As opposed to all the little USB flash drives that you could hide by stashing them in your pocket...or personal orifice, if threatened with a strip search.
I don't really think this is a risk particularly confined to the knives.
I don't know, my swiss army e-tool (or whatever it was called...it has translucent mac-type coloring, rather than the more common opaque) gets a lot more use than my leatherman -- it has a screwdriver, four doublesided bits (one flat, three phillips, three star drivers and a hex) in particularly useful sizes (for those who take apart computer cases on a regular basis..though it's also one of my preferred working-on-the-truck tools as well) with a place to stow the bits on in and this, for me, is quite the killer app.
It also has most of the more usual options, though I kind of wish they had thought to include pliers as well. How often do I use that bottle opener?:)
It weighs less than a standard leatherman, is smaller, and I've yet to see a leatherman with a bits-and-screwdriver options (as opposed the more typical one screwdriver on a flip out thing option).
I suspect it's one of those personal preference things.
Functionality increases: reading other people's documents.
That's the big nasty one, in my experience. It's compounded by the fact that when someone buys a new computer, they get the newest software, which then creates new documents in new (and unreadable by older versioned) formats, thus pushing everyone into having to upgrade. This wouldn't be such a problem if the 'upgrades' didn't expect newer hardware and penalize those without it.
I was thinking about home users, and I think that's why it didn't occur to me that your comment about business users upgrading is looking at the same problem. But a lot of upgrades are necessary -- companies that don't support older versions of software and compatibility issues (like the document one) are probably the major reasons. Remember that in a business context, a small number of users requiring a specific features (say, a particular function in a spreadsheet program) can ultimately change the standard deployment of entire organizations -- the more variety in the computers you provide the more headache (and from management's perspective, cost) for the IT folks. It's not as simple as criticizing businesses (or people) who upgrade their software. There are generally reasons for those upgrades, most people who use their computers for work (rather than because they think that it's fun) really have better things to do with their time than upgrade software (or wait while IT does it).
Rather than saying 'people shouldn't upgrade so much', I think we should be asking why 'upgrades' that provide minimal additional functionality require so much more from the hardware.
> Excellent question. Honestly, I have no idea. > I'm sure many people do, but the ones I know > cannot afford it.
Which is why I was curious -- I would think that MS would be shooting themselves in the foot if they insist on charging an amount most people in a particular area can't afford. Given that the cost of burning a CD and shipping it (esspecially when you do it in massive lots) is almost negligible, they'd stand to make a whole lot more profit by bringing their prices down to something a larger percentage of the people in a particular area can pay. In your area how many people would pay 50ZL or 100ZL (chosen to be closish to $10 US and $20 US) rather than use pirated software? It's a bit more than the $5 at the open air market, but still much more doable than over 400ZL/$100US.
Though perhaps the total amount of theoretical profit Poland can bring them is so small as to not matter in their massive budget. I don't know.
Most of my friends who have legit copies of Windows do so because it came with their machines. Because nearly all the machines here come with it. I do nearly all my computer shopping at bargain type places (I get a lot of refurbs and lots of older things that haven't sold, which is fine) and it's rare to find a system that is cheaper than those with windows already installed. I've always avoided the windows tax by building my own, but this isn't even cheaper anymore. For those who haven't, most of them pirate. I own one copy of windows 98se and one copy of windows 95C outright. I think both versions (full, not upgrade) cost me about $80 (new) a few years after each came out. But I do business with my computers at times and thus feel I *must* be legal, lest very bad things befall me.
OTOH, we are what are referred to as 'poor':) Most americans can afford to spend more than we do. So it makes sense to me that the local prices are over our heads. The paltry amount that MS could squeeze out of us is nothing to the amount that they can make on charging the rest of the US more. But if in your area almost nobody can afford to buy it, then they are losing money by insisting on keeping the price so high.
> $45 US is probably our latte budget for the > week.
Just to clarify, $45 US is only the latte budget for people with a fair bit of money -- upper middle class at least, or middle class with no kids, and then only some of them. It's about 3/4 of my weekly grocery bill for two people.
Out of curiousity, who *does* buy retail MS software in Poland?
Not that this is particularly politically feasable, but I would think that showing the site to the kids, along with showing what bits are wrong (a brief look at that particular site shows all *sorts* of places to start), maybe along with a class exercise in fact checking and some discussion as to why the people who wrote this site chose to portray Dr Martin Luther King Jr in this way (hint: kids get 'because they are mean and selfish people' pretty early). In other words, rather than hiding it, use it as a learning experience.
It might be significantly more politically feasable if one chose a different site, with a completely different topic. It would probably sink in more if this were done on a semi regular basis throughout the school years (using different sites -- maybe even choosing topics to correlate with other classroom topics)
Of course, none of these ideas are new (I think I swiped them off of some of my better teachers) but they don't get nearly enough mention, imo.
Wikipedia is free (as in beer), I have to pay for comptons, brittanica, etc. I know which one I'll go for, esspecially as a broke student or kid:)
If I *really* need an encyclopedia, I'll go to the library.
I've found that middle aged adults seem to be the most gullible as far as "I read it on the internet, thus it must be true" -- young people seem to grasp the concept that a million monkeys on a million typewriters mostly spew crap:)
Though I've been pretty turned off encyclopedias since elementary school, when a teacher used one to "prove" to me that the siberian desert *must* be hot, because all deserts are hot. When one has multiple sources, this is a slightly less likely mistake. (I wish I remembered which encyclopedia it was.)
What always struck me about this story is that I, at least, can 'think around' such things -- even random loud noises at 20 second intervals. If absolutely necessary, I can shut my ears off. In fact, I do this on a regular basis. Maybe I'm even more abnormal than I thought?
Though I have to say I have no idea of I could route around a chip in my head:)
I have aspergers syndrome. I've noticed that doctors are much more willing to medicate obvious but 'odd' behaviors than to medicate the things that cause problems to me. Medicating me so that I don't rock is far more important to them than pushing down the adreneline kick (hyper startle reflex) or helping my attention span, even though the two latter issues bug me far more than rocking.
"Mental health" would be much more useful if the professionals would stop using 'normality' as a baseline for treatment, and used functionality instead.
The effect on kids esspecially scares me -- because kids are still developing, and because with kids, even more than with adults, the treatments goals tend to be some paraphrased equivelant of "be less annoying to parents and teachers". I know too many young adults with tourettes and anti-psychotic induced tardive dyskinesia, because their parents, teachers and doctors decided that it was more important to keep them shut up in class than to keep them out of a wheel chair as an adult.
One thing you missed: a great deal of consumer hardware upgrading happens because new software is designed for newer processors and generally faster machines.
When the new software has to take advantage of new hardware features, this is unavoidable, but there's also this problem with software that has few discernable new features but runs a lot slower on the older processors. A certain large company's OS is particularly bad about this.
