ballzac

Again, there are just too many unknowns to say anything about it for sure. I personally don't see anything I would describe as "reliable/repeatable". There are lots of circles, spirals, and lines. If it is some sort of interferometric error, or if it's due to some sort of wobble, those are exactly the sort of issues you would expect. I guess what you're saying is that these problems are everywhere. Well, almost every LCD TV has a stuck pixel somewhere, but we don't really notice it. Problems that small can account for large artefacts in optical systems, and there could be many radar dishes that have problems like this. I would still bet on some sort of aberration of the detector rather than external interference, just because I'm somewhat familiar with optical systems, and systematic errors are almost invariably a function of the probe/detector, or whatever algorithms are used to produce the image. Also, I'm guessing the bandwidth is very narrow, and this would decrease the likelihood of picking up signals from other equipment. But, these are just possibilities I'm throwing out there that are based on my knowledge of optics, and I really have very little knowledge of how these radar systems are set up for meteorology.

I was picturing a satellite as the detector. Of course, radar uses ground-based dishes. Looking up how the common technology works, it sends out a large pulse that looks at a fairly large region of the sky, so interference effects could be to blame. One possibility is some sort aberration causing minor distortions in the outgoing pulse which then cause interference with the incoming pulse as it is detected by the same dish with the same aberrations. Although it would be caused by an aberration that affects the phase, direction, or energy ('colour') of the pulse, and may be barely detectable in the outgoing pulse, the interference with the detection of the incoming pulse could be similar to moire patterns. Not sure exactly how this could cause a spiral. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Moire_Circles.svg A more direct analogy would be the scanlines/tearing/flickering you see on footage of crt monitors. The flickering is not evident in either the crt image itself, or in the recording of static objects, but the interference between them is clearly visible. Because the tv and the recording device would usually have the same fps, this would be a very close analogy to the detector/emitter having the same aberrations. In spite of the fact that the detectors are ground based, there could still be some sort of wobble, so the first option couldn't be discounted.

Would be really difficult to work out what the cause is without knowing exactly how their instruments work, but it's almost certainly some sort of systematic instrumental error. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that the detectors only sample small areas at a time, which would rule out large scale interference effects. I'm guessing that a pattern like the picture you posted may be due to a wobbling/rotating detector. These things are up pretty high, so even if it was only wobbling very slightly off-axis, this could cause errors in the location of a cloud on the order of hundreds of kilometers as seen above, and a wobble or rotation is a systematic process, so would cause very regular patterns like circles and spirals.

I hated braces. I didn't really need them as my teeth were always pretty good. But I always had pain from this one tooth that would always twist slightly as my teeth grew and packed them in a little tighter. I got referred to an orthodontist, and of course they will never tell you you don't need them. The pain from the braces was worse than what I had originally. Every time they tighten them you know it's gonna cane for a few days. I think they've pretty much gone back to how they were before braces anyway now, but of course I never wore my plate after the braces had come off. I don't envy you.

It's possibly a component, but the ratio seems very different at actual events. I dunno. I've never done a head-count. Dare I say knitting forums?

Or it could be just another example of patriarchal oppression subjugating the female demographic. Think about it. We have a patriarch who has handpicked a band of male mods. There would be more women on here, but we've tricked them into spending their time making sandwiches for the male members. It has nothing to do with the different choices made by individuals. Oh dear. I blame you for bringing up that thread, chilli I will shut up now.

Not at all. The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy never decreases in an isolated system. The Earth is not an isolated system, nor is the environment that life emerged in. Imagine a simple example of a decrease in entropy: A box that contains air that is decreasing in temperature. We call this box a refrigerator. The way we make it work is to plug it into a power source (a low entropy system such as a battery). The compressor reduces the entropy inside the box, but increases the entropy of the system of a whole by turning the potential energy of the battery into heat in the coils at the back of the refrigerator. As a whole, the entropy of the isolated system of fridge, battery, and surrounding air is increasing, but the entropy of the air inside the fridge is decreasing (which is fine because it's not isolated).

