Regarding scissors, pick up a pair and examine how things move when you open and close them. In your right hand, you're not only rotating around the pivot vertically (opening and closing it) but also horizontally, pushing one blade against the other. Try it in your left hand, and the same action is pulling the blades slightly apart, meaning they don't cut properly.
Doesn't matter if you flip it around, you need to re-arrange the blades so the top handle corresponds to the right blade, as opposed to the top handle corresponding to the left blade with right-handed scissors.
This is of course why left-handed scissors exist, with the blade configuration switched. They're not necessarily easy to find, but if you're left-handed and doing something that requires really accurate scissoring that you can't do with your right hand, you're probably also looking at high-end scissors and those are more likely to have left-handed options.
I'm not left-handed, but I do some things left-handed and am somewhat ambidextrous with other things. I too struggled with scissors in the left hand until I figured out how the lever action worked on them to produce a good cut. At that point I also realized why some scissors I'd tried as a kid on one memorable occasion (why I remember stuff like that and not other things I don't know, but that's another story) didn't work - they were left-handed scissors.
I remember seeing fliers for this study when I was a student at the University of Rochester (graduated in 2008). They definitely tried to make it sound as awesome as possible, getting paid to play video games. I think a lot of people signed up to do it; I did a questionnaire via email or something to see how well I fit the type of person they were looking for (plays games a lot - at the time I probably only played a couple hours a month, no surprise they didn't choose me).
Anyway interesting to see the results now, but I'm kind of surprised it took so long, unless this is a second study, or the first one didn't work out. I'm also a scientist and understand these things take time, but a lot of these studies are conducted by grad students in that department at UR and work on shorter time scales. I participated (and was paid a little bit) for several other studies in that department.
I find that I'm excellent at navigation in real life (including in complex cities), but terrible in games. Generally I can't get anywhere in a game without looking at the map, even in really linear games. Even with the HUD and all kinds of stuff, there's tons of navigational clues that I use subconsciously in real life that are missing in games.
Thanks for the link to that poster. I looked into it on various US government websites in the past, and it's ridiculously confusing. Confusing to the point that the cynical part of me thinks that it's made purposefully confusing in order to discourage people. Which of course will backfire since that encourages illegal immigration.
Anyway I'm a US citizen and am considering marrying my girlfriend, a foreign national not living in the US, and the government websites really put a damper on my enthusiasm - not for her, but for the process;) After doing some additional research into the claims of that poster for a little verification, it makes things a lot clearer and encourages me to do it.
It may be of interest to know that the process for most other countries is similar, if not worse. I'm not really happy with the US and considered moving elsewhere, like Canada or the UK if I want to speak English or anywhere else really, but it's practically impossible unless you're famous or rich.
If you get used to a good electronic dictionary (or a good website), it's tough to go to a paper one. I don't believe these students should require an electronic one for an exam, and letting them only use paper ones is the obvious solution, but there is a huge difference.
Not sure what you've looked at online, but there are a lot of great internet language dictionaries out there. You want to find one that is exclusively for one language, not something like Google Translate or Babelfish (though those are great for getting a rough translation of a website). Leo.org for German is great, and thai2english.com and thai-language.com are great for Thai, as examples. After getting used to those for communicating over the internet in Thai after meeting people there and not learning a whole lot of the language, when I went back to Thailand with several paper dictionaries it was really frustrating.
I found a Thai dictionary for Android and while the dictionary was terrible compared to the websites (I didn't have data access with my pre-paid sim card) the ease of use and portability make it a heck of a lot easier to use. No surprise that foreign students want to use this kind of software instead of paper dictionaries (which at this point they may have hardly ever used in their life, even in school in their home country). I believe the software dictionaries for e.g. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are a heck of lot better than the Thai one since more people are interested in those.
(Seriously, who doesn't turn on the shuffle/random when playing back MP3s?)
I don't... but then I tend to listen to music by choosing albums. If I want to hear a particular song I'll just start the album at that song. I have tried doing the random thing before; I just like to have more control over what I listen to I guess. Sometimes I create playlists that would seem random to others, but I choose songs based on certain criteria to group together (kind of like a good album but with multiple artists).
That said, I'm being a little facetious because I know most people like random, and it's useful to just set it and go if you want background music (which I don't normally like to do). That's something useful for parties, though, so it does seem odd to leave that out in the device you have, designed to be used in the part of the house where parties are held.
