Well, when talking about a Denial-Of-Service (DOS) attack, if you want to elaborate with a new prefix, you need to address several things. One, the scope - is this a localized source, is it international, etc? Secondly, the scale - are we dealing with a large-scale attack, a small-scale attack, etc? Third, is it an automated attack with centralized control, such as a botnet or LOIC, or is it more akin to a "flash mob" DOS? In this particular case, we're dealing with a (G)lobal, (L)arge-scale and (A) automated. So there's your prefix to the Denial-Of-Service acronym.
Sometimes, you wish things in life were. For example, the "I spent a couple hours reading blog posts from a TV weatherman in California, and now I'm an expert on climate science!" crowd.
I've worked in the field before, and you're absolutely right. Thankfully, there's a lot of people who realize how bad these systems are and are working to come up up with more tactile solutions. Popular approaches are things like steering wheel buttons for controls with sounds to help keep you sure of what function you're operating on. Ultimately, the car is likely headed to a system where there are multiple dumb screens networked into a single "smartphone"-like compute platform for the vehicle. The screens provide independent interfaces but can display common shared applications being run by the compute platform, such as the current route on a GPS app or the currently playing music in a music/radio app. The driver's is the same display as the speedometer and other gauges, is not a touch screen (obviously), and is designed only for quick glances to get summary information while only moving the eyes a few degrees from the windshield. The center dash can go away, since drivers shouldn't be having to look over that far and mess with things over there, and since thus it makes more sense to have the passenger's display right in front of them (requires a bit of airbag/glove box repositioning, but is doable). Freeing up the center console and getting rid of all of these independent, heavy, inefficient standalone "boxes" (which often work poorly together) in lieu of a single embedded multifunction platform provides a massive number of benefits, from more interior design options for what to do with that extra space to reduced wiring costs, reduced weight, dramatically reduced power consumption, upgradeability, security, and on and on. It's the future of vehicles. The Tier 1s won't like it, as their entire business is built on said "boxes", but they'll have to deal with it sooner or later.
Shyness is a trait. Skulking in the shadows is a behavior. Yes, people exhibiting the latter behavior are probably shy. And while of course some guys have a problem with shy girls, many consider it attractive, a girl who giggles and blushes and gets embarrassed. You rarely see that in reverse. And that matches what you'd expect evolutionarily, btw.
Guess I'm too used to Iceland. Getting into bed with someone happens *before* dating them here. If you get along well with them in bed and hook up several times in a row without mixing it up a bit, then you're kinda dating. You get to know people over the course of sleeping with them.
Wait, so you're looking for fast-moving partners, but should we really take your anecdotal evidence from your other post that 22% of men are rapists?
Do you really not know the difference between "kissing someone" and "forcing sex on her while she's saying no over and over"? I mean, *Really*?
And, FYI, you're totally wrong about my friends and family. Not like it matters. You're simply looking for any excuse to try to dismiss the reality. Not like you care about the huge number of studies on the subject (also linked in this thread). It doesn't fit with what you want to believe, and therefore, you choose not to believe it.
The plural of anecdote is not data. But the plural of peer-reviewed studies is not "la la la, I can't hear you!" And, FYI, the person I was responding to with my personal experience was saying, "I don't believe the studies because it would mean that it's common". How else do you propose I respond to such a person except to post my real-life experience?
How the heck is "my life" and the lives of the women I know "overplaying the problem"? This isn't some trivial f'ing problem for me. This isn't abstract. This is "making it hard to date or even make friends with guys out of fear that they're not going to listen if I say no because a very much non-negligable fraction have shown that they in fact don't respect the word 'no'".
"I want to stop" is not "coyness". "I dunno..." with a blushing smile is coyness. If a girl says "I want to stop" and you don't, that's rape. There is no fuzzy line here. Call rape "paying off" if you want to, but it doesn't change what it is.