The title isn't exactly gender neutral, which might have put some off, but then again there must be some girls here who think of their friends' girlfriends/wives . I've always suspected that the main reason my girlfriend prefers it when I shave. Feeling facial hair down there must break the illusion Plus, I've seen her porn collection

In fact, read as much as you can on the issue. Read the report that was prepared for the U.S. Federal Government in in 2009 that collated the results of 53 peer-reviewed economics papers and found that about 5 percent of the gap was unaccounted for in the controls typically used. http://www.consad.co...al%20Report.pdf and be aware that even though this report was completed almost four years ago, just a week before he was sworn in, Obama continues to use the 77 cents statistic in his propaganda aimed at appeasing a society that has been influenced by a certain dogmatic movement. Read this article published in the national review, because it is a great summary of this issue and how dogmatic the presidential candidates chose to be in addressing this issue in order not to lose votes: http://www.nationalr...urchtgott-roth#

My main point is that discrimination has not been proven. You can say that women earn 77% of what men do, and say "ha, the other 23% is discrimination, there's your proof". But then a paper will come out that shows that some of this gap shrinks when you control for a certain factor. And then people say, "ha, so there's 12% that is discrimination". But wait, another paper comes out that controls for something else, and it turns out that only 8% is left, and people will say, "ha, there's your discrimination". This has been going on for a long time, and is basically identical to the God of the gaps argument which, if anyone is unfamiliar with it, is when a person claim that we can't explain a certain physical phenomenon, therefore God must have done it. But then when that phenomenon is explained with science, the apologist says "well, here's this other thing we can't explain, God must have done it". In the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson: So, basically, your discrimination is an ever-receding pocket of economic ignorance. Yet today the point is really moot anyway, because there are plenty of peer-reviewed papers today, the findings of which are that the gap can be eliminated completely by controlling for enough variables. If someone is claiming discrimination, then I want to see research that actually shows that some of the gap is due to discrimination, not just that they have failed to account for some amount of the gap. I think he was referring to the fact that we can't agree on what the actual paper you quoted is about or what its findings are. Neither of us seem to be able to understand how the other can be reading the same words and getting almost opposite meanings from it.

There's also the fact that the actual visual experience is a large part of sex, so it's kind of pointless to close your eyes and think of someone else when you can actually open your eyes and watch your favourite person put your bits in their mouth

In what sense do you mean "important"? Some might argue that it's more fulfilling for the individual to be 'present' in everything they do in life, including sex. As far as ethics go though, if everyone's cool with everything, then I don't see a problem with any of it.

Calling out the wrong name would be awkward unless you'd agreed on roleplay beforehand, but I have no problem letting my girlfriend know who I was thinking about, if she asks. I think the only problem may be when you're getting blowjobs, or other 'favours', because your partner is putting in all the hard work and someone else is getting the credit

Interesting. I was discussing this exact topic with my girlfriend the other day. For me, it is not so much about respect. It just personally seems weird to me to think about the partner of a friend like that. It depends on who I am closer to though. If I have been friends with a guy for a while and then they meet a woman who they introduce to me, I do not even feel the slightest attraction to them, not even involuntarily. But I have had plenty of female friends who I've been attracted to, and if they meet a man and I become chummy with him, it will not bother me to still think about her sexually. I was actually expecting this thread to be about the ethics of thinking about others when you're having sex with your partner, which I think most people do. I definitely do that, but it doesn't diminish the attraction I feel towards my girlfriend. One of our friend's in particular I've wanted to root since we met her, and thoughts of her have provided plenty of 'help' over the past few years In fact, I have offered my services many times but she has always declined, though I did get her to show me her tits one time. ETA: They were really nice

Okay raketemensch. It's seems like we're almost speaking different languages and you're right that it's probably best to let the article speak for itself. But, if there's really something I'm missing here, can someone else please explain it to me? I'm not being facetious. If I'm simply not understanding the paper or that paragraph in particular, I would really like someone to explain it to me. Maybe someone who speaks my language but has not been on my side in this thread would be good...I'm looking at you SYNeR

Fuck it. This one was too good to ignore... It's interesting that you chose to terminate your quote at that point. What was the problem with including the full paragraph? ...or even finishing off the section You are quote-mining. It is so completely dishonest. You brought up this paper. I am happy to discuss the actual content of the article, but if you're going to take a sentence out of context so it can look like she's saying that discrimination accounts for a large amount of the pay gap, then how can we actually have an adult discussion. The entire paper is about the psychological factors of the women that influence their behaviour in a way that causes them to earn less than men. If anything, you're making my point for me, because I didn't even know that factors like this contributed to the pay gap. Perhaps this was another honest mistake? You seem to be making a lot of them lately. Am I going nuts? I can understand that we may argue about what the results of research mean, but are we really arguing about what the paper is about? It seems clear as day to me. How can we even begin to discuss the details of research like this if we can't even agree on what the paper is about? I've already posted the conclusion in it's entirety. I don't expect many people here to bother reading the full document because of its length. I've noted that the abstract was a little vague so I wasn't going to quote it, but here it is: Wow. Just wow. Do you actually want me to address this 'point'?

