Where you live in the Bay Area makes a huge difference.
I have a friend living off the Great Highway in Sunset, right on the beach, and his rent is around $4,000 a month for a three-bedroom shithole. But hey - it's on the beach.
My wife rented a studio in the mid 2000s for about $1200/month across the street from UCSF Parnassus.
I rented a room for about $500/month in Daly City.
>>About the only thing that needs changing about San Francisco (and California, in general) is to not have Prop 13 apply to non-residential commercial properties.
Indeed. Prop 13 is justified in protecting people living on fixed income from the ridiculous raises in property taxes California has gone through in the last couple decades, but there's absolutely no defense for it for commercial products, and it has created a very stilted regulatory regime. Companies will jump through hoops to avoid re-assessments of value, which applies pressures on the market in very unoptimal ways.
But the issue raised was if polygamy was responsible for terrorism, and I think the answer to that is no, since other areas have had polygamy without especially high levels of violence.
I'd humbly suggest that it is the crushing poverty (which also leads to not getting a wife) of 40% of the population that leads to terrorism, not how many vaginas the top 1% are collecting.
Yeah, they're comparing the rated capacity of solar versus nuclear, instead of looking at the operating capacity of the two sources.
Solar's capacity factor is less than 20%. Nuclear's capacity factor is around 70-90%, depending on how you do the math.
This article is almost entirely a smokescreen for the fact that Germany has been shutting down its nuclear capacity and replacing it with fossil fuels.
For this reason, Germany's per-capita CO2 output is almost twice as high as nuclear-friendly France.
>>This leads to horrible social problems (murder/rape/terrorism)
Correlation is not causation. Just because polygamy and terrorism are both common in the middle east does not mean they cause each other.
Counterexample: China has had polygamy for roughly 3000 years, and never turned to murder/rape/terrorism (or at least in significantly higher numbers than other countries).
>>In a country where polygamy is normal most of the men can't have a girlfriend/wife/kids.
Nope. You have to look at the math of it. In Islamic countries, only very rich men can support multiple wives (each one gets their own house + servants). So if the top 1% of the population takes 3 wives each, that doesn't make a significant difference for the remaining 99%.
4e is an adaption of the 3e Miniatures Battles rules, not of the 3e roleplaying system. It's no mistake that they went so minis heavy - Ian and others at WOTC loved miniature battles and wanted to push the system more in that direction.
Hmm, not my experience at all. High level 4e is somewhat complicated (I just got done playing three 12 hour epic level games at a Con this last weekend), but it's not nearly as complicated as 3e was.
4e is basically a dumbed down version of D&D, and D&D Next is reputed to be even further dumbed down.
And they wonder why people are abandoning them for Pathfinder...
The Olympic Rings have super special protection under the law. Not only are other people not able to use the Olympic Rings without permission, but you are not able to make ANY logo with five interlocking rings on it, even if they look nothing like the Olympic Logo.
One of our HOA board members at my parents' place works for the California DMV, and illegally looks up the license plates of people parked in our visitor parking spots.
Since my old car was given to me by my parents, I kept getting nasty letters from them, claiming that I was a resident illegally parking in visitor's spots.
I wrote back saying that I was sure that the DMV would be interested in finding out who it was that was illegally conducting these searches, and I never heard from them again.
Cutting sugar reduced the *hunger*. It's hardly insignificant.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
>>It's still fun. The problem is, you have to actually play the game rather than spend your time bitching about things that don't really matter.
*Gaming* is still fun.
Diablo 3 isn't, even when you can play it. It's actually... boring.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
>>The only thing that's really difficult to reproduce is level randomization, and it's only relatively difficult. There are many publicly available terrain generation algorithms, and from what I've played in the D3 beta, the levels aren't completely randomized, they're just a few calls to an RNG for each piece with special pieces placed randomly.
It's also important to note that the randomization of Diablo is really quite meaningless. I can't recall ever playing through a Baal run and going, "Wow, this one layout is totally boss!" You can hardcode a few cookie cutter recipes for building "random" maps and nobody would notice. Daggerfall had a much more memorable random dungeon generator.
Given how popular Diablo 3 is, it's only a matter of time before server emulators exist.
>>I have no clue about DDT, I'm just saying that this logic is deeply flawed.
It's akin to a scientist saying that it is safe to drink non-radioactive water from a nuclear power plant's cooling power, and putting his money where his mouth is by drinking it.
It's entirely safe for humans in the dosage levels used to control bed bugs and malaria, which require much lower dosages than the wholesale blanketing of farmlands we were doing before. While it is toxic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Effects_on_human_health) the levels required are really high. The LD50 (50% chance of dying) for me would be around 30 pounds of pure DDT. When cut into a paste (1%-5% DDT), you're looking at needing to eat 600 to 3000 pounds of DDT paste to have even a 50/50 chance of dying from it.