Gee, let's look at my actual experience on the dating scene since my divorce a little over half a year ago:
1) Did not try to rape me. 2) Did not try to rape me. 3) Did not try to rape me. 4) Tried and succeeded at raping me. 5) Did not try to rape me. 6) Did not try to rape me. 7) Did not try to rape me. 8) Tried but stopped after about 10 seconds of me struggling. 9) Did not try to rape me.
Simply not true. "Geek" gets bonus points in many people's books (mine included). Favorite thing a guy has ever said to me after arriving at my house: "You've never seen Dr. Who?!" (incredulous, beat) "Okay, we're downloading and watching the first ep of Dr. Who, *then* we're going to have sex!" I've mentally given bonus points to guys for things like having seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or getting excited over the Higgs-Boson announcement, things of that nature. And I'm far from alone in this regard.
I'm not sure how often you think that women randomly come up to married guys in their (late 30s, 40s, later?) and start hitting on them. That's not how it works. So I don't know why you'd be surprised that this hasn't happened to you. As to the single geeks you know, find a straight girl whose opinion you can trust and have her be wingman with one of your geek friends when they go out and give an honest assessment of him to help him find out what he's doing wrong. Because I assure you, there's at least something (probably several things).
Also remember that "geek" isn't an excuse for "get out of doing the normal stuff free". You still should try to be at least moderately physically fit, keep good hygene (clear skin, nicely trimmed hair, consistent and managed facial hair (whether present or absent), no body odor, etc), weight at least in the ballpark of "normal", etc (just like geek girls aren't likewise given a pass if they're covered in acne, tattered hair, unshaved legs and armpits, smelly, heavy, etc). And your expected social role in the dating game remains the same as any other guy's - to make the approach, strike up the conversation, make the first move, etc. Some geeks have trouble with these sorts of things, but it should be noted, it's not that they're *geeks* that's the problem. The fact that they're geeks can actually be a bonus.
To help enlighten you on the subject: it's not about plausible deniability. It's because courage and self-confidence are attractive in guys. Nobody wants a guy who's just going to skulk in the shadows, too afraid to talk to you.
Plus, a lot of womens' behavior is genuine shyness. Not all women are shy, far from it, but plenty honestly are. I'm among them. My natural instinct when I catch the eye of a cute guy is to smile but look away. It takes willpower to try to reestablish eye contact. What usually happens? I honestly just simply hope that he'll come up and talk with me. And if he doesn't have the courage to do that, well, that's not a very attractive trait, IMHO, and I'd be more interested in the guy who does have the courage to do that, even if he's not the one that first caught my eye.
Then he's been lucky. Heck, there's some girls out there with rape fantasies. Does that mean that you should go up to every girl you meet and rape her, hoping that you happened to pick someone like that?
If you're experiencing that problem, the message is, "I like you, but not in THAT way". Unfortunately, what triggers "THAT way" varies from person to person. You can do general things to increase your odds - good grooming, be confident, get good at maintaining an interesting conversation, etc - but ultimately each woman's particular tastes will come into play. And they can be contradictory. For example, some women will be really bothered by it if you move too fast, while others want a guy who will push them up against a wall and totally make out with them (although - it should be noted - still respecting the word "no" if it comes up). And let's not even get into all the differences in what physical characteristics people find attractive.
Note that how attractive you think you are probably has little correlation with how attractive you actually are, for good or bad. See this study for details - basically, women correlate about 0.5 with raters on their self-perceived attractiveness, but men only 0.1. Also, other studies seem to show that it's easier for men to rank women consistently in terms of attraction than for women to rank men; women' perceptions of mens' attractiveness has been shown to vary even on factors like whether they're looking for short-term or long-term partners and their current hormone levels.
The basic gist of it is, clear up any obvious problems, both physical (bad acne, foul odor, etc) and socially (being able to maintain a normal conversation, coming across as confident instead of super-nervous, etc), and while you can't guarantee every girl is going to want you, some will. Remember that women are playing their own "game" on the dating scene, whether it's looking for someone for a relationship or just someone to sleep with, and just like you, they're overthinking everything that they do and hoping that they find the right person.
