But most people agree that both weed and alcohol, regardless of how they fare relative to each other, have detrimental effects on the body, especially in the long term. Traveling, which you mentioned, especially by plane, does not carry these risks.
While your opinion obviously differs, I personally don't see why drugs are necessary to enjoy life. I don't smoke, drink, or use weed. I have many "problems" that others do not share - my job is tedious, I have always had difficulty making friends, never had a girlfriend, and my health has had setbacks. But I never have turned to drugs to get away from these issues. Instead, I take pleasure in the little things of life, like going for bike rides in state parks, playing Halo 4, and spending time with family over the upcoming holidays. It is unreasonable to think that everyone can be content with all or even most of their lives, because society cannot function without trash collectors and assembly line workers.
If you think life sucks, then it has always sucked and it certainly sucks less today than it did 100 years ago. As long as you have the basics of food, water, shelter, and medical care (which will now be available in just over a year), it is not necessary to use drugs to be content with life.
Things happen... to some people. The strange thing about stuff happening is that it always seems to happen to the same people.
I am very fortunate to have a job right now, and I want to keep it that way. But I also realize that it's possible that, at some point in the future, I could be laid off without any employment in sight. That's why I have enough money available to live, if necessary, on a shoestring budget for three years without outside support. It wouldn't be a fun time of life, and I wouldn't be able to go to the movies or take vacations, but I would survive and make the best of the little things in life. Most importantly, I will never, under any circumstances, end up as a leech off my parents, living in their basement.
On the other hand, there are some people who spend most of the money they earn. It's funny how you see people who are very poor but still manage to go out to the bars downtown and buy overpriced drinks.
Today's world is so abundant that most people can make it on any salary, provided that they live frugally and manage their finances. There are few cases where one would be so desperate to get a job that allowing facebook profiling is necessary.
And finally, to get around this issue, you can simply do what I do: don't act stupidly. If you don't go out and get trashed, you won't end up with embarrassing drunk pictures on facebook. What a concept!
A very interesting proposal, and one that might work - but I see two problems with it.
First, you are annoying everyone else by holding the bright, large device up and texting away, oblivious to everything going on around you. That's just as bad as conducting a loud conversation.
Second, it is simple to track down the device initiating the attack. This isn't a huge DDOS attack where there are thousands of computers participating; there is one device, and it is associated with your full name and address in the carrier's database.
I think that what is missing here is that this old-world scheme, where you create software and sell it at a set price, is obsolete. Rather than criticizing piracy, companies need to realize that it is just another threat to their business model and react accordingly.
Some game companies do this by creating online multiplayer-centric games. Some companies host the software on their own systems and allow client access, therefore eliminating piracy. Some give the software away and provide support, or provide online components of the software at an additional cost.
The truth is that creating software and selling CDs is no longer a viable business. You need to come up with a new business model, not add DRM or fight piracy.
I don't see what the problem is with people thinking badly of people for posting drunk pictures on facebook is. In the past, it was possible for people to unethically hide their drunken behavior from parents and employers. Now, it isn't. To me, that is a positive change.
Keep in mind, we're not talking about fake pictures or lying here, both of which are unethical. The truth is that if you don't want to show up drunk urinating on a lightpole on facebook, then don't urinate on a lightpole. Whatever happened to the notion of personal responsibility? How did it suddenly become wrong for people to post pictures, and yet it is somehow right for people to act like idiots?
Employers correctly think badly of excessive drinking because it demonstrates a lack of responsibility. They don't want such people going out at night and representing their organizations in such a negative light. I can't blame them. It is a good thing for society, especially for people who act responsibly, that such behavior is recorded because doing so encourages honesty and rewards positive behavior.
And why is this a problem? You used World of Warcraft during those times; nobody is lying about your use. As with anything else, people can draw their own conclusions about you based on your behavior.
I still don't see what the issue is here. If they don't want to be friends with you because of your playing habits, then that's fine. Some people complain about lawsuits and the legal system being able to obtain information that hurts them - but isn't that what the justice system is about? I want people to lose custody of children because their shoppers' cards prove they are feeding them junk food, not retain custody by destroying or hiding that data - because the kids will be better off for it.