>Sugar IS indeed a poison, like alcohol...in fact, alcohol and sugar both get turned into FAT, which is killing us because we eat too damn much of it.
"Poison" usually means an acute toxicity, not just something that will make us high in fat. (And yes, I've watched that video before and recommended it to my personal trainer.) I cut sugar entirely out of my diet a year or two ago, as much as is practical (i.e. checking food labels and not eating anything with sugar in it). I haven't drunk soda in years (maybe a couple cokes in the last four or five years, total). Didn't matter. Still was gaining weight slightly. The nice thing about being off sugar was that I got a LOT less hungry during the day. But I was still eating a lot.
So a couple months ago I decided I'd simply start eating less, while maintaining a fairly high level of activity (I work out about 5 days a week, martial arts and the like). Lo and behold! I've lost 14 pounds. Haven't really been hungry. When I get hungry, I eat a little bit, and I tend to get full very quickly. Had one food dream, but that was about it.
Yeah, after living in a couple places that had bad grounds and only two-prong outlets, I made sure to buy a house that had at least three-prong outlets.
Then after I bought the house, I found out someone had replaced the grounding rod with a PVC pipe.../facepalm
Seriously. While we didn't have smartphones back in college, a friend of mine rigged up his alarm clock to a winch that would slowly lift up his mattress and dump him out of bed in the morning.
I imagine engineers have been doing shit like this all the way back to the Egyptian days. Those traps protecting the pharaohs' tombs were probably just freshman year hijinks.
Slashdot Mirror
Where you live in the Bay Area makes a huge difference.
I have a friend living off the Great Highway in Sunset, right on the beach, and his rent is around $4,000 a month for a three-bedroom shithole. But hey - it's on the beach.
My wife rented a studio in the mid 2000s for about $1200/month across the street from UCSF Parnassus.
I rented a room for about $500/month in Daly City.
>>About the only thing that needs changing about San Francisco (and California, in general) is to not have Prop 13 apply to non-residential commercial properties.
Indeed. Prop 13 is justified in protecting people living on fixed income from the ridiculous raises in property taxes California has gone through in the last couple decades, but there's absolutely no defense for it for commercial products, and it has created a very stilted regulatory regime. Companies will jump through hoops to avoid re-assessments of value, which applies pressures on the market in very unoptimal ways.
Eh, different strokes for different folks. I have trouble enjoying linear games. Uncharted drove me bonkers.
Skyrim is much more my cup of tea.
Sure, sure.
But the issue raised was if polygamy was responsible for terrorism, and I think the answer to that is no, since other areas have had polygamy without especially high levels of violence.
http://strangerinthisdunya.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/poverty-in-saudi-arabia/
I've debated something along the same lines for at least a decade now.
It's nice to see someone going forward with it.
Even if direct democracy is a danger, I don't see why each representative shouldn't have his own forum set up for his constituents.
I'd humbly suggest that it is the crushing poverty (which also leads to not getting a wife) of 40% of the population that leads to terrorism, not how many vaginas the top 1% are collecting.
Yeah, they're comparing the rated capacity of solar versus nuclear, instead of looking at the operating capacity of the two sources.
Solar's capacity factor is less than 20%.
Nuclear's capacity factor is around 70-90%, depending on how you do the math.
This article is almost entirely a smokescreen for the fact that Germany has been shutting down its nuclear capacity and replacing it with fossil fuels.
For this reason, Germany's per-capita CO2 output is almost twice as high as nuclear-friendly France.
>>This leads to horrible social problems (murder/rape/terrorism)
Correlation is not causation. Just because polygamy and terrorism are both common in the middle east does not mean they cause each other.
Counterexample: China has had polygamy for roughly 3000 years, and never turned to murder/rape/terrorism (or at least in significantly higher numbers than other countries).
>>In a country where polygamy is normal most of the men can't have a girlfriend/wife/kids.
Nope. You have to look at the math of it. In Islamic countries, only very rich men can support multiple wives (each one gets their own house + servants). So if the top 1% of the population takes 3 wives each, that doesn't make a significant difference for the remaining 99%.
>>"ok, so what's that do for you then?"
>>"fuck all if I know."
If you had an appallingly low comliness stat, you could stun people with your hideousness. If it was very high, you could charm them.
Otherwise, yeah, it meant fuck-all.
You're absolutely right.
4e is an adaption of the 3e Miniatures Battles rules, not of the 3e roleplaying system. It's no mistake that they went so minis heavy - Ian and others at WOTC loved miniature battles and wanted to push the system more in that direction.
Hmm, not my experience at all. High level 4e is somewhat complicated (I just got done playing three 12 hour epic level games at a Con this last weekend), but it's not nearly as complicated as 3e was.
