Somewhat different methods and personal philosophies.

So what would the Christ and the Vigilante be able to get together on? What are the irreconcilables?

What other news events from your childhood really stuck with you?

What most surprised/dismayed/thrilled about a new place (house, condo, apartment, hollowed-out tree in the woods, whatever)? What things caught you off-guard during or after you made the decision?

(And a quick shout out to It’s Lovely, I’ll Take It, a very fun terrible-real-estate-listing-photos blog run by a Seattlite Mefite.)

What song or songs kick you suddenly back to middle/high school, to that girl or that boy or that dance or that night?

I first got online in 1998. At one time I started noticing that a lot of search results I got were from some site called “wikipedia.” Being the naive little teenager I was, I assumed it was some kind of Wiccan encyclopedia.

Though unfamiliar with the term, I once created a sockpuppet at a major online forum (not Metafilter). I was called out in approximately 0.0001 milliseconds.

Fear and Loathing on/in/at/under x?

I am assuming you already have the most basic supplies, such a some food, a first-aid kit, and anything you would pack for vacation or expect your hotel to have, so toiletries, clothes, towels, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste/toothbrush, etc.

What kind of vacation do you want?  Where, when, why?  What would you be doing, if anything?  What would you be taking a vacation from?

It can be big or small. It can be driven by good intentions or something more selfish. The key thing is, it shouldn’t be a mild and sensible policy declaration: you’re shooting the moon on this one.

So what would you wave your scepter and make so, just for the hell of it?

Let’s assume a substantial, after all applicable taxes, amount of $30 million. Who will you help and how (with a smattering of ‘why’)? Just family or a multitude of impoverished people?

note: other things which likewise run on gas may or may not continue operation in this hypothetical, depending entirely on the preference of the answerer. If you want to tell me about a world sans automobiles, but which still has functional air planes, knock yourself out. If you want to assume all modern petroleum fueled transportation is out, that’s awesome, too.

What do you expect to stay around? What do you not count on? Why? Is how you things see right now how you’d like to see them? Where do your feelings on this come from, historically?

Etc. Go crazy.

Steve-o posted a (bizarrely practical!) question about resumes and then thoughtfully answered it himself under a different account, couched in a fictional happy discovery of a great new resource blah blah blah etc.

So, here’s the dilemma: Stephen had to have (a) found the site, (b) discerned that it was, indeed, a question-and-answer resource of some sort, and (c) had the wherewithal to bother with a two-account sockpuppet show — all of which are arguments toward having some notion of what you’re on about, at least — and yet the end result was so baldly, embarrassingly obvious that any credit lent above is revoked with prejudice.

While this sort of spam may be new to the BBQ, it’s old hat at mefi and has been running wild on the net for a good long time. So there’s a culture for it to fester in — one of naivety or indifference or even encouragement in some places. In that case, rather than raw stupidity being to blame, is it that this unchallenging environment has made otherwise bright, attentitive stars of the die-in-a-fire spam-and-shill sector lazy?

I’m also willing to accept “all of the above” as an answer.

With that in mind, the question I pose is a simple one: what recent advancement has “spoiled” you, to the point where you simply cannot imagine having to live in a world where it did not exist?

This does not have to be limited to tech toys and gadgets; it could be social, political, or really anything you could imagine. If pressed for a definition of “recent”, I would say “within 10 years of your date of birth”; so, within your own lifetime, or close to it.

So what is it for you?

In that spirit, what are you doing now that your younger self was never going to do? Or what aren’t you doing that your younger self was never going to give up?

If you read them, why?

If you don’t read them, why not? Does it simply not occur to you to bother, or do you actively avoid them?

And, given that Netcraft has confirmed the imminent death of the printed newspaper, will reading the obits go the way of the rest of print media? Will online obits have the same feel? How do you suppose the change in how people get their news will affect this niche issue in the years to come?

(Yes, this is meant to be in fun.)

What are the things that you feel like you should be doing but which you just aren’t, for whatever reasons? What’s the thing that bugs you most? What’s the thing that bugs you less than you reckon it should?

Assume that people are actually registered in the party that most closely aligns with their values. Now, would this cross-party system improve the whole affair (individuals would realize that they’re choosing the “enemy’s team,” would pick the person that they truly think would be the better choice), or would it make things worse (individuals would pick the person most likely to lose the election for the other side)?

Or are you getting too much sleep?