Both of your spelling examples don't sound right to me. I would not pronounce "cof" the same way I pronounce "cough". Maybe "coff" works. As for "swimmed", if you use it in a sentence it is awkward. "Swam" flows better. The spelling (for actual English words - those borrowed from other languages are different) should tell you how to pronounce it. The way we spell things evolved to the point where "cof" and "cough" are pronounced differently. Perhaps in the 1500s this wouldn't have been the case and it was arbitrary, but it's evolved to the point where it makes a difference. That said, I think there are better examples and I'm not saying your point is without merit. I can't think of any myself, though;)
As for double negatives, as with most grammar rules, you're free to break them if you do it well. The problem is people breaking the rules in ways that don't make sense. Like the stereotypical example, "I ain't got no double negatives" - which literally means "I have got double negatives". Your Chaucer quotes are examples of masterful wordplay.
Of course if you're in middle or high school and you try to use double negatives in a clever way, you will likely be marked down, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. In my experience there was little tolerance for breaking the rules of grammar, no matter how clever you were. Of course, I probably just thought I was being clever when I did stuff like that;)
The point is, breaking the rules is part of mastering things. Think of photography - there are plenty of "rules" there regarding exposure, composition, etc. To be a masterful photographer, you must understand these rules. You can not confine yourself to them, however - if you can recognize the rare circumstances where you're able to break the rules, that's when you get true art, just like your Chaucer quotes.
Unless Western Union changes their system, they're going to be in big trouble if any competitor shows up. The only reason they still exist is because there's usually no alternative for many of the transfers that they'll process. And as a result of this de facto monopoly, their fees are ridiculously high.
I tried to urgently send about $200 from here in the US to a friend in Thailand, and the only way that was going to work was Western Union since it's essentially instant and you can pick up the cash at any agent location. They've got a web service and say you can use a debit card, so I set up the whole thing online, and it wouldn't go through. Tried a different debit card, tried a credit card, no go. I contacted customer service and the reason was that they can't verify my identity. OK, they're trying to prevent fraud. So I ask, how can I confirm my identity and make my transaction? Their answer: YOU CAN'T! Seriously, I'm throwing an outrageous $25 or so in fees in front of them, with the likelihood of more in the future, and they refuse to take my money. That does not make any kind of sense.
Re:I did this on Fast and Furious/Tokyo Drift
on
HDR Video a Reality
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· Score: 1
Ah, now that would be a cool job...
I would have modded you up but I already commented in this thread so I'll say something instead - thanks for sharing that, I'm sure I'm not the only one around here interested in cinema technology who also would never be caught watching a movie like that (no offense) much less watching any behind the scenes stuff on the DVD (assuming they still put special features on DVDs these days...) where that kind of information might have shown up. Well, it being actually interesting, I suppose it wouldn't have shown up in the special features;)
Actually, now that I've written this comment I am really interested in how it looks. Are there any such shots in the trailer or will I have to get a copy of the whole thing to see it?
I frequent flickr and randomly browse around almost daily, and as such I've seen a lot of HDR, most of it terrible. I have very rarely seen good HDR. I don't think either of your examples are very good - they still look quite cartoonish. A truly good example looks much more like a "regular" photograph. It's got to be way more subtle than your examples. The NYC one is on the right track, but looks like it was amateurishly put together.
I was distracted and forgot the main points I wanted to make, regarding getting at the data in the first place and processing it. Getting the data also involves a lot of "fuss" but once you figure out where the thing you want comes from (NASA, USGS, etc. all have their own sites and systems for accessing the data) it's fairly trivial. Again, they don't make it easy to figure out how to avoid the fussing around, so I definitely agree with you there.
Also I was quite frustrated with doing analysis. GeoTIFF sounded great until I realized as you did that once you do anything to it outside of GIS software, such as in GIMP or Photoshop, the geolocation is lost. What a pain:) Ultimately I just didn't bother doing much processing that I couldn't do right in ArcInfo, but then I was just using it for a master's thesis research project and not doing anything too serious where it mattered.
I have had a similar experience with satellite imagery and data, but I have to say, despite the ESRI bashing going on earlier in the comments (much of which I agree with) ArcInfo was ultimately able to handle everything I threw at it without too much fuss. They certainly don't make it easy to figure out how to avoid the "fuss", though.
