Phi for All

Oh, now THERE'S a practical skill set.... If you're wondering why people don't invite you to parties anymore, I think I know the answer.

Ben tian sheng de yi dui rou!

Have you seen Serenity? Shiny.

His old socks must have been pretty disgusting. Why do socks have more friction once you've washed them a few times? Soap? You'll do well in your new home. It's like Birk capital of the world.

It is quite a feet, but if Illuminati pulls on this thread, heel soon unravel it.

Yes, and people with hanger dimples on the tops of the shoulders of their shirts will hopefully seem more attractive to the opposite sex. By the same token, faded jeans are a sign that a man actually knows how to do laundry, also making him attractive. However, tight-fitting shrunken clothes on women, which should imply that they are laundry-challenged and make them less attractive, will continue to bring in guys in droves. Go figure.

Anything important takes lots of practice. Collaborating artists rarely sculpt a masterpiece on their first few tries. If making that first move is tough you should try approaching a friend you're interested in knowing better and say, "I don't know a lot about relationships but I'd like to learn more with you." Then shut up and let them talk.

So heavy they make you pigeon-toed.

I thought size didn't matter!? Oh well, I do feel that a man's feet should fill his socks. One of the reasons guys like tubesocks so much is for the marginally longer neck. That way they still cover the ankles after repeated washings have shrunk them to Lilliputian proportions.

Tubesocks are a conundrum. When wearing long pants I pull the socks up, when wearing shorts I push them down. I actually like wearing the jogger (no show) kind when it's hot out. Nothing says tourist like shorts with tubesocks pulled all the way up. I like the evolution angle. Since the invention of the clothes dryer, natural selection will probably kill off the tubesock in favor of shorter ankle lengths. Tubesock mating suffers when static causes one of a pair to cling to the dryer door. Less surface area means less cling and thus more successful post-dryer mating. Crews and joggers (no-shows) will eventually dominate the species.

All parts of life are just parts of life. The sucking or shining is what you bring to it. I see every day through the eyes of a six-year-old (she'll be seven tomorrow). I quit a six-figure job two years ago because I was sick of being micromanaged by people who could never do what I did. Now I work from home, I spend a lot of time with family and friends, I'm finally meeting the neighbors, I'm learning great science from this forum. The really funny part is my home business is starting to make me more money than the old job did. Life is shiny. So much of being a teenager is knowing what is right but finally feeling the burden of what is wrong. You see injustice everywhere and realize you won't have the power to fix things for a few years yet... if then. You are caught between doing what you want and doing what you're supposed to. You find yourself spending too much time on what other's think and not enough on who you want to be. If you're shy because you don't want to look foolish, just remember that everyone else is waiting for you to speak up. Chances are you might say what they've been dying to say. And they'll thank you for it. And those who don't aren't worth the worry.

Sounds like some great topics for our Ecology and the Environment sub forum. When that one fills up with enough animal conservation threads, we can spin them off into another sub forum.

Are there similar Doomsday vaults with human and animal "seeds"? Did Norway buy any Murphy-proof mousetraps?

Distinguishing between a need and a want is one step towards wisdom, imo. Recognizing that part of what drives your purchases is simply a desire to acquire marks a milestone in your maturity level. I used to collect museum replica swords until I finally realized I was more excited by the prospect of shopping for my next one than I was when my current acquisition arrived. Shouldn't I have been more thrilled to receive something I'd been waiting for? But within a few days I was back with my nose in the catalog looking for what I wanted next. And don't forget the power of persuasion. Part of the "bang" is how good it sounds to you. I've noticed in the US that calling something by a French-sounding word makes it more desirable. I've lost thousands of dollars to the word "gourmet". Regular coffee comes pre-ground in a steel can with a plastic lid. Gourmet coffee comes in a paper bag as whole beans you have to grind yourself and costs more than regular. And what is a "buffet"? It's a cafeteria where you pay more and serve yourself. Pschologically, we often go out of our way to defend these types of purchases, more so than others. This tells me we probably know they're wrong and require justification. But those chemicals are hard to ignore.

Raising awareness regarding a possible global catastrophe doesn't seem overboard to me in the least, especially when the worst case scenario is that we spend too much money and time cleaning up the air we breath and saving a few forest ecosystems. To me it's a lot like spotting a huge meteor that will impact the earth in ten years. Better to give it a nudge now than have to give a titanic heave nine years from now.

