You could get into jewelry making. Sites like Think-Geek have bracelets made out of cat5 cable. If you have old random objects I'm sure you could get creative and make some bracelets and necklaces.
What's scary to me is all of the things that were really done on this simulation are skills that in my opinion the people should have had already. Is society really so far gone that people lack basic skills like cooking?
"We've all become acutely aware of the importance of water conservation"
Same goes for people who live through drouts, are environmentally conscious, live in parts of the world without much water, or even have a well at their house with finite water.
"minimizing our garbage output"
Same for people who are environmentally conscious... remember "reduce, reuse, recycle"? Same with composting...
"The crew bakes bread"
LOTS of people bake bread. I'm sure a large percentage of families have at one point or another attempted baking bread.
"waters the "crops" (spouts and lettuce they are growing)"
Some people water gardens. I water house plants...
"re-fuels the generator"
You re-fuel everything that uses fuel. It doesn't fill itself.
When I got Comcast, the CD I was provided not work as my computer was not Windows. I called them on the phone and told them I was running Linux. They said OK and got the computer working. No problems whatsoever.
It would be a nice solution for much of Africa, where they still don't understand HIV/AIDS and that is part of the problem. Sexual education has a long way to go there.
Another problem is that using a condom is a big no-no culturally. It's seen as being unmasculine, in a culture that is still extremely chauvanistic. Womens rights has a long way to go there.
Also, magic cures are still in use in much of the continent. There are various religions and tribes and just general hear-say that is completely wrong. I recall reading that some of them thought having sex with a virgin was a cure, for example.
And it's not so simple as educating people there, as most cannot afford an education. And it's not as simple as handing out condoms, as changing a whole culture takes time and work.
The idea is that nicotine releases happy chemicals in your brain. I think we've already known this for a while - it's why it's so hard to quit smoking. Now they are realizing that happy chemicals can treat some psychological disorders. Plausible.
However, there is a problem with this theory that we've recognized for a long time. When we artifically create these chemicals in the brain via medications or other chemicals and drugs, we get used to having the feeling. Then, in ordinary situations where we are supposed to experience happiness (ex. a day off, a sunny day, a good dessert, a good song) we don't feel anything. This leads further into depression because people literally cannot find happiness in activities they once found enjoyable. Any of the "happy chemicals" that might go off naturaly are so negligible compared to the constant chemicals caused by the drugs that the good experiences may just as well have never happened.
So, nicotine makes you happy? Probably. Can help with certain mental disorders? Again, probably. But should it be used / is it the best solution? That is what's debatable.
Unfortunately, the gas prices are too high for a lot of people. And by too high I don't mean that they can actually afford it but complain a lot.
I know several people who live a good distance from their job (an hour or two drive)and they have to work overtime in order to afford the gas for driving to work, plus have extra to pay the bills.
Really, there is no easy solution for this. One man who lives two hours from his job has been looking 11 years for a type of job he wants / is qualified for in his area, and can't find one. The logical argument is for him to move, but he also has a wife, two kids, and a life established at home.
Many others live in the country where there simply is no work, and so they have to drive a minimum hour in some direction to find a job. Arguing that everyone from the country in this situation should move closer to a job is just silly. And there is no public transportation there either - no buses or trains or taxis. Since everyone leaves at different times and to very different places, carpooling is mostly not an option.
Those of us who live near our work, or can take the bus, or make enough to afford gas sometimes wonder if it's really that terrible that the gas prices went up. Unfortunately, we may be in a minority.
Neither can I... and if I think back to highschool I have vivid memories of the teacher saying "Ok, there are 3 papers with no name" and we all would go up and debate whose handwriting it looked like. Most people could not recognize their own and had to look for answers they knew they had put down, or notes or doodles in the margins.
picture the crowd becoming confused, unable to move, dizzy and falling over, hallucinating...
and that lucky few who are allergic to it, vomiting and such.
Not such a fun picture as a riot overcome by giggles.
