CharonY

Oopsie. Thread fast. Brain slow (also slight aversion against videos).

There is a quite astute observation made by a comedian.

That data is not quite as clear as you make it. Bone density measurement is often looked at in context of fractures and there are other factors such as body mass that are relevant to it. It also depends on where you measure it. The general trend though is that African Americans (I only have US data here) have higher average bone density (though 20% would be the highest case, the difference is partially less than 5%). The differences in other groups mostly vanish once you adjust for body size. Polynesians also seem to be higher, but on average they also had higher body mass. There is a residual difference after accounting for that, but considering the various measurement methods it is not trivial to state how much it varies.

Frankly, I think your list is quite exhaustive in a high-level view. Though as mentioned, there often not separate issues and the impact may vary. Especially for elementary school I would suggest to zone in on specific issues to keep things more tangible. Rather than natural resource depletion, for example, you could talk about loss of potable water, which also can be connected to habitat loss. Or perhaps also focus a bit on what we can do, e.g. taking a careful look at sustainability (unfortunately there is a lot of fluff there). I do agree with Ken that within the next few generations climate change could be one of the biggest challenges for humans. With regards to populations it is also important to note that not only the number themselves are relevant, but also the resource distribution and consumption. You could find some positive trends from Rosling's talks and also take a look at https://www.gapminder.org/ for some powerful images. At the same time one should keep in mind that every person in Australia, Canada and USA produces almost double the amount of CO2 of a person on Germany or Japan, who in turn produce more than developing nations.

Well, in my experience it is a tactic used by students to avoid having to redo the alignment. "I mean, what is a baseline anyway?"

None of the above. That is not how evolution works. Like, at all. For starters evolution is a process involving genetic shifts in populations, not individuals. What you are thinking of is probably most likely to be achieved by a selective breeding program (though as likely you are going to end up with a rather convoluted family tree and way too many teeth).

It should be noted that Russia is not the only player. There are plenty of internal groups weaponizing social media. After all, Steve Bannon was quite open in describing the overall strategy, with additional insights gleamed from the Cambridge Analytica situation. And talking about Europe there is the same thing. In Germany the far right party has been pushing propaganda and fraudulent news via twitter and facebook.

So apparently there was a huge row regarding the last Star Wars movie (I have not seen it and do not follow social media). Now apparently someone looked into it and found that at least half of the vocal voices against the movie were most likely trolls and quite a few bots. Half of the bots were likely Russian. From the paper itself: Somewhat funny, somewhat sad. The future of discourse in the age of social media continues to be an interesting experiment.

Funnily success in live works roughly backwards. Having connections and getting to the right folks is important to get things off the ground, whereas ideas are fairly cheap. As such it would indicate that complex minds get less done. Looking at current events, it may be actually true,

Of course not. Kavanaugh is almost certainly to be confirmed. That is what the numbers indicate. Clarence Thomas was also confirmed, so I doubt you will have many folks being surprised at that. And of course there is the political capital to be gained. Dems can say that they support victims of abuse and Reps can claim that they protected the real powerless victims: men. It does not matter that the process was actually designed with a different goal in mind.

There are a number of adaptations that make humans very good long distance runners (well our ancestors and those with actual exercise, of course). As noted John, it is not unique, though. Nonetheless, to my knowledge, one of the most cited study is by Liebermann and Bramble who proposed that although humans are bad sprinters, they may excel in endurance running (though the idea was around since the 80s). Theirs was a comprehensive look at various parameters and adaptations related to endurance running in comparison with other animals. At that point, as the authors acknowledged, there is not a ton of data on endurance running ability of other animals. However, among those they looked at, humans performed pretty well and certainly outperformed other primates. The expected performance of fit humans was comparable to many many specialized species. That being said, humans do not outperform them in every category and is some (e.g. energy expenditure) humans do quite poorly. Regarding hunting, that part is unclear. It is more commonly speculated that similar to wild dogs and horses endurance running is more relevant for traveling rather than hunting. It has been speculated that it could be part of tiring animals, but the counterargument is that it is very energetically costly, and hence may not be very likely. Another hypothesis is that it is used for covering large areas in order to scavenge for food, which is a somewhat more attractive hypothesis. However, at least in modern hunter-gatherers scavenging is typically only done opportunistically. But to summarize for OP: A) humans are good at endurance running, but are not unique; B) it is unclear whether it is indeed an adaptation for hunting or for other purposes.

