I suggest you start planning trips via other means of conveyance. I hear Amtrak is still running service to many areas in the continental US, and there are always ships to other countries!:)
Unfortunately, because of the time and effort involved in attempting other methods of travel, people will still continue to fly no matter how bad the airlines get.
"Hell, I barely understand how a light bulb works and those things are everywhere."
This.
One generation grew up with a "new" gadget, which they were eager to figure out and impress others with. This generation sees computers as something necessary to life, like light bulbs. Some people grow up with light bulbs and figure out everything about them; most learn how to flip the switch and get light. Today's kids will be -comfortable- with the presence of tech and learn how to use it as a matter of watching parents and peers do so, but they may not understand it.
1) Find the closest 'open box'. If Google's not open, that's either the address field or the Google Search field provided at the top of my version of Firefox. I assume they have something similar.
2) Type 'google' into box. Since Firefox finishes partial urls if it has a clue, it'll take them straight to google. If they typed it in the search field, it'll search for Google. Either way, they get there.
I've known people who do this as well. If they are handed a written or typed url to get to, they'll type it into Google. Usually, this lack of efficiency characterizes every thing they try to do with a computer, and occasionally every other thing they try to do in life. They appear to be incapable of retaining more than one skill at a time, and I shake my head in wonder that they manage to get through the day. The worst part is that most of these people are at worst slightly below average IQ - they're not mentally incapable (so I assume)!
I'm sure a lot of you know this already, but Ultima Online offers full skill/stats access, within the limit that you can only have 6-7 skills at a time (depending how high you want them. If you want 20 skills, you'll never master any). This being the case, very few people are "useless" in the game, but some characters are certainly better than others at certain things. Soloing bosses takes a different "template" (set of skills found to be useful in conjunction) than mining and crafting - and because you have 6 character slots, you can have a GM crafter and a GM fencer, if you like. Players can also rely on others to provide what they don't enjoy doing themselves. Some people have 6 warriors, others have 1. I would say that the game is never unplayable, although I admit some of the lower-end quests get boring fast, so there is certainly an encouragement to master at least one template.
The problem is that in a game with set levels or a single-player story it is much easier to fail if your character has skills unrelated to the quest requirements. That being the case I wouldn't recommend that NWN be re-made with classless characters. I think the balance needs to fall somewhere between exclusive storytelling and very limited creation, and an open world with limitless creation - both have their perks and will attract people for different reasons, but both are necessary gaming niches.
I agree with the parent. On the sites that I visit with Google text ads, I don't feel the need to ignore the ad or block it the way I do with most other ads. I may even skim it to see if it has interesting content, because a text ad paradoxically calls more attention to itself than a flash ad which I will have to watch for a while to get all the info, or worse, have to block because it distracts from the site content. My browsing style is rather stream-of-consciousness, so I'm likely to click only on links relevant to the activity or text I'm currently viewing. Because Google can serve context-sensitive advertising, it's more likely to get a hit from me than an adsense-hosted flash ad that's been put up regardless of related site content.
I have even clicked on mostly ads from my gmail header adline, not because they were particularly flashy or advertised something cheap but because whatever they were linking to - doctors, movie reviews, etc was a good jumping point for quick research, and as parent stated they are sometimes linked to your email subject lines.
....so it could be worked around by faking a 3rd pin to make the connection? I'm assuming the software can't tell the difference, but is only counting pins.
People have been going barefoot and risking parasites for years. Funny thing, though. When you walk barefoot for long periods of time, you get these things called calluses on the bottoms of your feet, which protect them from being cut open and make it a lot harder for a parasite to burrow through! Also note that soil-borne parasites don't survive well in temperate or cold climates (such as most of the US and Canada), are rare except in soil contaminated by animal/human waste, and are generally easily treatable. Personally, I like going barefoot. The risk of stepping on broken glass, especially in urban areas, is far higher than the risk of picking up roundworms.
The problem is that most home ec classes are washed-out textbook-based crap.
I knew everything anyways
Congratulations, you're one of the 1% of adults who can fend for themselves! Don't speak for the rest of your peers, please. As you state, there are people out there incapable of scrambling an egg.
I would bet the people who didn't know how to cook and do laundry never covered that in home ec, or never took it - it's not exactly a top requirement for graduation, or at least it wasn't in my district. Regardless, I had a great home ec and career class where we covered a lot of material and did so with hands-on projects as often as possible. We had a full kitchen with 5 or 6 ovens, sinks, countertops and cooking utensils for our cooking unit; the teacher provided every single contraceptive option she could get her hands on (and she had A LOT) for our sexual health and reproduction unit, and we talked to actual cops and other community leaders during the drug unit. We even did a memorable exercise wherein we estimated our living costs when we moved out, and then compared them to the local prices for that year and looked at our misconceptions. It was eye-opening, and I'm sure a lot of us remembered it when we held our first paychecks. We did nothing with robo-babies, and I'm glad - why hand a hormonal teenage girl a fake baby anyway? At that age one of my friends was obsessed with pregnancy and wanted to have babies straight out of high school already. She benefited more from the contraceptives lessons than the baby doll (and now that she's matured a little she's still childless, thank god!).
