For me, it depends on the weather. If the weather is nice or a little cold, I don't mind walking. But if it's hot and humid out, I'll get all hot and sweaty out walking, then just feel dirty when I finally get to the restaurant.
A lot of urban areas in the US see people walking, but where I used to live, it was a 15-20 minute DRIVE to reach the nearest restaurants. Walking isn't realistic for every locale.
Most Americans don't spend 30 minutes a week walking. As for alcohol, I don't drink often, and I usually have someone sober drive me. I don't usually drink at resturants, but at bars or clubs. In the case of the latter, unless I have a driver, I'll only get a couple drinks when I first arrive, then not leave for at least 3 hours. The main club I go to has a 24/7 cafe just down the street, and I've sobered up there many, many nights before driving home.
Worse case scenario, I get a blanket out of the trunk and curl up in the back seat until I'm sober.
That said, do you think there's an "optimal" size for a city?
I like living out in the country, but I'd also like to be close to a relatively large city, where I can find just about anything I need -- even if it's not open 24/7.
I totally agree. I refuse to go anywhere in rush hour traffic. If I find myself in it for some reason, I'll find a restaurant or some diversion for an hour, then try again.
What I especially hate is when you get stuck in bad traffic unknowingly. Like everything is smooth sailing, but then you get near a wreck or some road construction, but then you're stuck and can't get out of it. I get really, really pissed off at the asshole who'll get in the lane that's going to end, speed to the end of it, then force their way in front of everyone. A lot of times, I'll get half into the lane that's going to close so they can't get around me.
Even in moderate traffic, I get really taxed mentally if I've been driving for over, say, 15 minutes. It puts me in a bad mood for hours. Especially if it causes me to run late for something -- which is an whole other source of stress in the same vein. Though I think the sources of traffic and the extremely negative social view of tardiness are pretty similar. When you consider that everyone has to rush to work by 9 and leave at 6, and being late is a supreme sin, then of course they're all driving like maniacs.
I know, I know, a lot of people will argue, "well, you should leave earlier." I see asking employees to leave early just in case there's traffic the same as call centers asking employees to leave early so they can boot their computers before their shift starts. (This assumes that you can't start your shift a little early, which some decent employers allow.)
The whole problem of traffic is absurd. It's based on a bunch of lemmings deciding that the best time to do anything is the exact same time everyone else is doing it. It's not economically feasible to build road systems that don't get backed up at peak traffic times. So the only solution is to spread the peak out over the day. A city will spend millions of dollars improving roads, but not a single penny trying to promote telecommuting or more flexible shifts. It kills me that I've been jammed up somewhere for 20 minutes at 6pm. But just a couple hours later at 8, it only takes 5 minutes to get past the same stretch of road.
They are generally the same, just with different flavors and textures, with one exception. Some toothpastes have an extra ingredient. It's out old antibacterial friend triclosan. I don't usually like antibacterial soaps (reasons have been argued as nauseaum), but for toothpastes, it makes a lot of sense. I think all the major brands have a product line with triclosan in it, and I highly recommend those over the others.
Don't brush too vigorously: you'll end up with with completely different problem of receding gums. If you don't have a really good electric toothbrush, get one. I use an Oral-B Triumph. I was totally amazed at how much I liked it. I thought it would just be a gimmick, but it's not. It's the best investment I've ever made into a gadget.
I also find 30 seconds of Listerine after brushing helps a lot, too.
Another thing I use daily is Johnson and Johnson Stim-U-Dent sticks. They take a little getting used to, but I really like them.
If his work isn't meeting the client's needs, then I wouldn't call it "done", or at least not "done right". Maybe the GP should have said, "If the work gets done on time and done right, I don't have a shit what else you do." I just assumed "done right" when I read it.
...can you think of any software that would get you easier, indeed any, credit from the bank, or, software that would help you sell your latest high tech gizmo to someone who just lost thier job and is having thier mortgage foreclosed?
When you say, "hey, we can replace 100 people with software" it suddenly becomes more frugal to spend money on a couple developers than on 100 people. Often, business processes and business software (usually very tightly coupled) are much more inefficient than they could be. Hell, I work at a company of 20 folks, and I know for a fact I could rewrite our internal software so that 18 or 19 people could accomplish the same amount of work.
