So intelligent people never take risks or choose riskier lifestyles according to their own balance of self preservation and stimulation?

By that logic a truly smart person would only ever choose to live in a virtual bubble. There's basically no need to go outdoors for many people any more, so why would you risk it if you didn't have to?

What about all the idiots that drive cars!? Don't they know car's are dangerous? (waaaaaaaaaay more dangerous than an Alligator!)


Life is risky, in fact last time I checked it had a 100% mortality rate. Each of us has a (probably genetic) pre disposition towards a particular balance of risk and preservation. The diversity of this mix is VERY important to maintaining a healthy gene pool and social structure.

We need risk takers, they are the ones that forge ahead into new territory, test new & dangerous technologies and thrive performing essential tasks that the rest of us are too chicken shit to do like rescue people from burning buildings (or more trivially removing alligators from pools lol)


I would also like to point out that many a dumbass couple has produced genius children, just as many genius parents have produced dumbass children. Genetics are only half the story & intelligence in particular does not appear rigidly linked to your genetic history.

The nightmare Idiocracy scenario you are so worried about has a lot more to do with education than genealogy

Hell yeah?! Love the photo-lapse, watching and hearing the process-Thanks and cheers for grabbing the tools of passion off the cupboard and sharing the ride

Lann-Does your future hold a forge in the backyard(yer pics from school), have you the room and the passion?? - long to work with fire and metal m'self someday...studio, studio space and time-

Soooo.....why make a tiny forge for a table-top when you could go the short distance further and build a more efficient and safer example?
I trust home-project enthusiasts with this how-to video like I trust an Alabama neighbor with deep-frying a turkey in the driveway next door.

Your video, DIY Forge, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Can't say I understand the logic here.
How does someone benefiting from a broken system make that person culpable for the brokenness? Someone who was shrewd enough to understand what was happening, and was well-positioned to gain as a result of it isn't necessary guilty of any crime that can be prosecuted successfully, and not arbitrarily.
Sure, the masses want justice, but scapegoating isn't how it's done. Following the letter or spirit of the law (or amending the law, if necessary) is how we forge justice in a free society. Otherwise, we're just witch-hunting and doing very little to fix the systemic problems.

1)Yes its a glitch/exploit. When an exploit is detrimental to the game it should of course be patched but just because its unintended by the developer doesn't necessarily make it detrimental to the game. Broodwar was full of glitches like this and it made it a better game. Exploiting detrimental glitches is a pretty good way to get them fixed quickly.

2)Build a forge.

I'm lacking in respect, huh? Fuck you, pal. I disagreed with you, and I did so pretty vehemently because I feel very strongly that you are wrong. Do you somehow think that you are entitled to judge everybody else by your impossible standards while staying safe from reproach and disagreement up in your ivory tower? And I'm the one with the ego, sure.

Now, look. I have two friends who are way into blacksmithing (and I'm actually going to try this out a bit when it becomes feasible for me to have a forge and anvil (I don't think my current neighbours would like it if I suddenly started pounding metal in my back yard)) and many others who have spent years working in construction. One of them even broke his back doing it. They have their primary skills and I've got mine, and while there is a slight overlap (since we all love to learn new things and tend to do so from each other), we all have to recognize that we are different people who are good at different things.

Because the really fucking simple truth is that life isn't perfect, and neither are human beings. We also have a finite amount of time and a finite amount of energy, and unless you are some sort of crazy person who doesn't have any limits and will work yourself until you keel over, you're going to have a few things you do well and a few things you do less well. Deal with it. What is happening here is that you've got some jacked up übermensch fantasy you can't possibly live up to, so you judge others instead of just taking your expectations down to a more realistic level.

Oh, and by the way - I love how your response was essentially just one big throbbing ad hominem. Don't have anything meaningful to say? Don't worry; you can always call the other guy an arrogant jerk! That'll show him! Nice job there, buddy. You really got me good.

I am so badly jaded by this point that i consider almost everything with power in the western world to be corrupt.

I used to say that those who were intelligent and caring enough to lead and forge a better world for all of us are least suited to get there, but i have since changed my opinion to a worse one; those who are most suited to getting into a position of power are those without empathy for others, who can and will abuse anyone and anything to further themselves - they are known as professional psychopaths, and i think we are led by them.

