Database Develop

Learning Geography

I searched but didn't find any thread like this...
There are many people here who would travel to different cities, states, countries...
And not everyone knows about everything!
Yes, there's Google, you can search, check reviews...
But wouldn't it be better if we could have some 1st hand information here?
So that someone traveling somewhere new doesn't get harassed unnecessarily...
Also, we could have posts describing the specialties of your region/zone...
Anything social, political, cultural facts...
This could help a lot of people when need be...
If there's anything wrong in it, mods feel free to close the thread... but i just hope we could help each other with a lot many things this way...
:good:

The UK is the armpit of Europe. If you come here you will get ripped off by everybody, not just taxi drivers. The beaches don't have sand..or sun for that matter. We specialize in going out on weekends playing catch the STD and throwing up on pavements.
Most of the population think Eastenders is the height of cultural entertainment and our politicians take it in turns every few years to see how hard they can screw the working man over.
You'd be better off going on a camping tour of Pripyat than taking a holiday in the UK.

DirkGently said:
The UK is the armpit of Europe. If you come here you will get ripped off by everybody, not just taxi drivers. The beaches don't have sand..or sun for that matter. We specialize in going out on weekends playing catch the STD and throwing up on pavements.
Most of the population think Eastenders is the height of cultural entertainment and our politicians take it in turns every few years to see how hard they can screw the working man over.
You'd be better off going on a camping tour of Pripyat than taking a holiday in the UK.
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lol...
the one thing i like about UK is the EPL... i mean BPL now!
would love to attend a game sometime...

DirkGently said:
The UK is the armpit of Europe. If you come here you will get ripped off by everybody, not just taxi drivers. The beaches don't have sand..or sun for that matter. We specialize in going out on weekends playing catch the STD and throwing up on pavements.
Most of the population think Eastenders is the height of cultural entertainment and our politicians take it in turns every few years to see how hard they can screw the working man over.
You'd be better off going on a camping tour of Pripyat than taking a holiday in the UK.
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Completely agree. At every single corner of the UK people try and get money from you.
Sent from my locked, tampered ville

I'd talk about my City...
Kolkata (earlier Calcutta) is an old Indian Capital City ( Now the Capital Is New Delhi)...
When the British ruled India, calcutta was their capital... So there are some pretty old British monuments, architecture etc...
It is a lazy city... The average summer temperature has been on the rise, it goes to a max of about 45 degree Celsius...
A drop in temperature below 20 degrees is supposedly winter time here!
We have great rains in July-August that floods a few regions...
The population of the city including its suburbs is about 15million! Wherever you go, you'd see people people people!!
There are some nice places to visit, i'll try getting some pics sometime later...
People in general are nice, but you see, there are every kind of people everywhere...
Politically, the communist party was in power from the 70's till a year and a half back...
It's an old, lazy life-style city, will glimpses of sparks during the festive season!
Will post some pics of the festivity that went on last week... it's majestically beautiful
If anyone plans coming to Kolkata (Calcutta), do drop a message to me for sure!
wiki link- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkata
Darjeeling, Sundarban are nearby places worth a trip!

DirkGently said:
The UK is the armpit of Europe. If you come here you will get ripped off by everybody, not just taxi drivers. The beaches don't have sand..or sun for that matter. We specialize in going out on weekends playing catch the STD and throwing up on pavements.
Most of the population think Eastenders is the height of cultural entertainment and our politicians take it in turns every few years to see how hard they can screw the working man over.
You'd be better off going on a camping tour of Pripyat than taking a holiday in the UK.
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That should keep Johnny Foreigner away Dirk, nicely done. Keep Britain and it's glorious sandy sunkissed beaches (such as West Wittering, and the boobie fest that is Bournemouth) free for us Brits. Could you imagine if they came over and discovered just how good value Southport Pier arcade is? It'd be shockingly over run within days! By jingo I won't hear of it!

xaccers said:
That should keep Johnny Foreigner away Dirk, nicely done. Keep Britain and it's glorious sandy sunkissed beaches (such as West Wittering, and the boobie fest that is Bournemouth) free for us Brits. Could you imagine if they came over and discovered just how good value Southport Pier arcade is? It'd be shockingly over run within days! By jingo I won't hear of it!
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Rumbled! Now that everyone's cancelled their reservations i can book myself a birth in Hayling Islands sumptuous caravan park!
Arcades, here i come!