And where does your sense of what’s enough and whether you’re getting it come from? Your doctor? Folk wisdom? Self-assessment?

Let’s say an entire world of people didn’t believe in free will (and that they were right). What would such a world be like?

Let’s say the world is otherwise like our world. If you’re temped to say, “That’s impossible. A world in which people don’t feel like they have free will would never wind up being anything like our world,” imagine this:

Super-intelligent aliens visit present-day Earth and explain to us that free-will doesn’t exist. They actually (somehow) prove to us that it doesn’t. Of course, some people don’t (or can’t) accept the proof, even though it’s iron-clad. So the aliens put something in our water — some chemical that forces us to see the truth. Suddenly, we all KNOW that there’s no free will.

What happens?

The cost of the treatment is not a factor - you have great health insurance.

The treatments offered to you may have serious side effects, but they could alleviate your symptoms and make you feel a lot better.

While treating your disease is not a guarantee, there is a very good chance it could cure the disease, or significantly extend your lifespan. (This extension of your lifespan would not involve a decrease in the quality of your life.)

If you choose not to treat the disease (not for any moral or religious reasons - simply because you don’t care if you live or die) is it suicide? Please elaborate on your answer.

(I’m not sick, it’s just a discussion I was having with someone.)

What if it is an animal with the intelligence equivalent of a dolphin, horse, or a cat?

It seems to me we have an extremely long way to go with “communicating” with cats and the like, how in the world can we expect to converse with an equivalent alien being?

Would it behoove us to make more of an effort on human to animal communication?

I was thinking about this today, and I realized that I don’t have one. The question stymies me. I mean, I have tons of memories going way back to early childhood, but I can’t even come close to pinpointing one as the earliest. I can’t even narrow them down to the ten earliest.

I have all these memories of nursery school, etc. I remember tons of events that would be impossible for me to put in chronological order. I think my earliest would have been from when I was three or so. But I have so many memories from that time, I can’t say which came first.

Am I being too literal? When most people get asked, “What’s your earliest memory?” do they just interpret that as, “Tell me a story from your early childhood”?

Or do most people actually have a memory that they know (or feel) came before all their other memories?

I was reading a rather scary Radar article and came across “Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over” — and the fact that Congress’ own freakin’ Homeland Security Committee was denied a review of the Continuity of Government classified annexes.

And it made me think … what sort of reasoning could possibly justify that behavior from the Bush Administration?

And in reply, my fertile brain popped back: what if Congress had been infiltrated by terrorists?

Now, obviously, I think that’s highly unlikely if not impossible, and pretty much downright silly. A moment borne of action movies and thrillers.

But it got me thinking along those lines. What conspiracies, theories, unknown facts, etc. would have to be revealed in order for you to go from Dubya being the worst, most crooked, most insane President in U.S. history to him being Lincoln, Roosevelt, Washington, etc., the savior of the nation?

What’s not fair? Locally or globally, personally or systemically, emotionally or economically: what are some big and small things in the world that are unfair?

Bonus questions: why isn’t it fair? And if it isn’t fair, why does it persist? And who might disagree about it not being fair, for that matter, and why?

Time to take revenge! How do you destroy your enemies, threaten the world, and generally inflict terror in the masses?

On a lighter note than “This too shall pass”, I’ve always thought this was a brilliantly funny entry into the Five-Word-Acceptance-Speech contest:

“Fools! Release the giant robot!”

My question is the opposite. What acts would you refuse to do, no matter what I offered you?

To make this interesting, let’s set a few caveats: no acts that cause permanent physical damage. I hope you won’t let me cut off your leg, no matter how much I offer you. No selling children into slavery or anything like that. I’m mostly interested in emotional boundaries.

Would you strip in front of your friends for money? Would you spend two years in solitary confinement for money? Would you eat dirt for money?

What wouldn’t you do for money?

Someone: Word X means Y.

Me: I guess it does to you. That’s not what it means to me. To me, it means Z.

Someone: Well, then you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean Z; it means Y.

Me: How can I be wrong? Do you mean my definition is non-standard? That most people mean Y and I’m going against the social default?

Someone: No, you’re just wrong. Word X MEANS Y.

At this point, if I question further, Someone either doesn’t want to talk about it any more, or he starts using mystical language that I can’t parse, e.g. “Words carry energy with them, you know.” Sometimes Someone brings up word origins. If you study linguistics, you learn that most origins are pretty murky. But even if they’re crystal clear, linking a word’s meaning with its origin is like linking a building’s purpose with its designer’s original intent: “You can’t move your car factory into there! In the 1930s, that building was built as a warehouse for storing cork!”

