October 24, 2013

Instead of H-1B, why not American women coders?

From the NYT:
I Am Woman, Watch Me Hack

By CATHERINE RAMPELL 
When she was a little girl growing up in the Bronx, Nikki Allen dreamed of being a forensic scientist. As a teenager, she liked studying science in school, and she thought forensics offered a way to give back to her neighborhood. Not insignificant, the job also looked pretty cool — at least based on the many hours of “CSI” Allen had watched on TV with her aunt.

Allen, who is now 16, had considerably less interest in computer programming. ... 
Computer science is an incredibly promising major, especially for a young woman.

No, it's not. The richest, most powerful people in the country (e.g., Bill Gates, Orrin Hatch, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) are engaged in an open conspiracy against American programmers. Defeat them, and maybe it would be.
... Yet just 0.4 percent of all female college freshmen say they intend to major in computer science. In fact, the share of women in computer science has actually fallen over the years. In 1990-91, about 29 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in computer and information sciences went to women; 20 years later, it has plunged to 18 percent. Today, just a quarter of all Americans in computer-related occupations are women.

In public discourse, there's a common assumption that women in the workplace is this amazing new idea that was just invented last week. The reality is that feminism back in 1969 was pushing on an open door and quickly became the standard. Why wouldn't it? Did corporations not want more workers competing for jobs?

(For example, the Equal Rights Amendment swept through Congress in 1972 and was approved by 30 states  by the end of 1973, only failing to gain ratification when Phyllis Schlafly won over the public by pointing out problems it would cause that were unanticipated in the celebratory rush to approve it.)

As these numbers point out, programming was more popular among young women a generation ago than it is today. Admiral Grace Hopper, main inventor in 1959 of COBOL, the verbose programming language that was the standard of Corporate America up through Y2K, was famous in the 1980s.

There are a lot of reasons that computers have faded as a career for women, such as programming languages becoming more abstract. And H-1B visas have flooded the market with Asian males.

I want to make a few points that are often overlooked:

American working women don't benefit from the kind of globalized winner-take-all competition that Mark Zuckerberg and popular economists assume are indisputably good. American women like 9-5 jobs that aren't all-consuming. They prefer jobs where you can also have a life. Opening up the workforce to global competition for American jobs is often assumed to be a way for women to strike back at white males, but the evidence is in and that turns out to be a very bad idea. Exacerbatig the War of the Sexes is just another successful divide-and-rule tactic of the Top Dogs.

In particular, American employers' evident animus against American programmers over about 45 and desire to replace them with young Asian men would logically make programming an unattractive career to women. Because of the biological clock, a lot of women would prefer to work harder in their 40s and 50s after their kids get to school than in their 30s.
One of the biggest challenges, according to many in the industry, may be a public-image problem. Most young people, like Allen, simply don’t come into contact with computer scientists and engineers in their daily lives, and they don’t really understand what they do. And to the extent that Americans do, “they think of Dilbert,” explains Jeffrey Wilcox, vice president of engineering at Lockheed Martin. (“Dilbert” being shorthand, of course, for boring, antisocial, cubicle-contained drudgery, conducted mostly by awkward men in short-sleeve dress shirts — a bit like “Office Space,” only worse.) “I think it’s just about telling our story better,” Wilcox said. “We as engineers, and I’m guilty of this, we’re not great storytellers.” 

I think Nerd Liberation over the last few decades has inclined women away from computers. If you go back far enough, nerds were culturally invisible, just as they tended to be invisible in real life to many women. But now it's hard to be oblivious.
Public narratives about a career make a difference. The most common career aspiration named on Girls Who Code applications is forensic science. Like Allen, few if any of the girls have ever met anyone in that field, but they’ve all watched “CSI,” “Bones” or some other show in which a cool chick with great hair in a lab coat gets to use her scientific know-how to solve a crime. This so-called “CSI” effect has been credited for helping turn forensic science from a primarily male occupation into a primarily female one.

That has to be the worst career choice in the world. There aren't actually a lot of criminal masterminds out there to engage in battles of wits with (there are mostly idiots doing horrible things), locals governments don't have gleaming high tech crime labs with wall-sized computer touch screens like on the TV shows (they have a lot of good-enough-for-government-work fluorescent tube lighting), and any career that gets taken over by women suffers a decline in pay and prospects (at least if you are a veterinarian you get to work with cute pets).

(In defense of CSI, however, I suspect that it has slightly reduced the crime rate by depressing young potential criminals into assuming they'll never get away with crimes because the cops have these science fiction crime labs that always get their man.)
There is, of course, no pop-culture corollary for computer science. A study financed by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

Huh?

I saw Geena Davis in 2000 rushing through the drugstore without her makeup on. Let's just say that the lovely Geena the you know from movies and television has devoted much of her waking existence to thinking hard (and effectively) about makeup.
found that recent family films, children’s shows and prime-time programs featured extraordinarily few characters with computer science or engineering occupations, and even fewer who were female. The ratio of men to women in those jobs is 14.25 to 1 in family films and 5.4 to 1 in prime time. Whenever high-ranking people in the tech industry meet, whether at the White House or a Clinton Global Initiative conference, one executive says, “we almost always walk away from the discussion having come to the conclusion we need a television show.” 
Nearly every tech or nonprofit executive I spoke with mentioned their hope that “The Social Network” has improved the public’s perception of programmers.

