From what I understand from those who did honestly figure out I'm not a homicidal maniac, before noon, I look like the top right frame. After noon, once the caffeine finally kicks in, I look like the bottom left frame.
The major differences are, I lost the goatee years ago, and I still have hair, but it's usually cut in a military "high and tight", which I guess doesn't help much either. That just gives people the impression that I have military training to back up the psychotic look.:)
I guess I could just give up smiling at people at work, if I really have no reason to smile. It's not like I'm ever customer facing anyways.:)
Actually, that's more of mentally unstable, yet able to control the populace. In the persons own mind, it would be that they did a good thing.
"The world is over populated, if we eliminate 50% of the population most of our problems will go away."
To someone saying that, it obviously is a good thing. If you're in the surviving 50%, you'd likely agree. If you're in the 50% that is slated for termination, you may just have a problem with it. Of course, there will be people on both sides that will argue. "Oh, you shouldn't have killed those people", or "I'm glad I'm being killed to save everyone else." Some people always want to argue.
What if the statement is completely factual. Without eliminating 50% of the population, there will be mass deaths from starvation and disease, and it's more likely 75% of the population will die?
I wouldn't ever want to be the person to make that decision, and it's not all that likely I would ever need to. I, like most would prefer to be one of the survivors.:)
But, a cold-blooded murderer is not an excellent personification of evil. They have their reasons for doing something, usually something twisted or self motivated.
True personification of evil would not be a murderer, because he or she would evaluate their actions and consequences. If I kill this person, I will end up in prison, and eventually executed. It's hard to continue your evil streak if you're locked away or dead.
It could be argued that authors are closer to evil, as they can write novels based on countless heartless killings, yet they've never been caught nor convicted for. In that, they've planned and reviewed the entire action of murder and the consequences.
Most cited murderers had a purpose of some sort, either in reality or their own twisted fantasy world. It may have miscalculated results. There was some gain to it. It could be for themselves or someone close to them. That in itself indicates some level of good. Consider the cold war strategy of "If we're nuked, we nuke them", held by both sides. The initial aggressor would be attempting a conquest for the good of their country. The retaliatory strike would then defeat the aggressor. The outcome? All of humanity is destroyed. (ya, ya, I know, not enough nukes, but it paints the picture).
I'd love to play in a virtual environment with E. I would likely show their developers that their "Evil" isn't as bad as it could get. Annoying? Sadistic? Maybe, but the human mind can always create deeper darker levels of evil than anything that can be programmed.
I don't smile much at work. When I smile, especially a big toothy smile, I've been told that I look like a serial killer who's decided "This is the day to kill all of you.", and very excited about it.
And no... I've never turned an office into a crime scene. I save my hobbies for the off-hours.:)
I guess they just see me from the animalistic view, and not the human social view. Funny that, I'm really a nice guy. I promise. I don't suggest attempting to argue that point though.:)
I wouldn't be surprised if the influence of race, culture, or even cliques were never introduced, that some simply wouldn't happen. It's still likely that those who have similar interests will group together, but I doubt it will be so distinct.
I was raised in an area where the population was approx 50% black, 50% white. I noticed that some people were rather prejudice, but that came from home rather than from exposure to the people themselves. Being that I never cared, I see people as being people, and any racial questions have been more of a curiosity of a persons roots, than to find a determination of how I should feel about them.
I have been stunned at how people who would be a minority in one area are terribly prejudiced against another group who would be a minority in another area. Historical hatred has a lot more to do with the prejudices than actually disliking an individual because of their race.
As an introduction of how the lack of such hatred is a good thing, I am white. My 2 year old daughter is white. She goes to preschool with blacks and latinos. Because no one has introduced the idea of race to her, she plays equally with everyone. The other children act in a similar way. They haven't been taught any differently. I know one day, another kid will introduce the idea, and then it will take a long time to undo that. It would be a fantasy to think that it wouldn't happen eventually.
I think the only way to accurately depict it would be to start with a large base of orphaned infants in a strictly controlled environment, where they were all given equal treatment and opportunity, with no external stimuli to introduce them to the ideas of racism or inequality. I fully believe in such an environment, the children would mature to be equal adults, regardless of race.
That has an inherent flaw though. Significant parts of history, geography, and literature would have to be excluded from their environment. The teachers (assumingly scientists) would also have to be amazingly careful of what they said and even their interpersonal treatment. Staff would have to be selected on a very strict basis. You can't have a black male phys ed coach, a while male science teacher, and a asian female mathematics teacher. It could (and would) be inferred that black men are better at sports, white men are better at science, and asian females are better at math. Any existing bias, which is virtually impossible to eliminate, would be recognized and learned by the students. If the study were to be done by say an all white staff, those of any other background could be assumed to be inferior since the elders are all white. They may notice and reflect it in the first few years, and start questioning it in the later years.
Not teaching important lessons, such as history and previous social interactions between cultures, would raise an entire group of students (or test subjects) that were crippled in outside society. We can't raise humans as guinea pigs, no matter how equal it may prove them to be by the end of the test.
By introducing older children in, who have experienced racism, that would corrupt the entire test. I do believe someday we'll be rid of such prejudices, but it's not going to be in our lifetimes.
Either, or.. Most people wouldn't consider it, and would just shit where ever they could get some privacy. There's enough problems with bears, I wouldn't want people problems too. (does a bear shit in the woods?)
Hehe. Ya, my area was hobby farms. I totally respect the people who had huge tracts of land. Ours was about 15 acres, because we grew it out to adjoining properties. It was always a bitch to mow the "front yard", since that was about 2 acres.:) We had neighbors with 40 acres. One of them was the foreman of an 18,000 acre cattle ranch nearby, who was the person I mentioned that never graduated high school and would score badly on IQ tests, but really knew the stuff he was skilled in. It was very helpful to have him around while us ex-city slickers learned the ropes. I grew up on our little farm, so I learned to do a lot. His ranch has changed a lot. I found they have a web site. They've reduced the cattle ranch down to 1,500 acres, sold some of it, and repurposed quite a bit. Times change. At least it hasn't become a field of planned developments and condos.:)
There's an entire area where a friend of mine lives that was all cattle ranches about 20 years ago. It's now exclusively nice homes in deed restricted communities. It's strange to know that where you're now under so many rules, used to be freely roamed by grazing cattle. Looking at it, you can't even tell that it was ever farm land, except for one old barn on a 20 acre lot being sold for "commercial/industrial" use. I suspect within the next 10 years, even that barn will be gone.
