In college I was in the Wine Club, each day we tasted one variety, of varying costs (the prices were wholesale, and funded by a $30 membership fee, and departmental budget, so they were sometimes pricey). For a whole semester we were given the label, and (wholesale) price of the wine, the expensive ones won every time. The second semester, they stopped giving the prices. After this, the ranking got much more sporadic, though the scores skewed towards higher prices.
The best was when a $9.00 bottle of domestic (Sonoma) merlot tied with a $80 bottle of (French, forgot the region though) merlot that had a decent reputation.
This was a mixed class, with some people actually going to school for wine (HRM), and a minority of interested novices. The wines were selected by both the grad-students and the department sommelier. So there was some trained pallets.
Price is around 60% of perceived quality, it seems, no matter what the actual quality is.
Pure white on pure black is too high contrast for my tastes. If using bright on dark, I try for a light gray on black, it is a little better on the eyes. To much contrast is also not a good thing.
I still prefer green on black, I'm not sure if there is a perceptual reason for this, or just nostalgia, though.
All of this, of course, comes with the caveat: whatever works for you is obviously the superior answer.
Somewhat true, but you also forget the "TERROR" argument, and how it isn't good to switch leaders in the middle of a (perpetual) war, at least for the second time around.
The line of reasoning went something like this, John Kerry was a coward, and if he won the terrorists would win, forcing us all to convert to their religion, while eating our babies, and using the bible for toilet paper.
Pretty much the same thing we will hear from McCain in a couple months.
The wedge issues seem to be losing some clout, thankfully, though. With the economy tanking, gay people seems like less of a threat, it seems. That and Bush succeeded in killing the republican party. We can see this by having McCain being the nominee, and not the fundamentalist (king of all values/wedge issues) Huckabee.
I agree, though, on the whole American voters seem to be idiots. Either that, or it is easier to motivate people using moral outrage, over using logical (and sometimes technical) arguments. Of course fear is the universal motivator, both parties are equally adept at playing that card.
This is what happens when half of our country views education as a bad thing ("he's too educated!"), and almost altogether lack it themselves. We are functionally illiterate (even if we can read, on average, at the 9th grade level, we choose not to), and yet are expected to make decisions that affect the whole world, this isn't a good condition. Our founding father expected an "informed populace" as the grease lubricating democracy, and we pretty much fail on this.
Also, the fourth estate has completely failed us. Most "news" isn't, these days. We get a stream of idiotic commentators, equally from both sides of the (illusionary) spectrum, to give us the guise of "balance". When actual reasoning doesn't work like this, nor does the political map actually look like this (look at the actual margins in the red/blue states the last two elections, it hardly leads to the idea of polarity), so now we have to deal with some moronic idea of "us vs. them", which leads to the wholesale adoption of partisan dogmas in the spirit of neo-tribalism.
Sadly, this line of reasoning makes the problem nebulous, and thus almost impossible to assign blame, or actually FIX anything. The universal answer is "more education", but I'm beginning that this will actually work. Our government may be too corrupt to ever actually be corrected. We need a Constitutional reset button.
Then why are you still here? Look at "vice" products, such as tobacco and booze, they are taxed VERY heavenly, and mostly because of their "unpopularity".
Personally I see taxes against the oil companies as a perhaps necessary corrective agent (notice the hedge word). There is something that doesn't seem to point towards the economy working as it should when a series of companies are making record profits while being the center of a "crisis". Why are they making record profits, and why isn't ANY of this being passed down stream to the people who depend (literally) on their products?
Are we also ignoring the huge amount of subsidies we're handing them? I doubt that an increase in taxes will counterbalance the money our government is throwing at them.
Instead of taxing them, we should pull out subsidies in an amount equal to their rising profits. Would you get up in arms over that?
Its amusing, one of the guys in my father's tour group runs a jewelery store in New York City, and actually opened it up, looked at it through a loup, etc... And said that it would be damn hard to actually tell the difference. He's had it for a good six months, and it still works/looks fine.
