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Comment Re:What time zone is the 10:20 PM? (Score 1) 146

by Kittenman (#46753029) Attached to: The Best Way To Watch the "Blood Moon" Tonight

Taken out of context, as it was in the summary, I fully agree that "West Coast" is ambiguous, given the international readership of Slashdot. That's why I made a point of very intentionally establishing context first, by mentioning that it was an LA Times article. I then used an "and" to pair it with the "West Coast" term, indicating that I think you need both to satisfactorily determine the time zone in question, rather than just one or the other.

FWIW, us NZers read 'West Coast' as the west coast of the South Island. Famous for

1: Rain
2: The Hokitika wildfood festival
3: Weird people, known as 'coasters'

But like most other people on the boards, I switch to west coast USA for this. I'm a visitor, best to be on good behaviour when in someone else's house :)

Comment Big company moves into town, sales soar... (Score 4, Insightful) 83

by Kittenman (#46744089) Attached to: Seattle Bookstores Embrace Amazon.com
Whether it's Amazon or not is irrelevant. In any large company, there's going to be a percentage who like the dead tree copies of the book. Got to a restaurant when the staff are on a break, you'll find some folks eating Mackers/KFC/their own sandwiches.

Where you work doesn't dictate where you shop.

Comment Re:What kind of industry do you work in? (Score 1) 452

by Kittenman (#46720841) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Start With Linux In the Workplace?

.... The key is to create an environment that is as close to what they know as possible. ....

Totally agree - we need to remember that the users don't care what's under the hood. Their job is to sell things, crunch numbers, make widgets, whatever ... not to use a PC. For them the PC is a tool. If it works the same as their last tool, great - they can concentrate on their job, not on learning things unassociated with it.

And yeah, maybe this new spreadsheet in Shiny-10 is better than the one in Sparkly-v8 - but they don't care.

Comment Re:well, think about his (Score 1) 408

I have a daughter who has insomnia. This insomnia is triggered by the thought that she has insomnia. This is due to a friend she used to have that would come over and then talk about maybe they have insomnia. So she psychs herself out and can't sleep. So we have started giving her a sleeping aid. It's not anything effective, but we carefully keep it under the guise of a medical prescription. We also have her going to a psychologist. So we are taking an actual medical approach. Yes, we will tell her eventually.

Are other two choice are: Do nothing. Give her a sleeping, and possible addictive, sleeping aid. Something we will do if all else fails.

Seriously, why didn't you do nothing? Every kid has sleeping problems. 'Doing nothing' is cheaper, doesn't expose your daughter to drugs she may not need, and additionally doesn't encourage her to seek professional aid (and a pill) when she has a problem in later life.

Comment In other news ... (Score 5, Insightful) 180

Watching sad movies makes you sad. Listening to happy music can cheer you up. Reading a sad book can make you unhappy.

Video games are just another entertainment form.

I appreciate that TFA is referring to a lack of mastery of the controls makes you aggressive (or frustrated)...but so does lack of mastery of anything you spend time on.
And my bugbear is XCOM classic ironman... damn those aliens.

Comment Meanwhile, back at the topic (Score 1) 1037

by Kittenman (#46680413) Attached to: How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion
Correlation != causation. The internet may not be causing the increase in atheism. Both are increasing at the same time, but we'd need to do more checks to make sure the two facts are related. Also increasing in the world's population, the average temperature, the number of exoplanets. We could also link the rise of atheism to the decrease in the number of pirates (but that's been done).

Meantime, I suspect it's to do with rise in information availability. People still read books away from the Internet, y'know.

Now, where did I put my copy of 'God is not Great'...

Comment I voted the 'it's up to them' option, but ... (Score 1) 307

by Kittenman (#46656185) Attached to: Should NASA Send Astronauts On Voluntary One-Way Missions?
.. I reckon that any volunteer would need to be carefully assessed to make sure that he's not crazy (defined as follows...) and is doing this for a socially acceptable reason.

Sorry to bring it up, but it was a one-way mission for the zealots who crashed the planes into the two towers, back in 2001. If we want a volunteer for a suicide mission, then we don't want a suicide-bomber sort-of guy, we want a sacrifice-for-the-common-good sort-of guy. Now, how we do find that sort of person, with questions...

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 2) 274

It's a pity, then, that we live in a society that values everyone's opinions.

OK, kill me, but I don't think that's a good thing. I'm uneducated on several major topics that appear in the newspapers on a daily basis. Example - Syrian Civil War (well, relatively under-informed). My opinion on that is worth less to society then someone who is much more familiar with the situation.

Conversely, I'm an amateur astronomer. Put me in a room with an astrologer and I'll rip him/her to shreds.

I think peoples' options matter, but not equally. An idiot (including myself) with no knowledge on a subject (sex life of the iguana?) has an opinion with a value that is near-zero. And that's just jim-dandy with me.

Comment Re:actually, it was the fleas. (Score 1) 135

by Kittenman (#46616785) Attached to: Researchers: Rats Didn't Spread Black Death, Humans Did

I was walking in the woods one day with a zoologist friend of mine, when we came upon a rotting coyote head in the middle of the trail. "Ooh!" she says, "I want to show that to my students!" Whereupon she picks up the head, maggot-ridden eyeholes and all, and pops it into the pocket of her windbreaker.

How big was the dry-cleaning bill?

Calls to mind the story of the young Darwin, who was faced with containing three beetles when he had only two hands. He put the third one in his mouth.

And I tip my hat to your zoologist companion.

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Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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