08:41 – It was 55.2F (13C) when I took Colin out at about 0640 this morning, damp and foggy. The crew from Shaw Brothers showed up around 0730 to gut the downstairs den. There’s a crew of four, so it shouldn’t take too long.
I disconnected the router to get it out of their way. I carried it into the unfinished area, where the fiber-optic terminal adapter lives, intending to plug it directly into the jack on the TA. My cunning plan failed, because there is no jack on the TA, just the cable that runs out into the downstairs den.
So I asked the guys if it didn’t matter to them to rip out the carpet, pad, and ceiling in the corner where the router goes first. They set me up an inverted bucket to put the router on, and our Internet and TV are back up.
Barbara volunteers at the museum after lunch. When she closes up at 1700, she’s heading down to Winston to meet Frances and Al for dinner. She considered driving back up here after dinner, but I suggested she just stay tonight with them and drive back up in the morning. It’s been a very stressful time, particularly for Barbara. If there’s anything a librarian hates, it’s disorganization. She’s lived with my disorganization for the last 33+ years, but this is a whole different level of disorganization. I figured she could use a break from it. Then, of course, we’ll continue to have everything a mess when Shaw comes back out to install the new floor and ceiling.
Barbara went over to the flooring place yesterday to pick out flooring. We were originally thinking about installing ceramic tile, but when he was out to work up an estimate, Jay Shaw recommended plastic fake-wood flooring. It’s basically like the stuff that we used when we had our deck replaced in Winston. Essentially 100% recycled soft drink bottles, with pigments and surface texture added. It’s extremely durable, particularly when used indoors, and it’s a lot softer than ceramic tile.
Looks like Trump thinks that Comey is going to lie to Congress:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4499790/Trump-warns-Comey-tapes-talks.html
This is getting strange.
I commented elsewhere about this:
http://www.eightriverssecurity.co.uk/ppss-cut-resistant-clothing/
“PPSS slash and cut resistant clothing is worn by both the general public and those in professional occupations to combat the ever increasing rise of violent knife crime in the UK
London alone already sees up to 1000 knife attacks a month.
Although the risk of injury through knife crime is statistically low, it is still a risk. Until recently, the public could do little to protect themselves from a bladed attack or assault.”
…
“Worn as a top layer or concealed under a shirt or jacket, this protection is ideal for those who feel they would like to minimise possible injury from glass, bite or knife attack.
This may be whilst socialising on an evening out to those who are at increased risk of attack due to their occupation.”
fucking hell
n
I don’t read Chaos Manor much anymore, because it seems to be mostly about Jerry’s health. While I wish him the best, I also wish for more of the insightful commentary that he is capable of.
That said, I did appreciate his comments about “Hidden Figures”. I just didn’t know enough about that era – it’s a good 20 years before my time – to evaluate the correctness of the movie. His point is, apparently, that (before computers) people were hired to handle the piles and piles of rote engineering calculations required, in order to free up the engineers to do other things. So the “calculators” were mathematical technicians, as in: somebody’s got to pull this cable, and somebody else has to crunch these numbers. Still a job that requires high competence and skill, but perhaps not as breathtaking as the movie would have us believe.
And the reminder that this is Hurricane Preparedness week. Some Official resources for any peeps that need ‘official’ sources.
https://community.fema.gov/hazard/hurricane-en_us/be-smart?lang=en_US
n
NB- “hurricane preparedness” is a great gateway to preparedness in general.
Preparedness of a different sort. This is the second time in two days that this 13 Reasons thing has come to my attention. Long cut and paste from my school district special email blast. IF YOU”VE GOT SCHOOL AGE KIDS, you need to be aware of this.
=============================
Dear Parents and Guardians of [Houston area] ISD Students,
Recently, there has been a great deal of news regarding the Netflix series entitled “13 Reasons Why” (13RW). This series is about a teenage girl who commits suicide and leaves behind 13 messages and audio tapes detailing why she blames certain people for her death. While the show may have the intended message that being kind could save a life, it has created deep concerns among school personnel and other professionals in the mental health community. We are writing you today to make you aware of these concerns, and let you know that there are student support services available at every campus in [houston area] ISD.