BTW - just as a personal datapoint, but 80-90% of the time if I'm not seeing someone and end up in a flirty conversation with someone who wants me and who I'm attracted to, but nothing happens, the reason was, "he didn't make a move soon enough, and I felt the need to move on". The thought I'm usually thinking is, "quit trying to talk me into bed and just kiss me already!" And, BTW, yes, I know it's totally unfair to you guys that you're expected to do all the work - to approach and strike up a conversation with a girl you don't know, to make the first move, etc. But courage and confidence are, rightly or wrongly, generally very attractive characteristics in a guy, and that's how you demonstrate them. And it's very much quite possible that she already scoped you out a long time ago and is hoping that you'll come talk to her.
Wait, are you really citing police conviction statistics here? I mean, really? You do realize that most rapes go unreported, right? And that most reported rapes lack sufficient evidence to prosecute?
Secondly, I'm not citing college statistics (see above). Although Wikipedia has a pretty impressive list of studies. Care to discount them all? Actually the college numbers are the most disturbing aspect, with most studies showing a 3-5% rate of rape *per academic year*, 95% of which go unreported.
First off, that's not the stat I'm referring to (see my post above); that's a totally different one. And secondly, that should be even more concerning, as college is just a few years of one's life; to amass such a high odds of rape or attempted rape in just a couple years is even more disturbing.
And yes, anything having to do with rape is controversial, and there's no shortage of people trying to downplay it. But want to know the little bit of selection bias that makes it hard for you guys to understand how common rape is? Because the women you know in your life aren't just going to come up to you and tell you that they've been victims of rape or attempted rape. Maybe if you got really close to one and the timing is right. But your casual acquaintances aren't just going to say it to you. It's something that even women don't often talk about with each other unless the right topic comes up and people feel comfortable enough talking about it. After I got the courage to tell my little sister what happened to me, for example, only then did I learn that she's apparently the only woman in my immediate family who hasn't been raped. I've hosted four women in my house over the years as low-rent / rent-free guests. One had been the victim of a violent rape and has flashbacks, one had significant sexual abuse at various points in her life and it's really messed her up in relationships, and I never raised the topic with the other two. Let's pick another selection criteria - I've dated approximately equal numbers of men and women over the years. Of the women, two I don't know their pasts (it was a long time ago, we were young), another one was a victim of an attempted rape, another one had been raped twice (once at knifepoint, once with drugs), and one had never been raped but had for a long time been in a situation where she felt compelled to have sex with an old boyfriend whether she wanted to or not because he was stronger than her and demanding, and she didn't want a fight out of it.
I could start adding friends to the list if you want.
It's this sort of personal experience that makes it obvious that the numbers for rape are *at least* as high as cited. But most of the guys reading this will never learn about most of the rapes or other forms of sexual abuse in the lives of most of the women that they know.
Haven't checked the references for myself, but I've seen the following cites: Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, 573; Horowitz, 413; Lips, 233. Plus, from my personal experience between myself and those I know, the numbers have to be at *least* that high.
I'll mark you down in the "refusing to admit there are so many who take the other view" category, and thanks for furthering my point.
If part of this comes down to them not knowing how to actually interact with women properly, perhaps some tips will help:
1) Believe it or not, a girl can *actually* be interested in you. No, I'm not kidding! You *don't* have to be a creeper!
2) Yes, you have to go up and talk to women even though you may be uncomfortable doing so. No, not everyone will be interested. But you understand statistics, right? Just increase the number of trials until you hit a positive result.
3) One at a time, guys! If you all mob the same girl, she's not going home with any of you.
4) A little alcohol is fine. Blind-drunk, however, is not cute.
5) Be a human being. Talk about things that human beings talk about for several minutes without any sexual pressure. You don't have to be all over her right away. No, seriously! Your goal off the bat is to show her that you are, in fact, a human being and not a creeper.
6) Do not, in any circumstance, talk about your penis. Not usually too much of a problem with American guys, but to guys from more sexually-liberated countries... we know you've got one, and yes, we've seen big ones before; now can you get on with the "being human" thing before we leave?