This is anecdotal, so grains of salt may be necessary.
But then again I had a pair of Prada loafer/moccasins that wore out in a month (overstock special at Neiman Marcus), and I know people who sprung for expensive name brand handbags that broke in weeks.
A lot of the "luxury" goods are cheaply manufactured Chinese products as well.
As for the price, if the price is too high, don't buy it. (A price that you think is too high does not justify breaking the law to get it.)
First: breaking a law is not inherently bad. Breaking a bad law is at best a neutral act, and sometimes can be a good act. When 60% of your "customers" break a law, there is something terribly wrong with your business model AND the law. When the law is completely written by the industry, and exists only for the good of the industry, there also is something terribly wrong.
Laws exist for the common good, not for the good of corporations, unless the two intersect.
Buying directly from musicians don't work, since they have to buy their copies from the label. And most the time are contractually limited from being able to produce independent albums.
I can see the parents point, though. There is something fundamentally annoying about the "I Am Rich" bling, especially the stuff that really isn't much better than average priced stuff, but only exists as a very expensive brand name. Showing off your wealth (for the sake of showing it off) is at least crass, if not arrogant.
I personally don't have anything against people with more money than me, but I really dislike people who have to constantly make it known that they have more money than me.
Idiotic status symbols are pointless, and obnoxious. Are the wealthy REALLY that insecure feeling, that they must constantly point out that they can throw a grand at a stupid wrist watch with all the functionality and quality of my $50 Timex?
My Dad, on a recent trip to China, bought a Vacheron Constantin knock off (of a $25,000 watch), that has been appraised as genuine. It was $25. This leads me to the conclusion that its value ONLY exists as the brand name, and nothing else. This seems rather silly to me.
Interesting thought just popped in my head related to this:
Then again it'll be pretty hard to tell what some even stranger people regard as xxx.:).
What exactly is the standard of classifying something "porn" or "not porn". I'm generally against the.xxx TLD for censorship issues, but now I really wonder about the feasibility of it to begin with.
Is "erotica" porn? What about "artistic nudes"? What about just photos involving naughty bits? What about classical paintings? Erotic texts? The kama sutra? Online documents using the word "sex"?
There is no natural line to draw. There is a very broad and fuzzy line between "porn" and "not porn", so who would get to arbitrarily draw a line, and say "everything past this point is pornography".
I guess it is an inherent flaw in the thinkofthechildren ethic, whose children, and who is thinking? You say tah-mah-to, I say too-may-to, you say smut, I say good family fun.
Er... From your ending "Semper Fi", I'm guessing you were/are a Marine, so can you tell me if you were, or were not trained in land warfare? Most of the Marines I know fought on the ground, actually ALL of them (who saw combat, of course).
Even the Air Force and Navy has basic land war training, not as much as the Army and Marines, of course, but there still is a degree of it.
Splitting hairs, ftw!
I'm sorry, the term "warfighter" doesn't sound right, it sounds rather forced. Firefox's spell checker doesn't even pick it up (as if that means much)! I'll stick to my colloquialisms.:)
Huh? I refuse to break common semantics because of American military jargon. A soldier is someone serving in AN army, not THE army, to the rest of the world. Whatever we term them per specific branch doesn't change the fact that they all are soldiers.
Its like the PC newspeak thing ("personhole covers", etc...), except for the military.
We generally only hear about the bad eggs, and never really about the normal guy/gal in the service (or police). Most of my high school friends ended up in the Army or Navy, and none of them are really as you describe. The ones who went to Iraq/Afghanistan were DEEPLY effected by the experience, in negative ways. I actually have never met anyone who was happily following orders in those places, there is a deep conflict.
Even the people I know who joined for gung-ho post 9/11 patriotism are hurt by Iraq. The patriotism wears off rather fast in circumstances.