When you have massively parallel tasks -- say 500 people all doing the same thing -- if you can rewrite your software to make them even 5% more productive, you'll only need 475 people do to the same work.
The thing is, there WILL be layoffs, we've already seen it. But there is still work to be done. They're going to be looking for ways to still get the necessary work done, but with less people doing it. I think "better software" is going to be a common answer to that problem.
An independently owned and operated wrapper site for wikipedia that has an ad at the top. All the revenue from the ads is then donated by the owner of the wrapper site to wikipedia.
That's funny, sure, but I'm not sure the Funny mod is appropriate. But this is exactly the kind of behavior I'd expect from most "mods" or admins somewhere. A lot of people are just out to do what they feel is unpopular to "the masses", but in their own circle of elites, is viewed as preferable.
So when the masses come in and say they like what the elites are doing, the elites have to rethink their position, just to avoid being mainstream.
It's the age old catharsis debate. One could equally argue that high-quality computer-generated child pornography could actually KEEP pedophiles from molesting children, as it gives them a safe outlet for their perversions without harming anyone.
Why don't we just send them to foreign counties where the exercise of their fantasies is legal? Then there's no need to lock them up.
You're hiding behind a law, but you're not hitting the real issue: What is "okay"? Where do you draw the line on what kind of sexual relations are acceptable, and what aren't? And what gives you the right to force your ideas onto other parent's kids, who might have different ideas than you do?
I mean, I think we've gone too far. Infanticide used to be a mother's given right, and now we're to the point of not even being able to decide when our own children can become sexually active, with whom, how the are educated, or any other damn thing.
Christianity has poisoned our moral compass. When we think it's okay to lock people away for having consensual sex with someone who has been sexually mature for years, that mothers ought not have the right to choose not to have their children (even the face of the gross overpopulation of the planet), and now that we can't even make drawings that YOU consider lewd because you think it's wrong?
What the fuck? Keep your morality to yourself. What you think is no more or less "right" than what anyone else thinks.
If some guy wants to jack off to itchy and scratchy, who the fuck cares? If he decides to touch your children in a way that you don't approve of, that's illegal and you have a right to prosecute him. But up until that point, who the fuck do you think you are to meddle in his life and his freedoms?
The truth is, most people are, in some way or another, sick fucks. Most people, though, keep their perversions in check. Some don't. Some are murderers or thieves or politicians or rapists. But most aren't.
I don't understand the moralist desire to bend every other person on the planet to do things THEIR way. It's so militant and aggressive and authoritarian. In its own way, it's a lot sicker than child pornography. Being so far obsessed with your own morality that you want to totally FUCK someone over in pretty much the worst way you can -- throwing them into prision -- simply because they have thoughts you don't agree with?
Wow, just wow. I really don't know who's more demented. The daddy molesting his little boy or people like you, who'd have people molested in prison for years, just because they entertain a thought in their head that you disapprove of.
I don't care if this blows my karma. I just can't stand to see people trying to shove their beliefs down the throats of everyone else under penalty of law.
I personally think a lot of kids get molested. Those that don't end up "experimenting" with other kids their age. I think it's so commonplace, and that it has always been so commonplace throughout human history, that it might even be considered a natural part of our existence. One that by modern thought is undesirable, but that wasn't always so. You might look up the practice of pederasty sometime, or arranged marriages, or any other number of practices that have occurred and still do occur amongst folks of this human race.
Pretty sure the ancient Hebrew words the writers used originally mean 24 hours, or more loosely, a day is equal to the span of time wherein one period of day followed by a period of night. So your answer is the definition of the word used by the original writers -- who I am sure would not have called it a day if that's not what they meant. Had they meant "indeterminate amount of time", they probably would have wrote that.
And if you can't trust the original authors, whooo boy, I don't even need to point out the problem there, do I?
The best answer that a practiced scientist and atheist can give on the spot is that some higher form of life evolved and then populated the earth with life. That is, aliens evolved & put life on earth. But, the aliens themselves would have had to evolved through some natural process. THAT is his answer to intelligent design. He answered NOTHING, but merely moved the issue to another planet. It is circular reasoning.