That's not quite true, if you do an actual search for any of these things (assuming you have safesearch turned off) the results turn up like normal. They just don't want people to be surprised by "interesting" things showing up in the instant results when they start typing a word like "assume".
For your example of Scunthorpe, I typed the first few letters and various other results showed up (this is not a commonly searched for or famous place), but when I had "scunt" typed in all the results were about Scunthorpe. Now, if it was Cunthorpe, even, the results will blank out when you have "cunt" but things start showing up again when you enter more letters. I also tried Cockfosters, a dirty sounding UK placename, and they don't blank out the results for cock... it thinks I want cocktail dresses at that point.
So basically, you're wrong and making wrong assumptions. I assume you didn't even try it, or you have safesearch on and didn't realize it.
I have to admit this would be interesting if there was a way to enable "dirty" words in the instant search, and if you could do instant image search (with dirty words enabled of course). As it is, if you're creative you can come up with words it doesn't block but which will yield you interesting results;)
If you recall, there was a recent flight that missed the airport and kept going off course for something like an hour and a half. One of the pilots was supposedly showing the other one how to use the new scheduling/timesheet system... on a laptop... which is why they didn't notice they forgot to land the plane.
Seems as though either they are allowed to use computers, or they use them anyway.
Sure, but very few people play that anymore once Guitar Hero type games came out - because you can do those relaxing on the couch (not to mention they have songs people in the US actually know).
I love the "informative" mod on this, but I wanted to say that I've seen (only seen mind you) plenty of ladyboys in Thailand myself and they can be quite convincing. Many of them aren't, though. And the only reason they can be convincing is because some Thais are so small. Completely different situation there compared to in the west.
Actually, a Thai university student I met was unbelievably convincing (the school uniform probably helped). I spoke to her briefly and I had no idea until someone told me later. That's pretty much guaranteed to never happen with someone who isn't Asian.
I posted something similar in reply to one of the other repliers but I was really aiming it at you, so I'll reiterate.
My girlfriend is from Thailand. She's not and has never been a bar girl or prostitute, but some of her friends ended up being in that position, and I know them. That's where girls end up if they don't do well in school and aren't sure how to do anything else (besides living in poverty or working on their parents' farm or whatever if they have one).
Anyway most bar girls do it because they feel as though they don't have any other choice. And as someone else said, they're acting 100% of the time, and from what I've seen they don't really do a good job.
And bar girls "end up dating with you" usually not because they really like you. They've probably got a few other "boyfriends" at the same time. It's all about the money. It can happen that a bar girl will end up having an exclusive western boyfriend/husband eventually, but it's not very common and it's not initially about love or anything like that, at least not for the girl.
Finally, western guys are "considered a huge score" because they're comparatively rich, and that's all. One of the problems is that most people who see them as a couple in public will assume it's a typical bar-girl-type fake relationship, not anything real.
In Thailand, while in many cases there are actually alternatives, it's not really so much a choice thing. They're doing it of their own free will, but not because they want to - many lack education and don't realize that there might be a better way to live. It's an attractive, leisurely lifestyle involving a good amount of money (for Thailand anyway) and many see it as their only choice.
You won't get interesting conversation out of most bar girls in SE Asia. I presume Japanese girls are different (coming from the geisha heritage, which wasn't usually about sex, just companionship and conversation as you say).
My girlfriend is from Thailand. She's not and has never been a bar girl or prostitute, but some of her friends ended up being in that position, and I know them. That's where girls end up if they don't do well in school, don't try to get more education, and don't want to (or can't) work on their parents' farm if they have one.
They do it out of choice, to some extent, but the alternative is not getting a legitimate job. It's being extremely poor because they have no education. And while it seems casual to foreign tourists (as with the parent), it's really not as accepted in the culture as it seems and those girls are looked down upon as much or more than they would be in the west. Luckily for them, there are so many of them and such a large bar culture that they can basically ignore everyone else and be accepted (and make much more money than they could otherwise).
If you look at the illustration in the article (and I assume in the original paper, I have access but have to login to a vpn and so on, I will see later since I'm interested), it's quite clear what happened and it's really not what you might think when you hear it "shredded" a tectonic plate. I think what's being implied is that it shredded the plate at the surface, but it happened far underground, in the mantle.
