Does your government manage to get that job swapped off to the husband so he needs time off? Wouldn't that be awesome, a system like you ask about, where I can get my wife pregnant, take five months off with pay, and then she gets the next four to deal with being pregnant. Wham, bam, thank you Ma'am I'm going to Orlando for five months!

But seriously, some companies do give paid paternity leave, so your question is moot.

How magnanimous of you. I'm sure your wife thinks you are the salt of the earth. She deserves more than 50% of the maternity leave time for herself. You'll be happy with 49%.

You're talking about paid leave to start with, and now it's unpaid. The FMLA means our employers cannot deny us 3 months of unpaid leave for maternity or paternity. So, this question is also moot.

And you think Norway has a good system? You have to work 50+ years over there? Our standard retirement age is around 62 to 65 or so. We don't really enter the workforce, for the most part, until long after 12. We'd call them sweatshops, I think.

Exactly what are the benefits to your employer during your 40th through 50th years of employment from your closer connection to your children? 30-40? 20-30?

Yeah, the pain.

The young folks don't have to pay into a system that they aren't going to get anything back from. What a pain for them. Less taxes for the rest of their lives.

The old folks don't get anything back from a system they've already paid into for all their lives and depend on to stay alive now.

I think the "pain" you expect us all to share is a bit different for some of us compared to others.

You're wrong. The social security act was passed in 1935 and taxes started being collected in 1937. The "boomers" weren't born until WWII -- after 1945 or so. This promise was made to us by FDR and his New Deal democrats, not the 'boomers'.

Huh? This is nonsense. What does it mean? What makes you think I'm going to be making $129,000 a year after I retire? That's just ridiculous.

Not if you cut them off because they managed to save a little too much of what they earned and in your mind don't deserve to get anything back from a system they paid into all their lives.

Here's a deal for you: give me back all the money I put into the system. Pay me back. I'll worry about myself. But don't you dare promise me that you'll take care of me in the future if I give you money I worked to earn today and then renege on the deal. That's patently dishonest.

You're pulling in so much irrelevant stuff that talking to you makes no sense. I bet James Gandolfino expected to pay into the system for a few more years, too. So what?

Those upper class British families were not crying for "better child care". Better child care is available for those who can pay for it. The complaint about needing "better child care" includes an implicit "that I don't have to pay a lot, if anything, for", and that means "taxpayer funded." Or, when someone is corporation bashing, the company needs to provide it free, which means the cost is passed on to the shareholders. In both cases, "other people paying to raise my children so I don't have to."

No, sounds like the now typical politically correct use of simple statistics to prove whatever you want. If "agency X" doesn't have equal numbers of male and female Y, then agency X is discriminating against women. It doesn't matter why the numbers aren't the same. (And you can include cases when the numbers of men and women are a ratio dependent upon the percentages in the total.)

This is a typical Title 9 analysis. If School A has 40% female attendance, then if athletics doesn't have 40% participation by women the school is in violation of Title 9. It doesn't matter if 40% of the women don't want to participate, or if more than 60% of the men want to, if the numbers don't match the school is doing something wrong. (E.g., a school can have 100 women's sports, but if they have a very good men's football program and lots of boys want to play on the team, the school is at fault.)

So, in your example, the fact that the engineering departments didn't have X% of women applying was proof that the departments were discriminating, even if they accepted every woman that applies. No paradox here, just simple misapplication of statistics.

Latch-key kids are kids who don't have after-school child care and thus use their "latch keys" to get into the house where no parent is home.

Apparently, a society of children raised by professional child raisers, kind of like 10 hour a day school from age 1 through 18, is the better society the OP envisions. Funded, of course, by the taxpayer. Who needs parental or emotional attachments when the government is ready, willing and able to provide for all needs?

So then you're a proponent of government taking money away from people under false pretenses. As in, "we'll take X percent of your income away from you today to provide for you when you get old. Oops, now you're old, we aren't going to provide for you after all. But we WILL give out free lunches to every child no matter how much money their parents make during the summer when school isn't in session. Aren't you glad you paid all those taxes and trusted us?"

If a private company did that, they'd be guilty of fraud and behaving unethically. When government does it, its the younger people deciding they don't want to honor the promises made to their parents.

Because everyone knows that when we were actually spending at 1990s levels (in 1990) there was no income tax.

No, they don't. That's why there is an IR filter you can remove in front of them. It's buried in the camera itself in most cases, but many of the cameras I've used (machine vision/scientific, in particular) have the IR filter easily accessible and removable. And many of the color cameras I've used outdoors now have very odd colors because the UV has deteriorated the sensor's color filters for the R, G, and B.

Why make two kinds of sensors when you can make one and then put a $0.50 filter in front depending on the use?

Not if the filter is built into the sensor, it isn't. That's why they don't build them into the sensor. If it's easy to remove the filters in the sensor, I challenge you to remove the Bayer filters from a color sensor and turn the camera into true monochrome.

But you're right, this stuff isn't new simply because it is so easy to take the filters out of the camera. I've had mono cameras I've had to put IR filters in because the vendor didn't (but does for the same model in color because without it the colors are off.) I've got one on my desk now that has no IR filters but does have an IR pass, and the images are very, well, they look funny if you don't know what is happening.

It leads to a government of the people ignoring the will of the people as well as the limitations imposed in it's creation that were primarily in place to protect the people from this kind of intrusion.

In other words, you could be completely free of any illegal or wrong doing and still not want the government to put microphones or cameras in your home or some location considered free from their influence and control. The government needs to either have permission granted to them or have a reasonable and articulate suspicion that those being investigated have, are in the process of, or about to commit a crime. Unfortunately, the government seems to be going from "this person is a suspected criminal, we need more evidence" to everyone might break a law so we need to be able to know everything possible in case we want to go after them.

Not only is that reprehensible- it is exactly that the protections in the US constitution are supposed to prevent the government from becoming. The English troops and government used to enter wherever they saw fit and turn the place upside down attempting to find evidence of wrong doing without even the slightest bit of accusation and they often took innocuous things out of context making innocent people subject to punishment. It did not all the sudden become a good idea for that to happen back then nor did it happen now.

Sigh.. Reagan raised, not cut capitol gains.

The downsizing has to do with the inefficiencies inherent with unions- one of the key factors in why GM needed bankruptcy and a government bailout.

The venture capitalist dismantling businesses was because the businesses were worth more closed and liquidated then open and producing. This was a product of poor management, high regional labor costs (unions) compared to globalized labor costs, and a high cost of business from regulation and market forces. It had little to do with capitol gains outside of changing the amount needed for profit. The change in the amounts needed for profit was minute compared to the other costs. People were liquidating businesses long before the capitol gains rate changed under Clinton. The real enemy you saw was globalization of the market place.

The vast majority of people experienced famine and/or pestilence at some point before the beginning of the last century, generally several times during their life.

And yet the vast majority survived. I never said there wasn't hardships, I said they got by.

The rest of what you say exists only in your mind. Discounting suicides, life expectancy increased during the great depression.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290.full

BTW, the great depression was largely caused by government interference within the free market (price controls and trade wars with Europe). I know that someone you find authoritative like your grandma might have told you different, but pick up a history book and get your information from a real source.