So I'll be one person who says "thank god for home ec", but I'll also say that my parents had a lot to do with filling in the gaps in my home-ec education, and every adult I know who is capable of cooking, cleaning, etc will probably say the same. Home ec on its own is useful, but it's definitely better with the backing of parents who can help their kids apply their knowledge of housekeeping on a more personal level.
Because 10 years isn't that long to hold a given piece of data. You don't expect a book in a library to disappear 10 years from now - it will still be at the same "address" in the catalog as it is today, although its physical shelf location may have changed based on the addition or subtraction of books from the surrounding shelves. For very old books, the address may be slightly updated when the book is replaced, but it will still exist - and it will exist in multiple libraries, at the same time. Just because we're used to the fluidity of the internet doesn't mean we need to give up on data permanence or redundancy. I agree it's difficult to keep every bookmark or shortened url accurate based on the fact that people do change their directories occasionally, but there are easy ways to redirect a missing subdirectory back to the home page where a visitor should be able to navigate back to the intended page.
I'm all for archiving parts of the internet. People create and display amazing things here, some of which are never going to be put on a hard copy for distribution and some of which I will still want to visit in 10 years. I hope this site actually works... regardless of the tripe that's being saved.
Try it in Pittsburgh and watch people treat the yield sign A) As if it's not there (and they'll probably try to turn the wrong way into the roundabout, too!) or B) as if it's a stop sign at which they must sit until all trace of traffic is clear regardless of time of day and the number of cars piling up behind them. Most people can't even merge onto the I-376 corridor, which has been there for YEARS and is a daily commute for a lot of them.
Anyway, this end of the country has enough constant road construction slowing everything down!
To be honest, I'd rather have a slightly blemished, organically-grown apple I grew in my back yard than a blemish-free apple from Wal-Mart, carvings or not.
I am always horrified by the amount of fruit that is tossed aside at the store for a small bruise, green spot, brown spot, scabbing, or other "blemish" that in no way affects the taste and/or can be easily removed with the tip of a sharp knife. One store near my last apartment used to put that kind of fruit on a "last chance" stand for a third of the price, and if you got it the day it was set out it would often be perfectly enjoyable. I rarely had to remove any whole fruits from the bags, I often got mixed bags of apples and oranges in quantities that two people could actually eat (vs. buying single ones or whole bags at the front of the store) and I was able to get fruits that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten, like two pints of slightly dry blueberries (not a single rotten fruit, just "old") which made amazing blueberry and white chocolate tarts. Bruised apples make perfectly good pie, too - once they're baked, you will never notice the bruised parts.
Maybe instead of figuring out how to etch things onto fruit, they need to be working on educating consumers about how to use fruit that's already got markings on it!
It may be an aggregate short-term gain but think in terms of long-term. We are now paying part of that company's profits (say, $30 of the $50 you spent on that tool) to another country's workers where it is more likely to be reinvested in their small businesses and local economy than to be paid back to another American company operating over there. (Ie, the chinese will go to a local shoe store with their paycheck from the american shoe factory, instead of buying from the american shoe stores in China).
The overall effect is less money to go into reinvestment - maintenance of company property, R&D, other workers' salaries suffer because the company is bleeding money at the reinvestment stage even as they save on cheaper labor. For some companies this is a manageable loss; they sell enough product that they will never have to worry about their bottom line as long as the product stays cheap. For others, it's a cost they can not afford to absorb long-term and one that will ultimately stifle the creativity and growth of that company.
You also have to count the costs that increased unemployment over here can have. Unemployed people are costing us a lot of taxpayer dollars in food programs, shelters and medical care that they can't afford to pay. They aren't paying much, if anything, back into the system but are draining it daily. If we aren't giving them an opportunity to work, they may end up taking what they can't buy - and now you've got higher crime rates in poor areas, which costs us money for more police activity, more "security" measures, more full jails... you get the point. If enough people offshore or cut jobs here, you get a pretty damn big mess.
I don't like the idea of feeding hungry Chinese when I'm starving myself. I've got a relatively low standard of living but when the economy makes it hard for me to put a roof over my head and the company down the street is hiring 200 Indians and not 100 of my neighbors, I'm naturally going to be a little bitter about outsourcing.
Hey, that's my job!
