jeremyt

Of course I'm aware of that.

It's exactly the point I'm trying to make. I've never heard of anything like this happening, anywhere, ever. Even in casual settings. Nor have I observed that a normal response to sexual arousal is to be feverish and flushed.

To draw the type of conclusions that she is claiming, her coworkers would have to (1) be incredibly observant (2) reject all of the most plausible explanations for a very unlikely explanation and (3) care.

This is Ockham's razor.

I have a friend that is abnormally paranoid. He thinks everybody is out to get him and sees devious plotting from the most innocuous of situations. "those two guys at the water cooler are plotting to make me look bad at the meeting today" - type stuff.

Chances are they are not.

All I'm saying is that it sounds like fear of taking a wrong social step at work seems to be affecting her performance, not to mention increasing her anxiety.

It could perhaps be healthy to reconsider whether her assumptions are reasonable or not.

I also think you're overreacting, honestly.

I don't think I've ever in my professional career observed someone being feverish and flushed and assume that it had something to do with sexual tension. Men just aren't that observant.

More likely, I would assume you were either sick or anxious because of some work-related conversation. Neither of which is a reason to be concerned vis-à-vis office politics.

Also, can I offer a suggestion to your problem? Couldn't you make up a little white lie and tell your coworkers that you had a very minor medical condition that resulted in being feverish and flushed often but that there were no other serious effects? No need to name anything, but that should take care of your worry about getting an email every time you sneeze and also deal with your concern about constantly having your obvious symptoms be misunderstood.

Sorry, but when you use the example of a repressive, communist regime that gives its people hardly any freedoms at all as an example of a better way of running a governmentyou kind of lose credibility.

Not to mention the fact that China seems the be having a massive problem with official corruption. In fact, China's official corruption problem is arguably worse than America's. At least our politicians are bought with campaign dollars. It appears that Chinese politicians and bureaucrats are bought with direct payments.

I had individual coverage as a freelancer for $130 per month.

I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious.

I think you're seeing hypocrisy here when there is really a lot less in reality.

People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass. This is why I don't give liberals a hard time because they are in favor of higher taxes but don't voluntarily pay higher taxes themselves.

First of all, most conservatives/libertarians are in favor of a smaller government, but smaller doesn't mean nonexistent. There are often large swaths of the government that they are in fact in favor of, and defense is one of them. I would be more surprised if these type of people that you're observing worked in places like the EPA, the Department of Education, and other things that the worldview opposes.

But even if… One can't just concede the playing field to the other side. If there is to be an EPA or Department of Education, been all things being equal it's better to have some conservative/libertarian people working there to keep things from getting out of control.

The cats and dogs line was a joke. In this case, I added the word literally to mean "usually when people utter this phrase they actually mean it figuratively, but I'm making such a strong statement that I'm really trying to say this time it's for real". Its extra hyperbole for comedic effect.

I take your point that a lot of pensions hold real property, but they also hold a significant amount of dollar-denominated assets. They don't have to go to zero for my raining cats and dogs point to hold, they just have to decline a significant amount.

Your second point is actually missing my point. I'm specifically referring to the transition in which anyone holding dollars will find their dollars worthless and anyone holding bitcoin will become filthy rich practically overnight. Think of it like a bank run. After the transition, business will continue as normal in the new currency.

Also, it is a good point that anyone holding debt denominated in dollars will find their debts disappear. I'm not sure this is a positive outcome.

You are correct. I'm not writing a research paper.

I'm simply stating an alternative hypothesis that you are free to accept or reject.

I offer it as food for thought and invite you to do some more research into the issue if you are intrigued.

A related discussion here: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-mone...

Despite what everybody likes to think, politicians aren't idiots.

When somebody disagrees with me, I like to assume that they're not idiots and that the disagreement might be based on some legitimate point that I've missed.

The truth is that Bitcoin is an existential threat to the United States government. As long as it's some third tier crypto currency only used by nerds on the Internet, it doesn't matter. But the infrastructure is being laid to push it as a (the) new global currency.

If that happens, we will witness an economic revolution with no parallel in history. It will literally be raining cats and dogs in the street.

Practically overnight, the US will lose the ability to borrow in its own currency, forcing a quick tightening of monetary policy, further exacerbated by foreign governments dumping their dollar reserves. The dollar <-> XX exchange rate would approach zero. Anyone holding dollars would no longer be able to afford any foreign goods. Dollar inflation would be rampant. A recession or depression would quickly follow.

Anyone not holding bitcoin will become the new underclass, and the new rich will be those who got in early. Essentially, the new world order will basically be made up of lottery winners.

Pensions would become practically worthless, as they would need to be converted to the new currency to be spent.

Etc, etc.

That's why I don't have any money in bitcoin. It can't succeed. The current world order won't let it.

I guess I'm just puzzled at the entire idea.

How many people out there have as their top concern that the person that they would like to meet for dating is also a programmer?