As for police... I have met some bad ones, but generally they are just working stiffs like the rest of us. I also know my fair share of ex-police, and they are among some of the nicest people I know. And most of my experiences with police have been positive, IF I'm not actually doing something wrong. A lot of police will give leniency (i.e. a warning) when they are enforcing a law they don't agree with, or you are just "technically" disobeying the law. They are, like the rest of us, just people.
Most cops are fine, as long as you are not an ass to them.
Every profession has assholes, you can't just stereotype everyone to whatever mold you want. Well you CAN, but then don't complain when your treated like an ass.
That said, I have met a couple gung-ho soldiers who would fall into the evil category, oddly most of them were Marines. This doesn't imply, though, that ALL of them are assholes.
You MUST live in poverty, to not be able to afford a "Y" or "O" key, or a comma key. Sucks to be you, perhaps we can get the UN to airdrop some keys to Anonymous Cowardisitan.
In much of the third world though, people ARE uneducated. Education often needs stability to happen, there is no real point in reading Shakespeare, or learning differential equations if your worried about genocide happening to you, or more worried about finding water.
Also malnutrition does lead to stupider people, especially when it hits children. Your brain needs nutrients to grow, take away those nutrients and it hinders development, which, for all intents and purposes, leads to stupidity.
I'm as misanthropic as the next basement dweller, but I have some issues with forced sterilization, and mass murder. I can understand (if not fully agree) with people who think that other species/ecosystems have as much right to exist as we do, but when we even even further decided that they have MORE rights, then I get a little confused. Aren't we just another species, and our cities/town/ghettos just another ecosystem?
The way I see it, the best way to improve conditions for everyone and everything is education. The more educated people are, the less children they have, the less they buy into extreme religious dogmas (which can be detrimental to human conditions). Education is also good for organization, which is essential for improving conditions, since most of the 3rd worlds problems can be attributed to bad governments.
Education would also increase the use of birth-control, both by giving people foresight, and by limiting bad religious dogmas against it. Which would lead to a decrease in population growth (many UN charts already show it evening out in the near future), in a couple decades perhaps Africa would be showing the same trend of much of the first world, falling populations.
Of course on problem with this is that these newly educated society would want the west's toys, meaning rabid (typo for rapid, but they both fit) industrialization, and all the problems that causes (see China).
But then to get a good education, the third world would also have to have stable governments first. Which is a somewhat a circular argument.
Its all about firehose... The whole "democracy" thing on the web, generally leads to worse content. The second you let people vote, you get the lowest common denominator... And this is/., so that is pretty damn low, even as elite we all view our selves.
The more Web 2.0/. gets, the less I want to read it... That and the new discussion system gives you less ability to ignore the trolls, either that or they are increasing in number of late.
Grr... Why the hell won't it let me post AC?! Is there a reason that it should display "You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later." for 10-15 minutes?
Phoenix gets this too in the winter. The cold air caps the warm (nasty) air underneath. But then again both Phoenix and LA are build in valleys. In winter nights here the sky turns a nice red color (the same color as northern "snow sky"), from all the light pollution bouncing off the smog layer. Though Phoenix has some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world, thanks to the brown cloud, and the huge amounts of desert dust in the air.
LA, of course, is much worse. But then again, I try to avoid that place like the plague. It takes 8 hours just to pass through town.
Dersert+Valley= an idiotic place to build a city, generally.
From what I here from my friends who spend time in the megalopolis' of China, though, LA and Phoenix has NOTHING on them. Pictures of Beijing and Shanghai that I've seen, are absolutely VILE. Not only is it high-rises to the horizon, but the sky is this awesome color of brown that only LA can dream of. It is almost opaque.
Sorry but, well, if you give a stupid person a steak knife and they stab themselves in the eye (and keep doing this) then you're surely accountable somewhere along the lines.
