While I absolutely agree with you that I would also oppose such a being...
However, when speaking of religion, one way of defining morality is doing that which pleases god or that which god asks you to do.
By definition, obeying god is good, even if you don't think it is. By definition, disobeying god is evil, even you don't think it is. Obeying in the face of difficulty, doubts, or even complete incomprehension in the commands is, supposedly, one's obligation to god.
Again, I don't agree with that definition (and would find it difficult to do so because I don't believe there is a god, and even if there were, I pretty much wouldn't care what it thought past intellectual curiosity), but an argument can be made that even if you don't believe it to be so, according to a particular religious viewpoint, it's totally moral to kill your child if god says to do it.
Actually, it sounds almost infinitely more credible than phrenology because phrenology had zero evidence or mechanism to support its claims, while magnetic stimulation of the brain actually has some evidence of efficacy and proposes a mechanism.
I'm not saying this is necessarily *true* or *correct* (and in fact, I rather doubt it's what it's being hyped as - for sure I agree with you there) but it's decidedly more credible than phrenology.
Getting at your other stuff - the changes to society - there's a book (I won't call it a good one or even a likely one) called the Truth Machine about the invention of a device that could always detect lies and how it changed society. It's somewhat interesting, though I think a bit naive in a lot of ways.
I think it's pretty degrading to call the field "social sciences" too - but largely because while science is a noble pursuit, it's rather a limited way of describing what actually goes on in most social "science" work and doesn't give full credit to the fields involved.
What you're describing isn't bragging - it's actually self-effacing because you aren't ignoring a "flaw" or "limitation" you have in this context, but rather openly acknowledging it and then saying that you think you might have some compensating factors because nobody is going to be a perfect match.
To be honest, I think that kind of opener would actually get me more interested in someone who doesn't match my ideal than a standard opener from someone who does meet the "objective" criteria I have, just because it shows a bit of outside the box ability and I like that. It's less generic.
You don't have any integrity. You called women "bitches and whores" and you attempted to generalize an entire group of people based on your own misogynistic beliefs.
Then, when you get called on it, you play the victim card and accuse me of trying to spin it. Then you play the victim card and blame women again for the whole income issue on some stupid website because hey, men are *powerless* to not post their income.
And, you also missed the entirety of my point. Which I will restate for you because you are clearly not smart enough to get it:
By posting your income you are only increasing the number of women who are gold-diggers who will respond to your profile. Sure, it makes you more "competitive" but why would you want to be more competitive for women who you obviously loathe?
Like I said, I don't post my measurements or random superficial shit like that because - wait for it - I don't want men who are interested in that over the stuff I consider important. Do I get fewer responses than women who do post those things? I'm sure I do. But I don't get a lot of guys who can only talk about meaningless (to me) physical attributes. It's amazing how that works!
It's really not that hard. Stop playing the victim, stop trying to blame everyone else when you are complicit in the very behavior you decry.
I don't really know any other way to say it - if you can't get it past this point, all I can say is good day and good luck.
And so you think that means women are "bitches and whores" - your words.
You want to go on a misogynistic rant, that's perfectly fine, but you should know that it makes you sound like a truly awful person.
Let me ask you this: What kind of women do you think those men who include their income information in their OKC profile are trying to attract? If that information is supposed to be irrelevant as you're trying to argue, then why would a man include it? If a man doesn't want to attract women who are interested in his income over his personality, why include it?
I don't post my measurements or any stats about my weight or height (though I do include adjectives like "tall" and "active") in my profile because I don't want to attract men who are superficial - they don't interest me. So if men are uninterested in the gold-diggers, why include the information that attracts them?
It takes two to tango, and by posting their income levels those men are emphatically inviting gold-diggers to the dance.
Wanting a partner who is employed and capable of supporting himself is not the same as wanting some guy to leech off of. I'm well aware that there are many gold diggers out there (of both genders, btw), but when you use blanket statements as you did you give the impression that you believe that about ALL women.
If you honestly believe what you wrote, you have issues that have nothing to do with "women now adays" and everything to do with you.
Having a job vs. not having a job is a phase change. Making 35k vs. making 350k is, to me at least, not relevant.
I've dated men who were poor - my most was a social worker who made 25k a year. To me, what's important is that they have SOMETHING gainful to do in their lives, and by "gainful" I mean useful, important, purposeful going on. Employment status is often - not always - but often - a good gauge of whether someone is an adult and whether they are the kind of person I, personally, am interested (read: motivated, adult, capable of supporting themselves). The level they can support themselves at isn't relevant to me, but rather that they are capable of it and that they are driven to do it.
I don't know about you, but I think someone's ability to function as an adult in modern society is an INCREDIBLY important aspect of a relationship with them, and like I said, employment status is not that bad a metric for determining that when one is faced with the prospect of hundreds or thousands of options.