7) Avoid any topics that might offend her unless you're sure you know her stance - that is, religion, politics, which text editor to use, etc. Also avoid any topic that makes you look bad, if you can.
8) Be prepared to fill in the silence if she's too shy to talk at any point in time. If she has no problem talking, though, be sure to let her.
9) She's still talking with you and you're getting along? Good! You've passed the "human being" test. Now you need to find out whether she is interested or whether you can interest her. This means progressively more flirting, moving into physical contact. Since we need to define some terms here:
10) Flirting: compliments, eye contact, touching your face or hair, whispering or any other excuse to get close to them, light non-threatening touches (arm, shoulders, hand, etc), and similar activity. You can gauge her reaction to them as you do them to judge her interest. If she's not interested, remember, there's plenty of other girls out there.
11) If you can get her to dance, now is a good time. It's a good excuse to increase the touching (just so long as you remember that it's *also* about actual, you know, *dancing*). Good targets for touching include the hair, small of the back, and eventually the face.
12) If she is still with you after all of this, try kissing her.
13) If she lets you kiss her then totally make out with her, just being sure to never exceed the bounds of what she's comfortable with (if you freak her out it's over). If you make out, odds are, assuming she's the type who goes home with someone on the first night, you're probably going home with her. If she doesn't do that, then at the very least she's probably willing to see you again and, assuming you don't screw up, you'll probably eventually sleep with her when she's ready.
Congratulations - you don't have to be a creeper anymore!
The biggest problem I have - not solely isolated to geek culture - is the refusal to believe that a problem even exists. When faced with some situation, such as "do I keep going when this girl who was making out with me before says, 'this is going too fast for me, I want to stop'?", a large percent of men will say "of course I stop" while a large minority will say "of course I keep going", but both groups by and large refuse to admit that there are so many people who take the opposite view.
Think of all the women you know. One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime. We're not even talking about sexual harrassment, things like unwanted grabbing of breasts and crotches, etc. One in four is just, simply, "rape". There is not some tiny, miniscule percentage of guys doing this; there's actually a rather large minority who seems to think that it's okay to do to women things that they don't want done to them. But just as much of a problem as these guys are, it's nearly as big of a problem that a large portion of the majority of guys who aren't like that seem to have trouble believing that so many men *are* like that. That they probably have several friends who wouldn't stop if the girl they're with said "no".
I think the Daniel Tosh / rape joke thing is a great example. Some comedians get all "freedom of speech" offended if anyone gets mad at them for telling rape jokes. "They're just harmless jokes!" The difference between a "harmless joke" and "offensive" when you say something over the top is whether you and/or your audience actually believe it. And whether you want to accept the fact or not, a sizeable percentage of your audience actually *does* believe what you're joking about. And a sizeable percentage of your audience are victims of what you're making fun of. So you can talk all you want about how you can stand up and tell genocide jokes without people getting offended, but unless you're prepared to go to the Kigali Chuckle Hut and do the same sketch to a bunch of Tutsis who had their families hacked down, you have no ground to stand on.
So many things wrong with your comically angry post. Some of the main ones:
1) Only asteroid fragments over a certain size make it to the ground. Blow it up enough and yes, it will not make it to the surface. It would add dust, of course, and impart a heating pulse to the surface, but spread out over however long between the furthest-forward pieces from the blast were and the furthest back ones.
2) Deflecting fragments of the asteroid from a collision course is precisely the point of an explosion, whether you're talking a bunch of small pieces that are now missing, or just two halves.
3) A bomb can do more than break up an asteroid; it can also move an asteroid, by radiation pressure, direct or indirect through surface heating.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, when talking about a Denial-Of-Service (DOS) attack, if you want to elaborate with a new prefix, you need to address several things. One, the scope - is this a localized source, is it international, etc? Secondly, the scale - are we dealing with a large-scale attack, a small-scale attack, etc? Third, is it an automated attack with centralized control, such as a botnet or LOIC, or is it more akin to a "flash mob" DOS? In this particular case, we're dealing with a (G)lobal, (L)arge-scale and (A) automated. So there's your prefix to the Denial-Of-Service acronym.
