jamesaguilar's comments

People drinking more in the winter should surprise no one. Bad weather displaces other pastimes, and people simultaneously feel more depressed because of the lack of sunlight.

With good reason, based on his posting history. It's pointless to warn someone like this that they are hell-banned. Any new account they make will suffer a similar fate within a small handful of posts.

On some level, that might be preferable because of the additional outrage it might generate.

I would like to propose a new hypothesis. Autism rates are linked to the incidence of people non-ironically drinking fruit juices to cleanse themselves of "toxins."

Likewise, the response will be muted the tenth time this plays out.

Don't you lose points for that? The tutorial says when planes pass too close, it hurts your score.

This article contains a variety of citations about screen time[1]. And here's some stuff about the benefits of reading[2], from the reading-to angle. There's tons of stuff like this if you care to look in to it in more detail.

Nothing in here is definitive. I am not saying that negative effects of screen time are proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. Personally, what I care about is what's most likely to be true, so I can act on that for the sake of my son. I think it is more likely than not that >2 hours of screen time per day is a negative factor. I think it is more likely than not that reading is a positive factor. I'm not going to wait for something to be 99.99% proven before I act on the information.

[1]http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/28/343735856/kids-and-sc...

[2]http://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/books/the-brainy-be...

Huh. I wonder if I should put up a bunch of positive and encouraging signs and images in my home gym to exploit this effect.

Also, my lifting buddies and I often joke around with each other with certain phrases. Some of those, like yelling, "light weight" after a particularly tough set, seem to cut with the grain of this article. On the other hand, phrases like, "no pain no gain," or talking about "this heavy ass weight" (not that the weight I'm lifting is really that heavy) cut against. I wonder whether changing our terminology/"battle cries" would have a positive effect on the work we can accomplish.

Very interesting link. Thanks for posting, iKenshu.

Difference is, reading of all kinds has positive effects on outcomes, whereas screen time has the opposite.

My parents and most of my friends' parents limited our screen time when we were kids in the 90s. I wouldn't say we grew up with "free tech" in the sense that you seem to believe we did.

It depends on what your goals for your kids are. It also depends on the quality of screen time. Youtube != Programming != Video gaming != Documentaries != Movies != TV.

Personally, my primary goal for my son is not to make him the best programmer out there. I want him to be a good, happy person first and foremost. If there are things I can do to make him a better programmer that would hurt the chances of him being happy and good, then I will probably prefer instead to hurt his chances of being a good programmer.

Screen time is one of those things that I'm somewhat concerned about. Some kids get a lot of it these days. I'm not normally one for fearmongering, but the studies I've seen coming out don't necessarily take a very positive view of its effects.

I really like your idea to give her cards. I think practicing budgeting and spending is probably really good for kids, and your solution feeds into that. Great job! I will probably steal this idea when my son is older . . . and perhaps I should also use it on myself.

You paid to get your PhD? I thought that was pretty uncommon?

> No, that is an overgeneralization of a very lazy mischaracterization of what I said.

I didn't characterize what you said, I asked whether I had understood your properly.

Now that you have clarified, I have another question. Do you actually believe that what he said was a controversial yet fundamentally scientific opinion? The man himself has acknowledged that there is not actually any genetic difference in intelligence, as far as we can tell. It might be different if the data actually backed up what he said, but as far as I can tell, it was simple racist ranting.

Nobody was punished for shirtgate. A guy apologized for doing something wrong. Everyone forgave him. The end.

> I am condemning the reaction to the comments

Are you saying that you believe it is wrong to fire or refuse to associate with someone who says racist things? (This was the reaction to his comments.) I mean, leaving aside the legal issues of having someone in a management position saying something like that. Morally, you feel that this is wrong?

Or do, and cut from other areas/don't get on the hoighty-toighty daycare/lessons/private school treadmill. But kids are definitely an expense.

> I'm of the opinion that the stock markets are now inherently unstable, and they will continue to crash every 7-10 years.

When you say "now," are you referring to the period from when financial markets were discovered until the present? Or some more specific period? As far as I knew, boom and bust are not exactly new developments.

Hedonic adaptation is the devil. You'd hope/intuit that spending more resources would make you happier, but that's just not the way it works. That said, you can use knowledge of this quirk of human psychology to make you richer and more secure compared to your higher-consuming self, not sacrificing any long term contentment or satisfaction to do it. Here's a more in-depth review of the topic[1].

[1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/what-is-hedonic-ad...

Some of these problems can be incredibly difficult. We used to use these to practice for the ICPC.

How would a driver come about these numbers? And 5% per day? Pretty sure you were talking to someone not in the know.