that reminds me...I really gotta call Hedy one of these days.

CHERRY HILL?

Can't you get a Nissan there as well?

Yes, yes you can!

If you can't get it in Cherry Hill, you don't need it. :haha:

Just had a woman come in and ask if we have any double-D batteries.

We don't, but you know, a good pair of double-Ds will last you a long time.

We have a bunch of electronic scales at the shop, but we're having a hard time getting rid of them. It turns out they are only accurate to 0.1 gram.

Just had two college kids come in and look at them but reject them for that reason. We speculate that they need this level of accuracy for powder-type drugs. We speculate that if they are selling weed they don't need that level of accuracy.

We had a huge laugh at the notion that they are doing some sort of science.

Those would be great for weighing out hops. What's the max weight?

I've got a nice digi darkroom scale that weighs in grams, grains, ounces, and drams. You really only need oz and g for hops. I bet if you listed them on ebay as homebrewing supplies they'd fly off the shelf.

Here they are

"weighs up to 500g at 0.1g increments. It also weighs in oz, ct or gn at the press of a switch."

So far, we have only used our electronic scale for pinewood derby cars and for science fair projects. That's honestly the reason I bought it, but I thought we would also use it for food.

(FYI, OXO makes one of the best kitchen scales. The display is removable on a wire that pulls out, so if you put a big bowl on the scale you can pull the display out to read it. On most other scales, a large bowl will cover the display, blocking your view of it.)

Dueling thugs.

I deal with thugs every day people. Guy comes in with his posse and he has put down $30 in a layaway on a camcorder. Then he says, he bought the same camcorder somewhere else and would like his $30 back.

But it doesn't work like that - a layaway is painful for us, because it means we can't sell the item and have to just sit on it for 90 days, and we have to track the item carefully, etc.

So we don't just give people their money back. We give them store credit. So his buddy, on his behalf, starts going off and getting really loud, saying shit like "Now you got a problem, I ain't leaving this shop until we see $30 and you can call the cops if you want." Being vaguely threatening, you know.

His friends are now trying to calm him down because they don't want any shit, but at the same time they're all complaining, they don't want anything in the shop.

Now another pair of gentlemen come in with a Toshiba laptop. They've stolen it. I tell you, after a while you know what's stolen and who's stealing. Every day I see it. Thugs. This pair offers up the reason why they are selling the laptop today: "Tired of it."

But now, you know, there's a new dynamic in the shop. Thug group #1 wants to continue to cause trouble. But thug group #2 prevents this, because they are motivated to do business. This immediately causes group #1 to settle down and my co-worker sells them on the idea of getting some video games for their store credit while I take my good old time buying in the laptop.

Fuckin' thugs. I am so tired of these fuckin' thugs.

Good luck with your new reality TV show - The Real Thugs of North Philly.

Thug Stars on the History Channel.

"One thing I've learned after 30 weeks in this business is, you know a couple of thugs are going to walk through that door."

Porn movie title:
Fuckin' thugs. I am so tired of fuckin' these thugs.

Special interest pron website: Thugs with Jugs

Yes! This is the model we have. I use it everyday, but obviously I'm unusual. It's only accurate in 1 gram increments though; now I feel inadequate compared to the drug dealers.

OXO is completely dead to me.

From today's clientele I feel that most north Philly people are Niners fans. We have a lot of males this morning who are downright angry and, as usual, with no justification.

A gentleman insisted that his tiny ring should be pawned for more than $10. He insisted that he bought it here. We give much more pawn value to jewelry bought in the store but we suspected that his jewelry was not.

We told him we would give one-third of his purchase if he could produce a receipt. He went directly home and searched for it, and returned with a receipt from Littman Jewelers. This is a large nationwide chain with 350 stores. It is, however, not us.

Please if you understand anything about what I write... it's that many of these people are just stone-dead stupid. They were raised in shit, went to school in shit if at all, and they continue to live in shit because it's all they know.

Now this guy swore up and down that he paid $135 for this ring and also that someone here said they would pawn it for $30, which is not what we do. Either we pawn for the weight of the gold, or we pawn 1/3rd of the purchase value. Therefore nobody from here ever could have told him that he could get $30.

He insisted on having a long, annoying argument about it. But discussing the issue with these people is useless. He truly believed that his Littman receipt would bear some meaning at the pawn shop. No amount of reason would convince him otherwise.

Who the fuck buys jewelry at a jewelry store anyway? 900% mark up.

Um.. guys that use pawn shops.

Pay attention, Footsie.


Between the belligerence, stupidity, and greed, I really would find that job crushing. Good luck with withstanding it until you can find something better.