I learned to target accurately with a BB gun on stray dogs. It was a weak spring action one, so I not only had to account for windage and the animal's speed, but raise my shots significantly so they'd even make it that far. Still, I could scare a stray dog off our property from a very respectable distance with a single shot. We didn't have any problems with foxes, but we'd see the occasional deer. The most dangerous problem was a large alligator who lost his way (we weren't close to any water). The alligator decided a cow looked like a good meal. Luckily, we dealt with it.
There are a lot of farmers who thought it would be a good idea, and moved onto an existing property and bought some livestock. That's fairly common in small farm areas (5 acres or less). They can't replace a fencepost, nor stretch barbed wire. It does take some skill. I've done most kinds of fences (barbed wire, board fence, chicken wire, 4x4 wire, and chain link) with 4x4 posts and round fence posts. Oh, and it's a blast to set posts in by hand, I assure you. They may just need to be taught, or they may just not be interested because they can get some schmuck (like me) to come by and do it for them. If they have cattle, they may have to mend it themselves in the middle of the night.
I was driving home one night and saw a cow in the middle of the road. I also spotted a truck off the side of the road, so we "encouraged" the cow to go back through the hole by driving around it and honking the horn. We've progressed so far from horseback.:) Now we can drive a truck and honk a horn.:)
That's generally the way it works. I find myself falling into the trap sometimes, but frequently enough I find that the person arguing with me has valid points, which change my own perspective.
Too bad so many people are so stubborn that regardless of the facts presented they refuse to change their opinion on things. I've been wrong on occasion (but not too many), and I'll admit it. That doesn't always end the verbal dispute, because they still hear my original opinion.
My biggest annoyance is not reading what's right in front of you.
"My antivirus popped up some message. I hit Allow because I didn't know what to do." The prompt clearly said that a virus was trying to do something bad, why would you allow it? Two hours of cleanup later, and it was resolved. That was for a friend, so I wasn't getting paid either.
Another is the normal operating temperatures of a computer. I tell people don't operate a computer in temperatures greater than 80 degrees. Some people avoid running their air conditioner to save the power bill. That's fine and all, saving the planet -n- stuff, but don't leave the computer on when it's so hot. A machine on temporary loan to someone (which has lasted over a year) is permanently damaged due to the hot operating temperatures (90 to 100 degrees ambient temperature) It was a really nice system. Now I don't even want it back. They still call, "My computer just crashed", and the outside temperature is 95 degrees. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened.
We really have been crippled by consumerism. Most people don't recognize, we're only ever a few days away from collapse for a variety of reasons. If the power grid were to become unavailable to an area, it would be chaos. If the transportation infrastructure were to become crippled, we'd be lost.
I've thrown a scenario out there for people before, which opened a few eyes. I used Los Angeles as an example, because I lived there for a while. L.A. is almost entirely dependent on products being brought in for essentials. Water is pumped from fields and reservoirs for hundreds of miles. Food is brought in by truck and train. Electricity is partially generated locally. 26% comes from natural gas powered plants. 52% from coal powered plants in 4 states. 6% comes from hydroelectric, primarily Hoover Dam. 11% comes from nuclear plants. I know at least some of the natural gas comes locally.
If an event were to happen that isolated the city at a 50 mile radius (ports flooded or otherwise disabled, highways and railways disabled, and pipelines disabled) to isolate the city at say a 50 mile radius, it would be able to generate something resembling 30% of the power requirement, and only a small part of it's water requirements. Food supplies would be minimal at best. This could easily happen with a cluster of earthquakes with unfortunate epicenters. Some people showed me their "earthquake kit", which included less than 1/2 gallon of water, a few energy bars, and basic medical supplies. None of them kept up with their kits, so most dated to the 1994 Northridge earthquake. People who lived in the area told me their first hand accounts of the collapsed overpasses, prolonged loss of power, and basically inability to leave. People were sleeping on blankets in their front yards, afraid to stay in their houses in case an aftershock collapsed their homes. The surviving roads made traveling 15 miles a 3 hour adventure, and it could have been worse.
We saw what happened with Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina. Without stores to buy their essentials, they were at a complete loss of how to survive without assistance from the Red Cross and other disaster services.
There's always a new record setting disaster, and we all hope it doesn't happen to a populated area, or at least NIMBY.
I'd like to find a productive farm in my back yard, with a windmill (or hand) powered water pump, and make friends with the farmer. Good luck with that.
And... I did grow up on a farm, so I know how gruesome it is to see cattle slaughtered. I haven't done it myself, but I carefully observed how it was done. It's a messy process. Our cattle were killed with a single gunshot to the head. Quick, painless, and after it happens, the rest of the cattle don't seem to care. I've seen video of the "Kosher" way of doing it (quickly slit throat). In lieu of a firearm being handy, it seems to be the next best way to do it. Poultry don't go quite as well, due to nerve reflex. This is apparent in the small farm method (chop the head off, wait for the body to stop moving) versus the commercial farm method (electrical shock to stun, and then beheading). Small farms use a variation of the small farm method, except they don't use warm water to remove the feathers.
Any way we do it is more humane than the natural order (larger predators chasing down and killing through bites and clawing).
Most people in cities wouldn't be able to handle what farmers see on a regular basis. They don't quite get, in an isolation scenario, you'd have to eat what you can. Cats, dogs, opossums, or even squirrels and rats are viable food. I'd have no moral problems with eating any of the above, as long as it wasn't my own pet.:)
But, people who aren't providing essential things such as food, shelter, and clothing (farming, construction, and textiles, respectively) aren't dedicating themselves to the sciences. They're filling the ranks of telemarketers, burger flippers, and bag boys. Some have advanced themselves to pyramid schemes, pump and dump stock scams, or a whole variety of other illegal things that the FBI could (and probably does) have volumes of books dedicated to.
They are perfectly content doing the drone job, for drone pay, filling every little niche from A to 9. You can drop off your car to have the oil changed, and it washed (an odd combination that I've noticed a lot of lately), while you walk over to your "fast food" chain of choice to eat a heart attack in a bag, and still be back to your desk to answer the phone before your lunch hour is over. Very little is about the advancement of humanity, or sciences nor technologies. It's about the status quo, which is sad. The status quo is to make enough money to pay your bills, so you can live in a place to sleep between your work shifts.
What have you done for the advancement of humanity today? This week? This year? During your whole life? For most people, the answer will be "nothing".
Unfortunately, your rant isn't all that misplaced, although this may not be the perfect audience.
