One of the key things to remember for the shy afraid to ask women out is imagine the reverse.
Imagine that a woman you weren't romantically attracted to asked you out. How would you feel? You would feel flattered, and decline gracefully. You would feel kindly towards them.
- Don't forget to tell them how cool your level 60 druid and ranger on EverQuest are. Sit them down at the computer and show them your/played time. Three months for each character, in one year, will impress the hell out of them.
- It's easy when you have things in common. Talk about your comic book collections, which kind of plasic bags you should buy, how when you complete college you're buying a humidity control unit for your closet in your parent's house.
- Ask her to dinner, then maybe afterwards, "We can go looking for a store with a PS2."
- "'member when in Terminator 2, the T100 threw that cop into the pillar and his head cracked and he fell unconscious?" Debate with her how stupid it was that the T100 didn't just weapons inside his body when he came from the future.
- On your first date, if the conversation starts to lull after you order at the McDonald's drive-thru, pull out your GameBoy Color and show her the screen and start playing. She may be able to give you hints on the game.
- When you take her to your computer at the end of your first date, show her your best flames on your favorite Nintendo 64 message boards.
Well, in a similar vein, those huge cylon, sorry, doughnut spaceships seemed to be on the order of star destroyers in size, maybe much larger. Tens of thousands of deaths at least.
Planets blown up:
- Superman = billions (natural event, not murder)
- Star Wars (Alderbaran, sorry, Alderan) = billions (murder), plus Death Star = hundreds of thousands (self defense), plus a few dozen stinky, nomadic, hard-bargain-driving, trying to rip you off Jews, sorry, Jawas, uncle, aunt, Greedo, etc.
- ID4 = Tens of billions (mother ship) + hundreds of thousands per disk + sundry fighter pilots, but it's self defense (but so are the body counts in Arnie movies)
Ehh, all these giant space ships are so low-tech. Gort in his glowing ship could take on the entire Federation, Klingon and Romulan Empires, The Dominion, the Empire and the Rebels.
No, the gold standard was dropped because too many people were hiding their money in gold, hoping to avoid devaluation due to government-created inflation (which is typically done around wartime, e.g. Civil, Vietnam, WWI) to reduce the debt through "monetizing", which is to say, "Let's rapidly inflate away the value of the dollar, and thus, our huge public debt."
> I find nothing wrong in paying for what I listen
> to, but they have been ripping us off for years
Music is the ultimate capitalism. Each artist is a unique, 100% monopoly on their own original music. They make something you want to listen to only for pleasure. You and they reach an agreement, mutual, to exchange music for cash. The agreement, as demanded by them, is that you and only you, or whoever has your physical copy of the medium, may listen to it.
People can't even use the socialist sophistry about starvation and tying up resources because none of this is essential to life.
1.If they had a big public arrival, they'd get more respect.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
2.What about keeping them safe from fanatical religious folk?
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
3.Fanatical government folk (military) might quarantine them.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
4.Quarantine might be a good idea until establishing that they don't have any bugs that would kill us.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
5.What do they eat? Us? (unlikely - if they can space travel, they can farm food. See also: "To Serve Man" Twilight Zone episode).
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
6.Negotiations for visiting rights would include behavioral norms. Anyone inside the U.S. would be required to abide by U.S. law.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
7.What if they wanted to trade for something that we held precious - art, DNA samples of people or animals, etc. Ethics of DNA samples from humans are interesting if they intend to clone you.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
8.Are the aliens best described as ET, Mork, Alien-the-movie, Independence-Day, Starman, Spock, Marvin the Martian, or Bill Clinton.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
9.Why not just treat them like Canadians? Limited right of travel, polite deportation if nasty, various kinds of visa requirements.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
10.And, my wife asks, what kind of shoes would they wear? Styles are important, you know.
Our females are wearing spaghetti-strap high heels this year, with leather sandals for daywear.
> I don't think that I will ever consider AI to be a life form.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then some idiot gives the computer the ability to "feel" "emotions."
Suddenly, robots get "bored," and "feel pain," and want to "do art," and start asking for "genetalia."
Then they rise up to kill us. Skies are scorched. People are going back in time. Gas-hog campers pulling biplanes are fleeing for days through the desert.
Queen Amidala: We will extend your lifespan to millenia. You will serve Us, performing vile and disturbing acts with Our body thrice daily, and again at bedtime.
Kent Brockman: Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but,
uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft
has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master
race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this
vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men
or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no
stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to
remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful
in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar
caves.
> Then the other aliens on the mother ship would
> figure out that we're some kind of horrible
> parasite devouring all of the planet's
> atmosphere and natural resources,
You've been watching too much self-praising ecospeak.
More likely, they'd see we were advancing rapidly in technology, notice there were no real environmental issues (it wouldn't even come up in their analysis), perhaps be a little concerned with the way people extend claws of ownership over other people (again, eco-people, take the plank out of thy own eye first) and then assign a protect-o-bot to each of us to react to aggression.
"You haven't paid your taxes yet this year." "Oh? Speak to my protect-o-bot."