What makes you think that DietPepsi is not the leader's real name? ;)
Sometimes, you wish things in life were. For example, the "I spent a couple hours reading blog posts from a TV weatherman in California, and now I'm an expert on climate science!" crowd.
Code monkey think maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself.
Code monkey don't say it out loud.
Code monkey not crazy, just proud.
I've worked in the field before, and you're absolutely right. Thankfully, there's a lot of people who realize how bad these systems are and are working to come up up with more tactile solutions. Popular approaches are things like steering wheel buttons for controls with sounds to help keep you sure of what function you're operating on. Ultimately, the car is likely headed to a system where there are multiple dumb screens networked into a single "smartphone"-like compute platform for the vehicle. The screens provide independent interfaces but can display common shared applications being run by the compute platform, such as the current route on a GPS app or the currently playing music in a music/radio app. The driver's is the same display as the speedometer and other gauges, is not a touch screen (obviously), and is designed only for quick glances to get summary information while only moving the eyes a few degrees from the windshield. The center dash can go away, since drivers shouldn't be having to look over that far and mess with things over there, and since thus it makes more sense to have the passenger's display right in front of them (requires a bit of airbag/glove box repositioning, but is doable). Freeing up the center console and getting rid of all of these independent, heavy, inefficient standalone "boxes" (which often work poorly together) in lieu of a single embedded multifunction platform provides a massive number of benefits, from more interior design options for what to do with that extra space to reduced wiring costs, reduced weight, dramatically reduced power consumption, upgradeability, security, and on and on. It's the future of vehicles. The Tier 1s won't like it, as their entire business is built on said "boxes", but they'll have to deal with it sooner or later.
Shyness is a trait. Skulking in the shadows is a behavior. Yes, people exhibiting the latter behavior are probably shy. And while of course some guys have a problem with shy girls, many consider it attractive, a girl who giggles and blushes and gets embarrassed. You rarely see that in reverse. And that matches what you'd expect evolutionarily, btw.
Guess I'm too used to Iceland. Getting into bed with someone happens *before* dating them here. If you get along well with them in bed and hook up several times in a row without mixing it up a bit, then you're kinda dating. You get to know people over the course of sleeping with them.
Do you really not know the difference between "kissing someone" and "forcing sex on her while she's saying no over and over"? I mean, *Really*?
And, FYI, you're totally wrong about my friends and family. Not like it matters. You're simply looking for any excuse to try to dismiss the reality. Not like you care about the huge number of studies on the subject (also linked in this thread). It doesn't fit with what you want to believe, and therefore, you choose not to believe it.
The plural of anecdote is not data. But the plural of peer-reviewed studies is not "la la la, I can't hear you!" And, FYI, the person I was responding to with my personal experience was saying, "I don't believe the studies because it would mean that it's common". How else do you propose I respond to such a person except to post my real-life experience?
How the heck is "my life" and the lives of the women I know "overplaying the problem"? This isn't some trivial f'ing problem for me. This isn't abstract. This is "making it hard to date or even make friends with guys out of fear that they're not going to listen if I say no because a very much non-negligable fraction have shown that they in fact don't respect the word 'no'".
"I want to stop" is not "coyness". "I dunno..." with a blushing smile is coyness. If a girl says "I want to stop" and you don't, that's rape. There is no fuzzy line here. Call rape "paying off" if you want to, but it doesn't change what it is.
Gee, let's look at my actual experience on the dating scene since my divorce a little over half a year ago:
1) Did not try to rape me.
2) Did not try to rape me.
3) Did not try to rape me.
4) Tried and succeeded at raping me.
5) Did not try to rape me.
6) Did not try to rape me.
7) Did not try to rape me.
8) Tried but stopped after about 10 seconds of me struggling.
9) Did not try to rape me.
This is a freaking problem, guys!