Our society does have too many laws and policies, and they need to be reduced. That's what voting, and failing that, demonstrating, is for. But prosecuting people for violating the existing laws using all available data is not wrong. It is being fair to upstanding citizens who follow the law.
That may be the case now, but I don't believe that medical pioneers will be so undervalued 10 years from now.
Right now, the social media companies are receiving all sorts of attention as the leading "innovators," as if creating a place to post on friends' walls and share pictures is actually so valuable. Meanwhile, a huge amount of information on biology is just waiting to explode as computing power becomes cheaper and cheaper.
People pay for what they value. Today, people think that disease, disability, and death are just natural occurrences that just need to be accepted. Once someone finds a cure for cancer, or Alzheimer's disease, or any one of a number of diseases, people will suddenly realize that the idea that people are born, get sick, grow old, and die no longer has to be the norm. The superstars will then be the people who cured blindness or who slowed aging, and things like facebook will rightfully be looked upon as useful tools, but not as huge innovations that are worth billions of dollars.
It will just take people to see that medicine can actually make them feel better, not just postpone disease as today's primitive treatments do. Between the time the first major cure is discovered and aging is eliminated, people will respect medical researchers a lot more, because they will realize that they have a chance of making it to the point where suffering is a thing of the past.
Upload bandwidth is limited. I have a business account at $60/month that provides 2 megabits per second. That's $17 more than the residential service, but you could pay $9.95 and get a webserver that has a connection with 100Mbps of upload bandwidth.
If you have 500GB of files to transfer, and you host them on a 2Mbps connection, it would take a month to upload all of the files to even one visitor - and your entire connection will be saturated all the time while you provide poor download speeds to whoever is accessing the server.
I don't agree with this comment. The parents were certainly wrong in forcing him to attend a certain school. However, the bottom line is that he decided to go to that school. He is an individual person of sound mind who could have told his parents that he was not going to accept their offer and set out on his own instead, as many have done. He didn't end up at the school by accident; he made a conscious decision to go there.
I agree with the idea that you're in a bad situation. I often post that while all other obstacles can be overcome when it comes to finances, illness is the one thing that can't be controlled and the government should redistribute wealth from the healthy to the sick so that everyone has the same opportunity.
But on the other hand, you were not forced to go to the college where you ended up. You could have decided not to accept your parents' offers for help and instead taken out student loans at a more reasonable college. This is the same reason why I don't buy a house or an expensive car - because I always have two years' salary set aside in the case I get sick or lose my job. When I buy something, I create an Excel spreadsheet and list the pros and cons, and consider all the positives and negatives of all the options. The people who are being foreclosed upon now and complaining about having lost their jobs are in that situation because they did not save enough money for that possibility and instead bought a bigger house that they would default upon immediately if they were fired. "Not knowing that you needed to know" something is hardly an excuse that would hold up in any court of law.
You had the right at any time to tell your parents that, when you started college, you would be of legal age and that you weren't going to accept their terms that they send you to a private college. While your situation is unusual and many of the circumstances were out of your control, stating that you share absolutely no responsibility is inaccurate.
If we eliminated 9/10 of the laws in our society, there would be little increase in violence.
Excessive laws cause disrespect for the law, and make it difficult for people to become knowledgeable about the law. That leads people to either break laws that they can't keep track of (because there are so many), or simply disregard the law because everyone else is disregarding it.
Review studies on raising the speed limits on major highways. In June, I drove from Pennsylvania to Chicago. As soon as I crossed the border into Ohio, I was surprised to find the speed limits at 70 instead of 65. I assumed that people would be traveling at five over, since everyone in Pennsylvania drives at 70. Instead, people kept driving at 70 because they generally don't want to get themselves killed by driving at an unsafe speed. Coming back, in a 55 zone near Altoona, people keep driving at (surprise) 70.
When everyone is breaking the law, the law has no effect. The law is meant to keep a few outliers in line, not turn everyone into criminals.
If everyone had to earn respect, then we would walk down the street spitting on people, stealing their wallets, and running them down with cars. A society with complete disrespect is unlivable.
I prefer to assume good faith and great ability in everyone I meet until proven otherwise. I believe that people deserve the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if a person decides to abuse that respect, then I'm quick to withdraw it.