Okay then, how do I find a travel agent that will book me the cheapest flight to London for 50 bucks?

"How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place" - I'm about halfway through, but according to this Copenhagen consensus group, which appears to be made up of Nobel prize-winning scientists, the ROI for global warming mitigation is negative (using the same methodology they applied to the other items they were considering).

One reason that hasn't been mentioned is external sales are considered a valuation event for the purposes of valuing option offers for new hires.

Especially when liquidity is so low, these secondary offerings result in ridiculous valuations on a very small amount of shares, but that really hurts the ability of the company to offer low strike prices on options to attract talent.

Well, after searching, it appears there is a book that does exactly this. I'm going to read it, and then maybe I will have a better idea of what the relative cost benefits are.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/thank-you?ie=UTF8&a=...

Here's my problem with the "the science is settled" argument:

Every time I go to investigate specific issues, it appears that there are credible people that disagree with the "settled science".

Let me be clear, I'm not arguing the actual point, I'm just trying to explain to you how hard it is for somebody who really does want to know the truth to actually find it. For every person that says one thing, I find another one that makes an equally compelling argument that it is the opposite. I just don't know who to believe.

Take the "global warming pause" problem. I did a Google search and started reading some of the results, and on the first page I came across this apparently well respected scientist who doesn't agree with the consensus. What criteria am I to use to disregard his opinion in favor of someone else's who appears to me to be equally qualified?

Here's the relevant parts:

The claim that the pause has been caused by heat is going into the deep ocean below 700 m is speculative and relies on models undergoing many data adjustments. That speculation is contradicted by two major issues.

First the Argo data has definitively shown the upper 300 meters have cooled slightly since 2003 (Read Xue 2011) and the consensus among oceanographers is that it is in the upper 100 meters that most of the heat is exchanged with the atmosphere.

Second is it defies known physics. IPCC expert Dr. Hans von Storch said in a recent interview "there is evidence that the oceans have absorbed more heat than we initially calculated. Temperatures at depths greater than 700 meters (2,300 feet) appear to have increased more than ever before. The only unfortunate thing is that our simulations failed to predict this effect." He went on to lament “If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.”

“There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.”

The Dr. von Storch interview can be seen in its entirety at Stampf, O. and Traufetter , G. (2013) Spiegel International, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von...

Also, I'm from the south, so feel free to contact me if you need any advice. I've been there; done that.

Don't listen all the whining. When I moved to San Francisco in 2008 to work on a startup, I rented a small bedroom in a house with an immigrant couple for $450 per month. If you want to make it work, you'll make it work.

I think you've missed the point that I was making, so I'm a little puzzled as to why you're spending all the time to do a line by line takedown. My main point is that I think any money that we are thinking about spending to mitigate global warming now could probably be better used solving world hunger or malaria or something. I don't KNOW that for a fact, and I'm open to arguments one way or the other. Just, to me, real people dying today is just more urgent than hypothetical people dying in the future.

I'm trying very hard to be constructive here, and I'm not exactly making an argument I'm just telling you where I am on the issue. Clearly I'm not an expert and I haven't read everything there is to read about it.

I still don't really see what's wrong with the statement that I made. Would you argue that we know everything that is necessary to know about, say, solar cycles? Or CO2 sequestration? I am willing to admit that it's possible that we do, but it's a much harder argument to make.

Finally, you are making my original point for me. People seem stuck in the theory and don't pay attention to the practical matters. For example, on the issue of nuclear power, Japan and Germany are in the process of decommissioning their nuclear power plants. The forecast for nuclear power is flat at best and negative at worst.

I'm all for building 10,000 nuclear power plants tomorrow, but it's not politically feasible. If that's your solution, then you're just not being serious.

With respect to the two orders of magnitude of difficulty, a quick Google came up with the following title "Fighting Climate Change Could Cost 4% of Global Economy — but It’s Worth It". The article is by someone supportive of CO2 reduction policies, so it seems fair to take the number as a first approximation. 4% of the global economy is A LOT.

Again, with a quick Google search, I came up with the following document (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201... addresses exactly this issue. A quote:

"In response to these predictions a large number of developed countries signed the Kyoto protocol in 1997. The Protocol is aimed at mitigating global warming, primarily by reducing net emissions of the main ‘greenhouse gases’: carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrous oxide (NO) methane (CH4) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)). A variety of proposals have been put forward aimed at achieving the reductions in emissions proposed under the Protocol. Some of these proposals, most notably reductions in CFC emissions, involve relatively low costs and have additional benefits, such as reduced damage to the atmospheric ozone layer, sufficient to justify them even in the absence of concerns about global warming. Others, such as reductions in emissions sufficient to stabilize the current atmospheric stocks of CO2, would involve substantial economic and social costs."

I'm sorry, but even when I try to read your posts sympathetically, all I see is "The science is settled, and you're an idiot" (I especially appreciate you addressing me as "dude"), when I've just pointed out above that at least some of the points you are making are not in fact settled, or even realistic.