Some people will upgrade a lot simply because they like to have the newest thing, but a lot of people would happily use their older machines if they were still usable.
(Yes, Linux and some other rather efficient alternatives exist, but are not necessarily ready for the home user)
> that way people can choose to pay for the > amount of malpractice coverage they want, > instead of forcing everyone to pay for those > who abuse the system.
Because *I* should pay to protect myself from a doctors truly bad judgment.
I'll grant that some percentage of malpractice suits are ridiculous. But some of them are quite real -- and I don't see why I should have to pay for insurance against the possibility that my doctor will make a truly bad decision.
Of course, 'fear of malpractice suits' is getting a little out of hand. The clinic I've been going to for a year and some now has suddenly decided that they must reevaluate my case, just to be damn sure that I still have what I've had since I was born, and it's looking like I'll be without meds for at least a few weeks. They claim it's because of fear of malpractice suits. What I can't figure out is why it's not a greater risk to screw with my meds. (And it's not a money issue, I pay out of pocket for my meds)
If it's *really* a malpractice fear, I would think that a reevaluation is in order, sure, but I would think that waiting to discontinue meds until the reevaluation is completed (if that is indeed what appears to be the correct course of action) would make more sense than simply refusing to write the next round of prescriptions until the reeval is completed. They aren't even making any efforts to taper dose as is appropriate.
But it's funny -- I went out looking for any sort of specific statistics on malpractice suits, and had a hell of a time finding trustworthy relavant ones. I found information about three vaguely related suits in the last twenty years, none of them particularly suggesting the above course of action. I smell a rat somewhere. I'm just not sure where.
> What I really should have said is that they
> should ban alkaline and carbon zinc cells
That makes more sense.
Throw a rider on your bill to allocate funds so that medicaid and medicare can provide chargers and rechargables to all patients using medicaid/medicare provided equiptment that can use rechargable batteries (like blood sugar monitors) and help defray the cost of lithium over alkalines for those pieces of equiptment that can't, and some fundage for providing chargers and rechargable batteries to public schools, hospitals, etc, and I might even support it, but that is one hell of a price tag.
I think it would be more fiscally responsible to start by taxing alkalines and carbon zincs, and using that tax money to help push the start up costs for rechargables down -- either by directly applying it to the purchases, by refund or by giving it over to public schools and hospitals, etc in order to buy chargers and rechargeable batteries. Hopefully after a few years of this rechargables would be in wide use (it's really only the start up that needs help -- after that the rechargables pay for themselves and then some)and no ultimate ban would be needed. If not, then at least the costs incurred because of that ban would have been pushed down.
The more I think about it the more I really like applying the deposit/return scheme to batteries -- and ultimately both rechargables and disposables should be recycled. It seems to work here in MA -- I think it's basic psychology. In most of the areas where I've lived (CA, WA, DC, VA, MD, WV) the suburbs have had curbside recycling, but if you live in an apartment complex, a city or a rural area recycling was a matter of finding a place to drop your cans (sometimes convenient and obvious, such as a supermarket parking lot, and sometimes really non-obvious, such as a random warehouse in a random industrial section, poorly marked and found after a good search through the yellow pages). It's just the same here, but because there's money in it, the recyclers are convenient and well marked, easy to find, and it's a bit easier sometimes to go through the trouble of putting bags of cans/bottles into the car or walking them two blocks down for $5 than for a warm and fuzzy "I'm helping the planet" feeling;)
Perhaps more practically, there really ought to be a public service announcement type of campaign for rechargables. I've noticed that a lot of the non-geeks around me still believe many outdated things about rechargeables. Until this last few weeks, when I undertook some serious research, I believed a few really questionable things. Some of this I believed because friend of mine who should know (i.e. they build electric cars [full sized road vehicles] or otherwise work with batteries as a job or serious hobby) told me so. There are still a number of things I'm still confused about, and I have better theoretical background knowledge than the average non-geek. I figure if I can't figure out a technical issue, then it's utterly unreasonable to expect the average american to do so. So a combination of a publicity campaign (to get the word out that rechargeables are more affordable, more reliable and less of a PITA than they were 20 years ago, and that they are fairly available) and an information campaign (to get correct info out -- when a source that ought to be reliable says that memory is a real issue with NiCADs and they should be deep cycled every week, ideally every time, and another equally reliable source says that memory is not an issue and deep cycling hurts the batteries and should never be done, the situation is *bad* -- and I'm not even going to try to list what the correct info is here, simply because I'm still not sure in some cases, and have decided to run my own experiments and collect my own data. But this is an unreasonable expectation of most people.). Relatively cheap, easier than getting laws passed and potentially very effective.
One of the things I've realized in the last week -- wh
because it's fun? because not all learning has to be (immediately) practically applicable? Because (as others have pointed out) learning about any grammar helps you understand the grammer of your native and secondary languages better?
Or, as we did in high school (yes, a friend of mine learned elvish and passed it on) because it makes a nifty secret language when two people wish to communicate without their classmates/teachers/parents knowing what they are saying. Add a basic substitution cipher and you probably won't keep the NSA confused, but your standard teacher/parent/chaperone types won't know what the heck you're saying.
Honestly? My major reason for having to acquire such things is new data formats that the old versions won't read. I really wish manufacturers would stop that already.
Actually, most of the hate crime laws require evidence that the attacker attacked the victim *because* of the protected criteria. In other words, if I attack a gay person because I want the money in their wallet, then it's not a hate crime, it's a mugging.
Those that don't, should.
And discriminating between crimes based on intent has plenty of legal basis -- what is the difference between manslaughter and murder? Intent, pure and simple. And it should be that way, because there is a difference between accidently running over someone in a car because you weren't paying attention, and purposely planning to run someone over with a car because you are pissed at them. The first is irresponsible, the second is anti-social.
> the feds should ban all non-rechargeable > batteries bigger than button cells.
I understand the theory, but bad idea. I will not use a rechargable for things like smoke detectors -- NiCad and NiMH batteries lose charge whilst sitting. Even the new ones do, though at a lesser rate. Li Ions are hard to find (in 9v and AA sizes, at least), only last two years or so from manufacture (no matter how many times you cycle them in that time) and I swear they lose charge too, though perhaps more slowly. I've been told different by someone who ought to know, but that doesn't match my experience. But for applications like smoke detectors, where it absolutely has to work and you can't be getting up there every few days or every few weeks to be taking out a battery and recharging it, rechargeables just don't cut it (unless the smoke detector has some sort of trickle charger built in and only uses battery for electrical outage backup). Also, things like emergency flashlights for places where leaving them on a charger is untenable are not good applications for rechargeables. I imagine there's some medical equiptment that uses larger-than-button sized batteries for which similar arguments hold.
