It's not low level if it's in your own backyard.

Now, that's not true. They call them squeegee kids back home, they stand in intersections washing windows and guilt tripping people into payment... they make a hundred dollars an hour, easy.

You don't have to be a productive member of society if you're manipulative. Well, unless everyone else is the same as you...

It's not a matter of having an "urge". I lived in an area with a lot of gang violence, and I had a lot of friends who weren't particularly good at standing up for themselves... hippies, ravers, skaters, theater folk, etc. When your friends can't stand up for themselves and there's an imminent threat, you step forward.

I was just a cowardly little nerd who skipped a grade and was younger and smaller than everyone else when I was young, and spent a lot of time running away. Then I hit puberty and my balls dropped, and I had an altercation where a teacher didn't show up for class and the students were running wild, a football player punched me in the back of the head and called my mother a whore, and I beat him half unconcious with tables, chairs and desks. I was standing over his prostrate body with a chair in my hand, and a third guy suplexed me on my head while I was paying attention to the guy who had infringed my honour. One second I was standing, the next I was on my head semiconscious. It all happened so fast, I wanted to understand how he did it, so I joined the team and for the first time in my life I was fighting guys my own size instead of guys who outweighed me by a hundred pounds, and I was undefeated in tournament.

Now, we're all adults, I'm not wandering around being dwarfed by everyone I meet, and I'm a tough guy who still surprises himself because part of me still thinks of myself as David and everyone else as Goliath. I enter every fight expecting my opponent to break me, hoping only to break him more than he breaks me, and I'm always startled at how slow and incompetent he is. I still get my bones broken sometimes, I've broken ribs, my nose, my face, my teeth... but I fight through the pain until, in the end, I'm standing over my helpless opponent and holding his life in my hands.

Truth is, I like it. When the violence comes, the adrenaline response I get is much higher than the average guy, to the point where I get chills and shiver and am completely dismissive of pain. It scares people, when it's in the aftermath and my teeth are chattering and I'm grinning like a madman and shaking like a leaf in a storm, wishing there was someone else to fight because I feel SOO fucking awesome. Based on conversations with doctors and martial arts instructors, only about 5% of the population has a physiological response like I do.

Training aside, I seem to be built for this type of thing... although it's possible it's a learned response from the violence I saw in my youth.

At any rate, I think about it and talk about it because I like it, I'm good at it, and when the shit hits the fan, the people close to me appreciate it, even if they find it unpleasant to hear about when we're all sitting and making small talk. It's nice to participate in a serious conversation about it.

I used to wrestle in school, took it pretty seriously and won gold in several provincial tournaments. I found that my body would be operating automatically when I did my moves, just like the article describes, and that the conscious part of my mind would be "watching" as though I was removed from the fight and was being an outside observer. Except that it wasn't that simple, because the tactile is huge in wrestling, when you can't see the guy and you're rolling and flipping and flying through the air, your contact with your opponent gives you an "eyes in the back of your head" sense, and that gets merged into what you're "watching" without removing the outside observer feeling. In street fights, which is more like a team sport than wrestling, it lets me use my conscious mind to keep a "map" of where people are, which is full of estimates based on where they were and the direction they were moving when I saw them out of the corner of my eye while absorbed in an exchange with the guy in front of me. But it's still not like you're thinking. You're being conscious without making an effort to be creative, and you do what the situation tells you is obvious. All the mental effort is in holding the model together effectively.

Ants are the dominant form of life on the planet. Individually they are dumb, but the knowledge lies in the network, not the individual. That is why humans are are achieving more despite being smaller and dumber than our ancestors.

http://definitions.uslegal.com...

"A public place is generally an indoor or outdoor area, whether privately or publicly owned, to which the public have access by right or by invitation, expressed or implied, whether by payment of money or not, but not a place when used exclusively by one or more individuals for a private gathering or other personal purpose."

US airports are public places. Just because it is private property doesn't automatically mean it's not a public space. If you turn your home into a B&B, it becomes a public space, even though it is your private property. You can have private clubhouses and private airports but the moment you leave the door unlocked and put up a sign that you're open to the public, the presumption of privacy is gone.

I feel that way about the entire tablet form factor. I had a couple given to me. I threw them out because it wasn't worth my time to find someone to buy them.

You claim to be a writer. If you were legitimate, you wouldn't be posting anonymously, you'd be self promoting. I call bullshit.

Women make up a tiny proportion of developers, but we still see passion plays like this in forums where developers dwell on a daily basis. So, who precisely is harassing who here?

Whatever you say, debt slave.

Yes. Lets ask children if they want to be treated like adults, and trust them to act like adults if they answer in the affirmative.

Or, maybe that's a cop out, and we should start acting like men.

In Islamic countries, it's illegal to earn money off debt, and their civilization is growing. It's a perfectly functional way to operate. I went looking for an Islamic bank myself, but there weren't any close enough for me to do business with them.

You should get one. I haven't been able to wear my suits to work much because I look silly sitting next to all the other long haired unshowered developers with ripped jeans and body odor loodking classy. So, I just wear it around town when I want to drink whiskey, smoke cubans and pull women. Kinda like Barney Stinson.

I wish someone had told me in high school how much easier your life becomes if you invest a bit of time and money into decent clothes. My life would have been so much more enjoyable.

But, I'm sure, like I was, you're "too intelligent for that crap". Your loss.

You, me, ass...

Yeah, it's like telling a 6'10" black dude that he ought to go out for basketball. What a horrible piece of advice to give. She should totally become an entertainer and dance for me. Like a monkey. Dance, monkey, dance! Show us your tits! You wanna pay the rent right?

Speaking personally, I have immense respect for a homemaker, raising the next generation of children who will care for me in my old age and be fit peers for my progeny. I have the same respect for a loyal husband and father. Not a whole lot of respect for anything else though. Wow, you work at a bank/a lab/dance and sing on stage... like I give a sweet flying fuck.

I don't owe anyone my respect, no matter how much I'm browbeaten. I have far more respect for the woman who makes me coffee, works two jobs and still cares for her husband and children than I do for the likes of Ada Lovelace and Steve Jobs.