Yeah, okay. And how is saying "god did it" any different? If ID is supposed to be an intelligent answer to the origins of life, you can't relegate how god himself came into existence to mysticism. You can't say "well, it doesn't matter" or "well, he always existed".
That's why ID is a pile of junk. If you say that man COULD NOT have come into existence without a creator, because he is complex and intelligent, then you also have to agree that god himself COULD NOT have come into existence without a creator.
ID is basically saying, "well, some forms of life need a creator, but others don't. we get to pick which is which."
I've read that some of the GMO foods we eat now were created by the "bombard and mutate" method you're describing, and that we really have no idea exactly what changes have been made. A lot of the changes are categorized as "junk dna", but who knows if it really does anything.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat before Monsanto hits me with a brain control ray.:)
So what should people be calling cheddar cheese? A cheddar-style cheese? Or is that to say the only types of cheeses made in Cheddar is, in fact, cheddar cheese? What if a cheesemaker in Cheddar were to make swiss-style cheese? Would it properly be called "Cheddar Cheese" as well?
I think the term cheddar is for a style of cheese, with a particular flavor, not cheese from a particular place. And when you think about it, that makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, I remember in UW, you could fall off bridges to your death. It was, in some places, a bit like a 3D platform game. What I thought was most impressive was the interactive nature of items, just like in the rest of the Ultima series. You could pick up items and even throw them.
Comparing the gameplay to a modern RPG, it was actually pretty good. It had an interesting setting and story, and interesting magic system, and lots of room to explore. The only downside is that the entire game was in a dungeon setting. No free-roaming across Brittania. (But we did finally get to see all of Brittania in 3D in U9, seven years later.)
Slashdot Mirror
For me, it depends on the weather. If the weather is nice or a little cold, I don't mind walking. But if it's hot and humid out, I'll get all hot and sweaty out walking, then just feel dirty when I finally get to the restaurant.
A lot of urban areas in the US see people walking, but where I used to live, it was a 15-20 minute DRIVE to reach the nearest restaurants. Walking isn't realistic for every locale.
Most Americans don't spend 30 minutes a week walking. As for alcohol, I don't drink often, and I usually have someone sober drive me. I don't usually drink at resturants, but at bars or clubs. In the case of the latter, unless I have a driver, I'll only get a couple drinks when I first arrive, then not leave for at least 3 hours. The main club I go to has a 24/7 cafe just down the street, and I've sobered up there many, many nights before driving home.
Worse case scenario, I get a blanket out of the trunk and curl up in the back seat until I'm sober.
That said, do you think there's an "optimal" size for a city?
I like living out in the country, but I'd also like to be close to a relatively large city, where I can find just about anything I need -- even if it's not open 24/7.
As an American, I say:
Walking 30 minutes to go to a restaurant? Are you out of your mind?
That's all. :D
I totally agree. I refuse to go anywhere in rush hour traffic. If I find myself in it for some reason, I'll find a restaurant or some diversion for an hour, then try again.
What I especially hate is when you get stuck in bad traffic unknowingly. Like everything is smooth sailing, but then you get near a wreck or some road construction, but then you're stuck and can't get out of it. I get really, really pissed off at the asshole who'll get in the lane that's going to end, speed to the end of it, then force their way in front of everyone. A lot of times, I'll get half into the lane that's going to close so they can't get around me.
Even in moderate traffic, I get really taxed mentally if I've been driving for over, say, 15 minutes. It puts me in a bad mood for hours. Especially if it causes me to run late for something -- which is an whole other source of stress in the same vein. Though I think the sources of traffic and the extremely negative social view of tardiness are pretty similar. When you consider that everyone has to rush to work by 9 and leave at 6, and being late is a supreme sin, then of course they're all driving like maniacs.
I know, I know, a lot of people will argue, "well, you should leave earlier." I see asking employees to leave early just in case there's traffic the same as call centers asking employees to leave early so they can boot their computers before their shift starts. (This assumes that you can't start your shift a little early, which some decent employers allow.)
