Not really. They've been done to death, particularly in the 80's and early 90's. Many of us remember the "Terminator" movies, "Bill & Ted", "Back to the Future", the TV show "Quantum Leap". The "Star Trek" universe couldn't make up its mind on what time travel rules it went by. I could talk about the time travel rules in "Dr. Who", but since British sci-fi doesn't make sense - that statement isn't intended as an insult, it's such a British tradition that they even make in-jokes about the fact that it doesn't make sense.

I've gotten really good at staying away from most arguments on the net. People don't act like themselves, and I've even had people I know in the world world begin to lose their manners and self-control.

In general most arguments don't get anyone anywhere. Both sides are usually stuck in their place and are completely obsessed with winning and what is "right", with neither side willing to give in. All-or-nothing deals almost lead to one side getting exploited, and it's certainly a terrible negotiating posture.

I don't think anything should be considered "common knowledge" or "common sense" for several reasons -

- In job training and school situations I hear "common sense" used a lot for very small details that need to be followed. While it does make sense to follow those details, they're often so small that they're easily forgotten. It helps to go over those details anyway, and no, they're not simply "common sense".

- For people well-versed in a specific subject or who work in very specialized fields, the practice they get can make their world seem like second nature. It's grown to become normal everyday life for them and they perceive it as being "common knowledge" that everyone should know. I worked in a grocery store for 11 years and a lot of people who'd been working there for a long time felt that customers should know how a grocery store works, but if a customer hasn't worked in a grocery store, how would they know how a grocery store works? What we perceive as "common knowledge" and "common sense" often isn't as common as we think.

- The internet society bombards us with an incredible amount of information to the point where our attention is spread pretty thin. This has also given rise to people who work in extremely specialized fields. There comes a point for most regular people that in order to specialize in a certain type of information an be putting time forth on other information. You'd be surprised at the amount of people considered "geniuses" who don't know what many would consider "common knowledge" or "common sense".

- I live in Canada, a country where we have to pay for extra education and post-secondary education. That certainly helps to keep people with lower incomes out of that information loop. I highly doubt that those living in poverty are surrounded by friends and family supportive of gaining more education. I can only imagine that this problem is compounded significantly in the United States.

- If information is power, people with little information can be exploited. You can certainly apply that theory to the way elite classes live.

- You can't control other people. Some people have learning disabilities. Some don't consider education fun enough to put effort forth on and would rather being doing something else. What about people in radically different cultures from our own?

I don't think such a think as "common knowledge" or "common sense" exists.

When I hear about rap songs such as the one you mentioned, I'm reminded of Jon Lajoie and how his parodies about rap songs actually have a much deeper sense of humour. Playing his parody songs several times I certainly laughed, but it also provoked a lot of thought and questions when rappers tell tales of having money, sexual escapades with women, how tough they may be in fights, or that their rhymes are good. Certainly it's not about all rappers or most rappers - I'm not going to go that far and say that everyone in one musical genre is alike, I get that enough being a fan of heavy metal. Here's the video - http://youtu.be/xC03hmS1Brk

The lines
"Stupid poor people
Stupid poor people
I have more money than you

Stupid poor people
Stupid poor people
You can't even afford food"

made me laugh VERY hard the first few times, but then I really started thinking about it, especially since the United States has a high level of poverty.

Something I love about underground music like metal, punk, hardcore and indie is that many of the bands go back home to regular day jobs, and are average joes like myself, and I can talk to them after shows like real people.

As far as wanting to be rich, it's something many North Americans are told they should strive for, and that money is the only way to measure success. It's a country built upon corporate abuse as well, and in many ways people are congratulated for exploiting people to gain more money. One of the most popular forms of exploitation is to convince people working at the lower end of job spectrum that if they work harder, put in hours off the clock and sacrifice their family and the rest of their personal life they MIGHT get somewhere, like a carrot being dangled in front of the face of a horse.