Or rather the opposite is true. If law enforcement does not believe the victim, it typically does not to to a prosecutor. In the particular quotes as, already mentioned, due process has not entered yet, as obviously the case has not entered the judicial system. And in fact, if there is no assumption of credibility of the victim, they won't. Due process therefore cannot come before assessment of the credibility of the victim. And I think it is important to recall again what this process here is. It is not a judicial process. It is designed as a kind of political interview in which the public and the committee gets a sense of the candidate, depending on issues political points can be scored already as this step (though it used to be rarer in the past). Then, based on the overall performance, political capital can be gained by voting a given direction. In Gorsuch's confirmation Democrats in red states scored points by voting for a conservative judge, for example. Thus, the overall process is centered solely around the candidate to assess their suitability as a judge at the supreme court. As such veracity of credibility of the claim are (at least based on the mechanism of the process) secondary to how the candidate deals with it (again, think assessment center, if you are familiar with those). There is of course the political overlay over all this, as Arete and others have pointed out which has become more aggressive over the years (some point to the rise of Gingrich as the starting point). However, what I do see is there is a a lot of conflation of issues that make a discussion almost impossible as you can just take any one aspect with limited or no context and use it to attack the rest.

So apparently the FBI investigation was highly curtailed can after all. According to various reports they were not allowed to talk to either Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh. Also reportedly only six persons were interviewed. I would also reiterate that in a job interview the job is to assuage worries employers may have. As such even when wrongfully accused of something (say by bad reference, errors in background check etc.) One would expect, especially from a seasoned judge, that one try to rectify the view. Getting belligerent is a lousy defense and realistically would automatically disqualify you from any job.

That is much rarer than you think. It has become more common recently. In the 80s perhaps a third of all men with a graduate degree were married to someone with the same level of education. Around 2010ish it has doubled to roughly 60%. But with the rise of higher education among women, the reverse is also true. I.e. roughly 60% of women with higher degrees are married to spouses with similar levels of attainment. In Godels time women with higher degrees were even rarer and women were less likely to be expected to be professionals (and were often actively inhibited to do so). Also often someone pursuing competitive careers including an academic one, often benefit from a partner who is not a full-time professional themselves and thus can take care of pretty much everything else. This, too was more important in former times than now. In other words, what you describe as typical, was, especially in Godel's time, rather rare.

Indeed, considering that one nominee has been retracted for marijuana use as a student, this seems like a rather unnecessary fracas.

Actually I think you are overestimating the difference in complexity or perhaps the pathway in their development. Remember, folks have also developed throwing sticks for hunting. Moreover, there are archaeological findings pointing to both, spear and javelin use some 500k years ago. Of course, going that far back it would be difficult to find definite timelines (especially as either or both could be far older and only few wooden tools would be preserved in the first place). See, that is actually one of the roles of science. By establishing a certain theoretical framework we go from making all kind of things up to a more rigorous system. Instead of just postulating things we can start asking more precise questions: What can we test? What can we learn from those tests? How precise is our knowledge on a given topic? Where are open questions? You may think that ideas and inventions come from thin air, but in fact they are derived from principles that we may or may not know about. After all, if you build a robot there is no equal competition between engineering knowledge and occult demonology, is there?

Maybe we have to spin it off to a different thread but basically I am referring to a number of studies who have looked at things like the rise of the tea party as well as factors driving folks to vote for Trump. It is of course too simplistic to derive a single narrative. However, a consistent factor were certain, predominantly white folks who felt threatened by a (half-)black president and culminating in a backlash that was seized by the GOP. Race related factors (incl changing demographics) were far more consistent and predictive for GOP and/or Trump votes between studies than aspects like economic worries (which was at least a contributing factor) or even terrorism. Same-sex and abortion were barely a factor as a whole (essentially they were more or less a steady background, in fact LGBT worries seemed to have declined in the last years). Certain folks like Bannon used that specifically as a strategy for the Trump campaign.