One major concern is that many students, especially middle and high school students, may have watched the series without the knowledge of their parents/guardians which has left them without the opportunity to process what they’ve seen. Other concerns include the following:
– there is a graphic depiction of suicide
-students may over-identify with the young lady who takes her own life resulting in increased suicide/attempted suicide
– there is the potential that the show could be a catalyst for revenge fantasies
– there is a dangerous reinforcement of the incorrect idea that suicide is the only way to be heard
– the show does a poor job of addressing mental illness and alternatives to suicide
– there is a focus on the responsibility of others for the character’s suicide; a focus on blame
– there are several scenes depicting serious trauma including rape, bullying, alcoholism and suicide, in which teens do not seek help or resources
– the adults depicted in the show struggle to respond in a meaningful way
While many youth know the difference between a TV drama and real life, talking with adults about this subject is very important. Adults can help share the message that suicide is not a solution to problems and help is available. [houston area] ISD would like to offer the following tips to assist parents:
– Check out the show; watch an episode or two and research articles regarding the program.
– Remind them that the series is fictional.
– Share that it is normal to experience periods of stress and distress. Offer healthy coping strategies, e.g. exercise, art, journaling, talking to friends and adults they trust.
– Let them know that there are adults at school who care and can help.
– Talk about where to seek support, including from family members, counselors, coaches, teachers, faith leaders, administrators, etc.
– Suicide prevention, awareness and support are available at http://www.Suicide.org
20+ veterans a day off themselves; maybe Netflix could do a series on that; I won’t hold my breath.
WRT UK/Londonistan knife attacks, their MSM and usual suspects have two choices, based on how it works here:
1.) Continue to screech and shout, regardless, “We gotta get these guns off the street.”
2.) Move on to “We gotta get these knives off the street,” and thus open up a whole new area for State regulation and repression.
Good luck to them; it’s way too late here, lol. Hundreds of millions of firearms nationwide! And nowadays the ability to build them ourselves, almost from scratch. With a thriving black market that can only get bigger as times get shittier.
60s and “a mix of sun and cloud” today, with rain expected over the weekend. Off to do as much outside chit as I can manage for the remainder of the daylight, along with several errands.
Still a job that requires high competence and skill, but perhaps not as breathtaking as the movie would have us believe.
In Computer Science circles in the US, industry and academia, there is currently a lot of navel gazing about how to get more women and non-Asian minorities involved in writing software. “Hidden Figures” strikes me as being another part of that process as well as the greatly expanded female role for Keira Knightly in “The Imitation Game”.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but my aunt was a computer during WW II. She actually had a job using a slide rule to compute ballistic tables.
I traded e-mails with RBT & OFD yesterday. I’m looking to experiment with loading OS/2 on some old P3 IBM desktops. I was hoping I could connect with someone who might be willing to offer any input regarding pitfalls in OS/2 installation or setup so I could test the proverbial waters.
OFD said he thought there were some ppl here who had OS/2 experience. If you’d be open to fielding a few questions, please let me know and how we can connect away from Bob’s blog/comments.
In my forty years of computer work (most programming) I rarely met a female that could cut it. Some back in the days when there were operators did okay as rote work was suitable to their skills. I really think it has a great deal to do with passionate thinking over logical. Not trying to be anti-female just looking at reality.
I’m now prepared to take a beating.
I put OS/2 warp on my gateway lappy back in the day. Since no one at IBM seemed to have considered that anyone would want to, there were a bunch of problems. I spent a fair amount of time on the phone with developers in Boca Raton. All that is in the distant past though. I determined that it really wasn’t feasible to do it, just for the benefits of the Presentation Manager. I probably still have quite a bit of shrink wrapped software somewhere…… (who am I kidding, I know I do and I’m pretty sure I know where it is, although it’s not EASILY accessible.)
I don’t know if I can remember anything useful, but I occasionally check email at my last name at aol dot com.
n
“I’m now prepared to take a beating.”
You probably won’t have to take a beating here. But try and run that by your nearby high skools or colleges and see what happens. Or put it in a letter to your local nooz paper.
In my own experience as an operator in the early days and a sys/net/security admin later, I found the same sort of issues, plus they were all, w/o exception, very high maintenance. I might possibly have been influenced by my previous many years in mostly male mil-spec and cop jobs, of course.
