My wife was a teacher and her pay was even less when you factored in that she'd get in early to set up, stay late to help students, grade papers late into the night, and use breaks (yes, even summer vacation) to come up with more lesson plans. We figured out how many hours she worked once and she was earning less than minimum wage. She could literally have gone to McDonald's and have been paid more.
I'm not going to say "we need to throw more money at teachers and that will solve education," but one of the big problems in education is that good teachers often get burned out (dealing with kids, parents, administrators, politicians who think they know best, constantly being told that THEY are what's wrong with education today, etc) in their first few years and leave for other professions. More pay and more respect would definitely help the situation.
We froze both of our credit files after the identity theft. It's useful when stores try to pressure you to "save 5% now if you just sign up for our card." Nope. No can do. My credit's frozen due to identity theft. That shuts them up real quick. On the down side, though, we gave up on refinancing our mortgage a couple of years ago even though we could have saved money. It was too much of a headache to thaw our credit, get the mortgage quotes, and try to get everything signed before the freeze took effect again.
Another problem are credit companies who treat identity theft with a shrug and a "that's your problem." Someone obtained my name, SSN, DOB, and address. How, I'll never know. They opened a Capital One credit card in my name. The fact that the mother's maiden name was wrong on the form wasn't a red flag. Neither was the immediate address change to another state. Nor was "my wife" calling to request a $5,000 cash advance before the card was activated.
When the card arrived at my house (a lucky quirk of them paying for rush delivery and THEN changing the address), I called CapitalOne. First, they insisted that it couldn't have been fraud, asking if my wife opened it without my knowledge. (She was next to me, freaking out about the situation. That'd be a no.) Then, they admitted that it might be fraud, closed the card out, but refused to give me more information. They literally told me "If we give you the address on the account and you go there and shoot them, we'd be liable." Apparently, they didn't think anything about liability if they opened an account under my name, ignoring a lot of red flags. They even stone-walled the police - telling them to call one phone number that was "manned" by an answering machine whose messages were never returned.
Eventually, I gave up on trying to push the investigation forward and just froze my credit. For all I know, the thieves who stole my identity are still out there racking up debt on other people's credit.
I don't think true communism has ever been tried on a large scale simply because it wouldn't work on a large scale. At some point, it just collapses into a "rich people rule the poor."
Not only that, but people complained about the manager after her and were told that it was his first offence. The "first offense" line was clearly being used to protect the manager no matter how many complaints were lodged against him.
That, plus all of the other red flags that her piece raised makes it obvious that Uber is NOT a good company to work for.
Europa - another moon where the possibility of life exists - had a liquid water ocean agitated by radiation from and gravitational interactions with Jupiter. No, we likely wouldn't find plants using photosynthesis, but any life we find there would likely have evolved to make use of radiation/gravitational flux as an energy source instead of solar energy. Just because life evolved one way on Earth doesn't mean that's the only way for life to arise/evolve.
If this only affected their kids, I'd actually side with them and say vaccines should be a parent's choice. I'd still call not vaccinating the wrong choice, but it would be their choice. However, a parent who doesn't vaccinate their child weakens herd immunity and exposes other people to diseases. People who a) are too young to be vaccinated, b) can't be vaccinated for valid medical reasons, or c) were vaccinated but the vaccine didn't "take" (vaccines aren't 100% but herd immunity usually covers the fraction who don't get protected). When their actions negatively affect other people - including possibly killing them - they don't get to argue that it's their freedom to choose not to vaccinate and it goes beyond a "Darwin effect."
That was just goal post shifting. Once the mercury link was busted, the anti-vax groups claimed it was other compounds in the vaccines. When that was disproved, they went to generic "toxins" or "they get so many vaccines that their immune system is overwhelmed." Never mind that they can't name the "toxin(s)" that cause autism (if they keep it generic, you can't disprove it) or that a baby's immune system wards off hundreds of bacteria/viruses daily (if not more) and a few shots won't tip the scales. They'll keep shifting the "why" in their belief that vaccines cause autism instead of admitting that they have nothing to do with one another.
This doesn't remove the "driving drunk" as a blame factor, it just adds "car driving the wrong way down a one way street" to the list. Her being drunk likely contributed to poor reactions that led to the accident. However, this doesn't add "the car accelerates like a rocket ship" to the list of causes to the accident, despite what the father says.
As a father, I get the impulse to not want to blame your child. Not to mention that he just lost his daughter. That's not a time in a person's life when they are 100% rational. Still, the hard truth is that his daughter was at least half to blame (with the other half going to the driver going the wrong way). The car's acceleration wasn't the cause of his daughter's death.
Trump is like a stopped clock. Occasionally, he says something true, but the reason why he said the thing and the reason why it's true are completely different.