Well Frances Arnold (CalTech) also just won one in chemistry (the fifth woman). In both disciplines (and one could probably include biology to the mix) women are underrepresented in faculty positions.

That is an important aspect. I know of someone who had probably average academic achievements and really lousy maths skills. While clearly not stupid overall intellectual capabilities were decent but not dramatic either way. However, the IQ tests administered were incredibly high in timed tests. As it turns out it seems to be down to very good reading ability. The person is an avid reader and is able to scan the questions very, very fast, answers easy questions almost immediately and is able to utilize far more time to crack the harder questions. In tests that were not timed and/or included more technical or mathematical question, the scores were roughly average, depending on composition. I.e. in this case two main skills were pushing scores, reading speed and comprehension.

My point is not that the motivation of OP is necessary in question. Rather that the general tone is indicative of a certain rather prevalent undercurrent of thoughts. I mean, within three hours of positing someone made an account specifically to post in this thread. While OP may not be a hardliner, the same talking points are used. While I am not interested in speculating regarding intention, it is important to let OP know the context of the comments they made and why pushback could be harder than other types of questions.

It is unclear who leaked the letter. The senator you may think of (Feinstein) denied that she or her staff leaked it and the The Intercept, who got it also said that she was not the source. Of course there is always the possibility that it was a ploy all along and just used third-parties to leak it. It is true though that justified or not Democrats are using it in a partisan way. But again, the structure of the two-party system together with the polarization in the last decade or so (quite of it seemingly based on racial fears) has undermined the cross-aisle mechanisms that were built into the process. Perhaps, but you have to remember that it was not a spur of the moment accusation. He had time to prepare himself, he knew that it was open and he knew that it was part of an application process. The fact that even under these conditions he could not deal with it calmly makes quite a few people question his judicial temperament (which the bar association already did a decade earlier and now includes quite some prominent law professors). And even if it he had less time to prepare, it would be problematic for a job candidate. Say during an interview someone in the committee digs out something that could be construed of you being a cannabis user, which would be disqualifying for your post. Would you rather calmly try to argue your case or rather try to insult the questioner in a fit of rage? The accusation may be false. The reaction, however, is telling.

And the above exchange pretty much validates (in general terms) your assumptions. If someone puts up a post such in OP (with whatever motivation), certain types come out and jump in. Like clockwork, really. Ultimately the world seems to be full of insecure persons who seek validation online. That, sadly is also how self-radicalization works. I am almost getting angry at the thought that there are certain... academics, who exploits those folks for their own benefit.

I will also add on top that biological categorization is to various degree also a construct. We are defining and using categories based on parameters that we deem useful for our investigations but they may only correspond to the actual system to a certain degree. To OP I will say that much of the aspects are down to societal heterogeneity rather than biological effects per se. And many, many misconceptions are down to rather awful studies by certain psychologists who preferred a strong narrative over strong science.

Garland was a SCOTUS nominee under Obama. The republicans blocked his nomination so he did not even got to a hearing. Gorsuch was a confirmed Trump Scotus nominee who essentially got Garland's slot instead. I.e. Trump was not even there yet and partisanship nuked a candidate. The start of this extreme partisanship was at the very least visible starting with the Obama administration, where the republicans started to vote en bloc. I.e. more like in an European parliamentary fashion thant it used to be. At some point a similar consolidation of the Democrats happened, though it does not seem to be nearly as coordinated as with the Republicans. In Gorsuch's confirmation three Democrats, most likely strategically, voted to confirm, for example. I do believe that traditionally background checks are not made public. Though this case is quite unusual.

If you only noticed now you have not paid attention. Garland was mentioned a couple of times. And you may also contrast with Gorsuch.