Also, I often find myself (an American) debating people who believe that homosexuality is a choice. Alan Turing is a great counterexample. Why would you "choose" to be gay if it meant this kind of punishment and drove you to take your life? And it's not like he was illogical, he's one of the greatest recent logicians.
While I do love this as it gives me another argument against people who blindly thrash through life with no regard what so ever for logic, fact and common sense, I must say I disagree with you somewhat.
Why celebrate "gay culture and heritage"? You seem like you respect Alan Turing, ergo I assume you pride yourself in logic thinking and sense. Would you argue that from a scientific, logic point of view, homosexuality is not a flaw? I mean, if ever I saw a trait that evolution would suppress, this would be it.
Yes, gays have been mistreated and ridiculed, beat and spat on. Still though, is the road to acceptance paved with pink man-strings, over-the-top genderized personalities, celebrations of ones (logically speaking) flawed dna and throwing the fact that you are different in everyone's faces? Really?
Strictly logically speaking, celebrating "gay culture and heritage" would be like me celebrating "diabetic culture and heritage". It's bullshit. It doesn't work that way. How about we all just get with the times, face the facts and realize that gay people are different and that it does. not. matter. (apart from those who for some reason think everyone needs to know where they like to stick their genitalia).
It's like racism in a way. If a black guy calls me whitey, pasty, whatever.. what happens? I don't give a shit, because my skin is indeed roughly the color of light dough (at least compared to the black guy). Now reverse the situation, see what happens if I refer to a black guy as black. It doesn't matter how politically correct I try to be, it doesn't matter that in a room full of white people his skin color is his most easily identifiable visible feature. He might be a cool guy, but most likely I will get a fist to the face, repeatedly. Likewise, if a gay guy calls me straight, even if he means it as a demeaning thing to say, he completely gets off the hook because noone cares. Refer to a raging homosexual as.. well.. gay, and you at the very least get a good screaming too.
*sigh* Can't we design some virus or some such that forces the right half of the brain to be the dominant one already?
I fail to see where it says "diabetes cured" or "breakthrough in diabetes management", like I can't help feeling it should as they did human trials successfully 3 years ago.
Finally, someone brings up the algae! The little buggers contain a lot of oil, can grow in virtually any environment, they live short lives and are hugely numerous and thus adapt quickly to become even more prolific. Squeeze the juice (or rather, oil) out of them, add a few chemicals to the mix, let it simmer and voila! Biodiesel!
This is where I say "yeah, I exaggerated how easy it is" but really, that is pretty much all there is. Why aren't companies buying huge swaths of barren, otherwise useless land to grow algae already?
Happiness is complicated, and people who try to simplify it and call it a choice really annoy me.
And people who make up excuses instead of putting in some hard work really annoy me. Of course brain chemistry isn't the same for everyone. Of course some people are more prone to be "careless (i.e. dumb) and happy" while others tend to feel adversity more heavily. And who is dumb enough to think one can be happy all the time? Clue: it's called Ecstasy and it usually doesn't end well. Being content is a much more realistic goal. Be happy when something good actually happens, be sad when something really sad happens, and train yourself to be emotionally "neutral" and content the rest of the time.
If you don't have a job and get turned down a couple of times, one group of people will just shrug it off and try again while the other group sit and think about how miserable their existence is, causing them to get even more down, causing them to wallow even more in their own misery, getting them even further down, ad infinitum.
Of course, what most people do is first go through the "Damnit! This is crap, why can't I get a decent job? How will I pay my bills?"-response, then move on to "Well.. there was probably someone more qualified than me. If I keep trying I will get a job, and after all, I have to get a job don't I?". Some people though, don't know how to cope. They follow the initial train of thought with "I'll not have any food. Can't pay for my apartment. My friends won't like hanging out with a fucking bum like me. I'm so useless." digging themselves deeper and deeper into the ditch.
Yeah, that was a rather simplified example but the facts remain. If you let failures get you down to the point of not trying, you will never succeed. If you let those pesky negative thoughts prevail, they will feed more negative thoughts until there is nothing left but negativity.
Lastly, please don't claim, like so many do, that you can't control your mind because "it's who you are" or some crud like that! You can control what you say, can you not? Yeah, thought so. If you invest a little in self-awareness you can fairly easily decide that when a negative train of thought starts, you force your focus (and thus your inner dialog) towards something else. Be it pron, calling a friend (and subduing the thoughts that (s)he doesn't want to talk to you), or focusing on your god damned finger nails.. Doesn't matter. Nip it by the bud every time and it won't have time to seed new crap. Do this enough times, and you have successfully completed cognitive-behavioural therapy.
Turn it around.. every 5 minutes, pull up that lovely goatse.cx picture in your mind and dwell on it for a few minutes. Imagine it in all it's *cough* glorious anatomical incorrectness. Do this for a week, and I promise you, that picture will be popping into your skull uninvited a lot more often than you would like.
No, that just doesn't cut it. I know we're past the time where people had to write optimized asm to get the absolute most out of their computers but still..
Are you claiming that programmers are so lazy they.. what? Pad Opera's memory so each page takes 32-33MB? I see no way in hell holding a 300KB document in memory takes 33MB, no matter how damn lazy the devs are. It's just mind boggeling.
Actually, my reply was far too long. You made my entire point in one sentence, heh.