And the sad thing is, why couldn't a potential terrorist do this also? Give a fake social media account filled with nothing but liked cat videos and posts about how wonderful it is that Beyonce is pregnant. Give a PIN code that unlocks the phone into "totally not a terrorist user" mode with a browser history of innocuous searches, a bunch of games (e.g. Angry Birds), and other completely normal content. Then, when the border guard lets them in, unlock the phone into "secret evil terrorist" mode.
NOTE: I'm not in favor of what the NASA scientist was put through. Just pointing out that, even in the face of someone arguing "we need this to keep us safe," this doesn't make sense since it could be sidestepped so easily.
Note that only 13 states don't have a portion of them within the zone and many states have all or most of their area within the border zone. For example, all of Maine is in the border zone. If you live in Maine, theoretically you could have your car searched without a warrant at any time because you're within 100 miles of the border. I live in NY and it's hard to tell for sure on the map, but I think I live barely outside of the zone. Still, most of New York State is within the zone including all of New York City.
I heard this years ago. I think the key is idling time. When you try to turn left, you often need to wait for traffic to clear in both directions before going. While you're doing that, the UPS truck is sitting there burning gas and getting 0 mpg. If the driver makes right turns, they might drive further, but they'll wind up still moving and thus won't be wasting gas waiting on a clearing. By using special mapping software, they can find the ideal route to deliver packages so that the truck is idling as little as possible and uses the minimum amount of gas needed.
And if I do, and I'm actually using my Facebook account to meet up with terrorists, preparing to be the first person ever from any of those seven countries to commit an act of terrorism in the US, what makes you think I'd use the same account for that as I do talking with friends and family? I mean, having one account used for both seems like it'd be asking for trouble. Guess which password you'd end up with...
Exactly this. It would take minimal effort for a would-be terrorist to make a "clean" Facebook account. Have it only friend pro-US people and be completely innocuous - not even discussing US politics, but discussing which pop band is the best and the results of "Which Hogwarts House Am I In" quizzes. A clever terrorist organization could even have a whole division dedicated to maintaining these accounts for years before handing them over to the would-be-terrorist. DHS gets the clean Facebook account and doesn't see the secondary account where he's liked every anti-US Facebook post there is. This won't protect us from terrorists (except, maybe extremely stupid ones), will weaken the security of people entering the US, and will lead to abuse.
I bought a Seagate 3TB drive awhile back and it's currently not being recognized by my computer all the time. It gets noticed, works for a bit, and then dies. I have everything backed up in other locations, but I'm going to buy another (non-Seagate) drive to replace it with before it goes completely.
That's something I thought of right away. Not having a service you would pay for, mind you, but that any terrorist could run a clean, pro-America social media profile meant to be given to anyone who questioned them. Once they were let through, they could maintain the clean profile (in case they are being watched), while also posting their "death to America" stuff on their actual profile.
The last one (calling publications that he doesn't like "failing" or "fake news") could be a calculating move. By delegitimizing anyone who reports bad things about him, he could:
- Shut out reporters working for organizations he deems "Fake News." (He's already said that some news organizations will be left out of the White House Press Corps and refused to take a question from a CNN reporter, calling CNN "Fake News".) - Try to pressure other organizations to fall in line lest they be labeled fake as well. (He went on to call NBC "fake news" for unflattering coverage of him. The implication clearly being "fall in line or you're fake.") - Fulfill his campaign promise to "open up libel laws." (Not that there are Federal libel laws, but he could have Federal legislation passed that would let him sue news organizations.) - Only allow positive press coverage of him. Anything else is "libel" and illegal.
Now, this doesn't mean him calling CNN and NBC "fake news" is calculating, but his own statements and actions don't point to a very pro-free-press version of Donald Trump.
Technically speaking, about 3 million more people voted for Hillary than Donald. It's just that, thanks to our electoral college system, those votes were divided up such that he won.
(Not saying his not a legitimate President because of that fact. We can argue about whether or not the electoral college should be changed going forward, but those were the rules going in and should be respected as such.)
Unfortunately, for me, my only option for wired high speed Internet is TWC (now called Spectrum). If I don't like their prices or speeds, I really have no other option.
Don't forget: Cable companies price TV+Internet bundles at a much lower cost than Internet-only thus luring cord-cutters back in the fold "to save money." (And even if you put the cable box in the closet without ever connecting it, you're counted as a subscriber.)
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My wife was a teacher and her pay was even less when you factored in that she'd get in early to set up, stay late to help students, grade papers late into the night, and use breaks (yes, even summer vacation) to come up with more lesson plans. We figured out how many hours she worked once and she was earning less than minimum wage. She could literally have gone to McDonald's and have been paid more.
I'm not going to say "we need to throw more money at teachers and that will solve education," but one of the big problems in education is that good teachers often get burned out (dealing with kids, parents, administrators, politicians who think they know best, constantly being told that THEY are what's wrong with education today, etc) in their first few years and leave for other professions. More pay and more respect would definitely help the situation.
