"Far less"? I have yet to find a girl that fulfills that first requirement!
Honestly, it's just a matter of asking. When I was young, I always thought I'd have that problem - then one day, while a little drunk, I just went up to a girl and asked directly. She said yes... Personal experience since then shows if you do it right, that method has about 5% success rate, which may sound low, but 1 in 20 aint bad, and it's pretty easy to ask 20 girls a night!
No women I know have a problem with being referred to as "girls"... perhaps in some English speaking cultures that may be considered sexist, but not anywhere I've lived (and right now, I don't live in an English speaking country).
Let's be fair here, though. These are a huge minority, and requires everyone involved to share similar values. More often than not people are simply too insecure to deal with "their [wo]man" doing a physical act with someone other than them. There are still those that would rather cheat than be honest with themselves and their partner and go open.
Unfortunately that's true - it seems to differ quite a lot in different cultures though. In both Sydney, Australia and Amsterdam, Netherlands, it was much easier to surround myself with like-minded people than here in Hannover, Germany - although it's not entirely impossible fortunately, it's just a matter of talking to people openly and seeing how they respond.
A non geeks requirements for a girl are far less. Will they have sex with me? Yes. Do I want to have sex with them? Yes. Boom they got a girlfriend.
I take a different train of thought to that - I'd say "they got someone to have sex with", not "they got a girlfriend". If I want to have sex with a girl, but am not interested in having a relationship with her, I won't take her out to dinner, I'll just ask, "Hey, would you like to get together for some casual sex sometime?" (generally prefaced with some comments about my assumption she's been eyeing me up recently or whatever - I'm not in to the whole "sex with strangers" thing, but I'm quite fine with casual sex with people I know). Generally the answer is no, but it's yes more often than you might expect if you've never tried it.
You realize you can have all that with someone who's not your mate. Even a platonic female friend.
It's not quite the same as a relationship though - with a relationship, there's an extra feeling of responsibility that encourages the "taking care of each other" thing that goes a step beyond what you have with even your closest friends. (to me at least)
And even then, there's friends with benefits to cover that last aspect missing from regular platonic friendship.
Of course that's true, and I clarified that point here
Ah, but that's when you simply go for the "best of both worlds" and have an open relationship. I'm currently single, but when I had a girlfriend, I'd have sex with her, and also my close female friends. She had sex with me and her close friends (both genders). Now that I'm single, I still have sex with my close female friends, but it's a different sort of situation to actually having a girlfriend.
(for reference, we didn't break up because of anything sex related - that side of our relationship was very healthy; we broke up because we had very different views on children (I want them, she didn't))
and there is really only one reason to take a girl out on a date....
It's comments like this that lend a strong argument as to why the stereotype of geeks never having girlfriends exists. Sex is great, and I enjoy it immensely, but I'd never consider it the "one reason" to be with a girl. It's great to share your thoughts with someone, have them share theirs with you; someone to laugh with, cry with; someone to look after you when you need it and give you the chance to look after them when they need it. My compatibility with a girl on ALL of these things is what I'm looking for when I go on a date with a girl, not just whether she'll put out at the end of the night.
Did you even read my post before replying? You're doing EXACTLY what I said people do - assuming that the "rebranding" came after it got all political, when in reality it occurred a long time ago in order to better fit the evidence at hand.
Sorry for my misuse of the word religion - obviously I wasn't clear enough in what I meant. I put the word in quotes precisely because I didn't really mean religion itself, but more or less a religious, dogmatic attitude. People who "religiously believe" one side or another without considering the evidence at hand, or deliberately cherry picking evidence that supports their existing beliefs.
As an atheist myself, there's no way I'd say "atheism is a religion". There's also no way I'd say that believing (or disbelieving) a particular scientific theory is a religion. I was referring to the overzealous behaviour that people on both sides of the debate seem to exhibit, taking things often to the absurd and beyond. That's pretty much why I put "religion" in quotes like that...
I didn't say we weren't having an effect on the environment, my point was that any and every natural event is given a globalwarming tag when it doesn't deserve one.
In many cases, that may be true, but the problem comes when you then begin to dismiss everything as being erroneously tagged when the tag might just be valid in some cases.
