Having said all that, it's also true that some people are just objectively more capable overall than others. The idea that all men are equal just isn't true. We lack the means to comprehensively measure enough abilities in a person to be able to say what they are "worth," but it is clear that the human brain is where almost all measurements should take place. While having large muscle mass, like in a weightlifter, or having stretchable ligaments and tendons, like in a contortionist can be developed to amazing depths, the muscle memory inherent to skills is almost completely found in the brain itself. We just don't know how to measure the brain accurately enough, in enough different vectors, to be able to rate a person's value. The skills learned to become a master boxer, for example, are all in the brain itself, even if the muscle development is in the arms and the reflex development is in the nervous system. A crude indicator of logical intelligence lies in the physical weight of different sections of the brain and their complexity, but that's only one miniscule measure of thousands or even millions of needed measurements of the brain to have any hope of accurately measuring a person's overall abilities.

Beyond raw ability, however, are things in the personality of a person like ego, drive to succeed, social skills and other intangibles that directly relate to the chances of success when faced with certain problems. Someone can be a genius with extraordinarily high problem-solving skills and an eidectic memory, but if their self-esteem is negative and they consider themselves worthless, for all practical purposes they _are_ worthless. They will refuse to use their skills and languish in an internal prison of their own construction. Another intangible is the correlation between high IQ and personality disorders; there is, as they say, a fine line between genius and insanity. People tend to be too smart for their own good and construct their own prisons, develop their own internal problems, and in general fuck their life up. While everyone has problems, smart people tend to develop systems of misbehavior that are very difficult to escape from, with slick and high walls to their trap. Their oubliette is laden with many feedback loops, self-delusions and logic patterns that have been specifically developed by themselves as defense mechanisms which have gone awry over time and become a complicated system of webs that keep them in their cognitive dissonance. Many people, "smart" or not, have these sorts of complicated problems that can be very difficult to process and resolve.

Ignorance is truly bliss, as well. Some people seem to be hyper-sensitive emotionally and experience situations completely differently than others, which can be, like anything else, a double-edged sword. Depression tends to go hand-in-hand with emotional sensitivity and awareness - most people don't think about death every day, for example, and those that do tend to be depressed. The human psyche is usually developed internally to avoid thinking about death. If everyone had to think about death all the time, its inevitability, nothing would ever get done. Yet it is true that death is inevitable. One of the functions of the human mind is to develop safety mechanisms and blind spots to certain things. Hyper-sensitive awareness in people tends to eliminate these blind spots in everyday living. And there are many of these hidden egresses that most people just don't pay attention to and learn to ignore. Your clothes constantly rubbing on your body all day is another example, just like the sheer amount of detail processed through the human eye. Our minds learn as children to filter out the overwhelming amount of incoming stimulation from all of our senses. Sometimes these filters become dysfunctional.

People are only worth what they think they are worth. Convince them that they aren't worth anything and it becomes self-fulfilling. People are also not equal to one another, even when comparing overall abilities. Memory is a huge factor in this. It's very difficult to learn anything with a poor memory, and if you can't learn anything, you aren't worth much. That's not to take away from the value of human life itself, though. Life is very precious. And no, I didn't say all this because I think I'm better than anyone. it's rather the opposite - I believe I'm rather worthless. I recognize that this is a product of low self-esteem, but it doesn't make it any less real to me. Inferiority complexes are like that. If I believed that all people are equal, that would force me to believe that I'm not a person, then. I admit I'm a human being... just a very lowly one who doesn't know anything and can't do anything right. It's why I don't post in these kinds of discussions, because I'm inherently wrong about everything. Even this post should just be ignored, as it's full of red herrings and false conclusions.

Thanks for mentioning Ultramon. It reminded me that I had my mom's old Xerox LCD in the guest room closet, so I dragged it out and set it up next to my normal one. I had neglected to do this before for some reason, probably to save energy, but it's irresistible to set it up now...

It's nice having a different background for each monitor, but the only thing I miss is that I can't use a slideshow of backgrounds anymore. Even worse, if I use Ultramon at all, then I can no longer have background slideshows on my primary monitor, either, since it's all set to a single profile. Oh well. I just set up a background for each of the monitors and when I get tired of it I will change it by hand...

Anyway thanks for reminding me. :P Appreciate the Ultramon tip.

I take it you meant inside or outside our sun. I didn't know that either.

That's very interesting. Thank you for the information - I know this is a late reply and we are a bit off-topic.

I have started using King Arthur flour just recently - their all-purpose and bread flours. As part of my wish-list for Christmas, I've got about thirty things I want from their website; while it is a bit pricey, some of their stuff looks awesome. This includes some of their custom flours that can't be found in the grocery store. Thanks for the recommendation; it shows that I'm on the right track, and that's encouraging.