And no, an out of work guy should focus on whatever else he wants to focus on - but *I* personally, am not going to be interested in dating him for the reasons I explained above.
tl;dr version: I would date a man who was employed flipping burgers rather than a man who is unemployed because to me, that says quite a bit about the person's character in most circumstances.
No, it means that you shouldn't brag about how awesome and amazing you are. If you have to say "I am an amazing person" then that likely means, at least the way I'd think about it, that you have to say it because you can't show it.
Many men think that they have to talk about what a catch they are, how incredibly good looking they are, how fit they are, how they're so awesome and successful. If you are all of these things (or whatever else) and if it is actually important, it will be apparent.
A man who is legitimately secure and confident will not feel compelled to tell me how awesome he is. He'll know I'll see it or, if I don't see it, he'll know I'm not the right one.
THAT is what is meant by self-effacing in this context: Not being a braggart.
It isn't suggesting that people change who they are, but instead adopt a communication style that won't be so off-putting that the other party doesn't have any interest in taking the time to get to know them.
When I get a message from someone on a dating site and it's rife with errors, that just says to me that they don't care about what they're saying so I shouldn't either.
Being true to yourself doesn't mean coming off like a sub-literate, mouth-breathing moron. Or, if it does, I guess then by all means, one should carry on with that, but just expect that only people willing to settle for a sub-literate, mouth-breathing moron will be open to meeting them.
I can tell you what has worked with me (a reasonably typical actual geek female) in the past:
- As TFA suggests, communicating well. If you don't care enough to express yourself well then why should I care enough to listen?
- Don't be an egotist (again, the TFA suggests this). If you're wonderful, I'll figure it out; don't brag to me.
- Be interesting, not generic. By this I mean why say, "I like to read books" - well, no shit, Sherlock, but what books? Why?
- Don't be cynical. "This probably won't work/this is probably a waste of time/you're probably not a real person" - then why try? We all know that it's statistically unlikely, and we all know that there are spammers and bots out there. Why start with a negative?
- Do be employed, don't live at home. I neither want nor expect a man to pay my way, but I expect him to be a functioning adult in society, not a manchild. I know with the economy the way it is now that many people are unemployed - that's fine, but I'm not going to date an out-of-work guy and I think he probably shouldn't be dating either as he has bigger problems to work on than being dateless.
- Do be in reasonable shape. If you don't take care of/care about yourself, why should I care about you?
Basically, if I get a message from someone that fails any of that, it'll go into the bin.
As far as past that - yes, part of it is timing, part of it is just that spark that does or doesn't happen, and part of it is luck. The point of my post, and the larger point of TFA, is that without getting past that first part you can't get to the part that involves timing, spark or luck.
It's cool and all that you want to have an opinion about a situation you were not in - more power to you if doing that makes you feel somehow relevant. Me, I will just go along with the cops at the scene who said it couldn't be avoided, the hiway patrol investigation that cleared me of fault, and - probably most persuasive - my insurance company who said I wasn't at fault and paid up without any argument at all.
Just gonna say, I think experts in crashes and a corporation that has a financial interest in blaming me NOT blaming me pretty much trumps the blathering of some slashbot who wasn't there. Anyway, please feel free to keep on with the off topic and irrelevant fixation you have - I'll leave you to it.
I didn't focus on the details leading up to the accident because they are irrelevant - what was relevant was the horrible roll and flip and the fact that everyone came out of it unscathed.
In the circumstances that I faced, no, I did not have the option of simply slowing down - there was no shoulder what-so-ever, there was someone tailgating me, and I couldn't change lanes because there was a car there, and in front there was a very unsafe vehicle (long pipes jutting WAY out the back of it at pretty much the perfect level to come right into the passenger compartment and impale us), and basically it was a perfect storm of "well fuck, there aren't a whole lot of options here".
But I'm glad you felt compelled to focus on the irrelevant part of this and indulge in the whole Slashdot tradition of Monday morning quarterbacking shit you have no information about. It's cute - don't ever change.
Three weeks ago I was in a very bad accident in a Honda Fit, which is a TINY car. A tire blew out and, as luck would have it, we were in semi-tight traffic at speed, and my only choice was to go off the road.
At about 70 MPH I went off the road into a culvert and we rolled AND flipped (as in, rolled side to side AND flipped end over end). We went something like 200 feet before crashing to a stop. One of the wheels to the car was found almost 600 feet from where the car ended up. Not only that, but we were carrying a very full load - a camping trip had been underway - and so there were a lot of missile hazards in the car.