Finally, someone I agree with on the privacy issue. In 10 years, everyone will be recording every second of every day, and will be able to look back at their lives and be able to watch anything they ever did.
The answer to privacy is simple: if you don't want pictures of you looking like an idiot to show up on facebook, then don't act like an idiot.
Or, perhaps he said it because it is true. It may be true that people between 18 and 29 were always disrespectful; they just always get old and become more respectful with age, as this study seems to indicate. People change over time.
I read "The Game," and tried some of the methods described in the book despite feeling like scum. Fortunately, I found that "pickup artistry" is a scam that is designed to make money. I've posted requests on reddit to ask people to come forward who don't own a pickup business and who have actually changed their lives from being unwanted by women to being studs, and strangely not one person has responded. I still have yet to meet anyone who has benefited from the "pickup" lifestyle advocated in "The Game."
As to the rest, we'll have to agree to disagree. I do have friends who are in their 30s, and they are generally respectful and honor their commitments.
One sentence that is completely true is that the more attractive a woman is, the more likely she is to exhibit this kind of disrespectful behavior. It sounds sexist, and it certainly doesn't apply to every woman, but in general it is entirely true. It is so true that I have to consciously fight against this stereotype when dealing with young women outside of a business atmosphere.
Many attractive women have been so coddled by men that they have come to feel entitled to everything the world has to offer. They come to see it as an entitlement that they can walking into bars and reject guy after guy, and get boyfriends to pay for lavish gifts for them. If you still are skeptical, look at the prices escorts charge compared to those doctors charge. A neurosurgeon with 24 total years of schooling can make $300/hr, a ridiculous fortune by any means, but a prostitute with a high-school education can make $500/hr - and a select few can make over $1000.
Therefore, society values attractive young women more highly than doctors who can save your life. The market speaks for itself. Since many attractive women are between 18 and 29, it would be a fair assumption to propose that a significant proportion of the rudeness can be explained by this effect alone.
I am 28, but my age is irrelevant to the discussion.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've never had this problem with people who are older than 30. I've volunteered at carnivals where we crushed one ton of potatoes over six days, for years, and the 50-year-old ladies never failed. The work was brutal - imagine peeling and chopping into tiny pieces 200 pounds of onions manually. They showed up with colds, bad backs, hung over, and even drunk, but despite doing this for 120 days over two decades, there was only one time that one of them failed to show up, and she called to say why.
Yet, in my dealings with people my "own age," I encountered the incident described above, another instance where I gave someone a $75 ticket for a concert over another friend and he decided not to show up, a friend I provided $2500 of videography for in exchange for a place to stay, and she didn't pay the $160 hotel bill, 200 hours of work put into an organization at the president's request when the president didn't even bother to look at what I had produced, and the list goes on and on.
You can blame poor social skills or whatever you would like, but the fact remains that any reasonable person would believe this behavior is abhorrent. I never lied, cheated, assaulted, or bad-mouthed any of these people in any way. No matter how poor one's social skills are, nonviolent people deserve the simple respect of being told the truth, or simply the offer of an apology and an acknowledgement of having done something wrong. Kind, respectful people would think just the opposite - that someone with poor social skills could benefit from some extra help. Consider that you don't often see poor social skills develop in the first place in people who are treated respectfully as children or young adults.
Criticizing the "victim's" personality is not an excuse for the poor behavior of self-centered people who care nothing for others.
Everyone deserves respect. If you don't want to talk to someone, then you kindly but firmly state that you are busy and aren't available to talk right now. Or, if the person keeps pestering you, you firmly state that you don't want to talk to the person again, and then ignore him or her on future occasions.
Faking or arranging a cell phone call helps nobody. The person who is talking to you might not even know that you don't want to associate with him or her and would never learn otherwise. (S)he eventually ends up confused and feeling bad. Meanwhile, you keep wasting your time as the person continues to contact you about whatever problem you're putting off with these fake or arranged calls. It's just a sign of disrespect that you won't look the person in the eye and tell the truth.
The most interesting fact from this article is that 18-to-29 year-olds are much more likely to use cell phones as an excuse to not talk to someone. This jives with my experience in real life. Finally, now it is possible to agree with our grandparents that young people are more inconsiderate than old people.
