Yeah, there was something in our lease shortly after the lead paint abatement section about how "previous tenants may have been involved in illicit activity involving the manufacture and/or sale of narcotics" or something, but who really reads that stuff? Turns out that after such "activity" they have to pretty much gut the place, so it ended with us having a nice kitchen.

At least you can get comcast. I have verizon because comcast refuses to give us service (Baltimore, same options as you)

When my roommates and I moved into our house, we tried to get comcast (cable and internet) but everytime we tried to set it up they said there was a hold on our account. Eventually it came out that a few years back our house had been a meth lab and the people who lived there didn't pay their bill for about a year. Why they didn't have their service cut off before then is beyond me, but our house is now on some sort of black list. Even after going to a comcast service center with our lease and ids to prove that we are different people, we still can't get comcast. So verizon DSL it is. Not that I particularly want comcast, but I like having options. And not being associated with cooking meth.

Seconded. Good storyline, doesn't drag too much, and with the age things kids can relate. Maybe.

But, as others have said, don't push too hard to get him to like them. Just show them that you like them and he'll think they're cool by association. If he wants to try other stuff, let him, but make sure he sees you reading some of these books and he'll copy you.

Whoa. This order just blew my mind. My girlfriend has never seen them (obligatory joke blah blah, yes she's real, and it's faults like never having seen Star Wars that I have to put up with to have one), and she's now going to watch them in this order. My sister is about to have a kid too, and I might suggest this.

Exactly. And, really, there's nothing that says you can't be good at reasoning but decide to become an artist. I just think it would be interesting to look at it.

Agreed, I'd like to see the scores from other countries.

Also, I'd like to see this with adults in different professions. For instance, are scientists better at this than artists? And what about creativity scores?

My gut says that a) all children will probably not be great at this and b) adults probably aren't either. And sadly it probably doesn't match up as well with profession as we might like. I'm a molecular biologist and plenty of my colleagues would probably struggle with these tasks. I wish I could take the test to see how I do (but I'm also afraid I would fail miserably).

It depends a lot on your parents. Aside from the possibility of home schooling (which has to bring about all sorts of problems for university admissions) they can do a lot to push you through more quickly, or not allow it. For one thing, they can send you to better schools that will actually look for gifted students and help them along. Alternatively, they can fight for (or against) advancement. For instance, it was twice suggested that I skip a grade, but my parents wouldn't let me because I was already small for my age and they were worried about me being picked on. Similarly, if my parents had fought for it, I could have graduated high school in 3 years. Probably could have done college in 3 years too, if I'd worked harder at it.

That said, I'm glad my parents did what they did. I'm working on my PhD in molecular biology now, and I'm in no hurry to be done. All those extra years in school didn't teach me any more bio, or math, or better writing skills, but I had a lot of fun during that time and definitely formed a lot of relationships that are important to me. That's what I always think people like this are missing out on.

Here's the (obligatory) xkcd I was thinking of: Good Morning

I really just want to wake up an hour or so later every day, so I think drifting west would be the best way to go. Just each night while I sleep move over a time zone and slowly circle the globe. Plus, think of all the cool places you'd get to wake up

I think there was an xkcd about this once...

Things always come in threes, right?

Why does everyone bring this up? That support is leaving in 11.10 so the argument only works as a stopgap for another few months. Sure you can choose that now, but in the long run if you don't want to use unity (and who does?) you have to switch someday.

The big question is where will people go; slackware? Fedora? Xubuntu? I know Ubunutu is trying to get more mainstream, but they'll lose some of their hardcore users, and I have to wonder how that'll affect their devs.