What's the biggest myth or misconception about working as an engineer in Silicon Valley?
Great question! So many people come and go here every year, it always makes me laugh when I hear some crazy excuse of why they decided to leave (read fired or failed)1) Its too expensive to live here. Sure, you can spend a fortune to live here, but if you truly are focused on your career at any cost, look at all the immigrants that work here as cleaners and gardeners. Do you think they have a mortgage or live in gated communities? The reality is they are found in all neighborhoods/towns across the valley but rent/share moderate accomodations so they can be here. If they can do it, why can't aspiring entrepreneurs? Obviously, some people want to be here more than others.2) The weather is perfect all the time. On the peninsula the weather is great, but go north of SFO airport and in the city or over Skyline Blvd toward the beach and its foggy and cold nearly all the time. 3) The valley is an advanced culture with modern infrastructure. Although its slowly improving, the valley is still stuck in the 50's and the place is falling apart. Roads, buildings and public transport are terrible.4) Where are the Americans? Go to any high tech company in the valley and its hard to find any white second generation Americans, virtually everyone is an immigrant. When talented people from all over the world fight hard to get to the valley, it shows you the level of competition you will face when you try to move here.You get to hear the "Sour Grapes" story alot because its very competitive to live here and so many people fail. Very few people leave out of choice, its invariably because they have to.
What are the biggest myths about being overweight?
That it’s entirely your fault. When I was pregnant for the first time, I kept experiencing jumps in my weight. My doctor would yell at me:“What do you think you’re doing to yourself. You need to stop!”But stop what? My friends who gained 30 pounds throughout the course of their pregnancies openly admitted to eating tubs of ice cream, yet I could swear to you that I watched every morsel that went into my mouth and yet I gained about 70 pounds.The weight flew off post pregnancy and people said, “aren’t you proud of yourself?” Yet I’d done nothing. The weight came and went of its own accord.My second pregnancy, the same thing happened as with the first, yet my blood pressure and other vitals remained perfectly fine, which should have indicated I was not abusing my diet. Yet again, no one believed me when I insisted I wasn’t overeating.Later in life, when my hormones started to change, I once again experienced jumps in my weight. I was able to regain control only when hormonal fluctuations had ceased.The problem is there’s a lot about weight gain that we simply don’t understand. It’s so easy not to listen to people and blame them when they insist they’re eating well, but maybe a lot of those people are telling the truth.I’m constantly being told, “you don’t eat anything,” yet that’s how strict I have to be with myself to maintain any semblance of a normal weight. It’s unfortunate that so many of us have to worry about weight from the cradle to the grave, yet it remains a harsh reality of our current time.
What is the biggest myth about Donald Trump and his money?
“What is the biggest myth about Donald Trump and his money?”trump has said, on film, that how much he is worth is a function of how he feels about himself. My interpretation, and it is just that (an opinion without empirical support), is that what he means is that he is a marketer, not a builder and while he is a marketer because no bank is stupid enough to loan him money (except in a swap for political leverage), his worth is a function of the value of his name in branding and licensing venues;you will note that he has been anxious to gain IP rights (copyright and so on) overseas, particularly in China. I think China or some other country is his exit strategy when things go South for him in the US legal system;one of his biographers said that, until recently, trump may have had negative net worth; that may explain his obduracy in insisting that the emoluments clause doesn’t apply to him: he is desperate for cash flow;trump frequently says that he has no financial involvements in Russia, including loans, but has never ruled out, under oath, any of the hundred other jurisdictions (Cyprus) where he may have obligations;that he is self-made: it is highly probable that he used trump tower to help the Russians launder money and they carved off a few rubles for trump; that money is dirty and if it can be tied to trump it would have negative value because it might result in trump going to jail;when trump sat with Putin in a private meeting for two hours, it might have been to renegotiate his loan terms in light of changes in his deliverables owed to Putin;
In your opinion, what is the biggest blunder of the Trump presidency?
The biggest blunder of President Trump was that he likes people and doesn’t see the evil in them until too late. He should have kicked out every one of Obama’s appointees the first day he was in office and rid Washington of the deep state. Then he should have called all of Obama’s ambassadors home.
What do you feel is the biggest taboo or myth in our culture?
I'm excluding crimes with natural victims from this list since that is obvious (rape, child molesting, etc.) Incest In most cultures there is some sort of incest taboo. In some cultures this taboo only applies to the members of one side of the family (mother's side or father's side). In American culture incest is a taboo on both sides of the family. The myth is that incest leads to birth defects, but that is not exactly true. Breeding in the same gene pool only increases the chances that recessive traits will show themselves in the offspring (these traits can be good or bad). This is really only statistically significant in direct blood line cases e.g. mother to son or father to daughter. Human siblings (along with most animal siblings) have no significantly higher chance of birth defects than any random pairings, yet we are taught that sibling pairings are repulsive and immoral. Since I am from the same culture as every other American, I too cannot shake the idea that two siblings mating is disgusting. However there is no real scientific reason for this if you are talking about two consenting adults. You cannot blame the bible, either, because the bible teaches homosexuality and fornication are sins but you could not really say those are 'taboo' in American culture. I know many homosexuals and fornicators personally and they are definitely not pariah.
What are the biggest myths about Ted Cruz and or his presidential campaign?
Here's my opinion just based on things I've read from others. Let me clue you in on my bias I've been following Cruz since 2013 & plan on voting for him in the primary.His Canadian birth has been touted as a big deal. He is a natural born citizen, having been born to an American mother. (Same reason it doesn't matter even if Obama had been born in Kenya)He's a hothead. People like to throw that one around that he's the stereotypical angry American. He's not if anything he's too calm. He's stupid. Not sure I should dignify that with a real response. He's been called brilliant by Alan Dershowitz.That he's an extremist. His arguments all hinge on a strict constructionist view of the constitution. That he's a demagogue. That presupposes lying. Cruz has an obsession with the truth & its precise telling. See the previous point. I've gone over clips & interviews from Cruz. You can disagree with him, but I don't believe you can discount his constitutional roots.