Though I feel the need to point out that saying to a depressed person "it's a choice one makes" probably has as much impact as saying the very same thing you said to an overweight person. It still leaves them in the dark about what, exactly, they should do. It's like Satanicolas says below "cognitive-behavioural therapy". There are no breaks, no cures, no instant-sixpack diets. There is realization and willpower (and brains) to push things in the right direction and adapt. Scarily, the person you pretend to be is the person you become if you put in some effort.
Oh, and a bit of a newsflash to the guy posting the links to his My Chemical Romance/Breaking Benjamin inspired DeviantArt texts: Everyone feels like they don't fit in. Everyone has monday mornings. Everyone has regrets. Get your head out of your ass and realize that you are (probably) like that 300 pound guy complaining that his weight is somehow genetic while chugging down his 5th full MacDonald's menu.
What is up with all this pressure on being happy anyways? I don't get it.. Is there something wrong with you if you don't have something to make you laugh with glee or feel that warm, fuzzy "I am loved"-feeling every day?"
I've been down. I've experienced alcoholism and violence up close. My school years are not even worth mentioning, and dreading both going to school and coming home generally isn't considered healthy for a kid/teen. Still, I refuse to say I have been depressed. Did I need a week or two worth of Sobril once because a lot of both old and new shit hit the fan at once? Yes. Am I a whiny bitch who knows I have nothing to be depressed about, or so dumb I just let the voices in my head control me? No
See, that's the whole trick. The brain is mallable. If I so chose, I could go into a self-inflicted depression in a few weeks. If I wanted, I could become an outwardly angry, hostile person. It's all about beeing intelligent enough to realize you are in control of which thoughts you allow your brain to cultivate. If you give into that naggy little voice that warns you not to do something or tells you something is wrong (like jealousy), it will soon become a Godzilla-size monster trampling around in your head. I've had the whole experience with "voices" (not divine, spiritual or insane ones, just thoughts) constantly telling me I suck. I shouldn't even try, that unanswered sms will remain unanswered because I don't matter one bit to anyone, I should just end it because.. hell.. how many people would I hurt and how long until even they got over it? Fuck that. I stopped allowing myself to listen do that stuff. I quite literally forced those voices to the back of my head, beat them into submission, and steered my internal, mental dialog (or is it monolog..?) towards more happy (or at least technical, cool) things.
Which is kind of sad, really.. Badly done scripting and even worse plug-ins aside, a website shouldn't really ever need to be bigger than 1MB with most pages easily optimized to fit into 200KB. That'd mean you could cram 1750 websites into 350MB of memory!
Yes, I know this is not how it works. Execution of the program itself also takes memory, etc. etc. Seems kind of strange though that my Opera is currently using 233MB to display 7 tabs that all-in-all clock in at no more than 5MB in actual size. Something's amiss here..
Off topic I know, but I have to ask. How does Opera make it into the same class of memory-muchers as Firefox? I've tested it a bit (nothing serious, just mucking about) and the worst I've seen as of yet was Firefox (3.5) using 1,2GB of memory while Opera (9.64), running 3 times as many tabs, claimed ~350MB.
Saying "Firefox and Opera" when talking about memory usage is like saying "Hummers and Matchbox cars" in terms of fuel efficiency.
Heh, you can't calculate insulin needs by bodyweight. That would be like.. I don't know.. calculating a car's fuel consumption by it's weight. With diabetes, you have to take into consideration
the amount of carbohydrates you eat
the glycemic index of your food and..
how proteins, fat and fiber affect your digestion
your emotional state
whether your body is working fighting off germs or some such
your activity level the past 48 hours (resistance training affects metabolism that long) as well as the coming few hours
I take 26 units of Lilly Humulin every night, and whatever amount of Lilly Humalog seems to make sense for what I am about to eat, a few minutes before each meal.
If those people don't experience severe complications within 10 years they have diabetes type 2, not type 1. Many T2's just need a regular chunk of insulin and the body does the fine tuning itself. If you try that with a T1 diabetic, you're either going to end up with death by hypoglycemia, or HbA1c values that are even worse than mine! =P
I'll start at the bottom and say of course, as an ongoing "top up" type treatment islet cell transplants sounds absolutely fantastic.
If what you say about those people is true, I am hard pressed to believe they actually have fully fledged diabetes (rather, a gradual one where they take insulin and the body does the fine tuning or something). I have fairly decent control of my blood glucose, but the only time of my life where I achieved even remotely close to consistent, normal and healthy levels was when I tried a ketose diet for a month or so eating only fat and protein, nearly removing any need for insulin at all. Yes, I could live that way for the rest of my life and avoid horrible complications at the cost of far less horrible ones and an inhuman regimen of eating. Or.. here's a thought! Someone with the financial means to do so, get their heads out of their asses and cure the disease that kills more people than breast cancer and AIDS combined! How often do you hear "cancer" in the main media? How often do you even hear diabetes mentioned at all..?
Note that the text hasn't been updated since ~2005 and their initial human trial was, according to them, a success. To a diabetic, a staggering, mindblowing success! Apparently, the islets were injected subcutaneously whereupon they went on to regulate the test subjects blood glucose levels for up to 20 months, without long term immunosuppression! Why am I not receiving this treatment right now? Can I sue the Norwegian government for attempted murder? =(
Yes, yes, availability of spare parts etc. Screw that. Abolish religion's hold on law and politics and enforce organ harvesting from anyone declared dead possessing spare parts of value to someone still living.