As the subducting plate subducts, it goes down into the mantle and in this case the mantle plume weakened it (by getting into fractures or whatever) and broke it off. So the slab disappears down into the mantle eventually (though these can stick around for years, detached). It's very interesting, but the same thing often happens without being cut off by a mantle plume. It's more or less a guaranteed result in a subduction zone, because the subducting slab isn't strong enough to support its own weight pulling on it after a certain point. Makes absolute sense if you look at a diagram of how subduction works.
Subducting slabs can also be cut off by things like strike-slip faults, which IIRC happened in northern California as a result of the San Andreas (don't quote me on that though). You can see the slabs in the mantle by various imaging techniques.
I think mangu's point is that the parent's assertion that the gulf was created by a hotspot is incorrect, if you believe what's in the well-cited Wikipedia article.
(I'm a geologist, and while I don't know much specifically about the gulf, I'm pretty sure Wikipedia is right here).
It's an anti-war movie. It's not like "The Green Berets", ostensibly a gung-ho pro-war WWII style movie but about Vietnam, coming out while the Vietnam war was still going on.
True, most of the great anti-war Vietnam movies came out well after it ended, but there isn't really an end in sight to conflict in the middle east. If you're going to make an anti-war movie about Iraq, at least partly with the intention of swaying public opinion against the war, then while the war is still going on is a good time to do it.
Heck, Jarhead, another anti-war movie, is set in the Gulf War. For all intents and purposes, though, in the minds of most who see it it's an Iraq/Afghanistan movie, because the middle east setting looks the same. I'm sure the producers realized that would be the case, and it's entirely intentional.
Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that it's a bit of a stretch to make an anti-war movie now that's set in a historical war like Vietnam, Korea, or World War 2. It is sometimes done, but mostly those are traditional war films about honoring the soldiers and rousing adventure and so on. If you are trying to make a statement, which the producers of The Hurt Locker certainly were, you do it with a film about a recent or ongoing war.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding scissors, pick up a pair and examine how things move when you open and close them. In your right hand, you're not only rotating around the pivot vertically (opening and closing it) but also horizontally, pushing one blade against the other. Try it in your left hand, and the same action is pulling the blades slightly apart, meaning they don't cut properly.
Doesn't matter if you flip it around, you need to re-arrange the blades so the top handle corresponds to the right blade, as opposed to the top handle corresponding to the left blade with right-handed scissors.
This is of course why left-handed scissors exist, with the blade configuration switched. They're not necessarily easy to find, but if you're left-handed and doing something that requires really accurate scissoring that you can't do with your right hand, you're probably also looking at high-end scissors and those are more likely to have left-handed options.
I'm not left-handed, but I do some things left-handed and am somewhat ambidextrous with other things. I too struggled with scissors in the left hand until I figured out how the lever action worked on them to produce a good cut. At that point I also realized why some scissors I'd tried as a kid on one memorable occasion (why I remember stuff like that and not other things I don't know, but that's another story) didn't work - they were left-handed scissors.
I remember seeing fliers for this study when I was a student at the University of Rochester (graduated in 2008). They definitely tried to make it sound as awesome as possible, getting paid to play video games. I think a lot of people signed up to do it; I did a questionnaire via email or something to see how well I fit the type of person they were looking for (plays games a lot - at the time I probably only played a couple hours a month, no surprise they didn't choose me).
Anyway interesting to see the results now, but I'm kind of surprised it took so long, unless this is a second study, or the first one didn't work out. I'm also a scientist and understand these things take time, but a lot of these studies are conducted by grad students in that department at UR and work on shorter time scales. I participated (and was paid a little bit) for several other studies in that department.
I find that I'm excellent at navigation in real life (including in complex cities), but terrible in games. Generally I can't get anywhere in a game without looking at the map, even in really linear games. Even with the HUD and all kinds of stuff, there's tons of navigational clues that I use subconsciously in real life that are missing in games.
Thanks for the link to that poster. I looked into it on various US government websites in the past, and it's ridiculously confusing. Confusing to the point that the cynical part of me thinks that it's made purposefully confusing in order to discourage people. Which of course will backfire since that encourages illegal immigration.