People *can* be smart. They likely won't be, because they can (almost) always get someone else to do it for them. If they didn't have a microwave oven, they wouldn't be able to cook themselves dinner. If they didn't have IT tech support, they wouldn't be able to work a computer. If they couldn't have their car towed to a mechanic and repaired, they wouldn't get from point A to point B.
We're all guilty of this to some degree. If I couldn't just buy gas for my car at a convenient location, I'd be hard pressed to refine my own fuel. Unfortunately, it's rough to increasingly difficult to find places close to work where I could raise my own food or pump my own water. (and yes, I don't do these right now because of this). Finding someone who could make their own nails or prepare their own timber to build their own house is virtually impossible. These days, if you dropped most people off from the city into vast wilderness, they'd be at a loss to feed themselves, but they'd tell you about what they saw on Survivorman, or some other reality show.
We're in a spoonfed society, which isn't getting any better any time soon. Well, unless you have any belief in the 2012 prophecies. I take them as an interesting talking point for a "what if", but I give the odds of something happening right up there with Y2k. It'll be a well discussed non-event. If you took an arbitrary group of 20+ people and dropped them in the wilderness, how long would they last? I like the show "Lost", but honestly believe they wouldn't survive more than a couple weeks, even without all the other character interactions. You'd see a group of 20 who died from starvation, dehydration, exposure, or disease from poorly planned waste disposal (mental note, don't shit in your fresh water supply).
Welcome to modern society. You'll always be dependent on someone else, and pay dearly for those services. You are right, we're all minor stones in the great wall of civilization, and no one will notice of one (or thousands) don't work quite right.
From the numbers you provided, the sample groups were inadequate. Over the years, I've met many people, and had the opportunity to learn a lot about them. There are stereotypical and astereotypical people in every group. In a sampling of say 10 people, they may all be complete idiots, or rocket scientists. Looks are frequently deceiving.
The IQ scores are almost always skewed. It's not how "smart" you are, but how educated you are. For example, I've known poor farmers who were not well educated, but through what they have been educated in, it's apparent that they are smart. A good farmer can repair his own equipment, sometimes with minimal tools. He can raise crops even in adverse conditions. He can raise cattle from birth to slaughter, and take care of any problem along the way. One in particular who would score miserably on a standardized IQ test, and never completed high school could look at the symptoms of an animal, and treat it properly. He kept his 40 year old truck on the road without ever taking it to a mechanic, and could revive almost any piece of farm equipment. He could solve real world logical problems in a heart beat. He wouldn't have a prayer solving an algebraic equation, could barely spell, and had no clue what to do with a computer though. He was never taught those skills.
Then again, his neighbor would be hard pressed to repair a fence. Was he stupid? I don't know, I didn't know the neighbor well enough. Maybe he had simply never needed to repair a fence, and had never been taught. Could you?
I personally know someone, approximately 30 years old, who usually scored just over 100 on an IQ test. She had never finished high school. She recently started taking GED classes. Now that she has picked up the required skills, she retested and scored 138. She didn't get any smarter in a matter of weeks. She simply gained the skills required to score better on the IQ test. Because I knew her personally, I knew she was smart. With the new score, she now believes it. What is Pi? What is an acute triangle? What does E=MC^2 mean? If you were never taught such things, those would mean absolutely nothing to you.
Someone else I know was convinced she was stupid. She was told so for too many years. She decided to prove them wrong, and is a better programmer than I am now, fluent in several programming languages. I don't know her IQ score, but I'm confident in seeing her ability in fields that she has the skills in that she's brilliant.
I've known people who score very low. I tried to tutor someone who was mentally retarded in reading. I was teaching him letters, which took a while. We then started on words and sounding them out. He could accomplish simple words, but it was difficult at best for him. He was told that he would never read, because he was too stupid. It was more that the extra time wasn't spent with him on it. He'll never be a rocket scientist or a surgeon, so yes, his IQ was low. And he is white of European descent.
To be on topic, if you were never told why the sky was blue, would you know the answer? What if it simply wasn't important to you at the time you were told? You'd likely forget. Grouping "parents" into one general category is insane. Almost everyone can be a parent. Well, I'd say a decent percentage of Slashdot readers won't, because of social ineptness.:) I'm a parent of 3, and father-like figure to more. Sometimes the children are afraid to ask. "Where do babies come from?" may be too mysterious a question. I was asked recently about sex by a friend's son. He was afraid to ask his mother, and his father avoided the question. I answered age appropriately, and then told him it was fine to tell his mother. His reponse? "I can't talk to mom about stuff like that. She's a girl
Along your theme, it's amazing how many cars have been brought to me in the last year by friends where a professional mechanic said it wasn't safe to drive, and presented with a quote of over $1,000 USD, just to find out that it was perfectly safe.
One in particular, I went item by item down the list of "repairs" only to find that it needed new spark plugs. The shop had completely overlooked the rack and pinion being worn beyond use (i.e., unsafe to drive), and the brakes leaking (i.e., unsafe to drive). They would have repaired their list, charged over $1,000, and handed back a death trap.
The real repairs were more than the value of the vehicle, and it now sits in a junk yard.
I've noticed that women are well targeted for these repairs, but it's not exclusive to them.
I went to have new tires mounted on my car. I generally do my own repairs, but I don't have a mounting nor balancing machine, so tires have to be done by a shop. I bring my own tires though. Last time I had two tires put on, they were very insistent that my front brakes were terribly worn. I thanked them for their advice, and picked up a new set of front pads on my way home ($35 vs $150). I did the front brakes at my leisure, just to find that the front pads weren't worn beyond 50%. Since I had already bought the pads, I went ahead and put the new ones on, and now the old worn pads (still 50% good) sit by my toolbox, in case someone needs them.
Shops love people saying "Fix whatever is wrong.". That's an open invitation to rape the customer. It's better to become aware of how your vehicle works, or make friends with someone who is honest. My friends will usually come to me first. Sometimes I'll send them back to the shop with the ok to do the work, but not usually. The last "urgent" brake job, I told the person to come back to me in 6 months or so, and I'd re-evaluate their brake condition. With all new parts (new pads, new rotors, per the shop quote), the price would have been $250 and a handshake. The shop wanted $1,500. I know they'll come back to me in 6 months because I'm honest.
My field is IT, but I've been working on cars for over 20 years. I don't charge for my work, but they always pay what they believe my time to have been worth, which has always been fair. It's a good way to make a few bucks on the weekends.:) It's not terribly regular work, but it's honest work for honest pay.