Or! Go through a very, very uncomfortable <5 years of treatment near-eliminating all the complications like blindness, kidney failure, stroke, heart disease, neuropathy (feeling like your legs are on fire, sometimes even after the amputation), giving you an indescribable increase in life quality as well as extending your now-bettered life by 10-20 years, no longer having your loved ones worried sick because you might keel over and die any time because your body decides to produce some insulin for a few days or your insulin resistance changes...
Fix 1: we don't yet know reliable and safe ways to transplant genes using viruses.
Well, except for the test subjects that had a genetic disorder which caused cells in their retinas to have such reduced light sensitivity as to render them blind. Several times has conditions such as this been treated using gene replacement treatment with levels of success ranging from being able to discern motion to reading, all within the first few weeks of the treatment. I don't remember the original article, so I'm just going to link to a random one that seems to talk about the same general thing: Gene therapy restores vision in nearly blind patients
Fix 2: way worse than the disease for most of people.
A much more sane variant of Fix 2 is transplantation of islet cells, grown from patient's own stem cells. I'm sure one day it'll be there.
Quite an arrogant thing for you to say (assuming that you, for the sake of validity of your argument, would have told us if you actually have diabetes). I would accept, without a single moments hesitation, having my immune system shut down, having bone marrow and (later) a new pancreas transplanted and living in a bubble for a couple of years. It boils down to this: no treatment, 60 years of drawing blood and injecting insulin several times a day and still you die from complications (assuming you don't get cancer or get hit by a car or something). Or! Go through a very, very uncomfortable
Ok, I might be a bit overly dramatic there. If I go on a no-carb diet and measure my blood glucose 5 times a day I might avoid any complications until I reach 70, at which point I will likely have loads of other shit to worry about. Still, there isn't even a questing of whether I'd do it or not but rather "Would it work?" and if so "How/where do I get it done? Can you start tomorrow? Later today?".
Read up. If transplanting islet cells worked, transplanting whole pancreases would work as well. Aside from the problems associated with other organ transplants (finding a donor the body won't immediately reject), there is the slight problem that a diabetics body will attack any insulin producing cells no matter who's stem cells they are grown from. Giving a type 1 diabetic an organ/islet transplant is like refilling a blown tire. Until you patch up the tire (gene replacement) or get a new one (bone marrow transplant), you will achieve nothing by refilling it past perhaps getting out of the gas station parking lot.
I also seem to remember an article about a female professor at a British university who cured rats who's pancreas had been removed. I can't for the life of me find the article, but the process as described consisted of treating the rats with one common drug that kills white blood cells and another drug that had a less-known side effect of somehow making the auto-immune system not produce the beta-cell attacking basta.. *cough* cells.
This research was done to find a way to prepare a patient for transplant and stop the auto-immune system from immediately destroying the new pancreas. To her great surprise, it seems the spleen produced or released stem cells of some sort that started producing insulin. The rats only needed to stop producing the hostile white blood cells after which they fixed the missing beta-cells themselves.
In light of this, I want that god damned bone marrow transplant, in effect getting someone else's auto-immune system. Has this been tried on diabetics? Has any positive changes been observed, f.ex. in a diabetic patient treated for blood cancer?
As a Type 1 diabetic myself it really makes my day when something new and cool like this pops up on my screen. I vaguely remember some doctor-or-some-such saying a few years back that diabetes is a disease that should have been cured (or at least fixable) 30 years ago. If not for the fact that medical companies have an income from insulin, needles, and other paraphernalia as stable as WoW subscriptions and probably a goodly bit bigger, it probably would have. Though I am pleased to see there have been actual, tangible improvements made in the few years I've lived with this damned malfunction, it scares and annoys the hell out of me that all the big money goes into making a disease/malfunction that kills more people than either cancer or AIDS a bit more manageable instead of fucking fixing it.
Fix 1 (don't know the current status of gene replacement therapy, but seems doable):
Why can't they just get the DNA of some thousand diabetes type 1 patients and healthy people on record, analyze it for the bits that stick out in diabetics, and use a virus to replace the defect bits? Isn't this the general idea behind gene replacement therapy? Follow up with auto-immune drugs used for transplant patients so we get rid of all the T-cells made for killing insulin producing cells, and transplant/grow a pancreas. I don't know.. it seems so god damned simple, yet IAJARG (I Am Just Another Random Geek) so I'm probably wrong.
Fix 2 (bit of a hazzle, but uses everyday techniques that any semi-large hospitals should have expertise on):
What about this? Transplanted organs are rejected by the auto-immune system. The little bastards are produced in the bone marrow (right?). This would mean that if my entire auto-immune system is wiped clean (with drugs every hospital has) and my bone marrow is replaced with donated marrow from a healthy person, I would in effect have that persons auto-immune system. As far as I can see, the new bone marrow isn't going to reject itself. It might reject the entire body it has been transplanted into but blood cancer is one of the least fatal cancers these days, right? Bone marrow transplant can't be that dangerous..? Again, transplant a pancreas (preferably from the same donor) or grow a new one. A couple of years of vaccinations and being sick and on antibiotics 24/7 later.. Voila, defective auto immune system is out, new one is up and running, new pancreas is in and the damned immune system doesn't attack it!
Could someone smarter than me please inform me why a disease, seemingly so simple to fix, remains uncured to this day with no big breakthroughs on the up-and-coming? Everyone gets their dose of daily cancer/AIDS/COPD/anti-drug propaganda. Everyone gets a visit now and then from someone collecting money for cancer research projects. At the same time, most people I talk to think diabetes means I have to take one shot a day (or a few pills) and the reply to how serious a condition it actually is usually boils down to "You can die from diabetes..? *disbelief*", "You sure you aren't making that up?" or "LOL, why haven't I ever heard of anyone dying of it then?".