(Part of it, anyway. I work with kids with autism spectrum disorders and many, many of them have great difficulties with speech and language processing. They not only don't speak clearly (if at all) but they have trouble labeling objects both receptively (touch the couch!) and expressively (what is that? Couch!)). I'm really interested to see what people have to say about this. The best motivation I've found is to take away anything the kid really wants (food, drinks, toys, computer) and make them ask for it repeatedly during a session, modeling the appropriate way to ask (Picture Exchange Communication System, sign language, verbal cues, Dynavox, Dynawrite...) and then making sure that they are asking at the highest level they are able to reach. I won't take "waha" for "water" when I know they can say "wata". It can be frustrating for them but if you always reward with the item after they've made a few (good) attempts to ask, they'll very soon learn that it's worth speaking clearly so they don't have to go through "I didn't understand you - say it again!" six times. Once they know that communication is effective in fulfilling their desires you can work on shaping language to a clearer state. If they're not motivated you'll get nowhere. For some of them I'd honestly advocate putting them in a public setting with a list of questions they have to ask in order to find their way "home", standing back and watching. If they can't get passerby to understand them, and are capable of understanding -why- they aren't understood, they'll hopefully shape up their speech patterns as fast as they can at least to a level where most people can grasp what they're saying. Just don't do with the guys who are going to be easily frustrated or become violent (duh).
I can't play back a kid's voice without a tape recorder in hand, but I do a lot of modeling, overexaggerated lip movements and bouncing around to make it fun and I can react a lot better than a computer can to a kid's changing attention and level of motivation.
You could always do what I do, and avoid cameras. If your friends don't have pictures to upload, they can't tag you. You could also try asking your friends not to tag you...
Opt-in and opt-out probably wouldn't work without a Facebook account for them to link to your name/tag. Otherwise, Mr. John Smith from Rhode Island might opt-out of being tagged by telling Facebook not to allow his name, and suddenly John Smith from Maine can't tag himself in photos. Without giving Facebook identifying information (even if it's just your email address and the ID of the friend who wants to tag you), you can't opt in or out of their services. If there's a workaround for opt-outs that doesn't involve identifying yourself, I'm unaware of it. Opting in might be 'easier', but then you'd either have to make a Facebook account just to allow someone to tag you in their holiday photos, or you'd (again) have to send in identifying information to allow Facebook to tell which John Smith you are, and who can tag you. It's not worth the hassle on either end.
Simple solution: Motion sensor set to turn on a sprinkler head.
No cat in its right mind will use your garden as a litterbox after the 2nd time they've been surprised by cold water, and the noise/surprise of the water might keep other pest animals away as well.
One of my cats utters shortened meows when he watches the birds out the window, but it's not quite chirping. He's the most vocal of our 3 and will trill (purr-meow) when coming to us or when he wants our attention as he goes somewhere. Our kitten is just learning, but is already figuring out that the siren meow doesn't always work on me (the way I see it, if she learns to beg loudly now and gets stuff for it, she'll be spoiled rotten and decide to be loud at 3am when she wants something...), so she is attempting purrs and other noises to get our attention. The cats also definitely have sounds for when they're uncomfortable or want to get away (as when we're trimming their claws, or giving the occasional flea-dip). Even people who have never heard a cat before would be able to identify the yowls of one who is not happy.
We are planning on a dog some time in the future, and while we have not trained the cats intensively in the past, I may attempt to train one or two of them along with the dog, to see which one picks up on the training faster, and how the results differ. (Naturally I'll be using different treats for the cat than the dog).
Not really. Most training I have seen uses elements of conditioning (rewarding expected behaviors and punishing undesirable ones) because that's what works best. I can't say I know every pet training method under the sun, but the base fact is that most creatures will work for a motivating item, be that praise, toys, treats, or in some cases even being left alone. In fact, I wouldn't have a clue how to train an animal without offering it motivation for the desired behavior.
Citation needed for: "Drugs available certainly carry more risks than being overweight."
Bias against fat people? There's a bias against anyone who doesn't fit the current standard of beauty, in case you hadn't noticed. Fat people are just the ones currently being railed on. Give it a couple of years; the fat mass will become the majority and people will start wailing about anorexics instead.
Note to Mr. Historian: The beginning of recorded history happened around the time our ancestors stopped hunting and gathering and started settling in to grow crops and developed specialization of the work force. Before that it's anyone's guess whether there were fat people, and my guess is NO. Hunting and gathering is a rough lifestyle and one that does not lend itself to gaining weight, unless you have one of those rare glandular problems and you're not constantly moving (ie, you're a second wife to someone). Go ahead and find me a picture of one of those "untouched" Amazonian rainforest tribes that features a clinically obese person.
Diet is not simply about disregarding cravings or substitution. It's about everything you take in, whether or not you crave it and whether or not you do anything about that craving. If you choose to eat rather than go hungry - that's a part of your diet. If you crave ice cream and eat it, that's also a part of your diet. If you mean dieting, that's another thing altogether.
Oh, and I never said that diet alone would kill off your fat cells, or that managing your appetite is easy. Hence the quip about treating cravings as a nutritional guide. People clearly do have the information available to make informed decisions about what they eat though, and it's certainly not going to hurt you to avoid large volumes of any food (I live by "Everything in Moderation", and it has served me well). Even if you are "overweight", a healthy diet can keep you more physically fit, and as far as I'm concerned if you're 300lbs and can bench your own weight, jog every other day and don't get out of breath climbing stairs, you don't need to be thin. Health comes in all sizes... but people who can't functionally move around, or get winded because of their size and lack of exercise are not healthy.
