This is a great flamebait post, but there are honestly echoes of things that go through my head as a parent... so I can't flame you but, I have to comment.;)
First, yeah, I don't want my kids hanging around crazy or bad kids. Yes, I admit, I'm starting to notice the money thing in my town... more obviously crazy poor people ratio. But at least in my local neighborhood, all the middle class (including lower middle class/working class) kids my kids hang out with are what I'd call good kids.
Second, there are just as many good poor people as there are good well-off people. But since there are so many more poor people in the US (world, whatever), the ratio of problems at home/life issues is very likely worse with poor people. Well, at least poor people IN THE CITY. I grew up in the country, and I would say the ratio of no problem to problem kids was about the same regardless of socioeconomic status.
Third, protect your kids from your biased adult thoughts. I don't want to make my kids assume wealthy people are somehow better by default. It absolutely is NOT true. Out of all the very wealthy people I know, every single one of them has family issues. Most have it so bad, siblings don't talk because there was a war over who got the family business. Some are such that the parent who started the family business is so controlling, they dictate everything their kids do even as adults... where they live, who they marry, etc. Lots of problems and strife for the next generation when you have lots of money. Just a different kind of crazy/evil.
A very smart stance I would say. I also like your last bit since not everybody is aware enough to realize immigrants that are coming in to stay here forever and to help the US become better are great people. I will quote:
I am a big fan of the idea of the H1B program and believe immigrants are the primary thing which has made and continues to make our country great, but companies like Infosys are a blight on our society with no redeeming value I can see.
Older Infiniti. If the names on the quick list are easy to say, it might pick them up... but I have a lot of odd names that is has problems with. I considered renaming my contacts to single digit numbers or something equally simple, but... nah.
And at least before the most recent firmware upgrade (maybe still like this), it was bad about calling the wrong person without confirmation... so if it got it wrong, bam, you were in the middle of a call to somebody else. That stress was not worth it! I found myself watching the screen more in case it called the wrong person, which defeated the whole purpose of hands free.
I'm slightly skeptical. The study was only of 20 younger and 20 older people, so probably not enough to be conclusive. From 2004, so I wonder if the results would continue 13 years later when more people were used to using cell phones.
Still very interesting, and I feel it has to be mostly correct if less exaggerated. Personally, I absolutely find myself halting/pausing conversations on the cell phone while driving when I'm at a major intersection that requires full concentration or I'd get T-boned. I even tell the other person "hold on a minute, I have to turn here". I'd do the same for people I am talking to. I also find myself losing concentration when the kids are being noisy in the backseats. So yeah, there has to be something about those distractions.
But then again, the way my brain works I have to concentrate very hard to have a verbal conversation with most people. Maybe some gab machines are so good at talking that it requires less concentration on their part. Hmm, I wonder.
Agreed. Cell phones are too prolific... hands free tech should be in all modern vehicles. I will say that dialing should be made better. In my car, I click a button the steering wheel then with another button on the wheel I scroll and pick one of my 6 main contacts. If they aren't on that list, I can't be bothered with it. Voice activation is nice in theory, but never works for phone calls in my car the way it should. Strangely enough voice navigation works well enough to use.
First, I seriously doubt 90% of people are reading text messages while driving 50 miles an hour. More likely when they are at a red light or something. But for those that are trying to kill their fellow humans by being really distracted, screw that.
And looking down at a phone is much worse than many ordinary distractions other than sleepiness. Reading/typing anything has a magical way of distracting you from all your peripheral vision and turning off your ability to judge time so you tend to look longer at a phone than other distractions.
I like your summary, but I have a few observations.
IMDB skews toward young male audiences.
Metacritic is also useful sometimes... it will skew low for scifi, horror, or fantasy in general, unless it is an independent movie that happens to be great.
Rottentomatoes is pretty good, but I remember reading it skews high or low due to it being a simple thumbs up vs. thumbs down. Easier to get a 99% on Rotten than other sites.
I really liked this movie a lot with such great visuals and a very cool idea for the plot. All the characters were superb as you mention. It was groundbreaking I believe in that it set the stage for other cool movie visuals like the recent Dr. Strange and Inception.