Dude, you are almost passively entertaining. Kinda off topic, and completely factually wrong, but entertaining.
But if it will appease you, I've donated everything but my last $10 to Slashdot. That wasn't very hard, since I don't have $10 to my name right now.
But hey, worship me as a multi-millionaire, I'm cool with that. We can discuss my newest business plan that I'd love to have you and your friends invest in. Because of the sensitivity of it, I'll need cash in small, unmarked, non-sequential bills. Meet me at the park bench at midnight. Be sure you aren't followed, or your investment is forfeit. You know, standard terms.
You'd be surprised the number of places I've seen Limewire up and running, where it shouldn't have been. I picked up a little work in a small office, and their manager's desktop was also the server for a few other things. They said "Oh, it's always a little slow", and it had been like that for years. Turns out a few years ago, Limewire had been installed and had been running ever since. They attributed it to someone who used to work nights, and downloaded music all night.
Luckily there was no sensitive data on any directories it was sharing, but if I recall correctly the old behavior was to share all of C drive, or at least look for directories that had music files in them.
I took it off (obviously), and cleaned up a few not terribly malicious malwares, and it was back up to a reasonable speed.
Most non-technical people will attribute a "slow" computer to just being old, even if the specs of the machine are fine, it just has too much crap on it. One computer I worked on had a dozen or so toolbars, and other assorted privacy concerns. They weren't necessarily malware, but do you need the Yahoo, Google, AOL and Ask toolbar on your computer, if you never use any of them?:)
There's a PC (2.8Ghz, 512Mb RAM, WinXP) that I'm working on now, that had so much crap installed that it was useless. Like, literally 5 minutes to open Firefox just after booting. After I removed the crap, it worked reasonably as long as you didn't have too many windows open. It's getting a memory upgrade today, and then getting delivered back to the customer.
Luckily, it wasn't my quote, and the man who said it is long since said.
How about, "Those oblivious to previous events and outcomes are likely to encounter similar trends in the future."
Or the class blunders... The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
Hmmmm, and Iraq and Afghanistan are in Southwest Asia, aren't they?
As others have pointed out, you need to review history a bit more. For about 1200 years, the "Moors" (derived meaning "Black") were the conquerors, taking millions of europeans and middle eastern people. Some estimate the number to be approx 40 million. When the Moors sided with the Arabic people, it was very very bad for the Europeans.
Not to say the Europeans were exactly innocent. The "political" systems in place lead to slavery of the general population by the nobility. Needless to say, border disputes were anything but friendly for centuries.
It's easy to believe that the Africans were simple people running around in small tribes who knew nothing but peace and avoiding being eaten by lions, but the Euro/American slave trade triangle was just another very dirty chapter in human history, not the only one like it.
But, if you'd prefer to believe your way, that's your decision. I must quote...
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana (1863-1952)
The Life of Reason (1905-1906)
Volume 1, Reason in Common Sense - pg 284
I like to believe that humanity had a kind, gentle history at some point, but in reality there's been an awful lot of blood shed and oppression. It's important for us to know the mistakes we've made before, so we can be better in our future.
Genetics have nothing to do with behavior. All humans are the same. They do learn from their environment. Greed has spread like an epidemic around the planet, and we're seeing the collapse of that system now. It's funny that the scam artists are now complaining that their marks are all running dry.
How does that saying go? Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll open a fish market. Or something like that, I can't be sure. Maybe that was the capitalist spin, before capitalism was outlawed.
Even with replanting, the timber industry has to wait a decade or more before they can reuse a piece of land. I grew up in an area that had been a heavily used area for pine logging at some point before, as I was told. There were large tracts of empty land. We replanted acres pines on our own land, so I got the opportunity to watch them grow from seedlings to mature trees. It took a long time. In theory, it could have been refarmed, but it never was. The last I had heard (and by looking at Google Maps), the pines remain today. Yea us, we helped our carbon footprint at least a little.:)
I think drug tests aren't always to see if you're under the influence, but to see if you have the tendency to do such things. If you're willing to do illegal drugs in your spare time, you'd be willing to do illegal things during work hours. That could extend beyond the drug use. If you're willing to smoke pot, you may be willing to liberate the company of equipment or trade secrets, because you've shown yourself to be morally corrupt. Ya, it's a stupid extension of the idea, but it's still applicable.
Work places that require mandatory drug testing after accidents aren't bad. I worked in a place with heavy equipment once. If you had any sort of accident with such equipment, you were required to go for drug testing immediately. While that's fair enough wanting to know if you were mentally altered while operating such equipment, the results of the test were still pass/fail. Someone who had a minor accident could lose their job for having smoked pot the night before. Mine was in a large warehouse. It was pretty easy to bump some overhead equipment such as fire suppression or conveyors (sometimes one in the same). It was easy enough to have something a bit too tall, and bump something accidentally. It wasn't exactly fair to fire a person for a "drug related accident", who had simply bumped an overhead rack because they misjudged by a couple inches, just because they had smoked some pot a few nights before. Still, it's illegal, so until the laws change, it's safer to stay within the law. And no, I don't do any illegal drugs, and I never had a workplace accident while I worked there.
I do know, through a second hand account, of a trucker who was involved in a fatality. He had smoked pot a few days before, and tested positive. The accident was a situation where a car struck another car, spun out of control into the path of the the truck. The trucker had no time to react. The actual person at fault for the accident was the driver of the car. Because the trucker had smoked pot, but was not under the influence at the time of the accident, he became liable for it, lost his job, and lost his commercial drivers license. It was a terrible way to shift the blame.
The same can happen if you've been drinking. Say you were drinking, and stopped legally at a red light. Another car rear ends you. Because you were under the influence, you are at fault, even though you did nothing wrong. It's wonderful how some of the laws work.
Both myself and a trucker friend of mine (no, not related to the above story), have a very high alcohol tolerance. we can both drink to what would be an illegal driving level without any measurable effects in reaction (or feeling it). We both know this, so we take precautions to ensure that even though we are physically and mentally capable of driving, we don't. He allows at least 12 hours from the end of drinking to the beginning of his work shift, just to be sure he won't lose his job or go to jail. He is (and does) have to take frequent random drug screenings that include alcohol tests. My only drug tests have been pre-employment, but still, I won't drink even the night before an interview. The night after a successful interview? Sure.:)
Slashdot Mirror
From what I understand from those who did honestly figure out I'm not a homicidal maniac, before noon, I look like the top right frame. After noon, once the caffeine finally kicks in, I look like the bottom left frame.