The whole problem of traffic is absurd. It's based on a bunch of lemmings deciding that the best time to do anything is the exact same time everyone else is doing it. It's not economically feasible to build road systems that don't get backed up at peak traffic times. So the only solution is to spread the peak out over the day. A city will spend millions of dollars improving roads, but not a single penny trying to promote telecommuting or more flexible shifts. It kills me that I've been jammed up somewhere for 20 minutes at 6pm. But just a couple hours later at 8, it only takes 5 minutes to get past the same stretch of road.
They are generally the same, just with different flavors and textures, with one exception. Some toothpastes have an extra ingredient. It's out old antibacterial friend triclosan. I don't usually like antibacterial soaps (reasons have been argued as nauseaum), but for toothpastes, it makes a lot of sense. I think all the major brands have a product line with triclosan in it, and I highly recommend those over the others.
Have you tried 30 seconds of Listerine after every brush? It's helped my teeth tremendously. I think the alcohol kills the bacteria.
Don't brush too vigorously: you'll end up with with completely different problem of receding gums. If you don't have a really good electric toothbrush, get one. I use an Oral-B Triumph. I was totally amazed at how much I liked it. I thought it would just be a gimmick, but it's not. It's the best investment I've ever made into a gadget.
I also find 30 seconds of Listerine after brushing helps a lot, too.
Another thing I use daily is Johnson and Johnson Stim-U-Dent sticks. They take a little getting used to, but I really like them.
If his work isn't meeting the client's needs, then I wouldn't call it "done", or at least not "done right". Maybe the GP should have said, "If the work gets done on time and done right, I don't have a shit what else you do." I just assumed "done right" when I read it.
...can you think of any software that would get you easier, indeed any, credit from the bank, or, software that would help you sell your latest high tech gizmo to someone who just lost thier job and is having thier mortgage foreclosed?
When you say, "hey, we can replace 100 people with software" it suddenly becomes more frugal to spend money on a couple developers than on 100 people. Often, business processes and business software (usually very tightly coupled) are much more inefficient than they could be. Hell, I work at a company of 20 folks, and I know for a fact I could rewrite our internal software so that 18 or 19 people could accomplish the same amount of work.
When you have massively parallel tasks -- say 500 people all doing the same thing -- if you can rewrite your software to make them even 5% more productive, you'll only need 475 people do to the same work.
The thing is, there WILL be layoffs, we've already seen it. But there is still work to be done. They're going to be looking for ways to still get the necessary work done, but with less people doing it. I think "better software" is going to be a common answer to that problem.
Sorry to feed the trolls, but I can't resist pointing out that the conclusion is a classic example of a false dilemma.
"If we didn't evolve... then god created us."
Hear, hear. I don't know why more people don't realize that.
Superfetch. Can you start photoshop in 5 seconds on XP?
Here's my idea:
An independently owned and operated wrapper site for wikipedia that has an ad at the top. All the revenue from the ads is then donated by the owner of the wrapper site to wikipedia.
That's funny, sure, but I'm not sure the Funny mod is appropriate. But this is exactly the kind of behavior I'd expect from most "mods" or admins somewhere. A lot of people are just out to do what they feel is unpopular to "the masses", but in their own circle of elites, is viewed as preferable.
So when the masses come in and say they like what the elites are doing, the elites have to rethink their position, just to avoid being mainstream.
Yeah... like Aristotle.
What about my vampire lover? He was turned into a vampire at only 13, but he is over 600 years old. Am I breaking the law when I have sex with him?
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding who's for dinner.
It's the age old catharsis debate. One could equally argue that high-quality computer-generated child pornography could actually KEEP pedophiles from molesting children, as it gives them a safe outlet for their perversions without harming anyone.
Why don't we just send them to foreign counties where the exercise of their fantasies is legal? Then there's no need to lock them up.
You're hiding behind a law, but you're not hitting the real issue: What is "okay"? Where do you draw the line on what kind of sexual relations are acceptable, and what aren't? And what gives you the right to force your ideas onto other parent's kids, who might have different ideas than you do?
I mean, I think we've gone too far. Infanticide used to be a mother's given right, and now we're to the point of not even being able to decide when our own children can become sexually active, with whom, how the are educated, or any other damn thing.
