Bartimaeus

That's how my cat is like too, actually! It's nice in some ways - being more involved than you would normally get out a regular cat is nice - but also very annoying at times, too. He whines and cries a lot for no real reason besides that he can. Whines at doors, whines at windows, whines for water (he only drinks out of a running faucet these days...), whines to jump up on counters (...and he's getting too old to jump by himself sometimes). I think he's about 13 or 14 years old now...which I guess probably means he won't be around that much longer, sadly, especially seeing as how persistent throwing-up is usually a bad sign for longevity. That's life, though...

In regards to foreign languages, I think we, again, get back to the point of 'youth being wasted on the young' - pretty much nobody who takes foreign language in high school ever remembers virtually anything from it a few years later (unless their studies or necessity - usage - take them back in that direction, anyways). What a a silly requirement and a bit of a waste, .

Requirement for admission, my bad. A lot of "2 years of foreign language required"s and "4 years strongly suggested"s from what I was reading, .

I'm pretty sure my cat would literally die if I went on a road trip with him. He's an old geezer and throws up with the slightest amount of anxiety (...darned rescue animals), and he hates being in cars. Your cat seems pretty relaxed by comparison, .

Yeah, I'm looking it up more, and it seems like it's more of a requirement for "competitive" (i.e. generally the highest-end...or otherwise more sought-after) schools than a strict requirement of some kind. Good call.

Literally nonexistent. No joke - the only crime that happens here is from people just traveling through. So that's nice...but still, the FOOD! I have to drive like an hour away to get any decent grub! ...and I HATE driving.

It's mandatory for a 4 year college degree (in most states?) these days, I think.

I'm the opposite: my handwriting is that of a 150 year old's, but my grammar is - well, I think anyways - pretty good. Good thing I don't have to write out stuff by hand too often. It wasn't that it was too hard or anything - it's just that it always felt like a big waste of time. High school made me realize that you get some of what you put into it...and then high school was suddenly over in the blink of an eye, and then you get to college and you start your generals and realize, "Hey, wait a second, this IS a big fat waste of my time!". Until you start some of your core classes (hopefully!), anyways...

Yeah, I recently moved to a small town in the very northern midwest recently. Absolutely sucks for food - no Mexican or Thai or Vietnamese or Cambodian or Philippine or even Indian or pretty much anything else worth a crap. ...Yes, I eat mostly Asian cuisine. It's even pretty hard to just get INGREDIENTS like thai or holy basil (e: or coconut milk or fish sauce...I mean, come on you guys) to cook with up here...it's quite intolerable.

Personally, I hated school right up until high school, when I was lucky to get a really cool English teacher and Science teacher (whom I'm still friends with today, though both have recently retired...) that pretty drastically changed my view of school, personal disposition, and life in general. I'm not sure what kind of person I would be without them today. So yeah, I can personally attest to the idea that youth is indeed wasted on the young...but yes, there are a few students genuinely interested in school, of course. (e): fixed this post not to be terrible

7th grade History (technically called Social Science) You have my interest... [...] how interested is the "average student"? Isn't there an old adage about youth being wasted on the young? If I had to guess, I would think that's probably your answer for a lot of kids.

Auf Wiedersehen to Jay Cutler as well, it seems...

Well, if I didn't convert my music into a lower quality format, that would take just about 35 hours straight of copying. That would be annoying, but I don't know, just let it sit in the background for two days. ...On the other hand, I am pretty sure the internal storage device couldn't store a few hundred GBs to begin with, so I'd have to convert it into a lower quality anyways.

I don't think it'd be appropriate to say at most (professional) workplaces, but...you know, I hate to make this example, but it actually has happened several times to me...just random black guys* calling you "cracker" in an informal setting (e.g. on a bus or in a bar or in the streets) is really not that unusual. I don't really mind that much, because it's obviously not meant in an explicitly racist way - more of just a "hello white guy"-type way - but you know, you don't really have an equivalent to call them in return that most people wouldn't find very offensive. I generally just prefer the more friendly "dude" or "man", personally, and really, I think people would be better off if they just stuck to less racially-charged terms in general... *...And a couple of white guys of seemingly...er...lower socioeconomic status, too, I suppose.