It may or may not be better than just pelting them with rubber bullets to disperse. It's intresting that this way more people would probably be detained rather than having a chance to run away.
We talk of saving all our data so that the future humans can understand the truth about the beginning of the universe, the truth implying what we currently hypothesize happened.
But isn't it possible that the future people will use our own data to disprove this theory and prove another?
The same thing happened when the Earth was thought to be stationary. There were theories that supported this idea, and the data corresponded well enough for them to accept it as truth. Later on, a better theory came along which we use now.
Who knows what new data and innovative theories will reveal?
The reason for multiple email accounts and especially aliases and such is for personal safety on the web.
There are countless articles on kids and also adult idiots who meet up in chat rooms, hand out their personal data like it was free candy, and then get fucked over in various ways because they weren't careful enough.
I have a specific alias to be associated with all my chatroom activities so they can't tie that version of me to the me in the real world. I also have a pen name and substitute fake names for real names when I write.
Things have gotten bad enough with employers looking up personal web accounts of potential employees, and making biased decisions based on things written there. Sometimes, I think, a bit of annonymity is needed to maintain sanity.
At the risk of getting marked troll or flamebait, it almost sounds like a pseudo communism. There are bins for them to have shirts, and free food... Google takes care of everything for them. Throw in the "you are all alike" attitude, especially evinced by the random desks and overcrowding.
Since most of this sounds a bit non-standard with companies, it will be interesting to see how well it ends up working in the long run.
I'm going into my junior year of college in the fall, and I've been at two colleges so far (started at an artsy fartsy one, and then to a more tech savvy school). I've met about two people who did not have a Facebook or Myspace account. Counting myself, that would be 3.
I'm a dying breed where I have enough confidence to make friends in person. The typical process at a University is to look up groups having to do with your interest in clubs, which classes and majors you are in, and what hobbies you have. Once you have said list of people, add them all as "friends", post on a message board, and then everyone accepts that those are truly your friends. When you finally meet them on campus sometime, act as if you've always known each other.
My process is more along the lines of talking to the people I sit next to at any given event or class. Go figure. I also don't feel the need to keep a diary or 10,000 photos documenting my life.
I am not wealthy, and I've met three nice policemen and one ass.
I was at a festival and found a 2 year old boy alone in the street, lost and afraid. I brought him to a policeman who immediately made an announcement to find his mother, and was very good with the little boy.
My friend wrecked her car on a back road into a tree because of gravel, and I was with her. We needed a policeman to come interview us and file a report before we could have the car towed. He was polite to us.
At a college cafeteria I left my things while I got a plate of food and was robbed of my wallet, keys, and cell phone. The police at the college successfully retrieved my belongings within the hour.
The only time one was rude was when I wrecked my car and was in the hospital and in shock, and a policeman thought it was necessary to come into my hospital room and start asking me dozens of questions.
While I agree on principle that we should weed out the "dumb shits", not all religious people can be blanketed under this category, nor athiests excluded.
A religous person who keeps their beliefs fairly quiet, perhaps will share them but not zealously, is fine by me. I can even lend them an ear to hear their beliefs and theories, and can say at the end of the day it was interesting.
Religious people can be zealous idiots just as much as athiests can, who protests outside churches and try to convert believers to their firm, scientific, disbelief. In the scientific community, let facts speak for themselves. In religious communities, let freedom of thought reign.
"Is this yet another sign of the typical media industry 'head in the sand, refuse to change' approach, or might we be seeing the early stages or some actual change?"
I think it's a little of both. They'd LIKE to keep their head in the sand, but change cannot be stopped. It's inevitable that eventually they won't be able to ignore the problem any longer.
Lately people are desperate for friends and life partners. It's obviuos if you just pay attention to the media. How many dating sites are there? Chat rooms? Interest groups? In recent years I've noticed that less and less people seem to be able to go out, meet people, and make friends. This seems to especially be a problem for older rather than younger people. They only social skill they knew was going to bars, and when they realize they no longer want a drunk friend/partner, they face complete isolation. Any new tech that allows people to be social and safe will be popular.