And quite frankly, as with the cop and firefighter jobs, most women simply didn’t and don’t seem interested in doing that kind of work.
WRT the insane amount of effort being expended to encourage/force females into STEM, WHY???? There aren’t enough jobs for the current people working in the fields. It’s a scam to push the prog agenda that individuals are not different, and it also pushes down wages by increasing the number of candidates for every available job.
Clear out any obstacles so that anyone with interest and aptitude can succeed, and quit trying to push a square peg into round holes.
n
RE: OS/2
Now that really takes me back. I LOVED OS/2. We did a review on it for an automation project in the early 90’s and OS/2 was the only mainstream OS that could multi-task well enough to meet the requirements. But the customer, Kodak, insisted we use a MicroSquat OS so we wasted thousands of hours trying to get the crap to work. Not that I remember ANYTHING about it after all these years. Aside from the fact that at Comdex MS was GIVING AWAY copies of NT to anyone who would stand still and IBM was SELLING example of OS/2 so it’s no wonder whic OS got the largest developer base.
It’s baaaaaaackkkkkkkk!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-12/new-ebola-epidemic-declared-after-three-people-die-dr-congo
n
Yeah when I worked as a wildland firefighter they allowed a ‘girl’ to join in I think 1971. It was a large mountain station and we had a cook so they had her shackup with the cook in her quarters. The guys didn’t abuse her but never really accepted her either. I think she lucked out as we had an easy fire season that year.
Today I notice that whenever I listen to fire calls the only females I hear around here are dispatchers.
Subbing again today. Should be the last day for me. Seniors hav 2.5 days left, others about 5 days. The natives are getting restless. I am still shocked at far down education has fallen. Also disturbing is the number of state mandated tests. Another interesting turn is that if you have perfect attendance you do not have to take end of semester tests. In others you could be as dumb as a rock but show up every day and get a A.
In Computer Science circles in the US, industry and academia, there is currently a lot of navel gazing about how to get more women and non-Asian minorities involved in writing software.
Which is why, after being a member of the ACM since 1976 (with a brief hiatus following hurricane Katrina), I am in the process of canceling my membership.
Clear out any obstacles so that anyone with interest and aptitude can succeed, and quit trying to push a square peg into round holes.
Amen!
RE: my OS/2 experiment
Thanks Nick. E-mail sent.
Yet another example of the progs’ refusal to accept reality. Men and women are good at different things. A couple million years of evolution has optimized the two sexes for different things.
And when women attempt to make a career in STEM, they’re trying to do something that men are optimized for. It’s no wonder so few succeed.
Regarding Chaos Manor; Jerry’s posts are not as frequent as before the stroke, but they are mostly about current events, with lots of mail and comments thereof.
There is usually a few paragraphs at the beginning about why the posts aren’t as regular; his stroke has reduced his touch-typing abilities, so it takes longer for him to create a post. But then the content changes to mail and his responses, along with his analysis of current issues.
Still a worthwhile read, IMHO. He is getting old, so not as much energy and focus as before the stroke. Plus, Roberta also had a stroke, and her recovery is not as much as Jerry’s.
That’s nothing. I may just have some close acquaintances who have access to CDC reports that are not available to the public. Ebola is here, so is a tremendous amount of totally resistant TB. The illegals are bringing in diseases that we eradicated here long ago, the big problem is that almost all have mutated to forms that are not treatable with the old-line medications.
You need to be very selective if you need to go to a clinic or a hospital. You stand a big chance of coming out in worse shape than when you went in.
“…how to get more women and non-Asian minorities involved in writing software”
Yeah…not gonna happen. There are only a few men who are good at writing software – there are even fewer women. Those are are good, more power to them. But trying to push people into a field they just aren’t meant for? Stupid.
Another little factoid about this was on Soylent News the other day. Some company testing students in hundreds of Indian universities. Apparently across the whole spectrum of computer science programs, from top to crap. The ratio of male to female students was roughly 5:3. Something like 3.5% of the male CS students were able to correctly solve the programming problems in the time given. Of the female CS students, it was 0.7%.