The major differences are, I lost the goatee years ago, and I still have hair, but it's usually cut in a military "high and tight", which I guess doesn't help much either. That just gives people the impression that I have military training to back up the psychotic look. :)
I guess I could just give up smiling at people at work, if I really have no reason to smile. It's not like I'm ever customer facing anyways. :)
Actually, that's more of mentally unstable, yet able to control the populace. In the persons own mind, it would be that they did a good thing.
"The world is over populated, if we eliminate 50% of the population most of our problems will go away."
To someone saying that, it obviously is a good thing. If you're in the surviving 50%, you'd likely agree. If you're in the 50% that is slated for termination, you may just have a problem with it. Of course, there will be people on both sides that will argue. "Oh, you shouldn't have killed those people", or "I'm glad I'm being killed to save everyone else." Some people always want to argue.
What if the statement is completely factual. Without eliminating 50% of the population, there will be mass deaths from starvation and disease, and it's more likely 75% of the population will die?
I wouldn't ever want to be the person to make that decision, and it's not all that likely I would ever need to. I, like most would prefer to be one of the survivors. :)
But, a cold-blooded murderer is not an excellent personification of evil. They have their reasons for doing something, usually something twisted or self motivated.
True personification of evil would not be a murderer, because he or she would evaluate their actions and consequences. If I kill this person, I will end up in prison, and eventually executed. It's hard to continue your evil streak if you're locked away or dead.
It could be argued that authors are closer to evil, as they can write novels based on countless heartless killings, yet they've never been caught nor convicted for. In that, they've planned and reviewed the entire action of murder and the consequences.
Most cited murderers had a purpose of some sort, either in reality or their own twisted fantasy world. It may have miscalculated results. There was some gain to it. It could be for themselves or someone close to them. That in itself indicates some level of good. Consider the cold war strategy of "If we're nuked, we nuke them", held by both sides. The initial aggressor would be attempting a conquest for the good of their country. The retaliatory strike would then defeat the aggressor. The outcome? All of humanity is destroyed. (ya, ya, I know, not enough nukes, but it paints the picture).
I'd love to play in a virtual environment with E. I would likely show their developers that their "Evil" isn't as bad as it could get. Annoying? Sadistic? Maybe, but the human mind can always create deeper darker levels of evil than anything that can be programmed.
I don't smile much at work. When I smile, especially a big toothy smile, I've been told that I look like a serial killer who's decided "This is the day to kill all of you.", and very excited about it.
And no... I've never turned an office into a crime scene. I save my hobbies for the off-hours. :)
I guess they just see me from the animalistic view, and not the human social view. Funny that, I'm really a nice guy. I promise. I don't suggest attempting to argue that point though. :)
I wouldn't be surprised if the influence of race, culture, or even cliques were never introduced, that some simply wouldn't happen. It's still likely that those who have similar interests will group together, but I doubt it will be so distinct.
I was raised in an area where the population was approx 50% black, 50% white. I noticed that some people were rather prejudice, but that came from home rather than from exposure to the people themselves. Being that I never cared, I see people as being people, and any racial questions have been more of a curiosity of a persons roots, than to find a determination of how I should feel about them.
I have been stunned at how people who would be a minority in one area are terribly prejudiced against another group who would be a minority in another area. Historical hatred has a lot more to do with the prejudices than actually disliking an individual because of their race.
As an introduction of how the lack of such hatred is a good thing, I am white. My 2 year old daughter is white. She goes to preschool with blacks and latinos. Because no one has introduced the idea of race to her, she plays equally with everyone. The other children act in a similar way. They haven't been taught any differently. I know one day, another kid will introduce the idea, and then it will take a long time to undo that. It would be a fantasy to think that it wouldn't happen eventually.
I think the only way to accurately depict it would be to start with a large base of orphaned infants in a strictly controlled environment, where they were all given equal treatment and opportunity, with no external stimuli to introduce them to the ideas of racism or inequality. I fully believe in such an environment, the children would mature to be equal adults, regardless of race.
That has an inherent flaw though. Significant parts of history, geography, and literature would have to be excluded from their environment. The teachers (assumingly scientists) would also have to be amazingly careful of what they said and even their interpersonal treatment. Staff would have to be selected on a very strict basis. You can't have a black male phys ed coach, a while male science teacher, and a asian female mathematics teacher. It could (and would) be inferred that black men are better at sports, white men are better at science, and asian females are better at math. Any existing bias, which is virtually impossible to eliminate, would be recognized and learned by the students. If the study were to be done by say an all white staff, those of any other background could be assumed to be inferior since the elders are all white. They may notice and reflect it in the first few years, and start questioning it in the later years.
Not teaching important lessons, such as history and previous social interactions between cultures, would raise an entire group of students (or test subjects) that were crippled in outside society. We can't raise humans as guinea pigs, no matter how equal it may prove them to be by the end of the test.
By introducing older children in, who have experienced racism, that would corrupt the entire test. I do believe someday we'll be rid of such prejudices, but it's not going to be in our lifetimes.
Either, or.. Most people wouldn't consider it, and would just shit where ever they could get some privacy. There's enough problems with bears, I wouldn't want people problems too. (does a bear shit in the woods?)
Hehe. Ya, my area was hobby farms. I totally respect the people who had huge tracts of land. Ours was about 15 acres, because we grew it out to adjoining properties. It was always a bitch to mow the "front yard", since that was about 2 acres. :) We had neighbors with 40 acres. One of them was the foreman of an 18,000 acre cattle ranch nearby, who was the person I mentioned that never graduated high school and would score badly on IQ tests, but really knew the stuff he was skilled in. It was very helpful to have him around while us ex-city slickers learned the ropes. I grew up on our little farm, so I learned to do a lot. His ranch has changed a lot. I found they have a web site. They've reduced the cattle ranch down to 1,500 acres, sold some of it, and repurposed quite a bit. Times change. At least it hasn't become a field of planned developments and condos. :)
There's an entire area where a friend of mine lives that was all cattle ranches about 20 years ago. It's now exclusively nice homes in deed restricted communities. It's strange to know that where you're now under so many rules, used to be freely roamed by grazing cattle. Looking at it, you can't even tell that it was ever farm land, except for one old barn on a 20 acre lot being sold for "commercial/industrial" use. I suspect within the next 10 years, even that barn will be gone.