I wound up with a lot of cuts, a slightly (as in not bad enough to tube) collapsed lung, and a lot of bruises. My passenger shattered his arm but is expected to make a full recovery. When I was in the ER being checked out the highway patrol officer investigating the wreck came in and said he'd shake my hand or give me a hug if I wasn't so beat up because not only did I do everything I could to minimize the risk (going off road rather than smashing into other people), he had never seen a wreck that bad where there wasn't at least one fatality.
Literally every single person I spoke with said they were shocked we weren't killed when they found out I had been driving a Honda Fit.
So no, as you say - small cars do NOT need to be death traps. They are QUITE safe, assuming you go for a quality make and model.
You're precious. Maybe you should re-read the post I was responding to and then mine too.
And I didn't use quotes consistently because I wrote it from my phone. But hey, you thinking I'm a racist (despite the actual content of my post) is actually a pretty perfect example of why it's fucking stupid to criminalize "racist" speech: idiots like you who can't be bothered to try to understand what someone is saying would run around screaming "racist!" despite the other person's point being exactly the opposite. How embarrassing for you - you try to poke at me for asking "what is racist speech?" by implying that it's some kind of failing of mine that I even need to ask the question, but then you turn right around and misconstrue a pretty perfectly obvious example of NOT racism as racism.
Also, the reason I ignored the VIOLENT component is because the person I was responding to was getting pissy about *racist* speech and saying it should be criminalized. Perhaps if you weren't so fucking stupid you would have realized that was what I was responding to rather than trying to seem smart with your little "BTW...." aside. Hell, if you'd even just understood what I wrote you'd see that I specifically mentioned the violence component AND the racism component.
tl;dr version: idiots like you are exactly the reason why criminalizing speech is a bad idea - you are too fucking stupid to understand what other people are saying and thus assume the worst.
While I, too, hate perpetual copyright, the average person *is* able to tell and retell their own versions of those stories, too.
Look at an iconic character like Superman and then look around at various comics by various labels that all have a superman-like character.
Superman=Hyperion=Invincible=Powers=you can keep going and going. Each version of that character, each label tells the story of that character in a different way.
Superman is the ultimate boyscout with an impossibly good heart. Hyperion is a what-if superman was taken and raised by the government. Powers takes an entirely different approach to the idea of a walking god. Invincible is a retelling of the Superboy concept but with a more realistic (for very stretchy definitions of realistic) spin.
Write your own - the name doesn't matter with these kinds of things. The greeks and romans and every other culture in the past felt fine renaming and modifying myths to their heart's content - so, too, should you.
Don't forget that, outside of massively racist individuals and organizations he's basically going to be shunned by most regular people, employers and groups.
There are a myriad of problems with this contention of yours. Let me go through them:
1) What is "racist" speech? If I say someone is "ghetto fabulous" is that racist? If I say someone is a "redneck" is that racist? Or let's say I call someone a nigger - is that racist? If any of these are racist, what, exactly, is the cut-off point? At what point do we decide a term is worthy of prosecution vs. something that's offensive but not illegal?
1a) What would be the value in criminalizing speech from point 1? I agree that racism is incredibly offensive, but so what? I find a ton of things incredibly offensive - some, actually, much more so than racism - but I don't think that things that are *merely* offensive should be criminalized. In fact, I think that criminalizing these things actually winds up harming society because it drives the people who think and feel that way underground where they can be vastly more harmful because they can play into all kinds of persecution complexes outside of the light of day.
2) You are insane if you think it isn't necessary to constitutionally protect free speech in a society that values it and is democratic. Since 9/11, the US (which isn't actually democratic) has gleefully given up all manner of things that, previously, had been held as important and valuable, all because of fear.
Even worse, it is extremely easy for groups with money to shape public opinion and modify values over time so that what was previously taken as one of the fundamental rights is... not. Without constitutional protection fundamental rights would be stripped away in a heartbeat with NOTHING to stop them. With constitutional protection we at least can *try* to appeal to that document, though there is erosion - erosion that is at least slowed by the constitution.
You want to talk about Americans seeing things in black and white - that just isn't the case. It's more that we know ourselves and the world we live in, and I absolutely know that without the fundamental protections of our constitution, we would be even more in the thrall of moneyed interests than we already are. I have absolutely zero doubt that, if we didn't have such protections you would see things like Newscorp spending billions to make it a crime to denigrate Fox "news," service providers making it a crime to complain, publicly about services, etc.
3) What's the value in trying to scare people into thinking about what they say before they say it? As I said above, I would *much* rather have some racist asshole feel perfectly free to mouth off about how much he hates everyone who isn't just like him than I would have a culture where people are more circumspect and go underground and get much, much worse.
Speech - ANY speech - is fine as long as it is just speech. When it becomes a call to action, or turns into action, that's when it crosses a line.
