Are religions unfair to women?

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You might very well be able to pull that off if the situation were like Pearl Harbor, where the target doesn't know that you're coming. As I said, I'm in favor of cheap stuff, so let's play with that.

I don't know what all of the drones are capable of. For example, it's possible that the Sentinel is capable of carrying bombs. There was talk of the SR-71 being used in a strike role, and the latest proposed successor is specifically being pitched at both snooping and strike. All three are Lockheed designs, so that's not a silly thing to ask. The photos that Iran published of the one that they nabbed didn't show the underside, so no help there.

I'm just going to go with the Predator (MQ-1) and Reaper (MQ-9) for now, with others in the back of my mind:

You still have some trouble with range. It looks as though the Predator can go almost 700 miles, and the Reaper can do a bit more than 1,100. It's possible, though, that you don't need the drone back. In that case, the Reaper at least is closer to the A-6. The reaper does cost $17 million, though. That's a lot more than a Tomahawk ($1-2M), but it could also hit as many as six targets (+$70,000 each for 4 Hellfires, and whatever 2 Paveways cost). Tomahawks have a range similar to that of the Reaper. Reaper would give better information on what was hit.

The Predator is slower - 100 to 135 mph - but it costs $4M. It can carry two Hellfires and it's been set up for Stingers (air-to-air). That would make it harder for a Wildcat to shoot it down I'm not sure that it can carry them together with Hellfires. In that case you would need more Predators to escort the strike planes.

When comparing planes to the Tomahawk, remember that the Tomahawk has its payload built in, so whatever the version, the range should be consistent, +/- wind and whatever other factors there are. Planes' listed ranges are usually without payload, since that's pretty variable. More so when they're carried on external hardpoints rather than in internal bays.

The Tomahawk is faster by 200+ mph and should be able to hit the same six targets for about $9M. It can be sub-launched, so no need to sneak a carrier and support ships close to somebody's shore.

There are experimental sub-launched drones, but I haven't heard about any configurable, armed ones.

I don't think that the drones' takeoff is short enough to launch from anything but a carrier, but I could easily be wrong on that. They're conveniently small, so they would be easy to hide if you were worried about your own airstrips on land coming under attack. They burn a lot less fuel than a jet fighter or bomber.

So you want to soften air defenses of another country. If it's more than 1,100 miles away from friendly airstrips or oceans, Predator and Reaper are out. In that case you might launch cruise missiles from B-52s somewhat closer in. It would still be nice to have fighter escort for those B-52 crews, but they might get away with it by flying low and getting their butts out as soon as they launch. Most things aren't that far, though.

If it's within 700 miles, you can launch Predators. Within 1,100, you have to pick the Reaper. If it's within 350 or 550 miles (respectively), you might even get some of them back. You could use either in combination with Tomahawks, getting some damage information from the drone. That would eliminate some need for planes, and I would guess that they already do that sort of thing, or plan to when it comes up.

The drones and cruise missiles have some communication vulnerability. China has shot down a satellite. I blindly assume that Russia could as well, but I haven't read up on it. I assume that the drones can keep in touch by other radio, but I think that that might be easier to interfere with. (I'm not a radio buff.) It might also be harder if they're flying low, which is necessary to sneak a slow plane close to an airbase.

If they get close, then they can probably do damage. You want to destroy the planes and damage the runway.

I haven't personally seen the damage from a Hellfire, but I wouldn't expect to fly a plane that's been hit by one. The contents of hangers can be hard to identify, though. If you don't know which ones have planes, you have to waste weapons. The Predator only carries two Hellfires or six Griffins. The Hellfire is an anti-armor weapon, so it's designed to concentrate energy. [...]

(I just realized that I'm too lazy to finish this now, but I'll post it so you get a head-start. +maybe XFilesGeek can add some of her aircraft expertise, since I know nothing.)

I did; I even got a little bit of a chuckle out of it. I just didn't think it needed a response.

Mission accomplished!

Society Naturally Overuses Radioactive Technology![youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOQ24Qku1s[/youtube]*waits for the laughs*

That's just wrong. People thought that right before the first world war. They thought that for a few years after it. Alfred Nobel thought that dynamite would make war too horrible to contemplate. Even nuclear war hasn't done that. This country has been through two big ground wars since. Other countries have been through many. The Economist just had a cautionary write up about the geopolitical similarities between 1914 and 2014: The world was peaceful, markets were integrated and lots of people were still rich. They're usually irrationally bullish on their ability to keep people like Erdogan and Sharif on good behavior with money. They also don't like to scare markets. If they're worried enough about war to talk about it, that's notable.