OTOH, most applications are not like smoke detectors and more people should use more rechargables more of the time. It would be useful if the start up expenses weren't so high. This can be staggered by buying new sets of batteries for each device as the old disposables go. But for anything that has to run, unless you have a critical mass of devices that use that type of battery, you end up having to buy at least two sets of rechargeables for each device. At somewhere between three and five times the cost of a same-sized alkaline battery, the price gets high, quickly. I was pricing out D-cells for a backup battery pack for my notebook (to be used to keep my notebook up while swapping out it's internal batteries, and also as a last option should I completely run down the two internals -- inspired by the recent slashdot book review) and realized that 32 of the suckers (16 to provide the 19v my laptop wants, doubled for spares, since nothing else I own uses D-cells) will run me nearly $200. I'll be going back to the drawing board, because there are cheaper solutions commercially available. (I may just use AA, since it really doesn't have to run a long time, worst case perhaps long enough to shut down, but I haven't fully thought that idea out yet and there may be some painfully obvious reason why it won't work.)
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have some sort of tax or fee on disposable batteries -- maybe like the bottle refund in some states. You could pay an extra five or ten cents and you'd get it back when you bring the batteries to be recycled. It would help keep them out of landfills, at least. Or we could tax disposables and use the revenue to subsidize rechargeables to make them a bit more affordable, esspecially the larger sizes. Esspecially since the environmental costs (which ultimately we all pay) for disposables are higher than those for rechargeables. A tax/subsidy system would bring the actual consumer dollar cost closer to the real long term costs of each. I can hear the free marketers all having heart attacks now, but it's less draconian (and more practical) than completely outlawing disposables, but still encourages use of rechargeables.
It would also be useful if more devices were calibrated for rechargeables. My palm gives me about four hours of heavy use before it starts flashing the annoying "your battery is dying" screen with a rechargeable, compared with 12 hours with an alkaline (generic store brand, because I'll pay a bit extra for high quality rechargeables, but I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to disposables). However, with the NiCad rechargeables, there's actually nearlly two hours left on the battery (it's just two hours of waiting for that damn screen to go away so I can go back to what I'm doing) whereas with the alkaline it's got perhaps three of those scre
At the intersection of Longwood and Brookline Ave (Longwood medical area), occasionally people will dash across out of turn, but mostly it's a very nicely coordinated dance between people and cars (with flashing ambulances thrown in to keep us all on our toes) but Mass ave going through Cambridge... As a friend of mine said to me, watch out for the hordes of maurading pedestrians.
I don't know that I agree with your assertion that Boston drivers are good, though. Maybe I'd buy it if they'd stop ploughing into my truck (whilst parked, legally, no less).
He was getting money from clicks, not subscriptions.
Which makes me wonder if those porn companies could come back and sue him for fraud, since he was intentionally making money from them (for each click) from people who ultimately could not purchase the service.
I've managed to avoid prison, though my father worked as a gaurd for awhile and I was committed to a mental hospital as a child (my lawyer and I fought, at one point, for sending me to juvie, because one actually has more rights in prison) so I've got a better idea than most of what goes on there.
And yes, american prisons suck. No one, ever, should have to put up with rape and beatings from gaurds or other prisoners. Prison *should* be a safe place where people can take steps to change their lives for the better and/or to keep people out of society who are unable to control themselves and as such are a danger to others. I think the concept of punishment, as a lot of people see it, is ridiculous. Most people who commit crimes don't consider the consequences -- if they did, they wouldn't do them, not because of fear of punishment, but because they'd realize that *most* crimes harm others. (Those that don't are another topic entirely)
All this said, this guy admitted to possessing child pornography. He also was sexually abusing children -- not for his gratification, just for profit, but that doesn't particularly change the affect on the kids. Many types of sexual abuse aren't overtly violent, but that doesn't make it okay. The ultimate effects on the victim are similar to that of violence. As such, he is a danger to others and prison is appropriate.
It is sad that prisons in this country are counterproductive. While it is an extremely good idea to push for more humane, more effective prisons (and yes, more humane prisons *would* be more effective), and I wish the law and order types would get past their simplified punishment mindset, ultimately, we can't use the sorry state of our prisons to justify letting people who are dangerous run amok instead. A fine and/or community service is too leniant. If this guy went into a school yard and started passing out copies of playboy, he'd be facing the same or more jail time. He'd also find himself placed in a sexual offenders database in many states. Home confinement is appropriate for truly non-violent offenders, but I maintain that sexual abuse of a child, even when not overtly violent, is still on par with violence, if not actually violence.
I'll tell you this, if I went over to the elementary school across the street with a copy of playboy (which is pretty tame compared to much of what's on the 'net), and I opened it up and started showing it to kids -- or even if I just handed it to one of them, I'd be going to jail for awhile. My name would also go on a sex offender list, and my time in jail would be particularly hard.
On one hand, this is slightly different. We can be pretty sure that his reason for luring kids to his websites was to defraud the folks he was advertising for (after all, a kid can click on the referral links, but without a credit card, etc cannot buy the service) and not to find a child for sexual purposes.
However, in most states purposely showing a child adult material is a felony, regardless of whether the intent was to provide an opening for sexually abusing a child. And three years is not an unreasonable sentence for someone convicted of that who did not go on to sexually abuse a child.
"Think of the children" annoys the hell out of me when we are talking about trying to make the entire world or entire internet child safe. Not only is that impossible (hey, where would we get more children;) ) but most of us are adults, and thus should not be treated as children. But he was *intentionally* targetting children, and that, I think, makes the jail term appropriate. He already is a criminal. If he were a teenager I would probably suggest leniancy -- both because teenagers don't necessarily have adult judgement yet, so treating them as if they do or should (in this sort of case) is somewhat unfair and fairly counterproductive, and because a teenager who does this sort of thing, after three years in jail, may well have a higher chance of coming out a criminal. But if this guy uses that three years to become a worse criminal, well, he's an adult and should know better.
If he'd just put up 'buy this page' sites rather than porn sites, the jail term would also be excessive, I think.
Incidently, part of the reason for this is because I do think that it is potentially harmful for kids to be exposed to porn too young -- simply because it provides an unrealistic portrayal of sex. For an adult, this isn't a problem. If there were readily available, more realistic portrayals of sex, it wouldn't be nearly the hazard it is. The issue isn't deep psychological damage -- it's simply setting up wrong expectations, which then are acted out upon (because the kids don't know yet that these are unrealistic expectations) and suddenly the kid is up for sexual harrassment or assault or rape because they thought they were doing the 'right' thing.
This guy is scum, he deserves to be in jail. More than five years would be excessive, three is reasonable.