Now we enter "guns don't kill people; rapid projectiles kill people" territory. I think there is a line here, though. A knife (no matter the type) is considered dangerous, we enter my anti-anti-smoking argument now. You KNOW that severe bodily harm will result from stabbing yourself in the eye, any reasonable person does, thus if you do this the liability is solely yours. Just like if you bought a gun, any reasonable person knows the risks. Though, if you walk into a gun store, buy a gun, and tell the salesman "I'm going to use this to kill Joe Smith, in cold blood, even!" Then perhaps the store has some liability.
If I give a stupid person a steak knife, and they TELL me that they are going to use it to stab themselves in the eye, then there is SOME shared responsibility. Just like if you tell your psychiatrist that you plan on killing yourself and they don't report it. This is... arguable... But if you give a moron a knife for the explicit purpose of stabbing someone else in the eye... then your probably partly responsible.
McDonalds: This may have actually been ligitimate, IF (and only if) the coffee was DANGEROUSLY hot, meaning hot enough to be a threat. I've spilled my own coffee on my lap several times, and never had a sever burn, so it may be negligence on McDonalds part.
Car safety standards: These are needed, because shit happens to even the most competent among us. All of us have driven when we really shouldn't have at some point (distracted, tired, "only had a couple". None of us are infallible, even the smartest of us. Also... We share the roads with people who are infallible, AND with morons, teenagers, and illegal immigrants without US licenses/standards.
Road Signs... See above. Also notice that I am not psychic, so don't really know that there will be a series of radical S-turns with a 5000 ft drop on the other side, nor do people going the other directions.
OS's: Perhaps. BUT... Most people are ignorant when it comes to computers, they are rather new, and a whole generation of people (mostly) have no bloody clue. And really, if it wasn't for them, they never would have become the commodity that we all enjoy now.
Smoking: God I hate this one. No one who started smoking since 1950 actually thinks they are good for you (the term "coffin nails" is surprisingly old), and I would agree that this, at least, is a superfluous lawsuit.
But yes, sometimes I marvel at the ignorance of my fellow man, BUT i also realize that intelligence and being informed is not perfect insurance against idiotic actions. I also realize that sometimes corporations overstep their bounds, and act recklessly. Do you think that if you wander into the bad part of town, you should not be able to press charges against the guy who stole your new car? It was your fault for being there, after all.
Who the hell would name their children's genitals after FOOD? The person should be investigating these people. There has to be some mixed wiring at least.
Never mind, I just had a college flashback, with all the drunken "tube steak" references.
I kinda agree. Sadly he have to sensationalize the Higgs, and treat it as a forgone conclusion, meaning it wasn't as scientific as it could have been. Seriously, why the superfluous "God" prefix? It was unnecessary.
If we can't pick the extremes, and can't pick the middle, what is left? I'm genuinely curious on this. Too bad you posted as AC, since I'd like a answer to this quandary.
Any society will have an economy, and the only "none of the above" I can immediately see is "no economy", which is absurd.
Wow... she has never actually been in a movie, or show, that I've seen... Must be cool.
Seriously though, I never got Bill Nye, or Beakman, it was like science for kids with ADHD, too many flashed, noises, and too little content. My parents "made" me watch Nova, Cosmos (almost monthly, my mom had a crush on Sagan), and Mr. Wizard. The other "science of kids" shows were too distracting for me, or her. (also wasn't allowed to watch Sesame Street, since it was too stupid, and might give me ADD)
Of course this was all interspersed with David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau specials.
I never got shows, media, that talked DOWN to kids. Your supposed to leave some things above their heads, to make them want to look it up themselves. Thats how you give them the lust for knowledge, and not just mere information.
Slashdot Mirror
In college I was in the Wine Club, each day we tasted one variety, of varying costs (the prices were wholesale, and funded by a $30 membership fee, and departmental budget, so they were sometimes pricey). For a whole semester we were given the label, and (wholesale) price of the wine, the expensive ones won every time. The second semester, they stopped giving the prices. After this, the ranking got much more sporadic, though the scores skewed towards higher prices.
