I'm so glad the media is still resorting to "culture of personality" thinking. Because, you know, that hasn't been a reasonable school of thought in anthropology for, what, more than fifty years?

Yup - if you aren't old enough to remember any of: Carter as President, the Iranian hostage crisis, Three Mile Island, Jonestown, Reagan's election, etc, you're probably not Gen X. Heck, remembering punk and disco. Essentially, if you have no conscious memories of the 70's, you shouldn't be considered Gen X. The fact…

Gen X has shifted over time - it was originally closer to 1960 to 1969, then shifted to 1964 to 1974, and now goes as late as 1980. The funny thing is that there's a HUGE difference that I can see between pre-1972 and later, as far as I can see. I was born in 1969, my wife in 1974 - and there's a lot of cultural and…

Yes, she is. And this is a great example of why 6-person juries are a disaster. Studies have shown that as a group, they're less likely to accurately recall testimony, and it's easier for a small number of jurors to sway everyone else, and groupthink becomes a real problem. They're also less likely to be in any way…

They don't want their kids in with the "poors". And to these people, an average, middle-class family is poor. We've built a law-abiding society where - unlike some parts of the world - they don't have to hire massive amounts of private security or risk being kidnapped. I'm getting sick of the rich acting like they're…

The headline should be "Private contractor getting rich off the taxpayer's dime does a lousy job of hiring and supervising employees". Public money, private profit. It's the worst combination, and the Republicans keep acting like these outsourcing deals are examples of "free enterprise". Guess what, Chuckles? If a…

The best part: right now Adobe is adding features quickly for CC subscribers only as a way of enticing people to subscribe. Once enough customers subscribe, they actually have an incentive to stop producing updates as quickly. After all, what are you going to do, drop your subscription and not have access to the…

Don't worry folks - Picture People, among others, is still doing quite well. There will still be places for that one person in the family to drag everyone to preserve, for history, your ability to mask your disdain for one another for a split-second.

I remember being taught that you don't get into ANYONE'S personal space unless they say it's OK. By my parents. Kids who hadn't figured it out got told that in school as well. This was in the 1970's. I have kids now, and yes, they're told to respect other people's boundaries at home and at school. They need to be…

The Rhode Island education commissioner has links to groups getting substantial funding from testing and other "educational" corporations who are trying to reallocate public education spending to their coffers. It's a common problem around the country. Things need to change, but spending money on standardized tests…

My partner and I had a very different situation - she ended up with a c-section on our first after a very long non-productive labor, she wasn't dilating enough, and the ob noticed that the baby was in trouble. Turns out the cord got wrapped around his neck. The ob tried a couple of things to try to avoid it (can't…

Actually, in our community, trash has to be in trash bags in cans (nearly everyone uses the large bins with wheels), and they pull the bags out and throw them in the truck. Having a bare 8" or 10" knife in a bag is a good way for a garbage collector to get hurt if it's shifted in the bag.

I've got a Windows XP VM that I use at work for certain administrative/management tools. Daily. It's a decade old, no joke. I've upgraded it to newer virtual hardware, patched it, etc. It's had tools added and removed. Been working since 2002. Probably going to retire it soon.

VOTE: Sony SLT-A65

I'll preface this by saying that if someone is abusive or dangerous, won't get treatment for substance abuse, has a massive gambling/spending problem and won't get treatment, all bets are off. Helping and sticking with someone doesn't extend to letting them drag you down.

Part of what we have here is NY City and State gov'ts taking a "hands-off" approach to this community. The recent trial notwithstanding, it's been very hard to get the DA's office to investigate sexual assault allegations for years. There are reports that Ultra-Orthodox private schools - which are still required to…

The big issue is that if something goes wrong, you're going to get charged with child neglect. In fact, some states have defined minimum age when you can legally allow a child to stay home alone. It depends on whether or not the kid can handle it - in other words - whether or not something goes wrong.

Actually, I've got some sympathy for your position. I'd probably be willing to pay $20 a month for full iPlayer access in the United States. But I don't have that option because between the BBC, its Governors and BBC Worldwide, there's no agreement on how to do this. They'd even talked about doing it, but as an iPad…

Here's another one - if you don't want ice cream that takes like crap all the time, don't buy Breyers. Actually, if you want something that can be legally sold as "ice cream", don't buy Breyers. They're now loading so many gums and other stuff into it that some flavors are a "frozen dessert" under the law, rather than…

A warning sign - if ABC starts showing sitcom episodes out of order, as they recently did with "Don't Trust the B_", they're about to cancel it. They did the same thing to "The Job" years ago.