"Students are demanding housing that graduates couldn't even afford in the past." My university has three students living in rooms that were built for one. This is true for most of the state college system (which also happens to be one of the best in the nation and the world). But let's not let facts get in the way of a good "cardboard box in the middle of the road" rant.

I got asked in January of 2010 if I'd be willing to move from Los Angeles to a tiny rural town on the East Coast where the home office was being transferred to. I said no and started looking for a new job (the new CIO was a pompous jerk and someone I wanted nothing to do with; luckily he was back east, so I rarely encountered him). My boss knew about it; I trained a few people to take over my systems, but she was my primary backup (I was the DBA among other things; she had been at one point).

Came to work the week I was expecting the formal offer from my current job. CIO from the east coast was in town; they laid off my boss on Tuesday, then approached me on Wednesday and said, "We'll be relying on you more for the next several months." I was tempted to just keep quiet, but I decided to be honest and said, "No, you won't. I'm putting in my notice on Friday."

Best part, this was the first week of December, and I had the last two weeks off as vacation: my formal last day was 1/2, with my new job officially starting 1/3. One of the systems I managed was the HR system, and they knew about the whole thing and were actually really supportive (I'm still friends with a couple of them).

So, CIO got 1 week of cross training from me and that was that. I ended up doing some consulting for HR, but didn't lift a finger for the CIO. If he'd bothered talking to anyone, he'd have known I was leaving and could have changed his plans.

Actually, the research article itself covers this. From the abstract:

"The primary outcomes were all-cause mortality and mortality due to cardiovascular disease (CVD). Prevalent disease was also compared among the chronotype groups. Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, sleep duration, socioeconomic status and comorbidities. Greater eveningness, particularly being a definite evening type, was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of all comorbidities." [Emphasis mine]

Association is of course not causation, and the abstract doesn't imply causation at all beyond the obvious and already-stated: "Mortality risk in evening types may be due to behavioural, psychological, and physiological risk factors, many of which may be attributable to chronic misalignment between internal physiological timing and externally imposed timing of work and social activities. These findings suggest the need for researching possible interventions aimed at either modifying circadian rhythms in individuals or at allowing evening types greater working hour flexibility."

Here's a start; the lit review at the beginning is rather thorough.

Insufficient Sleep in Adolescents and Young Adults: An Update on Causes and Consequences

The association of early adolescent development/pubertal onset and a more evening-type circadian phase preference (ie, preferred timing of sleep and wake as well as daytime activities) has been documented since the 1990s.36 The behavioral result of this biological process is most clear in the timing of sleep, particularly for weekends. For example, Roenneberg et al37 measured the midpoint of weekend sleep in European schoolchildren and revealed a marked linear delay of 2 (girls) to 3 (boys) hours across the second decade, roughly 12 to 18 minutes later with each year of age. The reversal of this delayed weekend sleep pattern may be a “biological marker for the end of adolescence.”

Recent data have indicated that another process involved in regulating sleep timing seems to be altered to favor late nights across adolescent development. This process, called sleep–wake homeostasis, can be thought of as the system that accounts for greater pressure to sleep as one stays awake longer. Data collected with 2 different paradigms to estimate the rate of buildup of sleep pressure in prepubertal versus postpubertal adolescents indicate that more mature adolescents accumulate this sleep pressure at a slower rate.38,39

Similar to the other reply. I'm a STEM major. For many of my classes at the local CC (I'm transferring this fall), there was one slot any given semester, and often the same slot every semester. In my case, this is a complication more because I also work full time; I've been lucky enough to juggle my hours at work (I'm salaried), but others might not be. This kind of thing is especially true for low-enrollment-but-necessary classes with labs (like modern physics or more advanced engineering classes). I mean, I'm definitely the kind of person who prefers to sleep in until 9-10, but I've been getting up between 6 and 7 for work for 20 years now. I can do it, but I'm not going to pretend my performance in the early morning is the same as what it is by noon or in the afternoon.

People who are depressed or sad often seek out others for support or just commiseration. That doesn't mean that being on social media is bad or making them depressed but that, perhaps, they're on social media because they're depressed or sad already.

As soon as I read the post, I assumed this was what was happening. Especially for something larger, the shipping will likely be more than $10, so signing up for Prime to get, say, a lawn mower or something big delivered (especially around the holidays) and then cancelling again would be a fiscally smart way to (ab)use the system.

There's an important difference between screening for a condition and testing for it.

Screening tools like the PHQ-9 are a great way to narrow down the list of people who may be depressed or are at risk for depression, but they don't say definitively whether or not someone is actually clinically depressed. That takes a far more detailed process, usually conducted by a psychologist or psychiatrist. The point is to screen out those who are not at all likely to have the given condition and focus on those who are more likely to have it. In this case, many organizations (Kaiser does this when I visit my psych for my ADHD meds refill) administer a screening tool like the PHQ9 to prospectively identify patients who might be depressed and get them to resources that can help.

Think of it as a Tier-1 tech support checklist - it's not likely to tell you what's actually wrong, but it can narrow things down a bit to determine whether or not you really need to talk to Tier-2.