The moron that this article about has basically wrecked his life by showing for ALL the world to see what a racist asshole he is. Oh, I suppose he'll find some "support" amongst people who think like him, but they, too, are marginalized because of their beliefs. They imagine they're martyrs now because people don't like their views - don't suggest that they be made martyrs in fact when the law prevents them from showing all the world how asinine they are.
Let me cut to the chase: the jokes in question were not particularly sophisticated, and, in fact, the attitude on Slashdot is, in fact, overwhelmingly misogynistic. Consequently, one can be excused, I think, for getting fucking tired of it.
Look at ANY thread on topics articles about the vast differences in gender representation in the technology field and you will see countless slashbots talking about how every woman they knew at university was just shopping for their Mrs. Degree, is an incompetent boob or a manhating, ball-busting bitch, or whatever other stereotype you want to insert. Further, the absolutely dismissive language that is used whe someone points out that, perhaps, it is that kind of attitude that leads to at least some of the gender imbalance is also pretty abhorrent.
At some point it stops being a joke and starts being something much worse. And then, of course, people like you step in and criticize anyone who complains about the misogyny as being overly sensitive, which basically reinforces that whole culture and on it goes.
Let me ask you a real question here. You criticized someone else for not lightening up and rolling with a joke. You got your undies in a wad over their criticism. Why the fuck aren't you following your own advice and lightening up, rolling with that (in my opinion justified) criticism, instead of defensively dismissing it as being without merit?
Has it ever occurred to you that the reason some people aren't laughing at those jokes is because they're sick and tired of it? Are you at least that self aware, that capable of understanding that other people - shocking as it may seem - might be just a little bored with such things?
My guess is probably not. You probably, honestly, imagine that you'e completely in the right here, as nothing you've said seems to indicate even the slightest hint that you can see the validity of anyone else's viewpoint but your own.
Personally, I love a GOOD joke at my own expense - but bullshit 50's stereotypes about how we wimminfolk are always using men and spending their money just aren't funny; they are old, played out, boring, low-hanging fruit offered up by simpletons. If you like humor as you claim above, then you ought to be lashing out at the people telling shitty "jokes" rather than the people who are sick and tired of hearing them.
Well, judging by your sig, you are obviously a toothless, uneducated, sister-fucking hillbilly because you want to talk about taking your bird dog to the range. How does a yokel such as yourself manage to get on the Internet? I assume you have Cleetus, who managed to get hisself some book learnin' and got through the 3rd grade to help you write one of them there fancy eeeelectronic mails or something?
Now, you aren't allowed to be bothered by any of that, you stupid hick, and any emotional response you might have to it, Clampet, is completely invalid because I'll just say now that I'm only kidding, and maybe if you weren't such a fucking country bumpkin who has sexual relations with any convenient farm animal (probably on the receiving end, at that) you would get the joke.
Now, if you aren't intellectually dishonest (which means you ain't a liar, in hickeese) you will immediately defend my comment because it included those magic words, "I'm joking," which makes everything all better.
People who bitch about price hikes because products get more expensive to make cleanly are idiots. It would be like bitching that food and drug safety regulations make medicine more expensive, or that building codes require safer (but often more expensive) materials than asbestos.
I'd absolutely be in favor of import taxes on goods produced in whole or part by factories that don't have modern standards & regular inspections, knowing full well it would raise prices. Use the taxes in part to help subsidize lower income people who would be most hurt by price increases.
At best some of our interns get stipends (very small stipends) if they are in certain programs, or they might be hired as work-study students if they show promise. By and large, however, no - they don't get paid cash.
However, we are obligated - very seriously obligated in the sense that the chancellor of research for the university will put her foot up a faculty member's ass and possibly exclude them from having ANY interns or graduate students working with them in the future - to provide a very educational opportunity for the interns. This means that while they do a fair amount of grunt work like making copies etc., they also have at least 1-2 hours/week of 1 on 1 time with their faculty advisor, they are assisted with doing things like making presentations at symposia or conferences, and they work on papers that use real, new data from the studies they're working on. For anyone who is really serious about getting into academia, this is a fantastic opportunity.
I can understand the other side of things - the comp. sci. people being farmed out as slave labor - but that's really an entirely different kettle of fish. I think comp. sci. interns should definitely get paid as they are often working for corporations rather than the university, and generating (ideally) revenue. My initial response was more just to address the parent poster who was saying they wished scientists had to do internships to point out that if they want a real career, they do. -
Slashdot Mirror
But I was assured that copyright laws and strict penalties for violating copyright would ensure the continued creation of new and amazing things.
Did the RIAA and MPAA *lie* to me!?
While I absolutely agree with you that I would also oppose such a being...
However, when speaking of religion, one way of defining morality is doing that which pleases god or that which god asks you to do.