As I tried pointing out above, I don't want one class to die instantly at the sight of another. It would be nice though, to have real, clear disadvantages against certain classes and the corresponding advantages against others. Kinda like when a warlock meets a rogue. All things being equal, the warlock will die. Horribly. Shamefully. As far as I have experienced, seen and heard, this is not the case throughout WoW's classes. Mostly, Blizzard are very good in their public mission to make every class equal and balanced, and straight down bland. Well, except that Ãne class that always manages to sneak past the balancing spreadsheets (currently: paladin, previously: dk, one expansion ago: warlock)
I couldn't agree more, except that if I got all my dots on a rogue, I assume he'd be dead before long if he didn't have CoS. Instead of removing CoS, which would lessen class distinction even further, give Demonic Circle: Teleport the ability to break all movement imparing effects! I've been playing very, very casually for a couple of years and I don't even know what, spesifically, "snare effects" are.
Thanks for the long reply! You make a few good points but you fail rather vigorously towards the end. I am not only talking about 1v1. In fact (as stated in a post I wrote further down) I am primarily talking about 3v3 or more. Of course 1v1 isn't any more fun in a R/P/S(L/Spock) system than being a lock meeting a hostile rogue. Also, I'm not saying one class should be so much more powerful than another that the other has no chance to survive, only that there should be some character difference.
ALL the healers have a unique healing style, with no real overlapping in spells. All the DPS (and there are not only ranged dps for the record) have unique playstyles, spells, and abilities. Most of the time most of the focus revolves around doing dps, but all classes have their niche abilities that are usefull in certain situations. And no, tanks do not do as much dps as classes specced for doing dps.
Wow.. seriously? Paladins and Priests have different spells? Now, I'm not 100% sure of the exact names and effects but I'm willing to bet that they aren't any more different as healers than a destro-lock and a mage are as ranged dps'ers. Yes, the spells that locks and mages can cast have different names. Still though.. it's a cast bar, an animation that streaks toward the enemy, and heavy damage. Sure, locks have immolate, incinerate and conflag and mages have their own somewhat different rotation but you can't really argue that the play is very different.
Lastly, tanks don't do at least somewhat comparable damage to dps classes? What world are you livi..*err* gaming in? Prot-Warriors do 3000-4500 dps, my warlock (using optimal rotation) in hateful gladiator's gear only reaches that level when I can massively abuse SoC. Average is roughly 1800-2000. Yes, those numbers are with my pvp gear/build but still. I'd have to do double or tripple my dps to really outdo the tank! The tank's role is to tank not to dps! Fair setup would be: tank tanking damage like the Juggernaut but hardly doing damage, while dps'ers (who die if the boss looks at us) do a ton of dps. If a god damned warrior can dps on par with clothies, then I should very damn well be able to tank Naxx!
I'm not saying any game should adhere strictly to anything like R/P/S. What I do wish for though, is for some controlled unbalancing. I could live with having very little chance of beating a rogue if I had a similar advantage over someone else. Every class should have enough damage and survivability to quest and survive, but dps classes should top the dps charts, tanks should top the threat charts and healers the healing charts. Tanks dpsing like crazy makes as much sense as a rogue healing others or a mage tanking.
Imagine having a game with 5 classes, each very strong against 2 other classes and similarly weak against the 2 other. Yes, in 1v1 PvP that would be complete trash but 3v3, 4v4 or 5v5 would without a doubt be fairly interesting.
Add to that the ability to have 2 skill threes for each class so you could build a character that was a little Rock and a little Scissor, making it less weak against Paper and Spock than Rock alone, but at the same time making it somewhat weaker against Scissors and Lizard. Get a three man team going consisting of a Spock, a Lizard and a Scissor and have a strategic teamskill-fest in battlegrounds!
A large amount of WoW's appeal is that you have a pile of interesting abilities. Your class behaves fundamentally differently to every other class in the game, and the talents you pick make it behave even more differently.
Woah... One must ask, have you ever played WoW? Ever? You used to have a pile of interesting abilities. Different weapons had different effects (mace-stun, etc.), and every class was at a distinct disadvantage against certain other classes (or at least they tried).
Now, you are either a pet-class (demo-lock, bm hunter), a healer (holy pala/priest, resto druid, resto shaman), ranged dps (mage, destro-lock, hunter, elemental shaman) or tank (dk, warrior, prot/ret-pala, feral druid). Most of the tanks can also dps on a level with all but the very best geared dps classes.
Rogues have sap+stuns, mages have polymorph and blast wave/ice-stuff, warlocks have fear and seduction, dk's have chains of ice and deathgrip, warriors have hamstring, hunters have freezing trap, priests have shackle undead and mind control, druids have root, palas have repentance, the list goes on but they are all essentially the same damn skill.
Arguing that all WoW classes present an unique playing experience is like arguing that 10 different computers running the same OS present unique experiences because one has an AMD cpu, another has Intel, one has Crucial ram, another has Kingston, etc. The names and details vary but the experience is pretty much exactly the same.
A very simplified example that doesn't take into account healers, hybrids or different builds but it shows the general idea: Mage > Warrior > Rogue > Mage
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Also, I often find myself (an American) debating people who believe that homosexuality is a choice. Alan Turing is a great counterexample. Why would you "choose" to be gay if it meant this kind of punishment and drove you to take your life? And it's not like he was illogical, he's one of the greatest recent logicians.