Anyway I'm a US citizen and am considering marrying my girlfriend, a foreign national not living in the US, and the government websites really put a damper on my enthusiasm - not for her, but for the process ;) After doing some additional research into the claims of that poster for a little verification, it makes things a lot clearer and encourages me to do it.
It may be of interest to know that the process for most other countries is similar, if not worse. I'm not really happy with the US and considered moving elsewhere, like Canada or the UK if I want to speak English or anywhere else really, but it's practically impossible unless you're famous or rich.
Regarding your last paragraph, please no. I've stumbled across Second Life "movies" and other machinima enough to know this is not a good idea ;)
If you get used to a good electronic dictionary (or a good website), it's tough to go to a paper one. I don't believe these students should require an electronic one for an exam, and letting them only use paper ones is the obvious solution, but there is a huge difference.
Not sure what you've looked at online, but there are a lot of great internet language dictionaries out there. You want to find one that is exclusively for one language, not something like Google Translate or Babelfish (though those are great for getting a rough translation of a website). Leo.org for German is great, and thai2english.com and thai-language.com are great for Thai, as examples. After getting used to those for communicating over the internet in Thai after meeting people there and not learning a whole lot of the language, when I went back to Thailand with several paper dictionaries it was really frustrating.
I found a Thai dictionary for Android and while the dictionary was terrible compared to the websites (I didn't have data access with my pre-paid sim card) the ease of use and portability make it a heck of a lot easier to use. No surprise that foreign students want to use this kind of software instead of paper dictionaries (which at this point they may have hardly ever used in their life, even in school in their home country). I believe the software dictionaries for e.g. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are a heck of lot better than the Thai one since more people are interested in those.
(Seriously, who doesn't turn on the shuffle/random when playing back MP3s?)
I don't... but then I tend to listen to music by choosing albums. If I want to hear a particular song I'll just start the album at that song. I have tried doing the random thing before; I just like to have more control over what I listen to I guess. Sometimes I create playlists that would seem random to others, but I choose songs based on certain criteria to group together (kind of like a good album but with multiple artists).
That said, I'm being a little facetious because I know most people like random, and it's useful to just set it and go if you want background music (which I don't normally like to do). That's something useful for parties, though, so it does seem odd to leave that out in the device you have, designed to be used in the part of the house where parties are held.
Both of your spelling examples don't sound right to me. I would not pronounce "cof" the same way I pronounce "cough". Maybe "coff" works. As for "swimmed", if you use it in a sentence it is awkward. "Swam" flows better. The spelling (for actual English words - those borrowed from other languages are different) should tell you how to pronounce it. The way we spell things evolved to the point where "cof" and "cough" are pronounced differently. Perhaps in the 1500s this wouldn't have been the case and it was arbitrary, but it's evolved to the point where it makes a difference. That said, I think there are better examples and I'm not saying your point is without merit. I can't think of any myself, though ;)
As for double negatives, as with most grammar rules, you're free to break them if you do it well. The problem is people breaking the rules in ways that don't make sense. Like the stereotypical example, "I ain't got no double negatives" - which literally means "I have got double negatives". Your Chaucer quotes are examples of masterful wordplay.
Of course if you're in middle or high school and you try to use double negatives in a clever way, you will likely be marked down, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. In my experience there was little tolerance for breaking the rules of grammar, no matter how clever you were. Of course, I probably just thought I was being clever when I did stuff like that ;)
The point is, breaking the rules is part of mastering things. Think of photography - there are plenty of "rules" there regarding exposure, composition, etc. To be a masterful photographer, you must understand these rules. You can not confine yourself to them, however - if you can recognize the rare circumstances where you're able to break the rules, that's when you get true art, just like your Chaucer quotes.
Unless Western Union changes their system, they're going to be in big trouble if any competitor shows up. The only reason they still exist is because there's usually no alternative for many of the transfers that they'll process. And as a result of this de facto monopoly, their fees are ridiculously high.
I tried to urgently send about $200 from here in the US to a friend in Thailand, and the only way that was going to work was Western Union since it's essentially instant and you can pick up the cash at any agent location. They've got a web service and say you can use a debit card, so I set up the whole thing online, and it wouldn't go through. Tried a different debit card, tried a credit card, no go. I contacted customer service and the reason was that they can't verify my identity. OK, they're trying to prevent fraud. So I ask, how can I confirm my identity and make my transaction? Their answer: YOU CAN'T! Seriously, I'm throwing an outrageous $25 or so in fees in front of them, with the likelihood of more in the future, and they refuse to take my money. That does not make any kind of sense.