By definition, obeying god is good, even if you don't think it is. By definition, disobeying god is evil, even you don't think it is. Obeying in the face of difficulty, doubts, or even complete incomprehension in the commands is, supposedly, one's obligation to god.
Again, I don't agree with that definition (and would find it difficult to do so because I don't believe there is a god, and even if there were, I pretty much wouldn't care what it thought past intellectual curiosity), but an argument can be made that even if you don't believe it to be so, according to a particular religious viewpoint, it's totally moral to kill your child if god says to do it.
Actually, it sounds almost infinitely more credible than phrenology because phrenology had zero evidence or mechanism to support its claims, while magnetic stimulation of the brain actually has some evidence of efficacy and proposes a mechanism.
I'm not saying this is necessarily *true* or *correct* (and in fact, I rather doubt it's what it's being hyped as - for sure I agree with you there) but it's decidedly more credible than phrenology.
Getting at your other stuff - the changes to society - there's a book (I won't call it a good one or even a likely one) called the Truth Machine about the invention of a device that could always detect lies and how it changed society. It's somewhat interesting, though I think a bit naive in a lot of ways.
I think it's pretty degrading to call the field "social sciences" too - but largely because while science is a noble pursuit, it's rather a limited way of describing what actually goes on in most social "science" work and doesn't give full credit to the fields involved.
What you're describing isn't bragging - it's actually self-effacing because you aren't ignoring a "flaw" or "limitation" you have in this context, but rather openly acknowledging it and then saying that you think you might have some compensating factors because nobody is going to be a perfect match.
To be honest, I think that kind of opener would actually get me more interested in someone who doesn't match my ideal than a standard opener from someone who does meet the "objective" criteria I have, just because it shows a bit of outside the box ability and I like that. It's less generic.
You don't have any integrity. You called women "bitches and whores" and you attempted to generalize an entire group of people based on your own misogynistic beliefs.
Then, when you get called on it, you play the victim card and accuse me of trying to spin it. Then you play the victim card and blame women again for the whole income issue on some stupid website because hey, men are *powerless* to not post their income.
And, you also missed the entirety of my point. Which I will restate for you because you are clearly not smart enough to get it:
By posting your income you are only increasing the number of women who are gold-diggers who will respond to your profile. Sure, it makes you more "competitive" but why would you want to be more competitive for women who you obviously loathe?
Like I said, I don't post my measurements or random superficial shit like that because - wait for it - I don't want men who are interested in that over the stuff I consider important. Do I get fewer responses than women who do post those things? I'm sure I do. But I don't get a lot of guys who can only talk about meaningless (to me) physical attributes. It's amazing how that works!
It's really not that hard. Stop playing the victim, stop trying to blame everyone else when you are complicit in the very behavior you decry.
I don't really know any other way to say it - if you can't get it past this point, all I can say is good day and good luck.
And so you think that means women are "bitches and whores" - your words.
You want to go on a misogynistic rant, that's perfectly fine, but you should know that it makes you sound like a truly awful person.
Let me ask you this: What kind of women do you think those men who include their income information in their OKC profile are trying to attract? If that information is supposed to be irrelevant as you're trying to argue, then why would a man include it? If a man doesn't want to attract women who are interested in his income over his personality, why include it?
I don't post my measurements or any stats about my weight or height (though I do include adjectives like "tall" and "active") in my profile because I don't want to attract men who are superficial - they don't interest me. So if men are uninterested in the gold-diggers, why include the information that attracts them?
It takes two to tango, and by posting their income levels those men are emphatically inviting gold-diggers to the dance.
Actually, let me respond again: Did you not read anything else in the first line you quoted?
I made the point that I emphatically don't expect or want to be supported by a man but you conveniently skipped that to go on your rant.
So, let me add another line:
- Possess reading comprehension and the ability to follow a line of reasoning.
Wanting a partner who is employed and capable of supporting himself is not the same as wanting some guy to leech off of. I'm well aware that there are many gold diggers out there (of both genders, btw), but when you use blanket statements as you did you give the impression that you believe that about ALL women.
If you honestly believe what you wrote, you have issues that have nothing to do with "women now adays" and everything to do with you.
You think it's about numbers, it's not.
Having a job vs. not having a job is a phase change. Making 35k vs. making 350k is, to me at least, not relevant.
I've dated men who were poor - my most was a social worker who made 25k a year. To me, what's important is that they have SOMETHING gainful to do in their lives, and by "gainful" I mean useful, important, purposeful going on. Employment status is often - not always - but often - a good gauge of whether someone is an adult and whether they are the kind of person I, personally, am interested (read: motivated, adult, capable of supporting themselves). The level they can support themselves at isn't relevant to me, but rather that they are capable of it and that they are driven to do it.
