bjo590

It would be revolutionary if "recommendations" wasn't a modern synonym for "advertisements"

I don't need to see a negotiated contract. I need to see a list of grievances the union wants to negotiate for. So far everything I have ever wanted but not had from an employer I was able to find by switching employers. What is something concrete that would make my life better that I can only get by joining a union?

Does this apply to motorcycles/motortrikes? It seems to use the term "passenger vehicle" which is a bit ambiguous.

> Dyslexia also has an IQ component which means those with low IQ are not dyslexic even if they otherwise have the same symptoms.

A person with IQ 100 (or whatever the mean IQ is) learning to read slower than average is different than a person with IQ 60 learning to read slower than average. You cannot completely remove the IQ component.

> We do have a term: slow to learn to read.

There are dozens of reasons a child can be slow to learn how to read. They could have not have access to education. They could has poor eye sight. They could be malnourished. They could have difficulties learning in general. Dyslexia means "Slow to learn how to read, despite no obvious influencing factors." It's a bit of a catch-all. There might be treatments for dyslexic children that also help other children learn how to read, but it's likely that non-dyslexic children will need treatments that will not apply to dyslexic children.

Dyslexia has more than 3 million cases in the US every year. It's common. When given the right treatments their quality of life can be improved greatly. I do not want to remove the classification of dyslexic, because it might jeopardize the way those children receive treatment.

EDIT: "Dyslexia has more than 3 million cases in the US every year." You can see the dyslexia in my writing style right there....

> The method for diagnosing dyslexia, known as the discrepancy model, was relatively straightforward: test a child’s IQ and their reading age, and if there was a discrepancy between the two – average-to-high IQ, low literacy – that child was dyslexic. Elliott felt unsure about these assessments. The children he tested for dyslexia all struggled to read and write – that much was clear – but their literacy difficulties manifested in different ways.

I'm a dyslexic, and I was given extra attention is school that significantly helped me. I have a pet theory, and this article seems to agree with it to some extent, that there are several or many different neurological conditions that are often put in the same label 'dyslexia'. I hope that one day more research is done to separate out the different underlying neurological states so we can better teach all children to read. The article's conclusion -- that because dyslexia is an inprecise term we should abandoned it to an even less precise term -- is flawed. We should instead work towards creating more precise language and understanding around the different ways low literacy manifests in children.

If I was an incredibly wealthy technocrat this would be a pet research field of mine. If we can improve childhood literacy education it will have massive returns on that person's lifetime contribution to society. Understanding how the brain processes language also has significant implications for other lines of research as well.

They are all playing the same game, but the niches they found success force them to play differently. Google tried to take over fb.com with g+. FB tried to attack android with fb phones. They both are fighting over direct direct messaging with Hangouts/messenger/whatsapp. There is just as much politics in Youtube as there is in Facebook.

I significantly prefer blister packs over pill bottles. Blister packs are easier to travel with. They take up less space in my medical cabinet. I can see how many pills I have left without looking inside of an opaque container. I actually would feel safer if my pills were packaged in a factory by a machine than at a pharmacy by a human.

It fits so far out of our theoretical models that it's unfair to say it isn't proven or disproven. There are virtually infinite hypothesis that are neither proven nor disproven experimentally, but because theory states it's impossible we don't consider them worth testing.

> leap seconds

Over long periods of time the approximation that a day takes 86400 SI seconds will become less and less accurate as the rotational period of the Earth changes. I wish calendars would be either purely astronomical in nature or purely SI in nature. Hybrid systems like UTC become more and more messy over time as the amount of adjustment needed increases. We've had ~25 leap seconds in UTC already, and it's a relatively young calendar system.

EDIT: I also wish we would change the name of the SI measurement "second". An SI second and an astronomical second are two different things, and deserve two different names.

Putting another $10m to follow it would be chasing good money after bad, and fall into the sunk cost fallacy.

Some napkin math.

How long would it take a nuclear powered EmDrive to push a fully loaded semitrailer from 0m/s to the speed of the interntional space station?

The maximum mass for a semi-truck fully loaded is 36000kg. The EmDrive generates 12millinewtons per kw. 1n = 1kg*(1m/s^2). Leo ~=7.66km/s^. A nuclear reactor produces ~1gw. We would need 275760000N to accelerate a semi truck to leo speeds. A nuclear powered EmDrive would take ~265 days to push a semi truck to low earth orbit speeds.

The escape velocity of Earth's orbit is 11.19 km/s, and if you were going to take humans on the trip you'd need much more cargo than 36000kg. Granted, you wouldn't have to move the craft from 11.19km/s to 0km/s and then 0km/s to 11.19 km/s every time you entered and left orbit, but it would be a slow ride regardless.

My understanding is running this experiment in space would cost >$10m, a very pricey experiment when the expected outcome is negative.