Ah, now that would be a cool job...
I would have modded you up but I already commented in this thread so I'll say something instead - thanks for sharing that, I'm sure I'm not the only one around here interested in cinema technology who also would never be caught watching a movie like that (no offense) much less watching any behind the scenes stuff on the DVD (assuming they still put special features on DVDs these days...) where that kind of information might have shown up. Well, it being actually interesting, I suppose it wouldn't have shown up in the special features ;)
Actually, now that I've written this comment I am really interested in how it looks. Are there any such shots in the trailer or will I have to get a copy of the whole thing to see it?
I frequent flickr and randomly browse around almost daily, and as such I've seen a lot of HDR, most of it terrible. I have very rarely seen good HDR. I don't think either of your examples are very good - they still look quite cartoonish. A truly good example looks much more like a "regular" photograph. It's got to be way more subtle than your examples. The NYC one is on the right track, but looks like it was amateurishly put together.
I was distracted and forgot the main points I wanted to make, regarding getting at the data in the first place and processing it. Getting the data also involves a lot of "fuss" but once you figure out where the thing you want comes from (NASA, USGS, etc. all have their own sites and systems for accessing the data) it's fairly trivial. Again, they don't make it easy to figure out how to avoid the fussing around, so I definitely agree with you there.
Also I was quite frustrated with doing analysis. GeoTIFF sounded great until I realized as you did that once you do anything to it outside of GIS software, such as in GIMP or Photoshop, the geolocation is lost. What a pain :) Ultimately I just didn't bother doing much processing that I couldn't do right in ArcInfo, but then I was just using it for a master's thesis research project and not doing anything too serious where it mattered.
I have had a similar experience with satellite imagery and data, but I have to say, despite the ESRI bashing going on earlier in the comments (much of which I agree with) ArcInfo was ultimately able to handle everything I threw at it without too much fuss. They certainly don't make it easy to figure out how to avoid the "fuss", though.
That's not quite true, if you do an actual search for any of these things (assuming you have safesearch turned off) the results turn up like normal. They just don't want people to be surprised by "interesting" things showing up in the instant results when they start typing a word like "assume".
For your example of Scunthorpe, I typed the first few letters and various other results showed up (this is not a commonly searched for or famous place), but when I had "scunt" typed in all the results were about Scunthorpe. Now, if it was Cunthorpe, even, the results will blank out when you have "cunt" but things start showing up again when you enter more letters. I also tried Cockfosters, a dirty sounding UK placename, and they don't blank out the results for cock... it thinks I want cocktail dresses at that point.
So basically, you're wrong and making wrong assumptions. I assume you didn't even try it, or you have safesearch on and didn't realize it.
I have to admit this would be interesting if there was a way to enable "dirty" words in the instant search, and if you could do instant image search (with dirty words enabled of course). As it is, if you're creative you can come up with words it doesn't block but which will yield you interesting results ;)
If you recall, there was a recent flight that missed the airport and kept going off course for something like an hour and a half. One of the pilots was supposedly showing the other one how to use the new scheduling/timesheet system... on a laptop... which is why they didn't notice they forgot to land the plane.
Seems as though either they are allowed to use computers, or they use them anyway.
You might have a hard time getting past 88 in a mall parking lot
Sure, but very few people play that anymore once Guitar Hero type games came out - because you can do those relaxing on the couch (not to mention they have songs people in the US actually know).
I love the "informative" mod on this, but I wanted to say that I've seen (only seen mind you) plenty of ladyboys in Thailand myself and they can be quite convincing. Many of them aren't, though. And the only reason they can be convincing is because some Thais are so small. Completely different situation there compared to in the west.
Actually, a Thai university student I met was unbelievably convincing (the school uniform probably helped). I spoke to her briefly and I had no idea until someone told me later. That's pretty much guaranteed to never happen with someone who isn't Asian.
I posted something similar in reply to one of the other repliers but I was really aiming it at you, so I'll reiterate.
My girlfriend is from Thailand. She's not and has never been a bar girl or prostitute, but some of her friends ended up being in that position, and I know them. That's where girls end up if they don't do well in school and aren't sure how to do anything else (besides living in poverty or working on their parents' farm or whatever if they have one).