Your point about nutjobs is moot, because the very people who are driving AGW policy are nutjobs themselves. If you agree with me that Gore, Mann and Hansen are nutjobs, then the case for AGW falls, because they are its primary proponents.
I'm not familiar with Mann and Hansen at all other than seeing some data analysis attributed to them, and only know of Al Gore in passing (he seems a bit towards the nutjob side of things from what I've seen though). Bear in mind that I don't live in the US and so much of the "politics" of it is completely off my radar - the only time I ever see ANY debate is online, and unfortunately "online" tends to be where most nutjobs come out of the woodwork.
I don't accept that "they [Gore, Mann and Hansen] are its [Anthropogenic Global Warming's] primary proponents" though - they may be the most outspoken or best known names in the US (and perhaps elsewhere also), but as soon as ANY individual names start getting mentioned for things that are widely researched by thousands of people across the globe, the trouble begins. I don't care about the people, I care about the science - and from what I've seen, the results of that science is pretty solidly showing right now that there's an effect, and that we need more data, but in the meantime it's probably a good idea to be a bit more careful.
The problem is that the "religion" aspect extends to BOTH sides of the debate. Those who argue that climate change could cause a "Day After Tomorrow" sort of situation are at best, completely devoid of both knowledge and reasoning skills (and at worst, complete loonies). On the other side though, those who argue that "There is 'no way' humankind could ever have an effect on our environment" are equally lacking.
I am quite convinced that we are having a measurable effect on our environment, and that without fully understanding the processes involved, it is extremely critical that we examine what we're doing, what effect it is having and, at the same time, take measures to reduce our impact until it is better understood. For this reason, many people who argue that it's all some great conspiracy would be quite quick to label me in with the nutjobs, and this is an intellectually dishonest approach. The vast majority of people that I've talked to (and seen comments from here on slashdot) appear to have the same opinion as myself, however those who argue against us tend to trot out things such as your comment about earthquakes and lump the rest of us in with that crowd. I would kindly request that you stop doing so, as it doesn't serve anyone's interests and only aims to weaken the concept of scientific understanding further.
In France, such a mandate wouldn't be necessary. The only time you'll even see a game that isn't in French is if the publisher has never released a French version, and even then it's just as likely you'll never even see the game at all - it's a matter of both linguistic comfort (most French people are more comfortable in French, whereas many (although not all) Quebecois are comfortable in both French and English), and of linguistic pride - something that France and French people in general are very strong on (basically, even without a mandate, every video game shop in France would follow this rule anyway).
Is it sad that in this day and age it's entirely possible the parent ISN'T intended as a joke? (it's moderated "Funny" and I assume that was the intention, but it's not so easy to tell any more.)
Regardless of your opinions about the cause of it, I beg to differ that natural processes are not news. Hurricanes in south-eastern US, flooding in India, bushfires in Australia, large rocks hurtling through space that might hit us and wipe out all life on earth - all of these are things are "natural processes", but always make the news every time, and quite rightly so.
Why is it now called "Climate Change" and no longer "(Man Made) Global Warming"? [emphasis mine]
It hasn't been called "Global Warming" by anyone doing real research in a VERY long time. The mainstream continued to say "Global Warming" for a long time after researchers had stopped using the term, and unfortunately the mainstream didn't catch on until after it became as political as it has, making a lot of the people sceptical of it think that calling it "Climate Change" is a weasel attempt at making it more popular - this couldn't be further from the truth.
As the other replier pointed out, "Climate Change" is simply a more accurate and less confusing name. It DOES amount to the same thing in the long term and when you look at global scales, but to avoid people saying "it's colder where I am right now, so Global Warming is a myth", "Climate Change" is more sensible.
Unlike the Arctic (which is just frozen water), Antarctica is actually a continent.
Now -- I know I could be wrong -- but I always thought in order to be a continent, a land mass has to be... land? Am I wrong?
You're not wrong, but the GP's point was that this particular ice is already floating - it's "jutting out over the side" over the continent and is floating on water.
That said though, it's possible that the GP is missing the fact that although this ice is "mostly floating", it's entirely possible that it is at least in part being supported by the ice that it's connected to (which is sitting on land), which would mean two things:
That breaking off it is somewhat expected if it gets weaker due to melting or whatever as the weight of it is now too much for the ice it's connected to to hold.