I learned to target accurately with a BB gun on stray dogs. It was a weak spring action one, so I not only had to account for windage and the animal's speed, but raise my shots significantly so they'd even make it that far. Still, I could scare a stray dog off our property from a very respectable distance with a single shot. We didn't have any problems with foxes, but we'd see the occasional deer. The most dangerous problem was a large alligator who lost his way (we weren't close to any water). The alligator decided a cow looked like a good meal. Luckily, we dealt with it.
There are a lot of farmers who thought it would be a good idea, and moved onto an existing property and bought some livestock. That's fairly common in small farm areas (5 acres or less). They can't replace a fencepost, nor stretch barbed wire. It does take some skill. I've done most kinds of fences (barbed wire, board fence, chicken wire, 4x4 wire, and chain link) with 4x4 posts and round fence posts. Oh, and it's a blast to set posts in by hand, I assure you. They may just need to be taught, or they may just not be interested because they can get some schmuck (like me) to come by and do it for them. If they have cattle, they may have to mend it themselves in the middle of the night.
I was driving home one night and saw a cow in the middle of the road. I also spotted a truck off the side of the road, so we "encouraged" the cow to go back through the hole by driving around it and honking the horn. We've progressed so far from horseback. :) Now we can drive a truck and honk a horn. :)
That's generally the way it works. I find myself falling into the trap sometimes, but frequently enough I find that the person arguing with me has valid points, which change my own perspective.
Too bad so many people are so stubborn that regardless of the facts presented they refuse to change their opinion on things. I've been wrong on occasion (but not too many), and I'll admit it. That doesn't always end the verbal dispute, because they still hear my original opinion.
My biggest annoyance is not reading what's right in front of you.
"My antivirus popped up some message. I hit Allow because I didn't know what to do." The prompt clearly said that a virus was trying to do something bad, why would you allow it? Two hours of cleanup later, and it was resolved. That was for a friend, so I wasn't getting paid either.
Another is the normal operating temperatures of a computer. I tell people don't operate a computer in temperatures greater than 80 degrees. Some people avoid running their air conditioner to save the power bill. That's fine and all, saving the planet -n- stuff, but don't leave the computer on when it's so hot. A machine on temporary loan to someone (which has lasted over a year) is permanently damaged due to the hot operating temperatures (90 to 100 degrees ambient temperature) It was a really nice system. Now I don't even want it back. They still call, "My computer just crashed", and the outside temperature is 95 degrees. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened.
We really have been crippled by consumerism. Most people don't recognize, we're only ever a few days away from collapse for a variety of reasons. If the power grid were to become unavailable to an area, it would be chaos. If the transportation infrastructure were to become crippled, we'd be lost.
I've thrown a scenario out there for people before, which opened a few eyes. I used Los Angeles as an example, because I lived there for a while. L.A. is almost entirely dependent on products being brought in for essentials. Water is pumped from fields and reservoirs for hundreds of miles. Food is brought in by truck and train. Electricity is partially generated locally. 26% comes from natural gas powered plants. 52% from coal powered plants in 4 states. 6% comes from hydroelectric, primarily Hoover Dam. 11% comes from nuclear plants. I know at least some of the natural gas comes locally.
If an event were to happen that isolated the city at a 50 mile radius (ports flooded or otherwise disabled, highways and railways disabled, and pipelines disabled) to isolate the city at say a 50 mile radius, it would be able to generate something resembling 30% of the power requirement, and only a small part of it's water requirements. Food supplies would be minimal at best. This could easily happen with a cluster of earthquakes with unfortunate epicenters. Some people showed me their "earthquake kit", which included less than 1/2 gallon of water, a few energy bars, and basic medical supplies. None of them kept up with their kits, so most dated to the 1994 Northridge earthquake. People who lived in the area told me their first hand accounts of the collapsed overpasses, prolonged loss of power, and basically inability to leave. People were sleeping on blankets in their front yards, afraid to stay in their houses in case an aftershock collapsed their homes. The surviving roads made traveling 15 miles a 3 hour adventure, and it could have been worse.
We saw what happened with Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina. Without stores to buy their essentials, they were at a complete loss of how to survive without assistance from the Red Cross and other disaster services.
There's always a new record setting disaster, and we all hope it doesn't happen to a populated area, or at least NIMBY.
I'd like to find a productive farm in my back yard, with a windmill (or hand) powered water pump, and make friends with the farmer. Good luck with that.
And... I did grow up on a farm, so I know how gruesome it is to see cattle slaughtered. I haven't done it myself, but I carefully observed how it was done. It's a messy process. Our cattle were killed with a single gunshot to the head. Quick, painless, and after it happens, the rest of the cattle don't seem to care. I've seen video of the "Kosher" way of doing it (quickly slit throat). In lieu of a firearm being handy, it seems to be the next best way to do it. Poultry don't go quite as well, due to nerve reflex. This is apparent in the small farm method (chop the head off, wait for the body to stop moving) versus the commercial farm method (electrical shock to stun, and then beheading). Small farms use a variation of the small farm method, except they don't use warm water to remove the feathers.
Any way we do it is more humane than the natural order (larger predators chasing down and killing through bites and clawing).
Most people in cities wouldn't be able to handle what farmers see on a regular basis. They don't quite get, in an isolation scenario, you'd have to eat what you can. Cats, dogs, opossums, or even squirrels and rats are viable food. I'd have no moral problems with eating any of the above, as long as it wasn't my own pet. :)
OOhh, that was so wrong. The Catholic God is going to smite you. :)
Ya, I'm anything *BUT* a Catholic priest type. And thank the deity of your choice, they never saw me as their type either. :)
But, people who aren't providing essential things such as food, shelter, and clothing (farming, construction, and textiles, respectively) aren't dedicating themselves to the sciences. They're filling the ranks of telemarketers, burger flippers, and bag boys. Some have advanced themselves to pyramid schemes, pump and dump stock scams, or a whole variety of other illegal things that the FBI could (and probably does) have volumes of books dedicated to.
They are perfectly content doing the drone job, for drone pay, filling every little niche from A to 9. You can drop off your car to have the oil changed, and it washed (an odd combination that I've noticed a lot of lately), while you walk over to your "fast food" chain of choice to eat a heart attack in a bag, and still be back to your desk to answer the phone before your lunch hour is over. Very little is about the advancement of humanity, or sciences nor technologies. It's about the status quo, which is sad. The status quo is to make enough money to pay your bills, so you can live in a place to sleep between your work shifts.
What have you done for the advancement of humanity today? This week? This year? During your whole life? For most people, the answer will be "nothing".
Unfortunately, your rant isn't all that misplaced, although this may not be the perfect audience.