People in that age group seem to think that they are entitled to do anything they like, as if their feelings are more important than everyone else's. Instead of treating people with respect, many young people seem to think that it's acceptable to ignore the person making the request. This happens in dating, where childish women give out fake numbers; in friendships, where some idiots have decided it's acceptable to commit to something and then not show up; and in family life, where you invite people to a party and they can't take five seconds from their self-centered lives to apologize and inform you that they will not be able to attend. A year after I graduated college, a co-worker and I scheduled a bowling outing for about 30 people; despite being the organizer, she decided not to show up and was unreachable on her cell phone because "someone from Pittsburgh suddenly showed up at my house and I had to give her a place to stay."
When people pull stuff like that on me, I tell them to get lost - but they keep doing it because others are willing to put up with this crap. It's bad enough that people cut short in-person conversations to take cell calls. But it says something about how low our society's expectations are for our youth that we accept one third of that age group being so self-centered that they can't be bothered to talk to you even when they don't have anything else to do.
It doesn't, unfortunately, in either of those cases. But it does protect against the case when someone says "but he was moving in reverse!" as one guy tried against me. Had he not been recorded telling the truth an hour earlier, the case would have been a "word versus word" case and it would have been thrown out, and I would have lost $3000 in repair bills.
A black box wouldn't be perfect, but it could protect against many types of lies that cause people to wrongfully lose money today.
But a black box is not a wiretap, which is why I don't believe that this argument against abuse holds here. The box isn't recording any private information. A wiretap on a phone records information that would not be able to obtained by a normal person. However, anyone standing on the sidewalk looking at the car has a good approximation of what is being recorded by the black box, so the box is just recording publicly available knowledge.
For most people, that would be a lot of accidents, but I drove 52 miles to work for years.
I've never been ticketed for any violation in 12 years of driving. One accident was caused by a hit-and-run, DUI, uninsured driver. Another was caused by an 85-year-old woman who had vision difficulties. In all six cases, I was at a dead stop.
You can draw whatever conclusions you like, but it's not possible to avoid being hit from behind while stopped.
The issue most people have with warrantless wiretaps and searches is not an issue of whether one has anything to hide. Instead, they do not trust the police to be truthful and respectful in enforcing the law, and are concerned about police abuse. It's important to recognize that the real problem is the potential for police corruption, not the wiretapping itself, which would be fine if we were assured that every police officer was honest.
I support making tampering with the boxes illegal because I trust the police to be more honest than other drivers. Your experiences may have been different, but I sincerely believe that accidents bring out the absolute worst behavior in people and the way that some people act after an accident is undoubtedly different than the way they would normally present themselves in any other circumstance. I want the law to prohibit tampering so that I can conclusively prove that the other driver is lying the next time someone hits me.
The issue comes down to who you trust more: the police, or the other driver. If you trust the other driver, then you should oppose the tampering prohibition. However, the next time someone hits me, I'll trust the police over the other driver any day.
Of course, it's possible that any system could fail and record inaccurate information. But I'm willing to tolerate a low failure rate in exchange for greater honesty and integrity when accidents occur.
Everyone here seems to be of the opinion that (s)he has some sort of right to privacy when it comes to breaking the law. Sorry, but the law is the law. If you don't like the speed limit, then vote for someone who will raise it - but if you drive over the speed limit, you should be ticketed. If you're walking alongside a cliff, you stay far away from the edge to make sure you don't die. If the law states that driving 1mph over the speed limit is illegal, then perhaps you might try driving 5mph below the limit to make sure that you won't violate the law. What a concept!
Furthermore, those who have ever been in an accident, will know it's a nightmare. I've been involved in six accidents, each time where someone hit me from behind and I was never at fault. One time, someone attempted to say that I hadn't been using my turn signal, and another time, someone attempted to convince the cops that I was in reverse when the accident occurred. My experience is that most people, when faced with an accident situation, have no integrity and will lie through their teeth to escape any responsibility for their actions.
I will gladly submit to any sort of monitoring, even if it includes every single input I place into the car. Such a "privacy violation" and even the risk of incorrect recording is well-worth the protection I would have against people who take no personal responsibility for their actions when an accident occurs.