Star Wars easily. If you saw it back in when it was released, it was a life changing event!
So many other great ones out there too, I'm enjoying the majority of the lists so far. But nobody has mentioned the original scary monster space movie:
Alien
And I don't think I've seen any of the big Japanese anime films mentioned so within my top 2 or 3 is:
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Finally, my favorite during my college days, even the trailer blew me away:
Didn't know Dungeon Synth existed... just youtubed some and yeah, I think you are right. I never had good luck with Pandora for new music, it always brought me back to the 5 bands they were pushing that month that fell into my "categories" apparently.
I had avoided channel 29 in the past, but you've encouraged me to give it a shot again. By the way, is it me, or did satellite radio seem to reduce the amount of music variety per channel starting about 2 years ago? Might just be me, I haven't had it forever or anything.
Take advantage of the situation if one parent gets paid less than the other. Stay home and raise kids for a few years! If you aren't near older relatives or neighbors that you can hang out with, find another like-minded stay at home parent and you can have adult conversation time every other day as well.
Screw getting a bigger house, a more expensive car, or whatever at that point in your life. Take two to seven years off to raise your kids... one income is fine if you don't go nuts spending money. Besides, daycare costs a fortune and your kids will love those people almost more than you. Is that normal or healthy? F*ck no! Babies need their parents (mom especially) 90% of their waking life. Buy a smaller house than your friends and you'll have the freedom to do whatever you want.
I can't stand it when the background audio... i say background... the non-center speakers... are set so loud it starts to hurt your ears. I've had to go ask workers/managers to turn it down over and over again, sometimes to no avail. This keeps me out of the theaters more than anything.
I thought the same as you when it comes to tools I won't use frequently... why buy something expensive? So I buy a cheap phillips head screwdriver thinking I only use it a couple of times a year. Well, the second or third time I have to use it, the metal on the tip shaves off so much it becomes useless. What a complete waste of time and money.
Riding lawnmowers... I decided to stick with my parents' advice. Neighbor bought some oddball brand, it lasted 5 years. I spent probably $300 more on a John Deere...zero maintenance other than oil/oil filter/battery replacement, and it is still going 12 years later. Well worth the extra money.
All the battery operated power tools are guaranteed to stop working in a few short years though. I really hate them and their built in obsolescence.
People should watch out for Walmart meat. It's full of water and salt and... yeah. Google it, there were some slashdot articles a while back too. I bought a big piece of meat and it looked too fresh... inside it was spoiled. Some of their meat is something like a month older than regular places b/c they do not have butchers anymore and it comes from far away.
Yep, that is precisely what happened to me. I had a cheap bucket (brand??) probably from Walmart that barely lasted anytime. The next one I got was super thick and it's been working well for years.
Personally I'd rather manufacturers default to making better stuff instead of junk. Most stuff I buy isn't disposable, it is something I want to last a couple of decades so I don't have to go through the hassle of shopping again.
And shopping for some things on Amazon is getting terrible... too many choices (bad ones) to sort through. Try shopping for a kid's bed on Amazon... let's say one that won't break in 12 months. Good luck, it will take you weeks just to go through the 10,000 choices of junk.
âoeOnce every three or four years, Walmart tells you to take the money youâ(TM)re spending on [marketing] initiatives and invest it in lower prices,â said Jason Goldberg, the head of the commerce practice at SapientRazorfish, a digital agency that works with large brands and retailers. âoeThey sweep all the chips off the table and drill you down on price.â
Interesting, but be careful about those heart attack type stats. Basically those who are on the verge of a heart attack only have it when heart rate is greatly increased. But if you just sit around for years and never exercise, the heart attack won't happen for a lot of those people. Doesn't mean exercise is bad for you though, it just means it's waiting for you.
Sounds like a subordinate I had in reverse... actually nothing to do with brainstorming. I'd give him a task... he'd do it, but then make me "check" his task to make sure I was OK with it. That sounds OK at first to you the reader, but the reality was I'd have to spend the exact amount of time on the task that he did in order to check every detail. I hired him so I would get more time, not less. I gave him the benefit of the doubt once or so but caught on real quick on what he was up to and let him know.
