groth's comments

They are not actually the exact same classes -- some are, if they are cross listed in the undergraduate catalogue. Others are taught by lecturers hired specifically for the extension school

(my credentials: I graded for Harvard Extension School multivar calc one summer. That guy was far from a harvard professor....)

tldr;

"The simplest answer to the question “Do elite colleges matter?” is: It depends on who you are. In the big picture, elite colleges don’t seem to do much extra for rich white guys. But if you’re not rich, not white, or not a guy, the elite-college effect is huge. It increases earnings for minorities and low-income students, and it encourages women to delay marriage and work more, even though it doesn’t raise their per-hour wages."

this is embarassing

These scooters aren't suppose to replace lyft or bart or muni. They're suppose to let you get from 24th mission to 16th mission with minimum context switching & waiting. This translates less well to manhattan but would (if theft weren't a problem) to Brooklyn, most 2nd tier cities in the U.S., and college campuses. I think it's a good investment.

how did you re-learn to read? I am ethnically chinese and have long been meaning to (re?)-acquire the mother tongue.

I find it works best if 'the long game' has short term appeal --

1. i.e. exercising in a way I find fun (jujitsu, dancing, swimming) 2. plan going out in a way that develops my social skills 3. save money but buy nice things that have low amortized cost (quality clothing, vacations, a computer that works...) 4. I think there's also value in making mistakes

tldr; adding bureaucracy makes people give up on everything.........even eating

not at all. the 'facts' are obviously out there, but it's not the job of a university president to promote them, especially when their facticity is a) indispute and b) promotes expectations and norms in society that could and do adversely effects a segment of it.

summers is still a faculty member at harvard, he's just no longer president, and no longer speaking for the institution

It's true that Lawrence Summers was largely ousted for an unpolitic statement; however, I would like to extend more credence to the Harvard Faculty, which collectively, overwhelmingly, voted to dismiss him as president.

1. I think it's important also to recognize that the "science" he cited was not fool-proof. In the way that most science is not (for example, check out the 50 year long & still on-going dispute with Phillip Morris about the harmful effects of tobacco). And that moreover, the specific reports he cites can certainly be disputed on the methodology (where are minority women? where are women of different socio economic classes? where are women working in technical fields whose performance do not correspond to standardized test scores? etc)

2. Even if Summers was absolutely right about sex difference between men and women, some of the outrage directed towards him came not from particular concern with his science, but the effects that such statements would have on the construction of a liberal democratic society (which Harvard, despite it's many follies, is mostly invested in). A society which operates on the truth that women just can't do math as well is one which condones expectations that adversely effect female participation in communities of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and tech-related fields.

*edit for formatting

Anyone know how burial mounds/roman roads are found? Would love to see that reproduced for the non-academic world.

I agree with you -- I never participated in these science fairs myself, but I attended a couple of summer programs where the majority of my cohort ended up submitting to these contests. The vast majority of people I knew who submitted (a statistically significant sample ~50) either seemed to have parents who worked in academia, or lived near a university, or just came from an incredibly privileged background (east coast new england andover/exeter or west coast harvard westlake). "Talent search" isn't quite right.

On the subject of whether the children who are involved end up doing real science -- I think they do, or at least they get a inkling sense of the research process. But aside from the difficulty of ascertaining the limits of human knowledge, they are also protected from the very real logistical aspects of the research process. Mostly, their papers don't get submitted to journals. Mostly, they won't be writing grants to fund their work. Mostly, they don't really have to join a lab for the next N years and develop significant working relationships with their peers and advisors.

As other people have pointed out, this article seems to argue that women should have work-life balance as if it were a problem specific to women. But that assumption itself is a huge part of the problem women face in achieve de fact equality. It is often taken as a given that a woman should be the primary care-taker of children. It is often taken as a given that woman is _naturally_ more invested in family life. It is often taken as a given that women need more life in the whole work-life balance equation. These sort of assumptions reify the norm that men work and women stay at home. Sandburg and her cohort advocate for an extreme repudiation of this norm even to the extent of abandoning work-life balance as a whole. One might argue that Sandburg is too much of a capitalist robot, but to revert in the other direction is just as bad, if not totally regressive.

The founders of snapchat should be pretty happy right now -- they have an idea worth stealing. And to push your apple vs IBM analogy farther, it seems that they could potentially still win, by building a product that is far and away better for a certain segment of the market (i.e. as apple did).

To address the deeper philosophical claim -- are big companies morally obligated in some sense, to not encroach on ideas currently dominated by some startup, I think not. The whole crux of your argument is that there's some well ordering on the timestamp of ideas, and whoever is earlier in the well ordering has some moral claim to executing the idea. As far as I can see, there's no a priori reason why this should be so, and there are lots of utilitarian reasons why this ought not be so. Just because someone came up with the idea does not mean they are the best agent to execute the idea. I might be a brilliant military tactician, but I might lack the charisma or fortitude to lead an army. In the same way, I might be a brilliant social based startup, but my same product under the influence of the most complete social graph might be tons better.

I am not saying facebook poke is better than snapchat. I don't use either, but I do think competition is healthy. Now what would be problematic is if startups did -- as your article asserts -- stop having original ideas just because they were afraid big companies would clone them. In that case, the government should probably seriously consider penalizing companies like facebook for scooping up the idea, if not by making them disable the app completely, but by making them retroactively purchase or pay a large sum to snapchat. I don't have any data to discern whether a "chill" effect is happening, but I would guess an answer in the negative.

I think you're misreading the article.

Kanazawa makes a claim that intelligent men are more likely to prefer monogamy because the evolutionary norm is polygamy.

The reporter/interviewer says "Really?". Because, here's the thing, Kanazawa's argument at this point doesn't hold. Just because somebody is good at something, does not mean they prefer it. Just because intelligent people are good at adapting to evolutionarily novel things does not mean they prefer to do those things.

Where does the preference come from? According to Kanazawa, because of paranoia. Humans appear to be designed to be paranoid; they are designed to see intentional agents behind natural phenomena.

"This is because making the mistake of thinking that a natural event has an intentional agent behind it is less potentially costly than being oblivious and thinking that an intentional event, like someone trying to kill you, has a coincidental cause. The paranoid outlive the oblivious."

I believe that at this point, he's referring to humans in general. Humans in general are paranoid. Intelligent people are extra paranoid, hence they don't want to do the evolutionarily normal thing, they want to do the evolutionarily novel thing.

Catchy title, but very suspicious article.

TLDR; author claims that intelligent people are paranoid freaks that prefer evolutionarily stupid things. What things are evolutionarily stupid? Sterility, monogamy, homosexuality, and other manifestations of social order.

Or, a scientific spin on fundamentalism.

I am in California. Does employer size matter? (It was a startup, but not a tiny one)

Any idea how I might go about finding the attorney? The websites "california employment attorney" turn off look oddly spammy. Also what kind of things would you look for in picking an attorney?

I am printing out forms for small claims now.

Ehhh, based on my limited experience with elementary school age children (younger sister & friends), a ton of them are already on facebook, albeit with misstated ages.

This move, might, like legalizing prostitution/marijuana, actually just make parental monitoring more efficient.

They do? Which companies? How do I find them? :p

because the lean startup methodology is currently the herd favorite...