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NOT much of a reputable source. By their standards the US isn't a place to write home either...

Check your sources b4 you post.

http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces/unitedst/index.htm

Yeah, a great place to live and visit.

Not

He's got info: http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces/rwanda/ind ex.htm

CNN.COM:

1. Timber Cutters: 117 / 100k / yr
2. Fishers: 71 / 100k / yr
3. Airplane Pilot & Navigator: 70 / 100k / yr

Fielding's DangerFinder:

1. Truck Driver - 762 Deaths / year
2. Farm Worker
3. Retail Salesman / Supervisor

Forbes:

1. Truck Drivers - 112,200 injuries
2. Nursing Aides - 79,000 injuries

Military Casualties in Iraq:

• 1,402 deaths / 623 days
• 9,326 wounded / 623 days

• 821 deaths / 100k / yr
• 5,464 injured / 100k / yr

• 657 deaths / 100k / yr
• 4,371 injured / 100k / yr

So, I'd have to support your claim that joining the army is one of the more dangerous ways to pay for an education. But as others have said, if you stay out of the infantry, or serve during peacetime, the statistics are a lot better.

As for the payscale, Ask.com reports the starting pay is about $27k / yr. This doesn't compare favorably to the average U.S. salary of $36k / yr. Comparing a starting salary with an average covering a breadth of experience isn't fair. The average salary for someone with just a high school education is $15k / yr. So while I wouldn't say the military make much more than the average person , in some circumstances it can look pretty attractive.

Best way to travel in a war zone?

Try Robert Young Pelton's website....lots of fun going to The World's Most Dangerous Places

Best way to travel in a war zone?

Try Robert Young Pelton's website....lots of fun going to The World's Most Dangerous Places

And you are complaining because you can't send him a Plan 9 cd ? Give me a fucking break. If you don't like it here, move there.

If you're serious about it, this might be a great resource. Came in quite handy when I visited Iraq last year to smuggle nuclear material.

If you want to find out just EXACTLY how dangerous the world is, pick up a copy of The World's Most Dangerous Places.

Or Read it online. I *LOVE* that book. :-)

An American programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of Indian programmers who in his mind "write half-assed code, cut corners, and cover up mistakes."

Meanwhile, an Indian programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of American programmers, who in his mind are slow, lazy and underproductive team members.

In India after the Bhopal disaster, were new enforced laws brought into existence that would prevent a repeat? No. That BP/Amoco gas pipe that everyone in Nigeria was told NOT TO GO NEAR. What happened? Boom and lots of people died. Quoting,

There have been similar incidents in other parts of Africa. More than 30 Kenyans died in July as they collected petrol from an overturned tanker lorry. In Cameroon, about 120 died as they gathered fuel at the scene of a railway accident.

Did I miss something, or have the scenes from Mad Max with the fuel shortages become reality? To give a more measurable indication of this, third world driving is world famous, neither the right nor the left side is reserved for cars driving in a particular direction. Instead vehicles are just grateful that a road exists at all and drive in a haphazard way. If you watch Lonely Planet on the Discovery Travel & Leisure channel you will see that head-on collisions occur far more than any other in all countries except developed ones. Here are some statistics (scroll down to automobiles). From this same source, I quote,

Ferries in places like Bangladesh, Haiti, The Philippines and Hong Kong have had major disasters from capsizing due to overloading and collision. In roughly an eight-year period, there were more than 360 ferry boat accidents killing 11,350 people.

Like in the US, if you picked up a dog and ripped his heart out in the mall everyone would be like "Oh my God!" but if you do it in a market in China/India it's, well, it's like pointing out that the sky is blue. This lack of respect for animal life and human life (road crash statistics) is indicative of the peoples' thinking. Anyone says, "but eberybody is different" is wrong to some degree. There's always some level of conformity. Even a staunch anarchist in the US can drive, he doesn't "disobey" red lights all the time and "ignore" stop signs all the time. A true anarchist would sit at the roadside and throw roadkill at passing vehicles, would piss in the middle of the freeway stopping all the cars, would attack a drive-thru bank with a sledgehammer, would walk in the street with a long knife in his hand, would throw a lit cigarrete on the floor at the gas station so he doesn't have to pay for his gas, etc.

I could fill this post with my personal experiences whilst visiting India e.g. electrician "If it catchs fire, then I give you half your money back and I fix it". Suffice it to say that look at my website to see the conditions your Indian software is written under. Notice the walls inside the houses - no wallpaper, shredded paint. But that's normal and natural, npbody notices it, it doesn't occur to them, just as making dangerous shortcuts whilst designing & coding don't occur to them. Same as that lost puppy look that you get when you tell a newbie that his PC has been fried because he opened an email with an attachment. He then says "What's an attachment" the thought never occurs, same as nobody *demands* to look at a company's balance sheet in the middle of a job interview. Read this to find out what these countries are actually like. No marketing trash. News like this happens all the time. I mean skyscrapers collapse by themselves all the time - they don't need Osama binLaden.

like saying that Hitler did bad things to the environment. Wearing veils is the least of the problems caused by the Taliban, typical liberal CNN being PC. It's like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500:

Forget CNN, get The Real Scoop on Afghanistan.

You'd have to be blind to see the American government change its mind mid-stride -- first by supporting a group (again, with weapons and money), then by turning face, cutting off support or even condemning the actions of the group they supported.

In the case of the Afghanis, there were really no good choices, except for Massoud, who didn't really want foreign support in his country - he is/was the pro-democrary guy in the mujahedin. We focused on Hetmakyar and bin Laden, who schmoozed better with the West. Hetmakyar, by the way, basically avoided fighting and stockpiled everything we sent to him; he knew that the war would end, then he would conquer the nation. So the war ended, and chaos continued as Hetmakyar, Dostum, and Massoud shook it up amongst themselves. Later, the Talibs, primarily religious students from the south and funded by merchants with Pakistani ties, grew sick of the corruption of the warlords and started raising hell. They eventually captured all Hetmakyar's territory, who then fled to Pakistan, then diplomacy & assassination delivered them Dostum's territory, who fled to Turkey. When the Taliban captured Hetmakyar's weapon's cache, they proclaimed that they "now have enough weapons for 25 years of war". I'm inclined to believe them.

I wrote this little rant to point something out: Afghanistan is probably the wierdest place we have ever intervened in. The forces in control have shifted numerous times the culture in place has changed radically, and its not easy to just say 'we supported this guy and now he is out to get us' when everything over there changes radically every 5 years. Finally, it just goes to show that if you give a man a gun, you never know who will eventually hold it, and who it will be used on...

Interested parties might want to read up on Afghanistan at dangerfinder, as well as at more conventional news sources.