While I do love this as it gives me another argument against people who blindly thrash through life with no regard what so ever for logic, fact and common sense, I must say I disagree with you somewhat.
Why celebrate "gay culture and heritage"? You seem like you respect Alan Turing, ergo I assume you pride yourself in logic thinking and sense. Would you argue that from a scientific, logic point of view, homosexuality is not a flaw? I mean, if ever I saw a trait that evolution would suppress, this would be it.
Yes, gays have been mistreated and ridiculed, beat and spat on. Still though, is the road to acceptance paved with pink man-strings, over-the-top genderized personalities, celebrations of ones (logically speaking) flawed dna and throwing the fact that you are different in everyone's faces? Really?
Strictly logically speaking, celebrating "gay culture and heritage" would be like me celebrating "diabetic culture and heritage". It's bullshit. It doesn't work that way. How about we all just get with the times, face the facts and realize that gay people are different and that it does. not. matter. (apart from those who for some reason think everyone needs to know where they like to stick their genitalia).
It's like racism in a way. If a black guy calls me whitey, pasty, whatever.. what happens? I don't give a shit, because my skin is indeed roughly the color of light dough (at least compared to the black guy). Now reverse the situation, see what happens if I refer to a black guy as black. It doesn't matter how politically correct I try to be, it doesn't matter that in a room full of white people his skin color is his most easily identifiable visible feature. He might be a cool guy, but most likely I will get a fist to the face, repeatedly. Likewise, if a gay guy calls me straight, even if he means it as a demeaning thing to say, he completely gets off the hook because noone cares. Refer to a raging homosexual as.. well.. gay, and you at the very least get a good screaming too.
*sigh* Can't we design some virus or some such that forces the right half of the brain to be the dominant one already?
Well I'll be.. That's amazing! *reads link*
Wait.. Patent, award, internal politics, grant, patent..
I fail to see where it says "diabetes cured" or "breakthrough in diabetes management", like I can't help feeling it should as they did human trials successfully 3 years ago.
Finally, someone brings up the algae! The little buggers contain a lot of oil, can grow in virtually any environment, they live short lives and are hugely numerous and thus adapt quickly to become even more prolific. Squeeze the juice (or rather, oil) out of them, add a few chemicals to the mix, let it simmer and voila! Biodiesel!
This is where I say "yeah, I exaggerated how easy it is" but really, that is pretty much all there is. Why aren't companies buying huge swaths of barren, otherwise useless land to grow algae already?
Happiness is complicated, and people who try to simplify it and call it a choice really annoy me.
And people who make up excuses instead of putting in some hard work really annoy me. Of course brain chemistry isn't the same for everyone. Of course some people are more prone to be "careless (i.e. dumb) and happy" while others tend to feel adversity more heavily. And who is dumb enough to think one can be happy all the time? Clue: it's called Ecstasy and it usually doesn't end well. Being content is a much more realistic goal. Be happy when something good actually happens, be sad when something really sad happens, and train yourself to be emotionally "neutral" and content the rest of the time.
If you don't have a job and get turned down a couple of times, one group of people will just shrug it off and try again while the other group sit and think about how miserable their existence is, causing them to get even more down, causing them to wallow even more in their own misery, getting them even further down, ad infinitum.
Of course, what most people do is first go through the "Damnit! This is crap, why can't I get a decent job? How will I pay my bills?"-response, then move on to "Well.. there was probably someone more qualified than me. If I keep trying I will get a job, and after all, I have to get a job don't I?". Some people though, don't know how to cope. They follow the initial train of thought with "I'll not have any food. Can't pay for my apartment. My friends won't like hanging out with a fucking bum like me. I'm so useless." digging themselves deeper and deeper into the ditch.
Yeah, that was a rather simplified example but the facts remain. If you let failures get you down to the point of not trying, you will never succeed. If you let those pesky negative thoughts prevail, they will feed more negative thoughts until there is nothing left but negativity.
Lastly, please don't claim, like so many do, that you can't control your mind because "it's who you are" or some crud like that! You can control what you say, can you not? Yeah, thought so. If you invest a little in self-awareness you can fairly easily decide that when a negative train of thought starts, you force your focus (and thus your inner dialog) towards something else. Be it pron, calling a friend (and subduing the thoughts that (s)he doesn't want to talk to you), or focusing on your god damned finger nails.. Doesn't matter. Nip it by the bud every time and it won't have time to seed new crap. Do this enough times, and you have successfully completed cognitive-behavioural therapy.
Turn it around.. every 5 minutes, pull up that lovely goatse.cx picture in your mind and dwell on it for a few minutes. Imagine it in all it's *cough* glorious anatomical incorrectness. Do this for a week, and I promise you, that picture will be popping into your skull uninvited a lot more often than you would like.
No, that just doesn't cut it. I know we're past the time where people had to write optimized asm to get the absolute most out of their computers but still..
Are you claiming that programmers are so lazy they.. what? Pad Opera's memory so each page takes 32-33MB? I see no way in hell holding a 300KB document in memory takes 33MB, no matter how damn lazy the devs are. It's just mind boggeling.
Actually, my reply was far too long. You made my entire point in one sentence, heh.
Though I feel the need to point out that saying to a depressed person "it's a choice one makes" probably has as much impact as saying the very same thing you said to an overweight person. It still leaves them in the dark about what, exactly, they should do. It's like Satanicolas says below "cognitive-behavioural therapy". There are no breaks, no cures, no instant-sixpack diets. There is realization and willpower (and brains) to push things in the right direction and adapt. Scarily, the person you pretend to be is the person you become if you put in some effort.
