Only thing that bothers me about Chicago deep-dish is how "fashionable" it has become (I'm looking at your SF) when really, it is no-where near as good as a thin, crisp slice of super greasy New York cheese. In SF there are tons of these places masquerading as fine-dining when the corner "New York" pizza shop down the block, playing metal to their pet cockroaches whilst stoned out of their minds make better pie for less.

One "slice" of Chicago deep-dish and I feel like I'm going to fall asleep from a heart-attack.

One thing is pearl clutching because of public breastfeeding or whatever. That stuff's dumb. Dressing up in lingerie and posing with yer tits out at a private dining establishment? Ya, that's obnoxious and should probably be fined.

They might as well have said "you can magically stop the train simply by murdering any random stranger".

The scary thing is not detecting a lack of emotions in some people, it's detecting emotions in people whilst they lie and say they would not sacrifice the fat guy.

In an ethics class I once attended, we were to imagine that there were two magic buttons, one "saves the whales" and kills a thousand random humans. The other kills all the whales and doesn't kill any humans. You have to press one button. Surprisingly I was the only one that killed all the whales (and saved the humans). I'd kill all the whales to save even one random human. And then I'd dine on whale burger (waste not want not). Everyone else was a traitor to humanity.

Interestingly I think most of the class were letting emotions choose their response, and it was the wrong response (IMO). This is the problem with these entirely convoluted situations, I don't think they are necessarily eliciting the best response. You might as well start them off with "you're in Wonderland..."

Coyote's are typically pretty timid and won't let you get close to them... however, there are those that have become used to humans, and will hang out around garbage bins and populated areas for easy dinners. We have a few that hang out under the shade trees of the back 9 of the local golf course in the evenings down here in west Texas, and as soon as the unsold hot dogs go in the dumpster, they dine.

Your video, QI - French and Russian Dining, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I think the point is that most people (certainly in the west) aren't eating that kind of fine sushi. In fact, most people in japan aren't eating it like that (at least in my limited experience).

Your steak/hamburger analogy is quite apt. Most people are not ordering a $100 steak (and while we're being food snobs, any steak that expensive should be rare at most), we're ordering t-bones.

For the small percentage of people that actually go to that kind of fine sushi dining, this is probably already preaching to the converted.

How he made it...
http://forum.coolermaster.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=15726&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=a279d6c77021a9dc4a8e55c4eaa959c4

I love how with all the time, effort, money and awesome put into this desk, he just turns around a chair from the dining room table to demo it.

I didn't have the tablets. I had the berries. Yes, they're real.>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Trancecoach:
Had a flavor tripping party about a year ago -- was a great time!

Wait, this is real? Like really real?

Below is the parable of the ox: (http://www.johnkay.com/2012/07/25/the-parable-of-the-ox)

Though it is about our economies in general, it also says something between the lines about markets without guidance. Namely that in ANY market, given enough time, you will get people who "abuse" the lack of rules and change the game in their favor. (Libor, credit default swaps, monopolies, etc etc) As free market policies work only when there is plenty of competition, as soon as some one cheats or in another form effectively removes competition the entire thing will collapse. Free market policies can be optimal during a time, however, that time is limited as before (just started market, monopoly or wild west) and after (mature market, few or 1 large competitors ruling the market, monopoly) you need guidance to make sure all the stakeholders are protected, not just those with power.

(BTW though there are rules setup to make sure the system works, you can see those are reactionary because otherwise the system doesnt work at all. They make sure there are good options for everyone, not just maximum options for those with power, aka in this case the cheaters)

25 July 2012, Financial Times

In 1906, the great statistician Francis Galton observed a competition to guess the weight of an ox at a country fair. Eight hundred people entered. Galton, being the kind of man he was, ran statistical tests on the numbers. He discovered that the average guess (1,197lb) was extremely close to the actual weight (1,198lb) of the ox. This story was told by James Surowiecki, in his entertaining book The Wisdom of Crowds.

Not many people know the events that followed. A few years later, the scales seemed to become less and less reliable. Repairs were expensive; but the fair organiser had a brilliant idea. Since attendees were so good at guessing the weight of an ox, it was unnecessary to repair the scales. The organiser would simply ask everyone to guess the weight, and take the average of their estimates.

A new problem emerged, however. Once weight-guessing competitions became the rage, some participants tried to cheat. They even sought privileged information from the farmer who had bred the ox. It was feared that if some people had an edge, others would be reluctant to enter the weight-guessing competition. With only a few entrants, you could not rely on the wisdom of the crowd. The process of weight discovery would be damaged.

Strict regulatory rules were introduced. The farmer was asked to prepare three monthly bulletins on the development of his ox. These bulletins were posted on the door of the market for everyone to read. If the farmer gave his friends any other information about the beast, that was also to be posted on the market door. Anyone who entered the competition with knowledge concerning the ox that was not available to the world at large would be expelled from the market. In this way, the integrity of the weight-guessing process would be maintained.