This idea is absolutely ridiculous. Capslock is a very valuable key when you're typing a lot of acronyms, and even with an acronym once in a while it has been proven that it's faster to type it with capslock down rather than use shift for each letter. We learned as much in middle school typing class. Secondly, I happen to utilize the capslock key quite often at my job when I type in supplier codes which are sequences of capital letters and numbers. If it bothers you so damned much rip the key off your keyboard.
If we keep adding planets we'll need a new mnemonic phrase for the kids at school to learn our solar system. Any suggestions?
practice makes perfect but...
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
Practice makes perfect but to be an expert or pridigy you still need to have some natural talent, and want to do what you're good at.
I'm naturally good at art, but I made a decision not to persue that as a career. It's nothing more than a hobby, even though I love it.
What I want to do is become a mechanical engineer. That was a risky decision because I really struggle with math. It's not that I can't do it, but it takes about ten times the amount of work as most people who focus their life toward math/science. I learn differently somehow, and usually need several examples and more practice. I got an A in my Calc class in college, but I needed nonstop work to get that A. I might be able to work hard enough to learn the required material for what I want to do, but it'll always be obvious my natural talent is in the arts.
I've watched some good talk shows (either Maury or Montel, or both) where they featured child prodigies. I recall there being an asian girl of around 8 who has published several good books that she's written herself. There was a 5 year old girl who was already a blackbelt at karate. I also saw a special on some other channel featuring a very young boy who was pretty much an expert at violin.
Slashdot Mirror
You could get into jewelry making. Sites like Think-Geek have bracelets made out of cat5 cable. If you have old random objects I'm sure you could get creative and make some bracelets and necklaces.
What's scary to me is all of the things that were really done on this simulation are skills that in my opinion the people should have had already. Is society really so far gone that people lack basic skills like cooking?
"We've all become acutely aware of the importance of water conservation"
Same goes for people who live through drouts, are environmentally conscious, live in parts of the world without much water, or even have a well at their house with finite water.
"minimizing our garbage output"
Same for people who are environmentally conscious... remember "reduce, reuse, recycle"? Same with composting...
"The crew bakes bread"
LOTS of people bake bread. I'm sure a large percentage of families have at one point or another attempted baking bread.
"waters the "crops" (spouts and lettuce they are growing)"
Some people water gardens. I water house plants...
"re-fuels the generator"
You re-fuel everything that uses fuel. It doesn't fill itself.
"washes a bit of laundry by hand "
So do I when it says "handwash only"
"prepares home cooked meals"
So can most people I know, if they have to.
"more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles"
Why is this supposed to be surprising? A lot of people don't have cars.
There are peoples in cities, who have taxis, buses, subways, trains, carpooling, bikes, legs, etc.
There are people in the countryside, farms etc, who may not have need of a car because they walk or use animals on their land.
There are teens and college students everywhere who are likely to have a computer and not yet have a vehicle.
If anything, that car analogy makes the numbers seem a lot less staggering.
When I got Comcast, the CD I was provided not work as my computer was not Windows. I called them on the phone and told them I was running Linux. They said OK and got the computer working. No problems whatsoever.
"and Hermione and Snape both die in the final Harry Potter book." ... you suck
*is defeated*
It would be a nice solution for much of Africa, where they still don't understand HIV/AIDS and that is part of the problem. Sexual education has a long way to go there. Another problem is that using a condom is a big no-no culturally. It's seen as being unmasculine, in a culture that is still extremely chauvanistic. Womens rights has a long way to go there. Also, magic cures are still in use in much of the continent. There are various religions and tribes and just general hear-say that is completely wrong. I recall reading that some of them thought having sex with a virgin was a cure, for example. And it's not so simple as educating people there, as most cannot afford an education. And it's not as simple as handing out condoms, as changing a whole culture takes time and work.