A guy walks into a bar with an octopus under his arm. He sets the octopus on a stool next to him and announces, "This is the most talented octopus in the world. I'll bet anyone in this bar $50 that this octopus can play any instrument set in front of it." None of the people could believe this, so one guy brought up a guitar. The octopus took hold of the guitar and started picking away, better than Jimi Hendrix. The man took $50 from the guitarist. Next someone brings up a trumpet. The octopus started playing the trumpet, better than Herb Alpert. The man won another $50 from the trumpeter. Then some guy brought up some bagpipes. The octopus picked up the bagpipes for a minute and, looking a little puzzled, set them down again. "Can't you play the bagpipes?" the man whispered to the octopus. "Play it?" asked the octopus, "I'm gonna screw it as soon as I figure out how to get its pajamas off."

And you got away from jobs that wasted your time and figured out how to be more productive for yourself. That's what makes you exceptional. Just miserable enough to leave and make something better. Which you overcame. Would you still be in miserable, exploitative jobs if the pay was twice what it was? And went on to better yourself. Minimum wage jobs should not be careers. Making them pay better could destroy the initiative it takes to go out and get a better one.

And that didn't teach you anything you would want passed along to your kids? Why should it federally mandated to just hand it to them?

Support? A pallet on the floor, a blanket and some gruel? What would a minimum wage laborer insist on for support? There will always be a low end to the spectrum and by your arguments nothing that is done will ever be enough. I don't know if you've joined the workforce yet, but wages and benefits are all you're likely to get from an employer. In the interview, I wouldn't mention the fact that you expect them to support you. It's unfortunate that we don't have any members at SFN who can tell you about lack of freedom. The ones we don't hear from live in countries where what we do here is illegal. Freedom is only an illusion if your mind accepts it that way. OK but correct me if I'm wrong; we're only talking about doubling the minimum wage, not the whole equation. I realize why you brought them up, but when you tell me I "don't believe in a decent minimum wage, universal healthcare, childcare, public`education" just because I don't believe in doubling minimum wage, you go beyond completeness.

I can see the reasoning behind this, but this time it's not just the US. Why would Israel risk the attempt alone when so many other countries are against Iran's nuclear program?

I think this is more of what Douglas had in mind back in post #3. But it's not the purpose of business to provide livable wages. Their purpose is to create profit. And no one has done more to increase efficiency than McDonald's. I'm no fan, but they have made their jobs so easy to train for that they can actually turn a profit (not much lately) with one of the largest employee turnover rates in the industry (80% are part-timers and they have a 300% turnover rate in the US). They don't have to keep employees as long as they can show profits to their shareholders. And most employees quit McDonald's and go right into a similar minimum wage position, so the problem isn't just the wage. This concerns me, but personally I would prefer that every US citizen had the kind of education, training and personal initiative so that all minimum wage jobs could be held by school kids and guest workers.

Misleading Vividness fallacy. There is no ownership involved in the minimum wage employee/employer relationship. There was no choice of employers or skill set application involved in slavery. Well, now you're adding more issues into your argument that weren't there before. Please don't assume that because I argue not to double minimum wage that I'm against universal healthcare, childcare, and public education. That's just more strawman.

It seems they are saying, "Two years ago we promised the world we'd stop walking down this path, but it's a nice path for us and we've decided to start walking down it again." It also seems that this nuclear research has become a "source of national pride", according to Iranian news network Khabar's report from the Iranian parliament. I would imagine the Iranians you don't see on TV are not feeling national pride. I would imagine they are probably as freaked out as we are.

I would love to see a study for this. Opportunities for education doesn't mean they will be acted upon, money is only part of family stability and "reducing crime" is a pretty blanket assessment. I think it's been shown increasing to $10 an hour might not be good for the economy. Especially when it's a strawman because no one ever said "fast food is more important than a living wage".

ecoli is going to punch you in the shoulder for me for this strawman. Really, really hard. This is not about murder and slavery, and you can't blame people for complying with laws you don't happen to like. Look around you. Poverty has always been around, and our market economy is doing very well. Despite the loss of offshored jobs, despite the low education scores, and despite the minimum wage not being changed since 1997. While I don't think an inflationary adjustment in the minimum wage would be a bad thing, I think jumping to $10 an hour would. And once you do it, you can never go back.