A. My wife. It was a doozy!

We got married recently after her (and her son) were denied entry into the USA. We had not intended to marry anytime soon and avoided discussing marriage up to and through the rejection at immigration, because of stress and fear and other relationship things and relocation things and just plain things. Anyway it finally became necessary to marry if we hoped to stay together. We did it. Then we sat and waited to see who would rip apart from tension first.

It was me.

I flipped out over a stupid issue (she left her purse on the bed and I couldn't comfortably sit down or stretch my legs). I complained about the purse and she complained about my housekeeping. I yelled about her inability to stay organised and she yelled about my wastefulness with towels. I yelled bigger and more, and she yelled bigger and more. Much breaking of personal promises and valuable possessions ensued in an escalating fight to show who cared less about money and things, and I eventually lost my cool and said the last thing I wanted to say, which I knew was the trump of the fight deck: getting married was the wrong way to handle our problems, etc. I am a huge jerk and cannot ever, ever say this sort of thing again. I don't mean it and it's a low blow even for when fights need to be won -- and this one didn't. Finally we resorted to mutual screaming while her son cried in the next room thinking God know what, probably terrified we would storm against him next. I slept at a hotel and we reconciled the next day. It was our first married fight and needed to be had, but neither of us expected it to go so crazy.

Incidentally she still keeps her purse on the bed and I still dry off with multiple towels and leave them on the floor in the kitchen.

Whew!

A. My belief in the inherent goodness of other people.

I'm one of those idealists who "learn" how wrong they were about people and become bitter.

I always thought that, since I do my very best not to take advantage of others, and since I base my decisions more on 'right' and 'wrong' then on personal gain, that others did so as well. Then I met certain people, my stepsiblings rather high among them. I was taken advantage of right and left, since I assumed we were all looking out for each other as people ought to do. I had a good reputation, since I am so consistently honest; disreputable people then pretended to be my friend so they could ride on the coattails of my good credit.

I tried to be generous; people then duped me out of money, because they always said, "Of course I'll pay you back"

I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt; if they said that the accusation someone else had made was false, I believed them if at all possible.

I still believe that, in an ideal world, people like me would be everywhere. But now I realize that in this world, people like me are considered contemptible fools. It makes me sad, and it makes me bitter.

A. Yeah, that's basically all I do. One of my current goals is to research fuzzy logic a bit more and implement it in the AI of the npcs in a game I'm coding. That's a subgoal of the goal of becoming more adept at logic, specifically the part dealing with learning some of the more common new logics, especially the ones that can be used to solve/inform any of the antimonies ( like paradoxes ). This is part of the larger goal, which is to develop a mastery of logic overall, which includes continuing to work on metalogic, and go through all of the old stuff ( trees, proofs in NK for prop logic and predicate logic, etc ) to make sure I haven't forgotten any of the basics, or especially any of the underlying theory. This is part of the larger goal which is to get into a masters program geared towards logic, cognitive science, or reasoning and inference. This is part of the larger goal of either becoming a professor or working in research dealing with artificial intelligence. Anyway, I listed all of that out so you can see that how I think is really goal oriented. I'd actually be curious to know if most humans think this way, or if the fact that I do is what kind of pulled me towards AI research where I can sit and think how to simulate a mind that gathers info. and decides with some sort of program or axiomatic system. I may have to steal your question and ask it again at some point in the future.

A. It would be presumptuous of me to say we failed science. I can only say I did. Why my chemistry grades alone are still probably legendary in my old school.

Science is a tool. Used well and for what it's supposed to be used for it makes life better. Used for a bad end or to accomplish something it can't do and it's worse than useless.

Science tests objective claims. It can tell you how things are, not how they should be. Science can tell you that mixing two chemicals creates a gas that will kill humans. Science has let us here to understand chemical reactions and the respiratory system. If use this to make gas chambers it isn't science's fault. We, not science must decide what use to make of its discoveries.

Some people make a religion of science, and that's failing science. Science can test the natural world. A supernatural claim, a moral claim, an aesthetic claim can't be (usually) tested by science and thus science should not be applied. It's the wrong tool. But just because science can't be used for these things doesn't mean they don't exist or don't matter. Science can't say if there's a God. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But some would say that if science can't prove it it isn't real. That's a misunderstanding of science that attempts to revere science but ends up hurting it in a number of ways.

We have made great advances in science. Science as a way of seeing the world's pretty new, but we've come a long way with it. It's served us well and we've encouraged it. Sure we could serve it better. Finance it by means other than companies financially interested in the outcome, for instance. But it's doing well and, thanks largely to it, we are doing pretty well too. Sorry, I rambled, there are a lot of parts to the answer and little space.

A. At first, I thought you were going to Rickroll me, and I was already kind of ready to be disappointed when I put that link into my address bar.

However, I was really kickassedly (it's a word, I swear) surprised.

While I'm sorry to say that I haven't gone to a concert anytime in my seventeen years (my parents are under the impression I'll certainly moshed to death), I just have to thank you for showing me this band. I've been choking through a drought without any new music, and this music seems really awesome.

I mean, really, stranger. If I were actually there, I'd at very least hug you for an awkwardly long time for introducing me to some music that isn't really mediocre.

So, once again, I'm sorry that I can't give you any decent suggestions, and if you rate me low (or not at all) I'm not complaining in the slightest. But seriously. Thanks for spreading awesome music. :D