That it WILL displace more water once it's broken away from the land ice as the water will now take up the weight that previously the land was supporting. In likelyhood, this is nowhere near as significant as ice that has fallen off land into the water, but it's still more than nothing.
Not to mention this is the month of Easter, when we should really be focussed on Jesus Christ who died and was resurrected nigh on two millenia ago.
But a significant percentage of the population don't believe that Jesus Christ existed (or, if he did, that the stories about him are true). Pretty much everyone accepts that both Darwin and Galileo existed and did do what it is said they did - even those who disagree with their findings/thoughts/ideas.
Unintrusive UIs would probably be what VLC/Quicktime use on OS X, with a control set that fades in and out if you move the mouse, in addition to the keyboard actions.
Don't forget support for the apple remote... that's one thing (out of several) I really love about VLC actually - sitting back on my couch and watching movies/TV with the ability to control it from the apple remote (which regardless of ones thoughts on Apple products in general, is a very nice little remote just for the simplicity). It's actually pretty much all I ever use the remote for as well, since I'm not much of an audiophile and FrontRow is just useless to me.
Not even that much... 100 Icelandic Kronur = $0.47 USD or 0.36 Euro at current exchange rates.
Other currencies with (essentially) the same name are doing much better though - 100 Swedish Kronor is a bit over $12, 100 Norwegian Kroner is currently a bit under $15 and 100 Danish Kroner is getting up near $18. That's just the Scandinavians though - 100 Czech Koruny is a bit under $5.
yet today Quebec doesn't seem to be the desolate Fallout style wasteland where everyone is fending for themselves and millions die that the article infers might happen.
Clearly you have never been to Quebec...
Okay, that was in jest, but more seriously, the biggest problem with this event would be that it'd be global (or at least 50% global) rather than localised, so while Quebec had a lot of help, the situation as mentioned would leave you with pretty much no help from anywhere. I doubt it'd be "a post apocalyptic wasteland" or anything as serious as the article as trying to infer, but it'd be REALLY annoying nevertheless.
Slashdot Mirror
"Far less"? I have yet to find a girl that fulfills that first requirement!
Honestly, it's just a matter of asking. When I was young, I always thought I'd have that problem - then one day, while a little drunk, I just went up to a girl and asked directly. She said yes... Personal experience since then shows if you do it right, that method has about 5% success rate, which may sound low, but 1 in 20 aint bad, and it's pretty easy to ask 20 girls a night!
Meh, I've got a platinum geek card thanks very much. Professional software developer with interests in mediaevalism, sci-fi and linguistics.
No women I know have a problem with being referred to as "girls"... perhaps in some English speaking cultures that may be considered sexist, but not anywhere I've lived (and right now, I don't live in an English speaking country).
Let's be fair here, though. These are a huge minority, and requires everyone involved to share similar values. More often than not people are simply too insecure to deal with "their [wo]man" doing a physical act with someone other than them. There are still those that would rather cheat than be honest with themselves and their partner and go open.
Unfortunately that's true - it seems to differ quite a lot in different cultures though. In both Sydney, Australia and Amsterdam, Netherlands, it was much easier to surround myself with like-minded people than here in Hannover, Germany - although it's not entirely impossible fortunately, it's just a matter of talking to people openly and seeing how they respond.
A non geeks requirements for a girl are far less. Will they have sex with me? Yes. Do I want to have sex with them? Yes. Boom they got a girlfriend.
I take a different train of thought to that - I'd say "they got someone to have sex with", not "they got a girlfriend". If I want to have sex with a girl, but am not interested in having a relationship with her, I won't take her out to dinner, I'll just ask, "Hey, would you like to get together for some casual sex sometime?" (generally prefaced with some comments about my assumption she's been eyeing me up recently or whatever - I'm not in to the whole "sex with strangers" thing, but I'm quite fine with casual sex with people I know). Generally the answer is no, but it's yes more often than you might expect if you've never tried it.
You realize you can have all that with someone who's not your mate. Even a platonic female friend.
It's not quite the same as a relationship though - with a relationship, there's an extra feeling of responsibility that encourages the "taking care of each other" thing that goes a step beyond what you have with even your closest friends. (to me at least)
And even then, there's friends with benefits to cover that last aspect missing from regular platonic friendship.
