I'm prepared against tigers.
I have my specious rock.
If you don't know that is a Simpsons quote relating bears repulsed by the patroll(sp) and stealth bombers.

I completely agree. So much of engineering is actually about understanding the problem, so adding more people from the same background will not improve this. I always hire a diverse set of people, and help them work together as a team. While it is crucial to have some solid CS people there, having humanities (especially Library Science, my favorite degree to hire from) helps cut through the groupthink and improves the solution pool, same as hiring both young and old programmers etc. Also, its more fun.

But there are whole animals referred to as Aberdeen Angus

If both your parents are morons then the likelihood of you receiving good fetal development, nutrition, and education are slim to none. There are exceptions but the reason they are called exceptions is they are RARE! That said growing up extended family would frequently commented on how much I was like my grandfather (he died when I was an infant) because I had his smarts (He taught himself chemical engineering and was part of the development of polymers). My take on our society is today's typical highly intelligent couple are too self absorbed to embark on a life of selfless giving by having children. Of those that do have children a large percentage offload the actual parenting to paid support so they can continue to be self absorbed while patting themselves on the back for having pro-created. Having said all that I believe a child raised by morons that love the child has a far superior life to a child raised by intellectuals or affluent parents who see the child as a trophy or burden.

ob. The Far Side reference

Japanese Americans have an even lower violent crime rate than Japanese at in Japan.

LK

The proper questions to ask are those that you know something about. For Snowden to suddenly jump on LGBT rights or Chechen independence would come off as the type of issue-of-the-day “activism” sometimes seen with celebrities. It would make about as much sense as if Pussy Riot went on U.S. television to talk about Obamacare or the Keystone Pipeline.

15" holes seem pretty ridiculous, considering you still have to get to the green. Accurate drives and knowing how to deal with situational shots comprise at least half the difficulty of golf. Nobody takes a mulligan on a missed putt, they take them when they slice a shot onto the next fairway over or into a water hazard or whiff it entirely and launch a clump of divot instead of the ball.

But no one derides amateur softball players for not hitting 85 mph pitches or being able to throw out a runner at first with a bullet from 130' away. What might make golf more accessible is building smaller 9-hole courses heavy on par-threes with more forgiving hazards and flatter greens. Less of a time commitment, cheaper due to faster turnover... Change the name somewhat (Golf-lite? Softgolf?) so as to defuse objections from people who want to maintain “pure golf’s” identity as is.

It's a dog-whistle for the obviously racist intent of "majority white". That's what they mean, that's what they're saying, they just lack the guts to be explicit with it.

LK

You're welcome.

Yes, let's be real. The primary obstacle to people like Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, etc from becoming like Mao, Pol Pot or insert your favorite genocidal dictator here, is that they face a strong opposition.

LK

A Progressive would more likely be negotiating for the other side. Just because his position had Labor in the title doesn’t make him a union organizer.

I use Evernote. But I don’t trust it.

I use Evernote for most of my digital notes stuff. I like the syncing feature which keeps notes on my mac, smartphone and tablet in sync.

However I don’t trust it for really important long-term stuff. Really essential stuff, such as long writing projects, articles, essays, important letters or digital journals go into textfiles that are in directories covered by redundant backup/archive mechanisms on detached portable HDDs with filesystems that can be read with widely available free open source software (Mac OS X HFS *without* journaling).

Doing anything else with anything valuable that’s supposed to stay useable longer than a decade is insane.

For instance, I still have CD copies of CD Archives of Zip Disk Archives of very old HDDs (2,5 40 MB HDDs would fit on one ZipDisk attached via parallel port - yepp, those were the days) with texts written in Ami Pro. The Ami Pro format is openable with a regular text editor, but it still is anoying to extract the useful data. No way am I installing Dos 5 and Win 3.11 on a Vbox just to run Ami Pro just to open them. Hence, only UTF-8 textfiles since round-about 2000.

You should do the same for any journal stuff that is supposed to last longer than 3 years.

My 2 cents.

Sharp PC 1403H from '91. I'd bet money that my 1986 Sharp PC 1402 (same device with less memory) still would be working too if I hadn't sold it.
Batteries are from the 90ies too - haven't replaced them since. Still work. Still have microcassettes with my own software on them, such as a Shadowrun (1st Ed.) Character Builder. Would print out the stats on the cash register strip printer. Still have that too, still works. :-)

My Mac Mini from 2006 still is going strong, aswell as my HTC Desire HD Smartphone and my HTC Flyer tablet, both of which have been in hard everyday use since 3 and 2 years ago respectively. Both have been dropped hard multiple times, the Flyer is nicked and dented around the edges, the pounch looks like it's been through a war and I've wasted 3 hardcases on my HTC Desire HD and replaced the battery and protective foil once, because it was so banged up already. I expect both to last another few years with everyday use. It's a shame replacing the HTC Flyer battery isn't done as easyly as with the phone.

I consider the HTC Desire HD and the HTC Flyer the best smartphone and tablet enclosures ever (solid aluminium), better even than Apples current cases - although the iPad Air enclosure does look cool. Shame they don't build them in that quality anymore. They are from a time when everyone was rushing into the mobile market and trying to make a name for themselves. Although the HTC One line still has pretty goog enclosures.

Interesting tidbit: The HTC Flyers enclosure is top notch and very sturdy which makes it notably heavier than your usual 7" plastic tablet. That's actually a little downside.

I've been using a Lamy Safari fountain pen every day for years, dropped it a few times, and it still works good as new. Most fountain pens are fragile and expensive, designed more for asthetics than functionality. The Lamy Safari is reasonably priced and extremely reliable. The grip section has an unusual design that's very comfortable to hold. Even the nibs are tougher than average and if you manage to destroy one (eg. by dropping onto concrete) they are replacable. There's good reason these pens are highly recommended for beginners by fountain pen user groups. It will easily survive long enough to save money over disposable ballpoints if you buy ink in bulk and use a refillable cartridge.

A computer that has run for three years. That's so cute!