Simply not true. "Geek" gets bonus points in many people's books (mine included). Favorite thing a guy has ever said to me after arriving at my house: "You've never seen Dr. Who?!" (incredulous, beat) "Okay, we're downloading and watching the first ep of Dr. Who, *then* we're going to have sex!" I've mentally given bonus points to guys for things like having seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or getting excited over the Higgs-Boson announcement, things of that nature. And I'm far from alone in this regard.
I'm not sure how often you think that women randomly come up to married guys in their (late 30s, 40s, later?) and start hitting on them. That's not how it works. So I don't know why you'd be surprised that this hasn't happened to you. As to the single geeks you know, find a straight girl whose opinion you can trust and have her be wingman with one of your geek friends when they go out and give an honest assessment of him to help him find out what he's doing wrong. Because I assure you, there's at least something (probably several things).
Also remember that "geek" isn't an excuse for "get out of doing the normal stuff free". You still should try to be at least moderately physically fit, keep good hygene (clear skin, nicely trimmed hair, consistent and managed facial hair (whether present or absent), no body odor, etc), weight at least in the ballpark of "normal", etc (just like geek girls aren't likewise given a pass if they're covered in acne, tattered hair, unshaved legs and armpits, smelly, heavy, etc). And your expected social role in the dating game remains the same as any other guy's - to make the approach, strike up the conversation, make the first move, etc. Some geeks have trouble with these sorts of things, but it should be noted, it's not that they're *geeks* that's the problem. The fact that they're geeks can actually be a bonus.
Could you elaborate on why, in your post, women are taking the blame for (predominantly male) late-night comedians making fun of Bobbitt?
To help enlighten you on the subject: it's not about plausible deniability. It's because courage and self-confidence are attractive in guys. Nobody wants a guy who's just going to skulk in the shadows, too afraid to talk to you.
Plus, a lot of womens' behavior is genuine shyness. Not all women are shy, far from it, but plenty honestly are. I'm among them. My natural instinct when I catch the eye of a cute guy is to smile but look away. It takes willpower to try to reestablish eye contact. What usually happens? I honestly just simply hope that he'll come up and talk with me. And if he doesn't have the courage to do that, well, that's not a very attractive trait, IMHO, and I'd be more interested in the guy who does have the courage to do that, even if he's not the one that first caught my eye.
Being confident != being an asshole.
Then he's been lucky. Heck, there's some girls out there with rape fantasies. Does that mean that you should go up to every girl you meet and rape her, hoping that you happened to pick someone like that?
"Hit on" != "Sexual harassment"
The sooner you realize that there is a difference between the two, the better.
In response to the Dutch guy talking about stereotypesÆ
You stereotyped me as "American guy" when in fact I'm a woman living in Iceland who deals with guys using such "pickup lines" unusually often.
Here's another idea: keep your stereotypes out of it. They're usually wrong and highly embarassing.
Signed,
Me.
If you're experiencing that problem, the message is, "I like you, but not in THAT way". Unfortunately, what triggers "THAT way" varies from person to person. You can do general things to increase your odds - good grooming, be confident, get good at maintaining an interesting conversation, etc - but ultimately each woman's particular tastes will come into play. And they can be contradictory. For example, some women will be really bothered by it if you move too fast, while others want a guy who will push them up against a wall and totally make out with them (although - it should be noted - still respecting the word "no" if it comes up). And let's not even get into all the differences in what physical characteristics people find attractive.
Note that how attractive you think you are probably has little correlation with how attractive you actually are, for good or bad. See this study for details - basically, women correlate about 0.5 with raters on their self-perceived attractiveness, but men only 0.1. Also, other studies seem to show that it's easier for men to rank women consistently in terms of attraction than for women to rank men; women' perceptions of mens' attractiveness has been shown to vary even on factors like whether they're looking for short-term or long-term partners and their current hormone levels.