DirkGently said:
Rumbled! Now that everyone's cancelled their reservations i can book myself a birth in Hayling Islands sumptuous caravan park!
Arcades, here i come!
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Ah that takes me back!
After a day LARPing around in hundred acre woods near Boarhunt, we went to the Ship Inn for a drink, when one of the guys said "Don't look, but that guy at the bar used to be in the Monkees"
Of course we all turned around then realised we didn't have a clue what anyone in the Monkees looked like, so Davy Jones was safe.

Bergen, Norway. The wettest place in the universe. We like to spend our time in front of computers, and being social means to spend $300 on overpriced beer and pizza. At summer time, a million eggshell white norwegians like to migrate to the south of the equator with our best buds, the swedes, and getting drunk and smashing things (much like the brits). We repeat this twice a year; summer and winter.
We also love to whine about everything.
Welcome!
Edit: I'm borrowing this from Dirk. "[...]and our politicians take it in turns every few years to see how hard they can screw the working man over."
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

LordManhattan said:
Edit: I'm borrowing this from Dirk. "[...]and our politicians take it in turns every few years to see how hard they can screw the working man over."
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2
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i guess that's a universal fact!
all politicians are such a breed!!

Montreal is Europe in North America. Living here sucks, because the premier of our province (equivalent to governor of a state), is practically openly racist toward the English. Other than the language feud, and the education riots, its a pretty nice place to visit
Sent from my Nexus S using xda app-developers app

[Q] 7-1 paris terrrorist attack, how do you think about it?

so, i'm curious how the users of xda think about the charlie hebdo attack of last week?
i think the UN should compile an army force and send them out to the middle east to prevent the terrorist groups
from traveling further and try to prevent groups from attacking innocent and harmless civillians (anywhere in the world)!
i believe the people of Isis and Al-qaeda should be taken out by force! honestly i don't approve of any violence! however in this
case the diplomatic way didn't had any positive result! therefore for the first time i'm saying yes to open fire! obama and other worldleaders should
finally put action to their words! these terroristgroups are an absolute thread to freedom of speech and expression!
so please give youre opinion and you're thoughts about this awful tragedy
(sorry for my broken english) i'm dutch :silly:
my condolances to the victims and family of the fallen!
je suis charlie

And as such the victims will have died in vain. Charlie Hebdo stood for freedom of speech through humour. They abhorred violence.
Murdering others because you don't agree with their ideas, however controversial they may be, makes you no better than those who murder others because they disagree with their ideas.
Murdering innocent people because you're upset over a cartoon is pure cowardice. It's not brave, it doesn't make you a hero. It makes you a pathetic coward.
But answering violence with more violence isn't the answer. That's how this whole mess started in the first place.
The problem here is religion. For as long as history can remeber, people have been slaughtering innocents in the name of some fictitious god. Christianity is no better, or have people forgotten about the crusades?
Cue more butthurt people now painting a target on my head just for saying that. Freedom of speech kids, it works both ways. You get to preach about your god to those who don't want you to, and we get to ridicule it. If we aren't allowed to ridicule it, you're not allowed to preach to us. It's both sides of the blade.
Religious followers being upset because someone drew their fictitious figurehead is as ridiculous as all of us going on a murderous rampage because someone drew the Android robot with a pink hat. But people are so brainwashed from birth that they can't see the sheer idiocracy of what they're doing.
That is what lies at the heart of this. But nobody wants to see it. All the imams have condemned the attack, but not a single muslim is willing to take a good hard look at their religion and see that it needs to change. In the west we have learned to accept (the hard way) that there are others who believe different, and we have learned to share our lives with them. We accept that someone won't pray at dinner, that someone won't thank a god every evening. Now it's time for muslims to make that growth as well.
What none of them realized is that those controversial catroons weren't meant as an insult.
The west learned through Apartheid that a seperate society doesn't work. We adapted.
The French shared their country, their lives and their culture with the muslims who came to live in France. They took them into their schools, their busses, their shops, their homes. They gave them the same rights and liberties as citizens.
Charlie Hebdo welcomed them into their lives by sharing their humour with them.
And as a reward for their acceptance, they were murdered.
And that is unacceptable. It is also why there is now such a backlash. If you come to live in our counties and want to share in our lives and become. A part of our society, you can't cherrypick the parts you want. It's all or nothing. You want the right to practise your religion in our society, then we retain the right to practise our humour.
I have gained a newfound respect for mayor Aboutaleb. That man should be an example to all muslims.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2