You don't have to disregard your drive to eat in order to maintain a healthy weight... you just have to manage it. If it's broken, you need to see someone about 'fixing' it either through diet, drugs, surgery or a combination thereof. I'll agree that the human drive to eat unhealthy things (it's been proven that fats are somewhat addictive) is a terrible evolutionary holdover, but with all the knowledge out there, what's stopping people from learning enough about their bodies to understand their cravings and treat them as cravings, instead of as a nutritional guide? I'm sure our ancestors craved sugar just as much as we do... they just didn't have boxes of Twinkies lying around. Sweet tree sap and flower nectar don't come in the same volumes as chocolate milk.
Since you're attacking root's AC posting (strawman!), I might as well let you flame me directly. The car analogy fits perfectly.
There are preventative measures everyone can take to keep their car running, regardless of make and model. Some models run longer than others on less maintenance, but eventually every one needs an oil change and tires rotated, or it will break down. You can't expect your Jeep (as awesome and hard-working as they are) to keep running forever without a tune-up, even if it doesn't need as much maintenance as someone's Corvette. Similarly, if you own a certain kind of car you should be expected to look up the basic facts about that car. You can't go to the gas station and fill up the tank if you don't know how much the tank will hold. You can't change the oil if you don't know what kind and how much to put in, what kind of filter to get... even if you pay a professional to do this for you (mechanic), you should be asking questions about what they do and why, to gain a better understanding of the necessary maintenance and what you can do at home. It's no different than taking yourself to the doctor, nutritionist, or gym/personal trainer to help take care of yourself if you don't have the time/energy to do it for yourself at home. There will also be times when your car will seize up for no "good" reason, or come with defects from the manufacturer (which may not show up until years later, like door lock failures). Maybe you were t-boned and now you can't open the passenger door, or maybe the door lock failed suddenly. Either you fix the door, or you learn to use the other doors in a more effective manner. The only difference is that when cars get too smashed up to work, most people can go get a new one. You can't really do that with yourself, so you need to take better care of your body than you do your car.
I'm with root - I don't care what "reasons" people have for becoming overweight - there is no excuse for not attempting to get that weight off, and trying until it either comes off, or you learn to live with it and stop screaming at everyone who pokes you in the tummy. Hell, I'm gaining fat around my middle pretty rapidly the last year or so, and as tired and stressed and poor as I am, I'm still finding ways to exercise. Screw the excuses. Even those who have been laid up and gained weight due to forced inactivity should be able to drop it when they are allowed to move again. If you can't use one ankle, make use of the other one, the rest of your legs, your arms and your core muscles (lower back, obliques and abs). Do modified yoga poses, do pilates, swim, fidget at your desk with a weight around your good ankle. Stand up for breaks (good for you if you're in an office 10 hours a day anyway!) and do calf raises. The cubicle divider makes a great place to hang on to and take some weight off that bad ankle if necessary. If you absolutely can not keep the weight off by yourself, get help and get a lap band. I guarantee it will take care of your hunger problem by making it physically impossible for you to eat too much, and between a guy with a lap band and a guy with a salad, I'll put my bets on the lap band working better for longer in most cases.
The bottom line is: Keep trying. I am not trying to be disparaging, but you sound like you're getting very defensive over your inability to do something that in all likelihood you are quite capable of, once you get past the initial pain of it. I do this to myself a LOT and I recognize the signs. Don't let your fears keep you from success. If you have lost weight in the past, you can do it again. Talk to your doctor (seriously!) and start charting your diet for starters. If you hate fitday.com, use dailyplate.com or one of the million other meal-trackers. You CAN do it. The question is whether you really want to ask for help - and the answer should be "yes", because if you can't do it alone (as your argument seems to indicate), then there's no reason to be ashamed of asking for help. Hell, I'll even make you a deal - for every pound you lose, I'll run another mile. Think you can get me into a marathon by next year?
Spicy foods can definitely help with cold symptoms but a flu is a different kind of bug entirely. I've used capsacin (hot pepper!) and garlic in tomato juice (for the vitamin C content) to ward off nasty sinus infections and colds, but it never worked for the last flu I had, except to clear up my nasal passages so I could breathe a little easier.
Here is a rough formula that will give you a relatively close estimate of your body fat % from your BMI: http://www.halls.md/bmi/fat.htm It correlates for sex and age. It isn't perfect (if you have a lot of muscle, or if you're like me and look anorexic, it'll be off by a small amount) but it correlated with another body fat calculator I found that used wrist/hip measurements to predict body fat percentage, which leads me to believe it'll be accurate for most of the population.