Technicality question on advertising and legalities around their verbiage. It's been a while, but I thought when somebody uses the phrase "Leading National Brand" it means absolutely nothing in court. In other words, they can always say they are better than the leading national brand, because there is no definite requirement for who is "leading". Leading might mean their 5 year old son who sells golf balls he found in the ditch outside.
Some other gotchas I remember are "Best", "Number 1", and crap like that. Anything that can't be pinned down to a definite thing, like a dollar amount or percentage, will get by with advertising whatever. Even stuff like water-proof can get by with judges as long as it is way better than typical products that are listed as "water resistant" even though the water-proof stuff might not be 100%.
A physical globe is of course best. I had one growing up. My kids now have one.
2nd best is the orange peel map, a homosiline projection.
I had to slap somebody around once at the work place when he swore up and down that Antarctica was the biggest continent. OMFG that hurt my brain. Then I quickly realized he was used to seeing some of those terribly distorted maps. I had to google it to prove to him that he was wrong, so convinced he was. And NOT google maps... just "google".;)
We aren't meant to remember things perfectly forever, it would drive us mad. Just go watch Strange Days or something similar.
The human mind evolved this way for many many reasons. Even the way we remember and forget is important. Do you want to be faced with the conscious decision to forget your dead loved one? I could never willingly do that, press a "button" to turn them off. But eventually you learn to deal with it.
I always see these same things/studies on Slashdot during this time of the year. Is it just because it is a hassle to code and deal with the change? Personally, I love getting an extra hour of daylight half the year. I get more exercise, my kids get more vitamin D, and it just seems way more efficient for someone who has a family and can't do things outdoors at night.
The negatives? People who die from strokes and heart attacks because of DST were about to die anyway, let's be realistic. Judges that are moody... well that just goes to show that they are human and will treat people more severely any time they have a bad day. It might actually help us weed out bad judges if you show the pattern. Consumer spending? No comment.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great flamebait post, but there are honestly echoes of things that go through my head as a parent... so I can't flame you but, I have to comment. ;)
First, yeah, I don't want my kids hanging around crazy or bad kids. Yes, I admit, I'm starting to notice the money thing in my town... more obviously crazy poor people ratio. But at least in my local neighborhood, all the middle class (including lower middle class/working class) kids my kids hang out with are what I'd call good kids.
Second, there are just as many good poor people as there are good well-off people. But since there are so many more poor people in the US (world, whatever), the ratio of problems at home/life issues is very likely worse with poor people. Well, at least poor people IN THE CITY. I grew up in the country, and I would say the ratio of no problem to problem kids was about the same regardless of socioeconomic status.
Third, protect your kids from your biased adult thoughts. I don't want to make my kids assume wealthy people are somehow better by default. It absolutely is NOT true. Out of all the very wealthy people I know, every single one of them has family issues. Most have it so bad, siblings don't talk because there was a war over who got the family business. Some are such that the parent who started the family business is so controlling, they dictate everything their kids do even as adults... where they live, who they marry, etc. Lots of problems and strife for the next generation when you have lots of money. Just a different kind of crazy/evil.
A very smart stance I would say. I also like your last bit since not everybody is aware enough to realize immigrants that are coming in to stay here forever and to help the US become better are great people. I will quote:
I am a big fan of the idea of the H1B program and believe immigrants are the primary thing which has made and continues to make our country great, but companies like Infosys are a blight on our society with no redeeming value I can see.
Older Infiniti. If the names on the quick list are easy to say, it might pick them up... but I have a lot of odd names that is has problems with. I considered renaming my contacts to single digit numbers or something equally simple, but... nah.
And at least before the most recent firmware upgrade (maybe still like this), it was bad about calling the wrong person without confirmation... so if it got it wrong, bam, you were in the middle of a call to somebody else. That stress was not worth it! I found myself watching the screen more in case it called the wrong person, which defeated the whole purpose of hands free.
I'm slightly skeptical. The study was only of 20 younger and 20 older people, so probably not enough to be conclusive. From 2004, so I wonder if the results would continue 13 years later when more people were used to using cell phones.