To me, it makes complete sense to use words in standard ways. But that’s just a matter of utility. It makes communicating easier. It says nothing about what words MEAN in some cosmic sense.

I guess it also might make sense to defer to some sort of authority, like a dictionary. But I don’t see how we — as a culture — can agree on a specific authority. I think that would be hard to do even within a small circle of friends. Imagine saying, “Whenever we argue about what a word means, let’s agree to go with whatever’s in the New Heritage Dictionary.”

Even if meaning just implies conventional meaning, why are people SO sure they know the consensus. “When most people say ‘Democracy,’ they mean blah blah blah…” How do you KNOW? Have you taken a survey? Based on my conversational experience, as a talker and as an observer, words are very fuzzy and meanings slip all the time from person-to-person. That’s one of the reasons we have so many conversational confusions.

Where does this idea come from, that words have fixed meanings? Why do so many people believe it?

If you believe it, why do you believe it? If you believe my “fuzzy” view is wrong, why is it wrong?

Wait, those are questions. Dammit.

So, fun facts: we’ve just hit 1,500 comments. Zounds! And 132 questions so far. Which is not a round number but I’m still pretty okay with.

Also, those Mets: how about them?

By teams, I mean categories like male, female, black, white, American and so on.

I don’t identify with any of them. Of course, I know I’m male, white and American. But I don’t in any way feel part of a team that includes other’s “like me.”

I know it’s easier to feel like a member if you’ve been persecuted, and people-like-me tend to be privileged. Yet I was horribly persecuted as a child. Why? Because I was a geek. I was a geek (nerd, whatever) in the 70s, before it had any cache. I had few friends, I was picked on, I was bullied, etc. This went on for about ten years of my life. I’m also Jewish, and I come from a family rife with Holocaust stories. I lived with deep feelings of unworthiness, shame and anger every day.

But I don’t consider myself part of the geek team; nor the Jew team. And traveling abroad didn’t make me feel part of the American team.

Yet I’m not disconnected from other people. I care deeply about friends and family. I care about people I’ve forged relationships with. I feel a part of that specific group. But not part of some larger group that includes tons of people I’ve never met. (Which doesn’t mean I never help strangers. It’s perfectly easy to help people who aren’t part of your team.)

Okay. That’s me. I don’t feel superior to people who feel otherwise. I’m sure it’s better to belong than not to. So if anything, I’m a little jealous.

Putting that aside, my main question is about teamists and non-teamists relating. Recently, I was part of a discussion about sexism. I made a point (that I’ve made here, in another thread), that many men I know are ashamed by their sexuality.

A woman remarked, “How is that my problem? Why should women be responsible for men’s sexual problems?” Now, I can understand why a woman might feel this way. And I worked hard to explain that I certainly didn’t think men’s sexual problems were an excuse for mistreating women. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was dividing the world up into two teams, men and women, and that she was essentially saying something like, “If there’s a problem in Chicago, why should the New York Mayor’s Office try to fix it?”

At one point, she even suggested that men should talk to other men about their problems — not to women.

Now, if I’m having a problem, it would never occur to me to seek out “men.” I would simply seek out a friend, male or female.

But I’ve had many conversations like this. They tend to get stuck. I can’t get inside the team mindset. The other person can’t get outside it.

Has anyone here ever had any luck bridging that gap?

If you’re a teamist, how does it feel when you come across someone like me? Do you think I’m weird? Damaged? Lying? Eccentric? What? Is it possible for you to see me as a person, and not as part of some team?

Let me be really clear and state that I absolutely notice race and gender. I’m not claiming that I see a woman and just think “person.” I’m not claiming I see a black guy and just think “guy” or “human being.”

I’m claiming that to me, there’s a huge difference between female and Member Of The Woman Club; and a black man, to me, is definitely black skinned (or brown or whatever). He’s just not necessarily a member of the Black Team.

I am often guilty of minimizing the role of “culture” in the people around me.

This week,. two twenty-somethings asked AskMe-relationship questions which took the form of, “I love my partner, but the relationship is dull, sexually. If I say with her, will I wind up regretting that I wasted my youth?”