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I suggest you start planning trips via other means of conveyance. I hear Amtrak is still running service to many areas in the continental US, and there are always ships to other countries! :)
Unfortunately, because of the time and effort involved in attempting other methods of travel, people will still continue to fly no matter how bad the airlines get.
"Hell, I barely understand how a light bulb works and those things are everywhere." This. One generation grew up with a "new" gadget, which they were eager to figure out and impress others with. This generation sees computers as something necessary to life, like light bulbs. Some people grow up with light bulbs and figure out everything about them; most learn how to flip the switch and get light. Today's kids will be -comfortable- with the presence of tech and learn how to use it as a matter of watching parents and peers do so, but they may not understand it.
1) Find the closest 'open box'. If Google's not open, that's either the address field or the Google Search field provided at the top of my version of Firefox. I assume they have something similar.
2) Type 'google' into box. Since Firefox finishes partial urls if it has a clue, it'll take them straight to google. If they typed it in the search field, it'll search for Google. Either way, they get there.
I've known people who do this as well. If they are handed a written or typed url to get to, they'll type it into Google. Usually, this lack of efficiency characterizes every thing they try to do with a computer, and occasionally every other thing they try to do in life. They appear to be incapable of retaining more than one skill at a time, and I shake my head in wonder that they manage to get through the day. The worst part is that most of these people are at worst slightly below average IQ - they're not mentally incapable (so I assume)!
I'm sure a lot of you know this already, but Ultima Online offers full skill/stats access, within the limit that you can only have 6-7 skills at a time (depending how high you want them. If you want 20 skills, you'll never master any). This being the case, very few people are "useless" in the game, but some characters are certainly better than others at certain things. Soloing bosses takes a different "template" (set of skills found to be useful in conjunction) than mining and crafting - and because you have 6 character slots, you can have a GM crafter and a GM fencer, if you like. Players can also rely on others to provide what they don't enjoy doing themselves. Some people have 6 warriors, others have 1. I would say that the game is never unplayable, although I admit some of the lower-end quests get boring fast, so there is certainly an encouragement to master at least one template.
The problem is that in a game with set levels or a single-player story it is much easier to fail if your character has skills unrelated to the quest requirements. That being the case I wouldn't recommend that NWN be re-made with classless characters. I think the balance needs to fall somewhere between exclusive storytelling and very limited creation, and an open world with limitless creation - both have their perks and will attract people for different reasons, but both are necessary gaming niches.
I agree with the parent. On the sites that I visit with Google text ads, I don't feel the need to ignore the ad or block it the way I do with most other ads. I may even skim it to see if it has interesting content, because a text ad paradoxically calls more attention to itself than a flash ad which I will have to watch for a while to get all the info, or worse, have to block because it distracts from the site content. My browsing style is rather stream-of-consciousness, so I'm likely to click only on links relevant to the activity or text I'm currently viewing. Because Google can serve context-sensitive advertising, it's more likely to get a hit from me than an adsense-hosted flash ad that's been put up regardless of related site content.
I have even clicked on mostly ads from my gmail header adline, not because they were particularly flashy or advertised something cheap but because whatever they were linking to - doctors, movie reviews, etc was a good jumping point for quick research, and as parent stated they are sometimes linked to your email subject lines.
Best internet analogy ever. Mod parent up!
....so it could be worked around by faking a 3rd pin to make the connection? I'm assuming the software can't tell the difference, but is only counting pins.
My Verizon LG (one of the low-end numbered phones) gave me an "Unauthorized Charger" error when I failed to plug the charger in all the way one day...
People have been going barefoot and risking parasites for years. Funny thing, though. When you walk barefoot for long periods of time, you get these things called calluses on the bottoms of your feet, which protect them from being cut open and make it a lot harder for a parasite to burrow through! Also note that soil-borne parasites don't survive well in temperate or cold climates (such as most of the US and Canada), are rare except in soil contaminated by animal/human waste, and are generally easily treatable. Personally, I like going barefoot. The risk of stepping on broken glass, especially in urban areas, is far higher than the risk of picking up roundworms.
The problem is that most home ec classes are washed-out textbook-based crap. I knew everything anyways Congratulations, you're one of the 1% of adults who can fend for themselves! Don't speak for the rest of your peers, please. As you state, there are people out there incapable of scrambling an egg.
I would bet the people who didn't know how to cook and do laundry never covered that in home ec, or never took it - it's not exactly a top requirement for graduation, or at least it wasn't in my district. Regardless, I had a great home ec and career class where we covered a lot of material and did so with hands-on projects as often as possible. We had a full kitchen with 5 or 6 ovens, sinks, countertops and cooking utensils for our cooking unit; the teacher provided every single contraceptive option she could get her hands on (and she had A LOT) for our sexual health and reproduction unit, and we talked to actual cops and other community leaders during the drug unit. We even did a memorable exercise wherein we estimated our living costs when we moved out, and then compared them to the local prices for that year and looked at our misconceptions. It was eye-opening, and I'm sure a lot of us remembered it when we held our first paychecks. We did nothing with robo-babies, and I'm glad - why hand a hormonal teenage girl a fake baby anyway? At that age one of my friends was obsessed with pregnancy and wanted to have babies straight out of high school already. She benefited more from the contraceptives lessons than the baby doll (and now that she's matured a little she's still childless, thank god!).