I really don't think that was Aaron Sorkin's intention. I suspect the public was most impressed by the realization that Zuckerberg made $10 billion before he was 30. All of Sorkin and Fincher's expert efforts to make Zuckerberg look bad counted for very little with the public's perception next to the simple fact that he made $10 billion for a few years' work.
They also mentioned how bummed they were that the hit film didn’t include more prominent female characters. Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences now offers a program called the Sciences and Entertainment Exchange that gives writers and producers free consultation with all kinds of scientists. Natalie Portman’s character in the superhero movie “Thor,” for instance, started out as a nurse. After a consultation with scientists introduced through the exchange, she became an astrophysicist. 
Casting Sofia Vergara as a hacker with a heart of gold may seem an eye-roll-worthy suggestion, but the Labor Department has estimated that there will be 1.4 million job openings for computer-related occupations this decade. The skills required to fill these jobs can be imported from places like India and China, or they can be homegrown. ... The young girls at home watching “CSI” represent a sizable American talent pool that has yet to be tapped.

It would be racist to homegrow them. What would the Zuck say?

89 comments:

  1. The young girls at home watching “CSI” represent a sizable American talent pool that has yet to be tapped.

    Actually, they don't.

    If they are watching TV instead of learning something, then they are useless.

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  2. Dilbert is an accurate depiction of the life of the software programmer.

    Along with a variety of other jobs, including multimedia programming and video and audio development, I did this job for 25 years.

    You sit in a cubicle for 8 to 10 hours a day, ruining your back hunched over a computer. Almost no human interaction. Some HR fool like the Big Hair Boss who knows nothing about your job tells you what to do. Digging through lines of code for bugs isn't glamorous. It hurts your brain.

    I made good money. Almost no women, other than H1B Indian women, want this job, for the obvious reasons that there is very little social interaction and absolutely no emphasis on dressing nice for meetings. And, the job confers no status.

    The women all want to be in HR, where they can wear nice outfits, and enjoy lecturing the programmer drones on the wonders of Diversity.

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  3. That has to be the worst career choice in the world. There aren't actually a lot of criminal masterminds out there to engage in battles of wits with..

    The criminal masterminds that are "out there" are mostly affiliated with the ruling elites and can't be prosecuted. Like Angelo Mozillo.

    http://www.capitalismwithoutfailure.com/2011/12/bill-black-on-incidence-of-fraud.html
    (...)
    On the prosecution of fraud following the current crisis: We now have appointed anti-regulators. The FBI warned in open testimony in the House of Representatives, in September 2004, that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, and they predicted that it would cause a financial crisis if it were not contained. It was not contained. Since then we have had zero criminal referrals. They completely shut down making criminal referrals. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have not made it a priority to prosecute these elite criminals who caused this devastating injury.
    On the incidence of fraud : "Liars loans" means that there was no prudent underwriting of the loan. About one-third of all the loans made in 2006 were liars loans. The Anti-Fraud Specialist Unit of the Mortgage Bankers Association - the trade association of the perps - reported this to every member of the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2006. The Anti-Fraud Specialist Unit stated the following: 1. Liars loans are an open invitation to commit fraud, 2. Liars loans contain a 90% incidence of fraud, and 3. Loans that were named "Alt-A" were actually liars loans. So nobody can claim they did not know. After 2006, liars loans grew to comprise over half of all loans made.
    On who was committing the fraud: It was overwhelmingly lenders and their agents that put the ‘lie’ in liars loans.
    On whether executives knew: We have known for centuries that if you do not underwrite loans, or if you do not underwrite insurance, you will get something called "adverse selection". When it comes to loans, this means you get the worst possible borrowers. If you lend this way, you lose money. This is like betting against the house in Las Vegas. You could win some individual bets, but if you stay at the table for three years, you are going to lose everything. The CEO’s knew all about this.

    (...)

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  4. Jonathan Silber10/24/13, 7:33 AM

    ...the Labor Department has estimated that there will be 1.4 million job openings for computer-related occupations this decade...The young girls at home watching “CSI” represent a sizable American talent pool that has yet to be tapped.

    And when the NBA expands into Europe, there'll be lots of job openings for hoop-related occupations for boys who can put up 20 points a game and shut down Lebron.

    So apparently all the American boys at home watching pro basketball, and considering their prospects for a career, should be encouraged to hit the court and practice draining their threes.

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  5. I've commented many times before.

    I left engineering because a) I got burned out. I actually worked at the top of my ability unlike my other female engineer friend who coasted along due to her female and 'white hispanic' status. She married the cute blonde fellow engineer. Of course. Stupid white knights!

    My other female friend went straight to management as soon as possible.

    BUT...the biggest reason was the Asian/Indian Male. I don't like non-white Men. I don't like them smiling at me. That sounds mean and terrible but it's the truth.

    I went into engineering with the idea of being surrounded by cute white blonde guys. I always had a crush on one of my white engineering fellow students. When there was no white male to crush over, the female engineer left.

    You want white women in engineering, get us some white men to swoon over.

    (Also, I realized that white engineering men don't date fellow engineering girls who are competing with them. They date kindergarten teachers who were pre-med but changed once they got the engagement ring. I'm still sad about that. I hated hearing my engineering study buddies come back after talking to their kindergarten teacher girlfriends about kids vomiting and such :( :( :( :()

    Oh well.

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  6. According to a recent survey by Georgetown University, the unemployment rate for new computer science graduates is 7.4%, about the same as the national unemployment rate (U3). A lot of these jobs can be performed over the Internet, so they are easily exported. Plus, as you say, Bill Gates and friends are doing all they can with help from their friends in Congress to be sure that wages stay low. Not a very promising career path.

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  7. Elite America says:

    "We shaft 95% of Americans by suppressing their wages by any means possible. But we make up for it with obsessive nose-counting of the racial and gender characteristics of those in the top 5% jobs! That's how we prove we are the good guys!"

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  8. I'm aware that these H1-B immigrants depress wages for engineers and computer programmers. But they are smart and are able to earn substantially more than the per capita income. America needs smart people.

    I'd love to see us as a nation give everyone in the world the chance to take the SAT test and then offer a plane ticket and citizenship to the top scorers. I figure start at the top, a math-verbal of 1600, and just keep admitting people until you reach either 50 million people or 1200 on the SAT, whichever comes first.