I don't know about you, but I think someone's ability to function as an adult in modern society is an INCREDIBLY important aspect of a relationship with them, and like I said, employment status is not that bad a metric for determining that when one is faced with the prospect of hundreds or thousands of options.
And no, an out of work guy should focus on whatever else he wants to focus on - but *I* personally, am not going to be interested in dating him for the reasons I explained above.
tl;dr version: I would date a man who was employed flipping burgers rather than a man who is unemployed because to me, that says quite a bit about the person's character in most circumstances.
No, it means that you shouldn't brag about how awesome and amazing you are. If you have to say "I am an amazing person" then that likely means, at least the way I'd think about it, that you have to say it because you can't show it.
Many men think that they have to talk about what a catch they are, how incredibly good looking they are, how fit they are, how they're so awesome and successful. If you are all of these things (or whatever else) and if it is actually important, it will be apparent.
A man who is legitimately secure and confident will not feel compelled to tell me how awesome he is. He'll know I'll see it or, if I don't see it, he'll know I'm not the right one.
THAT is what is meant by self-effacing in this context: Not being a braggart.
It isn't suggesting that people change who they are, but instead adopt a communication style that won't be so off-putting that the other party doesn't have any interest in taking the time to get to know them.
When I get a message from someone on a dating site and it's rife with errors, that just says to me that they don't care about what they're saying so I shouldn't either.
Being true to yourself doesn't mean coming off like a sub-literate, mouth-breathing moron. Or, if it does, I guess then by all means, one should carry on with that, but just expect that only people willing to settle for a sub-literate, mouth-breathing moron will be open to meeting them.
I can tell you what has worked with me (a reasonably typical actual geek female) in the past:
- As TFA suggests, communicating well. If you don't care enough to express yourself well then why should I care enough to listen?
- Don't be an egotist (again, the TFA suggests this). If you're wonderful, I'll figure it out; don't brag to me.
- Be interesting, not generic. By this I mean why say, "I like to read books" - well, no shit, Sherlock, but what books? Why?
- Don't be cynical. "This probably won't work/this is probably a waste of time/you're probably not a real person" - then why try? We all know that it's statistically unlikely, and we all know that there are spammers and bots out there. Why start with a negative?
- Do be employed, don't live at home. I neither want nor expect a man to pay my way, but I expect him to be a functioning adult in society, not a manchild. I know with the economy the way it is now that many people are unemployed - that's fine, but I'm not going to date an out-of-work guy and I think he probably shouldn't be dating either as he has bigger problems to work on than being dateless.
- Do be in reasonable shape. If you don't take care of/care about yourself, why should I care about you?
Basically, if I get a message from someone that fails any of that, it'll go into the bin.
As far as past that - yes, part of it is timing, part of it is just that spark that does or doesn't happen, and part of it is luck. The point of my post, and the larger point of TFA, is that without getting past that first part you can't get to the part that involves timing, spark or luck.
It's cool and all that you want to have an opinion about a situation you were not in - more power to you if doing that makes you feel somehow relevant. Me, I will just go along with the cops at the scene who said it couldn't be avoided, the hiway patrol investigation that cleared me of fault, and - probably most persuasive - my insurance company who said I wasn't at fault and paid up without any argument at all.
Just gonna say, I think experts in crashes and a corporation that has a financial interest in blaming me NOT blaming me pretty much trumps the blathering of some slashbot who wasn't there. Anyway, please feel free to keep on with the off topic and irrelevant fixation you have - I'll leave you to it.
I didn't focus on the details leading up to the accident because they are irrelevant - what was relevant was the horrible roll and flip and the fact that everyone came out of it unscathed.
In the circumstances that I faced, no, I did not have the option of simply slowing down - there was no shoulder what-so-ever, there was someone tailgating me, and I couldn't change lanes because there was a car there, and in front there was a very unsafe vehicle (long pipes jutting WAY out the back of it at pretty much the perfect level to come right into the passenger compartment and impale us), and basically it was a perfect storm of "well fuck, there aren't a whole lot of options here".
But I'm glad you felt compelled to focus on the irrelevant part of this and indulge in the whole Slashdot tradition of Monday morning quarterbacking shit you have no information about. It's cute - don't ever change.
Three weeks ago I was in a very bad accident in a Honda Fit, which is a TINY car. A tire blew out and, as luck would have it, we were in semi-tight traffic at speed, and my only choice was to go off the road.
At about 70 MPH I went off the road into a culvert and we rolled AND flipped (as in, rolled side to side AND flipped end over end). We went something like 200 feet before crashing to a stop. One of the wheels to the car was found almost 600 feet from where the car ended up. Not only that, but we were carrying a very full load - a camping trip had been underway - and so there were a lot of missile hazards in the car.