4e is basically a dumbed down version of D&D, and D&D Next is reputed to be even further dumbed down.
And they wonder why people are abandoning them for Pathfinder...
>>Aren't the rings a trademark, not a copyright?
The Olympic Rings have super special protection under the law. Not only are other people not able to use the Olympic Rings without permission, but you are not able to make ANY logo with five interlocking rings on it, even if they look nothing like the Olympic Logo.
Look at what the back of the Legend of the 5 Rings card game used to look like versus what they look like now: ...after they got sued by Olympian Assholes.
http://www.lizdanforth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/L5R-backs-300x255.jpg
One of our HOA board members at my parents' place works for the California DMV, and illegally looks up the license plates of people parked in our visitor parking spots.
Since my old car was given to me by my parents, I kept getting nasty letters from them, claiming that I was a resident illegally parking in visitor's spots.
I wrote back saying that I was sure that the DMV would be interested in finding out who it was that was illegally conducting these searches, and I never heard from them again.
Cutting sugar reduced the *hunger*. It's hardly insignificant.
>>It's still fun. The problem is, you have to actually play the game rather than spend your time bitching about things that don't really matter.
*Gaming* is still fun.
Diablo 3 isn't, even when you can play it. It's actually... boring.
>>The only thing that's really difficult to reproduce is level randomization, and it's only relatively difficult. There are many publicly available terrain generation algorithms, and from what I've played in the D3 beta, the levels aren't completely randomized, they're just a few calls to an RNG for each piece with special pieces placed randomly.
It's also important to note that the randomization of Diablo is really quite meaningless. I can't recall ever playing through a Baal run and going, "Wow, this one layout is totally boss!" You can hardcode a few cookie cutter recipes for building "random" maps and nobody would notice. Daggerfall had a much more memorable random dungeon generator.
Given how popular Diablo 3 is, it's only a matter of time before server emulators exist.
>>I have no clue about DDT, I'm just saying that this logic is deeply flawed.
It's akin to a scientist saying that it is safe to drink non-radioactive water from a nuclear power plant's cooling power, and putting his money where his mouth is by drinking it.
It's entirely safe for humans in the dosage levels used to control bed bugs and malaria, which require much lower dosages than the wholesale blanketing of farmlands we were doing before. While it is toxic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Effects_on_human_health) the levels required are really high. The LD50 (50% chance of dying) for me would be around 30 pounds of pure DDT. When cut into a paste (1%-5% DDT), you're looking at needing to eat 600 to 3000 pounds of DDT paste to have even a 50/50 chance of dying from it.
>>The obesity epidemic is most likely caused by an endocrine disruptor that affects many or all mammals.
Yes, the endocrine disruptor is called "McDonalds".
Whenever it is introduced to a country, the obesity rates skyrocket.
>Sugar IS indeed a poison, like alcohol...in fact, alcohol and sugar both get turned into FAT, which is killing us because we eat too damn much of it.
"Poison" usually means an acute toxicity, not just something that will make us high in fat. (And yes, I've watched that video before and recommended it to my personal trainer.) I cut sugar entirely out of my diet a year or two ago, as much as is practical (i.e. checking food labels and not eating anything with sugar in it). I haven't drunk soda in years (maybe a couple cokes in the last four or five years, total). Didn't matter. Still was gaining weight slightly. The nice thing about being off sugar was that I got a LOT less hungry during the day. But I was still eating a lot.
So a couple months ago I decided I'd simply start eating less, while maintaining a fairly high level of activity (I work out about 5 days a week, martial arts and the like). Lo and behold! I've lost 14 pounds. Haven't really been hungry. When I get hungry, I eat a little bit, and I tend to get full very quickly. Had one food dream, but that was about it.
>>...move asteroids into Earth orbit for mining. Imagine if we had a Fukushima/B.P. incident with one of those?
Ok, I'll bite.
If an asteroid suddenly started spewing huge amounts of crude oil into outer space, I think there would suddenly be funding for NASA.
If an asteroid released a small amount of radiation into outer space... nobody would notice.
>punch them in the face, which can kill much more easily than people think.
If this (or the ridiculous "punch -> nose shards to the brain" urban legend) was true, boxers would die all the time, especially amateur boxers.
Yeah, after living in a couple places that had bad grounds and only two-prong outlets, I made sure to buy a house that had at least three-prong outlets.
Then after I bought the house, I found out someone had replaced the grounding rod with a PVC pipe... /facepalm
Uh, you know we're talking about Rand Paul here, not Ron Paul?
But carry on.
Seriously. While we didn't have smartphones back in college, a friend of mine rigged up his alarm clock to a winch that would slowly lift up his mattress and dump him out of bed in the morning.
I imagine engineers have been doing shit like this all the way back to the Egyptian days. Those traps protecting the pharaohs' tombs were probably just freshman year hijinks.