I think if you equate the difficulty of CFC reduction and sulfur reduction to the difficulty of reducing global CO2 emissions, then you're really not having a serious conversation. There's at least two orders of magnitude of difficulty between the two.

Global warming is one of those tough issues for me. I guess you could call me a skeptic, but I try very hard to be a thoughtful skeptic.

What makes the whole conversation unproductive is there appears to be two sides: one which argues there is no problem and we must do nothing, and the other side says that the problem is going to end the world as we know it and we must change our entire way of living and make it our number one priority.

For me, there is a progression of questions that I must answer before I can sign on to the latter's assertions., And they look something like this:

1. Is the world warming? I think it most certainly is, but I would also note that it appears that the warming trend has halted for the past 10 to 20 years. From what I can gather, scientists have reasons why that might be the case but have not explained it.

2. Is the warming man-made? To a large degree, I believe that it is. However, there are a lot of things that we don't understand about climate (solar cycles, effects of water vapor, ocean CO2 sequestration, etc.) If I had to put a number on it, I would say 50 to 60% man-made.

3. Can we do anything about it? This is where I begin to separate from the global warming crowd. Theoretically, we can certainly do something about it, but having worked in government I just don't see any practical way that we can reduce greenhouse emissions to such an extent that it's going to make a great difference. Further, china and India are ramping up their CO2 emissions, and there's nothing that the developed countries can do about it. Finally, I have ethical objections to telling developed countries that they have to use less energy which will inevitably result in more lives lost due to starvation or simply just malnutrition and poverty.

4. Should we do anything about it? I believe this is a cost-benefit analysis. And I haven't done the analysis myself, but sometimes I question whether spending the enormous amounts of money today is worth putting off an uncertain disaster tomorrow when we have actual problems today that we could be working on instead. We have millions of people every year dying from malnutrition, poor water supplies, malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc. Why not save those actual lives instead of spending the money saving hypothetical lives in 100 years. And indeed, won't we be more suited to save those lines in 100 years than we are right now, meaning that the mitigation effort could be a lot cheaper?

Yes, but the point being made here is that managers should do more. They should spend all of a whole 30% of their time coding, which presumably includes real coding projects, not "some simple" coding.

After all, if all you're doing is checking in bug fixes occasionally, how are you really going to know the advantages and disadvantages of redis or puppet or any of the other tools used on a daily basis on engineering teams.

Yes, and developers should manage 30% of the time and do design work 30% of the time. You know, because good management and good design is essential to a good product, and just saying that you have "done some" design or management in the past isn't good enough.

I'll second this.

I used to live in Arlington, Virginia, and while getting overdrive set up was a nightmare, actually checking books out was really easy.

I now live in New York, and frankly the New York Public Library's process for checking out e-books is so confusing that I can't figure out how to use it most of the time. It's just a better use of my time to just go ahead and buy the damn thing.

You may think it's wrong, but a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the former president of the American Psychology Association would disagree with you. There is a chapter in his book (http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/...) where he talks about gender identification as nature or nurture.

He argues, quite convincingly, that girls raised as boys still like dolls and boys raised as girls still like firetrucks and bulldozers.

I would recommend the book.

Fixing...

Well, it is a loss for us, but unfortunately it's just not technically feasible to have a global seamless login experience yet. We're working in that direction.

Stack overflow PM here.

The hot/active/week/month tabs were only removed for anonymous users. If you're logged in at all, you will still see them. I think my meta-post covers the reasons behind this (mostly simplification for drive-by users).

Also, we have put a lot of effort into simplifying our accounts management over the last year. We're about halfway there, but at the moment we aggregate site accounts under a global account. You'll have to take an affirmative action to "join" another site, but it's not the whole registration process - no separate username/email/password.

Bottom line is registration requires an email and password, and that gets you the key to all of our sites. You just have to "use" the key on the site when you interact the first time.

Also, I'll add that you could just go here: http://stackexchange.com/questions?tab=hot

Here's the court decision: http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Korte-G...

I admit that this may be a fuzzy edge case that I'm not completely familiar with, but I think the objection is not that Congress is completely exempt from the act but that the president had the executive branch issue a rule that allowed the government to subsidize congressional health plans, where this is not allowed in any other business.

This is technically separate from the waiver objection.

I know there's an objection here, so if you can find a reference to it I would appreciate the clarification.

I'm trying to summarize the objections without judging the objections themselves.

The exemptions that I'm referring to are being referred to as "waivers", and you can see a itemized list and description of each type of waiver here: http://heartland.org/policy-documents/six-types-obamacare-wa...

As to the abortion issue, it appears that I was slightly incorrect. The objection is mostly to the contraceptive mandate (free contraceptives for women). I still think there is some objection on the abortion issue, but frankly I'm not familiar with it so I can't say whether it's justified or not.