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  9. I cut code, or hired people to cut it, for 30 years. My experience was that women make excellent programmers. They are more painstaking than men, not so easily bored, and pay more attention to detail.

    I once had a male programmer who was obsessed with trying to make his COBOL code rhyme (it's possible). Women are never like that. They just sit in the cube all morning chasing down the bug that crashed last night's processing cycle.

    Other things equal, I'd always hire a woman over a man for routine application & maintenance coding, which is what 95 percent of programming is. There's a more even balance of talent in the creative & imaginative side of programming, but you don't actually need much of that.

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  10. Women win in mass immigration, H1B by babysitting immigrant kids and adults as teachers, social workers, media yellers, etc. Nit so much nurses any more, that's Filipina now.

    And women win by sticking it to their natural and eternal enemy. Beta White males.

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  11. "This so-called “CSI” effect has been credited for helping turn forensic science from a primarily male occupation into a primarily female one."

    Did this make anyone else think of the scene in Johnny Dangerously where he's telling his gang about all the new and exciting areas of crime that are coming available?

    Another quote from the movie that fits this topic: "Dames are put on this earth to weaken us, drain our energy, laugh at us when they see us naked."

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  12. Being one of iSteve's socially liberal/moderate contingent (hi!) I've always believed that a huge part of Big Religion's love of immigration is because they reeeeeeeallly want traditional roles for women, but don't want to say anything out loud. That would mean (1) making themselves clear, instead of "letting it be known" so they can always have plausible deniability that they're not (eek!) trying to boss people around and (2) actively debating with people. Apparently, we should just know, dammit.

    That's part of the issue I have with the new domesticity trends. Sure, it's more likely that there will always be, say, more women in certain areas and they'll prioritise family over career, that there'll be fewer of them at the very top etc. Fine - not that anyone needs my permission, but I have no problem with those choices, whether they're inbuilt or cultural or whatever. (That, BTW, is what annoys me about feminist dogma. So what if I like the humanities and people more than science and machines because of conditioning? It's still at I want.)

    But I seriously question the timing. Just as soon as the jobs market for women collapses, they magically rediscover the wonders of the home? Not to knock said wonders, but it definitely seems like an attempt to put a sheen on the fact that they couldn't make it very far (especially in areas like technology) anyway.

    Traditionalists need to make their arguments openly, just as white liberals who want things like gun control as protection need to phrase their desire for ethnic togetherness openly. And they also need to acknowledge that, with businesses unable to import cheap, subsidised labour, there might be *more* women (even mothers) in the workforce than before. And the birthrate might go to replacement level. And so on, and so forth.

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  13. Haha I love when Steve trolls his readers like this. Two posts ago jody got about ten attaboys simply by whining about women in the work place. Something tells me the Steveosphere isn't going to love this suggestion.

    Of course part of the reason why Cowen gets to eat the filet mignon rather than beans is because that autistic ball of hot air figured out what David Caruso in Jade-like smooth Sailer didn't: if you gonna troll, troll people like Sailer not your own readers. He apparently also figured out that you come across as unimportant when you troll your competitors comment sections, but you maybe kind of made Gladwell stop blogging back in like 2006 so it was def worth it im sure.

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  14. Salary Survey: Average Starting Salary for Class of 2013 Grads Increases 2.4 Percent,
    http://www.naceweb.org/s09042013/salary-survey-average-starting-class-2013.aspx

    but the starting salary for computer science majors declines by 2.5%. The shortage shouters have some explaining to do.

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  15. I've known a few women programmers since I started at my software co 20 years ago. They used to be the thing, and one tried to talk me into getting back into coding again. But they're all gone now, some to Seattle, some to the local U. There are lots of opportunities for sure.

    But they seemed to be more stressed and impatient with everything...I have to admit the guys are much more settled and can sit for hours in front of a monitor and living on vending machine food without worrying about how fat they're getting.

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  16. Well, because they are not much good at it once you get past all the feminist propaganda.

    But your whole notion is flawed: somehow we have to accommodate some element of the victimology plantation; we have to squit our eyes at the real capabilities of people and not look clearly at what they do; PC (and therefore the government--or "society") should dictate hiring choices; the sexes are somehow interchangeable and "equal" in all capacities.

    Here is an idea: How about having male programmers. How about white ones? You know, the people that actually invented computer programming.


    We can then be competitive with the rest of the world.

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  17. Doesn't so much deal with who wants to be a programmer, but Robert Cringely recently linked to his excellent series from the 90's on the rise of the computer industry and one of the chapters dealt specifically with what makes a good programmer. Don't remember many women mentioned. Also reminded me of a quote I saw at one time, something to the effect that one really good programmer wasn't equivalent to two or five average programmers, but more like a hundred average programmers.

    http://www.cringely.com/2013/02/10/accidental-empires-part-8-chapter-2-the-tyranny-of-the-normal-distribution/

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  18. Women used to be more involved in coding. Grace Hopper is usually given credit for the invention of COBOL although it was a committee product. But whatever the justice of the case, COBOL was more female friendly.

    In high school it's clear that the girls do better in English and boys do better than girls in Algebra. This difference was mirrored, at one time, in computer languages. COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was designed to be English-like. It was said to be 'self documenting'. That means that it read like an English language statement of a business problem (sort of).

    COBOL is very American. It was created by the federal government and required to be used by those who wanted to contract with the federal government.

    In Europe they went a different way - a more masculine way. They adopted ALGOL (Algorithmic Language). The structure of ALGOL was supposed to reflect the nature of the underlying algorithm not the business rule. It was more algebraic.

    As it happens subsequent federal efforts to strong arm the computing industry the way they had with COBOL have all failed. Those abortive federally mandated areas include ADA in programming languages, CODASYL in DBMSs, and the ISO protocol suite. Instead the market has supported the C family of languages, relational DBMSs, and the IP protocol suite.

