I am speechless. Just in case anyone reads this and thinks having a C-section is painless: it's not. It's really not for the faint of heart, and it almost always happens after hours in labor anyway.
Before leaping to insulting conclusions about why women get C-sections, consider the most obvious explanation: this whole thing is just due to gestational diabetes -> higher risk of c-section AND gestational diabetes -> higher risk of obesity later in life for infant.[0]
>Stanley convinced a dean at Johns Hopkins to let Bates, then 13, enrol[sic] as an undergraduate.
>“I was shy and the social pressures of high school wouldn't have made it a good fit for me,” says Bates, now 60. “But at college, with the other science and math nerds, I fit right in, even though I was much younger. I could grow up on the social side at my own rate and also on the intellectual side, because the faster pace kept me interested in the content.”
OK, I might take a lot of heat for this, but I don't think it's a good idea to put a 13-year-old with college students. In this case, he was a boy, but imagine if he were a girl? One of the main causes of failure to achieve educationally for bright girls is getting pregnant. 40% of the fathers who impregnate girls under 15 are 20-29 years old [0]. So in the case of girls, this is a super visible obvious problem, but what happens with a teenage boy? I could see him getting in an abusive relationship or otherwise preyed upon in a zillion ways.
This article takes a blasé attitude toward the social concerns and cites no sources about the actual social outcomes for these kids. Let your kid study by themselves, send them to a gifted child summer camp, etc.
They called it "radical acceleration", but they don't do it anymore. There were some mixed outcomes, like mine. These days it would be considered unethical experimentation on human subjects.
Yeah big time. Not that it's ever easy for smart asocial people, but being four years younger than everyone else made it way worse for me. Some people managed a lot better though, especially if they could pass for older.
> OK, I might take a lot of heat for this, but I don't think it's a good idea to put a 13-year-old with college students.
These kinds of things are rare enough that they tend to get a lot of attention, and I've yet to hear of a horror story of the kind that people tend to raise in the abstract, so I think that between parents, school administrators, and the particular students involved when this actually occurs in practice, things are generally handled fairly well.
That's not to say that there isn't legitimate reason to consider carefully, but I think the idea that this is somehow universally an unacceptable risk in every case is simply unsupportable from the factual experience. I'm interested in seeing any concrete evidence that would suggest otherwise, but generalization from what is typical of age groups to cases that are clearly atypical for their age group is, I think, insufficient to make that case.
>I've yet to hear of a horror story of the kind that people tend to raise in the abstract
First result on Google:
>When Sufiah Yusof was 13 in 1997, she was accepted by Oxford University but left the school in 2001. Although she later returned, she did not earn her degree. It was later found she worked as a prostitute in England before finding employment in the social work field[0]
People in this thread are acting like denying these kids entry to college is denying them the opportunity to learn. I just don't think college is the only way to learn (arguably, it's not even the best way). We have online courses, we have all kinds of resources.
I don't think the students at Johns Hopkins are the usual sort of 20-29yos who would knock up a teen girl. And inasmuch as SMPY has been running for so many decades and has thousands of participants, if 10 or 20% of the participants were becoming teen moms, someone probably would've noticed by now.
Agreed on the bullshit. I think this might have something to do with me growing up in a certain hippy town on the California coast, but I couldn't get through this article without a lot of eye-rolling. OK, let's just put the whole drug thing aside and call it a hobby. You can have a hobby without having a pseudospiritual and vaguely appropriative justification for it.
Bodybuilders have a term that they use to describe the mythos that has evolved in their subculture regarding steroids and supplements: Broscience. This is the yuppie drug-dabbler equivalent.
Offtopic, but unfortunately broscience has extended beyond pharmaceuticals to training practice. This kind of thinking dominates the crossfit world with terms like "muscle confusion" and "failure". It's sad because I got into crossfit ten years ago because it was fun, something different every day kept me coming back. I didn't want to be a Navy SEAL, just to keep active, but the almost religious adherence to the training philosophy -- and the injuries sustained by several people I knew -- drove me away. Now I find myself sedentary and looking for something similar, but less pseudo-scientific.