The best was when a $9.00 bottle of domestic (Sonoma) merlot tied with a $80 bottle of (French, forgot the region though) merlot that had a decent reputation.
This was a mixed class, with some people actually going to school for wine (HRM), and a minority of interested novices. The wines were selected by both the grad-students and the department sommelier. So there was some trained pallets.
Price is around 60% of perceived quality, it seems, no matter what the actual quality is.
Pure white on pure black is too high contrast for my tastes. If using bright on dark, I try for a light gray on black, it is a little better on the eyes. To much contrast is also not a good thing.
I still prefer green on black, I'm not sure if there is a perceptual reason for this, or just nostalgia, though.
All of this, of course, comes with the caveat: whatever works for you is obviously the superior answer.
Somewhat true, but you also forget the "TERROR" argument, and how it isn't good to switch leaders in the middle of a (perpetual) war, at least for the second time around.
The line of reasoning went something like this, John Kerry was a coward, and if he won the terrorists would win, forcing us all to convert to their religion, while eating our babies, and using the bible for toilet paper.
Pretty much the same thing we will hear from McCain in a couple months.
The wedge issues seem to be losing some clout, thankfully, though. With the economy tanking, gay people seems like less of a threat, it seems. That and Bush succeeded in killing the republican party. We can see this by having McCain being the nominee, and not the fundamentalist (king of all values/wedge issues) Huckabee.
I agree, though, on the whole American voters seem to be idiots. Either that, or it is easier to motivate people using moral outrage, over using logical (and sometimes technical) arguments. Of course fear is the universal motivator, both parties are equally adept at playing that card.
This is what happens when half of our country views education as a bad thing ("he's too educated!"), and almost altogether lack it themselves. We are functionally illiterate (even if we can read, on average, at the 9th grade level, we choose not to), and yet are expected to make decisions that affect the whole world, this isn't a good condition. Our founding father expected an "informed populace" as the grease lubricating democracy, and we pretty much fail on this.
Also, the fourth estate has completely failed us. Most "news" isn't, these days. We get a stream of idiotic commentators, equally from both sides of the (illusionary) spectrum, to give us the guise of "balance". When actual reasoning doesn't work like this, nor does the political map actually look like this (look at the actual margins in the red/blue states the last two elections, it hardly leads to the idea of polarity), so now we have to deal with some moronic idea of "us vs. them", which leads to the wholesale adoption of partisan dogmas in the spirit of neo-tribalism.
Sadly, this line of reasoning makes the problem nebulous, and thus almost impossible to assign blame, or actually FIX anything. The universal answer is "more education", but I'm beginning that this will actually work. Our government may be too corrupt to ever actually be corrected. We need a Constitutional reset button.
Then why are you still here? Look at "vice" products, such as tobacco and booze, they are taxed VERY heavenly, and mostly because of their "unpopularity".
Personally I see taxes against the oil companies as a perhaps necessary corrective agent (notice the hedge word). There is something that doesn't seem to point towards the economy working as it should when a series of companies are making record profits while being the center of a "crisis". Why are they making record profits, and why isn't ANY of this being passed down stream to the people who depend (literally) on their products?
Are we also ignoring the huge amount of subsidies we're handing them? I doubt that an increase in taxes will counterbalance the money our government is throwing at them.
Instead of taxing them, we should pull out subsidies in an amount equal to their rising profits. Would you get up in arms over that?
Its amusing, one of the guys in my father's tour group runs a jewelery store in New York City, and actually opened it up, looked at it through a loup, etc... And said that it would be damn hard to actually tell the difference. He's had it for a good six months, and it still works/looks fine.
This is anecdotal, so grains of salt may be necessary.
But then again I had a pair of Prada loafer/moccasins that wore out in a month (overstock special at Neiman Marcus), and I know people who sprung for expensive name brand handbags that broke in weeks.