    All the modern IT languages and standards are now heavily oriented toward male modes of thought.

    Albertosaurus

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  19. "Natalie Portman’s character in the superhero movie “Thor,” for instance, started out as a nurse. After a consultation with scientists introduced through the exchange, she became an astrophysicist."

    Pardon me, but can someone explain what exactly is wrong with being a nurse? So wrong it had to be changed? It's technical and scientific, it requires smart and dedicated people, and it exchanges long hours and lots of frustration for a solid middle-class living. All traits it shares with computer programming.

    So what exactly makes them so different that women doing the former job is bad and shouldn't be lionized in media, but women doing the latter is a good thing that should be?

    Oh, right - because women actually like being nurses, want to do that job, and have been good at it for a very long time. This runs afoul of leftism's goal of permanent revolution against its two greatest enemies: reality and human nature.

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  20. There were more women techies in the 70's and 80's because a lot of the big telecoms took existing workers and trained them on programming in X or Y language, and suddenly you had yourself a developer. Inevitably, a lot of women were selected.

    Nowadays companies want you to bring background and relevant skillset to the table already, they're not looking to invest much in training an IT person after they've gotten them in the door....

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  21. Her penultimate paragraph is actually pretty damn good. How'd she slip that one past the Thought Police?

    "but the Labor Department has estimated that there will be 1.4 million job openings for computer-related occupations this decade."

    The other point she could've made is that there will also be millions of job closings over the next decade. We need these openings for American workers, and Americans in fields that are downsizing need to know that, if they invest the time and money it takes to develop IT skills, there will likely be a job there for them when they finish.

    "The skills required to fill these jobs can be imported from places like India and China, or they can be homegrown."

    Again...wow. How'd this one slip past the censors?

    "And right now, kids are not learning about them in school. Most elementary and public schools don’t teach computer science...The few that do usually only teach how to use technology...There is also the issue of recruiting teachers. The median job for people with a computer-science degree pays around $80,000 to $100,000; the typical teaching salary is closer to $45,000 or $55,000.

    I've been been saying this for years. One huge problem with getting kids into programming is finding decent teachers to teach them. The two programming teachers at my high school were quite possibly the worst teachers imaginable...in any field. That was the early 90s, and few men with good programming skills would have gone into teaching when they could easily earn 2-3 times as much in industry.

    Older programmers - the ones industry doesn't like - could become teachers, but they won't even try if we're still paying them the same salary as gym teachers.

    By the way, if you want more exposure for women programmers, you could get them to add a new character on "Big Bang Theory." Raj is looking for a girlfriend, it's the top-rated sitcom in the country, and she'd fit right in.

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  22. On the other hand, I have noticed that computers seem to work a lot better than they did a quarter of a century ago. You go, Charlie Chan!

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  23. "The richest, most powerful people in the country (e.g., Bill Gates, Orrin Hatch, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) are engaged in an open conspiracy against American programmers...For example, the Equal Rights Amendment swept through Congress in 1972 and was approved by 30 states by the end of 1973, only failing to gain ratification when Phyllis Schlafly won over the public by pointing out problems it would cause that were unanticipated."

    Orrin Hatch voted for the amnesty bill despite promising during his last election that he wouldn't. He voted for it on the contingency that the bill let in hundreds of thousands more immigrants (via H-1B) than it already did.

    Hatch's daughter-in-law is a member of the Marriott family. She stands to inherit about $500 million when daddy finally kicks the bucket.

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  24. Wouldn't working around all those (tee hee) boobies make the nerds uncomfortable?

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  25. I suppose all those movies featuring black computer hacker geniuses have spawned a generation of black computer science graduates...

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  26. I guess one thing which jumps out at me about the depiction of computer experts in the movies and TV is that the male geeks usually look downright geekish, while the female geeks usually like like supermodels. I recently watched an episode of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" (it's dire) and one of the amusing aspects is the brilliant computer hacker "Skye" played by the very hot Chloe Bennet - you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who looks less like a computer hacker.

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  27. Why not disabled American coders?

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  28. There is a practice known as "predictive programming" utilized by our "higher ups" that is similar to the Hegelian Dialectic in which an outcome is imagined, a phony dialogue created and a solution proffered to achieve this outcome; the proliferation of "CSI" shows is along this line.

    The outcome imagined is a 1984 style America in which neighbors spy on neighbors, and a part of the solution is to make spying and snitching cool. The CSI shows have caused an explosion in the number of Americans who want track and snoop on their neighbors, and the dialectic has been achieved.

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  29. Simon in London10/24/13, 12:06 PM

    American nurses are a hell of a lot better paid than astrophysicists!

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  30. The underlying theory is that there would be at least 51% of programmers who are female if it wasn't for all the sexism and male chauvinism in the tech world. The opposite seems to be the case, of course. Take as an example all the effort an annual New York Ruby conference has put into "gender diversity": http://goruco.com/news/2013/gender-diversity-report/

    I've noticed too that almost everybody who's anybody in the tech business has said that Marissa Mayer's decision to ban off-site workers at Yahoo has been a bad one but every guy who says so makes sure to add that Marissa herself is super smart and an all-round great addition to Yahoo. If it were a male CEO making that decision they would be as polite, believe me.

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  31. Programming is low status these days, and if there is one thing that women HATE HATE HATE...

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  32. No, it's not. The richest, most powerful people in the country (e.g., Bill Gates, Orrin Hatch, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) are engaged in an open conspiracy against American programmers.

    Orrin "Boyle" Hatch hates hates hates computers, programmers, and geeks. For him it's a generational rather than personal thing, being brought up on movies where evil computers/robots take over the world. His jihad against "pirates" is nothing more than "smash the machines".