Of course that's true, and I clarified that point here
Ah, but that's when you simply go for the "best of both worlds" and have an open relationship. I'm currently single, but when I had a girlfriend, I'd have sex with her, and also my close female friends. She had sex with me and her close friends (both genders). Now that I'm single, I still have sex with my close female friends, but it's a different sort of situation to actually having a girlfriend.
(for reference, we didn't break up because of anything sex related - that side of our relationship was very healthy; we broke up because we had very different views on children (I want them, she didn't))
and there is really only one reason to take a girl out on a date....
It's comments like this that lend a strong argument as to why the stereotype of geeks never having girlfriends exists. Sex is great, and I enjoy it immensely, but I'd never consider it the "one reason" to be with a girl. It's great to share your thoughts with someone, have them share theirs with you; someone to laugh with, cry with; someone to look after you when you need it and give you the chance to look after them when they need it. My compatibility with a girl on ALL of these things is what I'm looking for when I go on a date with a girl, not just whether she'll put out at the end of the night.
Did you even read my post before replying? You're doing EXACTLY what I said people do - assuming that the "rebranding" came after it got all political, when in reality it occurred a long time ago in order to better fit the evidence at hand.
Sorry for my misuse of the word religion - obviously I wasn't clear enough in what I meant. I put the word in quotes precisely because I didn't really mean religion itself, but more or less a religious, dogmatic attitude. People who "religiously believe" one side or another without considering the evidence at hand, or deliberately cherry picking evidence that supports their existing beliefs.
As an atheist myself, there's no way I'd say "atheism is a religion". There's also no way I'd say that believing (or disbelieving) a particular scientific theory is a religion. I was referring to the overzealous behaviour that people on both sides of the debate seem to exhibit, taking things often to the absurd and beyond. That's pretty much why I put "religion" in quotes like that...
I didn't say we weren't having an effect on the environment, my point was that any and every natural event is given a globalwarming tag when it doesn't deserve one.
In many cases, that may be true, but the problem comes when you then begin to dismiss everything as being erroneously tagged when the tag might just be valid in some cases.
Your point about nutjobs is moot, because the very people who are driving AGW policy are nutjobs themselves. If you agree with me that Gore, Mann and Hansen are nutjobs, then the case for AGW falls, because they are its primary proponents.
I'm not familiar with Mann and Hansen at all other than seeing some data analysis attributed to them, and only know of Al Gore in passing (he seems a bit towards the nutjob side of things from what I've seen though). Bear in mind that I don't live in the US and so much of the "politics" of it is completely off my radar - the only time I ever see ANY debate is online, and unfortunately "online" tends to be where most nutjobs come out of the woodwork.
I don't accept that "they [Gore, Mann and Hansen] are its [Anthropogenic Global Warming's] primary proponents" though - they may be the most outspoken or best known names in the US (and perhaps elsewhere also), but as soon as ANY individual names start getting mentioned for things that are widely researched by thousands of people across the globe, the trouble begins. I don't care about the people, I care about the science - and from what I've seen, the results of that science is pretty solidly showing right now that there's an effect, and that we need more data, but in the meantime it's probably a good idea to be a bit more careful.
The problem is that the "religion" aspect extends to BOTH sides of the debate. Those who argue that climate change could cause a "Day After Tomorrow" sort of situation are at best, completely devoid of both knowledge and reasoning skills (and at worst, complete loonies). On the other side though, those who argue that "There is 'no way' humankind could ever have an effect on our environment" are equally lacking.
I am quite convinced that we are having a measurable effect on our environment, and that without fully understanding the processes involved, it is extremely critical that we examine what we're doing, what effect it is having and, at the same time, take measures to reduce our impact until it is better understood. For this reason, many people who argue that it's all some great conspiracy would be quite quick to label me in with the nutjobs, and this is an intellectually dishonest approach. The vast majority of people that I've talked to (and seen comments from here on slashdot) appear to have the same opinion as myself, however those who argue against us tend to trot out things such as your comment about earthquakes and lump the rest of us in with that crowd. I would kindly request that you stop doing so, as it doesn't serve anyone's interests and only aims to weaken the concept of scientific understanding further.