Anyway most bar girls do it because they feel as though they don't have any other choice. And as someone else said, they're acting 100% of the time, and from what I've seen they don't really do a good job.
And bar girls "end up dating with you" usually not because they really like you. They've probably got a few other "boyfriends" at the same time. It's all about the money. It can happen that a bar girl will end up having an exclusive western boyfriend/husband eventually, but it's not very common and it's not initially about love or anything like that, at least not for the girl.
Finally, western guys are "considered a huge score" because they're comparatively rich, and that's all. One of the problems is that most people who see them as a couple in public will assume it's a typical bar-girl-type fake relationship, not anything real.
In Thailand, while in many cases there are actually alternatives, it's not really so much a choice thing. They're doing it of their own free will, but not because they want to - many lack education and don't realize that there might be a better way to live. It's an attractive, leisurely lifestyle involving a good amount of money (for Thailand anyway) and many see it as their only choice.
You won't get interesting conversation out of most bar girls in SE Asia. I presume Japanese girls are different (coming from the geisha heritage, which wasn't usually about sex, just companionship and conversation as you say).
My girlfriend is from Thailand. She's not and has never been a bar girl or prostitute, but some of her friends ended up being in that position, and I know them. That's where girls end up if they don't do well in school, don't try to get more education, and don't want to (or can't) work on their parents' farm if they have one.
They do it out of choice, to some extent, but the alternative is not getting a legitimate job. It's being extremely poor because they have no education. And while it seems casual to foreign tourists (as with the parent), it's really not as accepted in the culture as it seems and those girls are looked down upon as much or more than they would be in the west. Luckily for them, there are so many of them and such a large bar culture that they can basically ignore everyone else and be accepted (and make much more money than they could otherwise).
If you look at the illustration in the article (and I assume in the original paper, I have access but have to login to a vpn and so on, I will see later since I'm interested), it's quite clear what happened and it's really not what you might think when you hear it "shredded" a tectonic plate. I think what's being implied is that it shredded the plate at the surface, but it happened far underground, in the mantle.
As the subducting plate subducts, it goes down into the mantle and in this case the mantle plume weakened it (by getting into fractures or whatever) and broke it off. So the slab disappears down into the mantle eventually (though these can stick around for years, detached). It's very interesting, but the same thing often happens without being cut off by a mantle plume. It's more or less a guaranteed result in a subduction zone, because the subducting slab isn't strong enough to support its own weight pulling on it after a certain point. Makes absolute sense if you look at a diagram of how subduction works.
Subducting slabs can also be cut off by things like strike-slip faults, which IIRC happened in northern California as a result of the San Andreas (don't quote me on that though). You can see the slabs in the mantle by various imaging techniques.
IAAGGS
I think mangu's point is that the parent's assertion that the gulf was created by a hotspot is incorrect, if you believe what's in the well-cited Wikipedia article.
(I'm a geologist, and while I don't know much specifically about the gulf, I'm pretty sure Wikipedia is right here).
I don't like the title either, but it's not an action movie along the lines of the films you list, *at all*.
I'm not saying I like the title either - I thought it was pretty stupid and I don't even remember what it refers to in the film (which I did see).
It's an anti-war movie. It's not like "The Green Berets", ostensibly a gung-ho pro-war WWII style movie but about Vietnam, coming out while the Vietnam war was still going on.
True, most of the great anti-war Vietnam movies came out well after it ended, but there isn't really an end in sight to conflict in the middle east. If you're going to make an anti-war movie about Iraq, at least partly with the intention of swaying public opinion against the war, then while the war is still going on is a good time to do it.
Heck, Jarhead, another anti-war movie, is set in the Gulf War. For all intents and purposes, though, in the minds of most who see it it's an Iraq/Afghanistan movie, because the middle east setting looks the same. I'm sure the producers realized that would be the case, and it's entirely intentional.
Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that it's a bit of a stretch to make an anti-war movie now that's set in a historical war like Vietnam, Korea, or World War 2. It is sometimes done, but mostly those are traditional war films about honoring the soldiers and rousing adventure and so on. If you are trying to make a statement, which the producers of The Hurt Locker certainly were, you do it with a film about a recent or ongoing war.