    Gates, Von Zuckerberg, Ellison are more the self-hating nerds that climb to the top of the IT world. They don't have the industry itself, though, just the people that make it run. They also hate that part of themselves that is nerdy, having schmoozed with the Gordon Gekko-ish fratboys and 42-longs hanging out in the gyms and steroid bars.

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  33. "found that recent family films, children’s shows and prime-time programs featured extraordinarily few characters with computer science or engineering occupations, and even fewer who were female."

    Duh, that's because all the computer programmer acting jobs go to black guys

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  34. Notice and observe the NYT's own word speak regarding the example of CSI and Bones and the jobs where actresses are portrayed as "cool".

    Exactly what, however, in these pop culture references are being unconsciously referred to as "cool"? The jobs in and of temselves (highly unlikely) or the more practical idea from a woman's viewpoint: "Hey, look at the acting job that such and such Alister is doing. Awesome and cool! The fact that she solves all those hard math nerdy stuff problems and her makeup still looks awesome. And those lab clothes aren't near as silly and weird as I originally thought. I wonder who the actress' hairstylist is?"

    Practical observation: On the night of Monica Lewinsky's infamous interview in early 98 regarding....you know.....the inc's lipstick was completely sold out in America by the next day because women watched and saw...."cool lipstick! Liking the Anniston bangs but that lipstick! Who makes it? Where can I buy it?" They didnt just watch for what was said, but immediately noticed how she LOOKED.

    Boom. There you go. Unconsciously the NYT mentions it in passing without the QED to put it all together.

    So the real practical question: Do millions of women watch those pop culture shows for the crime solving skills OR for the (from practical woman viewpoint) cool fashion and clothing accessories?

    The answer......is staring us.....in the face.

    There you go.

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  35. I agree, we need less stereotyping of women on TV so as to encourage more girls into STEM. Along with hot white lady detectives in hip-huggers and their black sidekicks, we need to show more women at microscopes and keyboards so girls can envision what their future jobs will be like thanks to encouragement to go into STEM!

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  36. OT, but it appears that Maria, the luminous little blonde, is a Gypsy after all. Some of the accounts of her sibs in Bulgaria say they are albino, but Maria has normal eyes, so I don't understand that unless some albinos have normal eyes.

    The British papers are all over this.

    http://tinyurl.com/l33xddf

    Get a load of her mother. And the dyed red hair on some of the kids.

    It seems as if the Gypsy couple who adopted her didn't abduct her. And now, instead of growing up in a Gypsy dump in Greece, she'll be returned to a promising life in a Gypsy dump in Bulgaria. They've got to return her to her parents, don't they?

    As far as the two blond kids in the Irish Gypsy camp, they turned out to be Gypsy as well.

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  37. In public discourse, there's a common assumption that women in the workplace is this amazing new idea that was just invented last week.

    Could this be a consequence of many career women opting out of the career-track in their mid-30s? Lots of women (including my mother) took enormous effort to establish themselves in a professional environment, then after having kids slowly eased out and let their husbands be the breadwinner. This makes them invisible to new generations of women who have lots of career energy in their 20s; there are thus too few female mentors to establish some cross-generational perspective and wisdom.

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  38. It's absurdly unrealistic to expect to combat structural unemployment by teaching average people to code. As someone who has done some coding, I can say without equivocation it's very difficult - much harder than any advanced math class I took college. Its hard enough teaching kids algebra, let alone teaching them to code (also there's at least five important languages but only one algebra, but programming does get easier after you learn one language). In my decade working with websites and programming I have never encountered a female coder. Larry Summers was on to something, or in non-scientific speak it's just too damn hard.

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  39. Steve, Identity Politics are a danger sign flashing that income growth has stopped, for the foreseable future, and the game is getting a bigger slice of a constantly shrinking pie by screwing another group over.

    Consider, if GDP were growing at around 8-9% a year, and at least half of that were captured by a wide swath of the nation not just a few elites, would there be any support for identity politics, as opposed to getting while the sun shines?

    No.

    But if you are convinced (Green fantasies lead to pricey energy i.e. no-growth for decades, to take one example) that there will be no growth and America's future does not amount to a hill, or can, of beans, then identity politics to get your group over on another is perfect. And White guys are the ONE GROUP that can be played such.

    Compare say, White women, versus White guys as a group able to be screwed over by identity politics. No contest. This is because White guys have committed the one sin that is unforgivable (by women). Not being sexy. The central tragedy of the West is that prosperity is built on guys being unsexy, and thus for all the wealth and the security and technology, women HATE HATE HATE it. They'd rather starve with sexy guys than live nicely with boring ones. Its just the way women are.

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  40. The young girls at home watching “CSI” represent a sizable American talent pool that has yet to be tapped.

    Maybe not.

    We had a young lady working in our membership department who was working on her Masters in forensics. While she was here, she managed to collate the renewal notices wrong, so everyone got someone else's invoice. When I pointed out that if those had been DNA samples, she would have just put a bunch of innocent people on death row. She just giggled.

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  41. American women like 9-5 jobs that aren't all-consuming. They prefer jobs where you can also have a life.

    Actually, these days everyone wants a 9-5 job that isn't all-consuming and where you can also have a life.

    I'm 56. I never thought of myself as being a workaholic, but compared with today's under-30's I'm a regular Thomas Alva Edison.

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  42. "...any career that gets taken over by women suffers a decline in pay and prospects (at least if you are a veterinarian you get to work with cute pets)."

    Being a vet requires as much if not more courage than being a medical doctor. Most people don't visit a vet until their beloved companion animal is seriously ill or injured. Every day, a vet faces the anguish of a pet owner who must decide between having a dying animal treated or euthanized. It's emotionally less devastating somehow to let a female vet put your pet to sleep. Often times, they will cry with you and give you a hug when its all over, which has a great healing effect. Many veterinary practices will hire a young female vet to be the Angel of Death because the senior staff just can't take it any more.