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But most people agree that both weed and alcohol, regardless of how they fare relative to each other, have detrimental effects on the body, especially in the long term. Traveling, which you mentioned, especially by plane, does not carry these risks.
While your opinion obviously differs, I personally don't see why drugs are necessary to enjoy life. I don't smoke, drink, or use weed. I have many "problems" that others do not share - my job is tedious, I have always had difficulty making friends, never had a girlfriend, and my health has had setbacks. But I never have turned to drugs to get away from these issues. Instead, I take pleasure in the little things of life, like going for bike rides in state parks, playing Halo 4, and spending time with family over the upcoming holidays. It is unreasonable to think that everyone can be content with all or even most of their lives, because society cannot function without trash collectors and assembly line workers.
If you think life sucks, then it has always sucked and it certainly sucks less today than it did 100 years ago. As long as you have the basics of food, water, shelter, and medical care (which will now be available in just over a year), it is not necessary to use drugs to be content with life.
Things happen... to some people. The strange thing about stuff happening is that it always seems to happen to the same people.
I am very fortunate to have a job right now, and I want to keep it that way. But I also realize that it's possible that, at some point in the future, I could be laid off without any employment in sight. That's why I have enough money available to live, if necessary, on a shoestring budget for three years without outside support. It wouldn't be a fun time of life, and I wouldn't be able to go to the movies or take vacations, but I would survive and make the best of the little things in life. Most importantly, I will never, under any circumstances, end up as a leech off my parents, living in their basement.
On the other hand, there are some people who spend most of the money they earn. It's funny how you see people who are very poor but still manage to go out to the bars downtown and buy overpriced drinks.
Today's world is so abundant that most people can make it on any salary, provided that they live frugally and manage their finances. There are few cases where one would be so desperate to get a job that allowing facebook profiling is necessary.
And finally, to get around this issue, you can simply do what I do: don't act stupidly. If you don't go out and get trashed, you won't end up with embarrassing drunk pictures on facebook. What a concept!
A very interesting proposal, and one that might work - but I see two problems with it.
First, you are annoying everyone else by holding the bright, large device up and texting away, oblivious to everything going on around you. That's just as bad as conducting a loud conversation.
Second, it is simple to track down the device initiating the attack. This isn't a huge DDOS attack where there are thousands of computers participating; there is one device, and it is associated with your full name and address in the carrier's database.
I think that what is missing here is that this old-world scheme, where you create software and sell it at a set price, is obsolete. Rather than criticizing piracy, companies need to realize that it is just another threat to their business model and react accordingly. Some game companies do this by creating online multiplayer-centric games. Some companies host the software on their own systems and allow client access, therefore eliminating piracy. Some give the software away and provide support, or provide online components of the software at an additional cost. The truth is that creating software and selling CDs is no longer a viable business. You need to come up with a new business model, not add DRM or fight piracy.
I don't see what the problem is with people thinking badly of people for posting drunk pictures on facebook is. In the past, it was possible for people to unethically hide their drunken behavior from parents and employers. Now, it isn't. To me, that is a positive change.
Keep in mind, we're not talking about fake pictures or lying here, both of which are unethical. The truth is that if you don't want to show up drunk urinating on a lightpole on facebook, then don't urinate on a lightpole. Whatever happened to the notion of personal responsibility? How did it suddenly become wrong for people to post pictures, and yet it is somehow right for people to act like idiots?
Employers correctly think badly of excessive drinking because it demonstrates a lack of responsibility. They don't want such people going out at night and representing their organizations in such a negative light. I can't blame them. It is a good thing for society, especially for people who act responsibly, that such behavior is recorded because doing so encourages honesty and rewards positive behavior.
And why is this a problem? You used World of Warcraft during those times; nobody is lying about your use. As with anything else, people can draw their own conclusions about you based on your behavior.
I still don't see what the issue is here. If they don't want to be friends with you because of your playing habits, then that's fine. Some people complain about lawsuits and the legal system being able to obtain information that hurts them - but isn't that what the justice system is about? I want people to lose custody of children because their shoppers' cards prove they are feeding them junk food, not retain custody by destroying or hiding that data - because the kids will be better off for it.
