STEM Graduate Surplus, Infighting Amongst Engineers

So I posted the Atlantic article on Reddit in an engineering sub, and the backlash was palpable. One /u/ in particular went after the data, pointing out that the "53.7% of engineering grads that found a job in the first 12 months after graduation" was from 2009, and "of course things were bad in 2009!"

My response was "I'm not sure what would have occurred economically since 2009 to provide a STEM labor market correction? Unemployment nationwide has only ticked down a bit, it seems logical that other economic indicators would also have remained relatively underwhelming."

In response, this graph was pointed out to me, from a Bay Area Economic Council report published in December 2012.

Given a cursory glance, yes, STEM jobs are doing better than "Total Occupations" in that total unemployment since 2000 is up 10% or so (important note: this is since 2000, not year over year percentage changes). And yes, since 2009 there has been an uptick of STEM hiring and it is more pronounced than the Total Occupations category. And so I was about to concede the point until I actually read the report.
And lo and behold, Figure 8:

They conveniently broke down the Stem Occupations category into sub categories. And wouldn't you know it: engineers are in the shitter. Not only are engineers net negative jobs since 2000, we are actually doing worse than the population at large.


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There is no STEM graduate shortage.

High school seniors: consider yourself warned.

- In computer and information science and in engineering, U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students than are hired into those fields each year.

- Wages have remained flat, with real wages hovering around their late 1990s levels.

- Percentage of Engineering graduates that have a job within 12 months of graduation: 53.7%

More here.
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Rampant Sexism in America IS Still A Thing

You need not go far to find a good example. Here's Business Insider's list of "30 Most Important Women Under 30 In Tech"

Good luck finding a fat woman, or a pimply-faced woman in there. Which, while being obviously sexist, is DOUBLY so when you remember that this is "in tech".


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Polytheism, Monotheism, Atheism, and Space Aliens

What if, later this afternoon, an Intelligent alien race lands here on Earth and makes contact with us. What if they contact our leaders and after exchanging business cards, they ask "how advanced are you?"
We humans interpret this as we can and respond "currently we can control nuclear fission but not nuclear fusion."
"No, that's not what we mean," replies the Alien. "How advanced are you, as in are you polytheistic, monotheistic, or atheistic?"
We respond "the majority of humans are monotheistic."
"Oh, okay," replies the Alien. "See you in another 200 years."
"Wait, what?!" we ask.
"Well, you see," replies the Alien, "there are more than 2,000 Intelligent species in the Universe that we've cataloged so far, not including you 'humans'. And of them, all 2,000+ followed this exact same socio-developmental pattern: polytheism, monotheism, atheism. And it turns out, interestingly, that when an Intelligent species reaches a plurality of atheists, that milestone means they're usually socially, mentally, and emotionally ready to join the interstellar community."

The question I have is this: given this information, that 2,000 out of 2,000 Intelligent species had all followed our species current religious trend, and it had ended in planetary atheism...how many monotheists would drop religion?
My guess is many would, but not nearly all of them. More likely is that new membership would massively plummet, as the young hoped they'd get to join the interstellar community once they shed the suddenly-archaic-seeming belief systems of their elders. But many Muslims, Jews, and Christians would die believing that they were right, and 2,000+ Intelligent species of Aliens were wrong. Earth Exceptionalism.

The case can be flipped around. What if the Aliens arrived and reported that of these 2,000+ species of Intelligent star-explorers, pretty much all of them (except the cyborg race of Planet 95C2) had a strong monotheistic religion on their planets. The belief in One God wasn't just a plurality on Earth, it was literally Universal. How many atheists would take up a religion, in this case? I bet some would, but most would just argue that obviously Faith isn't just an Earth construct but rather a universal construct of Intelligence...all Intelligences in the Universe share this flaw.

My guess is this: it is much easier to strip monotheists of their beliefs than it is to convince atheists to believe.


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Modern Bomb Making In America

I don't condone blowing up innocent people. I don't recommend anyone build explosive devices. I hope the world is a peaceful one, and that my children grow up in comfort and security and without the fear of terrorism.

That said, I want to correct something going around. Federal authorities and the media are latching on to the idea that the bombs used in Boston were "sophisticated" because they used "a battery pack and a circuitboard." I feel that I should point out that a Furby has a circuitboard and batteries. A solar-powered LED patio umbrella has a circuitboard and batteries. The watch on your wrist, if not hand-wound, has a circuitboard and battery. Circuitboards aren't this holy object that only a tiny cadre of madmen are capable of producing.

The bombs in Boston, unless authorities dramatically change their tune, probably had less than $2 of electronics in them. It's likely the only thing on the circuitboard was a SPST relay (costing less than a dollar) and a timing mechanism ($1 or less depending on type). Once again, I do not want any innocent lives ended with bomb making, but people need to realize that any engineer worth his or her salt could put a 'pressure cooker bomb' together in about a day.

The point I want to make is that all day, almost every day, hundreds of thousands of people all over this country who are perfectly capable of making bombs freely choose not to do so. Rather than be scared that there are so many potential bomb makers in America...can we stop for a second and realize that 99.9999% of those of us capable of easily manufacturing bombs choose not to do so? America is a really, really safe place.


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An Update

True to my word, I've been writing. The word count stands at 32,158.
For those keeping score, I've completed 4 of 15 planned chapters.


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