People *can* be smart. They likely won't be, because they can (almost) always get someone else to do it for them. If they didn't have a microwave oven, they wouldn't be able to cook themselves dinner. If they didn't have IT tech support, they wouldn't be able to work a computer. If they couldn't have their car towed to a mechanic and repaired, they wouldn't get from point A to point B.
We're all guilty of this to some degree. If I couldn't just buy gas for my car at a convenient location, I'd be hard pressed to refine my own fuel. Unfortunately, it's rough to increasingly difficult to find places close to work where I could raise my own food or pump my own water. (and yes, I don't do these right now because of this). Finding someone who could make their own nails or prepare their own timber to build their own house is virtually impossible. These days, if you dropped most people off from the city into vast wilderness, they'd be at a loss to feed themselves, but they'd tell you about what they saw on Survivorman, or some other reality show.
We're in a spoonfed society, which isn't getting any better any time soon. Well, unless you have any belief in the 2012 prophecies. I take them as an interesting talking point for a "what if", but I give the odds of something happening right up there with Y2k. It'll be a well discussed non-event. If you took an arbitrary group of 20+ people and dropped them in the wilderness, how long would they last? I like the show "Lost", but honestly believe they wouldn't survive more than a couple weeks, even without all the other character interactions. You'd see a group of 20 who died from starvation, dehydration, exposure, or disease from poorly planned waste disposal (mental note, don't shit in your fresh water supply).
Welcome to modern society. You'll always be dependent on someone else, and pay dearly for those services. You are right, we're all minor stones in the great wall of civilization, and no one will notice of one (or thousands) don't work quite right.
Apollo, you are so evil.
I wonder how many people won't know the reference. Hint: look for Cassandra in Greek mythology.
Citations please.
I know you're just being a racist troll, but...
From the numbers you provided, the sample groups were inadequate. Over the years, I've met many people, and had the opportunity to learn a lot about them. There are stereotypical and astereotypical people in every group. In a sampling of say 10 people, they may all be complete idiots, or rocket scientists. Looks are frequently deceiving.
The IQ scores are almost always skewed. It's not how "smart" you are, but how educated you are. For example, I've known poor farmers who were not well educated, but through what they have been educated in, it's apparent that they are smart. A good farmer can repair his own equipment, sometimes with minimal tools. He can raise crops even in adverse conditions. He can raise cattle from birth to slaughter, and take care of any problem along the way. One in particular who would score miserably on a standardized IQ test, and never completed high school could look at the symptoms of an animal, and treat it properly. He kept his 40 year old truck on the road without ever taking it to a mechanic, and could revive almost any piece of farm equipment. He could solve real world logical problems in a heart beat. He wouldn't have a prayer solving an algebraic equation, could barely spell, and had no clue what to do with a computer though. He was never taught those skills.
Then again, his neighbor would be hard pressed to repair a fence. Was he stupid? I don't know, I didn't know the neighbor well enough. Maybe he had simply never needed to repair a fence, and had never been taught. Could you?
I personally know someone, approximately 30 years old, who usually scored just over 100 on an IQ test. She had never finished high school. She recently started taking GED classes. Now that she has picked up the required skills, she retested and scored 138. She didn't get any smarter in a matter of weeks. She simply gained the skills required to score better on the IQ test. Because I knew her personally, I knew she was smart. With the new score, she now believes it. What is Pi? What is an acute triangle? What does E=MC^2 mean? If you were never taught such things, those would mean absolutely nothing to you.
Someone else I know was convinced she was stupid. She was told so for too many years. She decided to prove them wrong, and is a better programmer than I am now, fluent in several programming languages. I don't know her IQ score, but I'm confident in seeing her ability in fields that she has the skills in that she's brilliant.
I've known people who score very low. I tried to tutor someone who was mentally retarded in reading. I was teaching him letters, which took a while. We then started on words and sounding them out. He could accomplish simple words, but it was difficult at best for him. He was told that he would never read, because he was too stupid. It was more that the extra time wasn't spent with him on it. He'll never be a rocket scientist or a surgeon, so yes, his IQ was low. And he is white of European descent.
To be on topic, if you were never told why the sky was blue, would you know the answer? What if it simply wasn't important to you at the time you were told? You'd likely forget. Grouping "parents" into one general category is insane. Almost everyone can be a parent. Well, I'd say a decent percentage of Slashdot readers won't, because of social ineptness. :) I'm a parent of 3, and father-like figure to more. Sometimes the children are afraid to ask. "Where do babies come from?" may be too mysterious a question. I was asked recently about sex by a friend's son. He was afraid to ask his mother, and his father avoided the question. I answered age appropriately, and then told him it was fine to tell his mother. His reponse? "I can't talk to mom about stuff like that. She's a girl
Along your theme, it's amazing how many cars have been brought to me in the last year by friends where a professional mechanic said it wasn't safe to drive, and presented with a quote of over $1,000 USD, just to find out that it was perfectly safe.
One in particular, I went item by item down the list of "repairs" only to find that it needed new spark plugs. The shop had completely overlooked the rack and pinion being worn beyond use (i.e., unsafe to drive), and the brakes leaking (i.e., unsafe to drive). They would have repaired their list, charged over $1,000, and handed back a death trap.
The real repairs were more than the value of the vehicle, and it now sits in a junk yard.
I've noticed that women are well targeted for these repairs, but it's not exclusive to them.
I went to have new tires mounted on my car. I generally do my own repairs, but I don't have a mounting nor balancing machine, so tires have to be done by a shop. I bring my own tires though. Last time I had two tires put on, they were very insistent that my front brakes were terribly worn. I thanked them for their advice, and picked up a new set of front pads on my way home ($35 vs $150). I did the front brakes at my leisure, just to find that the front pads weren't worn beyond 50%. Since I had already bought the pads, I went ahead and put the new ones on, and now the old worn pads (still 50% good) sit by my toolbox, in case someone needs them.
Shops love people saying "Fix whatever is wrong.". That's an open invitation to rape the customer. It's better to become aware of how your vehicle works, or make friends with someone who is honest. My friends will usually come to me first. Sometimes I'll send them back to the shop with the ok to do the work, but not usually. The last "urgent" brake job, I told the person to come back to me in 6 months or so, and I'd re-evaluate their brake condition. With all new parts (new pads, new rotors, per the shop quote), the price would have been $250 and a handshake. The shop wanted $1,500. I know they'll come back to me in 6 months because I'm honest.