I would actually argue that yoga is now sufficiently commercialized as to bear little resemblance to anything "ancient" or "mystical". I can buy a book, get some videos or take a class and hear nothing spiritual at all. (Side note: Mark Lauren, in his fairly good _You Are Your Own Gym_ covers yoga a bit). This isn't to say there's not lots of people selling the "spiritual enlightenment" line.
I think all exercise programs tend to have a something to sell, because otherwise how do you make money? It's an interesting balancing act, however. Your doctor can tell you "get more exercise", but that's a pretty abstract concept that requires planning, commitment and is by definition kind of uncomfortable. So a whole industry has grown up around branding exercise. It works, too. Some of it is better than others, but people, myself included, buy it. We might buy it because we're gullible, we might buy it because it's easier than coming up with our own plan or more interesting when executing it.
But the number of books that grace the shelves with words like "warrior", "ultimate", "prescription", "philosophy", "enlightenment", "Spartan", "SEAL", etc, etc, etc. is pretty staggering. But frankly, whatever works. Insurance companies often incentivize gym memberships, but rarely do they pay for you to regularly see a trainer, so whatever is safe that gets people exercising. I complain, but it's not even in the same league of problematic as unregulated administration of pharmaceuticals by spiritual leaders.
In practice, Yoga is pretty woo free for the most part. I was also concerned to try it because of the woo but my friends all said I'd like it.
I took some classes and not a single instructor treated the class as anything but an exercise class with some meditation at the end. I even took an "alternative" yoga class with weights.
It can be done easily in your home (if you have some space) and you can do great full body workouts. I was pretty much out of shape when I've started it two years ago and now I feel great.
Maybe this is something for you. Altough some people around Pavel (and Strongfirst) can come off a little bit cult-ish, but I don't think that it is too bad.
I have a few around. When I lifted competitively (15 years ago?) we had a few Pavel guys in the community. Nice guys but... weird.
My biggest issue with kettlebells is that my basement ceiling is low so swinging them is probably out and I've only got 7 months or so of outdoor training. I'll check it out, however, can't hurt to ask.
swinging shouldn't be a problem if you are doing the russian swing (maximum shoulder height).
For the more advanced exercises military press, snatch and clean and jerk you need a room where you can stand up with your hands straight above your head.
I am training outside the whole year, but it doesn't get extremely cold here in winter -5° to -10° Celsius is pretty much the minimum. But I am under a roof and so it works for me (but I have to store the Kettlebells indoor so the handles are warm).
We used to have a local ping pong group that met regularly and I had a few friends who did it. Then they lost their venue for being to loud and boisterous. Apparently there were a few people who were intense about ping pong.
Have you tried interval training? I've had the best return on effort with that out of everything I've tried (jogging, traditional gym work, cycling). It's light on broscience and seems to be supported by all the 'real' scientific testing. It only takes 10-15 minutes per day and it's completely self-guided (I use a timer app on my phone to keep track of intervals.)
Like HIIT? A bit. I did the NYTimes 7 minute workout for a bit to try and break out of a rut. It was pretty good, but I fell off that wagon too, partially lack of variety, I think. It reminded me a bit of basic training. I think there's got to be a market for guided training like that. They were often used for punishment, but I liked grass drills.
Except for the fact that Japan actually has a very low rate of workplace participation for women, I agree with your comment.
Feminists actually talk about this a lot, using the term "emotional labor"[0]
It is a bit like how the decline of religiosity in the US has led to a decline in social participation. It's clear to me, at least, that whatever your opinion on these institutions (religion, patriarchy) there needs to be a movement to fix the void in civil society created by their decline.
I think about when I visited the Middle East and how I would often see men on "friend dates", i.e. having a coffee together or relaxing in the park. They would often be sitting close, even holding hands. It made me think about the strange distance men in the US have from each other and how lonely it is.
