No problem. I admit I don't own one myself, but it seems to be pretty well reviewed. When I upgrade my headphones, that'll probably be my solution for comms while I game.

You might consider getting a pair of high end headphones like those made by Sennheiser and adding a modmic if you want to use them for communication while gaming.

I've been listening to this song a lot recently. Almost on repeat, in fact.

Eh, that's cool. Given the unlimited resources, maybe you could develop a technology for implanting reading ability into people's minds?

To invert this experiment, I'd like to inhabit a planet with nothing but one race of people and see how long it took for genetic drift to produce new skin tones, eye colors, and so on. I'd also like to see if people again divided themselves along racial lines once new races started to emerge, particularly if they all started out and stayed primarily in one region of the planet.

Teach them to read, but not speak.

How would this work? As far as I can tell, reading is derived from speech. In fact, I'm not even sure how you'd go about teaching someone to read without speaking to them at some point. And if you did, you'd probably see imitation pretty quickly.

You'd want to make the caretakers as impersonal as possible, maybe even to the point of being robotic. Consider how much of communication is nonverbal. We even have languages that are completely based on hand gestures. Even the slightest reinforcement of certain nonverbal actions by the caretakers might have a profound effect on how language develops. Then again, if you had a thousand islands full of babies, you'd have room to systematically alter variables like level of contact between babies and caretakers and see what differences those alterations made.

I personally find paper books to be frustrating, especially if I need to go look for a particular reference. The ability to search an ebook by keyword cannot be overrated. There's really nothing special to me about the tactile nature of a traditional book. It just gets in the way, for the most part.

Interestingly, I also find that the depth with which I read something on the Internet actually changes based on where I found it. For example, I read through this entire article primarily because it was linked on Hubski, where the stated goal of the community is to inspire intelligent discussion. I knew that I'd need to read through the whole article if I wanted to be informed enough about its contents to post anything meaningful.

Had I found it on reddit, where the rapid consumption of content is my driving motivation, I almost certainly would have skimmed through it and moved on to the next meme or gif. On Facebook, I think my reaction might further depend on who posted it.

I just picked up a G502 last week to replace my Deathadder 2013 (a couple of the switches were starting to go bad). I've been really impressed so far. The placement of the side buttons is better for my full palm grip and the middle mouse click feels pretty good, if somewhat mushy. I love the adjustable weights. I went ahead and put all of mine in, because I actually like a lot of extra heft. Also, it may or may not be placebo, but the sensor tuning in the software seems to have helped it track better on my mouse pad than my Deathadder did. Speaking of, I'd say the Logitech software is overall less in the way than Razer Synapse.

Yeah, I could definitely see that video triggering ASMR. I tend to prefer the videos that are made specifically for it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I probably would. As a philosophical stance, pragmatism is very attractive to me, so understanding related scientific concepts should be pretty interesting too.

As it happens, that "tug of war" is a common conflict in philosophical and scientific writing. I'm sure you've probably encountered some philosophical works or scientific studies that were just plain wordy.

Dragon Ball Z. Particularly, from the perspective of one of the random humans who gets killed and wished back to life. Imagine their trip to King Yemma's desk and assignment to HIFL or wherever else. Then imagine their surprise when they get to resume life exactly as they left off, say, before Cell absorbed them. Could be absolutely hilarious, I think.

The first thing I have to do when I get up is put in my contacts. I'm pretty blind without them. Then, I go find something to satisfy my inevitable hunger. If it's the weekend or I'm on break from school, I'll queue up some youtube videos on my chromecast and watch those while I eat. If not, I'll eat quickly and head to the shower. Brush my teeth after eating/showering, then it's pretty much either straight to my computer or out the door for school.

I have a mundane life, but it's nice.

Well, I guess I'll be the first to put it out there on this thread. I watch/listen to ASMR videos. ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. It is a pleasant tingling sensation in the head and spine that is caused by various "triggers," including personal attention and soft, repetitive sounds. Not everyone feels it. I am one of the lucky bunch that does. Thing is, even if you don't experience ASMR, many of the videos designed to trigger it are also just very relaxing because of the soft sounds and slow, gentle movements.

Last spring, I took a course in developmental psychobiology, and systems biology was interspersed throughout. Definitely an interesting way to conceptualize the interconnections between various levels of biological study. I recall a demonstration my professor used to explain what I believe he called "partially dependent systems."

Here's the demonstration:

According to the description of the video, the metronomes become able to influence each other into synchronization when they are sitting on the cans. This is because being on the cans makes the activity of each metronome - an independent system of sorts - partially dependent on the activity of the others. The on-cans configuration is supposed to be analogous to certain biological systems. For example, the endocrine system and the nervous system in the human body.

In your opinion, am I understanding this correctly?

As someone who is particularly interested in language and its common usage, I'd like to see how the cultural idiosyncrasies of groups using the same base language affect communication between those groups. I'd also be interested in seeing how those idiosyncrasies are related to informal segregation.

Do you think you could explain simply what unigrams and bigrams are?

