Currently living in Europe and having visited many of the European cities, I find Vienna to the best among them too. This is a really generous offer and one could save a lot of money.
I usually prefer making it smaller. As much as possible, I try to write the content in the subject, to make it easy for the receiver to decide if it is important enough to reply or not. I do write longer mails when necessary, but I find that the short version suffices in most cases.
Amazing feat. But funny to ponder about the fact that it took 14 years of work to save 1.5 hours of travel time. On a serious note, Hats off to such forward-thinking people.
I believe that money spent on education is money well spent. Building schools and etc, not only help to educate the young generation, but also provide jobs. An educated young man will be able to not only help himself, but his family and his surroundings.
I personally do not feel that there is a correlation between sex and maths skills. Its the stereotypes that result in girls not actively pursuing maths related courses. If provided the right education and motivation, anyone can be good at any subject. In India, for example, where the students have no choice but to learn predefined syllabus, girls do pretty well in Maths.
I personally do not feel that there is a correlation
I'm sorry that I'm about to sound rude, but...
For this kind of question it really doesn't matter what any of us feel. Our values, morals, aesthetics, etc. simply have no bearing on the truth of the matter. And none of us has sufficient data points (rigorous, untainted, and unprejudiced) to form a model that has any validity. We really only have two choices: (1) say "I don't care", and ignore the debate; or (2) read the study, then criticize methodological flaws if any, else deal with the results.
There is a third choice: "I care, but please bring a better case-study". As stated above, the gist of my argument is that all are born equal, it is the society and the stereotypes that shape them.
That's not a third choice. If you can show that the methodology of the study fails to account for this, then you've got a case, which I accounted for. But when it simply doesn't match your "feeling", well, I'm sorry, but that just doesn't matter.
By the way, I did not disagree with the results of the study. I agreed to it by stating my personal feeling instead of going by the article, since the article didn't mention the study in detail.
> Its the stereotypes that result in girls not actively pursuing maths related courses.
have you ever thought what is the root of these stereotypes? Historical oppression by males? Historically, males have had no problem "delegating" chores to women. Why producing tedious mathematical proofs wasn't considered a chore (what it in many cases is) and wasn't "delegated" to women?
> where the students have no choice but to learn predefined syllabus, girls do pretty well in Maths.
exactly. But when it is time for a real, not predefined, stuff and you have little to no guidance ...
There is a reason 2 sexes exist. Males or females are no better than each other. The Nature have no problem bringing together 2 sexes in 1 body at the pure biological level.
It is the behavioral and mental differences of the sexes that make the 2-sex species much stronger than otherwise.
Well, historically women were discouraged from doing anything intellectual. I read a biography of Ada Lovelace and she regularly corresponded with a medical doctor who in his letters advised her to not to so much math. It was believed that thinking too much would weaken the body. Good thing she didn't listen!
In adulthood, she also corresponded with her childhood math tutor. He wrote to her that his daughter was precocious at math, and he feared it would do her damage, so he actively discouraged his daughter... so much so that his wife complained to him that the daughter was now quite intellectually deficient.
Ada Lovelace only got where she was because she was raised by her mother who hated her poet father Lord Byron with such intensity that she considered it the ultimate revenge to completely prevent Ada from reading any literature, and spend all her time doing math. But most girls, like her tutor's daughter, were subject to the opposite treatment. It's not surprising that most women didn't do very much math.
>There is a reason 2 sexes exist... It is the behavioral and mental differences of the sexes that make the 2-sex species much stronger than otherwise.
Wow, that is the most bullshit explanation for sexual reproduction I have ever seen. The actual reason for the existence of sexual reproduction is still very much under research, but one plausible explanation is that it increases genetic diversity a la http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queens_Hypothesis
It certainly has absolutely nothing to do with making the species stronger. Natural selection does not work on a species level, only on the level of an individual organism or gene. If a species is not "strong" it goes extinct.
>she considered it the ultimate revenge to completely prevent Ada from reading any literature, and spend all her time doing math.
yep, her mother demonstrated a level of rationality no man can even dream to achieve.
>Wow, that is the most bullshit explanation for sexual reproduction I have ever seen.
you missed just a small detail - i didn't try to explain sexual reproduction. I was talking about existence of 2 sexes, which overlaps with sexual reproduction, yet is not the same thing.
> It certainly has absolutely nothing to do with making the species stronger. Natural selection does not work on a species level, only on the level of an individual organism or gene. If a species is not "strong" it goes extinct.
thank you. That clearly settles our discussion why women haven't been successful in areas where analysis of facts and synthesis of theories explaining the facts is the main mode of operation.
No, I did not. The existence of two sexes is only because of sexual reproduction. If organisms did not have sexual reproduction, and only reproduced asexually, there would not be two sexes. If something like two sexes arose in a species (i.e. one that is good at math and one that was good at cooking), it would speciate, because each "sex" would just keep changing individually; evolution is a chaotic process. Sexes only exist where there is sexual reproduction. The question of why two sexes exist is absolutely about why sexual reproduction exists; two sexes exist BECAUSE sexual reproduction exists, and sexual reproduction exists BECAUSE it confers some evolutionary advantage.
In fact, your confusion about this connection actually illustrates why you argument is wrong. IF it were possible for a species to evolve to be "strong" AND division of skills produced produced "strength" THEN you would expect to see asexual species with "sexes." But you don't.
>thank you. That clearly settles our discussion why women haven't been successful
You made a completely fallacious argument as some sort of absurd appeal to the naturalistic as evidence of your claim. Showing that the claim is blatantly false repudiates that claim, so it's relevant to our discussion. I'm honestly flabbergasted that you would say something like "I'm right because it's natural" when you clearly have a extremely poor understanding of nature.