Too much! To me, it doesn't matter how short the meetings are, even a short meeting is disruptive. My new manager is really excellent, though. She has moved all our meetings to Mondays and it is now very manageable.
It's not about the money: many of the people complaining are extremely wealthy. It's because they moved to California with an aesthetic in mind. They wanted rambling bungalow houses, palm trees, quiet boulevards, and sunshine. They wanted flea markets and VW bugs with surfboards strapped to the roof. Shops that sell homemade tie-dye and vegan coffee houses with patios in the sun.
The anger is because they bought and paid for a fantasy of California and now they are upset about the change, which they see as a bait-and-switch. Really, it's just the evolution of a region. It's irony that these same people are most likely to call themselves "progressives"
This sounds terrible, really! Which makes sense because I do not like Twitch etc. :)
The GP is getting downvoted, so I guess a lot of people do enjoy watching games be played instead of playing them. Thank you for providing an explanation. As someone who does not enjoy it, it IS really difficult to understand.
>Anti-psychotics (and benzodiazepines) are bad drugs that make people's mental problems worse.
This is not true. Many people are able to live high functioning lives thanks to anti-psychotics, which are sophisticated drugs that are very effective against psychosis and are the best therapies we currently have [0].
>> Anti-psychotics (and benzodiazepines) are bad drugs that make people's mental problems worse.
> This is not true. Many people are able to live high functioning lives thanks to anti-psychotics, which are sophisticated drugs
Investigative journalist Robert Whitaker [1] has looked into the "mental health" industry, and proposes that today's patients do worse on their medications than their unmedicated predecessors. It used to be that people had "episodes" that they usually recovered from, now they have chronic diseases from which they never recover (unless they stop taking their pills). There is no good evidence that long-term anti-psychotic use is beneficial [edited, originally said 'no evidence whatsoever']:
> that are very effective against psychosis and are the best therapies we currently have.
Are you a psychiatrist? If a person makes themselves psychotic by compulsively using alcohol and cocaine, and the psychosis goes away when they stop using these substances, and Science also knows how to help the body repair the damage done by alcohol and stimulants... why would you put the person on maintenance sedative medications, instead of helping them fix the problem?
I think a lot of it is that men are freeloading on childcare. Who takes leave when the baby is born? Women. Who is more likely to drop out of the workforce when they have kids? Women.
So, as it stands, it's really a better economic decision to hire a man than to hire a woman, even if the woman is cheaper per hour (you still have to train a new person and so on). As a woman, I always find this discussion frustrating because nobody admits this. Everyone just pretends that employers are being irrational and sexist.
My husband stayed at home with the baby at first and he was socially ostracized for it. "Parents' groups" (really, MOMS' groups) told him straight up they didn't want him to attend, no other men were staying at home, etc. People actually pointed and laughed at him in the street, and this is in Seattle!
Until childcare is a socially acceptable role for the dad, this whole issue is going nowhere.
The problem with such theory is that there is plenty of data from countries with different amount of male childcare, and by now it should be clear if increase male child care results in increase pay for women.
For example, Sweden. The data trend has been steady for the last 50 years or so that the work force is getting more and more gender segregated, with women prioritizing jobs that has high social status but below average pay. During that time, the trend has also been steady with fathers spending more time with their children, without the "gender gap" going down. As correlation goes, we could almost claim that fathers spending time with children would increase the economical difference between men and women.
A more reasonable conclusion could be that childcare ratios might effect pay difference within the same profession/title, but that aspect has been completely dwarfed in respect to the difference choices of work profession that women and men do.
I think you miss read there, I said that the trend is that Swedish fathers take more time with child care now than in the past. As in, 50 years ago, fathers spent less time on child care than fathers today do.
