The episode you're thinking of is The Outcast. For the lazy, this episode features an alien from an androgynous race that illegally identifies as female. She is forced to undergo "psychotectic treatment" by her people and then no longer identifies as female, going as far as agreeing that she had a "sickness" before. The tone of the episode is clearly in favor of her having the choice to identify as she wished.

That said, I'm not sure I agree that treating social anxiety disorder is the same as "curing homosexuality;" it's a leap too far for me.

I prefer to encrypt everything with RND-10: rounding each byte to the nearest base-10 number. Decryption is left as an exercise for the user.

Brutal. I live in city #2 (Provo, UT for those not keeping track), and, because I can't really help myself, all I can say is: this post brought to you via Google Fiber.

Originally, quite a bit of time was spent doing upgrades behind the scenes, then they switched everyone who was on the iProvo network to Google, then they started adding new customers in built-out neighborhoods. I am lucky enough to live in a neighborhood that they switched over relatively early. It looks like they've got quite a ways to go before they finish the built-out neighborhoods. There are a couple of places that people live that aren't built out, and those people will end up in the same end as you. Right now though? I see several Google Fiber branded vehicles a day.

For those at home wanting to know what it's like? Honestly, from a web-usage stand point it's about the same as the XFinity service we had before. When Google announced they were coming to town XFinity waved a magic wand and we went from sub-50, with highly inconsistent service to 100-plus with very good reliability. In the reliability department, Google is slightly better (it's only been a month, so we'll have to see about the long-run still). As far as the routers provided by both: the XFinity box had more options for power users and the Google box has all the power-user options (even simple stuff like staticly assigned DHCP) hidden fairly well. I'm not convinced the router is the best available, but my landlords don't want to swap it out.

Quite clearly Microsoft was just pulling a play out of Gillette's book.

It only goes to -1...so sad.

Sex has never been so slow.

Your sig is both ethically and morally wrong. Frankly, it's so wrong that I demand a refund.

Comparing them to the US as a whole isn't particularly fair, as they're (in theory) mostly pulling local talent from California. California's demographics:

• Racial composition - 2010
• White - 57.6%
• Asian - 13.1%
• Black - 6.2%
• Native - 1.0%
• Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander - 0.3% 0.4%
• Other race - 17.0%
• Two or more races - 4.9%

So really, Google is more white and Asian and less "other" and black than the rest of California.

Trust me, it's a fad at best.

I have swam with sharks on numerous occasions, and always look forward to doing it again. I realize that surfers are especially at risk, so would I surf without personal protection (like a Shark Shield)? No. That's silly. Respect and fear are two different things. The sharks aren't out to get you. They may be curious, but because they're not mindless killing machines most peoples encounters with sharks end with a bump or a "omg! look! a shark!" moment. If sharks truly wanted to eat people then almost no coastal waters would be safe. As it is, millions of people go the beach to surf, swim, snorkel, etc. without incident every year. We can't make the world a perfectly safe place, and there are much more dangerous animals out there than sharks (for example, mosquitos, pigs, bees, ants, dogs, crocodiles, and other people). A waste of money is a waste of money, no matter how many warm fuzzies it gives people.

You're assuming it's an either/or situation. It looks more to me like someone is profiting on the fear.

Yes, the terror is in the minds of many beach goers, but not in reality. By putting this in place they're validating that fear. Of course this doesn't surprise me as Australia is currently in the middle of a shark cull. Sometimes I forget that the US doesn't have a monopoly on acting on unsubstantiated (and often dis-proven) fears; it's part of the human condition.

What the IQ requirement of being in Mensa actually is?

It's like the price of a superyacht; if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

earth bugs would die from the intense radiation around Jupiter.

Oh, really?

Exactly this. We investigated moving our engineers (running Pro/E / Creo) and our drafters (running Autocad) to this setup because they're the only ones not running a VDI or VDI-like setup. We're a company well suited to this because we already have the entire setup minus the NVidia gear. We ended up skipping it (for now at least) because of one two things: money and productivity. The cost of switching to a virtual environment was significantly more than the cost of getting them all new hardware. We might look at it again in another year or so when they're due for new hardware anyway, but for now it's $40k plus that isn't needed or wanted by anyone other than IT. It makes our jobs easier, but reduces their productivity slightly at the gain of increasing ours slightly. Even with 10+ drafters and 5+ engineers that offset was enough to make us blink.