You still haven't even scratched the other half of the comparison, with front-line infantry.



Just a few years earlier, the men who had them were bumped and shipped off to die. Who was treated more unfairly?



How many machinists, CNC programmers, quality engineers, QA techs, assembly techs, manufacturing engineers, and welders do you actually know? How many of them were ever overpaid? How many women are paid less then the men beside them in those jobs?



Which is? I don't want to hear what he thinks. I want to hear what you think, on the record.



That's not a reasonable comparison. You've said that military women are underpaid. I've already made a fair argument that those in many Navy and Coast Guard roles are paid perfectly well for time and effort when compared to private sector jobs with similar qualifications. You haven't refuted that. In that case, they're only underpaid when considering what might happen in wartime.

Your $5 comparison is for time and effort. They're paid fairly, I'm paid nothing. Your previous claim implies that they should also be paid for risk. If I were paid for risk, that would be a lot more than $5. We could put it to an auction to see what it would take to get someone to take my place on the list.

Besides which, the draft is violating. I'm registering my body and whatever neurons might make me good canon fodder. I have to tell them where that "resource" is at all times. How would you like having to register some part of your body that's valuable to national defense, with the implication being that it could suddenly belong to the government if something bad happened? For example, in the past there have been disasters that put population rebound in question. How would you like having to register your reproductive tract in case of that eventuality? You'd have even less right to complain than I do about the draft because it's been even longer since western culture has faced anything like that. You should be totally fine with it. Shall we pass a law?



Which you, as a medical worker, know is a false comparison. I've read my share of MMWRs and New England Journals. They have much tougher statistical questions than this one. You should know this. You can avoid reporting an accident with the consent of any other parties. There may not even be any. You can avoid an asthma diagnosis by not seeking treatment. That's not comparable.



You're using a double standard: opportunity vs. support. Again, I think that you really do understand a lot of these issues. You're (hopefully) trained to.

The statistics for women in STEM programs (a topic which you excised) are that they don't apply as often and they don't work in the fields as long.

Those are raw statistics. They don't say why, but nobody even asks that question when they're stiffing me on car insurance.

If you used the same standard for women's varsity sports, you would stiff them because they didn't draw crowds and they didn't bring in money.

When my dad and I went to Gophers women's hockey games in the early 2000s, that was still true. That's for one of the best women's hockey teams in the world, in a state so cold that there's nothing else to do in the winter and a hockey arena is a good place to go warm up That's in a state and on a campus with a lot of vocal, aggressive feminism. How many men's varsity teams were allowed to run in the red for three decades?

Plus, the only sport that I've seriously competed in is almost never varsity, so that places women in Title IX sports ahead of where I was as a guy.



Until I assert them, in which case you've already shown that you'll divert.



You already benefit here from the same Christian chivalry system that you seem to disavow. (Full disclosure: I'm not religious.) Make fun of the Promise Keepers as much as you like. I sure do. But remember that I don't feel obligated to you. As long as a girl is financially and emotionally independent, I don't see much reason to be sexually dependent on her. I'll play the field.



Well, then how do you feel about girls getting both genders drunk? You focused on law regarding rape, but that's not the only issue. The girls did put people at risk, and not just themselves and other girls: the chances of proper use of barriers go down when both people are drunk, for example. Or was this a case of "girls will be girls?"



You implied that "primary custody" is OK. Do you mean to say that if:

I bust my butt at work all week, and...
...try to be a good father before and after work and on the weekends, and...
...get up in the middle of the night to take care of my kid when it's my turn, and...
...listen to my wife's burdens and fears while we're lying in bed at 12:00 PM and I need to work at 9:00 AM...

...that because she stayed home while the kids were at government daycare (whoops: I mean "school") for 6-7 hours, she gets primary physical custody of them? And I still have to pay whatever a judge thinks he can squeeze out of me with threats, supposedly to "take care of the kid" (assuming that that's where the money actually goes)? You could take my kid, and I wouldn't even get the house? I'm not asking her to pay "house support". I'll still be stuck with the gas and electric bills and the taxes. Sure, I may get visitation rights (while she teaches the kid to hate me the rest of the time, so that'll sure be fun). She can come and look at my house, too

Yeah, I should at least get the house. But I should really get joint physical and legal custody by default.



Although the chart that you posted is no longer being used by Wikipedia, it looks as though it lists the raw pay gap. It also averages to within a cent of the 77 in the raw data.