To clarify, I don't particularly disagree with your assertion that Americans have some serious problems. What I do disagree with is your analysis of women's culture in the U.S. (I think you've got a very narrow band of data, I'll eleborate below) and that somehow women are (or women's culture is) somehow more responsible for the problems in the U.S. than men or men's culture or any other factor. If you'd posted something that criticized all Americans I probably wouldn't have blinked, if you'd posted something that was critical of women, but didn't echo known, common anti-woman beliefs/propaganda (for lack of better words for the phenomenon), I would have been less likely to react as well.
Your complaint about women not wanting to commit is interesting, as it's one I'm more used to hearing from women about men than vice versa (though I've heard it from women about women and men about both men and women, so no one gets to completely avoid it, I suppose). I don't find that surprising. Marriage has it's pros and cons. It's not just about committing to have sex with only one person. There are a lot of practical aspects -- financial (dependant on where you are and who has what money and what income, you can lose quite a bit of money in taxes and such if you're married that you wouldn't if you were single), geographical (if one partner gets transferred at work, do both move or does that partner have to lose their job and find another?), emotional (living with someone is very difficult -- esspecially if one was an only child in a 'standard' household [parent(s) only, no extended family]) etc. And some of these fall particularly hard on women, because traditionally they've been the ones expected to make greater sacrifices for the marriage. If a woman wants to have a career or continue her education than it makes sense to delay marriage. And all of this is intensified if children are expected to be part of the package.
My mother went to four different colleges and ultimately decided to go into nursing rather than medicine, because she got married and had to follow my father around. Two years later she had me and three years after that my sister. It took her fourteen years to get her BA in Nursing, and she started before she met my father (and she was her high school valedictorian, so I don't think that was a problem with the academic work). Now, she doesn't (to my knowledge) regret any of this, and I respect the decisions she made as those that were best for her, but I certainly can understand why a woman would *not* want to do that. I don't think one can explain away difficulty finding a wife or the rising age of first time brides by claiming that women on the whole have become less willing to commit. The social and economic factors affecting marriage have changed in the last two generations, and they combine to make getting married, and esspecially getting married young, a less attractive choice than it was before, at least unless one really wants to have children.
Incidently, life expentancy stats would seem to bear this out. Married men have longer life expentancies than unmarried men, but the reverse is true for women.
On a related point, to find a wife, being popular with women is not really the best strategy. It's being appealing, as marriage material, to at least one woman (and it only has to be one, though I suppose increasing that number would increase your odds somewhat) who is interested in getting married. I know one guy who is really popular with women, but not in any way that would be useful to find a partner -- for various reasons he's very popular with..lesbians. Not very useful for getting married or getting laid, but his parties are great. Actually, I exaggerate a little -- he ended up marrying a woman who thought she was a lesbian, but decided she'd just hadn't met the right man. This is, however, a lousy strategy in general and I don't recommend it (because it wastes your time and annoys the lesbians:) ).
Modeling and the whole beauty queen business is
Re:Change one thing at a time
on
Debugging
·
· Score: 1
It all depends on how you're staring.
If you are conciously going over the code you see, then yes, that's not very zen like.
But in troubleshooting I find myself staring at logs or whatnot in a zen-like manner. The stare is different -- like 'soft gaze' or 'eagle gaze' -- I'm not focusing on the words, but seeing the whole, and sometimes that is enough to knock the answer out of my head and into my fingers. It's a lot like going away from a problem, except that there is a small amount of focusing stimulus to remind me that I'm still trying to solve it. It is backing away from the problem.
What the original posters' former coworker was doing, I cannot comment on, because I wasn't there, but it is possible he was doing what I (and others) do.
BTW, _Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintainance_ is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Though I came out of it feeling more than a little uncomfortable with my similarities to Phaedrus. I'm mostly over that now;)
I have mod points, and I very nearly modded this flamebait.
But I've realized (after careful reading of this post and some perusal of your website) that this isn't flamebait or a troll, in the usual senses of the words, and that you seem in some ways to be a very thoughtful individual, if rather misguided about some issues.
So I'll rebut your arguments instead.
"Bitching", defined as complaining, is hardly a pursuit limited to women (american or not). I've worked in male-dominated (not purposely, just because it fell out that way) offices that held 'bitch sessions' that were called exactly that.
The use of 'bitch' to denote all women is a misogynist term, and almost certainly did not originate with women. The more or less male analog to this is 'bastard', yet not all men (american or not) are illegitimate.
> This is a bit extreme, but a good exaggeration > might be that if you have only known women of > the U.S. culture, you have never really known a > woman at all.
Just for the record, my mother is Japanese, as is her mother. So I grew up with women who were not socialized predominately in the U.S. While I have not been able to leave the U.S. as an adult, I have certainly dealt with women who did not grow up here. So this argument does not apply to me.
> Women in the U.S. commonly: 1) are infantile, > 2) live in a fantasy world in which the rules > of life don't apply to them, 3) are self- > destructive, 4) want control, 5) believe that > men are reponsible for all of their problems, > 5) are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and > 6) use anger and hostility to try to intimidate > and get their way.
Oprah Winfrey and Women's magazines in general are not indicative of 'women's culture' any more than esquire, playboy and sports illustrated are indicative of 'men's culture'. They are corporate entities created to make money. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, unless you would like to try to claim that men are 1. infantile, 2. live in a fantasy world in which the rules of life don't apply to them, 3. are self-destructive, 4. want control, 5. believe that women are reponsible for all of their problems, 6. are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and 7. use anger, hostility, violence and a larger body size to try to intimidate and get their way. I'd suggest you either reconsider your sources or reconsider your hypothesis
Incidently, all of these things are true for individual examples, regardless of gender. None of these things are true for the entire gender.
I fail to see a problem with some of these things ('want control' -- I want control over my life, and I fail to see why it's wrong for a woman to do so) and some of these problems (irresponsibility, blaming others unreasonably, intimidation) are problems in American culture, period, and are not particularly gender linked, though the way they manifest may be, i.e. statistically, women will be more likely to use emotional manipulation, like crying, where men will be more likely to use physical intimidation. But this is still statistical, and any individual may use either or neither, regardless of gender.
Also, these traits bear startling resemblance to the psychological profiles of a healthy woman (as in, this is what a psychologically healthy woman is like -- a woman who acts as an adult, is responsible, likes men [and therefore sex], etc is neurotic and requires treatment) from the first half of the twentieth century. If you are not aware of this you may want to do more research here. A fair chunk of women's problems in this country stem from psychological and psychiatric practices.
And yes, I really do care about what happens in my country. Which is one of the reasons I hate seeing energy wasted on misguided attacks and other strategies.
I fail to see how the satiric practices of any country accurately reflect the reality of any other country reliably enough to draw good conclusions about that cou
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to all the little USB flash drives that you could hide by stashing them in your pocket...or personal orifice, if threatened with a strip search.
I don't really think this is a risk particularly confined to the knives.