Play

The other "X-Men" movies were decent "popcorn" movies - the kind of movies that aren't too deep. They're alright, I don't regret seeing them either in the theater or renting them, and the plot and overall message are usually pretty simple, which is good because it makes them easy movies for the average audience to understand without getting too preachy. On the other hand I can barely remember what happened in those movies, so I don't consider them classics that stand the test of time. I'm getting tired of "X-Men" movies and spin-offs as they're starting to feel like TV shows with a bigger budget.

I'm also done with time-travel movies. "Back to the Future" is certainly a classic as are a few other movies, but the time-travel concept can get out of control quickly.

The Xbox One performs online checks every 24 hours and every time you start a game, the PS4 doesn't. You need a broadband connect for the Xbox One while the PS4 doesn't. The Xbox One allows publishers to restrict the sale and trading of physical games, while the PS4 doesn't, which essentially means that Electronic Arts games will be heavily restricted before Microsoft and EA end up going to court for violating first-sale doctrine. Selling or buying used games will be a major hassle on the Xbox One, while it'll be easy on the PS4. The PS4 will have more exclusive games because Sony has more internal studios and has made indie games easy o the PS4.

The PS4 will be easier to use, cheaper, and will have more games. I will get a PS4.

I think it's absolutely awesome! I know the reaction from a lot of video game websites was negative, but I think it helps to wait on a sequel to "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" - or at least some more ports with all the DLC, and I'd also like to have some leaderboard challenges as well. An iOS game doesn't feel like a full on sequel, and I felt even better about it being an iOS game when I saw the price was going to be $7. Why $7? Because most of the mobile games that are out there already are cheap junk, or at the very least games $2.99 and under can be EXTREMELY shallow, even when they're good. There's also the huge glut of pay-to-win games out there as well. I became so angry at those games that I deleted them off my iPhone before I smashed it to bits with a baseball bat.

Premium mobile/tablet games are where Square Enix (Eidos) said they were going to do more of, and it's a different market than regular mobile/tablet games. People need to get used to higher prices on the app store in order to get higher quality apps. The premium mobile/tablet games markets is a smaller one, and if there comes a breaking point where people get tired of junk apps, shallow apps or pay-to-win apps, then premium apps will be waiting right there with better quality.

Actually I don't believe that anyone should be punished for a crime. Punishment isn't rehabilitation. Rehabilitation gets people out and working, and people out and working decent jobs commit fewer crimes. Punishing people also costs A LOT of money as well.

People have a misconception that being declared "clinically insane" gets people into a cushy mental institution where they get out early since there's no set time. In fact in both Canada and the United States people declared "clinically insane" typically spend more time incarcerated than they would had they been convicted for a crime.

In Canada we have specific institutions for people who've been declared "clinically insane" for crimes, so they do essentially go to a prison. In the United States however since the mental institutions have been closed people who are declared clinically insane actually go... to jail! There are portions of correctional facilities dedicated to those who've been declared "insane".

Here's a big kicker for you - people typically think of someone being declared "clinically insane" or cases of murder, but people get declared "clinically insane" for all sorts of petty crimes, like spending 16 years in the mental health portion of prison for a purse snatching.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty unhappy in Canada that my tax dollars are being wasted in locking people up so they can join gangs, build hatred from being beaten and raped all while getting training from other criminals on how to commit crimes when there's an opportunity to train a person to make money at a job and therefore spend that money. The same goes for mental health, since in Canada we have to pay for mental health care such as psychiatrists and prescriptions.

To me the issues should be about getting people proper treatment so they can get good jobs and spend money - that's good for the economy. The current systems in both Canada and the United States do nothing to actually stop crime, which in turn puts public safety at risk, loses public money and chips away at the economy.

It looks to me like everything they're doing there looks legal, and I even think it looks cool! Has it gone "too far" though? I personally don't think so. It's sort of an artistic statement, isn't it? However, I think they need some other animal activists there to interpret the meaning of the statement, as I would interpret it as the corporate world treating people like a commodity similar to meat.