It's pretty obvious from looking at the chart where I got that number.



Well, you were willing to blow away a few hundred years of actual, reliable statistics (there is no such thing going back "several thousand years") on wars and the draft, present yourself as a better predictor of events than the founder of the Nobel awards, and ignore the expert opinion of people whose job it is to predict these things. I think that I'm within my rights.



I'll just re-post what I wrote, since I'm pretty sure that you're the only one who didn't get it.

Why taking advantage of an opening is not the same as leaving one, or the same as liking the bystanders involved:





Actually, she was his first professional hire, putting her infinitely ahead of men (as a ratio).



If you knew many of the aforementioned machinists, CNC programmers, quality engineers, QA techs, assembly techs, manufacturing engineers, and welders, you would have caught that right away. Those jobs are (still) done mostly by men.

That's not because we discriminate against women. The big companies that are still in business are usually government contractors, so they're required to follow federal equal-opportunity standards. Meaning that a guy with decades of experience and a proven record, but no degree, or a young guy who's been studying informally since he was 8 (both common in industry until recently) might be bumped by a girl fresh out of school who wasn't even interested in the field until just two years earlier.



I chuckled at that. If you can afford one made here, you're doing well. I don't think you'd need a space heater. You probably have all built-in heaters and heated floors.

Also, you can say that you're anti-military, but you would be living with a lot less if we didn't dominate the world and its labor. You're about to find out by just how much

You would also know a lot more about the work that men do after paying equal labor costs relative to what you take in.



Close to the same pay. She may be slightly faster on serial stuff, but it's a tough call. My dad's a lot faster on multi-variable problems, and you would know how lousy organic systems are with those. Her college was paid. My dad started just as his dad was laid off.

goddamn f*****g ipad.
I'm taking my dog for a walk.

Ort snay!

2nd try, on the desktop.

1st faulty assumption: there's going to be another war that involves the US, despite that fact that there would be an all-out revolution if the government got us dragged into anything that involved anything short of an attack on the mainland at this point.
2nd faulty assumption: said war will be big enough that the US will need more boots on the ground than are provided by the current volunteer fource.
3rd faulty assumption: said need for boots will cause the congress to reinstitute the draft without provision for women being required to serve.

I think I have, and you just repeatedly fail to get it.


Your claim was that 'combat pilots (men) were better qualified than non-combat pilots (women) after the war, and that was why airlines hired men rather than women after the war.' Please try for consistency.

Given that I don't work in any of those fields, none. Neither males nor females.

if we're going to look within fields rather than across fields, we're going to have to look at whether the job loss in tech was more highly distributed amongst men than women.
In any case, your point was that, across fields, women are paid less partly because they choose less affluent careers or specialties. If it's ok to blame women for choosing less affluent (though often more indispensable) careers, why is it not ok to blame men for choosing more disposable (but often more affluent) careers?


Using quotes and citations to support my position does not preclude me from stating my opinion. Are you suggesting that I have a problem with brevity?

've said that military women don't get recognized for being in combat, when a man working in the same position, for the same company, and under the same circumstances, would be. That's not quite the same as saying that they're underpaid.

We've already addressed that. Your risk approaches the limit of zero.

I have to admit, this got me to laugh out loud. Having to register for the draft is violating? Wow. Would that every woman's life involved such little violation as that on a daily basis, and across her life.

Yeah, it is. Male drivers, on average, cost insurance companies more than female drivers, on average. That is the sole criterion on which the fees are based. Likewise, asthmatics cost insurance companies more than non-asthmatics, on average.
As for 'not seeking treatment for asthma' in order to avoid diagnosis, 1)most people (including me) were diagnosed as children. Once you're diagnosed, you can never again claim on an insurance form that you don't have asthma without committing fraud. 2)not seeking treatment for persistent shortness of breath and/or cough, if you don't know why you have these issues, is stupid.


Uh, no. Insurance fees are judged only based on how much a given demographic is likely to cost the insurance company. Thankfully for both women and anyone else who participates in a non-popular sport, universities have different criteria for deciding which sports to support. Neither the women nor the me would have had rowing teams at my university, if 'will this make us money' was the criterion by which sports were supported. There would, literally, have been nothing but football if that were the case.