I wound up with a lot of cuts, a slightly (as in not bad enough to tube) collapsed lung, and a lot of bruises. My passenger shattered his arm but is expected to make a full recovery. When I was in the ER being checked out the highway patrol officer investigating the wreck came in and said he'd shake my hand or give me a hug if I wasn't so beat up because not only did I do everything I could to minimize the risk (going off road rather than smashing into other people), he had never seen a wreck that bad where there wasn't at least one fatality.
Literally every single person I spoke with said they were shocked we weren't killed when they found out I had been driving a Honda Fit.
So no, as you say - small cars do NOT need to be death traps. They are QUITE safe, assuming you go for a quality make and model.
You're precious. Maybe you should re-read the post I was responding to and then mine too.
And I didn't use quotes consistently because I wrote it from my phone. But hey, you thinking I'm a racist (despite the actual content of my post) is actually a pretty perfect example of why it's fucking stupid to criminalize "racist" speech: idiots like you who can't be bothered to try to understand what someone is saying would run around screaming "racist!" despite the other person's point being exactly the opposite. How embarrassing for you - you try to poke at me for asking "what is racist speech?" by implying that it's some kind of failing of mine that I even need to ask the question, but then you turn right around and misconstrue a pretty perfectly obvious example of NOT racism as racism.
Also, the reason I ignored the VIOLENT component is because the person I was responding to was getting pissy about *racist* speech and saying it should be criminalized. Perhaps if you weren't so fucking stupid you would have realized that was what I was responding to rather than trying to seem smart with your little "BTW...." aside. Hell, if you'd even just understood what I wrote you'd see that I specifically mentioned the violence component AND the racism component.
tl;dr version: idiots like you are exactly the reason why criminalizing speech is a bad idea - you are too fucking stupid to understand what other people are saying and thus assume the worst.
While I, too, hate perpetual copyright, the average person *is* able to tell and retell their own versions of those stories, too.
Look at an iconic character like Superman and then look around at various comics by various labels that all have a superman-like character.
Superman=Hyperion=Invincible=Powers=you can keep going and going. Each version of that character, each label tells the story of that character in a different way.
Superman is the ultimate boyscout with an impossibly good heart. Hyperion is a what-if superman was taken and raised by the government. Powers takes an entirely different approach to the idea of a walking god. Invincible is a retelling of the Superboy concept but with a more realistic (for very stretchy definitions of realistic) spin.
Write your own - the name doesn't matter with these kinds of things. The greeks and romans and every other culture in the past felt fine renaming and modifying myths to their heart's content - so, too, should you.
Don't forget that, outside of massively racist individuals and organizations he's basically going to be shunned by most regular people, employers and groups.
There are a myriad of problems with this contention of yours. Let me go through them:
1) What is "racist" speech? If I say someone is "ghetto fabulous" is that racist? If I say someone is a "redneck" is that racist? Or let's say I call someone a nigger - is that racist? If any of these are racist, what, exactly, is the cut-off point? At what point do we decide a term is worthy of prosecution vs. something that's offensive but not illegal?
1a) What would be the value in criminalizing speech from point 1? I agree that racism is incredibly offensive, but so what? I find a ton of things incredibly offensive - some, actually, much more so than racism - but I don't think that things that are *merely* offensive should be criminalized. In fact, I think that criminalizing these things actually winds up harming society because it drives the people who think and feel that way underground where they can be vastly more harmful because they can play into all kinds of persecution complexes outside of the light of day.
2) You are insane if you think it isn't necessary to constitutionally protect free speech in a society that values it and is democratic. Since 9/11, the US (which isn't actually democratic) has gleefully given up all manner of things that, previously, had been held as important and valuable, all because of fear.
Even worse, it is extremely easy for groups with money to shape public opinion and modify values over time so that what was previously taken as one of the fundamental rights is ... not. Without constitutional protection fundamental rights would be stripped away in a heartbeat with NOTHING to stop them. With constitutional protection we at least can *try* to appeal to that document, though there is erosion - erosion that is at least slowed by the constitution.
You want to talk about Americans seeing things in black and white - that just isn't the case. It's more that we know ourselves and the world we live in, and I absolutely know that without the fundamental protections of our constitution, we would be even more in the thrall of moneyed interests than we already are. I have absolutely zero doubt that, if we didn't have such protections you would see things like Newscorp spending billions to make it a crime to denigrate Fox "news," service providers making it a crime to complain, publicly about services, etc.
3) What's the value in trying to scare people into thinking about what they say before they say it? As I said above, I would *much* rather have some racist asshole feel perfectly free to mouth off about how much he hates everyone who isn't just like him than I would have a culture where people are more circumspect and go underground and get much, much worse.