The idea is that nicotine releases happy chemicals in your brain. I think we've already known this for a while - it's why it's so hard to quit smoking. Now they are realizing that happy chemicals can treat some psychological disorders. Plausible. However, there is a problem with this theory that we've recognized for a long time. When we artifically create these chemicals in the brain via medications or other chemicals and drugs, we get used to having the feeling. Then, in ordinary situations where we are supposed to experience happiness (ex. a day off, a sunny day, a good dessert, a good song) we don't feel anything. This leads further into depression because people literally cannot find happiness in activities they once found enjoyable. Any of the "happy chemicals" that might go off naturaly are so negligible compared to the constant chemicals caused by the drugs that the good experiences may just as well have never happened. So, nicotine makes you happy? Probably. Can help with certain mental disorders? Again, probably. But should it be used / is it the best solution? That is what's debatable.
Unfortunately, the gas prices are too high for a lot of people. And by too high I don't mean that they can actually afford it but complain a lot.
I know several people who live a good distance from their job (an hour or two drive)and they have to work overtime in order to afford the gas for driving to work, plus have extra to pay the bills.
Really, there is no easy solution for this. One man who lives two hours from his job has been looking 11 years for a type of job he wants / is qualified for in his area, and can't find one. The logical argument is for him to move, but he also has a wife, two kids, and a life established at home.
Many others live in the country where there simply is no work, and so they have to drive a minimum hour in some direction to find a job. Arguing that everyone from the country in this situation should move closer to a job is just silly. And there is no public transportation there either - no buses or trains or taxis. Since everyone leaves at different times and to very different places, carpooling is mostly not an option.
Those of us who live near our work, or can take the bus, or make enough to afford gas sometimes wonder if it's really that terrible that the gas prices went up. Unfortunately, we may be in a minority.
Neither can I... and if I think back to highschool I have vivid memories of the teacher saying "Ok, there are 3 papers with no name" and we all would go up and debate whose handwriting it looked like. Most people could not recognize their own and had to look for answers they knew they had put down, or notes or doodles in the margins.
picture the crowd becoming confused, unable to move, dizzy and falling over, hallucinating... and that lucky few who are allergic to it, vomiting and such. Not such a fun picture as a riot overcome by giggles. It may or may not be better than just pelting them with rubber bullets to disperse. It's intresting that this way more people would probably be detained rather than having a chance to run away.
We talk of saving all our data so that the future humans can understand the truth about the beginning of the universe, the truth implying what we currently hypothesize happened. But isn't it possible that the future people will use our own data to disprove this theory and prove another? The same thing happened when the Earth was thought to be stationary. There were theories that supported this idea, and the data corresponded well enough for them to accept it as truth. Later on, a better theory came along which we use now. Who knows what new data and innovative theories will reveal?
The reason for multiple email accounts and especially aliases and such is for personal safety on the web.
There are countless articles on kids and also adult idiots who meet up in chat rooms, hand out their personal data like it was free candy, and then get fucked over in various ways because they weren't careful enough.
I have a specific alias to be associated with all my chatroom activities so they can't tie that version of me to the me in the real world. I also have a pen name and substitute fake names for real names when I write.
Things have gotten bad enough with employers looking up personal web accounts of potential employees, and making biased decisions based on things written there. Sometimes, I think, a bit of annonymity is needed to maintain sanity.
At the risk of getting marked troll or flamebait, it almost sounds like a pseudo communism. There are bins for them to have shirts, and free food... Google takes care of everything for them. Throw in the "you are all alike" attitude, especially evinced by the random desks and overcrowding.
Since most of this sounds a bit non-standard with companies, it will be interesting to see how well it ends up working in the long run.
I'm going into my junior year of college in the fall, and I've been at two colleges so far (started at an artsy fartsy one, and then to a more tech savvy school). I've met about two people who did not have a Facebook or Myspace account. Counting myself, that would be 3.