Which shows a lot of things. It shows that there are a lot of crappy CS programs in India (and in the US, and everywhere else, for that matter). And even in the good programs, a lot of students aren’t all that good. But the gender statistics also show that far too many of low ability have joined the programs. You’d have to drop 80% of the women, keeping all of the good ones, in order for the women’s performance stats to match the men’s.
I hope the company has the guts to do the same study in the US, in China, in Germany and elsewhere.
– – – – –
@dkreck: No problem – I’m in for the same beating, if anyone here were to play PC police. Reality is what it is. I’ve always said: treat each person as an individual, ignoring their plumbing and other irrelevant attributes. That’s genuine equal rights.
The average abilities and inclinations of the genders differ. Maybe some aspects are genetic and others are cultural – it doesn’t matter. It will turn out that more women are in some fields, and more men in others. As long as everyone is treated equally (by my definition above), I have never understood why that should be a problem.
OFD said he thought there were some ppl here who had OS/2 experience. If you’d be open to fielding a few questions, please let me know and how we can connect away from Bob’s blog/comments.
If you haven’t already been there, hit Arca Noae’s web site. They will support OS/2 moving forward. Sooner or later, they will even have a commercial release.
https://www.arcanoae.com/
At AT&T, I worked for what used to be IBM Global Network Services. If you dig around on the FTP site, the OS/2 client will probably still work for dial in since a few die hards who worked on the product are still employed by IBM.
ftp://ftp.attglobal.net/pub/ibm
My experience with OS/2 was limited to Warp in the early 90s, and (sigh) I dropped it once Windows 95 hit the market. Let the flaming commence.
Above is my current OS/2 knowledge, but you can contact me at gregnorton at gmail dot com if you think I might be of help.
RE: my OS/2 experiment
Thanks Greg. E-mail sent.
Oh dear…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-13/hospitals,-telecommunications-hit-in-global-cyberattack/8523102
Another little factoid about this was on Soylent News the other day. Some company testing students in hundreds of Indian universities. Apparently across the whole spectrum of computer science programs, from top to crap. The ratio of male to female students was roughly 5:3. Something like 3.5% of the male CS students were able to correctly solve the programming problems in the time given. Of the female CS students, it was 0.7%.
My CS grad program at [a mid-tier state university] is ~ 95% Indian. Most of them arrive being unable to code beyond “Hello world”, but I’ve found that the females pick it up faster than the males.
And when women attempt to make a career in STEM, they’re trying to do something that men are optimized for. It’s no wonder so few succeed.
In my experience, coding ability is evenly dispersed across the genders, but most women smart enough to do the work are too practical to get involved with such a limited career field where management has very little appreciation for/understanding of the high octane intellectual effort required to produce something like Google Maps.
Again, in general, when it comes to choosing careers, guys are Tim “The Toolman” Taylor. O(n lg n) sorting algorithms argh argh argh …
RIP Itanium (and PA-RISC).
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intels-itanium-cpus-once-a-play-for-64-bit-servers-and-desktops-are-dead/
Other fields that are vastly dominated by males includes: painting, literature, music composing… And these are those more artistically than technically domains..
The hobbies each have, show a big difference between females and males. If we exclude general stuff like reading, listening to music or traveling from the hobbies, what is left is that women would do some decorating stuff, and men would be *addicted* to a lot of those involving building/crafting stuff.
You know, I took a programing course once, cs 204 at TAMU. IBM 370 assembly language programming. I wanted to understand the nuts and bolts of big iron.
All of the good programmers that I have known over the years were self taught. They already knew how before taking a course, if they ever took a course.
“Other fields that are vastly dominated by males includes: painting, literature, music composing… And these are those more artistically than technically domains..”
Good point, and often forgotten. Males also tend to dominate the cooking/chef field, at least at the big-name, professional level, and the one woman who actually kicked ass and took names was the late Julia Child.
For our poetry, the one woman who sorta did that, with a handful of really excellent poems, Emily Dickinson. Before that? Probably the person or persons known as Sappho.
Woman composers? Painters? Georgia O’Keefe? Seriously?
Programming is a thought process. Programming languages are just tools. You have to be able to run the process out in a logical and workable manner. Use what works for you. I’ve always written in routines. Small paragraphs of code expanded and refined. Not everyone does that and there’s nothing worse than dealing with someone else’s spaghetti code.