In our country right now, on average, the richest pay less tax than the poor, and the extremely rich can afford to pay no tax. Our MP's cheat expenses (which are already outrageous) and have second houses paid for them, they set up laws to help them dodge tax and make changes to our social systems so that they can sell them off to their friends. They recently even wanted a further pay hike because apparently all of those things followed by a guaranteed golden handshake/pension is not enough. Meanwhile, and this is not hyperbole, there are elderly people dying because they can't afford to heat their homes during the winter, and food banks have risen meteorically because others can't afford to feed their families.

This feels like some sort of medieval nightmare, where the kings and lords are living a life of plenty, stuffing their faces with roast pigs whilst the commoners starve and eat grass outside the castle walls.

I am genuinely concerned for the world, and i am bewildered by the fact that none of my friends seem to care as much as i do. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing - apathy is how this world will burn.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Congrats to you Barsepts - I think we're going to need to forge new royal scepters. Thanks for all your contributions.

Then see, we'll gently guide her back down to earth so we can bust it open and see what's inside!

"Rumor has it, that Japanese securities mogul Hattorishi Hanzō MCCVII has purchased the first to be brought back to earth from her unaltered orbit, and plans to forge Samurai swords with the precious cargo, in the tradition of her great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great great, great, great Grandfather."

They have "value" the same way all currencies have "value", in that they are a reliable way to determine if somebody else has stored value in the currency market in question.

Calling them "coins" is probably confusing, people don't have bitcoins, people have bitcoin accounts, which you can make as many of as you wish, but new bitcoin accounts are always empty.

To get "coins" the central p2p accounting ledger called the block-chain has to show that some other account transferred coins to your account, that transfer log has to go all the way back to coins generating through mining.

The specifics of how the accounting is verified is some very cool crypto, but suffice it to say it is functionally impossible to forge bitcoin transactions.

Your video, Man at arms: Forging He-Man's Sword, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

You can afford...being the prime question here.
Most cars these days (read: not performance cars) are made on the cheap.
Forged connecting rods, and billet valves / cam shafts / high tensile head bolts are not cheap, therfore they dont go into the vast majority of modern engines.

Putting a turbo on your engine alone would vastly increase compression ratios, stressing just about every internal part in the car. The poverty pack econo-cars can not handle any more than about 4-6lb's of boost before things start heating up, warping, and shaking themselves apart violently.

Cost to get things up to spec?

erm....well a good set of H beam forged con-rods can cost you anywhere from 600 upwards (generally upwards...a lot upwards), and thats just the part, not including installation. Getting the valves reworked, vavle springs, cam shaft....thats ~2k+ if youre doing it on the cheap.

Then you need an intercooler to take the heat out of the intake air (as the turbo compresses intake air, and therfore heats it up) so as to keep the economy levels up....and piping to go with it, your looking at another 1k at least.

Then you need an ECU mod, piggy back if you can get away with it, around the 1k figure, otherwise a full standalone can cost upwards of 1.5k.

Then you need to program and tune, upwards again of 1.5k.

To turbo a non-turbo economy engine povery-pack car, you are looking at LEAST 5k+, and thats doing it on mega budget, you wont get any reliability or safety out of it.

Before you even get to put the turbo on, which itself is about 300-1.5k depending on what turbine you purchase, you also need a turbo manifold to redirect all of the exhaust gas into a turbo, and have an outlet pipe that allows waste-gate dumps into your exhaust. So you also need to get your cat-back system redone too, which is about 700-1500 to get it done right.

Doing it right? Start counting from 10k....and keep going.

Doing it right would be to upgrade the breaks (bigger discs, bigger calipers, bigger master cylinder), the suspension (coilovers), and doing some serious chassis strengthening to take the increased loads (front/rear sway bar upgrades, front/rear strut tower bars etc..)

Its not cheap unfortunately

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

cheap-ass drop-forged wrenches will break all day long...Try breaking some Snap-On flank drive wrenches doing this....dare ya...you'll twist the head of that bolt off before the wrench will bend.