Speech - ANY speech - is fine as long as it is just speech. When it becomes a call to action, or turns into action, that's when it crosses a line.
The moron that this article about has basically wrecked his life by showing for ALL the world to see what a racist asshole he is. Oh, I suppose he'll find some "support" amongst people who think like him, but they, too, are marginalized because of their beliefs. They imagine they're martyrs now because people don't like their views - don't suggest that they be made martyrs in fact when the law prevents them from showing all the world how asinine they are.
Let me cut to the chase: the jokes in question were not particularly sophisticated, and, in fact, the attitude on Slashdot is, in fact, overwhelmingly misogynistic. Consequently, one can be excused, I think, for getting fucking tired of it.
Look at ANY thread on topics articles about the vast differences in gender representation in the technology field and you will see countless slashbots talking about how every woman they knew at university was just shopping for their Mrs. Degree, is an incompetent boob or a manhating, ball-busting bitch, or whatever other stereotype you want to insert. Further, the absolutely dismissive language that is used whe someone points out that, perhaps, it is that kind of attitude that leads to at least some of the gender imbalance is also pretty abhorrent.
At some point it stops being a joke and starts being something much worse. And then, of course, people like you step in and criticize anyone who complains about the misogyny as being overly sensitive, which basically reinforces that whole culture and on it goes.
Let me ask you a real question here. You criticized someone else for not lightening up and rolling with a joke. You got your undies in a wad over their criticism. Why the fuck aren't you following your own advice and lightening up, rolling with that (in my opinion justified) criticism, instead of defensively dismissing it as being without merit?
Has it ever occurred to you that the reason some people aren't laughing at those jokes is because they're sick and tired of it? Are you at least that self aware, that capable of understanding that other people - shocking as it may seem - might be just a little bored with such things?
My guess is probably not. You probably, honestly, imagine that you'e completely in the right here, as nothing you've said seems to indicate even the slightest hint that you can see the validity of anyone else's viewpoint but your own.
Personally, I love a GOOD joke at my own expense - but bullshit 50's stereotypes about how we wimminfolk are always using men and spending their money just aren't funny; they are old, played out, boring, low-hanging fruit offered up by simpletons. If you like humor as you claim above, then you ought to be lashing out at the people telling shitty "jokes" rather than the people who are sick and tired of hearing them.
Well, judging by your sig, you are obviously a toothless, uneducated, sister-fucking hillbilly because you want to talk about taking your bird dog to the range. How does a yokel such as yourself manage to get on the Internet? I assume you have Cleetus, who managed to get hisself some book learnin' and got through the 3rd grade to help you write one of them there fancy eeeelectronic mails or something?
Now, you aren't allowed to be bothered by any of that, you stupid hick, and any emotional response you might have to it, Clampet, is completely invalid because I'll just say now that I'm only kidding, and maybe if you weren't such a fucking country bumpkin who has sexual relations with any convenient farm animal (probably on the receiving end, at that) you would get the joke.
Now, if you aren't intellectually dishonest (which means you ain't a liar, in hickeese) you will immediately defend my comment because it included those magic words, "I'm joking," which makes everything all better.
Right, you roadkill eating sheep raper?
Bye, Karma!
So fuck 'em when they whine about it.
People who bitch about price hikes because products get more expensive to make cleanly are idiots. It would be like bitching that food and drug safety regulations make medicine more expensive, or that building codes require safer (but often more expensive) materials than asbestos.
I'd absolutely be in favor of import taxes on goods produced in whole or part by factories that don't have modern standards & regular inspections, knowing full well it would raise prices. Use the taxes in part to help subsidize lower income people who would be most hurt by price increases.
At best some of our interns get stipends (very small stipends) if they are in certain programs, or they might be hired as work-study students if they show promise. By and large, however, no - they don't get paid cash.
However, we are obligated - very seriously obligated in the sense that the chancellor of research for the university will put her foot up a faculty member's ass and possibly exclude them from having ANY interns or graduate students working with them in the future - to provide a very educational opportunity for the interns. This means that while they do a fair amount of grunt work like making copies etc., they also have at least 1-2 hours/week of 1 on 1 time with their faculty advisor, they are assisted with doing things like making presentations at symposia or conferences, and they work on papers that use real, new data from the studies they're working on. For anyone who is really serious about getting into academia, this is a fantastic opportunity.
I can understand the other side of things - the comp. sci. people being farmed out as slave labor - but that's really an entirely different kettle of fish. I think comp. sci. interns should definitely get paid as they are often working for corporations rather than the university, and generating (ideally) revenue. My initial response was more just to address the parent poster who was saying they wished scientists had to do internships to point out that if they want a real career, they do. -
You sound like an insect. Human beings should have a broader education.