Still very interesting, and I feel it has to be mostly correct if less exaggerated. Personally, I absolutely find myself halting/pausing conversations on the cell phone while driving when I'm at a major intersection that requires full concentration or I'd get T-boned. I even tell the other person "hold on a minute, I have to turn here". I'd do the same for people I am talking to. I also find myself losing concentration when the kids are being noisy in the backseats. So yeah, there has to be something about those distractions.
But then again, the way my brain works I have to concentrate very hard to have a verbal conversation with most people. Maybe some gab machines are so good at talking that it requires less concentration on their part. Hmm, I wonder.
Agreed. Cell phones are too prolific... hands free tech should be in all modern vehicles. I will say that dialing should be made better. In my car, I click a button the steering wheel then with another button on the wheel I scroll and pick one of my 6 main contacts. If they aren't on that list, I can't be bothered with it. Voice activation is nice in theory, but never works for phone calls in my car the way it should. Strangely enough voice navigation works well enough to use.
First, I seriously doubt 90% of people are reading text messages while driving 50 miles an hour. More likely when they are at a red light or something. But for those that are trying to kill their fellow humans by being really distracted, screw that.
And looking down at a phone is much worse than many ordinary distractions other than sleepiness. Reading/typing anything has a magical way of distracting you from all your peripheral vision and turning off your ability to judge time so you tend to look longer at a phone than other distractions.
I like your summary, but I have a few observations.
IMDB skews toward young male audiences.
Metacritic is also useful sometimes... it will skew low for scifi, horror, or fantasy in general, unless it is an independent movie that happens to be great.
Rottentomatoes is pretty good, but I remember reading it skews high or low due to it being a simple thumbs up vs. thumbs down. Easier to get a 99% on Rotten than other sites.
I really liked this movie a lot with such great visuals and a very cool idea for the plot. All the characters were superb as you mention. It was groundbreaking I believe in that it set the stage for other cool movie visuals like the recent Dr. Strange and Inception.
Yeah, Night Watch really was something special. Nothing had that look when it came out... love that movie!
Star Wars easily. If you saw it back in when it was released, it was a life changing event!
So many other great ones out there too, I'm enjoying the majority of the lists so far. But nobody has mentioned the original scary monster space movie:
Alien
And I don't think I've seen any of the big Japanese anime films mentioned so within my top 2 or 3 is:
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Finally, my favorite during my college days, even the trailer blew me away:
The Matrix
Didn't know Dungeon Synth existed... just youtubed some and yeah, I think you are right. I never had good luck with Pandora for new music, it always brought me back to the 5 bands they were pushing that month that fell into my "categories" apparently.
I had avoided channel 29 in the past, but you've encouraged me to give it a shot again. By the way, is it me, or did satellite radio seem to reduce the amount of music variety per channel starting about 2 years ago? Might just be me, I haven't had it forever or anything.
Take advantage of the situation if one parent gets paid less than the other. Stay home and raise kids for a few years! If you aren't near older relatives or neighbors that you can hang out with, find another like-minded stay at home parent and you can have adult conversation time every other day as well.
Screw getting a bigger house, a more expensive car, or whatever at that point in your life. Take two to seven years off to raise your kids... one income is fine if you don't go nuts spending money. Besides, daycare costs a fortune and your kids will love those people almost more than you. Is that normal or healthy? F*ck no! Babies need their parents (mom especially) 90% of their waking life. Buy a smaller house than your friends and you'll have the freedom to do whatever you want.
Very insightful. No points to mod you up, wish I had them.
I think users at my office will react similarly. We are staying with Win7 until new PCs come in slowly that only have Win10.
I can't stand it when the background audio... i say background... the non-center speakers... are set so loud it starts to hurt your ears. I've had to go ask workers/managers to turn it down over and over again, sometimes to no avail. This keeps me out of the theaters more than anything.
I thought the same as you when it comes to tools I won't use frequently... why buy something expensive? So I buy a cheap phillips head screwdriver thinking I only use it a couple of times a year. Well, the second or third time I have to use it, the metal on the tip shaves off so much it becomes useless. What a complete waste of time and money.