My field is IT, but I've been working on cars for over 20 years. I don't charge for my work, but they always pay what they believe my time to have been worth, which has always been fair. It's a good way to make a few bucks on the weekends. :) It's not terribly regular work, but it's honest work for honest pay.
Dude, you are almost passively entertaining. Kinda off topic, and completely factually wrong, but entertaining.
But if it will appease you, I've donated everything but my last $10 to Slashdot. That wasn't very hard, since I don't have $10 to my name right now.
But hey, worship me as a multi-millionaire, I'm cool with that. We can discuss my newest business plan that I'd love to have you and your friends invest in. Because of the sensitivity of it, I'll need cash in small, unmarked, non-sequential bills. Meet me at the park bench at midnight. Be sure you aren't followed, or your investment is forfeit. You know, standard terms.
You'd be surprised the number of places I've seen Limewire up and running, where it shouldn't have been. I picked up a little work in a small office, and their manager's desktop was also the server for a few other things. They said "Oh, it's always a little slow", and it had been like that for years. Turns out a few years ago, Limewire had been installed and had been running ever since. They attributed it to someone who used to work nights, and downloaded music all night.
Luckily there was no sensitive data on any directories it was sharing, but if I recall correctly the old behavior was to share all of C drive, or at least look for directories that had music files in them.
I took it off (obviously), and cleaned up a few not terribly malicious malwares, and it was back up to a reasonable speed.
Most non-technical people will attribute a "slow" computer to just being old, even if the specs of the machine are fine, it just has too much crap on it. One computer I worked on had a dozen or so toolbars, and other assorted privacy concerns. They weren't necessarily malware, but do you need the Yahoo, Google, AOL and Ask toolbar on your computer, if you never use any of them? :)
There's a PC (2.8Ghz, 512Mb RAM, WinXP) that I'm working on now, that had so much crap installed that it was useless. Like, literally 5 minutes to open Firefox just after booting. After I removed the crap, it worked reasonably as long as you didn't have too many windows open. It's getting a memory upgrade today, and then getting delivered back to the customer.
Luckily, it wasn't my quote, and the man who said it is long since said.
How about, "Those oblivious to previous events and outcomes are likely to encounter similar trends in the future."
Or the class blunders... The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
Hmmmm, and Iraq and Afghanistan are in Southwest Asia, aren't they?
As others have pointed out, you need to review history a bit more. For about 1200 years, the "Moors" (derived meaning "Black") were the conquerors, taking millions of europeans and middle eastern people. Some estimate the number to be approx 40 million. When the Moors sided with the Arabic people, it was very very bad for the Europeans.
Not to say the Europeans were exactly innocent. The "political" systems in place lead to slavery of the general population by the nobility. Needless to say, border disputes were anything but friendly for centuries.
It's easy to believe that the Africans were simple people running around in small tribes who knew nothing but peace and avoiding being eaten by lions, but the Euro/American slave trade triangle was just another very dirty chapter in human history, not the only one like it.
But, if you'd prefer to believe your way, that's your decision. I must quote...
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana (1863-1952)
The Life of Reason (1905-1906)
Volume 1, Reason in Common Sense - pg 284
I like to believe that humanity had a kind, gentle history at some point, but in reality there's been an awful lot of blood shed and oppression. It's important for us to know the mistakes we've made before, so we can be better in our future.
Genetics have nothing to do with behavior. All humans are the same. They do learn from their environment. Greed has spread like an epidemic around the planet, and we're seeing the collapse of that system now. It's funny that the scam artists are now complaining that their marks are all running dry.
How does that saying go? Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll open a fish market. Or something like that, I can't be sure. Maybe that was the capitalist spin, before capitalism was outlawed.
Not to be too obvious, but...
man man
Even with replanting, the timber industry has to wait a decade or more before they can reuse a piece of land. I grew up in an area that had been a heavily used area for pine logging at some point before, as I was told. There were large tracts of empty land. We replanted acres pines on our own land, so I got the opportunity to watch them grow from seedlings to mature trees. It took a long time. In theory, it could have been refarmed, but it never was. The last I had heard (and by looking at Google Maps), the pines remain today. Yea us, we helped our carbon footprint at least a little. :)
I think drug tests aren't always to see if you're under the influence, but to see if you have the tendency to do such things. If you're willing to do illegal drugs in your spare time, you'd be willing to do illegal things during work hours. That could extend beyond the drug use. If you're willing to smoke pot, you may be willing to liberate the company of equipment or trade secrets, because you've shown yourself to be morally corrupt. Ya, it's a stupid extension of the idea, but it's still applicable.
Work places that require mandatory drug testing after accidents aren't bad. I worked in a place with heavy equipment once. If you had any sort of accident with such equipment, you were required to go for drug testing immediately. While that's fair enough wanting to know if you were mentally altered while operating such equipment, the results of the test were still pass/fail. Someone who had a minor accident could lose their job for having smoked pot the night before. Mine was in a large warehouse. It was pretty easy to bump some overhead equipment such as fire suppression or conveyors (sometimes one in the same). It was easy enough to have something a bit too tall, and bump something accidentally. It wasn't exactly fair to fire a person for a "drug related accident", who had simply bumped an overhead rack because they misjudged by a couple inches, just because they had smoked some pot a few nights before. Still, it's illegal, so until the laws change, it's safer to stay within the law. And no, I don't do any illegal drugs, and I never had a workplace accident while I worked there.
I do know, through a second hand account, of a trucker who was involved in a fatality. He had smoked pot a few days before, and tested positive. The accident was a situation where a car struck another car, spun out of control into the path of the the truck. The trucker had no time to react. The actual person at fault for the accident was the driver of the car. Because the trucker had smoked pot, but was not under the influence at the time of the accident, he became liable for it, lost his job, and lost his commercial drivers license. It was a terrible way to shift the blame.
The same can happen if you've been drinking. Say you were drinking, and stopped legally at a red light. Another car rear ends you. Because you were under the influence, you are at fault, even though you did nothing wrong. It's wonderful how some of the laws work.
Both myself and a trucker friend of mine (no, not related to the above story), have a very high alcohol tolerance. we can both drink to what would be an illegal driving level without any measurable effects in reaction (or feeling it). We both know this, so we take precautions to ensure that even though we are physically and mentally capable of driving, we don't. He allows at least 12 hours from the end of drinking to the beginning of his work shift, just to be sure he won't lose his job or go to jail. He is (and does) have to take frequent random drug screenings that include alcohol tests. My only drug tests have been pre-employment, but still, I won't drink even the night before an interview. The night after a successful interview? Sure. :)