It's reverse natural selection. Their parents were stupid. and so were their parents. too stupid to work their way out of the ghetto. so they stayed and married .... well... mated with ... other stupids, and made stupid babies....and neglected them into ignorance on top of their stupidity.

That sounds really harsh... but it is probably fairly accurate in many of the Family Trees in any ghetto that's existed for more than 100 years.



So, Tony... I need a powered Subwoofer. My receiver is the Sony 7.1 5 hdmi

http://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/B...anvasWidth=500

you got anything that might suit?

No subwoofers. We have some 7.1 receivers, some complete surround systems (Sony, 5.1 speakers and Blu-Ray, $249 amazing deal), but right now there are no individual speakers or subwoofers.

You cause me to go deep here, I have considered the question very carefully, and I believe that what we are seeing is culture in operation, over many generations.

As in "Trading Places", I now believe that upbringing is 99%, genetics 1% in determining our intelligence.

(It may go further than that: what we believe intelligence is, and what importance we place on it, is mostly cultural.)

What WE are is informed by what our culture taught us. We have no idea how big the impact of our culture is. But consider that all first-world drama is informed by Shakespeare, who worked from late 1500s - early 1600s.

Culture is so critical to who we are. We don't want to believe it. We try to deny it. But if there is a unifying "force" a la Star Wars, it's culture, which goes so far as to inform us what musical scale sounds "right" to our ears.

Culture tells us how often to wash our hands, whether we value hard work, whether we value education, what importance we place on charity, what importance we place on raising children.

All humans are identical, genetically. Race is an expression of as little as 25,000 years spent developing separately. But in the 100,000 years we have been wandering the earth, no group of us spent enough time apart to develop into a different species. We all have roughly the same capacity for intelligence. When an African is raised in western culture s/he seems western, identical to the rest of us, save for the racial characteristics.

What confuses us is that we don't see how valuable our cultural background is. We don't realize that our cultural differences develop in the same way as genetics... slowly, over many generations. What if, instead of Shakespeare, we had three centuries of slavery?

Our cultural differences APPEAR to be genetic, because they happen over so many generations of time that we can't see where the changes happened.

And what do Tiger moms think of us? Are we belly scratching slackers?

Well, I have to say that my oldest boy Aden is so much like his father in so many ways. Not just physically. Emotionally, and psychologically as well. I see so many of his fathers traits in his behaviours, and he's barely been influenced by his father. Mav is much more 'Australian' in his behaviours and psychology, so, more like my side of the tree, genetically speaking.

I'd always been a proponent for nurture, but now I'm reconsidering the nature side of things purely because there's really no other explanation for it.

There is a concept about of the "third helix", which is culture.
Just because it isn't genetic, or in the DNA, doesn't mean it isn't inherited. Language, religion, general attitude, daily behaviour of role models are all examples.

But doesn't that come under nurture? Or am I missing something?

Yeah, I was more engaging with UT's post.

I think nature is a bit more than 1% ... it would even vary from individual to individual. As in, one kid has lots of mental flexibility, so nurture = 99%. Some other kid, malformed brain lobe, never develops empathy, ends up sociopathic: nature = 99%.

I could only suggest Aden had more imprinting from his dad (or other sources of that type) than you realise.

Beautifully put, UT.

There have been recent studies showing that our DNA changes in response to stress. That DNA is inherited by descendants even though the stress has changed.

Basically, evolution.

By stress I don't mean a tough day at work, but any type of stress put upon a person. Hunger, learning, emergencies and so forth.

It is probably true about other human experiences but I don't think that's been studied, but it stands to reason. We need to think of DNA as "a living document" not something cast in stone.

Ummmm.....I'm not so sure.

Such "stress" would have to specifically affect the DNA of a person's sperm or egg cells,
not their somatic cells, for inheritance to take place, and even then
inheritance would happen only rarely and randomly
... in a comparatively miniscule number of pregnancies.

When the stress of pregnancies during the severe starvation and war time conditions
at Stalingrad during WWII was investigated for birth defects, the effects could not be shown.

I think UT's emphasis on "culture" is important, not in the food/water sense of "nurture",
but in the overall sense of societal support and traditions.
Unfortunately, some of those traditions are not always beneficial to the individual.

Hence the idea of "memes" evolving similarly to genetic evolution, and for the same reason - cultural groups are separated mentally like evolutionary groups are separated geographically, with some mixing along the borders, and imperfect duplication and a changing environment causing change over time.

Woman comes in and sells us a Wii game and an xBox game.

She looks 13, so I'm about to ask whether she's 18 since you can't buy or pawn unless you're 18.

