self_assembly

In your father's case it might be because he has no other emotional outlet. But as a male with a decent social life I still don't feel comfortable making my friends an emotional outlet. I'd rather not talk to them about things that are frustrating me or making me feel stressed. So my significant other still gets the brunt of that.

In fact most of my male friends also don't get too deep in discussing their feelings. So it might not just be a lack of friendship, but a deeper problem which is men having a hard time discussing their emotions with others.

Another fun one that I'm definitely guilty of as a native Californian is "no yea" for "yes" and "yea no" for "no". I do it without thinking all the time and am always shocked that no one ever questions what I mean.

Or if an area is zoned for this type of construction, which it is, then maybe the neighbors should stop whining and those homes should be built.

This is probably a dumb question but I would appreciate a serious answer.

How am I considered a consumer of Equifax? Aren't the consumers the people that use Equifax to check my credit? When did I ever enter into an agreement with Equifax that binds me to arbitration?

I guess it comes down to why are you doing the research in the first place. Is it for your own curiosity and self-fulfillment or is it for "people to take you seriously"? I'll admit your point about resources is completely fair and oftentimes you need the prestige to obtain the necessary resources. However there is plenty or research that can be done without insane amounts of resources (<15k). As someone who does research professionally in an area that requires minimal resources (a start up cost of 10k and reoccurring costs that are much less). I do about as little as I can get away with in terms of disseminating my work. I do the work for my own personal motivations and am not concerned about being taken seriously.

There are actually some benefits to this approach in that I don't have to work on "safe projects" that are deemed "serious research" by the community. It is actually quite liberating to work on things that others might scoff at and call you a "quack" or "wack job". And even if I am a "quack" I can honestly tell you that I am happy and feel fulfilled. Just my two cents. Life is too short to worry about everyone else.

> The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

Couldn't you argue that since in order to harvest animals you must harvest plants for the animals to eat. So definitely more suffering is produced by harvesting animals. This is amplified even more so when you consider that you have to harvest more plants for producing meat than you would if you just ate the plants.

I think this is a reasonable point, but I would just add that a lot of people in CS academia are well aware of this. The problem is that we all serve multiple masters and one of the things we have to do is publish frequently. I think you'll find that many CS academics try to strike a balance between publishing for the sake of publishing and actually working towards a larger scientific goal. Personally speaking I'm definitely guilty of publishing work that looks good on my CV, but does not advance my deeper scientific agenda. That said the science is always on the front of my mind even if it only makes up 10-20% of my actual publications.

In regards to solutions it would be great if we focused less on the frequency at which we published and editors were more willing to publish work that had novel ideas even if it did not have state of the art performance (yet). Although like any job there will always be parts that are tedious, involve politics and yes parts that are even counter productive. At some point as an individual you just have to play the game while still thinking about and trying to advance the bigger picture.

> In the late 70's, I can remember a rash of stories on the nightly news, telling us that scientists were predicting that half of Florida was going to be underwater by the 2000's. Perhaps, even as a kid, I was sensitized to reporting on science, since my 4th-grade science text book was also predicting we'd be in a mini ice age in the 80's, and completely out of oil by 2000. And, dang it, I was looking forward to driving.

Isn't the difference with today the consensus among scientist. In any time period you can probably find some scientist making exaggerated claims about X. It feels a lot different when you have hundreds of scientist coming together to write things like IPCC reports. This isn't just some scientist says X. This is the vast majority of scientist more or less agree that X is a major problem.

Animals are just simply "killed for food". They are raised in absolutely deplorable conditions. This isn't meant to be accusatory, but in honest question. Do you think it is justified to raise animals in torturous conditions from birth to slaughter?

Sure I get that. But how far do you take that justification? Would you be willing to kill someone who is laying on the ground defenseless because the referee is inept. Fighters need to have some self control. And it in this specific situation it seemed pretty cut and dry that the Tai Chi master was not able to fight back.

By not continuing to pummel him when he is on the ground. I don't know what could compel someone to continue hitting a person's head as he lays helpless on the ground (the opponent was basically curled up in the fetal position). At that point it just seems like the fighter gets some sort of sick enjoyment from hurting the other person.

Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer for a while. This is a rather unfortunate example.

I can't remember any names, but I know other countries have a had a better go of it. Specifically I'm thinking of an Eastern Asian country but I really can't remember who and what country.

Me too! I've always been incredibly impressed by the quality of their publications.

The products aren't exactly comparable in terms of utility. I get a whole lot more utility out of a cell phone or laptop then I would out of the amazon look. Even if both have security risks one has substantially greater rewards.