Professional analysts scrutinised the contents of these regulatory announcements and advised their clients on their implications. They wined and dined farmers; once the farmers were required to be careful about the information they disclosed, however, these lunches became less fruitful.

Some brighter analysts realised that understanding the nutrition and health of the ox was not that useful anyway. What mattered were the guesses of the bystanders. Since the beast was no longer being weighed, the key to success lay not in correctly assessing its weight, but rather in correctly assessing what other people would guess. Or what others would guess others would guess. And so on.

Some, such as old Farmer Buffett, claimed that the results of this process were more and more divorced from the realities of ox-rearing. He was ignored, however. True, Farmer Buffett’s beasts did appear healthy and well fed, and his finances were ever more prosperous: but, it was agreed, he was a simple countryman who did not really understand how markets work.

International bodies were established to define the rules for assessing the weight of the ox. There were two competing standards – generally accepted ox-weighing principles and international ox-weighing standards. However, both agreed on one fundamental principle, which followed from the need to eliminate the role of subjective assessment by any individual. The weight of the ox was officially defined as the average of everyone’s guesses.

One difficulty was that sometimes there were few, or even no, guesses of the oxen’s weight. But that problem was soon overcome. Mathematicians from the University of Chicago developed models from which it was possible to estimate what, if there had actually been many guesses as to the weight of the animal, the average of these guesses would have been. No knowledge of animal husbandry was required, only a powerful computer.

By this time, there was a large industry of professional weight guessers, organisers of weight- guessing competitions and advisers helping people to refine their guesses. Some people suggested that it might be cheaper to repair the scales, but they were derided: why go back to relying on the judgment of a single auctioneer when you could benefit from the aggregated wisdom of so many clever people?

And then the ox died. Among all this activity, no one had remembered to feed it.

What if his last wish was to have his entire family dine & dash?

SREDNI VASHTAR

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things---such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dulness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him ``for his good'' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out---an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. De Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. De Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability.

After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. ``It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers,'' she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it ``gave trouble,'' a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.

``I thought you liked toast,'' she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

``Sometimes,'' said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight be asked a boon.

``Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.''

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty comer, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up: ``Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.''

Mrs. De Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.

``What are you keeping in that locked hutch?'' she asked. ``I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared away.''

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then be imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the pæan of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

``Tea is ready,'' said the sour-faced maid; ``where is the mistress?'' ``She went down to the shed some time ago,'' said Conradin. And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

``Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!'' exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.

>> ^hpqp:

It's no secret that OBL was trained by the CIA during Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, as a part of the proxy wars between USSR and USA during the cold war.
As for the evidence, you might like to start with the links I've already provided you with. Twice. Oh well, "Third time's the charm" for you superstitious types: http://www.debunking911.com/

_{(Btw, if you're going to defend your questionable beliefs, try linking articles that are a tad more convincing than the conjecturing ramblings filled with leading questions of a Srebrenica-massacre-denialist and defender of a renowned war criminal.)}>> ^marbles:
>> ^hpqp:
Yes, why do truthers keep avoiding the evidence and logic?

I'm not avoiding anything. Please share all credible evidence backing the official theory. No such evidence exists.
And logic? Maybe you should do some research on who Osama bin Laden aka Tim Osman really was.
Osama bin Laden: Made in USA



And it's no secret that al-Qaeda was a database of "freedom fighters" of a CIA proxy army. It's also no secret they were given 6+ billion dollars in the 80s by the CIA and Saudi Intelligence to fight the Soviets over Afghanistan under the invented threat of Communism. Now here's where that "logic" comes in.

When did OBL stop working for the CIA?
OBL was immediately blamed for 9/11 (within a few hours after the attacks) and now we are fighting wars under the invented threat of Muslim jihadists.

Why were some of the alleged hijackers living with CIA and FBI informants?

Why were some of the alleged hijackers training at US military bases?

Why did Anwar al-Awlaki dine at the Pentagon just months after 9/11?

What was ISI Chief Mahmud Ahmad (who wired $100,00 to Mohammed Atta) doing at the Pentagon the week leading up to and morning of 9/11?

Oh, I'm looking for "logical" answers here.

And for "evidence" supporting the official story, don't be a chicken shit. List your best supporting evidence. Of course, I know this is impossible for you. For it would require you to actually construct a coherent argument.
Maybe instead of letting debunking.com do your thinking for you, you should try getting all the facts and confirm them for yourself.

And my "questionable beliefs" are grounded solidly on credible evidence and sound logic, so question away. The link was to an article, not a guy. I'm glad you can google, but if you want to refute the article, try to avoid using logical fallacies (after all).

_{(Btw, "conjecturing" isn't an adjective. You can google that too! It's funny, you keep accusing me of "conjecturing", but you're too much of a chicken shit to demonstrate it!)}

*quality dining.

He was a committee chairmain and a chair of a summer study committee? Two more chairs and they'll have a dining room set. ZING!

Tonight we dine on fancy feast my love.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
My 5000th COMMENT!!!!! YEAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!