I don't know, my swiss army e-tool (or whatever it was called...it has translucent mac-type coloring, rather than the more common opaque) gets a lot more use than my leatherman -- it has a screwdriver, four doublesided bits (one flat, three phillips, three star drivers and a hex) in particularly useful sizes (for those who take apart computer cases on a regular basis..though it's also one of my preferred working-on-the-truck tools as well) with a place to stow the bits on in and this, for me, is quite the killer app.
:)
It also has most of the more usual options, though I kind of wish they had thought to include pliers as well. How often do I use that bottle opener?
It weighs less than a standard leatherman, is smaller, and I've yet to see a leatherman with a bits-and-screwdriver options (as opposed the more typical one screwdriver on a flip out thing option).
I suspect it's one of those personal preference things.
Functionality increases: reading other people's documents.
That's the big nasty one, in my experience. It's compounded by the fact that when someone buys a new computer, they get the newest software, which then creates new documents in new (and unreadable by older versioned) formats, thus pushing everyone into having to upgrade. This wouldn't be such a problem if the 'upgrades' didn't expect newer hardware and penalize those without it.
I was thinking about home users, and I think that's why it didn't occur to me that your comment about business users upgrading is looking at the same problem. But a lot of upgrades are necessary -- companies that don't support older versions of software and compatibility issues (like the document one) are probably the major reasons. Remember that in a business context, a small number of users requiring a specific features (say, a particular function in a spreadsheet program) can ultimately change the standard deployment of entire organizations -- the more variety in the computers you provide the more headache (and from management's perspective, cost) for the IT folks. It's not as simple as criticizing businesses (or people) who upgrade their software. There are generally reasons for those upgrades, most people who use their computers for work (rather than because they think that it's fun) really have better things to do with their time than upgrade software (or wait while IT does it).
Rather than saying 'people shouldn't upgrade so much', I think we should be asking why 'upgrades' that provide minimal additional functionality require so much more from the hardware.
> Excellent question. Honestly, I have no idea.
:) Most americans can afford to spend more than we do. So it makes sense to me that the local prices are over our heads. The paltry amount that MS could squeeze out of us is nothing to the amount that they can make on charging the rest of the US more. But if in your area almost nobody can afford to buy it, then they are losing money by insisting on keeping the price so high.
> I'm sure many people do, but the ones I know
> cannot afford it.
Which is why I was curious -- I would think that MS would be shooting themselves in the foot if they insist on charging an amount most people in a particular area can't afford. Given that the cost of burning a CD and shipping it (esspecially when you do it in massive lots) is almost negligible, they'd stand to make a whole lot more profit by bringing their prices down to something a larger percentage of the people in a particular area can pay. In your area how many people would pay 50ZL or 100ZL (chosen to be closish to $10 US and $20 US) rather than use pirated software? It's a bit more than the $5 at the open air market, but still much more doable than over 400ZL/$100US.
Though perhaps the total amount of theoretical profit Poland can bring them is so small as to not matter in their massive budget. I don't know.
Most of my friends who have legit copies of Windows do so because it came with their machines. Because nearly all the machines here come with it. I do nearly all my computer shopping at bargain type places (I get a lot of refurbs and lots of older things that haven't sold, which is fine) and it's rare to find a system that is cheaper than those with windows already installed. I've always avoided the windows tax by building my own, but this isn't even cheaper anymore. For those who haven't, most of them pirate. I own one copy of windows 98se and one copy of windows 95C outright. I think both versions (full, not upgrade) cost me about $80 (new) a few years after each came out. But I do business with my computers at times and thus feel I *must* be legal, lest very bad things befall me.
OTOH, we are what are referred to as 'poor'
Hmm. MS is being stupid. What's new?
> $45 US is probably our latte budget for the
> week.
Just to clarify, $45 US is only the latte budget for people with a fair bit of money -- upper middle class at least, or middle class with no kids, and then only some of them. It's about 3/4 of my weekly grocery bill for two people.
Out of curiousity, who *does* buy retail MS software in Poland?
Not that this is particularly politically feasable, but I would think that showing the site to the kids, along with showing what bits are wrong (a brief look at that particular site shows all *sorts* of places to start), maybe along with a class exercise in fact checking and some discussion as to why the people who wrote this site chose to portray Dr Martin Luther King Jr in this way (hint: kids get 'because they are mean and selfish people' pretty early). In other words, rather than hiding it, use it as a learning experience.
It might be significantly more politically feasable if one chose a different site, with a completely different topic.
It would probably sink in more if this were done on a semi regular basis throughout the school years (using different sites -- maybe even choosing topics to correlate with other classroom topics)
Of course, none of these ideas are new (I think I swiped them off of some of my better teachers) but they don't get nearly enough mention, imo.
Wikipedia is free (as in beer), I have to pay for comptons, brittanica, etc. I know which one I'll go for, esspecially as a broke student or kid :)
:)
If I *really* need an encyclopedia, I'll go to the library.
I've found that middle aged adults seem to be the most gullible as far as "I read it on the internet, thus it must be true" -- young people seem to grasp the concept that a million monkeys on a million typewriters mostly spew crap
Though I've been pretty turned off encyclopedias since elementary school, when a teacher used one to "prove" to me that the siberian desert *must* be hot, because all deserts are hot. When one has multiple sources, this is a slightly less likely mistake. (I wish I remembered which encyclopedia it was.)
What always struck me about this story is that I, at least, can 'think around' such things -- even random loud noises at 20 second intervals. If absolutely necessary, I can shut my ears off. In fact, I do this on a regular basis. Maybe I'm even more abnormal than I thought?
:)
Though I have to say I have no idea of I could route around a chip in my head
And therein lies the problem.
I have aspergers syndrome. I've noticed that doctors are much more willing to medicate obvious but 'odd' behaviors than to medicate the things that cause problems to me. Medicating me so that I don't rock is far more important to them than pushing down the adreneline kick (hyper startle reflex) or helping my attention span, even though the two latter issues bug me far more than rocking.
"Mental health" would be much more useful if the professionals would stop using 'normality' as a baseline for treatment, and used functionality instead.
The effect on kids esspecially scares me -- because kids are still developing, and because with kids, even more than with adults, the treatments goals tend to be some paraphrased equivelant of "be less annoying to parents and teachers". I know too many young adults with tourettes and anti-psychotic induced tardive dyskinesia, because their parents, teachers and doctors decided that it was more important to keep them shut up in class than to keep them out of a wheel chair as an adult.
One thing you missed: a great deal of consumer hardware upgrading happens because new software is designed for newer processors and generally faster machines.
When the new software has to take advantage of new hardware features, this is unavoidable, but there's also this problem with software that has few discernable new features but runs a lot slower on the older processors. A certain large company's OS is particularly bad about this.