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  43. Being a vet requires as much if not more courage than being a medical doctor.

    Way way way way wait. Hold it. No one's arguing that vet work isn't legitimate real medical practice. But dont ever DARE claim that a medical doctor doesnt have less courage than a vet does.

    Medical HUMAN doctors deal with the real thing. Fido and Fluffy, they are important no question. Yes, they are becoming more and more family members.

    But lets be real. Stage 4 terminal and the doc has to tell the person. THAT...take 1,000 times way more real courage. Also, suppose a new medical breakthru available only thru surgery because its still a new procedure. There is a possiblity it could prolong life for the stage 4 terminal for up to 7 additional yrs of life, and the patient wants to take the chance.

    THAT....takes tons of more courage to weigh the pros and cons and then proceed with the procedure. Lets keep all things in proper perspective in the big picture of life.

    Humans first, pets second.

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    Replies
    1. Life and death cases make up a smaller percentage of an MDs caseload. Also, MDs are selected for mildly sadistic tendencies -- they feed off their patients suffering to a certain degree. And by 5pm they have totally forgotten about the patient that died at 3 am.

      A vet usually goes into the business because they have a deep fondness for dumb chums. I think seeing Fido slip off into oblivion hurts him more than an oncologist who just heard his stage four cancer patient died due to complications from pneumonia.

      Delete
  44. Maybe women don't want to be in a workplace populated by men that come from a country where, every 90 minutes, a bride is set on fire because her family hasn't provided sufficient dowry.

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  45. I meant to say above:

    If it were a male CEO making that decision they wouldn't be as polite, believe me.

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  46. "Will underachievers have to eat more beans?"

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/101137659

    "Tyler Cowen's new book, Average Is Over, apparently paints a bleak picture for American underachievers, a group which he thinks will eventually include everyone except the top 10 percent to 15 percent."

    "It's possible that 90 percent of Americans will permit their wages to fall to the point where they have to eat beans. That's they'll sit passively by while the top 10 percent grow even wealthier. And that they will support a government that is less and less able to "take care of them."

    But that's not likely. What Cowen describes is a situation in which America is ripe for a political and social revolution. You can keep some of the people down most of the time, you can keep most of the people down some of the time, but you can't keep most of the people down most of the time. Not in the United States.

    Far more likely, long before we ever get to Cowen's ugly world, people will decide that there are better ways of taking care of themselves than submitting to a economy that only has room to keep the top 10 percent comfortable. That could mean hugely redistributive taxes. It could mean some form of economic protectionism. Or perhaps some Very New Deal we haven't yet conceived. Even if these are in fact economically destructive, I think many people would prefer to live in a society that is poorer overall but in which the middle-classes and lower-classes aren't impoverished.

    Capitalism has been the most successful program of the modern era. It has improved the lives of millions. If Cowen is right and it's next phase is widespread lowering of the standards of living for most Americans, it's days are numbered."

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  47. catherine rampell: "Today, just a quarter of all Americans in computer-related occupations are women."

    And 90% of all HR staff are women.

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  48. Silicon Valley Guy10/24/13, 4:05 PM

    What fun it will be for these girl programmers, working among (as things are trending) a nearly 100% Indian cohort of male colleagues! Meetings will be especially fun with guys raised with traditional attitudes toward women. Potential marriage partners? Forget it; the guys will import a girl from India.

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  49. And women win by sticking it to their natural and eternal enemy. Beta White males.

    Substitute Scots-Irish for "women", drop the adjective "Beta", and I think you are on to something.

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  50. "When she was a little girl growing up .... Nikki Allen dreamed of being a forensic scientist": this is a standard trope of American journalism. Are all small American children career hustlers, or as some just, you know, children?

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  51. "Exacerbatig the War of the Sexes is just another successful divide-and-rule tactic of the Top Dogs."

    Remove the word "Top" from that sentence, and it instantly becomes applicable to Whiskey.

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  52. The women all want to be in HR, where they can wear nice outfits, and enjoy lecturing the programmer drones on the wonders of Diversity.

    And don't forget the HR motto, Fire at Will. Too bad if your name happens to be Will, or some other post-baby-boomer white male name. Women, especially minority women, love that sort of power.

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  53. What fun it will be for these girl programmers, working among (as things are trending) a nearly 100% Indian cohort of male colleagues!

    I hope they prefer the smell of curry, rather than B.O. and four-color ink.

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  54. Matthew, the nursing schools are having the same problem. Who's going to pursue a Master's in nursing and teach for $80K when you can work in the field with your RN for $100K? Never mind that most nurses pursuing advanced degrees are going into NP and PA programs instead.

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  55. All of the women I've worked with have been asian immigrants. The pay is still pretty good even with all the immigrants (more than I deserve), but most women don't seem to be interested if they have much of a choice. It's only the ones from poor countries who are happy to have any renumerative job in America. They called it the "Swedish paradox" in that Brainwashed tv documentary series.

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  56. "I'd love to see us as a nation give everyone in the world the chance to take the SAT test and then offer a plane ticket and citizenship to the top scorers. I figure start at the top, a math-verbal of 1600, and just keep admitting people until you reach either 50 million people or 1200 on the SAT, whichever comes first."

    50 million Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans might not get along with each other.

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  57. John Derbyshire says:

    I cut code, or hired people to cut it, for 30 years. My experience was that women make excellent programmers. They are more painstaking than men, not so easily bored, and pay more attention to detail.

    I once had a male programmer who was obsessed with trying to make his COBOL code rhyme (it's possible). Women are never like that. They just sit in the cube all morning chasing down the bug that crashed last night's processing cycle.