Our society does have too many laws and policies, and they need to be reduced. That's what voting, and failing that, demonstrating, is for. But prosecuting people for violating the existing laws using all available data is not wrong. It is being fair to upstanding citizens who follow the law.
That may be the case now, but I don't believe that medical pioneers will be so undervalued 10 years from now.
Right now, the social media companies are receiving all sorts of attention as the leading "innovators," as if creating a place to post on friends' walls and share pictures is actually so valuable. Meanwhile, a huge amount of information on biology is just waiting to explode as computing power becomes cheaper and cheaper.
People pay for what they value. Today, people think that disease, disability, and death are just natural occurrences that just need to be accepted. Once someone finds a cure for cancer, or Alzheimer's disease, or any one of a number of diseases, people will suddenly realize that the idea that people are born, get sick, grow old, and die no longer has to be the norm. The superstars will then be the people who cured blindness or who slowed aging, and things like facebook will rightfully be looked upon as useful tools, but not as huge innovations that are worth billions of dollars.
It will just take people to see that medicine can actually make them feel better, not just postpone disease as today's primitive treatments do. Between the time the first major cure is discovered and aging is eliminated, people will respect medical researchers a lot more, because they will realize that they have a chance of making it to the point where suffering is a thing of the past.
Upload bandwidth is limited. I have a business account at $60/month that provides 2 megabits per second. That's $17 more than the residential service, but you could pay $9.95 and get a webserver that has a connection with 100Mbps of upload bandwidth. If you have 500GB of files to transfer, and you host them on a 2Mbps connection, it would take a month to upload all of the files to even one visitor - and your entire connection will be saturated all the time while you provide poor download speeds to whoever is accessing the server.
I don't agree with this comment. The parents were certainly wrong in forcing him to attend a certain school. However, the bottom line is that he decided to go to that school. He is an individual person of sound mind who could have told his parents that he was not going to accept their offer and set out on his own instead, as many have done. He didn't end up at the school by accident; he made a conscious decision to go there.
I agree with the idea that you're in a bad situation. I often post that while all other obstacles can be overcome when it comes to finances, illness is the one thing that can't be controlled and the government should redistribute wealth from the healthy to the sick so that everyone has the same opportunity.
But on the other hand, you were not forced to go to the college where you ended up. You could have decided not to accept your parents' offers for help and instead taken out student loans at a more reasonable college. This is the same reason why I don't buy a house or an expensive car - because I always have two years' salary set aside in the case I get sick or lose my job. When I buy something, I create an Excel spreadsheet and list the pros and cons, and consider all the positives and negatives of all the options. The people who are being foreclosed upon now and complaining about having lost their jobs are in that situation because they did not save enough money for that possibility and instead bought a bigger house that they would default upon immediately if they were fired. "Not knowing that you needed to know" something is hardly an excuse that would hold up in any court of law.
You had the right at any time to tell your parents that, when you started college, you would be of legal age and that you weren't going to accept their terms that they send you to a private college. While your situation is unusual and many of the circumstances were out of your control, stating that you share absolutely no responsibility is inaccurate.
If we eliminated 9/10 of the laws in our society, there would be little increase in violence.
Excessive laws cause disrespect for the law, and make it difficult for people to become knowledgeable about the law. That leads people to either break laws that they can't keep track of (because there are so many), or simply disregard the law because everyone else is disregarding it.
Review studies on raising the speed limits on major highways. In June, I drove from Pennsylvania to Chicago. As soon as I crossed the border into Ohio, I was surprised to find the speed limits at 70 instead of 65. I assumed that people would be traveling at five over, since everyone in Pennsylvania drives at 70. Instead, people kept driving at 70 because they generally don't want to get themselves killed by driving at an unsafe speed. Coming back, in a 55 zone near Altoona, people keep driving at (surprise) 70.
When everyone is breaking the law, the law has no effect. The law is meant to keep a few outliers in line, not turn everyone into criminals.
If everyone had to earn respect, then we would walk down the street spitting on people, stealing their wallets, and running them down with cars. A society with complete disrespect is unlivable. I prefer to assume good faith and great ability in everyone I meet until proven otherwise. I believe that people deserve the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if a person decides to abuse that respect, then I'm quick to withdraw it.
