Crake

It depends a lot on the field. At my community college, the STEM classes had standards. Totally incompetent people disappeared after a semester or two of going up the coursework chain. Meanwhile, the liberal arts professors had to deal with people that couldn't write a coherent sentence if their life depended on it, even in advanced classes. However, I constantly read similarly demented and completely mangled english sentences written by graduates of the local public four year university.

I can't really recommend community college for STEM, since at least in my original state, you had to start as a freshman at university even if you had an associate's degree in science that was "guaranteed" to transfer for credit. (The engineering department's justification was "we'll accept your credits, but you still have to take everything over again.") It's a good way to get screwed, and community colleges offer very few second year science and math classes. (The liberal arts people had much less difficulty transferring.)

However, I did learn my calculus and sciences very well because I had excellent teachers that I could ask questions of if I needed to. My physics professor had been teaching for over four decades--and with a small class size of around ~20, I had plenty of opportunity to absorb the material and understand it completely. As a result, I now find myself tutoring my buddy at a $60,000/year private tech college, because my knowledge of the subjects is sound and the quality of the teaching at his school is completely terrible. Interestingly, the homework assignments and test questions are near identical in terms of subject matter covered and difficulty--the main difference is that the private tech college curves, which my professors at my community college were explicitly forbidden from doing.

This is a pretty good way to limit your friends network, though. For example, feminists and other sjws often will delete you from everything and start a witch hunt trying to fire you, get all your friends to hate you, and so on if you "confess" to being an egalitarian and/or say anything that indicates rival theories for things outside of their ideology, like the scientific method, might have some validity.

Religion used to be like this (and still is in many developing countries, along with an uncomfortably large segment of the US), but it has to some extent grown much more milder in portions of the community. However, cult like thinking takes many forms, and inadvertently contradicting a cultist may very well become an aspiration crushing torment to the novice idgaf-er.

I guess it's all about taking baby steps at first. And sometimes antidepressants.

My Manhattan living expenses at the moment are about $1000/month (rent, utilities, monthly metro card, and phone plan). It's not really all that hard.

You can rent a large bedroom in Manhattan with great subway access for $650-800, if you don't mind a 20 minute commute to midtown.

If you can't survive on $3,000-$3,500 a month here, you have a spending problem, not an earning problem.

It's totally an issue. If you're a transfer student, you'll find that the few universities that go on about how proud they are to be need-blind and offer a great education to everyone!...now all consider need in admissions, or don't offer to meet your need even if you do get in.

Considering many low-income students start out at a community college, taking even one credit at one effectively locks you out from virtually all prestigious universities. It used to be the case that you COULD go from community college to a fancy private, but it's all but impossible these days.

Combine this with what you mentioned in the second part of your comment, and low-income kids are screwed both pre and post high school. It also screws over kids of all income ranges with highly dysfunctional/abusive families (who won't help with college, didn't support your pre-college academics/extracurriculars, won't sign your FAFSA, etc), since the only thing you can afford is a community college in those cases as well.

The horse buggy drivers felt that way too. I'm sure they managed to retrain and find a new profession.

Historically, artists have always had to have a patron sponsor them in order to pursue their artistic inclinations. While it's hard for male artists to find this today, chances are that your wife already has access to guaranteed patronage if she's not in the mood to learn a more economically relevant skill set.

Just because you are prejudiced in favor of white people doesn't mean every other white person alive is also a racist.

Result of using gender quotas, maybe? Does anyone know to what extent the NYPD relaxes its standards for people who aren't qualified but are "under represented"? If there's a bias in the hiring phase, there's likely to be similar laxity in the firing phase, too.

This would have been far more convincing if he tried to book the same dates as his friend and was accepted after they said they didn't have anything available on that date. As it is, it's just one of many possible reasons his friend had trouble finding a reservation.

I agree with most of what you're saying, except for "every single person's money problem is solved with the very simple 'don't spend more than you earn.'" Sometimes it's not being able to earn enough money that's the problem--there's a baseline level of income needed to pay for very basic no frills food and rent in any given area.

The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems is also a very good self-teaching resource. It doesn't jump steps so you don't get lost when studying.

>I think barbies dolls should be outright banned.

You do realize there are plenty of girls out there who love their barbies, right? Why do you hate them?

Sex based discrimination doesn't help reduce sex based discrimination. Surprising, I know.

"Single-sex schools do not provide any social or educational benefits over coeducational programs within the public school system, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Their findings dispel assertions from proponents of same-sex schools that boys and girls learn differently and must therefore be separated to reach their full potential.