Oh, and a bit of a newsflash to the guy posting the links to his My Chemical Romance/Breaking Benjamin inspired DeviantArt texts: Everyone feels like they don't fit in. Everyone has monday mornings. Everyone has regrets. Get your head out of your ass and realize that you are (probably) like that 300 pound guy complaining that his weight is somehow genetic while chugging down his 5th full MacDonald's menu.
What is up with all this pressure on being happy anyways? I don't get it.. Is there something wrong with you if you don't have something to make you laugh with glee or feel that warm, fuzzy "I am loved"-feeling every day?"
I've been down. I've experienced alcoholism and violence up close. My school years are not even worth mentioning, and dreading both going to school and coming home generally isn't considered healthy for a kid/teen. Still, I refuse to say I have been depressed. Did I need a week or two worth of Sobril once because a lot of both old and new shit hit the fan at once? Yes. Am I a whiny bitch who knows I have nothing to be depressed about, or so dumb I just let the voices in my head control me? No
See, that's the whole trick. The brain is mallable. If I so chose, I could go into a self-inflicted depression in a few weeks. If I wanted, I could become an outwardly angry, hostile person. It's all about beeing intelligent enough to realize you are in control of which thoughts you allow your brain to cultivate. If you give into that naggy little voice that warns you not to do something or tells you something is wrong (like jealousy), it will soon become a Godzilla-size monster trampling around in your head. I've had the whole experience with "voices" (not divine, spiritual or insane ones, just thoughts) constantly telling me I suck. I shouldn't even try, that unanswered sms will remain unanswered because I don't matter one bit to anyone, I should just end it because.. hell.. how many people would I hurt and how long until even they got over it? Fuck that. I stopped allowing myself to listen do that stuff. I quite literally forced those voices to the back of my head, beat them into submission, and steered my internal, mental dialog (or is it monolog..?) towards more happy (or at least technical, cool) things.
Hard work, but the concept is easy as pie.
However, there are plenty of real world FACTS that can be used in a study like this that aren't open to alternative views of reality
Tell that to an ID-supporter/creationist/general religious person! Facts, HAH!
Which is kind of sad, really.. Badly done scripting and even worse plug-ins aside, a website shouldn't really ever need to be bigger than 1MB with most pages easily optimized to fit into 200KB. That'd mean you could cram 1750 websites into 350MB of memory!
Yes, I know this is not how it works. Execution of the program itself also takes memory, etc. etc. Seems kind of strange though that my Opera is currently using 233MB to display 7 tabs that all-in-all clock in at no more than 5MB in actual size. Something's amiss here..
Off topic I know, but I have to ask. How does Opera make it into the same class of memory-muchers as Firefox? I've tested it a bit (nothing serious, just mucking about) and the worst I've seen as of yet was Firefox (3.5) using 1,2GB of memory while Opera (9.64), running 3 times as many tabs, claimed ~350MB.
Saying "Firefox and Opera" when talking about memory usage is like saying "Hummers and Matchbox cars" in terms of fuel efficiency.
I'm not sure I understand.. by
American style kitchen
..do you mean MacDonald's? Because I'm pretty sure most Europeans don't exactly consider MacDonald's foreign.
Heh, you can't calculate insulin needs by bodyweight. That would be like.. I don't know.. calculating a car's fuel consumption by it's weight. With diabetes, you have to take into consideration
I take 26 units of Lilly Humulin every night, and whatever amount of Lilly Humalog seems to make sense for what I am about to eat, a few minutes before each meal.
If those people don't experience severe complications within 10 years they have diabetes type 2, not type 1. Many T2's just need a regular chunk of insulin and the body does the fine tuning itself. If you try that with a T1 diabetic, you're either going to end up with death by hypoglycemia, or HbA1c values that are even worse than mine! =P
I'll start at the bottom and say of course, as an ongoing "top up" type treatment islet cell transplants sounds absolutely fantastic.
If what you say about those people is true, I am hard pressed to believe they actually have fully fledged diabetes (rather, a gradual one where they take insulin and the body does the fine tuning or something). I have fairly decent control of my blood glucose, but the only time of my life where I achieved even remotely close to consistent, normal and healthy levels was when I tried a ketose diet for a month or so eating only fat and protein, nearly removing any need for insulin at all. Yes, I could live that way for the rest of my life and avoid horrible complications at the cost of far less horrible ones and an inhuman regimen of eating. Or.. here's a thought! Someone with the financial means to do so, get their heads out of their asses and cure the disease that kills more people than breast cancer and AIDS combined! How often do you hear "cancer" in the main media? How often do you even hear diabetes mentioned at all..?
Note that the text hasn't been updated since ~2005 and their initial human trial was, according to them, a success. To a diabetic, a staggering, mindblowing success! Apparently, the islets were injected subcutaneously whereupon they went on to regulate the test subjects blood glucose levels for up to 20 months, without long term immunosuppression! Why am I not receiving this treatment right now? Can I sue the Norwegian government for attempted murder? =(
Yes, yes, availability of spare parts etc. Screw that. Abolish religion's hold on law and politics and enforce organ harvesting from anyone declared dead possessing spare parts of value to someone still living.
Damnit!
