sorry about that. :)

to get back on-topic: http://www.lelo.com/index.php?...

security and latency might be poor, but usually adequate for the purpose.

(walls so thin I was actually considering joining in the nightly party next door where the couple went at it all the time)

this is a little-known feature, actually. you just punch the wall hard enough and you have an instant glory hole. it cuts down on the uncomfortable introductions, and being semi-anonymous, makes rejection more tolerable.

when you're done, you can find a sheaf of wadding in the nightstand, often marked with a cross. you just tear out the pages, crumple them up, and stuff the hole with them. the staff is trained to notice it, and will plaster over it when you check out. it's courteous to examine the wall and just punch out a pre-existing patch if there is one.

Yeah, that's why he's using a serious first world solution, rather than the old school way of gathering a tribe to sack and torch Sony's headquarters.

"goddam" is a correct regional variant. look it up.

as for the use of language, i eschew capitalization for principled reasons. i won't go through it again because you're not worth it. if you set that aside, however, you'll find the rest impeccable.

i don't consider myself an intellectual giant; how could i, in the face of people like Paul Erdos or Terence Tao, let alone Newton or laPlace?

you, however, are worthless. don't bother me.

Please elaborate.

my opinion is that it is not just media perception; increasingly so recently. i am glad i was born when i was; i'd almost certainly be a ritalin kid these days, at best. it's a terrifying thought. not that it's necessarily wrong either way, but just the arbitrariness of it.

i agree with the rest.

I tentatively agree. I believe in the reality of mental disease, but I also believe in character and challenge. It would be pathological to medicate a problem away, and it would be pathological to expect a human environment to be free of cruelty.

I do not know if there is a solution, or even if my beliefs are mutually consistent. Any more thoughts?

no, the post i was replying to referred exclusively to bullying. there's something called "context". you see, it's more efficient to simply refer back to context than try to evaluate everything as a goddam closure.

i only called you a dumbass because you called me ignorant. i return blow for blow, neither more nor less.

as far as capitalization: you might as well judge someone by the length of their hair. grow up.

i wasn't talking about learning, dumbass. i meant the rigors of "bullying". yeah, it sucks, but it's much worse elsewhere, for any number of reasons that Americans couldn't even begin to imagine.

it's a complicated thing. sometimes, the greater the suffering, the greater the will to live in the moment. maybe the greatest cruelty of bullying is the sheer arbitrariness of it, but maybe that's exactly the kind of thing nerds need to embrace and understand. we live in amazing times.

Maybe. But it ends, is my point. It ends, and one is rewarded relatively richly afterward (relative to one's intrinsic ability, of course, and subject to the vagaries of fortune).

The discrimination against blacks (to whatever extent it is, and for whatever reason) is much more persistent.

Yes, I happily would. The life of the mind is, frankly, a perilous one. If the minimal rigors of (gasp) public education are enough to convince one to put an end to it, then they are probably better off leaving this world. Sorry, but that's just how it is. It could be better, and a lot of it is really silly, and a lot of us are working on fixing that, but my sympathy is limited, having gone through much of the same.

yeah, most of us are if you think about it.

"... and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, and I know not that. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... And therefore never [ask] for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Well, the "I know black people!" thing happens all the time, but I see your point. OTOH, "nerds" have pretty damned good prospects after high school, so crying oppression is a bit incredible.

Oh, please. Maas Biolabs would never conduct such a sloppy wetworks. Their general operating policy is abduction and indoctrination of the talent. In extremely rare cases, termination followed by cryonic preservation of the cortex prior to neural "biosoft" imprinting is acceptable as well, but don't expect any surviving witnesses in either case. Often, they use localized airburst toxins or a satellite projectile to zero out the target area. If the situation permits, venting of a military hallucinogenic/sedative can also neutralize the crowd. Either way, it would be indistinguishable from a random act of civil unrest such as those of the notorious Panther Moderns.

Oh, come on, what are the chances that the kid would have grown up to be more useful than its harvested biomaterial? Pretty low if you ask me, especially if the stem cell therapy is expensive. I just hope the aborting mother gets market value for her labor (no pun intended) and goods.

And sometimes you even get a marketable biotech product out of it. Would you rather have 113 patents, or a useless infant? I know which one I'd pick.