Very interesting—thanks for the insight. I've kind of steered off-topic a bit, but it seems to me that how people behave in dance classes is interesting as a model because the approaches happen again and again and again, while the anxiety is for me quite similar in nature, and because what the girls have told me about their experiences sounds quite similar to my feelings trying to make approaches in spite of shy quiet geek boy tendencies.

Interesting, I didn't expect the difference in local culture to be anywhere near that much. Perhaps we Australians are just oddballs. I can understand beginners being a bit squeamish about it, since it takes a while for it to become more sexually neutral; especially with Tango, since my understanding is that it isn't terribly forgiving of those with any real sense of personal space. Here though there is a tendency for women to lead more than you describe, as Australian men in general aren't terribly interested in dancing and so occasionally the imbalance can be truly catastrophic.

I think there's more to it than that, though. Perhaps the reasons that you state cause the inhibitions that you mention, however it is not a rational "I must not do so because people will think this of me..." etc. etc., in my opinion, or at least if so it is more deeply ingrained, since the same phenomenon occurs in other areas. My anecdotal evidence: I dance as a hobby, and of all of the groups with which I have taken lessons, it has been invariant that essentially all beginning women, and even the majority of experienced ones, will never ask for a dance, and will quite happily (or not) sit on the sidelines all night waiting for someone to come to them.

When a friend of mine visited a club of a different style, she found herself in this situation again; no longer being able to offer years of experience, she suddenly had to start asking for herself, and to put it mildly found the experience freakishly traumatic. Another confided that in well over a year she had been able to bring herself to ask a dance of someone perhaps ten times. All this in a context where refusal without reason is viewed about as fondly as spitting in someone's face.

That's not to say that I (Australian male) don't find it difficult at times, and in the early days I felt the same utter terror that they did, but I knew perfectly well that I had to bite the bullet and do it anyway, because no-one was going to come to me. This is not the same as making romantic advances, but I find it interesting because to me the anxiety of rejection is similar, and the behaviour of the two sexes is similar, despite the fact that rational factors other than fear of rejection are not present—on the contrary, being preemptive is greatly endearing. It makes me wonder whether there really is a difference, or whether we're just stuck in this situation because for men there is no alternative to making the first move, and without that pressure most women lack any reason to put themselves through it.

Self repairing machines maybe science fiction now, but so were cell phones with internet browsers in 1995

The EU also has spent billions of dollars on a brain mapping/simulation project as well.

If that ever gets significant progress it wouldn't be too far fetched for machines to self diagnose and self repair.

The difference between the buggy and whip and auto makers is the automakers still required people to work.

I think the question should be asked when will automation be good enough to exclude any human input. Even the engineers and artists will be out of job.

I heard a VR software developer say "People overestimate technological change for a year, but under estimate change when you talk about a decade."

Something to that effect...

So its worth to give a bit of thinking on what happens when machine learning is good enough to eliminate current jobs and all possible jobs after that.

Besides who is going to foot the bill to retrain all 14 million truck drivers when Google self driving cars are good enough? I highly doubt they are all going to be robot repairmen.

Hrm... I take it you haven't tried the product yet or watched the reaction of people who have used it.

I'm a child of the 90's so I used to play those VR games for a dollar for 5 minutes in the arcades and have to agree those were pretty shitty.

However, the Oculus Rift is something else to behold.

I own a dev kit and I actually get "Oh shit" moments in the Rift playing the roller coaster demos. Regular games don't do that for me. I get vertigo playing Minecraft in the Rift when I am high up building something. Regular Minecraft doesn't do that.

When I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the Rift I find myself looking left and right and checking my mirrors just like I drive a car in real life. I even look out the window to look at the scenery. Without the Rift I don't do that.

And this is a low rez version without positional tracking.

Its not a gimmick and its not going away. 2 billion dollars says its not going away. Even if you hate Facebook you can invest in one of the other kickstarters like AntVR and use their product.

I've been participating in the RiftMax shows and it reminds me of the scene in Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex where they are in a virtual chat room on the net.

This is going to be big.

One a side note. If your significant other doesn't allow you 30 minutes of me time uninterrupted then you are going to have a rocky relationship.

When my special something is reading a book. I leave her alone unless its an emergency. (Also she has a bad habit of watching TV shows ahead of me on hulu so if I bother her she will start saying spoilers).

When I'm on the computer she does the same.

I just make sure at a certain time I turn the computer off and spend some time with her before we go to bed.

We generally watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report and then head to bed.

Actually... I have an Oculus Rift and have to say I don't use it more than 30 minutes to an hour at a time.

Mostly because a lack of a killer app at this point (Skyrim with special drivers comes close, but I think Star Citizen will be the app everyone has to get VR because its amazing just sitting in the hanger looking at the 3d screens sitting in your ship's hanger that pop out at you).

Anyways... If you can't find 30 minutes to an hour a day to enjoy some me time then I would argue that there is something wrong with your life.

I don't have kids personally but I have dealt with families that do and basically unless you go to bed when the kid does, you should have at least 30 minutes to enjoy the experience.

Basically I spend 30 minutes alone playing games. Then maybe an hour watching TV with the significant other and then to bed to get 8 hours of sleep.

If not, then I would argue, you are going to have stress management issues in your life and no one wants that.

So yeah... The Oculus Rift is amazing. Most of the demos are short games so I haven't spent six hour with it in a sitting, but demos like Titans of Space really take my breath away.

Also the rollercoaster demo made me go "Oh shit!" out loud. Only happened once since successive rides had me knowing I would be ok, but no non-Oculus Rift game has ever made me fear for my safety.

Its something that even non-video game players can get a kick of it.

Anyways, I own one and its amazing. The only problem with it is that I'm going to have to buy an expensive computer to play the 1080p and the lack of games for it right now.

Once both of those issues are resolved. I think we are seeing a revolution.

Things are changing a little bit. Elsevier offer HTML+MathJax at least for the journals that I've used. MathJax (a JS library) makes things quite a bit easier in that you can use LaTeX and have it automatically rendered to MathML, picking up \begin{align}\end{align}s and such in your HTML.

One runs the experiment in the dark with a photographic film or movable photomultiplier behind the slits, allowing the observation of single photons. The density of the photons exhibits an interference pattern.

I've not done this experiment myself, but remember being told that it was possible using film during high school.