ShadowLea said:
But answering violence with more violence isn't the answer. That's how this whole mess started in the first place.
The west learned through Apartheid that a seperate society doesn't work. We adapted.
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A wonderful humanist once said an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Then I look at history the Christian crusades where many were murdered. Centuries later into the 21st century where Muslims, and I'm not meaning all Muslims, have the spotlight in committing many heartless acts against humanity. The cost of human life..................... the torture ,abuse,deprivation or murder of a human being there is never an excuse for that. I'm assuming these individuals have a built up, or have instilled in them, a hatred for the western way of life and use religion as an excuse to commit atrocities.
Apatheid indeed did not work, several of my friends who are Caucasian have worked in South Africa and it was an unsafe place to be for them.
There will be a balance for both, I'm thinking 2 or 3 lifetimes away. Hope is almost always a positive thing.
I have Muslim friends, some I have known most of my life and they are very different to what I have seen in the media.
I think I have written enough I'm emotionally drained.
Round and round we go

Political threads aren't really something that we allow. To much potential for emotions to get out of hand resulting in flaming of members.
Thread Closed

Dissection in High Schools

Hey everyone! I have an assignment about the topic of the ethics of dissecting animals in high school science class. I have a survey that asks about one's opinion on this topic. I thought it would be interesting to see what XDA members think about dissection in high schools so I would greatly appreciate it if you guys took a few minutes to fill out my survey on Google Forms. It would also be quite cool to hear about your experiences with dissection while you were in high school so feel free to start a conversation about that in this thread. Thanks everyone!
Here's the link to the survey: http://goo.gl/forms/xU2gjBTaQi

Over here animals used in labs for the purpose of education and study are never killed for that purpose. They're all roadkill, natural causes, diseased, etc. (This is in Western Europe, the law does not allow the killing of animals for laboratory pruposes.)
By dissecting an animal, people learn that animals are living creatures made of the same parts as themselves. That is a very important lesson, because the idea of humans being 'more' than animals, either special or better or 'god's favourite', is what leads to animal cruelty.
I always found it highly educational. Except the one time with the tarantula. I bloody hate spiders, dead or alive.
It also gives kids a stomach for blood, a great little reality check, a slap in the face about mortality, and it never fails to leave a lasting impression. Given the attitude of high school kids, that's a knock off their high horse they sorely need. If they cry and vomit, all the better. Life isn't pretty, welcome to the real world.
(A good friend of mine is a medical examiner, I sometimes help out as her assistant when they're short on staff, since I have had basic medical training. It's one of the reason why I do not care for someone's skin colour; I've seen up close that all humans look exactly the same inside their skin and when they're dead.)