    Other things equal, I'd always hire a woman over a man for routine application & maintenance coding, which is what 95 percent of programming is. There's a more even balance of talent in the creative & imaginative side of programming, but you don't actually need much of that.


    While it is true that on average women have greater attention to detail, at the right hand of the bell curve, where most Silicon Valley and other tech region programmers are from, this tends to be a wash.

    At that point, perseverance and raw IQ become the most important things.

    Here, we are not talking about payroll or stock-keeping programs but programs that run on multiple machines or have enormous potential for race conditions, deadlocks, etc, and operate at very high levels of abstraction.

    The number of women at three SDs and above the mean is much lower than males at three SDs and above.

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  58. I'd love to see us as a nation give everyone in the world the chance to take the SAT test and then offer a plane ticket and citizenship to the top scorers.


    You seem to be a little confused about what this "us as a nation" stuff entails, Einstein.

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  59. I was just thinking recently "I haven't seen Whiskey around for a long time", but this thread drew him like a moth to a flame .... a moth which constantly repeats "white women hate hate hate beta males".

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  60. Women win in mass immigration

    It's not possible for one sex to win and the other to lose. Our fates are inextricably intertwined.

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  61. It's not possible for one sex to win and the other to lose. Our fates are inextricably intertwined.

    Women tend to less lose than men since women reproduce more than men.

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  62. "Col. Reb Sez said...

    I'm aware that these H1-B immigrants depress wages for engineers and computer programmers. But they are smart and are able to earn substantially more than the per capita income."

    Actually, no, a lot of them aren't that smart.

    "America needs smart people."

    In order to remain "America", America needs americans.

    Perhaps America does not need you.

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  63. Television and movies, never a particularly accurate mirror of society, have gotten even less realistic over time - I mean, just in showing everyday details of life. TV shows working in dingy offices (if in New York) or anodyne industially lit offices (if in LA), and wearing off-the-rack clothes. Now they show them working in sleek, darkened power-offices (always with glass bricks - what's with the glass bricks!?), and wearing taylored designer suits. Computer programmers, engineers, and scientists - when shown at all - were portrayed as what they usually are - white guys. Now they're all black men or young women.

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  64. >I think seeing Fido slip off into oblivion hurts him more than an oncologist who just heard his stage four cancer patient died due to complications from pneumonia.<

    I've closely observed a few surgeons, for example, and they were tough (not unfeeling). Not sentimental types. However, it has been known for years that the loss of patients does indeed take an emotional toll over time. It can be something of a professional hazard; it is addressed as such in journal articles.

    >they feed off their patients suffering to a certain degree<

    A long-running popular superstition is that surgeons are secret sadists - they get off on carving up people. Your comment seems to be largely derived from that superstition. Personally, I consider the superstition as something only people like the panicky village woman character in the movie "Bride of Frankenstein" would believe. It is, btw, widespread among the homeopathic crowd.

    It's true that some docs take a jaundiced view of suffering, tending not to be unduly impressed by injuries that some patients consider terrible. A neurologist remarked to me that he regularly saw people who broke vertebrae by falling off telephone poles and landing on their heads. "My God," I exclaimed, "what do you do for these poor souls?"

    "Nothing," he shrugged.

    "Nothing?"

    "Nothing. I tell them, 'lie on your back for 4 to 6 weeks and we'll see.' That fixes most of them."

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  65. I hope they prefer the smell of curry, rather than B.O. and four-color ink.


    In my experience with Indian FoBs, they will need to get used to curry and strong BO.

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  66. I'd love to see us as a nation give everyone in the world the chance to take the SAT test and then offer a plane ticket and citizenship to the top scorers. ...

    Why not have everyone in America take the SAT test, and then repatriate the low scorers?

    I figure start at the top, a math-verbal of 1600, and just keep admitting people until you reach either 50 million people or 1200 on the SAT, whichever comes first.

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  67. Also, MDs are selected for mildly sadistic tendencies -- they feed off their patients suffering to a certain degree. And by 5pm they have totally forgotten about the patient that died at 3 am.

    That's an interesting topic.

    I have encountered some physicians who have the attitude that if a patient seems to have an incurable malady, then the decent thing for the sufferer to do is to hurry up and croak.

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  68. Oncologists and vets have to put patients who have recently died out of their minds to function. There are other patients and pets who require attention, and it's not their job (or their owners') to be therapists.

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  69. Coding: 'Suitable for exceptionally dull weirdos'.

    So why exactly would bright young women want to become coders?

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  70. I ran into Geena Davis at a local diner recently. She looked astoundingly good for her age.

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  71. The most vivid is going to Mississippi in the spring of 1967 where I also met my wife, Marian. We went there to hold hearings highlighting the importance of the multi-county Head Start program. There was tremendous political pressure to defund that program.

    Marian was not only the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund office in Mississippi at the age of 27, she was also general counsel to the Child Development Group of Mississippi. She was meant to testify about Head Start, but instead discussed the near-starvation going on in Mississippi. So the Senate subcommittee and staff went and saw children in the United States of America in 1967 who were tangibly severely malnourished—bloated bellies, running sores that wouldn’t heal. It was this incredibly awful, powerful experience that’s with me all the time. I’ll never ever forget seeing those hungry children. Seeing things stokes one’s commitment to make a difference.
    This is what got the left going, the US in rural south places use to be like rural mexico before the Food Stamps. So, Tyler Cowen is wrong, Republicans win the placed looks like San Diego in 1980 not like the Rio Grande Today.

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  72. Penny Al Arrabbiata10/25/13, 3:10 PM

    Women win in mass immigration

    What dumbshit wrote this? Whiskey? I mighta known.

    Women suffer more from mass immigration than do men. Illegals/immigrants take a lot of women's jobs, too, and women feel far more vulnerable in dangerous parts of town than men are.

    Women are the like all those white liberals fleeing California who know it's turned to awful but have with that brainwash-induced mental block that precludes them from identifying the root cause.