I’m tempted to write, “It doesn’t work that way. When you’re 30, 40 and 50, you don’t look back and lament all the things you never did. You’re too busy being 45, fighting with your boss, kissing your kids, watching DVDs… whatever. You’re more worried about where you’ll be five years from now than where you were you were ten years ago.

“I would like to travel around the world, and I’ll probably never get to do it. I’m married, I have a job, etc. It makes me sad, but I think about it as ‘I’ll probably never get to do it.’ Which is upsetting. But I don’t think of it as ‘I squandered my chance,’ even if that is somehow true. The past is the past.

“And even things I did do in the past don’t thrill me all that much now. Yes, I drove across the country; yes, I went to Europe… So? That was fun at the time. What am I supposed to do about it now? Bask in the memories? They’re fading. They’re like chapters in a book that I’ve already read. They’re way less potent than stuff I’m doing now and stuff I’m worried about — or looking forward to — in the future.”

But I don’t write that, because maybe I’m just quirky this way. Maybe I just happen to dwell on the present (and the future). Maybe that’s just my temperament. Maybe other people are more nostalgic.

What do you think? What makes someone a past person, a present person, or a future person?

So what bugs you about where you live right now? What would you change if you could?

Boxers or briefs?  Or something else?  Why?  When?  What made the change for you?  Do you maintain a hybrid schedule?  Do you have a word in what your partner chooses?

(Also, hey, look under there!  Yes.  Yes.  I just made you say “under where”.  Happy Friday!)

What could make cubicles better? What’s been done already?

What is it?  What isn’t it?  How many are there?  What colors do they come in?  Etc.

My initial thought is “That would be great.” Would it? Naturally, it would be great for anyone with cancer (and that persons loved ones), but surely the outcome wouldn’t be as simple as cancer is cured, happily ever after, hooray.

Would a cancer cure impact the population is a major (harmful?) way? What would it mean for insurance companies? Cigarette companies? Unemployment rates? Etc.

I can think of two “what if” scenarios with which you can frame answers, and either is acceptable:

1. The cure is mostly used in 1st World Countries. Cancer is wiped out in the US, England, Germany, etc. But poorer nations can’t afford it.

2. The cure is inexpensive (or the expense is somehow mitigated — say with massive foreign aid) and the entire world is rid of cancer.

If you want, you can spin this question even further. What if medical science achieved its goals and disease was wiped out altogether? This IS what scientists are trying to do, and it’s remotely possible that with advances in genetic research, nanotechnology and other fields, a day will come when no one dies of a disease. Let’s assume that people can still die of old age (I know you could frame that as a disease, but I’m trying to keep this from being about immortal beings). Unless you got into a car accident or something, you’d be guaranteed a 120-year life. How would this change the world?

It doesn’t matter (to this question) whether our feelings are based in reality or not (whether there’s such a thing as objective beauty is a subject for another question). I’m just interested in hearing from people who consider themselves — who feel themselves to be — attractive.

It may be hard for such people to fess up, because doing so sounds conceited. But I’m hoping that at least some people will get over this. I’d really love to hear thoughtful answers.

As for me, I’ve never felt attractive. Let me clarify that a little. I’ve certainly felt that specific people have liked the way I look. And that felt good. And it might have even briefly made me feel attractive. But still, at my core, I never felt that their assessment was correct. I’ve never been able to sustain the feeling that I’m attractive.

At worst I feel ugly. At best, I feel average. I’m a little ashamed to admit this (though I doubt my confession will surprise anyone), but my self-assessment has had a huge impact on my life. Not a day goes by when I don’t, at least once, think about my (lack of) looks. I compare myself with other people (and usually come off the worst); I covet other people’s beauty; etc.

Even unrelated traits tie into my body image. Instead of thinking, “I’m smart,” I think, “Well, at least I’m smart.”

I’m not trying to garner pity. Truth is, in my 40s, all this stuff bothers me much less than it did when I was younger. But I can’t deny that it had a significant role in shaping who I am, how I relate to others, and how I feel about myself.

There’s tons of literature about people like me. But I never hear the other side. I’m really curious about what it’s like to have a general feeling that you’re attractive. I can’t imagine what that would be like. I wonder how it would impact a person’s life.

Please note that I’m not talking about “how good it feels when my boyfriend tells me I’m good looking” or “how charged I get when the ladies look my way.” I can understand that. I’m talking about a general, every-day feeling: what you think about yourself when no one’s there and you look in the mirror. And how that affects you.

But what are video games replacing?  Is it books that are getting aside?  Is it cowboys and indians in the backyard?  Burning ants with magnifying glasses?