Some people will upgrade a lot simply because they like to have the newest thing, but a lot of people would happily use their older machines if they were still usable.
(Yes, Linux and some other rather efficient alternatives exist, but are not necessarily ready for the home user)
> that way people can choose to pay for the
> amount of malpractice coverage they want,
> instead of forcing everyone to pay for those
> who abuse the system.
Because *I* should pay to protect myself from a doctors truly bad judgment.
I'll grant that some percentage of malpractice suits are ridiculous. But some of them are quite real -- and I don't see why I should have to pay for insurance against the possibility that my doctor will make a truly bad decision.
Of course, 'fear of malpractice suits' is getting a little out of hand. The clinic I've been going to for a year and some now has suddenly decided that they must reevaluate my case, just to be damn sure that I still have what I've had since I was born, and it's looking like I'll be without meds for at least a few weeks. They claim it's because of fear of malpractice suits. What I can't figure out is why it's not a greater risk to screw with my meds. (And it's not a money issue, I pay out of pocket for my meds)
If it's *really* a malpractice fear, I would think that a reevaluation is in order, sure, but I would think that waiting to discontinue meds until the reevaluation is completed (if that is indeed what appears to be the correct course of action) would make more sense than simply refusing to write the next round of prescriptions until the reeval is completed. They aren't even making any efforts to taper dose as is appropriate.
But it's funny -- I went out looking for any sort of specific statistics on malpractice suits, and had a hell of a time finding trustworthy relavant ones. I found information about three vaguely related suits in the last twenty years, none of them particularly suggesting the above course of action. I smell a rat somewhere. I'm just not sure where.
> What I really should have said is that they
;)
> should ban alkaline and carbon zinc cells
That makes more sense.
Throw a rider on your bill to allocate funds so that medicaid and medicare can provide chargers and rechargables to all patients using medicaid/medicare provided equiptment that can use rechargable batteries (like blood sugar monitors) and help defray the cost of lithium over alkalines for those pieces of equiptment that can't, and some fundage for providing chargers and rechargable batteries to public schools, hospitals, etc, and I might even support it, but that is one hell of a price tag.
I think it would be more fiscally responsible to start by taxing alkalines and carbon zincs, and using that tax money to help push the start up costs for rechargables down -- either by directly applying it to the purchases, by refund or by giving it over to public schools and hospitals, etc in order to buy chargers and rechargeable batteries. Hopefully after a few years of this rechargables would be in wide use (it's really only the start up that needs help -- after that the rechargables pay for themselves and then some)and no ultimate ban would be needed. If not, then at least the costs incurred because of that ban would have been pushed down.
The more I think about it the more I really like applying the deposit/return scheme to batteries -- and ultimately both rechargables and disposables should be recycled. It seems to work here in MA -- I think it's basic psychology. In most of the areas where I've lived (CA, WA, DC, VA, MD, WV) the suburbs have had curbside recycling, but if you live in an apartment complex, a city or a rural area recycling was a matter of finding a place to drop your cans (sometimes convenient and obvious, such as a supermarket parking lot, and sometimes really non-obvious, such as a random warehouse in a random industrial section, poorly marked and found after a good search through the yellow pages). It's just the same here, but because there's money in it, the recyclers are convenient and well marked, easy to find, and it's a bit easier sometimes to go through the trouble of putting bags of cans/bottles into the car or walking them two blocks down for $5 than for a warm and fuzzy "I'm helping the planet" feeling
Perhaps more practically, there really ought to be a public service announcement type of campaign for rechargables. I've noticed that a lot of the non-geeks around me still believe many outdated things about rechargeables. Until this last few weeks, when I undertook some serious research, I believed a few really questionable things. Some of this I believed because friend of mine who should know (i.e. they build electric cars [full sized road vehicles] or otherwise work with batteries as a job or serious hobby) told me so. There are still a number of things I'm still confused about, and I have better theoretical background knowledge than the average non-geek. I figure if I can't figure out a technical issue, then it's utterly unreasonable to expect the average american to do so. So a combination of a publicity campaign (to get the word out that rechargeables are more affordable, more reliable and less of a PITA than they were 20 years ago, and that they are fairly available) and an information campaign (to get correct info out -- when a source that ought to be reliable says that memory is a real issue with NiCADs and they should be deep cycled every week, ideally every time, and another equally reliable source says that memory is not an issue and deep cycling hurts the batteries and should never be done, the situation is *bad* -- and I'm not even going to try to list what the correct info is here, simply because I'm still not sure in some cases, and have decided to run my own experiments and collect my own data. But this is an unreasonable expectation of most people.). Relatively cheap, easier than getting laws passed and potentially very effective.
One of the things I've realized in the last week -- wh
because it's fun? because not all learning has to be (immediately) practically applicable? Because (as others have pointed out) learning about any grammar helps you understand the grammer of your native and secondary languages better?
Or, as we did in high school (yes, a friend of mine learned elvish and passed it on) because it makes a nifty secret language when two people wish to communicate without their classmates/teachers/parents knowing what they are saying. Add a basic substitution cipher and you probably won't keep the NSA confused, but your standard teacher/parent/chaperone types won't know what the heck you're saying.
Honestly? My major reason for having to acquire such things is new data formats that the old versions won't read. I really wish manufacturers would stop that already.
Actually, most of the hate crime laws require evidence that the attacker attacked the victim *because* of the protected criteria. In other words, if I attack a gay person because I want the money in their wallet, then it's not a hate crime, it's a mugging.
Those that don't, should.
And discriminating between crimes based on intent has plenty of legal basis -- what is the difference between manslaughter and murder? Intent, pure and simple. And it should be that way, because there is a difference between accidently running over someone in a car because you weren't paying attention, and purposely planning to run someone over with a car because you are pissed at them. The first is irresponsible, the second is anti-social.
> the feds should ban all non-rechargeable
> batteries bigger than button cells.
I understand the theory, but bad idea. I will not use a rechargable for things like smoke detectors -- NiCad and NiMH batteries lose charge whilst sitting. Even the new ones do, though at a lesser rate. Li Ions are hard to find (in 9v and AA sizes, at least), only last two years or so from manufacture (no matter how many times you cycle them in that time) and I swear they lose charge too, though perhaps more slowly. I've been told different by someone who ought to know, but that doesn't match my experience. But for applications like smoke detectors, where it absolutely has to work and you can't be getting up there every few days or every few weeks to be taking out a battery and recharging it, rechargeables just don't cut it (unless the smoke detector has some sort of trickle charger built in and only uses battery for electrical outage backup). Also, things like emergency flashlights for places where leaving them on a charger is untenable are not good applications for rechargeables. I imagine there's some medical equiptment that uses larger-than-button sized batteries for which similar arguments hold.