Christianity has poisoned our moral compass. When we think it's okay to lock people away for having consensual sex with someone who has been sexually mature for years, that mothers ought not have the right to choose not to have their children (even the face of the gross overpopulation of the planet), and now that we can't even make drawings that YOU consider lewd because you think it's wrong?
What the fuck? Keep your morality to yourself. What you think is no more or less "right" than what anyone else thinks.
If some guy wants to jack off to itchy and scratchy, who the fuck cares? If he decides to touch your children in a way that you don't approve of, that's illegal and you have a right to prosecute him. But up until that point, who the fuck do you think you are to meddle in his life and his freedoms?
The truth is, most people are, in some way or another, sick fucks. Most people, though, keep their perversions in check. Some don't. Some are murderers or thieves or politicians or rapists. But most aren't.
I don't understand the moralist desire to bend every other person on the planet to do things THEIR way. It's so militant and aggressive and authoritarian. In its own way, it's a lot sicker than child pornography. Being so far obsessed with your own morality that you want to totally FUCK someone over in pretty much the worst way you can -- throwing them into prision -- simply because they have thoughts you don't agree with?
Wow, just wow. I really don't know who's more demented. The daddy molesting his little boy or people like you, who'd have people molested in prison for years, just because they entertain a thought in their head that you disapprove of.
I don't care if this blows my karma. I just can't stand to see people trying to shove their beliefs down the throats of everyone else under penalty of law.
I personally think a lot of kids get molested. Those that don't end up "experimenting" with other kids their age. I think it's so commonplace, and that it has always been so commonplace throughout human history, that it might even be considered a natural part of our existence. One that by modern thought is undesirable, but that wasn't always so. You might look up the practice of pederasty sometime, or arranged marriages, or any other number of practices that have occurred and still do occur amongst folks of this human race.
Pretty sure the ancient Hebrew words the writers used originally mean 24 hours, or more loosely, a day is equal to the span of time wherein one period of day followed by a period of night. So your answer is the definition of the word used by the original writers -- who I am sure would not have called it a day if that's not what they meant. Had they meant "indeterminate amount of time", they probably would have wrote that.
And if you can't trust the original authors, whooo boy, I don't even need to point out the problem there, do I?
The best answer that a practiced scientist and atheist can give on the spot is that some higher form of life evolved and then populated the earth with life. That is, aliens evolved & put life on earth. But, the aliens themselves would have had to evolved through some natural process. THAT is his answer to intelligent design. He answered NOTHING, but merely moved the issue to another planet. It is circular reasoning.
Yeah, okay. And how is saying "god did it" any different? If ID is supposed to be an intelligent answer to the origins of life, you can't relegate how god himself came into existence to mysticism. You can't say "well, it doesn't matter" or "well, he always existed".
That's why ID is a pile of junk. If you say that man COULD NOT have come into existence without a creator, because he is complex and intelligent, then you also have to agree that god himself COULD NOT have come into existence without a creator.
ID is basically saying, "well, some forms of life need a creator, but others don't. we get to pick which is which."
What about prions?
I've read that some of the GMO foods we eat now were created by the "bombard and mutate" method you're describing, and that we really have no idea exactly what changes have been made. A lot of the changes are categorized as "junk dna", but who knows if it really does anything.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat before Monsanto hits me with a brain control ray. :)
So what should people be calling cheddar cheese? A cheddar-style cheese? Or is that to say the only types of cheeses made in Cheddar is, in fact, cheddar cheese? What if a cheesemaker in Cheddar were to make swiss-style cheese? Would it properly be called "Cheddar Cheese" as well?
I think the term cheddar is for a style of cheese, with a particular flavor, not cheese from a particular place. And when you think about it, that makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, I remember in UW, you could fall off bridges to your death. It was, in some places, a bit like a 3D platform game. What I thought was most impressive was the interactive nature of items, just like in the rest of the Ultima series. You could pick up items and even throw them.
Comparing the gameplay to a modern RPG, it was actually pretty good. It had an interesting setting and story, and interesting magic system, and lots of room to explore. The only downside is that the entire game was in a dungeon setting. No free-roaming across Brittania. (But we did finally get to see all of Brittania in 3D in U9, seven years later.)