So I'll be one person who says "thank god for home ec", but I'll also say that my parents had a lot to do with filling in the gaps in my home-ec education, and every adult I know who is capable of cooking, cleaning, etc will probably say the same. Home ec on its own is useful, but it's definitely better with the backing of parents who can help their kids apply their knowledge of housekeeping on a more personal level.
Because 10 years isn't that long to hold a given piece of data. You don't expect a book in a library to disappear 10 years from now - it will still be at the same "address" in the catalog as it is today, although its physical shelf location may have changed based on the addition or subtraction of books from the surrounding shelves. For very old books, the address may be slightly updated when the book is replaced, but it will still exist - and it will exist in multiple libraries, at the same time. Just because we're used to the fluidity of the internet doesn't mean we need to give up on data permanence or redundancy. I agree it's difficult to keep every bookmark or shortened url accurate based on the fact that people do change their directories occasionally, but there are easy ways to redirect a missing subdirectory back to the home page where a visitor should be able to navigate back to the intended page.
I'm all for archiving parts of the internet. People create and display amazing things here, some of which are never going to be put on a hard copy for distribution and some of which I will still want to visit in 10 years. I hope this site actually works... regardless of the tripe that's being saved.
Try it in Pittsburgh and watch people treat the yield sign A) As if it's not there (and they'll probably try to turn the wrong way into the roundabout, too!) or B) as if it's a stop sign at which they must sit until all trace of traffic is clear regardless of time of day and the number of cars piling up behind them. Most people can't even merge onto the I-376 corridor, which has been there for YEARS and is a daily commute for a lot of them.
Anyway, this end of the country has enough constant road construction slowing everything down!
To be honest, I'd rather have a slightly blemished, organically-grown apple I grew in my back yard than a blemish-free apple from Wal-Mart, carvings or not.
I am always horrified by the amount of fruit that is tossed aside at the store for a small bruise, green spot, brown spot, scabbing, or other "blemish" that in no way affects the taste and/or can be easily removed with the tip of a sharp knife. One store near my last apartment used to put that kind of fruit on a "last chance" stand for a third of the price, and if you got it the day it was set out it would often be perfectly enjoyable. I rarely had to remove any whole fruits from the bags, I often got mixed bags of apples and oranges in quantities that two people could actually eat (vs. buying single ones or whole bags at the front of the store) and I was able to get fruits that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten, like two pints of slightly dry blueberries (not a single rotten fruit, just "old") which made amazing blueberry and white chocolate tarts. Bruised apples make perfectly good pie, too - once they're baked, you will never notice the bruised parts.
Maybe instead of figuring out how to etch things onto fruit, they need to be working on educating consumers about how to use fruit that's already got markings on it!
It may be an aggregate short-term gain but think in terms of long-term. We are now paying part of that company's profits (say, $30 of the $50 you spent on that tool) to another country's workers where it is more likely to be reinvested in their small businesses and local economy than to be paid back to another American company operating over there. (Ie, the chinese will go to a local shoe store with their paycheck from the american shoe factory, instead of buying from the american shoe stores in China).
The overall effect is less money to go into reinvestment - maintenance of company property, R&D, other workers' salaries suffer because the company is bleeding money at the reinvestment stage even as they save on cheaper labor. For some companies this is a manageable loss; they sell enough product that they will never have to worry about their bottom line as long as the product stays cheap. For others, it's a cost they can not afford to absorb long-term and one that will ultimately stifle the creativity and growth of that company.
You also have to count the costs that increased unemployment over here can have. Unemployed people are costing us a lot of taxpayer dollars in food programs, shelters and medical care that they can't afford to pay. They aren't paying much, if anything, back into the system but are draining it daily. If we aren't giving them an opportunity to work, they may end up taking what they can't buy - and now you've got higher crime rates in poor areas, which costs us money for more police activity, more "security" measures, more full jails... you get the point. If enough people offshore or cut jobs here, you get a pretty damn big mess.
I don't like the idea of feeding hungry Chinese when I'm starving myself. I've got a relatively low standard of living but when the economy makes it hard for me to put a roof over my head and the company down the street is hiring 200 Indians and not 100 of my neighbors, I'm naturally going to be a little bitter about outsourcing.
I'll be writing that one down...
Hey, that's my job!
