And there are reps out there who are certainly assholes, I know. Personally I'm always more than happy to hand a customer over to someone higher-up; because the other crazy-making aspect of these jobs is an utter lack of power, like you mentioned. You have no authority to approve or grant anything in most cases —…

I can't speak for all phone operators, but as someone who works at a call center (with a casual dress code to boot) we're apathetic because we're overworked and routinely shouted at by strangers for things that are not our fault. If we didn't put up emotional barriers we'd go crazy.

My Chinese friend mentions eating lots of this stuff in his childhood — he says the fin itself is pretty much flavorless and has a texture like chewy gelatin. It's a status symbol; shark fin is expensive as hell, like swallows' nests. People also attribute bogus health-enhancing properties to things like these, but…

Before that, there was a movie called Brainwave (based loosely on a book called Synthajoy) that used the same premise. Yeah, no potential for abuse there!

Here's how I understand the behavioral differences between cats and dogs. In the wild cats are mainly solitary animals, whereas dogs' wild ancestors are almost all social animals. Understanding the thoughts/feelings of their pack-mates and interacting well with them is important for doggy survival; for cats it isn't.…

Slathering white lead all over their faces (for cosmetic reasons) couldn't have helped much either. And I also heard the Romans already knew about lead being toxic.

Much of this is really good advice. My personal hangup was skipping Step 4 because I was too busy writing beautiful, tortured prose, and who has time to read anything? Then I began to read actual books written by humans other than myself and realized why everything I wrote sucked so much, and how to change that.

I'm with you on the anxiety. I also go to A-kon too, funny enough, but I always go in a mask or otherwise incognito. Something about keeping my identity shielded is relaxing to me; it's not so much being around people that freaks me out, but the thought of being seen/perceived and having to deal with other people's…

Sadly, I think screenwriters have trouble writing actual Science! dialogue — mainly because most of them are screenwriters, not physicists or biologists. And even if they do the homework (or, God forbid, get an actual scientist to help with the script) the producers are even less likely to understand the concepts…

Bruce Banner, Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark are proof that the public is more than okay with scientist characters, so long as they punch things. Being a genius action-hero somehow makes them more relatable than a purely intellectual character. (House doesn't do enough punching, of course, but his personality makes up…

Is there anyone in existence who does like eating Peeps? (the texture is like eating a sand-covered sponge, and the flavor is just sugar + industrial colorants to me.) I'm genuinely curious.

My partner and I agree with you on the cats > babies issue. We have a (completely opinion-based) laundry list of reasons why having our cat is superior to having a baby, but it's primarily because the cat seems so much more adorable to us. We also think it's possible that something hormonal is very different with us…

I don't think large utopian societies are feasible unless human nature undergoes some pretty drastic changes. Once you exceed the Dunbar number in a population you tend to find that many people are unable to think of strangers as "fully human", at least in terms of considering how their actions will affect them. Even…

Certain people throughout history (yogis, etc) have supposedly been able to raise/lower their metabolism or body temperature at will. I don't doubt it's possible to learn this skill if you're dedicated enough, but I also can't see it being useful for weight loss or anything of the sort. Realistically the kind of…

I concur. I read the book first and thought "How can anyone film this? there's no plot and most of it is scatological," but the movie has remained one of my favorites. Now in retrospect it seems common sense that the film would be about the author himself wandering in and out of the text (and reality itself).

Not everything needs to be filmed in 360° — it seems a little pointless to do so for porn, for example, unless you enjoy the immersive experience of standing in a hotel room watching two strangers going at it. Likewise it can drive up the difficulty/expense in conventional filmmaking when you have to have 360° sets,…

I can confirm that (brief) sustained eye contact and a smile is a fairly common way of communicating "Oh, I notice that you're a homosexual! me too!" without having to actually say anything. It's both a way to show interest (as I imagine it is for straight people) and a friendly greeting, since it gets used between…

This is exactly what I thought when I came to read the article. The Hunger has always been one of my favorite vampire movies (though the book is pretty awful) and if this movie is anything like it, it'll probably be amazing. Plus, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston.

Calling it now — this character will try to kill the protagonist at least once.

They sure look like it. Actually everything in the trailer makes me think this is just a Chaos;Head sequel. I really liked the premise of Chaos;Head (and the horror elements!) so I'm hoping this one handles the idea better, with a more coherent plot.