A lot of the "luxury" goods are cheaply manufactured Chinese products as well.
As for the price, if the price is too high, don't buy it. (A price that you think is too high does not justify breaking the law to get it.)
First: breaking a law is not inherently bad. Breaking a bad law is at best a neutral act, and sometimes can be a good act. When 60% of your "customers" break a law, there is something terribly wrong with your business model AND the law. When the law is completely written by the industry, and exists only for the good of the industry, there also is something terribly wrong.
Laws exist for the common good, not for the good of corporations, unless the two intersect.
Buying directly from musicians don't work, since they have to buy their copies from the label. And most the time are contractually limited from being able to produce independent albums.
I can see the parents point, though. There is something fundamentally annoying about the "I Am Rich" bling, especially the stuff that really isn't much better than average priced stuff, but only exists as a very expensive brand name. Showing off your wealth (for the sake of showing it off) is at least crass, if not arrogant.
I personally don't have anything against people with more money than me, but I really dislike people who have to constantly make it known that they have more money than me.
Idiotic status symbols are pointless, and obnoxious. Are the wealthy REALLY that insecure feeling, that they must constantly point out that they can throw a grand at a stupid wrist watch with all the functionality and quality of my $50 Timex?
My Dad, on a recent trip to China, bought a Vacheron Constantin knock off (of a $25,000 watch), that has been appraised as genuine. It was $25. This leads me to the conclusion that its value ONLY exists as the brand name, and nothing else. This seems rather silly to me.
So now the web is going to degenerate into Usenet naming conventions?
http://slash.dot.dot.bork.bork.bork?
Interesting thought just popped in my head related to this:
Then again it'll be pretty hard to tell what some even stranger people regard as xxx. :).
What exactly is the standard of classifying something "porn" or "not porn". I'm generally against the .xxx TLD for censorship issues, but now I really wonder about the feasibility of it to begin with.
Is "erotica" porn? What about "artistic nudes"? What about just photos involving naughty bits? What about classical paintings? Erotic texts? The kama sutra? Online documents using the word "sex"?
There is no natural line to draw. There is a very broad and fuzzy line between "porn" and "not porn", so who would get to arbitrarily draw a line, and say "everything past this point is pornography".
I guess it is an inherent flaw in the thinkofthechildren ethic, whose children, and who is thinking? You say tah-mah-to, I say too-may-to, you say smut, I say good family fun.
Er... From your ending "Semper Fi", I'm guessing you were/are a Marine, so can you tell me if you were, or were not trained in land warfare? Most of the Marines I know fought on the ground, actually ALL of them (who saw combat, of course).
Even the Air Force and Navy has basic land war training, not as much as the Army and Marines, of course, but there still is a degree of it.
Splitting hairs, ftw!
I'm sorry, the term "warfighter" doesn't sound right, it sounds rather forced. Firefox's spell checker doesn't even pick it up (as if that means much)! I'll stick to my colloquialisms. :)
Huh? I refuse to break common semantics because of American military jargon. A soldier is someone serving in AN army, not THE army, to the rest of the world. Whatever we term them per specific branch doesn't change the fact that they all are soldiers.
Its like the PC newspeak thing ("personhole covers", etc...), except for the military.
Some soldiers != all soldiers.
We generally only hear about the bad eggs, and never really about the normal guy/gal in the service (or police). Most of my high school friends ended up in the Army or Navy, and none of them are really as you describe. The ones who went to Iraq/Afghanistan were DEEPLY effected by the experience, in negative ways. I actually have never met anyone who was happily following orders in those places, there is a deep conflict.
Even the people I know who joined for gung-ho post 9/11 patriotism are hurt by Iraq. The patriotism wears off rather fast in circumstances.