(Part of it, anyway. I work with kids with autism spectrum disorders and many, many of them have great difficulties with speech and language processing. They not only don't speak clearly (if at all) but they have trouble labeling objects both receptively (touch the couch!) and expressively (what is that? Couch!)). I'm really interested to see what people have to say about this. The best motivation I've found is to take away anything the kid really wants (food, drinks, toys, computer) and make them ask for it repeatedly during a session, modeling the appropriate way to ask (Picture Exchange Communication System, sign language, verbal cues, Dynavox, Dynawrite...) and then making sure that they are asking at the highest level they are able to reach. I won't take "waha" for "water" when I know they can say "wata". It can be frustrating for them but if you always reward with the item after they've made a few (good) attempts to ask, they'll very soon learn that it's worth speaking clearly so they don't have to go through "I didn't understand you - say it again!" six times. Once they know that communication is effective in fulfilling their desires you can work on shaping language to a clearer state. If they're not motivated you'll get nowhere. For some of them I'd honestly advocate putting them in a public setting with a list of questions they have to ask in order to find their way "home", standing back and watching. If they can't get passerby to understand them, and are capable of understanding -why- they aren't understood, they'll hopefully shape up their speech patterns as fast as they can at least to a level where most people can grasp what they're saying. Just don't do with the guys who are going to be easily frustrated or become violent (duh).
I can't play back a kid's voice without a tape recorder in hand, but I do a lot of modeling, overexaggerated lip movements and bouncing around to make it fun and I can react a lot better than a computer can to a kid's changing attention and level of motivation.
You could always do what I do, and avoid cameras. If your friends don't have pictures to upload, they can't tag you. You could also try asking your friends not to tag you...
Opt-in and opt-out probably wouldn't work without a Facebook account for them to link to your name/tag. Otherwise, Mr. John Smith from Rhode Island might opt-out of being tagged by telling Facebook not to allow his name, and suddenly John Smith from Maine can't tag himself in photos. Without giving Facebook identifying information (even if it's just your email address and the ID of the friend who wants to tag you), you can't opt in or out of their services. If there's a workaround for opt-outs that doesn't involve identifying yourself, I'm unaware of it. Opting in might be 'easier', but then you'd either have to make a Facebook account just to allow someone to tag you in their holiday photos, or you'd (again) have to send in identifying information to allow Facebook to tell which John Smith you are, and who can tag you. It's not worth the hassle on either end.
Simple solution: Motion sensor set to turn on a sprinkler head. No cat in its right mind will use your garden as a litterbox after the 2nd time they've been surprised by cold water, and the noise/surprise of the water might keep other pest animals away as well.
One of my cats utters shortened meows when he watches the birds out the window, but it's not quite chirping. He's the most vocal of our 3 and will trill (purr-meow) when coming to us or when he wants our attention as he goes somewhere. Our kitten is just learning, but is already figuring out that the siren meow doesn't always work on me (the way I see it, if she learns to beg loudly now and gets stuff for it, she'll be spoiled rotten and decide to be loud at 3am when she wants something...), so she is attempting purrs and other noises to get our attention. The cats also definitely have sounds for when they're uncomfortable or want to get away (as when we're trimming their claws, or giving the occasional flea-dip). Even people who have never heard a cat before would be able to identify the yowls of one who is not happy.
We are planning on a dog some time in the future, and while we have not trained the cats intensively in the past, I may attempt to train one or two of them along with the dog, to see which one picks up on the training faster, and how the results differ. (Naturally I'll be using different treats for the cat than the dog).
Not really. Most training I have seen uses elements of conditioning (rewarding expected behaviors and punishing undesirable ones) because that's what works best. I can't say I know every pet training method under the sun, but the base fact is that most creatures will work for a motivating item, be that praise, toys, treats, or in some cases even being left alone. In fact, I wouldn't have a clue how to train an animal without offering it motivation for the desired behavior.
Way to read too much into that!
Citation needed for: "Drugs available certainly carry more risks than being overweight."
Bias against fat people? There's a bias against anyone who doesn't fit the current standard of beauty, in case you hadn't noticed. Fat people are just the ones currently being railed on. Give it a couple of years; the fat mass will become the majority and people will start wailing about anorexics instead.
Note to Mr. Historian: The beginning of recorded history happened around the time our ancestors stopped hunting and gathering and started settling in to grow crops and developed specialization of the work force. Before that it's anyone's guess whether there were fat people, and my guess is NO. Hunting and gathering is a rough lifestyle and one that does not lend itself to gaining weight, unless you have one of those rare glandular problems and you're not constantly moving (ie, you're a second wife to someone). Go ahead and find me a picture of one of those "untouched" Amazonian rainforest tribes that features a clinically obese person.
Diet is not simply about disregarding cravings or substitution. It's about everything you take in, whether or not you crave it and whether or not you do anything about that craving. If you choose to eat rather than go hungry - that's a part of your diet. If you crave ice cream and eat it, that's also a part of your diet. If you mean dieting, that's another thing altogether.