Thanks!

You really hate the mall? I'm similar to you about being bored shitless about clothes (I do like to get unique T-shirts from thinkgeek or whatnot), but I've never had bad feelings about the mall, really. I hate clothes shopping... but the mall also has a bookstore. I guess if you're not into gaming it's not as big of a draw, but especially when I was younger I loved going into stores like Electronic Boutique, the video arcade, and if you were lucky the mall would have a gaming store that sold tabletop RPGs / wargames / comics/ M:tG and other card games, etc. I guess my love for malls came from when I was younger, but I still like to go in to the bookstore and look around for a while... I guess I am still just a kid. I haven't been into an arcade for some time, though, and wonder if I ever will again... but I do like going in and looking at RPGs and things in the gaming store and the bookstore, maybe manga (though it's hard to find anything good that's worth the fuck-me-over price, unlike how cheap manga is in Japan). And looking at magazines (I still pick up a new issue of 2600 now and then and maybe weird tales or something).

but clothes shopping? what a drag...

and oh yeah - I've been into cooking for about three years now and always make a new dish or two every week. I try to change up enough things on the menu so we don't have a similar dish for a week or more... as far as breakfast goes, I always forget you can eat in the morning. =) I do love making new desserts all the time though, and I'm really into baking right now...

Er.. she could be a chef. ;)

I'm actually in my 'cooking' phase right now... now being about three years. Due to various awkward circumstances about not working and stuff like that, I have always had lots of free time and never did much with it that was useful or constructive... so finally finding some way that I could help contribute has been a very useful activity for me. Having this sort of time means that I can try to make new/different meals every day/week... maybe eventually I will become a pastry chef or something. I really like baking and am learning a lot right now, even though I also do all the cooking for supper, desserts and etc. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

Did you know there's so many types of flour that it can literally make your head explode thinking about them? True story.

In fact, the difference between regular all-purpose flour and pastry flour or cake flour is the amount of proteins per gram in them, so if you buy all-purpose and figure out how much protein is in the flour per gram, it might turn out that it's actually cake flour (7% protein iirc). And you should never buy bleached flour - it's pointless and takes away from the taste. I'm not even sure why they bleach flour, except that the process is probably easier and more efficient for them when they make it... but it's not really any cheaper than unbleached flour, which is what you should always get. Except cake flour is always bleached due to the way they make it.

Then there's wheat flour, which has the entire wheat kernel in it, which means you are supposed to always refrigerate wheat flour, otherwise the wheat germ oil becomes oxidized over time. There's many subtypes of each flour, depending on the region it was farmed and made, and even variations in the same brand of flour across the country, because it's produced from different fields...

Koyaanisqatsi. Hopi for "life out of balance," a word that is only known to many because of a particular movie of the same name. It's not that technology drives our lives out of balance; far from it. It is when technology supercedes everything else. Serial Experiments: Lain. Ghosts in the shell. Living in the circuitry. A holy silicon wafer.

So many posts in this thread use the excuse, "We will be buying a 2-year plan for a phone we have to have anyway, might as well get this one," or "A phone is something you use everyday anyway, might as well be a good one," when these statements blind users to the fact that a phone isn't always necessary. I must be the only person reading this thread without a smart phone. Am I saying, "Look at me, I don't need it?" It's not that I don't need it; I choose to live without it. Am I dysfunctional for not wanting a phone? Probably. Yet our relationship with technology has blurred the line between natural being and artificial machines.

Communication is an integral part of the human condition and required for emotional links to our family and friends. Yet, comments and phones like these remind me of technological pornography: an addiction designed to rub you all the right ways. These phones remind me of substance abuse. It is good to have a phone, of course it is... but there must be a limit between use and abuse. There is now a generation that has never lived without smart phones, who have never lived without the Internet, a generation of people dependent on electrons pushed through never-ending wires, eternal radio transmissions, an endless vista of pure silicon and gleaming metals. The amount of information overload in our society is staggering, and this double-edged sword will continue to whet and sharpen... but when will it actually sever and separate the truth from fiction?

A book called Brave New World postulated that in the future there will be so much information that the powers that be will be able to control the masses through things they like, not things they fear. The amount of data that is processed through our heads has reached a point where we have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, what is trivial from what is important, what is true from what is false. Objects bubble up in the maelstrom into the awareness of the public consciousness, then quickly sink and fade into obscurity: Ruby Ridge and Waco are the first things that come to mind. Things happen and then they vanish, only to be mentioned as a blurb in the history books. There was once a time when people remembered. Now we happily drown in a sea of solipsism, engrossed to the point of dissociation.