I didn't respond because I didn't feel like going there, but since you insist, here are a few links discussing why that disparity might come about.
http://www.albany.edu/~scifraud/data/sc ... _3943.html
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ing-logic/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... t-matters/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... are-human/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... abilities/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... y-science/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... e-science/
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/ ... .html?etoc
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... cal-agenda
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com ... ober-2013/
http://www.nature.com/news/end-harassment-1.13991
http://womanofscience.com/tag/harassment/
http://scientificfemanomaly.com/2013/08 ... u-boulder/
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/ ... thropology
http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2001/JUN ... ience.html
http://monicacatherine.wordpress.com/20 ... -happened/
https://medium.com/ladybits-on-medium/2f9fcaf6b313
http://www.ibtimes.com/sexism-science-u ... unterparts
http://whyscienceissexist.wordpress.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012 ... inst-women
http://www.blogher.com/swept-under-rug- ... epartments
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-educa ... -anonymous
http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/201 ... iam-fiasco
http://sss.sagepub.com/content/43/1/136.abstract
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/ ... ot-so-nice

I could go on. Give me an hour or two, and I could come up with literally hundreds of personal accounts of sexism and/or harassment that women have encountered within STEM departments.

See above. If money were the criterion, like it is in insurance, not only would I not have been able to row on a varsity team in college, but neither would the men. There would have been no men's soccer, no men's baseball, and even no men's basketball at my university. Only football consistently made money.

Which "need" are you asserting that you think that I'm diverting on?


Seriously? You're not interested in commitment unless a woman is dependent on you? Dude, that says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about me.


Getting drunk is stupid regardless of what gender you are. It's more of a 'kids will be kids' issue, especially in permissive environments like frats and sororities.



First, we were discussing a 50/50 split of assets and custody separately earlier, but whatever.
Second, if that's your attitude about marriage, I suggest that you never get married, or get divorced as soon as possible. Hire a surrogate, hire a maid, and hire a prostitute; it will save everyone, particularly your prospective wife, a hell of a lot of heartache.


Earlier you said that, within fields, there isn't as much of a pay gap. That chart suggests otherwise. You also said that, within fields, the gap was to within a few cents of 100, not to within a few cents of 77.

I've already spent waaay too much time on this. I might come back and do the rest later, and I might not.

"Seriously? You're not interested in commitment {which is a buzzword for dependence} unless a woman is dependent on you? Dude, that says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about me."

Why would a girl who actually cares about me want to make my world smaller by saying that I could only have needs and wants met by her? Your above statement says this about you: that you're intellectually dishonest and needy, and in-the-closet about the latter.

"Your claim was that 'combat pilots (men) were better qualified than non-combat pilots (women) after the war, and that was why airlines hired men rather than women after the war.' Please try for consistency."

Your link included nothing about air crews. If you chicks admire the WASPs so much, learn a little bit about the flying that they actually did.

"1st faulty assumption: there's going to be another war that involves the US, despite that fact that there would be an all-out revolution if the government got us dragged into anything that involved anything short of an attack on the mainland at this point."

You made several outlandish claims like this. "[A]ll-out revolution"? By the college hipsters who left their "Occupy" encampments to wait in line for the new iPhone? That's all you have.

Last edited by NobodyKnows on 20 Mar 2014, 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

here's a good idea: when you'e in a hole, stop digging.
Commitment is a choice. Dependence is not.


I don't give a flying f**k about the WASPs. I care, in this instance, about your lack of consistency; did women lose their jobs after the war because the men were more qualified (first claim) or because the men somehow 'deserved' the jobs more, even when the women were more qualiifed, because they'd been in a war (second claim)?

And baby boomers, grandparents, etc. You seem to forget that there were some pretty large demonstrations both here and in the rest of the world during the lead-up to the Iraq war (you can google it), and that was *before* we'd already been fighting for a decade and spent more than a triliion dollars in someone else's sand pit with nothing to show for it.

You're such a turd. I was one of them. I marched down Hennepin avenue in Minneapolis, right at the front, in one of the bigger demonstrations in the US. Where were you?

Last edited by NobodyKnows on 20 Mar 2014, 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I can tell.

Behind the Redwood Curtain, in the only town (at the time) in the US run by the Green Party. Not a lot of war support there.
I'm a turd? Tell me, what are the psychological characteristics of a turd that would lead you to label me as such? The primary attribute of turds is usually considered to be their stinkyness, which you are in no position to judge from where you sit.

Last edited by LKL on 20 Mar 2014, 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So, are you going to address the issue of consistency?

...but plenty of war profiteers.

Not sent from my slave-produced iPad.

You can't come back from that one! Well done!