Or! Go through a very, very uncomfortable <5 years of treatment near-eliminating all the complications like blindness, kidney failure, stroke, heart disease, neuropathy (feeling like your legs are on fire, sometimes even after the amputation), giving you an indescribable increase in life quality as well as extending your now-bettered life by 10-20 years, no longer having your loved ones worried sick because you might keel over and die any time because your body decides to produce some insulin for a few days or your insulin resistance changes...
Fix 1: we don't yet know reliable and safe ways to transplant genes using viruses.
Well, except for the test subjects that had a genetic disorder which caused cells in their retinas to have such reduced light sensitivity as to render them blind. Several times has conditions such as this been treated using gene replacement treatment with levels of success ranging from being able to discern motion to reading, all within the first few weeks of the treatment. I don't remember the original article, so I'm just going to link to a random one that seems to talk about the same general thing: Gene therapy restores vision in nearly blind patients
Fix 2: way worse than the disease for most of people.
A much more sane variant of Fix 2 is transplantation of islet cells, grown from patient's own stem cells. I'm sure one day it'll be there.
Quite an arrogant thing for you to say (assuming that you, for the sake of validity of your argument, would have told us if you actually have diabetes). I would accept, without a single moments hesitation, having my immune system shut down, having bone marrow and (later) a new pancreas transplanted and living in a bubble for a couple of years. It boils down to this: no treatment, 60 years of drawing blood and injecting insulin several times a day and still you die from complications (assuming you don't get cancer or get hit by a car or something). Or! Go through a very, very uncomfortable
Ok, I might be a bit overly dramatic there. If I go on a no-carb diet and measure my blood glucose 5 times a day I might avoid any complications until I reach 70, at which point I will likely have loads of other shit to worry about. Still, there isn't even a questing of whether I'd do it or not but rather "Would it work?" and if so "How/where do I get it done? Can you start tomorrow? Later today?".
Read up. If transplanting islet cells worked, transplanting whole pancreases would work as well. Aside from the problems associated with other organ transplants (finding a donor the body won't immediately reject), there is the slight problem that a diabetics body will attack any insulin producing cells no matter who's stem cells they are grown from. Giving a type 1 diabetic an organ/islet transplant is like refilling a blown tire. Until you patch up the tire (gene replacement) or get a new one (bone marrow transplant), you will achieve nothing by refilling it past perhaps getting out of the gas station parking lot.
I also seem to remember an article about a female professor at a British university who cured rats who's pancreas had been removed. I can't for the life of me find the article, but the process as described consisted of treating the rats with one common drug that kills white blood cells and another drug that had a less-known side effect of somehow making the auto-immune system not produce the beta-cell attacking basta.. *cough* cells.
This research was done to find a way to prepare a patient for transplant and stop the auto-immune system from immediately destroying the new pancreas. To her great surprise, it seems the spleen produced or released stem cells of some sort that started producing insulin. The rats only needed to stop producing the hostile white blood cells after which they fixed the missing beta-cells themselves.
In light of this, I want that god damned bone marrow transplant, in effect getting someone else's auto-immune system. Has this been tried on diabetics? Has any positive changes been observed, f.ex. in a diabetic patient treated for blood cancer?
As a Type 1 diabetic myself it really makes my day when something new and cool like this pops up on my screen. I vaguely remember some doctor-or-some-such saying a few years back that diabetes is a disease that should have been cured (or at least fixable) 30 years ago. If not for the fact that medical companies have an income from insulin, needles, and other paraphernalia as stable as WoW subscriptions and probably a goodly bit bigger, it probably would have. Though I am pleased to see there have been actual, tangible improvements made in the few years I've lived with this damned malfunction, it scares and annoys the hell out of me that all the big money goes into making a disease/malfunction that kills more people than either cancer or AIDS a bit more manageable instead of fucking fixing it.
Fix 1 (don't know the current status of gene replacement therapy, but seems doable):
Why can't they just get the DNA of some thousand diabetes type 1 patients and healthy people on record, analyze it for the bits that stick out in diabetics, and use a virus to replace the defect bits? Isn't this the general idea behind gene replacement therapy? Follow up with auto-immune drugs used for transplant patients so we get rid of all the T-cells made for killing insulin producing cells, and transplant/grow a pancreas. I don't know.. it seems so god damned simple, yet IAJARG (I Am Just Another Random Geek) so I'm probably wrong.
Fix 2 (bit of a hazzle, but uses everyday techniques that any semi-large hospitals should have expertise on):
What about this? Transplanted organs are rejected by the auto-immune system. The little bastards are produced in the bone marrow (right?). This would mean that if my entire auto-immune system is wiped clean (with drugs every hospital has) and my bone marrow is replaced with donated marrow from a healthy person, I would in effect have that persons auto-immune system. As far as I can see, the new bone marrow isn't going to reject itself. It might reject the entire body it has been transplanted into but blood cancer is one of the least fatal cancers these days, right? Bone marrow transplant can't be that dangerous..? Again, transplant a pancreas (preferably from the same donor) or grow a new one. A couple of years of vaccinations and being sick and on antibiotics 24/7 later.. Voila, defective auto immune system is out, new one is up and running, new pancreas is in and the damned immune system doesn't attack it!
Could someone smarter than me please inform me why a disease, seemingly so simple to fix, remains uncured to this day with no big breakthroughs on the up-and-coming? Everyone gets their dose of daily cancer/AIDS/COPD/anti-drug propaganda. Everyone gets a visit now and then from someone collecting money for cancer research projects. At the same time, most people I talk to think diabetes means I have to take one shot a day (or a few pills) and the reply to how serious a condition it actually is usually boils down to "You can die from diabetes..? *disbelief*", "You sure you aren't making that up?" or "LOL, why haven't I ever heard of anyone dying of it then?".