In France, such a mandate wouldn't be necessary. The only time you'll even see a game that isn't in French is if the publisher has never released a French version, and even then it's just as likely you'll never even see the game at all - it's a matter of both linguistic comfort (most French people are more comfortable in French, whereas many (although not all) Quebecois are comfortable in both French and English), and of linguistic pride - something that France and French people in general are very strong on (basically, even without a mandate, every video game shop in France would follow this rule anyway).
Is it sad that in this day and age it's entirely possible the parent ISN'T intended as a joke? (it's moderated "Funny" and I assume that was the intention, but it's not so easy to tell any more.)
Natural processes are not really news.
Regardless of your opinions about the cause of it, I beg to differ that natural processes are not news. Hurricanes in south-eastern US, flooding in India, bushfires in Australia, large rocks hurtling through space that might hit us and wipe out all life on earth - all of these are things are "natural processes", but always make the news every time, and quite rightly so.
Why is it now called "Climate Change" and no longer "(Man Made) Global Warming"? [emphasis mine]
It hasn't been called "Global Warming" by anyone doing real research in a VERY long time. The mainstream continued to say "Global Warming" for a long time after researchers had stopped using the term, and unfortunately the mainstream didn't catch on until after it became as political as it has, making a lot of the people sceptical of it think that calling it "Climate Change" is a weasel attempt at making it more popular - this couldn't be further from the truth.
As the other replier pointed out, "Climate Change" is simply a more accurate and less confusing name. It DOES amount to the same thing in the long term and when you look at global scales, but to avoid people saying "it's colder where I am right now, so Global Warming is a myth", "Climate Change" is more sensible.
Unlike the Arctic (which is just frozen water), Antarctica is actually a continent.
Now -- I know I could be wrong -- but I always thought in order to be a continent, a land mass has to be... land? Am I wrong?
You're not wrong, but the GP's point was that this particular ice is already floating - it's "jutting out over the side" over the continent and is floating on water.
That said though, it's possible that the GP is missing the fact that although this ice is "mostly floating", it's entirely possible that it is at least in part being supported by the ice that it's connected to (which is sitting on land), which would mean two things:
"Some plants and animals may have to adapt". Yeah? Many plants in Antarctica?
Apparently not a lot, but still some...
Not to mention this is the month of Easter, when we should really be focussed on Jesus Christ who died and was resurrected nigh on two millenia ago.
But a significant percentage of the population don't believe that Jesus Christ existed (or, if he did, that the stories about him are true). Pretty much everyone accepts that both Darwin and Galileo existed and did do what it is said they did - even those who disagree with their findings/thoughts/ideas.
Unintrusive UIs would probably be what VLC/Quicktime use on OS X, with a control set that fades in and out if you move the mouse, in addition to the keyboard actions.
Don't forget support for the apple remote... that's one thing (out of several) I really love about VLC actually - sitting back on my couch and watching movies/TV with the ability to control it from the apple remote (which regardless of ones thoughts on Apple products in general, is a very nice little remote just for the simplicity). It's actually pretty much all I ever use the remote for as well, since I'm not much of an audiophile and FrontRow is just useless to me.
1400 miles away is CLOSE... my mother lives about 11000 miles away from me at present.
Not even that much... 100 Icelandic Kronur = $0.47 USD or 0.36 Euro at current exchange rates.
Other currencies with (essentially) the same name are doing much better though - 100 Swedish Kronor is a bit over $12, 100 Norwegian Kroner is currently a bit under $15 and 100 Danish Kroner is getting up near $18. That's just the Scandinavians though - 100 Czech Koruny is a bit under $5.
At least we don't have to deal with that moronic 'OMG ponies' theme this year.
You're right... OMG KITTENZ is much better as I'm sure everyone can agree.
yet today Quebec doesn't seem to be the desolate Fallout style wasteland where everyone is fending for themselves and millions die that the article infers might happen.
Clearly you have never been to Quebec...
Okay, that was in jest, but more seriously, the biggest problem with this event would be that it'd be global (or at least 50% global) rather than localised, so while Quebec had a lot of help, the situation as mentioned would leave you with pretty much no help from anywhere. I doubt it'd be "a post apocalyptic wasteland" or anything as serious as the article as trying to infer, but it'd be REALLY annoying nevertheless.