“Men and women are good at different things. A couple million years of evolution has optimized the two sexes for different things.”
Yes, and I’m interested in that optimizations. What the men got? higher capacity of imagination, of vision? focus -yes you mentioned before; risk taking too. What makes them to so much admire a well crafted object?
Womens seems to be more pragmatic. With regard to risks, they seem more ignorant than prudent.
All of the good programmers that I have known over the years were self taught.
I was pretty much self taught by learning on the job. Went to one “advanced” tech school when in was in the USAF. That was a waste of time. Having been in the USAF programming role for only five months I was so far above the MSGTs, TSGTs and SSGTs in the class that it was a joke. Several civilians, GS-11s in the class who were clearly in that role because where the GS’ were working before wanted to get rid of them. Several of the above mentioned NCOs had transitioned from chock block remover on the flight line to programming so they could retire and try and get a programming job, probably GS-11 judging from the capabilities of the other GS’ in the class.
Spent two weeks basically bored.
Programming is a thought process.
I would go beyond that as some knowledge of the tools available to you is required. No use trying to write a Photoshop clone in FORTRAN.
All of the good programmers that I have known over the years were self taught. They already knew how before taking a course, if they ever took a course.
I did get something out of an online UW C++ certificate program I took while in the Northwest. They gave us a smart pointer object that I use everywhere since I finished the program.
C++11 has smart pointers, but the UW object works in earlier versions of the language.
Oh, and I definitely learned something at The Big Nerd Ranch when Death Star Telephone sent me for iOS development class.
Yes, that really is the name of the place.
Real programmers can write Fortran in any language.
We have smart pointers in our mostly fortran calculation engine. You better be smart when you use them otherwise they will burn you hard.
No code for OFD, ever, assuming that bash and vim don’t count as such, or in my olden times, DCL on VMS.
No, OFD’s code is dead languages from now on. And ballistics.
Got most of the scrap firewood, kindling and dead leaves taken care of; I’ll wrap it up tomorrow, ran outta gas by 5:30. Also raked out two raised beds and am getting them ready for planting garlic and onions tomorrow. We have peas and rhubarb coming up now. Did a dump run and picked up more bags of potting soil and compost. Tomatoes coming up, and I’ll be using small grow bags and containers for stuff like chives, mint, and maybe some medicinal herbs. Again, experimentation at this stage, mainly, to see what grows where and how well. Given lack of space and sunlight.
Next up is carrots, turnips and spuds.
And in the fall, picking up more bags of all those types of winta veggies and storing them in the cellar properly. Next to the shelved canned stuff, etc. And containers of flour, cornmeal, rice, pasta, beans, etc.
Alternating months of stored water and food, with ammo and training.
Getting ready for a violent commie uprising/insurrection in the village here. Just in case.
So I am sitting in my living room, reading a post-apocalyptic novel (“Bunker”), which uses an EMP as it’s premise, when the power goes out.
A bit of “Freaky Friday” for me.
It’s a bit windy today, and a tree fell into a power line a couple miles away. Total power outage was just a couple of hours.
I’ve got a generator, but a couple of days ago, thinking that the power-outage potential due to wind storms was diminishing, I took my spare generator gas and recycled it into one of the cars. The generator is about empty (by planning, since you don’t want gas sitting in there during non-use, even though I’ve put in gas stabilizer).
I had planned on getting fresh gas ‘real soon now’. Today’s power outage just moved it up the priority a bit. So now I have two five-gallon jugs of fresh gas, with stabilizer added.
And fixed the garage door motor – one of the bolts attaching it to the support bars had fallen off. Minor fix with some spare bolt/nuts and star washer. And ensured the other bolt was tight.
Story moral: don’t procrastinate on being ready for random events. Like a power outage whilst reading a post-apocalyptic book.
And Mr. RickH wins the innernet today with his scary story. Yikes.
Good advice: make sure you have all yer ducks lined up for whatever, in your vicinity and AO.
Sorta related: Last year I was sitting here in the office and starting to watch one of those docudramas on the work of a husband-wife exorcism team. About a minute into the flick, the ceiling light above me crashed down out of the ceiling and broke across the top of the monitor.
I stopped watching and also deleted it from the machine.