I'm a dying breed where I have enough confidence to make friends in person. The typical process at a University is to look up groups having to do with your interest in clubs, which classes and majors you are in, and what hobbies you have. Once you have said list of people, add them all as "friends", post on a message board, and then everyone accepts that those are truly your friends. When you finally meet them on campus sometime, act as if you've always known each other.
My process is more along the lines of talking to the people I sit next to at any given event or class. Go figure. I also don't feel the need to keep a diary or 10,000 photos documenting my life.
I am not wealthy, and I've met three nice policemen and one ass.
I was at a festival and found a 2 year old boy alone in the street, lost and afraid. I brought him to a policeman who immediately made an announcement to find his mother, and was very good with the little boy.
My friend wrecked her car on a back road into a tree because of gravel, and I was with her. We needed a policeman to come interview us and file a report before we could have the car towed. He was polite to us.
At a college cafeteria I left my things while I got a plate of food and was robbed of my wallet, keys, and cell phone. The police at the college successfully retrieved my belongings within the hour.
The only time one was rude was when I wrecked my car and was in the hospital and in shock, and a policeman thought it was necessary to come into my hospital room and start asking me dozens of questions.
... to living forever!
Honestly though, as cool as it sounds, I can't help but wonder what adverse side effects there might be for some individuals.
While I agree on principle that we should weed out the "dumb shits", not all religious people can be blanketed under this category, nor athiests excluded.
A religous person who keeps their beliefs fairly quiet, perhaps will share them but not zealously, is fine by me. I can even lend them an ear to hear their beliefs and theories, and can say at the end of the day it was interesting.
Religious people can be zealous idiots just as much as athiests can, who protests outside churches and try to convert believers to their firm, scientific, disbelief. In the scientific community, let facts speak for themselves. In religious communities, let freedom of thought reign.
+5 Insightful
"Is this yet another sign of the typical media industry 'head in the sand, refuse to change' approach, or might we be seeing the early stages or some actual change?" I think it's a little of both. They'd LIKE to keep their head in the sand, but change cannot be stopped. It's inevitable that eventually they won't be able to ignore the problem any longer.
i've got to ask, what's the origin of all these internet = tubes comments?
Lately people are desperate for friends and life partners. It's obviuos if you just pay attention to the media. How many dating sites are there? Chat rooms? Interest groups? In recent years I've noticed that less and less people seem to be able to go out, meet people, and make friends. This seems to especially be a problem for older rather than younger people. They only social skill they knew was going to bars, and when they realize they no longer want a drunk friend/partner, they face complete isolation. Any new tech that allows people to be social and safe will be popular.
This idea is absolutely ridiculous. Capslock is a very valuable key when you're typing a lot of acronyms, and even with an acronym once in a while it has been proven that it's faster to type it with capslock down rather than use shift for each letter. We learned as much in middle school typing class. Secondly, I happen to utilize the capslock key quite often at my job when I type in supplier codes which are sequences of capital letters and numbers. If it bothers you so damned much rip the key off your keyboard.
If we keep adding planets we'll need a new mnemonic phrase for the kids at school to learn our solar system. Any suggestions?
Practice makes perfect but to be an expert or pridigy you still need to have some natural talent, and want to do what you're good at.
I'm naturally good at art, but I made a decision not to persue that as a career. It's nothing more than a hobby, even though I love it.
What I want to do is become a mechanical engineer. That was a risky decision because I really struggle with math. It's not that I can't do it, but it takes about ten times the amount of work as most people who focus their life toward math/science. I learn differently somehow, and usually need several examples and more practice. I got an A in my Calc class in college, but I needed nonstop work to get that A. I might be able to work hard enough to learn the required material for what I want to do, but it'll always be obvious my natural talent is in the arts.
I've watched some good talk shows (either Maury or Montel, or both) where they featured child prodigies. I recall there being an asian girl of around 8 who has published several good books that she's written herself. There was a 5 year old girl who was already a blackbelt at karate. I also saw a special on some other channel featuring a very young boy who was pretty much an expert at violin.