As for police... I have met some bad ones, but generally they are just working stiffs like the rest of us. I also know my fair share of ex-police, and they are among some of the nicest people I know. And most of my experiences with police have been positive, IF I'm not actually doing something wrong. A lot of police will give leniency (i.e. a warning) when they are enforcing a law they don't agree with, or you are just "technically" disobeying the law. They are, like the rest of us, just people.
Most cops are fine, as long as you are not an ass to them.
Every profession has assholes, you can't just stereotype everyone to whatever mold you want. Well you CAN, but then don't complain when your treated like an ass.
That said, I have met a couple gung-ho soldiers who would fall into the evil category, oddly most of them were Marines. This doesn't imply, though, that ALL of them are assholes.
You MUST live in poverty, to not be able to afford a "Y" or "O" key, or a comma key. Sucks to be you, perhaps we can get the UN to airdrop some keys to Anonymous Cowardisitan.
In much of the third world though, people ARE uneducated. Education often needs stability to happen, there is no real point in reading Shakespeare, or learning differential equations if your worried about genocide happening to you, or more worried about finding water.
Also malnutrition does lead to stupider people, especially when it hits children. Your brain needs nutrients to grow, take away those nutrients and it hinders development, which, for all intents and purposes, leads to stupidity.
I kind of like people... Being one and all.
I'm as misanthropic as the next basement dweller, but I have some issues with forced sterilization, and mass murder. I can understand (if not fully agree) with people who think that other species/ecosystems have as much right to exist as we do, but when we even even further decided that they have MORE rights, then I get a little confused. Aren't we just another species, and our cities/town/ghettos just another ecosystem?
The way I see it, the best way to improve conditions for everyone and everything is education. The more educated people are, the less children they have, the less they buy into extreme religious dogmas (which can be detrimental to human conditions). Education is also good for organization, which is essential for improving conditions, since most of the 3rd worlds problems can be attributed to bad governments.
Education would also increase the use of birth-control, both by giving people foresight, and by limiting bad religious dogmas against it. Which would lead to a decrease in population growth (many UN charts already show it evening out in the near future), in a couple decades perhaps Africa would be showing the same trend of much of the first world, falling populations.
Of course on problem with this is that these newly educated society would want the west's toys, meaning rabid (typo for rapid, but they both fit) industrialization, and all the problems that causes (see China).
But then to get a good education, the third world would also have to have stable governments first. Which is a somewhat a circular argument.
Its all about firehose... The whole "democracy" thing on the web, generally leads to worse content. The second you let people vote, you get the lowest common denominator... And this is /., so that is pretty damn low, even as elite we all view our selves.
The more Web 2.0 /. gets, the less I want to read it... That and the new discussion system gives you less ability to ignore the trolls, either that or they are increasing in number of late.
Grr... Why the hell won't it let me post AC?! Is there a reason that it should display "You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later." for 10-15 minutes?
Fine, no AC for me, mod me offtopic!
Phoenix gets this too in the winter. The cold air caps the warm (nasty) air underneath. But then again both Phoenix and LA are build in valleys. In winter nights here the sky turns a nice red color (the same color as northern "snow sky"), from all the light pollution bouncing off the smog layer. Though Phoenix has some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world, thanks to the brown cloud, and the huge amounts of desert dust in the air.
LA, of course, is much worse. But then again, I try to avoid that place like the plague. It takes 8 hours just to pass through town.
Dersert+Valley= an idiotic place to build a city, generally.
From what I here from my friends who spend time in the megalopolis' of China, though, LA and Phoenix has NOTHING on them. Pictures of Beijing and Shanghai that I've seen, are absolutely VILE. Not only is it high-rises to the horizon, but the sky is this awesome color of brown that only LA can dream of. It is almost opaque.
Sorry but, well, if you give a stupid person a steak knife and they stab themselves in the eye (and keep doing this) then you're surely accountable somewhere along the lines.