I wasn't talking about Booth's paper. Actually, that's the order the discussion occurred in prior to you ever posting anything about the work by Booth, and the point I was making was that your data was consistent with my position. What you did when you then started talking about Booth's discussion paper is called moving the goal posts. You never actually addressed my point that you hadn't proven your point that anyone can throw statistics up to make their point. Now you might be conceding that the original graph you posted is consistent with my position? I'm not really sure. You still haven't addressed it. Are we done with that? Or do we still disagree. I'd like you to adress my point with clarity and honesty before quote-mining a thirty page document and expecting me to address it. I'm happy to discuss this rationally, but you need to put the work in to address my points if you expect me to give you the same courtesy.

^just when I thought you were out of ad homs

It only controls for "major occupational group". It does not even count whether they are full time or part time, let alone things like whether it's day shift or night shift, and it's not clear whether a "major group" like construction would include the receptionist for a construction company or whether they would be included in the "office" group. But construction would definitely group someone doing low skilled and low danger work in with someone doing more skilled and more dangerous work. There are many other things that could be controlled for, like how long the person has been employed in the company, how many breaks they've had in their career and for how long, their educational level... These are all things that depend on the choices one makes in life. It's not even that they are necessarily "bad choices" as you put it. It depends on what you want out of life. And considering it's mostly when women are married with kids that they earn less than men, they're also spending the majority of the household earnings. So I don't think they're bad choices at all. Choosing less stressful, less dangerous jobs for lower pay when your husband is raking in the money is not necessarily a bad choice, just a different one. But that data you posted is entirely consistent with my contention that the pay gap is not due to workplace discrimination. You say this is "definitely not consistent with (my) view". Can you explain why you say this in light of my explanation I've given...please? Yep, picking out a few 'buzzwords' rather than actually addressing the fact that there was no mention of any proof of discrimination in the discussion paper whatsoever. I'm hoping anyone who is following this discussion actually reads the paper, because it is about the choices women make that affect their employment opportunities. It is about a different aspect to the ones I've mostly been addressing. Namely, she is looking at the negotiation skills and competitiveness of women in the workplace, rather than what jobs women choose based on whether they want to raise children or not, which is more what I have been addressing. But there is nothing whatsoever in that article that provides any proof of discrimination in the workplace.

On Friday I heard him yelp and I ran out of the study and saw him lying in the hallway panting. I tried to get him to drink some water and he just slumped on the ground. I realised there was something really wrong with him, so I took him to the vet asap. They said he had a heart problem which had caused a saddle thrombus. They gave him oxygen, blood thinners, diuretics and a pain killer. They said that if he was going to get better, we would see improvement within the next 48 hours. We took him home and looked after him all night. He was weeing every half hour or so because of the diuretics and his legs weren't working because of the thrombus, so we were cleaning up after him all night to try to keep him dignified. He seemed better in the morning, and we took him back to the vet for a check up. They gave him some more pain killers, and just told us there's nothing we can really do but wait and see. A few hours later, he started having breathing difficulties again, and was in a lot of distress. Our usual vet was closed for the day, so we took him to an emergency place. They said that the blood supply to his legs was really bad. He had no sensation in his legs at all. They said that even if the clot does clear, he would probably never get the use of his legs back. We had also been told by the previous vets we'd seen that because of the underlying heart condition, this would happen again even if he gets better, and that he's very unlikely to live another six months. At this stage, it was looking doubtful that he would survive this attack. Considering the amount of suffering he was going through, and the fact that even if he got better, he wouldn't have enough time left to get used to not having the use of his legs, and that he would have to go through all this suffering again at some point, we decided to have him put down. It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make. He's always been my little baby. He was a complete sook, and I was always there to protect him. I feel like I let him down because I was unable to protect him. Even though I know we had his best interests at heart when we had him put down, it felt like a betrayal. I knew I would be really upset when he goes, but this has hit me harder than I could have imagined. I was having constant anxiety attacks yesterday after he died, and I wasn't able to eat anything yesterday and was throwing up when I tried. This was all compounded by the fact that I hadn't had any sleep the previous night. In spite of this, I couldn't get to sleep for ages last night, and I thought I was never going to sleep. Once I finally got to sleep, I slept well. I'm feeling a little better this morning, having had a good nights sleep, and I'm eating again. The house seems so empty. I just expect him meow at me to let him in, or to bring me a toy mouse. I loved him so dearly. He was the last of my childhood pets. I'd had him since I was 15. Here is a picture of him frolicking on the floor, taken a couple of years ago RIP Turvy

If the answer is not "A", and the last couple of posts haven't convinced him that it's "B", then I'm afraid that would sway me towards "C"

If the answer is "B", then I hope Raketmensch apologises for calling whitewind a misogynist Takes a while for her to get to her main point, but I think it's interesting to here this perspective coming from an African American woman.

