How a cooling vest invented by a furry made it's way into the US military (2019)
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
From what I remember most traditional body cooling gel based vests have the problem of causing blood capillaries in the skin to close down. That stops the body from transporting warm blood from the core to the surface where sweat is used to cool it.
To put it another way, they are too cold to really help with cooling.
They idea behind the vacuum glove was that there are certain areas of the body with more capillaries and if you can keep blood flowing to them by not going too cold (say constant 12C) and by using a mild vacuum to draw blood to them you have a much better way to cool the body.
I'm guessing that's much harder to work with than a simple vest holding gel packs. Seems a shame though that we don't have anything more effective right now.
My own personal usecase would be better cooling than "loads of fans" when riding indoors on Zwift. The cooling vests I've tried so far weirdly just make you feel cold and hot at the same time.
1. https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-cooling-glove-research-...
"diversity is our strength", does have some validity.
It gives us the most optimal way to find new ways of solving/improving certain aspects of a problem/product because said problem/product is put in a new unique environment to be tested.
After all it's not like a differing genders or skin colours leads to any diversity in experience . . .
Opinion or fact?
The actual problem is sacrificing meritocracy and excellence in order to satisfy checklist "diversity".
There's probably a balance between meritocracy(because hiring for these parameters) and hiring based on skill no matter where they're from.
The world is chaotic, messy and unfair. Meritocracy is a mirage. We are not sacrificing anything by having non homomorphous workforces. Every study on it shows increased economic output, it really is a no brainer
This is something meritless people say. For those of us who have been working hard our entire lives to be REALLY good at something, we know that merit absolutely makes a huge difference to the value we bring to our jobs, and that value is usually recognised.
This isn't to say that society is based entirely on merit. Far from it - though some more than others. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for merit; that we shouldn't seek to fill jobs on the basis of merit. Just because something is hard doesn't mean it isn't worth it.
Finally, I would argue against the claim that "every study on it shows increased economic output." There are all kinds of studies on diversity, and they point in many directions. A popular topic is women in senior leadership. [There is no clear evidence that this leads to better performance.](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2696804) I think it more likely that economic performance has everything to do with ability and nothing to do with skin colour or genital configuration.
No. I am a staff engineer under 30 with a degree from an Ivy League. I say it because it simply is true. Let me break down the points I made.
1) Does not exist
this is easy to prove. In most industries contacts are a better predictor of success than hours, degrees, or awards. In terms of monetary success, being born rich is the highest predictor of being ahead in life more than any other.
The top forbes list is all topped by Americans, born near California between 1950-1990. The statistical chance of the "most worthy" and merit humans being born in such a small time and geographic boundries is 0.
2) has never existed
Historically goverment was hereditary, which only maximises the point I am making. But most famous artists were friends of rich people, not the most talented. Even great thinkers were all well off before they did the stuff we value from them.
3) arguably it is good that it doesn't
If the world was perfectly meritocratic those above would deserve it, and those below would deserve it too. Treating poor people badly would arguably be ethically correct as they deserve their station. But we inherently know the world is not fair and we could be down at some point therefore meritocracy not being true means ethics and success are divorced and we are all better all for it.
> There are all kinds of studies on diversity, and they point in many directions.
Meta and broad studies don't. Single issue ones with insane variables around, low confidence intervals and admitted low samples do. Like for example studies on Women on leadership positions.
Here is a nice write up on meritocracy from someone who has not drank the kool aid
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/373065/the-pencilswo...
So does this make a difference or not? If not, why do it, and why bring it up? If so, merit exists.
Whenever I say we should increase minimum wage or unemployment benefits I hear its because I must be poor and a moocher. Whenever I say meritocracy doesn't exist someone chimes thats because I have never achieved anything. Whenever you want to help others someone comes out and says its because you want to take advantage of him.
I work really hard, always have, always will. But the truth is that, that same amount of work, effort and knowledge would not be rewarded if I was born somewhere not in the first world. That I got extremely lucky both in birth, location, time and chances and while I worked hard I am not entirely responsible for my success.