She hands over her ID for the transaction. She's 32.

I've had this happen several times. Black women, they can look young!

So my (new) coworker leans back and sighs, he's got some back pain going. She offers "I could give you a massage, my massages are great."

Don: What do you massage?

Woman: Oh, you know back, shoulder, legs...

Alan: How much do you charge?

Woman. Twenty dollars.

Alan: Happy ending?

Woman: The whole ordeal.


It was not a surprise that a young lady was offering her sex services in the shop, but it was a surprise that buttoned-down Alan, who never says anything sex-related, would ask whether she was offering.

The whole ordeal, lol.

"ordeal" doesn't exactly sell it.

She should've had a good-looking man sucking her face off. That would've sold it!

would that commercial have been more gross or less gross if the woman had been similarly unattractive?

Answer: same amount of gross. Don't get that defensive 'ugly women don't like it' attitude.

Remember humor?

I only asked because it occurred to me that it would be less gross if the woman was on a par with Walter. I don't really know why.

As I remember the (I think it was a National Geographic video about Sapolsky's work) video stated that the researchers followed the children who were born of those pregnant mothers and those children had inherited the changed DNA in their somatic cells. Perhaps it was only a change that was passed on to fetuses. I don't recall if the children of the starvation victims then had children with the changed DNA.

Maybe I have to watch it again and take better notes, drink less beer, or fewer beers.

@jim: Look at me regressing and being the defensive one. :blush: Sorry.

For me, I just can't stand that noise on television. Even if it's a show I like with people I like...the slurpy thing just gets to me like fingernails on a blackboard get to some people. And of course it was exaggerated just for that effect, but it made me oogey.

But I also get the creeps from certain suspended ceilings and other holey textures like that. And wet yarn. Can't stand it. Yeah, I'm weird. ;)

Well that ceiling tile looks like its covered in roaches. So yah.

And you should come have lunch with my counterpart. Gawd. Chews with his mouth open. Mack, Mack, Mack! Bleurgh...

EDIT: and I hope you don't identify as an 'ugly' woman. you've got such a pretty face.

*** de-cloaks***

Yes, this field of study is called epigenetics.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/epigenetics.html :
Program Description
Once nurture seemed clearly distinct from nature. Now it appears that our diets and lifestyles can change the expression of our genes. How? By influencing a network of chemical switches within our cells collectively known as the epigenome. This new understanding may lead us to potent new medical therapies. Epigenetic cancer therapy, for one, already seems to be yielding promising results.

and

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/
WHAT IS EPIGENETICS?
The development and maintenance of an organism is orchestrated by a set of chemical reactions that switch parts of the genome off and on at strategic times and locations. Epigenetics is the study of these reactions and the factors that influence them.
EPIGENETICS & THE ENVIRONMENT
The genome dynamically responds to the environment. Stress, diet, behavior, toxins and other factors activate chemical switches that regulate gene expression.

are two good places to start for info if you want to know more.

Sometimes, it really is yo mamma's fault.

***returns to lurker status***

Holy fucking fuck... *waves at LabRat*

It's like a super-power. *awe-struck*

I know, right? I iz in aww.

*waves*

Holy and entirely Mackerel!

set De-cloaker on stun!

So, 2 w00t points for me.

1- being right
2- enticing labrat out like punxatawney Phil

Changes in DNA are not birth defects.

Yeah, I meant to mention that.

Hi Labby! :D

Pretty authoritative lurking!

You know, i really wish i could lurk for ages then just say something about something i knew i knew more than anyone else about. Unfortunately i cant help but spew bullshit most of the time instead. Sorry. ;)

Lab Rat please come back, we love you!

'Cause wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'
Plannin' and dreamin' her posts will start
That won't get her into the thread

Hey Lab, good to see ya.

There are many good things about the shop, and sometimes I don't point them out enough.

Today I was listing items on eBay, and the last item I put off until I can give it enough time to do it correctly. I realized it was my next item when I only had about a half hour to go. I think this one deserves about an hour of time.

It's a Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar, and it is... some years old. Where some is probably more than 30. It's in the original Gibson case. What I realized is that I didn't consider dating the guitar via the serial number. If this is something old, or rare, it could be worth...

Yeah: dot dot dot!

The pawn shop experience is definitely not Pawn Stars, but once in a while there is something like this, where we get something cool or interesting.

Like it or loathe it, shops like this provide a necessary service to people who rarely have access to any other form of in-time financial assistance. Better that than a loan shark.

It was an epiphany when I realized that my bank fees were much MUCH greater than the pawn interest fees. Around here the middle class is being raped in bank fees.