It's a somewhat plausible hypothesis. I actually had three hypotheses and decided to only address one of them. A. deliberate misinterpretation B. honest mistake C. moron I decided to go the middle ground.

You know perfectly well that whitewind was expressing what he sees as the typical attitude of society in general, and not expressing this view himself. This, in fact, shows that both you, whitewind, and I, are dissatisfied with these gender stereotypes. This would have been a great opportunity to acknowledge a point of agreement from which we can then discuss who is more negatively affected by these stereotypes and how they can be overcome (points we disagree on). Instead, you decide to misinterpret his post so you can just argue.

I may have vented frustrations from time to time, but I'm more interested in having a rational discussion about the issues. That is seeming to be increasingly difficult. I'm aware of why you posted the those stats. It is along the line of "for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD", which is the way lawyers describe the fact that any good attorney can find a specialist who will testify to agree with their side. But in order to make this point well, you would need to provide data that in not consistent with what I am saying. You don't seem to understand that. I even put it in bold in one of my posts, but you have not addressed it. Here it is again: both sets of data are consistent with my position, but only the set you provided is consistent with yours. This means that you completely didn't prove your point. In order to prove your point, you need to find data that is inconsistent with my position. You haven't done that. And I've asked you to provide evidence for this. Actually, it is pretty clear that lifestyle choices do depend on gender, for whatever reason. Whether it's biological, or societal conditioning, women and men, on average, make different choices. If you can agree that lifestyle choices affect wage, then it's not too much of a stretch to see that gender may affect wage through lifestyle choice rather than by discrimination from employers. Exactly my point. There are many other factors involved. I'm not claiming that never married childless women earn more than their male counterparts due to discrimination against men. I'm using that data to show that the 75c on the dollar figure is nonsense because you control for two factors, marriage and children, and the gap reverses. This suggests to me that it is those choices, and not discrimination, that is causing differences in the wages. Now, I realise that when small sample sizes are used, you end up with conflicting results, and meta-analyses are required to work out what the actual results are for a larger sample. This happens which drug trials where a 12 patient study will find a drug to be no better than placebo, and a 20 patient study will find better than placebo. You can collate that data and work out what the actual efficacy of the drug is. But we're not talking about a small survey, nor have you shown me any data that conflicts with the data I provided, nor have you given any specific reasons as to why you think the data I posted may be flawed. A good theory should agree with all data. If you cannot fit all data to the theory, then either your data is flawed, or your theory is flawed. When you're looking at raw census data, that is a pretty big sample that you're looking at, and it's difficult to see where things can go wrong, so unless you can give me a reason as to why the data does not fit your theory, then you will not convince me that your theory is accurate. What do you mean "no meta-analysis of these huge surveys"? It's the smaller ones that need meta-analysis. Here you have a huge survey, with very clear data. There are not many controls, so you cannot conclude from the data I posted that men are paid less than women for the same work (and that is not my contention anyway). All you can conclude is that the data that says that women get paid less than men is bunk, because it changes drastically by controlling for even a couple of variable that involve choices made by women and men. One of the reasons I was posting very simplistic data is that it is a good starting point for a discussion, whereas deconstructing a huge research article or discussion paper is something that I didn't think anyone would bother with, so I thought post the bare minimum, and people can try to offer explanations. I find it odd that you are unwilling to address the results of a very simple survey (whose results should be accurate because of the large sample size) yet you post a very complicated discussion paper that I am then expected to address. But here goes: "Alison Booth of ANU demonastrates that..." a small component of the gender wage gap is due to choices that women make in the marketplace that are probably not innate and are mostly due to sociological factors. That is basically the findings in a nutshell. Although there is some discussion of the possibilities of discrimination, discrimination is not one of her findings. So what is your point in posting this? Even in the bit you quoted, she put "discrimination" in quotes and said that this differential is "often interpreted as discrimination". How on earth does this article in any way support your contention that the gender wage gap is due to discrimination? Being a discussion paper, you can't assume that everything discussed in the paper are actual findings of the original research, so the most important parts of the paper to actually work out what was found are the abstract and the conclusion. I found the abstract to be rather vague, but here is the conclusion in its entirety: In fact, the discussion paper is almost entirely about 'choices', or more accurately behavioural characteristics of women from different background, and how this affects their likelihood of getting higher-paying, or higher ranked, positions.