The team of psychologists examined all available research on single-sex education published within the past seven years, which included 184 studies comprising 1.6 million students from kindergarten to 12th grade in 21 different countries, and found no evidence to support proponents’ claims.

In their study, which appeared Monday in Psychological Bulletin, a journal published by the American Psychological Association, the psychologists said that students who attended single-sex schools weren’t any better off than peers who attended coed programs in terms of self-esteem or performance in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects."

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/5/study-single-...

>For women, youth is an advantage in dating. For men, the opposite, which both supports and demands career success.

IMO this is probably the biggest reason for the under-representation of women as CEOs/engineers/etc. You don't have to make a lot of money as a female to attract a mate, but you're sure as hell going to have a hard time with that if you're a male.

Your family sounds like mine, except everything in my house was censored, and I didn't get to go to school, either.

> Young women don't magically become technologists at 22.

I think what the author was saying with this is that you can't just throw them in a women's special ed program and expect them to become creative problem solvers in a few weeks if that wasn't (to at least some extent) their personality type to begin with.

>. You might tell a little kid about how cool programming is, but do you even attempt a real explanation of your work with a young adult?

I do, constantly. Most people who haven't started by now do so because of lack of interest/motivation/dedication, though. I think people like you and me who come to programming late are definitely rather rare. I don't think the author was really being exclusionary--it's the case for most people.

>Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed.

Who do you think portrays them on tv and in movies? Fake women? Give me a break.

>When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

I like how if a man does it, it's sexist, but if a woman does it, it's "empowerment." I guess men aren't allowed to write empowered female characters. And yet, if they don't write them--that makes them misogynists, too.

>They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.

In my experience, this is just very elaborate justification for plain old jealousy of another woman's looks.

>Media representation criticism != body policing of actual people.

Except that in many cases, it's actual women being criticized.

A woman said something you disagree with. Such a tragedy!!

>Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way?

In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans. Have you never read an article by a feminist about X or Y movie character is demeaning to women because she dressed too sexy, or wore something that the feminist herself would never wear?

>considered unfeminine

It's interesting to note, though, that it is only considered unfeminine by other women. Guys just think it's badass when they find a girl into the same stuff they're into.

>Being in a room full of men with few or no women in ANY circumstance is awkward unless you are top of your game.

I've never really cared, whether I'm at the top or bottom of my game. Biological sex of the people around me is irrelevant--unless I'm going to a gay bar.

>not that the images themselves can induce it

And yet, that's exactly what people are doing here.

>but that doesn't mean we can't try to empathize with those that have experienced terrible things either

Please, continue to lecture someone with diagnosed PTSD about being nice to people with PTSD.

>I could be wrong, but I think PTSD can be induced with images.

You're wrong. I know tumblr likes to use the word "trigger" for just about everything, but real diagnosed PTSD is predicated on events significantly more traumatizing than seeing some photographs. There's nothing life-threatening about an image, no matter how disturbing.

>Recent bank reforms in the US created a requirement for any institution offering any checking account to offer at least one checking account option with no fees and no overdraft protection.

Can you show this option available for, say, Chase? I hadn't heard of this reform, and I'm a bit skeptical it exists. (Although I'd be happy to be proven wrong.)

>Ever since that generation the gender gap has been widening

Well, it might have something to do with the huge emphasis on judging people based on their gender that the feminists and sjws have been shoving down everyone's throats lately.

Seriously, she doesn't like the increasing number of women only events because they make it harder for women (at all stages of their careers) to be accepted like everyone else. Surprise, emphasizing someone's gender as the most important thing about you makes people more likely to treat you differently because of it.

I'm part of the younger generation, and I feel exactly the same way she does. These sexist policies are making my life WAY more difficult. I'm jealous of people who got to experience tech before it got popular enough to become a target for feminists.

>You do not represent all women in technology. You get to represent yourself.

Any given feminist will happily claim to be the voice of all women everywhere. It's only when a woman disagrees with their dogma that a woman is only allowed to speak for herself.

>I don't think either of us is capable of making definitive statements on the harm of women-only education programs

Well, it's pretty much a given that they're increasing sex based discrimination in the world. Both as a primary effect ("we only take people with vaginas") as well as a significant secondary effect ("wait, so I can't go because I'm a boy?").

>I do believe however that it's completely and utterly impossible to improve gender dynamics without putting emphasis on it.

It's a free country, so you're free to believe that. Just acknowledge that you're an advocate for sex-based discrimination. Incidentally, this makes you a sexist.

>Part of it is rarely seeing a person of color in a computer engineering role.

It's sad that we live in an age where it's acceptable to avoid a career field because you don't want to be around people of a different skin color.