OTOH, most applications are not like smoke detectors and more people should use more rechargables more of the time. It would be useful if the start up expenses weren't so high. This can be staggered by buying new sets of batteries for each device as the old disposables go. But for anything that has to run, unless you have a critical mass of devices that use that type of battery, you end up having to buy at least two sets of rechargeables for each device. At somewhere between three and five times the cost of a same-sized alkaline battery, the price gets high, quickly. I was pricing out D-cells for a backup battery pack for my notebook (to be used to keep my notebook up while swapping out it's internal batteries, and also as a last option should I completely run down the two internals -- inspired by the recent slashdot book review) and realized that 32 of the suckers (16 to provide the 19v my laptop wants, doubled for spares, since nothing else I own uses D-cells) will run me nearly $200. I'll be going back to the drawing board, because there are cheaper solutions commercially available. (I may just use AA, since it really doesn't have to run a long time, worst case perhaps long enough to shut down, but I haven't fully thought that idea out yet and there may be some painfully obvious reason why it won't work.)
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have some sort of tax or fee on disposable batteries -- maybe like the bottle refund in some states. You could pay an extra five or ten cents and you'd get it back when you bring the batteries to be recycled. It would help keep them out of landfills, at least. Or we could tax disposables and use the revenue to subsidize rechargeables to make them a bit more affordable, esspecially the larger sizes. Esspecially since the environmental costs (which ultimately we all pay) for disposables are higher than those for rechargeables. A tax/subsidy system would bring the actual consumer dollar cost closer to the real long term costs of each. I can hear the free marketers all having heart attacks now, but it's less draconian (and more practical) than completely outlawing disposables, but still encourages use of rechargeables.
It would also be useful if more devices were calibrated for rechargeables. My palm gives me about four hours of heavy use before it starts flashing the annoying "your battery is dying" screen with a rechargeable, compared with 12 hours with an alkaline (generic store brand, because I'll pay a bit extra for high quality rechargeables, but I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to disposables). However, with the NiCad rechargeables, there's actually nearlly two hours left on the battery (it's just two hours of waiting for that damn screen to go away so I can go back to what I'm doing) whereas with the alkaline it's got perhaps three of those scre
It depends on the intersection.
At the intersection of Longwood and Brookline Ave (Longwood medical area), occasionally people will dash across out of turn, but mostly it's a very nicely coordinated dance between people and cars (with flashing ambulances thrown in to keep us all on our toes) but Mass ave going through Cambridge... As a friend of mine said to me, watch out for the hordes of maurading pedestrians.
I don't know that I agree with your assertion that Boston drivers are good, though. Maybe I'd buy it if they'd stop ploughing into my truck (whilst parked, legally, no less).
He was getting money from clicks, not subscriptions.
Which makes me wonder if those porn companies could come back and sue him for fraud, since he was intentionally making money from them (for each click) from people who ultimately could not purchase the service.
I've managed to avoid prison, though my father worked as a gaurd for awhile and I was committed to a mental hospital as a child (my lawyer and I fought, at one point, for sending me to juvie, because one actually has more rights in prison) so I've got a better idea than most of what goes on there.
And yes, american prisons suck. No one, ever, should have to put up with rape and beatings from gaurds or other prisoners. Prison *should* be a safe place where people can take steps to change their lives for the better and/or to keep people out of society who are unable to control themselves and as such are a danger to others. I think the concept of punishment, as a lot of people see it, is ridiculous. Most people who commit crimes don't consider the consequences -- if they did, they wouldn't do them, not because of fear of punishment, but because they'd realize that *most* crimes harm others. (Those that don't are another topic entirely)
All this said, this guy admitted to possessing child pornography. He also was sexually abusing children -- not for his gratification, just for profit, but that doesn't particularly change the affect on the kids. Many types of sexual abuse aren't overtly violent, but that doesn't make it okay. The ultimate effects on the victim are similar to that of violence. As such, he is a danger to others and prison is appropriate.
It is sad that prisons in this country are counterproductive. While it is an extremely good idea to push for more humane, more effective prisons (and yes, more humane prisons *would* be more effective), and I wish the law and order types would get past their simplified punishment mindset, ultimately, we can't use the sorry state of our prisons to justify letting people who are dangerous run amok instead. A fine and/or community service is too leniant. If this guy went into a school yard and started passing out copies of playboy, he'd be facing the same or more jail time. He'd also find himself placed in a sexual offenders database in many states. Home confinement is appropriate for truly non-violent offenders, but I maintain that sexual abuse of a child, even when not overtly violent, is still on par with violence, if not actually violence.
Also, amoung the charges was one count of possessing child pornography, which by itself could justify 30 months in jail.
I'll tell you this, if I went over to the elementary school across the street with a copy of playboy (which is pretty tame compared to much of what's on the 'net), and I opened it up and started showing it to kids -- or even if I just handed it to one of them, I'd be going to jail for awhile. My name would also go on a sex offender list, and my time in jail would be particularly hard.
;) ) but most of us are adults, and thus should not be treated as children. But he was *intentionally* targetting children, and that, I think, makes the jail term appropriate. He already is a criminal. If he were a teenager I would probably suggest leniancy -- both because teenagers don't necessarily have adult judgement yet, so treating them as if they do or should (in this sort of case) is somewhat unfair and fairly counterproductive, and because a teenager who does this sort of thing, after three years in jail, may well have a higher chance of coming out a criminal. But if this guy uses that three years
On one hand, this is slightly different. We can be pretty sure that his reason for luring kids to his websites was to defraud the folks he was advertising for (after all, a kid can click on the referral links, but without a credit card, etc cannot buy the service) and not to find a child for sexual purposes.
However, in most states purposely showing a child adult material is a felony, regardless of whether the intent was to provide an opening for sexually abusing a child. And three years is not an unreasonable sentence for someone convicted of that who did not go on to sexually abuse a child.
"Think of the children" annoys the hell out of me when we are talking about trying to make the entire world or entire internet child safe. Not only is that impossible (hey, where would we get more children
to become a worse criminal, well, he's an adult and should know better.
If he'd just put up 'buy this page' sites rather than porn sites, the jail term would also be excessive, I think.
Incidently, part of the reason for this is because I do think that it is potentially harmful for kids to be exposed to porn too young -- simply because it provides an unrealistic portrayal of sex. For an adult, this isn't a problem. If there were readily available, more realistic portrayals of sex, it wouldn't be nearly the hazard it is. The issue isn't deep psychological damage -- it's simply setting up wrong expectations, which then are acted out upon (because the kids don't know yet that these are unrealistic expectations) and suddenly the kid is up for sexual harrassment or assault or rape because they thought they were doing the 'right' thing.
This guy is scum, he deserves to be in jail. More than five years would be excessive, three is reasonable.