I think dissection is fine, and is helpful if the dissector can handle the gore.
I grew up on a farm where we grew angus cattle, and lived off the meat we got from them. I was around during all the process, from the cow being shot, to the final cuts of meat being done. We also sometimes got a pet pig with the full intention of growing it out to eat.
When we started doing dissection I had no problem doing it, though I had a close friend who would stand in the corner, due to him not being able to stomach the gore. I always found dissection interesting, and it helped enforce the knowledge I had learned beforehand, however it was no use at all to the people who couldn't handle the gore.
ShadowLea said:
It also gives kids a stomach for blood, a great little reality check, a slap in the face about mortality, and it never fails to leave a lasting impression. Given the attitude of high school kids, that's a knock off their high horse they sorely need. If they cry and vomit, all the better. Life isn't pretty, welcome to the real world.
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I COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT ANY BETTER MYSELF. However I believe more needs to be done at younger ages to ease them into things like this, if you only get shown the gore etc in one full hit when your older, your more likely to be completely against it.
Overall people should be less sensitive, and dissection is good for learning

Truth about ecig's

Just feel like I need to get this out there, theres lots of stuff going on with E-Cigs, I one day would like to quit smoking with E-Cigs, or at least have the "healthier option".
But there are so many states and officials and big tobacco trying to get rid of them, or stop their innovation, there really is a WHOLE lot of mis information and conception about E-Cigs and vaping devices that it just kills me, really, don't judge it just because you read one article on G+ or you saw a report on news, most of those are twisted and misleading. Anyway, there are so many people here on xda that I thought maybe a good place to spread the word, I know a lot of you smoke, so maybe this is a way I can also help you decide. Here is a good video to watch, and there are many more about vaping on youtube, just look them up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4oFQ3w3Znk

It's sad that the world revolves around money, so the big companies spread so many fake facts... In Hungary the government wants to make laws against e-cigarettes, because in Hungary you can ONLY buy regular cigarettes in the "National tobacco shops". People realized that vaping is healthier and cheaper than regular cigarettes, so the Hungarian vaper community grows day by day, so less people buy cigarettes. It's absurd that the government is against the people's health.

Any Gay here who still can't accept himself?

I'm gay and I'm always wondering if there is somebody like me who still can't accept themselves as a gay men. I believed I'm already Gay since I was a kid like 4, because I've had a feeling towards men in that age already. Like having a crush with them. I clearly remember that. And the usual kids were making a jokes of marrying a woman, but not me, I want to marry a boy instead. Lol.
In my case, you won't notice I'm Gay. I dressed like a real guy, I moved and speak like a real man. My family don't even know I'm gay. I lived in a Muslim country and in a muslim community. In short I am a Muslim(please no bad comments just because I am a Muslim). It's quite difficult for me to reveal my real identity because of my surroundings. Though I fallen in love already with my best friend, I still managed myself not to pursue what I wanted. There were also so many gays who entertained me, but because I am not serious about it, I always ignored them. I really wanted to be a real man. I always pray that one morning I woke up and becomes straight already. But this is me. This is inborn. Nothings happen really!
I've always dreaming of marrying a woman, having kids and a normal family. But I am very afraid that I might just hurt my wife because I can't really love a woman truly.
Anyone here like me too? Well I guess......... I don't know. Lol

Just cause you like dudes doesn't mean you're not a "real man", bro
I hope you can find some support here or irl, it must be quite difficult for you in the situation you're in but you have my acceptance even if you can't accept yourself (Y)

Thank you so much! Your comment are really appreciated. :angel: God bless you and your family.

I'm not gay but my entire family is.

wizkid92 said:
I'm not gay but my entire family is.
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God blessed you mate and to your family too. You must be very careful to your sorroundings and in social media too. I am in Malaysia and even the majority of people here are Muslims, Gays are everywhere and it is spreading rapidly. It's worldwide. Take care mate and I belived it's hard to convert back to straight.

Having a preference for the same gender is always a choice of *will* more so than any other factor realistically speaking. Be that as it may, those choices reside betwixt you and God alone. That being stated, coming from a Muslim related country, you are indeed wise to tread carefully. Even in Malaysia.
God's wisdom be with you always.