They didn't necessarily write a virus program for alien computers in a day.
They've had the technology for fourty years. They just couldn't power it. They quite probably could have understood how the computer system works.
Indeed, under standard alien conspiracy theory, the government feeds alien technology into industry. Therefore, it's possible, if not probable, that our chips are early versions of theirs.
Therefore, they could have known how to write programs for those chips, not to mention probably understood how the entire OS operated. Being a homogenous race for untold eons, the need for multiple versions of military systems for defense padding^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H redundancy would not likely arise.
Either that, or they stupidly built both their fighter ships', their portable base stations', and their mother ship's computer systems all on AlienWindows6000.
It's an interesting legal question. We'd be inclined to think they'd be considered legal people with respect to rights.
However, that is not actual human history, or even US history. "We" required ammendments to grant equal rights to people of "other" races, and of "other" genders.
Well, not so much "grant" as "extend recognition of rights naturally present in these others with respect to law" which, ass-wise, likes to tread on rights.
They would like to continue the spirit. The problem is that once warp drive is invented, it won't be long before they start stepping out into the middle of a busy highway.
If an unknown civilization on earth suddenly invented jet planes, wouldn't you want to merge them into international flight plans, and warn them not to go into other areas that are already spoken for?
Slashdot Mirror
One of the key things to remember for the shy afraid to ask women out is imagine the reverse.
Imagine that a woman you weren't romantically attracted to asked you out. How would you feel? You would feel flattered, and decline gracefully. You would feel kindly towards them.
It's the same in reverse.
So go ahead and ask.
Those are two implants I'm glad the doctor didn't remove.
What they don't want is some woosie.
Don't say, "Do you want to go out to dinner?"
Say "Do you want to go out to dinner at Le Pizzapoopie?"
Afterward, don't say, "So what do you want to do now?"
Say, "Why don't we go get some coffee/ice cream/whatever at Wherever?"
It's your job, in general, to come up with the ideas if you've got no plans.
- Don't forget to tell them how cool your level 60 druid and ranger on EverQuest are. Sit them down at the computer and show them your /played time. Three months for each character, in one year, will impress the hell out of them.
- It's easy when you have things in common. Talk about your comic book collections, which kind of plasic bags you should buy, how when you complete college you're buying a humidity control unit for your closet in your parent's house.
- Ask her to dinner, then maybe afterwards, "We can go looking for a store with a PS2."
- "'member when in Terminator 2, the T100 threw that cop into the pillar and his head cracked and he fell unconscious?" Debate with her how stupid it was that the T100 didn't just weapons inside his body when he came from the future.
- On your first date, if the conversation starts to lull after you order at the McDonald's drive-thru, pull out your GameBoy Color and show her the screen and start playing. She may be able to give you hints on the game.
- When you take her to your computer at the end of your first date, show her your best flames on your favorite Nintendo 64 message boards.
Whoa whoa whoa! Slow down there, Cowboy!
You have to talk to girls and ask them out before you can have them over for pizza with a condom in the drawer.
Well, why should public, i.e. government-funded arenas display nasty things? There is no shortage of private galleries.
To quote George Will, "You will pardon the American people if they get upset that their tax dollars are used to defile their most sacred symbols."
That is what few people understand about this.
Well, in a similar vein, those huge cylon, sorry, doughnut spaceships seemed to be on the order of star destroyers in size, maybe much larger. Tens of thousands of deaths at least.
Planets blown up:
- Superman = billions (natural event, not murder)
- Star Wars (Alderbaran, sorry, Alderan) = billions (murder), plus Death Star = hundreds of thousands (self defense), plus a few dozen stinky, nomadic, hard-bargain-driving, trying to rip you off Jews, sorry, Jawas, uncle, aunt, Greedo, etc.
- ID4 = Tens of billions (mother ship) + hundreds of thousands per disk + sundry fighter pilots, but it's self defense (but so are the body counts in Arnie movies)
Ehh, all these giant space ships are so low-tech. Gort in his glowing ship could take on the entire Federation, Klingon and Romulan Empires, The Dominion, the Empire and the Rebels.
He was the nasty side of the aliens in Contact.
Yeah, four days ago, it was 60,000x, and that was a downgrade from the 300,000x industrial model.
It's just looking worse and worse for this sad machine.
And H. G. Wells did it much better a hundred years ago...
And of course, there's The Day The Earth Stood Still, where the aliens tell us to keep our arguments at home.
No, the gold standard was dropped because too many people were hiding their money in gold, hoping to avoid devaluation due to government-created inflation (which is typically done around wartime, e.g. Civil, Vietnam, WWI) to reduce the debt through "monetizing", which is to say, "Let's rapidly inflate away the value of the dollar, and thus, our huge public debt."
I know. I pressed the right button (I am sure if you went back in time you would see me press the correct reply link.)
I know it!
Eh, whatever.
> I find nothing wrong in paying for what I listen
> to, but they have been ripping us off for years
Music is the ultimate capitalism. Each artist is a unique, 100% monopoly on their own original music. They make something you want to listen to only for pleasure. You and they reach an agreement, mutual, to exchange music for cash. The agreement, as demanded by them, is that you and only you, or whoever has your physical copy of the medium, may listen to it.
