Quickie Questions

Still speak to your doctor.

I had some quite annoying scars on my palm that faded thanks to a series of incredibly painful cortisone injection.

Thanks.

What's the proper term for someone who digitally pirates? Is it accurate to use the term "pirate"?

yes.

Yar.

Why exactly is the exchange rate between Yen and USD so large? Is it because A Yen is the equivalent of an American penny, or the Japanese economy just really bad?

One yen works out to roughly one penny. Its not because Japan's economy is in the toilet or anything like that.

It's just that yen is supposed to be a smaller unit of worth. I've heard that Japan has often struggled to fight deflation, the process of their currency gaining worth.

First of all, the stability of a currency is more important than its value - as long as it stays relatively constant everything's fine.

Second, a currency's value is kept low when the government is trying to encourage exports.

I'm not even an amateur economist, but I think I know roughly how this works in the dumbed-down version of the theory that you can hear on the news:

You're a company in country A. You want to buy product n. In your country, that product costs 1 a (where lowercase "a" refers to the currency of country A). In country B, the cost of 1 n is 1 b; but 1 b is worth 2 a. So n is twice as expensive in country B as it is in country A. Thus you keep buying n in country A at the price of 1 a per unit.

Let's say that the value of currency b suddenly drops to ½a - so now you need 2 b to buy one a. Assuming that the price of n stays constant in each country, you (a company in country A) can now spend 1 a to buy 2 units of n in country B (because n still costs 1 b). Then you can sell both units of n in you country, each for the standard price of 1 a - so you've doubled your investment.

If country B benefits from selling lots of n to country A, it will take steps to keep the value of b relative to a low.

edited 13th Feb '14 3:45:24 PM by BestOf

They have changed it in the "Gay as Trope" because its so confusing, but what does the "QQIAPP&GQ" of LGBTQQIAPP&GQ mean?

This may not be entirely correct, but I think it's

Lesbian

Gay

Bisexual

Transgender

Queer

Questioning

Intersex

Asexual

Pansexual

Poly

&

Gender Queer

It's basically lots of different labels that some people consider to be different somehow.

Man I remember when it was just LGB rights.

I'm all for support of these people and always have been but shit man, we're gonna run out of letters soon

And apparently there's some big controversy over whether the "A" is "Asexual" or "Allies"

According to the new version of the Trope page that was mentioned earlier, you can refer to it as

Wha?

Why are racial minorities lumped into it too T_T

Godamn social justice warriors.

Pfft. Yeah. How dare those non-whites feel like they have equal ground with us non-straights.

There's exactly one issue I can think of where racial minorities should be lumped in with gender and sexual minorities: representation in media. That's it. It's a whole different ballgame in everything else.

Also the way people treat them in general?

Which pretty much encompasses all the issues.

I also originally thought that lumping race with the other minorities felt a bit silly, but now that I think about it there's not really much difference. The main difference is scale, if you compare really big ethnicities to the rarer sexual (and/or gender) minorities. That said, the largest minority in the world (that usually is treated like a minority) is women.

I don't know. You can only widen your scope so much until you lose slight of your original goals.

Oh speaking of Lgbt, do people still use thrice in day-to-day conversation?

Uh, is Bing working for everyone?

I think they do. I know that it's perceived as archaic in some circles, so people like that would say "three times". I don't think "thrice" is actually rare, though.

edited 15th Feb '14 7:17:53 PM by BestOf

Is there a term for someone who believes that God exists but doesn't associate themselves with any religion in particular?

Deist?