As an example: during the outbreak a few years ago, many places including airports screened for Ebola using a simply checklist (have you traveled to the outbreak regions recently, do you have a fever, etc.). Anyone who was identified as at-risk of actually having Ebola then underwent diagnostic testing for the disease; most didn't actually have it, of course, and some people who were screened did have it but were asymptomatic at the time and thus were missed by the screening process (the couple of individuals who ended up infected in the US, for example). Screening isn't perfect, but it's about probabilities; diagnostic testing is far, far more accurate but also more intensive (both personally and in terms of resources).

An example of bad screening is the blood donation restriction for Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). In reality, the screening should be related to most recent HIV test, most recent unprotected sex or intravenous drug use, and any other specific at-risk behavior (regardless of sexual orientation). A gay man in a multi-year monogamous relationship is still actively having sex with men but poses far less an HIV risk than a straight woman who has sex with multiple partners in a year.

(Disclosure: I am the honest broker for a database of patient responses to screening and satisfaction questionnaires, including the PHQ-9.)
(Second disclosure: I'm also annoyed with the FDA, in case you couldn't tell.)

I would venture that a big percentage of WF clientele shop there *because* of its high-price reputation. There are studies showing that people feel like they're getting a better quality product when they pay more for something, and that is almost certainly a big part of why people shop at WF. I suspect that trying to compete with Walmart is going to destroy the chain.

I'm sorry, I assumed anyone discussing gender and pay would be informed on the relevant science. Two supporting links from the last two years since you don't seem to be up on the conversation; you can find dozens if not hundreds on the same subject.
Constrained by Emotion: Women, Leadership, and Expressing Emotion in the Workplace
"For instance, women incur social and economic penalties for expressing masculine-typed emotions because they violate proscriptions against dominance for women. At the same time, when women express female-typed emotions, they are judged as overly emotional and lacking emotional control, which ultimately undermines women’s competence and professional legitimacy."

The Price Women Leaders Pay for Assertiveness—and How to Minimize It
"To test this popular view, my colleague Larissa Tiedens, of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and I recently synthesized 71 studies testing reactions to people who behave assertively. We found that women, on average, were disparaged more than men for identical assertive behaviors. Women were particularly penalized for direct, explicit forms of assertiveness, such as negotiating for a higher salary or asking a neighbor to turn down the music. Dominance that took a verbal form seemed especially tricky for women, compared with men making identical requests."

In order to determine that there's no pay gap, the only relevant information is the current pay controlled for other factors. I will almost guarantee that a pay gap exists, although it could be very small. This is beyond the "life decisions" canard that a lot of people like to play. If men are more likely to be offered internships, and I offer increased pay for internship experience, then I'm introducing a pay gay based on sex - indirectly, certainly, but the result is still the same. Given the massive amount of cultural and sociopolitical discrimination that have been present historically, it's extremely unlikely that the criteria Google chooses are entirely free of sex bias.

In a more practical and yet simple example, Google claims to account for performance ratings in their salary calculation. Yet women are more often given lower performance ratings for the same behavior in competitive environments; for example, men who are assertive are praised, whereas women who are assertive are penalized. Therefore, unless we can show that performance ratings themselves don't have a sex bias, we can't assume that any system that includes performance rating as a criteria doesn't have a sex bias. I won't even get into the ambiguity of "other variables".

Google may very well be right and their system eliminates gender bias, but simply saying it doesn't prove it.

Like others have said, the issue is complicated. However, I think in balance that this action at the state level is bad. In many areas, the primary issues with AirBNB are twofold: it bypasses hospitality regulation when it is in fact part of the hospitality industry, and it disrupts the residential rental market in the area. Both of these are legitimate concerns for any area, though for different populations. For the first, it's a similar issues as with Uber and Lyft: regardless of what libertarians and others like to claim, regulations on insurance and such such for professional organizations exist largely to protect consumers as well as companies. Someone renting a room or a property through AirBNB almost certainly doesn't have the necessary insurance to protect a renter in the event of an incident nor to protect themselves in the case of a bad tenant. Further, without any kind of health or safety inspection, the quality and safety of the rentals are extremely suspect; yes, some of that is handled by word-of-mouth and ratings, but the average person doesn't know the finer points on pool treatment and the like. The latter is a bigger issue in some places than in others, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid concern. San Francisco, for example, is notorious for its high housing costs, and AirBNB is just making it worse by taking a percentage (however small) of potential properties off the rental market. While other areas of California aren't as bad, many still have a similar housing crunch. These properties are not zoned for short-term rental and were granted development permits with the explicit intent of providing long-term housing; AirBNB essentially negates that permit process. Since permits are all handled at the local municipal level, it seems counter-intuitive to have the state step in and essentially tell municipalities what they can or cannot permit. I cannot say if the same issues exist in Indiana, but the principle isn't any different. While the state has a vested interest in keeping regulatory environments similar for the entire state, it's hard to argue that the municipalities are doing anything to hinder AirBNB *as it was meant to be used by its creators*; instead, the state is supporting behavior that AirBNB itself as well as the municipalities are against. That makes it rather hard to justify.

/EOM

The highest PM2.5 in Los Angeles is estimated (it wasn't measured back then) to have been about 100 ppm (from the LA times last year: http://www.latimes.com/world/a...). In recent times, the max was 79, and the daily average is 18 or so. That puts Beijing at 2.5x the worst LA has ever seen and about 15x worse than LA on any given day.

... else what's a heaven for? --Robert Browning