Finally, someone I agree with on the privacy issue. In 10 years, everyone will be recording every second of every day, and will be able to look back at their lives and be able to watch anything they ever did. The answer to privacy is simple: if you don't want pictures of you looking like an idiot to show up on facebook, then don't act like an idiot.
Good for her!
Or, perhaps he said it because it is true. It may be true that people between 18 and 29 were always disrespectful; they just always get old and become more respectful with age, as this study seems to indicate. People change over time.
I read "The Game," and tried some of the methods described in the book despite feeling like scum. Fortunately, I found that "pickup artistry" is a scam that is designed to make money. I've posted requests on reddit to ask people to come forward who don't own a pickup business and who have actually changed their lives from being unwanted by women to being studs, and strangely not one person has responded. I still have yet to meet anyone who has benefited from the "pickup" lifestyle advocated in "The Game." As to the rest, we'll have to agree to disagree. I do have friends who are in their 30s, and they are generally respectful and honor their commitments.
One sentence that is completely true is that the more attractive a woman is, the more likely she is to exhibit this kind of disrespectful behavior. It sounds sexist, and it certainly doesn't apply to every woman, but in general it is entirely true. It is so true that I have to consciously fight against this stereotype when dealing with young women outside of a business atmosphere.
Many attractive women have been so coddled by men that they have come to feel entitled to everything the world has to offer. They come to see it as an entitlement that they can walking into bars and reject guy after guy, and get boyfriends to pay for lavish gifts for them. If you still are skeptical, look at the prices escorts charge compared to those doctors charge. A neurosurgeon with 24 total years of schooling can make $300/hr, a ridiculous fortune by any means, but a prostitute with a high-school education can make $500/hr - and a select few can make over $1000.
Therefore, society values attractive young women more highly than doctors who can save your life. The market speaks for itself. Since many attractive women are between 18 and 29, it would be a fair assumption to propose that a significant proportion of the rudeness can be explained by this effect alone.
I am 28, but my age is irrelevant to the discussion.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've never had this problem with people who are older than 30. I've volunteered at carnivals where we crushed one ton of potatoes over six days, for years, and the 50-year-old ladies never failed. The work was brutal - imagine peeling and chopping into tiny pieces 200 pounds of onions manually. They showed up with colds, bad backs, hung over, and even drunk, but despite doing this for 120 days over two decades, there was only one time that one of them failed to show up, and she called to say why.
Yet, in my dealings with people my "own age," I encountered the incident described above, another instance where I gave someone a $75 ticket for a concert over another friend and he decided not to show up, a friend I provided $2500 of videography for in exchange for a place to stay, and she didn't pay the $160 hotel bill, 200 hours of work put into an organization at the president's request when the president didn't even bother to look at what I had produced, and the list goes on and on.
You can blame poor social skills or whatever you would like, but the fact remains that any reasonable person would believe this behavior is abhorrent. I never lied, cheated, assaulted, or bad-mouthed any of these people in any way. No matter how poor one's social skills are, nonviolent people deserve the simple respect of being told the truth, or simply the offer of an apology and an acknowledgement of having done something wrong. Kind, respectful people would think just the opposite - that someone with poor social skills could benefit from some extra help. Consider that you don't often see poor social skills develop in the first place in people who are treated respectfully as children or young adults.
Criticizing the "victim's" personality is not an excuse for the poor behavior of self-centered people who care nothing for others.
And that is still wrong.
Everyone deserves respect. If you don't want to talk to someone, then you kindly but firmly state that you are busy and aren't available to talk right now. Or, if the person keeps pestering you, you firmly state that you don't want to talk to the person again, and then ignore him or her on future occasions.
Faking or arranging a cell phone call helps nobody. The person who is talking to you might not even know that you don't want to associate with him or her and would never learn otherwise. (S)he eventually ends up confused and feeling bad. Meanwhile, you keep wasting your time as the person continues to contact you about whatever problem you're putting off with these fake or arranged calls. It's just a sign of disrespect that you won't look the person in the eye and tell the truth.
The most interesting fact from this article is that 18-to-29 year-olds are much more likely to use cell phones as an excuse to not talk to someone. This jives with my experience in real life. Finally, now it is possible to agree with our grandparents that young people are more inconsiderate than old people.