>her mother demonstrated a level of rationality no man can even dream to achieve
Apparently your version of rational discourse is to respond to a claim that repudiates your claim (women were, in fact, actively discouraged from doing math) by insulting women.
>No, I did not. The existence of two sexes is only because of sexual reproduction. If organisms did not have sexual reproduction, and only reproduced asexually, there would not be two sexes. If something like two sexes arose in a species (i.e. one that is good at math and one that was good at cooking), it would speciate, because each "sex" would just keep changing individually; evolution is a chaotic process. Sexes only exist where there is sexual reproduction. The question of why two sexes exist is absolutely about why sexual reproduction exists; two sexes exist BECAUSE sexual reproduction exists, and sexual reproduction exists BECAUSE it confers some evolutionary advantage.
your post again confirms my point. You're very good a "housekeeping" of facts, yet you miss the ability to analytically transcend beyond the mere set of facts. The sexual reproduction is the _mean_ of keeping 2 sexes from speciating, and not a _goal_ of the 2 sex existence. The 2 sex specialization inside 1 species is what confers primary evolutionary advantage.
>IF it were possible for a species to evolve to be "strong" AND division of skills produced produced "strength" THEN you would expect to see asexual species with "sexes." But you don't.
because without sexual reproduction the speciating happens. Sexual reproduction is a necessary mean for keeping of (and not a goal of development of) specialization without triggering speciating.
But of course, you're not interested. You have something invested in the idea that men and women have different skills, so you invented your silly theory that evolution made men and women specialize in different spheres because it made the species stronger. And you kept on following the trajectory of the argument until it brought us to this absurdity.
The irony is that if you actually understood biology, you could easily make an appeal to the natural without inventing this dumb theory. You could have mentioned that males in many species develop specialized traits in order to attract females; human males could have such traits. In Belig's ground squirrels, only the males outbreed, and as such are the only ones that spend extensive time outside of burrows. Consequently they have superior navigation skills to the females who never leave their burrows. A difference like this could be responsible for differences in male and female human abilities. And there are a million more such valid arguments.
But you did what most people did. You rationalized. You had an opinion, and then you invented something to support it. Sadly, you knew almost no biology.
If you did, you wouldn't have missed the basic principle of the theory of natural selection: the variants which propagate themselves the most are the ones that you see go to fixation. There is nothing that drives a species to be strong; rather, individuals that are strong reproduce themselves.
Your basic problem is that you're thinking about evolution tautologically. Evolution can't predict that if one species turned into two, then both species would die out, so therefore it must develop sexual reproduction. Whatever drove those two species to speciate would still drive them to speciate. And then they would go extinct. A lot of species go extinct. Your theory requires that sexual reproduction emerges completely independently of an evolutionary pressure- which is ridiculously improbable- and then continue to exist even though it confers no advantage. This is absurd for any number of reasons, not least of which is that an asexual organism can produce 2x the number of copies of itself as a sexual organism. (When sexual organisms reproduce, only half of their genes get passed onto their offspring; this is hugely inefficient.)
>Tell that to an evolutionary biologist and they will laugh in your face. Wait... you already did that. I'm laughing.
Evolutionary biology, compare to lets say mathematics where my roots are, has a very large part which is "interpretation" and which is very susceptible to whatever is dictated by the current authority in the science (and/or by political climate).
With regard to laughing - how about evolution biologists who thinks that evolution, a large statistical dynamic system process, has produced different bodies for males and females (or are you going to argue that as well?) efficiently reflecting specialization, and ignored for the reason of PolitCorrectness another available degree of freedom extremely important in the context of the specialization - mental abilities, brain (especially considering that for K-selection behavioral/mental characteristics may be playing comparable or even more important role than pure physical body characteristics)
> Consequently they have superior navigation skills to the females who never leave their burrows.
For many, many generations ... Are you, as evolutionary biologist, saying that female squirrels have the same abilities to develop such navigational skills? When did they develop them? While never using?
Let suppose they did develop them in some past. Thus we can suppose the abilities are just dormant now. May
be the female squirrels also have dormant penises?
>- how about evolution biologists who thinks that evolution, a large statistical dynamic system process, has produced different bodies for males and females (or are you going to argue that as well?) efficiently reflecting specialization, and ignored for the reason of PolitCorrectness another available degree of freedom extremely important in the context of the specialization
I actually have no idea what the sentence actually said, but somewhere in there I think you're implying that some evolutionary biologists for reasons of political correctness believe that male and female human brains are identical. Like I said, most humans rationalize. I have no excuse for them. But in my experience, the stereotype is the opposite, see: http://xkcd.com/775/
>For many, many generations ... Are you, as evolutionary biologist, saying that female squirrels have the same abilities to develop such navigational skills?
Um. If the burrows were passed along paternally instead of maternally, and it was the female squirrels that moved about and the male squirrels that stayed in their borrows, I would expect that, yes? I'm not really sure what your point is. Or why you're talking about squirrel penis.
>Um. If the burrows were passed along paternally instead of maternally, and it was the female squirrels that moved about and the male squirrels that stayed in their borrows,
you must be kidding. "If". If a grandmother had balls, it would be a grandfather.
In the jacana, the males are the ones that are smaller and incubate the eggs (sitting on them to keep them warm), and the females are the bigger ones that go out and procure food, but the one that's called the female is the one that laid the egg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacana
I too feel that the Loser-pays scenario is much better. This leads to all parties trying to amicably solving the issue before going to court. Here in Germany, the person suing needs to send a minimum number of warnings before taking the case to court. This provides the defendant with a chance to pay off if he in the wrong, instead of having to go to court and paying the additional lawyer fees for both parties.