I prefer having vinyl as it feels more "real" to me than any other format. Also, when I own music on one format it's legal for me to obtain it in another format - ie I can download music from vinyls I own and it's not piracy because I partly own the music on the vinyl. If only I downloaded music because it sucks not having the songs from a vinyl I own my iTunes. All vinyls should have download keys!

People make up quotes and sayings all the time. Even if a person repeats them I still don't read much into them. What's the quote really supposed to mean? There's a lot of people who could misinterpret it.

I think I get the meaning, although it's a subject I don't think about and that's normally irrelevant to me.

As far a the meme you included with this question, it's just a meme that anyone could've whipped up. Sure, a lot of them SOUND cool in theory but often have a twisted intent behind them. I haven't re-read that meme much so I don't know if the author has any hidden meaning in it or misgivings or whatnot.

I'm sure there's a lot of people who think women from another country are "better" than women from their own, but it sounds to me like a "grass is greener on the other side" mentality.

For a SHORT distance I believe I could, though for a long distance we've come to rely on our eyesight so much that it's much too difficult to try and walk in a straight line while being unable to see.

Also, people sleepwalk with their eyes open and they can see as well.

I've heard or bosses who are supposed to be a "jerk who can get things done", but since I've never met one in real life I consider such a creature to be mythical.

Jerk bosses aren't looking for people who can get work done, they're looking for people to act like yes men and people who they can harass, all at the expense of productivity.

I'm glad you asked!

I was disappointed. I had heard rumours that the next Xbox was going to focus on doing everything better BUT games, but in fact it doesn't. Despite Microsoft repeating that the Xbox One would be "simple", Microsoft does not know how to make user-friendly products. The idea of using your own voice as well as movements instead of the button press of a remote to me makes changing channels harder, and the extra features make it less user friendly.

Not only that, but the Xbox One won't actually control everything in the living room as you need a special cable box that goes to your Xbox One. No word about providers, so right now Comcast is the only cable provider Microsoft has a deal with, and cable providers in the United States are focused on specific regions. No word about satellite providers. It also won't control DVRs.

At this point the idea of the one item that controls the living room has faded a long time ago. There was a point where you could plug your cable connection into your VCR so you could change channels from your VCR, but when VCRs got phased out nobody really missed that ability. Universal remotes allow switching between devices pretty easily as well.

There's also the uprising of smartphones and tablets. If you want to surf the net, why do it on your TV when it's more convenient from your phone or tablet? They've made the concept of having everything in the living room less and less relevant by making what was once only available in the living room now mobile.

The living room hub idea needed to be used on the current generation of consoles, and it got some gamers to do exactly that (of course, the PS3 did exactly the same thing).

Paying a fee for used games? They shot themselves in the foot with this one because that violates first-sale doctrine. Expect to see a class-action suit over this. The issue has been resolved in Europe as digital content (a similar issue) has been declared a product under first-sale doctrine, but I think we'll see some big court proceedings in the United States over this issue.

It requires a connection, so they already lost 15% of current Xbox users who don't use the internet, so they've further limited their audience there as well.

Live TV will only initially work in the United States, so if you're hoping for your Xbox One to be more than a Blu-Ray playing video game machine from the get-go outside the US, you're out of luck. They're talking about it as more than a game machine, but those features are already limited in the United States and more limited outside the United States. The only 2 place the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 were the United States and the UK.

Microsoft is also making a lot of promises up front, meaning that they're spending money so the Xbox One comes on board with hardware and software for non-gaming applications. Sony on the other hand talked about streaming in the future and made no such promises, which means once Gaikai has the technology from their end and the software ready to go, it's just an update away. Also, that makes the Xbox One more expensive to produce.