What’s being offset, and is it a good thing or a bad thing or just a neutral thing?

Adolf
Gaylord

Which is better? Why? Discuss.

So, what’s the deal? What makes sense and what doesn’t? If you’re for, if you’re against: why, and how did you get there?

Would everybody be happier if the John Galt speech was a quarter as long but substantially the same?

So lay it on me.  What makes my brother so totally frickin’ sweet?

Do you even have a choice? Do you remember a point where you didn’t?

(Hat tip to robocop is bleeding, who posited this and other questions over in Metatalk recently.)

What I found interesting was the statement in the book that we will not know our true nature as a species until we are free of these structures. Which lead me to wonder - is it not our nature as a species to create them? Can we ever be free of structures like these, or is it “hard-wired” into us, that we must create methods that give some group more power than others?

What piece of art (door wide open for what qualifies) has most struck you relevant to these questions? What has caught your eye, or makes your point?

So what are the big (or not so big) things you worry or suspect you’ll never really understand?  What are the answers you think you might never get?

What’s the symptom that bugs you most? Worst minor malady? And why?

I’ve got a serial story/novella in the works (9,600 words so far), and I’m stumped as to who will be the Bad Guy/Bad Girl.

Plot: A hairdresser in California is subject to psychic visions while she sleeps, which come true. Her husband is a programmer/science type who doubts her. He secretly works for a government contractor in San Fran that gathers information on suspected terrorist activity in the U.S. (domestic only). She does not know this, she thinks he works as in middle management at a software company.

The husband’s workplace spits out information on people based on data collected from supercomputers. One place is Amherst, Massachusetts, where there is a group of anti-war activists.

Meanwhile, in Amherst, we have a dude who is an FBI agent who has infiltrated himself into this anti-war group. He has fallen in love with the leader, an older woman who is a college professor. She has a connection with a homeless guy who is a veteran of the Gulf War and he and her FBI boyfriend hate each other (she has no idea her boyfriend is with the FBI and her boyfriend doesn’t get why she puts up with being friends with this homeless tramp).

In California, there is a spy within the govt contractor’s office who misdirects information so that the FBI will go hunt people who aren’t really a terrorist threat.

We find the hairdresser correctly predicting a big Cali earthquake, while our FBI agent was sent to Austin, Texas on a wild goose chase on bad information sent to him by the California office. He returns home to Amherst to find his girlfriend and her friends planning a trip to Washington, D.C. to protest the current war.

Our psychic hairdresser has a premonition about something bad happening in D.C. but she is wrapped up in earthquake stuff (their friends have been hurt, etc.). All she sees is something vague. I’m thinking she is going to eventually go to D.C. to stop whatever it is she sees and everyone involved will wind up there for a big climax.

Who is the bad guy/girl? The FBI agent? The disgruntled vet? The spy in the California office? One of the members of the anti-war group? Or someone mysterious who was totally missed by everyone?

What would float your boat as a reader in this situation?

When I was growing up (Im 21 now, so when I was 13-14) whenever my sister or I said we hate something my parents/grandparents always told us not to say hate its a strong word. Then I was watching Scrubs and one of the characters mentioned that hate has lost all meaning now a days. The one thing that I can relate it to is to hate crimes. So my question has hate lost its meaning? Or did it used to mean more? Was it related to hate crimes?

This is one of the most profound experiences I get from art (and sometimes I get it from objects and experiences that aren’t art, as when I look at the ocean).

However, bottomlessness is an illusion. A work of art only has so much information in it. But at some point, it SEEMS like it has infinite information in it. I’m interested in the mechanics of this. How much information — and what sort of information — creates an oceanic feeling?

I have a theory that you don’t really need that much information. I think the human brain sort of goes one… two… three.. four… OH MY GOD! INFINITY!!!

I remember, years ago, seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Nicholas Nicholby.” Near the start, they created the illusion of a busy London street. I remember marveling at it, feeling like they had a million actors on stage, all doing very different things — so many things that I could never take in the whole scene, even if I saw the play a hundred times.

In fact, they had about 25 actors on stage. That’s a relatively large number, but it’s not vast. Still, I couldn’t keep track of them all at once, so my brain just decided that something really profound and “infinite” was going on.

I doubt it’s possible to break this down into an equation, but I do wonder about the minimum amount of information needed to create the illusion of vastness, great depth, the oceanic, the infinite…