Moral: Don’t get involved with paranormal phenomena, even if only watching it on yer pixels. They’ll come outta the screen ATCHA!!!
“The hobbies each have, show a big difference between females and males. ”
10-4, I love going to quilting meetings. I specialize in making quilts that look like children’s cartoons.
“All of the good programmers that I have known over the years were self taught.”
Roger that. Somebody told me that which my boss wanted done could be done in MSFT Visual Basic for Applications, which I never hear of at the time. So I had our librarian buy me a copy of “VBA Unleashed” and went on from there.
OFD is into “Egyptian Hieroglyphics Unleashed!”
Quilting meetings. I know there’s some kinda deal like that around here in Vermont somewhere, but have never been to any of them. My quilts would resemble stuff from Hieronymous Bosch and the Breughels, father and son. Throw in some Salvador Dali for fun.
Maybe a little esher too?
Them folks you mentioned were seriously MESSED UP.
HBosch especially.
n
My son stole my Harshbarger quilt that my grandmother Harshbarger, my aunt, and my cousin made me about 30 years ago at the farm. They used just any crazy piece of cloth that they could find and it was beautiful. So, I put it up in my closet for safekeeping. I went over to my son’s house a couple of years ago and there is my quilt on his bed !
Everyone in my family shops in my closet.
Barbara went over to the flooring place yesterday to pick out flooring. We were originally thinking about installing ceramic tile, but when he was out to work up an estimate, Jay Shaw recommended plastic fake-wood flooring. It’s basically like the stuff that we used when we had our deck replaced in Winston. Essentially 100% recycled soft drink bottles, with pigments and surface texture added. It’s extremely durable, particularly when used indoors, and it’s a lot softer than ceramic tile.
Got URL ? We had a deck made out of stuff like that a couple of houses ago. It was neat. And purple planks.
“Maybe a little esher too?”
Yeah, M. C. Escher. Impossible chit to look at.
“Them folks you mentioned were seriously MESSED UP.”
Whatchoo mean by dat, kemosabe? Them pictures?
“Everyone in my family shops in my closet.”
Wire it up, homes. Give ’em a wittle surprise.
Mrs. OFD just called and had finished up her week of being a “hired gun” teaching peeps how to be instructors to help other people, and was driving down to a long-time friend’s house to stay tonight. She saw the sky turn black and just missed being hit by a friggin’ tornado, which struck just on the other side of the ridge from where she was driving. Sat in a Rite-Aid store for 45 minutes in Asheville, while a wicked violent t-storm blew shit up all around them; they were all ready to go down into their cellar.
But it passed, and all’s well that ends well.
My only excitement today was seeing a single-engine float plane come in overhead at treetop level and then land in the bay, tootle around a bit and then take off again.
Them pictures, yes. and the mind behind them. Messed up.
Got a full weekend of family stuff ahead. No sales for me this weekend.
Better get my “not screaming at the kids” sleep…
n
Oh for petesakes, that’s just the way them cats rolled back then, kemosabe! I can stare at them pics for hours! Could my mind be messed up, too??? Yikes!
Yard chores tomorrow and dealing with decompressing and angry wife on Sunday. Mothers Day! Another wunnerful Hallmark Holiday!
We all need decent sleep tonight. Tomorrow all hell could break loose. Or it could just be yet another doldrums day with not much going on. Hope to finish certain yard stuff and get a few other things accomplished.
Say, here’s a firearms question, sorta rhetorical; y’all may have noticed all the hoopla and yada-yada for the last year or two on all them rifle-pistols, you know, an AR “pistol,” with certain BATF brace rules and a whole chit-ton of other crap.
Why would I want an AR pistol for home or vehicle defense when A.) I can get or build folding-stock rifles already, and B.) I already have actual frigging PISTOLS that do the PISTOL job.
Other than that, Pax vobiscum, fratres, et semper paratus
Pax, pax, pax….yikes… we don’t need this…we don’t want it….WTF?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/05/paul-craig-roberts/are-you-ready-to-die/
Greg writes: “My CS grad program at [a mid-tier state university] is ~ 95% Indian. Most of them arrive being unable to code beyond “Hello world””
We get these at our school too. But…why is your school putting them into a grad program? We run them through our bachelor’s program, since they obviously do not have the skills of a decent CS bachelor. Many of them fail out.