    Women tend to be less opposed to mass immigration to it because they're far less analytical than men and are far more susceptible to touchy-feely political arguments.

    More than that, working class women need working class men who can help pay the bills. When men don't feel financially stable, they don't marry, don't commit, and women suffer every bit as much.

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  73. Penny Al Arrabbiata10/25/13, 3:34 PM

    "OT, but it appears that Maria, the luminous little blonde, is a Gypsy after all. Some of the accounts of her sibs in Bulgaria say they are albino, but Maria has normal eyes, so I don't understand that unless some albinos have normal eyes."

    An article in the Mirror quotes the "adoptive" father as saying she had problems with her eyes. Albinos often have vision problems, but their eyes are often blue, not always pink.

    This outcome is what I suspected when no one came forward in the first few days. The real mother has 8 or 10 kids, many of whom are very light skinned.

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  74. The best hackers were already hacking in jr high. They didnt need teachers or a high school class(when they take such classes they run circles around their "teacher) . They are exclusively boys. They dont watch TV.

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  75. I'd love to see us as a nation give everyone in the world the chance to take the SAT test and then offer a plane ticket and citizenship to the top scorers. I figure start at the top, a math-verbal of 1600, and just keep admitting people until you reach either 50 million people or 1200 on the SAT, whichever comes first.

    I think Israel should go first. If they're not smart enough to implement your brilliant plan, then what hope have we goyische kopfs?

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  76. I ran into Geena Davis at a local diner recently. She looked astoundingly good for her age.

    She married a plastic surgeon not too long ago.

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  77. Women tend to be less opposed to mass immigration to it because they're far less analytical than men and are far more susceptible to touchy-feely political arguments.

    Women lose less since more women tend to reproduce than men. Male reproduction is more susceptible to control and dominance of a territory.

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  78. When I switched to UCLA as my medical provider around 2005, I scheduled a meet and greet appointment with their non-Hodgkins lymphoma doctor just in case I ever needed an NHL oncologist again.

    The poor man came in looking like he'd had a tragic day with his patients. He asked me what he could do for me. I said I just wanted to have a brief meeting in case I ever relapsed, but I'd been fine for 8 years, and that you NHL doctors are doing great these days in fighting this cancer.

    He was stunned for a couple of seconds and then he broke into a huge smile. I'd made his day.

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  79. Penny Al Arrabbiata10/25/13, 7:32 PM

    "Women lose less since more women tend to reproduce than men."

    If amount of reproduction were the measure of success and/or happiness, then birthrates wouldn't be falling catastrophically and billionaires would all have 60 children.

    The number of your progeny is not, for most people, a measure of success.


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  80. If amount of reproduction were the measure of success and/or happiness, then birthrates wouldn't be falling catastrophically and billionaires would all have 60 children.

    The number of your progeny is not, for most people, a measure of success.


    The majority of people are actually less successful and less happy these days as birth rates have fallen, and greater wealth these days does correlate with greater fertility for men after a certain threshold (billionaires are far beyond this threshold), so I'm not sure why you're bringing this up.

    Having children is a major factor in people's happiness.

    Women have less to lose in an ultimate sense since more women tend to reproduce than men, whose reproductive success is more sensitive to control and dominance of territory.

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  81. Penny Al Arrabbiata10/25/13, 11:38 PM

    "Women have less to lose in an ultimate sense since more women tend to reproduce than men, whose reproductive success is more sensitive to control and dominance of territory."

    Territorialism affecting men's reproductive success is an interesting hypothesis.

    In white, Western countries, the government now has almost a complete monopoly on violence. The net effect, ironically, most benefits blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims - groups willing to use intimidation and violence to mark their territory.

    End result: blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims can live anywhere they choose. Whites can only live in white neighborhoods.

    But overall, when men lose, women lose. Women lose because the men who are losing are quite often their husbands or fathers or sons, or their; or their would-be husbands - economically struggling men don't get married. A husband is almost always better than a government welfare check.

    Whether one gender loses slightly more than the other is irrelevant.

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  82. Territorialism affecting men's reproductive success is an interesting hypothesis.

    It's not a hypothesis. It's a fact of nature regarding all sexual species.

    It's not a slight difference. It's significant. Male reproduction is tied to territoriality in a way that female reproduction isn't.

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  83. If only it were possible to throw McCain\Zuckerberg\Gates in jail for treason

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  84. Wouldn't working around all those (tee hee) boobies make the nerds uncomfortable?

    You know what you need, Steve? You need to give readers a way to up- and down-vote comments, and you need to regularly ban sh*tposters.

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  85. Maybe women don't want to be in a workplace populated by men that come from a country where, every 90 minutes, a bride is set on fire because her family hasn't provided sufficient dowry.

    Will someone just pay her frickin' dowry already? Jeez, that must hurt.

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  86. Ah, yet another one of those "not enough women in X" articles. Did they ever think women simply were not made for those jobs? Nope. Affirmative Action solved that. If any woman gets a C. Sc degree, the standards are lowered and she is getting a helping hand.

    I LOL'ed at that India comment. Out of a country of 1 billion people, how many actually ARE intelligent? You import lackwits, you get lackwits.

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  87. Sort of OT... A young billionaire clothes his wolfish desire for profit in liberal bromides. Throwing the equivalent of chump change (to him) at politics, he discovers that politicians are so predictable. Venal. Playthings, really.

    He gets a taste for it. The power! The influence! Ten years later, Khodorkovsky is still in prison.

    The Zuck? He only eats beans when he orders a burrito.

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  88. Yes, cast Sofia Vergara in a movie about it, why did that occur to no one. Also the next women-in-the-workforce info-narrative could be ghostwritten by CAA's or WME's reps on behalf of the other middle-aged actresses out there cooling their heels

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