To clarify, I don't particularly disagree with your assertion that Americans have some serious problems. What I do disagree with is your analysis of women's culture in the U.S. (I think you've got a very narrow band of data, I'll eleborate below) and that somehow women are (or women's culture is) somehow more responsible for the problems in the U.S. than men or men's culture or any other factor. If you'd posted something that criticized all Americans I probably wouldn't have blinked, if you'd posted something that was critical of women, but didn't echo known, common anti-woman beliefs/propaganda (for lack of better words for the phenomenon), I would have been less likely to react as well.
:) ).
Your complaint about women not wanting to commit is interesting, as it's one I'm more used to hearing from women about men than vice versa (though I've heard it from women about women and men about both men and women, so no one gets to completely avoid it, I suppose). I don't find that surprising. Marriage has it's pros and cons. It's not just about committing to have sex with only one person. There are a lot of practical aspects -- financial (dependant on where you are and who has what money and what income, you can lose quite a bit of money in taxes and such if you're married that you wouldn't if you were single), geographical (if one partner gets transferred at work, do both move or does that partner have to lose their job and find another?), emotional (living with someone is very difficult -- esspecially if one was an only child in a 'standard' household [parent(s) only, no extended family]) etc. And some of these fall particularly hard on women, because traditionally they've been the ones expected to make greater sacrifices for the marriage. If a woman wants to have a career or continue her education than it makes sense to delay marriage. And all of this is intensified if children are expected to be part of the package.
My mother went to four different colleges and ultimately decided to go into nursing rather than medicine, because she got married and had to follow my father around. Two years later she had me and three years after that my sister. It took her fourteen years to get her BA in Nursing, and she started before she met my father (and she was her high school valedictorian, so I don't think that was a problem with the academic work). Now, she doesn't (to my knowledge) regret any of this, and I respect the decisions she made as those that were best for her, but I certainly can understand why a woman would *not* want to do that. I don't think one can explain away difficulty finding a wife or the rising age of first time brides by claiming that women on the whole have become less willing to commit. The social and economic factors affecting marriage have changed in the last two generations, and they combine to make getting married, and esspecially getting married young, a less attractive choice than it was before, at least unless one really wants to have children.
Incidently, life expentancy stats would seem to bear this out. Married men have longer life expentancies than unmarried men, but the reverse is true for women.
On a related point, to find a wife, being popular with women is not really the best strategy. It's being appealing, as marriage material, to at least one woman (and it only has to be one, though I suppose increasing that number would increase your odds somewhat) who is interested in getting married. I know one guy who is really popular with women, but not in any way that would be useful to find a partner -- for various reasons he's very popular with..lesbians. Not very useful for getting married or getting laid, but his parties are great. Actually, I exaggerate a little -- he ended up marrying a woman who thought she was a lesbian, but decided she'd just hadn't met the right man. This is, however, a lousy strategy in general and I don't recommend it (because it wastes your time and annoys the lesbians
Modeling and the whole beauty queen business is
It all depends on how you're staring.
;)
If you are conciously going over the code you see, then yes, that's not very zen like.
But in troubleshooting I find myself staring at logs or whatnot in a zen-like manner. The stare is different -- like 'soft gaze' or 'eagle gaze' -- I'm not focusing on the words, but seeing the whole, and sometimes that is enough to knock the answer out of my head and into my fingers. It's a lot like going away from a problem, except that there is a small amount of focusing stimulus to remind me that I'm still trying to solve it. It is backing away from the problem.
What the original posters' former coworker was doing, I cannot comment on, because I wasn't there, but it is possible he was doing what I (and others) do.
BTW, _Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintainance_ is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Though I came out of it feeling more than a little uncomfortable with my similarities to Phaedrus. I'm mostly over that now
I have mod points, and I very nearly modded this flamebait.
But I've realized (after careful reading of this post and some perusal of your website) that this isn't flamebait or a troll, in the usual senses of the words, and that you seem in some ways to be a very thoughtful individual, if rather misguided about some issues.
So I'll rebut your arguments instead.
"Bitching", defined as complaining, is hardly a pursuit limited to women (american or not). I've worked in male-dominated (not purposely, just because it fell out that way) offices that held 'bitch sessions' that were called exactly that.
The use of 'bitch' to denote all women is a misogynist term, and almost certainly did not originate with women. The more or less male analog to this is 'bastard', yet not all men (american or not) are illegitimate.
> This is a bit extreme, but a good exaggeration
> might be that if you have only known women of
> the U.S. culture, you have never really known a
> woman at all.
Just for the record, my mother is Japanese, as is her mother. So I grew up with women who were not socialized predominately in the U.S. While I have not been able to leave the U.S. as an adult, I have certainly dealt with women who did not grow up here. So this argument does not apply to me.
> Women in the U.S. commonly: 1) are infantile,
> 2) live in a fantasy world in which the rules
> of life don't apply to them, 3) are self-
> destructive, 4) want control, 5) believe that
> men are reponsible for all of their problems,
> 5) are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and
> 6) use anger and hostility to try to intimidate
> and get their way.
Oprah Winfrey and Women's magazines in general are not indicative of 'women's culture' any more than esquire, playboy and sports illustrated are indicative of 'men's culture'. They are corporate entities created to make money. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, unless you would like to try to claim that men are 1. infantile, 2. live in a fantasy world in which the rules of life don't apply to them, 3. are self-destructive, 4. want control, 5. believe that women are reponsible for all of their problems, 6. are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and 7. use anger, hostility, violence and a larger body size to try to intimidate and get their way. I'd suggest you either reconsider your sources or reconsider your hypothesis
Incidently, all of these things are true for individual examples, regardless of gender. None of these things are true for the entire gender.
I fail to see a problem with some of these things ('want control' -- I want control over my life, and I fail to see why it's wrong for a woman to do so) and some of these problems (irresponsibility, blaming others unreasonably, intimidation) are problems in American culture, period, and are not particularly gender linked, though the way they manifest may be, i.e. statistically, women will be more likely to use emotional manipulation, like crying, where men will be more likely to use physical intimidation. But this is still statistical, and any individual may use either or neither, regardless of gender.
Also, these traits bear startling resemblance to the psychological profiles of a healthy woman (as in, this is what a psychologically healthy woman is like -- a woman who acts as an adult, is responsible, likes men [and therefore sex], etc is neurotic and requires treatment) from the first half of the twentieth century. If you are not aware of this you may want to do more research here. A fair chunk of women's problems in this country stem from psychological and psychiatric practices.
And yes, I really do care about what happens in my country. Which is one of the reasons I hate seeing energy wasted on misguided attacks and other strategies.
I fail to see how the satiric practices of any country accurately reflect the reality of any other country reliably enough to draw good conclusions about that cou
> Better insulating perhaps?
According to some, government/corporate conspiracy to silence the information.
Another issue that I haven't been able to suss out the truth of.