The basic gist of it is, clear up any obvious problems, both physical (bad acne, foul odor, etc) and socially (being able to maintain a normal conversation, coming across as confident instead of super-nervous, etc), and while you can't guarantee every girl is going to want you, some will. Remember that women are playing their own "game" on the dating scene, whether it's looking for someone for a relationship or just someone to sleep with, and just like you, they're overthinking everything that they do and hoping that they find the right person.
BTW - just as a personal datapoint, but 80-90% of the time if I'm not seeing someone and end up in a flirty conversation with someone who wants me and who I'm attracted to, but nothing happens, the reason was, "he didn't make a move soon enough, and I felt the need to move on". The thought I'm usually thinking is, "quit trying to talk me into bed and just kiss me already!" And, BTW, yes, I know it's totally unfair to you guys that you're expected to do all the work - to approach and strike up a conversation with a girl you don't know, to make the first move, etc. But courage and confidence are, rightly or wrongly, generally very attractive characteristics in a guy, and that's how you demonstrate them. And it's very much quite possible that she already scoped you out a long time ago and is hoping that you'll come talk to her.
Wait, are you really citing police conviction statistics here? I mean, really? You do realize that most rapes go unreported, right? And that most reported rapes lack sufficient evidence to prosecute?
Secondly, I'm not citing college statistics (see above). Although Wikipedia has a pretty impressive list of studies. Care to discount them all? Actually the college numbers are the most disturbing aspect, with most studies showing a 3-5% rate of rape *per academic year*, 95% of which go unreported.
First off, that's not the stat I'm referring to (see my post above); that's a totally different one. And secondly, that should be even more concerning, as college is just a few years of one's life; to amass such a high odds of rape or attempted rape in just a couple years is even more disturbing.
And yes, anything having to do with rape is controversial, and there's no shortage of people trying to downplay it. But want to know the little bit of selection bias that makes it hard for you guys to understand how common rape is? Because the women you know in your life aren't just going to come up to you and tell you that they've been victims of rape or attempted rape. Maybe if you got really close to one and the timing is right. But your casual acquaintances aren't just going to say it to you. It's something that even women don't often talk about with each other unless the right topic comes up and people feel comfortable enough talking about it. After I got the courage to tell my little sister what happened to me, for example, only then did I learn that she's apparently the only woman in my immediate family who hasn't been raped. I've hosted four women in my house over the years as low-rent / rent-free guests. One had been the victim of a violent rape and has flashbacks, one had significant sexual abuse at various points in her life and it's really messed her up in relationships, and I never raised the topic with the other two. Let's pick another selection criteria - I've dated approximately equal numbers of men and women over the years. Of the women, two I don't know their pasts (it was a long time ago, we were young), another one was a victim of an attempted rape, another one had been raped twice (once at knifepoint, once with drugs), and one had never been raped but had for a long time been in a situation where she felt compelled to have sex with an old boyfriend whether she wanted to or not because he was stronger than her and demanding, and she didn't want a fight out of it.
I could start adding friends to the list if you want.
It's this sort of personal experience that makes it obvious that the numbers for rape are *at least* as high as cited. But most of the guys reading this will never learn about most of the rapes or other forms of sexual abuse in the lives of most of the women that they know.
Haven't checked the references for myself, but I've seen the following cites: Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, 573; Horowitz, 413; Lips, 233. Plus, from my personal experience between myself and those I know, the numbers have to be at *least* that high.
I'll mark you down in the "refusing to admit there are so many who take the other view" category, and thanks for furthering my point.
Heck, even Dane Cook can tell a funny, non-offensive rape joke. I mean, if Dane Cook can do it...
If part of this comes down to them not knowing how to actually interact with women properly, perhaps some tips will help:
1) Believe it or not, a girl can *actually* be interested in you. No, I'm not kidding! You *don't* have to be a creeper!
2) Yes, you have to go up and talk to women even though you may be uncomfortable doing so. No, not everyone will be interested. But you understand statistics, right? Just increase the number of trials until you hit a positive result.
3) One at a time, guys! If you all mob the same girl, she's not going home with any of you.
4) A little alcohol is fine. Blind-drunk, however, is not cute.