Riding lawnmowers... I decided to stick with my parents' advice. Neighbor bought some oddball brand, it lasted 5 years. I spent probably $300 more on a John Deere...zero maintenance other than oil/oil filter/battery replacement, and it is still going 12 years later. Well worth the extra money.
All the battery operated power tools are guaranteed to stop working in a few short years though. I really hate them and their built in obsolescence.
People should watch out for Walmart meat. It's full of water and salt and ... yeah. Google it, there were some slashdot articles a while back too. I bought a big piece of meat and it looked too fresh... inside it was spoiled. Some of their meat is something like a month older than regular places b/c they do not have butchers anymore and it comes from far away.
Yep, that is precisely what happened to me. I had a cheap bucket (brand??) probably from Walmart that barely lasted anytime. The next one I got was super thick and it's been working well for years.
Personally I'd rather manufacturers default to making better stuff instead of junk. Most stuff I buy isn't disposable, it is something I want to last a couple of decades so I don't have to go through the hassle of shopping again.
And shopping for some things on Amazon is getting terrible... too many choices (bad ones) to sort through. Try shopping for a kid's bed on Amazon... let's say one that won't break in 12 months. Good luck, it will take you weeks just to go through the 10,000 choices of junk.
I think it's a great idea. Sorry salespeople.
âoeOnce every three or four years, Walmart tells you to take the money youâ(TM)re spending on [marketing] initiatives and invest it in lower prices,â said Jason Goldberg, the head of the commerce practice at SapientRazorfish, a digital agency that works with large brands and retailers. âoeThey sweep all the chips off the table and drill you down on price.â
Interesting, but be careful about those heart attack type stats. Basically those who are on the verge of a heart attack only have it when heart rate is greatly increased. But if you just sit around for years and never exercise, the heart attack won't happen for a lot of those people. Doesn't mean exercise is bad for you though, it just means it's waiting for you.
Sounds like a subordinate I had in reverse... actually nothing to do with brainstorming. I'd give him a task... he'd do it, but then make me "check" his task to make sure I was OK with it. That sounds OK at first to you the reader, but the reality was I'd have to spend the exact amount of time on the task that he did in order to check every detail. I hired him so I would get more time, not less. I gave him the benefit of the doubt once or so but caught on real quick on what he was up to and let him know.
Technicality question on advertising and legalities around their verbiage. It's been a while, but I thought when somebody uses the phrase "Leading National Brand" it means absolutely nothing in court. In other words, they can always say they are better than the leading national brand, because there is no definite requirement for who is "leading". Leading might mean their 5 year old son who sells golf balls he found in the ditch outside.
Some other gotchas I remember are "Best", "Number 1", and crap like that. Anything that can't be pinned down to a definite thing, like a dollar amount or percentage, will get by with advertising whatever. Even stuff like water-proof can get by with judges as long as it is way better than typical products that are listed as "water resistant" even though the water-proof stuff might not be 100%.
A physical globe is of course best. I had one growing up. My kids now have one.
2nd best is the orange peel map, a homosiline projection.
I had to slap somebody around once at the work place when he swore up and down that Antarctica was the biggest continent. OMFG that hurt my brain. Then I quickly realized he was used to seeing some of those terribly distorted maps. I had to google it to prove to him that he was wrong, so convinced he was. And NOT google maps... just "google". ;)
We aren't meant to remember things perfectly forever, it would drive us mad. Just go watch Strange Days or something similar.
The human mind evolved this way for many many reasons. Even the way we remember and forget is important. Do you want to be faced with the conscious decision to forget your dead loved one? I could never willingly do that, press a "button" to turn them off. But eventually you learn to deal with it.
I always see these same things/studies on Slashdot during this time of the year. Is it just because it is a hassle to code and deal with the change? Personally, I love getting an extra hour of daylight half the year. I get more exercise, my kids get more vitamin D, and it just seems way more efficient for someone who has a family and can't do things outdoors at night.
The negatives? People who die from strokes and heart attacks because of DST were about to die anyway, let's be realistic. Judges that are moody... well that just goes to show that they are human and will treat people more severely any time they have a bad day. It might actually help us weed out bad judges if you show the pattern. Consumer spending? No comment.