People in that age group seem to think that they are entitled to do anything they like, as if their feelings are more important than everyone else's. Instead of treating people with respect, many young people seem to think that it's acceptable to ignore the person making the request. This happens in dating, where childish women give out fake numbers; in friendships, where some idiots have decided it's acceptable to commit to something and then not show up; and in family life, where you invite people to a party and they can't take five seconds from their self-centered lives to apologize and inform you that they will not be able to attend. A year after I graduated college, a co-worker and I scheduled a bowling outing for about 30 people; despite being the organizer, she decided not to show up and was unreachable on her cell phone because "someone from Pittsburgh suddenly showed up at my house and I had to give her a place to stay."
When people pull stuff like that on me, I tell them to get lost - but they keep doing it because others are willing to put up with this crap. It's bad enough that people cut short in-person conversations to take cell calls. But it says something about how low our society's expectations are for our youth that we accept one third of that age group being so self-centered that they can't be bothered to talk to you even when they don't have anything else to do.
It doesn't, unfortunately, in either of those cases. But it does protect against the case when someone says "but he was moving in reverse!" as one guy tried against me. Had he not been recorded telling the truth an hour earlier, the case would have been a "word versus word" case and it would have been thrown out, and I would have lost $3000 in repair bills.
A black box wouldn't be perfect, but it could protect against many types of lies that cause people to wrongfully lose money today.
But a black box is not a wiretap, which is why I don't believe that this argument against abuse holds here. The box isn't recording any private information. A wiretap on a phone records information that would not be able to obtained by a normal person. However, anyone standing on the sidewalk looking at the car has a good approximation of what is being recorded by the black box, so the box is just recording publicly available knowledge.
For most people, that would be a lot of accidents, but I drove 52 miles to work for years.
I've never been ticketed for any violation in 12 years of driving. One accident was caused by a hit-and-run, DUI, uninsured driver. Another was caused by an 85-year-old woman who had vision difficulties. In all six cases, I was at a dead stop.
You can draw whatever conclusions you like, but it's not possible to avoid being hit from behind while stopped.
The issue most people have with warrantless wiretaps and searches is not an issue of whether one has anything to hide. Instead, they do not trust the police to be truthful and respectful in enforcing the law, and are concerned about police abuse. It's important to recognize that the real problem is the potential for police corruption, not the wiretapping itself, which would be fine if we were assured that every police officer was honest.
I support making tampering with the boxes illegal because I trust the police to be more honest than other drivers. Your experiences may have been different, but I sincerely believe that accidents bring out the absolute worst behavior in people and the way that some people act after an accident is undoubtedly different than the way they would normally present themselves in any other circumstance. I want the law to prohibit tampering so that I can conclusively prove that the other driver is lying the next time someone hits me.
The issue comes down to who you trust more: the police, or the other driver. If you trust the other driver, then you should oppose the tampering prohibition. However, the next time someone hits me, I'll trust the police over the other driver any day.
Of course, it's possible that any system could fail and record inaccurate information. But I'm willing to tolerate a low failure rate in exchange for greater honesty and integrity when accidents occur.
Everyone here seems to be of the opinion that (s)he has some sort of right to privacy when it comes to breaking the law. Sorry, but the law is the law. If you don't like the speed limit, then vote for someone who will raise it - but if you drive over the speed limit, you should be ticketed. If you're walking alongside a cliff, you stay far away from the edge to make sure you don't die. If the law states that driving 1mph over the speed limit is illegal, then perhaps you might try driving 5mph below the limit to make sure that you won't violate the law. What a concept!
Furthermore, those who have ever been in an accident, will know it's a nightmare. I've been involved in six accidents, each time where someone hit me from behind and I was never at fault. One time, someone attempted to say that I hadn't been using my turn signal, and another time, someone attempted to convince the cops that I was in reverse when the accident occurred. My experience is that most people, when faced with an accident situation, have no integrity and will lie through their teeth to escape any responsibility for their actions.
I will gladly submit to any sort of monitoring, even if it includes every single input I place into the car. Such a "privacy violation" and even the risk of incorrect recording is well-worth the protection I would have against people who take no personal responsibility for their actions when an accident occurs.