As for why there are fewer women in coding than men, my personal guess is that it is a combination of two things: First, on average, women find communication with people more important than men. Second, men are more often the types to focus (if you want to be impolite, “obsess”) on some small task, like finding that last stinking bug in that horribly complicated algorithm.
Look at my wife and I: We’re about equally intelligent, we both have PhDs in computer science, we’re both introverts. What do I do in my spare time? Program, do math problems. What does she do in her spare time? Cook, garden, work with dogs. I’m exaggerating only a little (I also have other hobbies), but I think that’s typical: on average, women are more balanced – but in CS, obsession is actually useful.
I think obsession also applies to the fields the Eugen mentions: painting, literature, composing music. It certainly applies to top-level research in fields like mathematics, physics, etc..
But, again: Let each person do whatever they want. Plumbing is no more relevant they eye color, and no one is even remotely interested in how many programmers have blue eyes…
“Pax, pax, pax….yikes… we don’t need this…we don’t want it….WTF?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/05/paul-craig-roberts/are-you-ready-to-die/
“
Disinformation Review writes in https://euvsdisinfo.eu/the-show-must-go-on/
I stumbled upon Disinformation Review just a few days ago. Each week, it issues a newsletter by email reviewing the Russian propaganda, and how it is reproduced by pro-Kremlin media outlets. It is quite big, but fortunately, here in Romania it doesn’t seem to matter much as we are pretty much against everything that is russian, and we put zero trust in everything they say.
Disinformation Review is a project financed by EU, although EU does not take it as its official position. I think it’s worth checking it out: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/homepage/disinformation-review/
Wow, are you behind the times. If too many white men are working in the programming field — with its high pay and current high status — then that’s prima facie proof of bias and adequate grounds for lawsuits and other official action.
Amusingly enough, the one time I was in a face-to-face conversation with someone who was making the usual assertions about how important it is to increase diversity because we have to bring all viewpoints to the table, I challenged his assertions. No, it’s not obvious; please explain. As expected, the explanations quickly devolved to “you just don’t understand and I can’t explain it to you”. Not as expected, I wasn’t called a racist, a sexist, or a Rethuglican troll, but that’s likely because he realized the difference between calling someone Hitler from the safety of your keyboard and calling someone Hitler when he’s three feet away from you.
We get these at our school too. But…why is your school putting them into a grad program? We run them through our bachelor’s program, since they obviously do not have the skills of a decent CS bachelor. Many of them fail out.
Why? International tuitiion $$$. Plus the school wanted the bodies in the graduate program to build justification for their newly minted PhD degree.
In mainstream programming (using Cobol, PL/1, etc) I’ve found males and females in roughly equal numbers, going from 1980 to 2013. In systems programming men ruled. There were some wimminz who were good at it, but it was about 80% or more a male field.
@SteveF: Yep, I’m waaaayyyy behind the times. One upon a time (probably when I was a kid), it would have been radical left to say “treat everyone fairly, ignore gender, eye color and other irrelevant attributes”. Nowadays, the exact same statement is seen as far right. Go figure…
Seriously, this is a battle I fight in our school all the time. Let’s do X for women! Um…no…let’s not. Let’s do Y to get more women into tech! Um…no…let’s not. Let’s establish a special counselor just for women. Um…why?
All the time they’re doing this, and yet there is no equivalent interest in getting more men into women-dominated fields. For example, medical school students are now around 60% women. Which would actually be just fine, if it weren’t for the continual drumbeat of how disadvantaged women are, and how they need special treatment.
Things are changing – it is at least possible to express disapproval of affirmative action now – but it’s still going to be years before the Progressives and their PC nonsense really start losing their grip on power.
WRT gasoline/fuel stabilizer:
Be sure to carefully read the instructions. Usually buried at the end in fine print is a note that if you are storing gas/fuel for a long-term the dose is double.
Even though I rotate my stored gas on an annual basis I use the greater long-term dose. In talking with my auto mechanic he says that he never recommends using anything less than the double/long-term dose. Our small engine mechanic that does the annual maintenance on our mower and snowblower says the same (they come out and pick up, service, and return; they also return replaced parts and include boxes from the replacement parts, and provide a written description of all work done).