Oh, and I never said that diet alone would kill off your fat cells, or that managing your appetite is easy. Hence the quip about treating cravings as a nutritional guide. People clearly do have the information available to make informed decisions about what they eat though, and it's certainly not going to hurt you to avoid large volumes of any food (I live by "Everything in Moderation", and it has served me well). Even if you are "overweight", a healthy diet can keep you more physically fit, and as far as I'm concerned if you're 300lbs and can bench your own weight, jog every other day and don't get out of breath climbing stairs, you don't need to be thin. Health comes in all sizes... but people who can't functionally move around, or get winded because of their size and lack of exercise are not healthy.
You don't have to disregard your drive to eat in order to maintain a healthy weight... you just have to manage it. If it's broken, you need to see someone about 'fixing' it either through diet, drugs, surgery or a combination thereof. I'll agree that the human drive to eat unhealthy things (it's been proven that fats are somewhat addictive) is a terrible evolutionary holdover, but with all the knowledge out there, what's stopping people from learning enough about their bodies to understand their cravings and treat them as cravings, instead of as a nutritional guide? I'm sure our ancestors craved sugar just as much as we do... they just didn't have boxes of Twinkies lying around. Sweet tree sap and flower nectar don't come in the same volumes as chocolate milk.
Since you're attacking root's AC posting (strawman!), I might as well let you flame me directly. The car analogy fits perfectly.
There are preventative measures everyone can take to keep their car running, regardless of make and model. Some models run longer than others on less maintenance, but eventually every one needs an oil change and tires rotated, or it will break down. You can't expect your Jeep (as awesome and hard-working as they are) to keep running forever without a tune-up, even if it doesn't need as much maintenance as someone's Corvette. Similarly, if you own a certain kind of car you should be expected to look up the basic facts about that car. You can't go to the gas station and fill up the tank if you don't know how much the tank will hold. You can't change the oil if you don't know what kind and how much to put in, what kind of filter to get... even if you pay a professional to do this for you (mechanic), you should be asking questions about what they do and why, to gain a better understanding of the necessary maintenance and what you can do at home. It's no different than taking yourself to the doctor, nutritionist, or gym/personal trainer to help take care of yourself if you don't have the time/energy to do it for yourself at home. There will also be times when your car will seize up for no "good" reason, or come with defects from the manufacturer (which may not show up until years later, like door lock failures). Maybe you were t-boned and now you can't open the passenger door, or maybe the door lock failed suddenly. Either you fix the door, or you learn to use the other doors in a more effective manner. The only difference is that when cars get too smashed up to work, most people can go get a new one. You can't really do that with yourself, so you need to take better care of your body than you do your car.
I'm with root - I don't care what "reasons" people have for becoming overweight - there is no excuse for not attempting to get that weight off, and trying until it either comes off, or you learn to live with it and stop screaming at everyone who pokes you in the tummy. Hell, I'm gaining fat around my middle pretty rapidly the last year or so, and as tired and stressed and poor as I am, I'm still finding ways to exercise. Screw the excuses. Even those who have been laid up and gained weight due to forced inactivity should be able to drop it when they are allowed to move again. If you can't use one ankle, make use of the other one, the rest of your legs, your arms and your core muscles (lower back, obliques and abs). Do modified yoga poses, do pilates, swim, fidget at your desk with a weight around your good ankle. Stand up for breaks (good for you if you're in an office 10 hours a day anyway!) and do calf raises. The cubicle divider makes a great place to hang on to and take some weight off that bad ankle if necessary. If you absolutely can not keep the weight off by yourself, get help and get a lap band. I guarantee it will take care of your hunger problem by making it physically impossible for you to eat too much, and between a guy with a lap band and a guy with a salad, I'll put my bets on the lap band working better for longer in most cases.
The bottom line is: Keep trying. I am not trying to be disparaging, but you sound like you're getting very defensive over your inability to do something that in all likelihood you are quite capable of, once you get past the initial pain of it. I do this to myself a LOT and I recognize the signs. Don't let your fears keep you from success. If you have lost weight in the past, you can do it again. Talk to your doctor (seriously!) and start charting your diet for starters. If you hate fitday.com, use dailyplate.com or one of the million other meal-trackers. You CAN do it. The question is whether you really want to ask for help - and the answer should be "yes", because if you can't do it alone (as your argument seems to indicate), then there's no reason to be ashamed of asking for help. Hell, I'll even make you a deal - for every pound you lose, I'll run another mile. Think you can get me into a marathon by next year?
Spicy foods can definitely help with cold symptoms but a flu is a different kind of bug entirely. I've used capsacin (hot pepper!) and garlic in tomato juice (for the vitamin C content) to ward off nasty sinus infections and colds, but it never worked for the last flu I had, except to clear up my nasal passages so I could breathe a little easier.
Here is a rough formula that will give you a relatively close estimate of your body fat % from your BMI: http://www.halls.md/bmi/fat.htm It correlates for sex and age. It isn't perfect (if you have a lot of muscle, or if you're like me and look anorexic, it'll be off by a small amount) but it correlated with another body fat calculator I found that used wrist/hip measurements to predict body fat percentage, which leads me to believe it'll be accurate for most of the population.