I'm interested in the developmental processes behind the switch from understanding via mental translation to near-native understanding. When people start out learning a new language, they tend to have to translate between the new language and their native language. For example, the German word "Vogel" and the English word "bird" both mean the same thing. An English speaker learning German will start out by translating "Vogel" to "bird" mentally, but can eventually just come to understand that "Vogel" refers to a winged, feathered creature (and even understand the German words for "winged" and "feathered" on the same level). I'd like to study the changes that occur in the brain as this transition takes place.

I also have a BA in philosophy, so my interest in language is broader than just its acquisition. In philosophy, linguistic precision is absolutely necessary. One of the first things philosophers do before starting a discussion is define their terms with the intent of sticking to those exact definitions. Because of that, I have actually developed an interest in the imprecision of common language. It is absolutely fascinating to me that there are so many cultural idiosyncrasies in within any given language, but communication is usually not hampered. I'm not sure exactly how I would study this from a developmental or psychological perspective, but I think I have time to figure that out.

I took German in high school, so as a matter of familiarity, that would have to be one of my favorite foreign languages. Aside from that, I really enjoy listening to Japanese, though I don't actually know how to speak, read, or write it. I also like listening to and learning how to speak with different accents in English.

To answer your second question, I'll just copy my response to hanszyme:

Let me be clear that I don't yet have enough expertise to give you detailed advice on language learning in particular. That said, there are strategies for learning in general that apply to learning a new language. One big tip I heard I can't tell you how many times is to vary where and when you study day to day. It turns out that people tend to do better on tests when the testing environment is similar to the learning environment. So, by varying your learning environment, you can keep what you learn from being so dependent on the context of where you learn it.

Another thing you can do is try to speak, read, or write in your target language a little bit every day. Repetition is honestly one of the best ways for you to learn anything.

I definitely can't recommend any drugs for you. For starters, I'm not exactly up on all the drugs there are out there. Besides that, I don't have the qualifications to prescribe/recommend drugs.

Let me be clear that I don't yet have enough expertise to give you detailed advice on language learning in particular.

That said, there are strategies for learning in general that apply to learning a new language. One big tip I heard I can't tell you how many times is to vary where and when you study day to day. It turns out that people tend to do better on tests when the testing environment is similar to the learning environment. So, by varying your learning environment, you can keep what you learn from being so dependent on the context of where you learn it.

Another thing you can do is try to speak, read, or write in your target language a little bit every day. Repetition is honestly one of the best ways for you to learn anything.

To that end, as TheVenerableCain said, duolingo might be a decent place to start. I wouldn't suggest trying to use it to learn a whole language, but it can be a good starting place. Also, it's great if you've learned a language before and want to brush up on the basics.

I just finished getting my BA in psychology. I intend to study adult development from biological and cognitive perspectives. To be more specific, I have an interest in adult acquisition of new languages. Next step is graduate school, naturally.

I think the closest we've gotten to that sort of story so far is the first season of Rebels. While it is about a group of people fighting against the Empire, the entire season is basically contained to the planet Lothal. As the main characters hit the Imperials where and how they can, you get small glimpses of how the regime is affecting the little guy - a disgruntled shopkeeper cowering at the barrels of stormtroopers' blasters, a farmer and his family taken prisoner when the refused to give up their farm, a kid joining the Imperial Academy because his sister did the same and was never seen again. That was really one of the strengths of the season for me, so I'm not really sure how I feel about the series expanding toward the scale of the Galactic Civil War next season.

I'm not entirely sure I'm done using reddit yet. I mostly used it as a lurker and only really created an account so I could better curate things I wanted to see. Every once in a while, I like to get on and mindlessly scroll through r/gifs or whatever, looking for neat and funny things.

If I do leave for good, I think I'll miss the two or three really good Android apps that I use to access reddit on mobile. See, for the type of content on reddit, I almost exclusively use my phone. As a semi-lurker, the experience of scrolling through a never ending feed of content is pretty much the perfect sort of activity to pass the time when all I have is my phone.

Easily one of my top 3 favorite game franchises. I main Link and Mewtwo in Smash for 3DS. I don't have a Wii U, but I've more than adapted to playing on a handheld, so I don't feel like I'm missing too much. Granted, I still love the GCube controller.

I love the lore of Warcraft. It's too expansive to adequately describe all of it, but my favorite section of the lore has to do with Draenor. Draenor is a separate planet from Azeroth, the main world of the story. It is the homeworld of the Orcs, who comprise the majority of the current day Horde. It is the homestead of the Draenei. It is also the staging ground of the Burning Legion's assault on Azeroth. The Burning Legion is pretty much the main antagonistic force in World of Warcraft, and is responsible for everything from the death of the World Tree to the rise of the Lich King. Sargeras, corrupted Titan (creators of the universe) and leader of the Legion, has his hands in almost everything bad that has happened to Azeroth.

In its first iteration in World of Warcraft, Draenor was known as Outland. It was largely taken up by scorched wastelands where the Burning Legion had invaded and destroyed it, though there were a few undesecrated places. In the current expansion (Warlords of Draenor), players have been taken back in time to an alternate Draenor, not yet ravaged by the Legion. Here, they have been fighting the old Orcish leaders in order to stop a new invasion of Azeroth. Basically, Draenor is as much of a central location to the story of Warcraft as Azeroth itself.