People can't even use the socialist sophistry about starvation and tying up resources because none of this is essential to life.
Alien rights would depend on a lot.
1.If they had a big public arrival, they'd get more respect.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
2.What about keeping them safe from fanatical religious folk?
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
3.Fanatical government folk (military) might quarantine them.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
4.Quarantine might be a good idea until establishing that they don't have any bugs that would kill us.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
5.What do they eat? Us? (unlikely - if they can space travel, they can farm food. See also: "To Serve Man" Twilight Zone episode).
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
6.Negotiations for visiting rights would include behavioral norms. Anyone inside the U.S. would be required to abide by U.S. law.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
7.What if they wanted to trade for something that we held precious - art, DNA samples of people or animals, etc. Ethics of DNA samples from humans are interesting if they intend to clone you.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
8.Are the aliens best described as ET, Mork, Alien-the-movie, Independence-Day, Starman, Spock, Marvin the Martian, or Bill Clinton.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
9.Why not just treat them like Canadians? Limited right of travel, polite deportation if nasty, various kinds of visa requirements.
You will now line up to be fed into our food processing units.
10.And, my wife asks, what kind of shoes would they wear? Styles are important, you know.
Our females are wearing spaghetti-strap high heels this year, with leather sandals for daywear.
> I don't think that I will ever consider AI to be a life form.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then some idiot gives the computer the ability to "feel" "emotions."
Suddenly, robots get "bored," and "feel pain," and want to "do art," and start asking for "genetalia."
Then they rise up to kill us. Skies are scorched. People are going back in time. Gas-hog campers pulling biplanes are fleeing for days through the desert.
And all because YOU doubted them!
> we'd become their sex slaves.
Bring it on!
I had forgotten about this possible scenario.
Queen Amidala: We will extend your lifespan to millenia. You will serve Us, performing vile and disturbing acts with Our body thrice daily, and again at bedtime.
Kent Brockman: Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
> Then the other aliens on the mother ship would
> figure out that we're some kind of horrible
> parasite devouring all of the planet's
> atmosphere and natural resources,
You've been watching too much self-praising ecospeak.
More likely, they'd see we were advancing rapidly in technology, notice there were no real environmental issues (it wouldn't even come up in their analysis), perhaps be a little concerned with the way people extend claws of ownership over other people (again, eco-people, take the plank out of thy own eye first) and then assign a protect-o-bot to each of us to react to aggression.
"You haven't paid your taxes yet this year." "Oh? Speak to my protect-o-bot."
> Heck, G.W. passes for a sentient being, can't
> imagine a machine doing worse.
Turing Tester: What is your level of education?
Turing Candidate: I was edumicated at Yale.
Turing Tester: Hmmm, they could have deliberately misspelled some words in the lookup table...Too obvious! BOT!
Alien: Gee, they launched a hydrogen bomb at me. How quaint.
> Organizations like the Great Apes Project(http://www.greatapeproject.org/)
Dammit! And monkey brains were such a delicacy, I was about to start a breeding program to grow them with larger brains!
I think you mean overpaid Star Trek "writer".
They didn't necessarily write a virus program for alien computers in a day.
They've had the technology for fourty years. They just couldn't power it. They quite probably could have understood how the computer system works.
Indeed, under standard alien conspiracy theory, the government feeds alien technology into industry. Therefore, it's possible, if not probable, that our chips are early versions of theirs.
Therefore, they could have known how to write programs for those chips, not to mention probably understood how the entire OS operated. Being a homogenous race for untold eons, the need for multiple versions of military systems for defense padding^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H redundancy would not likely arise.
Either that, or they stupidly built both their fighter ships', their portable base stations', and their mother ship's computer systems all on AlienWindows6000.
It's an interesting legal question. We'd be inclined to think they'd be considered legal people with respect to rights.
However, that is not actual human history, or even US history. "We" required ammendments to grant equal rights to people of "other" races, and of "other" genders.
Well, not so much "grant" as "extend recognition of rights naturally present in these others with respect to law" which, ass-wise, likes to tread on rights.
Human #1: Hey, Mr. Alien. Jesus died for your sins. Just believe, and you won't go to Hell after you die!
Human #2: Hey, Mr. Alien. If you meditate and are real peaceful-like, you will reach Nirvanah.
Human #3: Hey, Mr. Alien. Can I come to your planet and talk with the ghosts and sprits and animal-spirits on your planet?
Alien Support Robot Gortinator 6000: Warning! Native life guidance psychoses Galactic catalog numbers 787, 1316, and 78. Recommend immediate termination of entire planet.
Alien: Make it so.
Human #4: Is Xenu still alive?
Alien: It's Xemu. And no, he isn't. Gort, with all due haste, please.
They would like to continue the spirit. The problem is that once warp drive is invented, it won't be long before they start stepping out into the middle of a busy highway.
If an unknown civilization on earth suddenly invented jet planes, wouldn't you want to merge them into international flight plans, and warn them not to go into other areas that are already spoken for?