5) Be a human being. Talk about things that human beings talk about for several minutes without any sexual pressure. You don't have to be all over her right away. No, seriously! Your goal off the bat is to show her that you are, in fact, a human being and not a creeper.
6) Do not, in any circumstance, talk about your penis. Not usually too much of a problem with American guys, but to guys from more sexually-liberated countries... we know you've got one, and yes, we've seen big ones before; now can you get on with the "being human" thing before we leave?
7) Avoid any topics that might offend her unless you're sure you know her stance - that is, religion, politics, which text editor to use, etc. Also avoid any topic that makes you look bad, if you can.
8) Be prepared to fill in the silence if she's too shy to talk at any point in time. If she has no problem talking, though, be sure to let her.
9) She's still talking with you and you're getting along? Good! You've passed the "human being" test. Now you need to find out whether she is interested or whether you can interest her. This means progressively more flirting, moving into physical contact. Since we need to define some terms here:
10) Flirting: compliments, eye contact, touching your face or hair, whispering or any other excuse to get close to them, light non-threatening touches (arm, shoulders, hand, etc), and similar activity. You can gauge her reaction to them as you do them to judge her interest. If she's not interested, remember, there's plenty of other girls out there.
11) If you can get her to dance, now is a good time. It's a good excuse to increase the touching (just so long as you remember that it's *also* about actual, you know, *dancing*). Good targets for touching include the hair, small of the back, and eventually the face.
12) If she is still with you after all of this, try kissing her.
13) If she lets you kiss her then totally make out with her, just being sure to never exceed the bounds of what she's comfortable with (if you freak her out it's over). If you make out, odds are, assuming she's the type who goes home with someone on the first night, you're probably going home with her. If she doesn't do that, then at the very least she's probably willing to see you again and, assuming you don't screw up, you'll probably eventually sleep with her when she's ready.
Congratulations - you don't have to be a creeper anymore!
The biggest problem I have - not solely isolated to geek culture - is the refusal to believe that a problem even exists. When faced with some situation, such as "do I keep going when this girl who was making out with me before says, 'this is going too fast for me, I want to stop'?", a large percent of men will say "of course I stop" while a large minority will say "of course I keep going", but both groups by and large refuse to admit that there are so many people who take the opposite view.
Think of all the women you know. One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime. We're not even talking about sexual harrassment, things like unwanted grabbing of breasts and crotches, etc. One in four is just, simply, "rape". There is not some tiny, miniscule percentage of guys doing this; there's actually a rather large minority who seems to think that it's okay to do to women things that they don't want done to them. But just as much of a problem as these guys are, it's nearly as big of a problem that a large portion of the majority of guys who aren't like that seem to have trouble believing that so many men *are* like that. That they probably have several friends who wouldn't stop if the girl they're with said "no".
I think the Daniel Tosh / rape joke thing is a great example. Some comedians get all "freedom of speech" offended if anyone gets mad at them for telling rape jokes. "They're just harmless jokes!" The difference between a "harmless joke" and "offensive" when you say something over the top is whether you and/or your audience actually believe it. And whether you want to accept the fact or not, a sizeable percentage of your audience actually *does* believe what you're joking about. And a sizeable percentage of your audience are victims of what you're making fun of. So you can talk all you want about how you can stand up and tell genocide jokes without people getting offended, but unless you're prepared to go to the Kigali Chuckle Hut and do the same sketch to a bunch of Tutsis who had their families hacked down, you have no ground to stand on.
So many things wrong with your comically angry post. Some of the main ones:
1) Only asteroid fragments over a certain size make it to the ground. Blow it up enough and yes, it will not make it to the surface. It would add dust, of course, and impart a heating pulse to the surface, but spread out over however long between the furthest-forward pieces from the blast were and the furthest back ones.
2) Deflecting fragments of the asteroid from a collision course is precisely the point of an explosion, whether you're talking a bunch of small pieces that are now missing, or just two halves.
3) A bomb can do more than break up an asteroid; it can also move an asteroid, by radiation pressure, direct or indirect through surface heating.