The Xbox One will have a version of Windows 8 as the operating system, which is notoriously difficult to use. It'll be more expensive to develop on the Xbox One than it'll be on the PS4, which was specifically made to be easy to develop on.

From the gaming front, while Microsoft has promised 15 exclusive games, 8 of which being new IPs released in the first year (don't expect them all due to delays), Microsoft is doing the same trick they did with the 360 - pay some developers more for exclusivity early in the life cycle then focus resources somewhere else other than games. Right now the Xbox One will be good for "Halo" and "Forza" as exclusives, beyond that they don't care much for anything that isn't a super blockbuster. They'll get "Call of Duty" DLC a month before everyone else does, but if "Call of Duty" starts selling better on a Sony system that deal will end. That's if the CoD trend doesn't end first.

Sony is big and open to indies, even helping them to publish and promote games with Microsoft is getting harder to deal with and not focusing on indie games. Sony also knows how to make mid-core games ($40 to $60 games that don't get huge promotion and not required to sell millions of units to make a profit) which means more games and more exclusive games for Sony.

Sony is also perfecting streaming technology and software on the PS3! If you want to stream movies, TV and video games without waiting on buffering, Sony will perfect that in the future. You won't need a special cable box to watch TV on the PS4 OR PS3, you'll just need a broad-band connection.

The PS4 is a gaming machine first perfecting streaming movies and TV, while Microsoft isn't focusing on games, and already has a difficult to use interface with a difficult to obtain TV/movie plan. The Xbox One has already failed at TV and movies, and isn't focusing on games. Just one more failure to chalk up for Microsoft...

When I first heard about Formspring, one of my first thoughts was that people would really be able to belt out sarcastic snappy one-liners. It turns out that most regular people aren't that clever, and that most people aren't TV comedians. Being funny online, especially in text is pretty difficult.

My answers are certainly much longer, although I admit I don't come on as much as I used to because I saw answers shrinking and become less intellectual. Your friends might be entertained by short quips for a few weeks, but in reality it doesn't let anyone know who you really are or what you're really about as a person.

I also stopped sending out questions at all for that very same reason. I hate reading short answers, and every time I think about sending out a spammed question I stop myself since most of the answers I get will be disappointing. I also used to ask "Only for you" style questions, but since people put more priority on answering spammed questions, it's difficult to create follow-up questions to actually get to know people.

Why do people give such short answers? I think it's because most people follow the path of least resistance. We live in an ADHD day and age.

- Advice is inherently judgmental. "I know better than you for your own life."
- Advice that works creates a dependent relationship. If it works they must depend on you for more advice.
- You can be blamed if someone takes your advice and it doesn't work.

It can be difficult for me not to give advice since I grew up in a family of adviceaholics.

The best thing I've done for people has been to foster indiependance and guide them to their own solution.

I personally love the DIY (do it yourself) ideal of many bands, meaning they do things on their own without giving or taking advice.

It depends on what country they're launching from, as most countries have rules, regulations and laws for what can and can't be done in their airspace, such as launching vehicles into outer space.

Since my sideburns have been going to "civil war" size (bigger than in my current profile picture) I've put separate shampoo and conditioner in it often, and it feels better and doesn't tangle as easy, so I can run my fingers though them. I should do it more often, though I'm not often thinking about it.

Although yes, shampoo and conditioner help significantly, and more than soap does.

After taking a class on counseling it really opened my eyes to how much advice doesn't work, why it doesn't work, the problems if people actually take advice, and how people hate it. This is certainly difficult for me to deal with as I've grown up in a house of adviceaholics and I've grown to dislike getting advice myself. I've also been an adviceaholic, I fight against often. I look back and dislike what I've done in being controlling and giving advice, so I certainly feel some guilt about that.

When I was a teenager I didn't take anyones advice, and I highly doubt I'd even listen to my own advice. I would stonewall people often with passive aggression and passive resistance as a way to gain power over the people controlling me and to aggravate them. My teenage self would probably do the same thing against my modern self.