In 1990, mothers spent about 10 times more than fathers. 20 years later, than number is less than half of that. Has the drastic effect of doubling the number of days that fathers spend on child care and cutting the days mothers spend by almost a third had any measurable effect on wages for women in general? That linked article below estimate that Sweden will have 50/50 childcare by 2040, so can we predict with data supported evidence that income differences between genders will be reduced to 0 by the same year? I doubt that, and I have not seen any numbers that points towards it.
I don't see how I misread at all. 4x as much time off for the mother vs the father still tips the calculus to the point where it makes sense for employers to discriminate.
IMO it's premature to congratulate Sweden's supposed gender equality when the disparity is that huge -- Sweden's women still spend 400% of the time as their male counterparts on childcare. That's huge.
If someone want to put blind faith in their theory, then good luck. I personally want evidence to support my theories, where data can either prove or disprove it.
Going from 10% to 25% is significant, and 200% increase is huge by any standard. I doubt a scenario where there won't be any change in wages until its 50/50 and then by some flip of a switch all women will suddenly earn 20% more.
Freeloading how? By not doing what? When, and for how long?
I don't think perfect parity in childcare is worth some of the artificial contrivances that perfectly equitable circumstances might demand.
Modern society is not natural or normal, in a cosmic sense.
If you mean freeloading, as in skipping town and denying involvement in a pregnancy, your arguments hold water, inasmuch as putting a child up for adoption is a similar degree of freeloading.
If you mean father and mother both being equally in the child's continual presence for the first 24 months of life, I doubt humanity's general economic wealth, in aggregate, could support such practices.
Should children be raised by butlers and maids in the name of equitable career paths for parents?
Maybe we should all be raised in B.F. Skinner Boxes, and learn to walk through operant conditioning.
What exactly is wrong with a man wanting to stay at home with the kids? Even if the mom does it during infancy (when, due to breastfeeding and so on, she's arguably a better fit), the dad could take over later, maybe the second year. How is this unnatural?
Take my situation: I'm a woman, I make way more than my husband. I'm not the most lovey-dovey/maternal person in the world, my husband is. He did not have the resources while staying home that are available to women. In fact, he was jeered at in the streets and discriminated against.
IMO, people who smear a loving man being the primary caregiver for his baby as being "unnatural" are cruel and backwards.
>What exactly is wrong with a man wanting to stay at home with the kids? Even if the mom does it during infancy (when, due to breastfeeding and so on, she's arguably a better fit), the dad could take over later, maybe the second year. How is this unnatural?
It's completely unnatural. So is you going to work. So is your husband going to work. The only thing that would be natural is both of you living in the woods as hunter-gatherers, as part of a tribe of hunter-gatherers.
As soon as we start talking about "jobs", "careers", or any kind of society that's bigger than a small tribe, and certainly anything involving technology beyond the spear or any kind of written communication, naturalness has completely gone out the window.
>IMO, people who smear a loving man being the primary caregiver for his baby as being "unnatural" are cruel and backwards.
They're also stupid, because as far as we know, there's nothing at all natural about having monogamous relationships. We really don't know how our distant ancestors lived socially, and the best we can do is look at primitive tribes that survived to modern times like the Native Americans, Australian aborigines, pre-contact Hawaiians, or various South American tribes. Not all of those were monogamous (Hawaiians in particular were highly promiscuous).
Anyway, back to modern society, what kind of craphole do you live in where your husband was "jeered at in the streets"? You might want to think about relocating to a better city.
Oh nothing is wrong with it, but that's a way different story. A desire to contribute to or fully take on child care should not be mocked.
But I really don't think the commonly observed imbalance of sympathy and empathy one sees, when comparing motherhood and fatherhood, is a freeloading type thing.
Before leaping to insulting conclusions about why women get C-sections, consider the most obvious explanation: this whole thing is just due to gestational diabetes -> higher risk of c-section AND gestational diabetes -> higher risk of obesity later in life for infant.[0]
[0] http://www.webmd.com/baby/gestational-diabetes-you#1