No, but you are likely to make a different impression mentioning your love of whole grain pepper right off the bat. When people ask what someone is in to they generally expect common answers like movies, sports, traveling... not much else really. Niche interests aren't exactly shameful, but there is a certain weight that comes with them. If a person has too specific an interest, like rice carving or riding Harley Davidsons (and only Harley Davidsons durn it!) there's a feeling that you may never truly understand that person if you have no interest in their interest. Don't say you like comic books, say you like movies. And when they ask what movies you like, say you like the ones based on comic books (and the more faithful the better). If they have half a brain they'll hardly be surprised to find you do, in fact, also like comic books.

You're just mad that the World Series is always won by an American team.

Even if they did know more (and it's pretty apparent they didn't), asking the most basic of questions is essential to the type of piece they were doing. The point of educating them beforehand would just to be to make them look smarter than they are. Since they didn't know more, and didn't expect their average audience member to know more than them, doing the piece as a group learning experience probably made sense.

Thank you, I was waiting for someone to say that. Do you know that it's true? I think everyone thought it was an odd thing to say, but even at 14 I thought "hmmm... I guess he's only reading the telemetry". Kind of reminds me of the way BP photo-shopped their gulf disaster response to show them watching the same footage we were seeing at home, because obviously they would all be watching the oil spewing constantly to remind them of what they were trying to stop. The idea that it takes hundreds of people to put a shuttle into the air and not all of them are going to be watching it launch because they are too busy launching it seems to be lost on the majority of people who think there's nothing more to anything than the most exciting or glamorous aspects that happen to make for good TV.

I referred to it as just that today. I was in 8th grade and we had a snow day. One of my friends called me right after it happened.

I think it's obvious that real world violence is the primary cause of violent media. These violent acts shouldn't be allowed to happen in a world where impressionable young writers and producers might be influenced to produce violent fiction.

I would assume it comes from fetching. You make a motion while throwing something and the dog looks to see where what you threw went. Make the motion without throwing anything, which is a bit like pointing, and the dog will still look. Cats look at your hand wondering whether you are about to drop a treat for them, the finger sticking out makes no difference.

"Most animals don't even know to look at where we are pointing at." Someone (perhaps it was you?) brought this up in the last "cats vs. dogs"discussion and since I didn't comment then, I will comment now. Pointing is a learned non-verbal communicative act. A finger is not a laser pointer, and there is no reason why looking at the finger itself is wrong or should be used as a mark of low intellect. I won't bother with whether dogs are born knowing this or learn it while playing fetch and other games with humans, but will point out that dogs with this skill have historically been valued by hunters over ones that don't have this skill. A cat may not recognize the position of your fingers as a specific instruction as most cats tend to just watch any object in motion. Cats' and dogs' respective behavior has much to do with how we tend to play with them, which in turn is a reflection on how we have traditionally exploited them to our advantage.

Then you haven't thought it about it enough. Arcade games are generally winnable, and the value of your initial fee increases with skill. Those high scores on games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man are achieved on a single credit. You aren't buying the entertainment, but rather an opportunity to be entertained. No amount of money will guarantee you get to the second board of Donkey Kong, yet one quarter is all it takes to play through the entire game. The only goal of Farmville is to increase your credits through a repetitive mechanic so that you can buy items that either serve little more than a decorative function or temporarily speed up/eliminate some aspect of the repetitive play (so you may earn money for the useless items in less time). People spend real money because the game is not actually fun to play, yet having a colorful personalized farm others can visit holds some strange appeal to them. You don't pay to play Farmville, you pay to avoid having to play it.

You listed mainly the typical "red state" outdoor activities. Though I'm in WV, I live in a college town and most of my female friends are left-of-center. In addition to biking, hiking, and caving (and that's just in the Summer) don't forget to include going to festivals and gatherings such as Bonaroo or Burning Man among the things people may consider outdoor activities when describing themselves. Actually, it seems the activities you listed are the interests women claim when they want men to believe they would be a fun person to hang out with. A lot of men around this state do hunt and fish or ride dirt bikes and not many women want to be thought of as someone who would get in the way of those things. If most of your real interests are things you do indoors and alone that's probably how you will spend most of your time. I'd expect a high percentage of people on /. have the personality trait that, while they would, in theory, like to do those things, many can't tear themselves away from their work-spaces for fear of wasting valuable personal time on single-tasking leisure pursuits.

Yeah, that might help.

The most you would have paid will always be more than the most you were willing to pay. Don't know why but it is. Could be that given a second chance to pay more we again wouldn't. But because we believe that we actually would have paid more when assuming that it would have changed the outcome favorably we then regret not going with the higher amount before.

If I cut in front of you in line and buy the last of an item you intended to purchase, I am only causing you a neutral outcome. But it is still rude. Notice that people care somewhat less when they are sniped by a bidder who did at one time themselves have a winning bid, than when sniped by a bidder who showed no interest before the closing moments. This is because we use the number of bids and distinct bidders to gauge interest in an item when determining our own max bids. It's not logical (mostly because of sniping) but if I see bidding has slowed on an item with numerous bidders unwilling to go markedly higher than the current amount I can assume that the final price will be within that same ballpark. When there are fewer bidders taking turns having the highest bid, it is likely that one will wait until the very end to actually input their highest bid, which will generally be significantly more than their previous highest bid.