Okay, I'm done. No, I'm not on anything. I wish I was, then I could forget...

Yes, I'm crazy. I must be the only one.

and yeah, soon I won't be able to resist the lure of smart phone, either. But not yet.

Treating other humans like animals is not the hallmark of civilization, nor the pinnacle of human excellence. It's rather the opposite. Am I the only one who sees innocent people being castrated under your policy? I noted that you didn't imply chemical castration, but rather physical castration, and along with the underlying tone of your sentences, this says to me that you posted this message with vengeance and ill will in your heart. Or you were trying to be funny - and I stand for your right to joke, even if I may find it tasteless.

If you treat another human as an animal, guess what that makes you? Some might say it makes you less than human. While I might find distaste for your ideology, I will still treat you as human because that is the fundamental privilege that you deserve. Do you see how that works now? Treating others as animals never ends well.

Do you also throw statutory rape into the mix? 17-year-olds getting castrated because they had sex with a willing 16-year-old (in states where that is illegal)? I assume so, or you would have made an exception. Do you support the uterus and ovaries being physically ripped out of a woman rapist? Or do you only have hangups with men?

I take it that you support the death penalty for rapists? Treat them like an animal and all that. Do you take them out back and put them down like a lame horse? Are you aware that castrating a human male carries risks of death? Don't tell me you don't have an emotional stake in the game. Emotions have no place in a court of law. Your statement reeks of vigilantism to me.

Do I support rapists? No. We have laws against it, and those laws carry punishment of stints in prison, but the punishment varies depending on the severity of the crime. Your solution attempts to cover a wide range of circumstances with a one-size-fits-all answer, and as history can tell you... solutions such as yours are barbaric and not fit to be found in a modern and equal society. I also do not approve of castrations for convicted pedophiles or others, perhaps not even if they ask for it - because it is too likely to be coercion from law enforcement or others. Or chopping the hands off of thieves. The state does not have the right to sever body parts. I also do not support the death penalty, even though I live in Texas.

Obviously, your three sentences struck an emotional chord in me, or I wouldn't have bothered to reply, and I'm not acting like your words didn't affect me. I just feel revulsion at the idea of innocent people subject to punishments that can not be reversed.

This would be a form of cognitive dissonance, yes. But dissonance runs both ways: those with college degrees will, by definition, value them for the hard work and money that they represent. It is only with great fortitude that those with college degrees could admit to themselves that the degree they spent so much time and money for may not be worth what they believe it is worth.

A lot of people can see something that's not there. That's very common. It's very rare for a person to appear who can see something for exactly what it is.

It's also why poor people tend to be the most generous. They know what hard work is worth and value it appropriately. Those who get something for nothing tend to have difficulty in evaluating and appreciating the proper value of their proceeds.

You're a fucking moron. Are you saying that we shouldn't have any rocket scientists in America, or are you saying you think our rocket scientists should redesign our economy or hand-feed long lines of kids? Because either one is just weird.

Boy, how can I forget that! It said I was going to be sued by Metallica for downloading one of their albums off Napster at the time. I laughed my ass off when I got that email. I found it hilarious, but I guess if Lars jumped me outside of my house and beat the living crap out of me I might have felt differently. Since that didn't happen, it sure made me think that Metallica was just a bunch of little bitches.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a pussy, but damn did that make them look like cunts.

Saw these at an Exxon in Houston last week. They automatically turn on when you begin pumping gas, and turn off when you stop pumping. To stop winos from watching TV, or something. The one I saw was showing the local weather with ads on the sides/corners, which isn't too bad, I guess. I still found it somewhat annoying.

Oh, sorry, Geekoid, I thought your response was to amaupin. Doh.

How is what he said different than what you said? He wasn't lying.

Saying his password is "a secret" is simply a more tactful way of saying, "I don't want to give that to you." If the cashier is female she might even smile. Your version is more formally correct but also a little blunt. I'm not saying his way is necessarily better, but I don't think what he says is a lie. He's not saying his e-mail is Top Secret government information. The cashier can tell from context that he is trying to be polite in his declination.

Taking into consideration that god is the source of all suffering, knowing he exists doesn't make the suffering he imposes any easier on those who happen to be under His heel. Rather, it seems to be a way for God-believers to convince themselves that their suffering is only temporary and has meaning. It's difficult to admit to a child cancer patient that the reason he or she is suffering is completely random or out of anyone's control, and that their suffering is pointless (well, ok, it gives you character if you happen to survive).

Just because god is love doesn't mean he's not cruel.