Stephen Jay Gould, a great biologist, once said that "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
I think your comment shows a profund misunderstanding of what meritocracy means. No one is saying everyone is equally capable. Merit, ability, knowledge, are all true and real. A meritocracy is a system where those who posses them triumph over those that do not. We do not live in a system like that, and as I mentioned its probably good we do not as the ethics of such a system are quite awful.
I just used credentials to defend against the personal attack that was implying the only people against meritocracy are those with nothing to offer.
It may have affected their strengths and experiences, it may not. They may have very similar aptitudes as the rest of the workforce.
Sure, but just like every other rule of thumb the internet peddles as gospel it's wrong often enough to be barely better than worthless in practice.
"Real" diversity are the dimensions that can vary and affect the above context. Different mental models/modes + patterns of human thought can be used to tackle problems in >diverse< and potentially unique ways.
"Fake" diversity are the dimensions that can vary and not affect the above context. Superficial characteristics of a human person will not affect problem solving.
"Fake" diversity can be used as a statistical measure for "real" diversity. A man and a women likely have different life experiences, resulting in different mental models ("real" diversity). A black person and a white person will likely have different life experiences, resulting in different mental models.
Where this all goes awry is when you optimize for superficial diversity. You end up selecting against diversity of thought/character/non-superficial things over time. This sentence is based on conclusions around game theoretic optimization drawn from SSC Meditations on Moloch (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/).
Viewing diversity as a means to an end, which is productivity, will never work without a wider context. Humans are ends to themselves, and trying to optimize for "productive" diversity will always backfire. Diversity leads to both beauty and ugliness, productivity and stagnation, [thing-you-like] and [thing-you-don't-like] - you can't have one without the other.
But still, there's only one of you, so the method isn't scalable.
I would be surprised to find there’s at least one. I don’t think they would have named their new programming language “carbon”, too similar to “cabrón”.
Google’s HQ is in California. The state has a land border with Mexico and almost 40% of Hispanic and Latin population, predominantly Mexicans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_and_Latinos_in_Calif...
Why do you think diversity and unity are mutually exclusive?
The two words also mean literally the opposite thing. You can be along a spectrum from one to the other, but you can't have both at once.
We all love to say how true diversity is diversity of experience. You are literally taking about unified, shared experiences.
Surely a new set of common experiences increases the diversity of thought of all the participants? Nothing's lost.
This statement is absurd on its face. The entire premise of the benefits of diversity (of thought and experience) is predicated on the subjects in question having had unique experiences.
>Is it your contention that a new experience deletes or diminishes previous experiences?
Somewhat, yes. When I went to university, the shared experiences there hugely overshadowed what I had experienced in my prior education.
And the article linked to the dudes Twitter despite him asking to be anonymous due to online threats. muppets...
I wonder if the military, and other large innovation-seeking organizations, could give members a “Desk Budget” which is carefully tracked as “voting with your dollars” and eventually bring some of the popular items into standard issue through central procurement. Basically crowdsourcing the constant scan for market innovation.
Of course you'll get the same effect at higher altitudes, but the difference is that you can acclimatize to them in a matter of days, whereas daily temperature changes are to high to enable the same in response to them.
I'm no expert, but considering that the body has to work harder to cool off during heat waves the effect could be non-negligible.
And there are vests that circulate chilled water [1] for military and astronaut use - although the military one linked puts the chiller in a vehicle and each passenger plugs themselves into it.
For portable use I suppose the question is whether a battery-powered cooler provides more cooling than the same weight in ice packs.
https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/DFJ201ZS
Liquid and air cooled suits are common in auto racing.
It's a bit like the "dancing man" inflatable you see outside of car dealerships. It's not airtight, but the fan keeps air coming in at the rate it flows out.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/02/wearable-fans-...
At the end of the day companies just want to know whether you can perform the job they are asking for. If yes, then there shouldn’t be any issue.
The comparison does point out the why though. Trained soldiers are an expensive resource, so protecting that investment makes sense. In a medieval battles you would supplement your expensive knights, trained cavalry, and other glorious actors on the battlefield with a common, cheap, and quite disposable resource: peons — commoners pressed into battle with a pointy stick (spear) and little in the way of armour, or, 'meat shields' — to line up and point in roughly the right direction. Nowadays that approach wouldn't do well for morale and popularity, so every soldier gets armoured up.