As I tried pointing out above, I don't want one class to die instantly at the sight of another. It would be nice though, to have real, clear disadvantages against certain classes and the corresponding advantages against others. Kinda like when a warlock meets a rogue. All things being equal, the warlock will die. Horribly. Shamefully. As far as I have experienced, seen and heard, this is not the case throughout WoW's classes. Mostly, Blizzard are very good in their public mission to make every class equal and balanced, and straight down bland. Well, except that Ãne class that always manages to sneak past the balancing spreadsheets (currently: paladin, previously: dk, one expansion ago: warlock)
I couldn't agree more, except that if I got all my dots on a rogue, I assume he'd be dead before long if he didn't have CoS. Instead of removing CoS, which would lessen class distinction even further, give Demonic Circle: Teleport the ability to break all movement imparing effects! I've been playing very, very casually for a couple of years and I don't even know what, spesifically, "snare effects" are.
Thanks for the long reply! You make a few good points but you fail rather vigorously towards the end. I am not only talking about 1v1. In fact (as stated in a post I wrote further down) I am primarily talking about 3v3 or more. Of course 1v1 isn't any more fun in a R/P/S(L/Spock) system than being a lock meeting a hostile rogue. Also, I'm not saying one class should be so much more powerful than another that the other has no chance to survive, only that there should be some character difference.
ALL the healers have a unique healing style, with no real overlapping in spells. All the DPS (and there are not only ranged dps for the record) have unique playstyles, spells, and abilities. Most of the time most of the focus revolves around doing dps, but all classes have their niche abilities that are usefull in certain situations. And no, tanks do not do as much dps as classes specced for doing dps.
Wow.. seriously? Paladins and Priests have different spells? Now, I'm not 100% sure of the exact names and effects but I'm willing to bet that they aren't any more different as healers than a destro-lock and a mage are as ranged dps'ers. Yes, the spells that locks and mages can cast have different names. Still though.. it's a cast bar, an animation that streaks toward the enemy, and heavy damage. Sure, locks have immolate, incinerate and conflag and mages have their own somewhat different rotation but you can't really argue that the play is very different.
Lastly, tanks don't do at least somewhat comparable damage to dps classes? What world are you livi..*err* gaming in? Prot-Warriors do 3000-4500 dps, my warlock (using optimal rotation) in hateful gladiator's gear only reaches that level when I can massively abuse SoC. Average is roughly 1800-2000. Yes, those numbers are with my pvp gear/build but still. I'd have to do double or tripple my dps to really outdo the tank ! The tank's role is to tank not to dps! Fair setup would be: tank tanking damage like the Juggernaut but hardly doing damage, while dps'ers (who die if the boss looks at us) do a ton of dps. If a god damned warrior can dps on par with clothies, then I should very damn well be able to tank Naxx!
I'm not saying any game should adhere strictly to anything like R/P/S. What I do wish for though, is for some controlled unbalancing. I could live with having very little chance of beating a rogue if I had a similar advantage over someone else. Every class should have enough damage and survivability to quest and survive, but dps classes should top the dps charts, tanks should top the threat charts and healers the healing charts. Tanks dpsing like crazy makes as much sense as a rogue healing others or a mage tanking.
See my previous comment about Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock
Imagine having a game with 5 classes, each very strong against 2 other classes and similarly weak against the 2 other. Yes, in 1v1 PvP that would be complete trash but 3v3, 4v4 or 5v5 would without a doubt be fairly interesting.
Add to that the ability to have 2 skill threes for each class so you could build a character that was a little Rock and a little Scissor, making it less weak against Paper and Spock than Rock alone, but at the same time making it somewhat weaker against Scissors and Lizard. Get a three man team going consisting of a Spock, a Lizard and a Scissor and have a strategic teamskill-fest in battlegrounds!
Or what about Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock? If that isn't pretty much the perfect basic balance of any PvP type game, I don't know what is.
A large amount of WoW's appeal is that you have a pile of interesting abilities. Your class behaves fundamentally differently to every other class in the game, and the talents you pick make it behave even more differently.
Woah... One must ask, have you ever played WoW? Ever? You used to have a pile of interesting abilities. Different weapons had different effects (mace-stun, etc.), and every class was at a distinct disadvantage against certain other classes (or at least they tried).
Now, you are either a pet-class (demo-lock, bm hunter), a healer (holy pala/priest, resto druid, resto shaman), ranged dps (mage, destro-lock, hunter, elemental shaman) or tank (dk, warrior, prot/ret-pala, feral druid). Most of the tanks can also dps on a level with all but the very best geared dps classes.
Rogues have sap+stuns, mages have polymorph and blast wave/ice-stuff, warlocks have fear and seduction, dk's have chains of ice and deathgrip, warriors have hamstring, hunters have freezing trap, priests have shackle undead and mind control, druids have root, palas have repentance, the list goes on but they are all essentially the same damn skill.
Arguing that all WoW classes present an unique playing experience is like arguing that 10 different computers running the same OS present unique experiences because one has an AMD cpu, another has Intel, one has Crucial ram, another has Kingston, etc. The names and details vary but the experience is pretty much exactly the same.
Stupid "less than" signs *mumble grumble*
A very simplified example that doesn't take into account healers, hybrids or different builds but it shows the general idea: Mage > Warrior > Rogue > Mage