Now we enter "guns don't kill people; rapid projectiles kill people" territory. I think there is a line here, though. A knife (no matter the type) is considered dangerous, we enter my anti-anti-smoking argument now. You KNOW that severe bodily harm will result from stabbing yourself in the eye, any reasonable person does, thus if you do this the liability is solely yours. Just like if you bought a gun, any reasonable person knows the risks. Though, if you walk into a gun store, buy a gun, and tell the salesman "I'm going to use this to kill Joe Smith, in cold blood, even!" Then perhaps the store has some liability.
If I give a stupid person a steak knife, and they TELL me that they are going to use it to stab themselves in the eye, then there is SOME shared responsibility. Just like if you tell your psychiatrist that you plan on killing yourself and they don't report it. This is... arguable... But if you give a moron a knife for the explicit purpose of stabbing someone else in the eye... then your probably partly responsible.
Remember kids, drinking and analogies don't mix.
Rant much?
McDonalds: This may have actually been ligitimate, IF (and only if) the coffee was DANGEROUSLY hot, meaning hot enough to be a threat. I've spilled my own coffee on my lap several times, and never had a sever burn, so it may be negligence on McDonalds part.
Car safety standards: These are needed, because shit happens to even the most competent among us. All of us have driven when we really shouldn't have at some point (distracted, tired, "only had a couple". None of us are infallible, even the smartest of us. Also... We share the roads with people who are infallible, AND with morons, teenagers, and illegal immigrants without US licenses/standards.
Road Signs... See above. Also notice that I am not psychic, so don't really know that there will be a series of radical S-turns with a 5000 ft drop on the other side, nor do people going the other directions.
OS's: Perhaps. BUT... Most people are ignorant when it comes to computers, they are rather new, and a whole generation of people (mostly) have no bloody clue. And really, if it wasn't for them, they never would have become the commodity that we all enjoy now.
Smoking: God I hate this one. No one who started smoking since 1950 actually thinks they are good for you (the term "coffin nails" is surprisingly old), and I would agree that this, at least, is a superfluous lawsuit.
But yes, sometimes I marvel at the ignorance of my fellow man, BUT i also realize that intelligence and being informed is not perfect insurance against idiotic actions. I also realize that sometimes corporations overstep their bounds, and act recklessly. Do you think that if you wander into the bad part of town, you should not be able to press charges against the guy who stole your new car? It was your fault for being there, after all.
Who the hell would name their children's genitals after FOOD? The person should be investigating these people. There has to be some mixed wiring at least.
Never mind, I just had a college flashback, with all the drunken "tube steak" references.
You forgot the crappy glove enchant, and the mithril spurs.
I guess they aren't items unto themselves, but still.
Pedantry ho!
I kinda agree. Sadly he have to sensationalize the Higgs, and treat it as a forgone conclusion, meaning it wasn't as scientific as it could have been. Seriously, why the superfluous "God" prefix? It was unnecessary.
If we can't pick the extremes, and can't pick the middle, what is left? I'm genuinely curious on this. Too bad you posted as AC, since I'd like a answer to this quandary.
Any society will have an economy, and the only "none of the above" I can immediately see is "no economy", which is absurd.
Wow... she has never actually been in a movie, or show, that I've seen... Must be cool.
Seriously though, I never got Bill Nye, or Beakman, it was like science for kids with ADHD, too many flashed, noises, and too little content. My parents "made" me watch Nova, Cosmos (almost monthly, my mom had a crush on Sagan), and Mr. Wizard. The other "science of kids" shows were too distracting for me, or her. (also wasn't allowed to watch Sesame Street, since it was too stupid, and might give me ADD)
Of course this was all interspersed with David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau specials.
I never got shows, media, that talked DOWN to kids. Your supposed to leave some things above their heads, to make them want to look it up themselves. Thats how you give them the lust for knowledge, and not just mere information.
Don't forget "The Golden Ratio" by Mario Livio.
Roberto Vacca's "The Coming Dark Age" is also a fun one, if you can find it in print, and in english.