Are you not sure like I am because of a double standard in who is able to use the slurs? I mean we did just have a talk about someone who got fired because of "gorilla" and was labeled racist because it was taken in a way that means to belittle said person because of color, but honky, cracker, etc are also used to belittle someone because of being white but it's okay? Is this why we have such an issue with race because we can't agree to make everyone follow the same rules across the board? Well, I'd say that's more of an issue of, as you just said, a double standard, which doesn't really factor into the issue in my mind, per se. Anyone who lightly* uses racial slurs while being offended at others doing the same is just a bit of a hypocrite, that's all. Really, my problem is...you know, I'm not even sure, which I guess kind of sums up how I feel about most political issues, to be honest, which is why I guess I am pretty darned centrist... *Note the "lightly". Not every usage of a racial slur is going to be the same, and because of historical connotations (as well as their original meaning when they were coined), some are automatically interpreted as being worse than others, but still, it should be pretty obvious when a racial slur is actually being used in a negative manner vs. when it's being used lightly.

Well, ignoring the more formal definition of racism simply being "discriminating between races", I wouldn't say racial slurs are always racist...but it seems like they sometimes are, and for that specific scenario of racial slurs being hurled your way for no good reason and in an insulting fashion, it seems like it should qualify...but maybe it shouldn't. I'm not totally sure.

The problem, as I see it, is that "discrimination" has a negative connotation, but the base word itself does not actually imply a negative usage. As such, when you get into discrimination meaning to simply treat someone else differently on the basis of some trait (which is more or less its most wide usage at this point), it starts to cover scenarios where it makes perfect sense to "discriminate" against or between people (for example, "discriminating" between pregnant and non-pregnant women, or recognizing the - positive - differences between different cultures, etc.). It's like we're at the point where we would call something discrimination ONLY if we mean it when we believe something to be unfair or otherwise negative...but that's not what the word literally means, which is where we run into a problem of its usage. This is probably why I don't really like to use the word at all to begin with, in favor of more specific alternatives...but unfortunately, there isn't always a more specific way of describing a situation. We really should stop having words being co-opted - or, if they are co-opted, make sure it's a completely and totally different meaning instead of a relatively close meaning.

Isn't it arguably a bit of both? Unless the racial slurs were not actually based on his race...but if they were, obviously some sort of discrimination between his race and others is being made (which is where the original meaning of the word "discrimination" comes from), which is motivating those specific slurs, right? It's more a term I'd associate with actually depriving someone of something they are entitled to simply because of a trait beyond their control. In other words looks/thoughts not behavior. If it extends the some jerk yelling words the term discrimination begins to lose it's teeth real quick. Like calling apolitical opponent a nazi. There actually is such a thing and it's not a good thing when it's meaning is diluted to extend meaning "everyone who disagrees with me". Sticks an stones and all that. Hmm. Going by the more literal and broader definition of "being able to discriminate a difference between different things", just noticing that someone is black or white would technically fall under that more broad definition, which obviously makes the word rather useless in a social context. On the other hand, going to specifically just "deprivation of something" feels too specific - I feel as though coming up with slurs specific to one's race should really be considered discrimination (in the negative sense) of some kind, but I'm not sure how you would come up with a definition of the word that isn't too broad to also cover other things to the point of absurdity. So, in your opinion, what would you call simple racial slurs - just racism?

Isn't it arguably a bit of both? Unless the racial slurs were not actually based on his race...but if they were, obviously some sort of discrimination between his race and others is being made (which is where the original meaning of the word "discrimination" comes from), which is motivating those specific slurs, right?

How slow are we talking?

Key words being "used to be",

...Uh, actually, a billion is a thousand times a million, not a million times a million. That would be a trillion.

Nobody who has hasn't seen Brazil (but eventually plans to or was ever even thinking about it) should watch that video.

For some reason, I read it as "walking home from work", and so I expected a very different result when you said "I saw the Porsche coming up behind me going at least 120km/h", . Glad there wasn't too much damage.

The only kind of math that I hate in games is percentiles and ugly decimal points. I'm not sure what it is about them, but seeing my chance to hit expressed as "65.1%" just feels so incredibly and unsatisfyingly gamey to me. AD&D abstracted this away a little by using the THAC0, AC, ability bonus, and dice roll systems, which I always loved. The math is still there, and you can still rather easily figure it out if you so wish, but it's hidden away just a little bit in the game under a system which allows me to think of my average damage as being "1D6 + 1" (or 2-7) instead of an average of 4.5, or that I need to roll a 13 or better with my D20 roll combined with my other THAC0 modifiers to beat their AC instead of it being 65% chance or whatever to hit. I like just a little bit of fuzziness and abstraction for numbers, but not too much - the numbers should still be moderately transparent and tied to hard math that you can figure out. (e): So I guess I basically like rational numbers and fractions rather than irrational numbers. Gee, what a surprise: the guy with OCPD doesn't like irrational numbers - that's a shocker.