We froze both of our credit files after the identity theft. It's useful when stores try to pressure you to "save 5% now if you just sign up for our card." Nope. No can do. My credit's frozen due to identity theft. That shuts them up real quick. On the down side, though, we gave up on refinancing our mortgage a couple of years ago even though we could have saved money. It was too much of a headache to thaw our credit, get the mortgage quotes, and try to get everything signed before the freeze took effect again.
Not paying your taxes makes you smart!*
* Only applies to billionaires. Attempts to apply this to someone in the middle class may result in jail time.
Another problem are credit companies who treat identity theft with a shrug and a "that's your problem." Someone obtained my name, SSN, DOB, and address. How, I'll never know. They opened a Capital One credit card in my name. The fact that the mother's maiden name was wrong on the form wasn't a red flag. Neither was the immediate address change to another state. Nor was "my wife" calling to request a $5,000 cash advance before the card was activated.
When the card arrived at my house (a lucky quirk of them paying for rush delivery and THEN changing the address), I called CapitalOne. First, they insisted that it couldn't have been fraud, asking if my wife opened it without my knowledge. (She was next to me, freaking out about the situation. That'd be a no.) Then, they admitted that it might be fraud, closed the card out, but refused to give me more information. They literally told me "If we give you the address on the account and you go there and shoot them, we'd be liable." Apparently, they didn't think anything about liability if they opened an account under my name, ignoring a lot of red flags. They even stone-walled the police - telling them to call one phone number that was "manned" by an answering machine whose messages were never returned.
Eventually, I gave up on trying to push the investigation forward and just froze my credit. For all I know, the thieves who stole my identity are still out there racking up debt on other people's credit.
If one of those planets is found to contain a lot of liquid water, we should name it Mon Calamari.
"What star does Mon Calamari orbit again?"
"It's One Trappist!"
I don't think true communism has ever been tried on a large scale simply because it wouldn't work on a large scale. At some point, it just collapses into a "rich people rule the poor."
Not only that, but people complained about the manager after her and were told that it was his first offence. The "first offense" line was clearly being used to protect the manager no matter how many complaints were lodged against him.
That, plus all of the other red flags that her piece raised makes it obvious that Uber is NOT a good company to work for.
Europa - another moon where the possibility of life exists - had a liquid water ocean agitated by radiation from and gravitational interactions with Jupiter. No, we likely wouldn't find plants using photosynthesis, but any life we find there would likely have evolved to make use of radiation/gravitational flux as an energy source instead of solar energy. Just because life evolved one way on Earth doesn't mean that's the only way for life to arise/evolve.
If this only affected their kids, I'd actually side with them and say vaccines should be a parent's choice. I'd still call not vaccinating the wrong choice, but it would be their choice. However, a parent who doesn't vaccinate their child weakens herd immunity and exposes other people to diseases. People who a) are too young to be vaccinated, b) can't be vaccinated for valid medical reasons, or c) were vaccinated but the vaccine didn't "take" (vaccines aren't 100% but herd immunity usually covers the fraction who don't get protected). When their actions negatively affect other people - including possibly killing them - they don't get to argue that it's their freedom to choose not to vaccinate and it goes beyond a "Darwin effect."
That was just goal post shifting. Once the mercury link was busted, the anti-vax groups claimed it was other compounds in the vaccines. When that was disproved, they went to generic "toxins" or "they get so many vaccines that their immune system is overwhelmed." Never mind that they can't name the "toxin(s)" that cause autism (if they keep it generic, you can't disprove it) or that a baby's immune system wards off hundreds of bacteria/viruses daily (if not more) and a few shots won't tip the scales. They'll keep shifting the "why" in their belief that vaccines cause autism instead of admitting that they have nothing to do with one another.
This doesn't remove the "driving drunk" as a blame factor, it just adds "car driving the wrong way down a one way street" to the list. Her being drunk likely contributed to poor reactions that led to the accident. However, this doesn't add "the car accelerates like a rocket ship" to the list of causes to the accident, despite what the father says.
As a father, I get the impulse to not want to blame your child. Not to mention that he just lost his daughter. That's not a time in a person's life when they are 100% rational. Still, the hard truth is that his daughter was at least half to blame (with the other half going to the driver going the wrong way). The car's acceleration wasn't the cause of his daughter's death.
Trump is like a stopped clock. Occasionally, he says something true, but the reason why he said the thing and the reason why it's true are completely different.
And the sad thing is, why couldn't a potential terrorist do this also? Give a fake social media account filled with nothing but liked cat videos and posts about how wonderful it is that Beyonce is pregnant. Give a PIN code that unlocks the phone into "totally not a terrorist user" mode with a browser history of innocuous searches, a bunch of games (e.g. Angry Birds), and other completely normal content. Then, when the border guard lets them in, unlock the phone into "secret evil terrorist" mode.
NOTE: I'm not in favor of what the NASA scientist was put through. Just pointing out that, even in the face of someone arguing "we need this to keep us safe," this doesn't make sense since it could be sidestepped so easily.
Here's the map of those "border zones."
Note that only 13 states don't have a portion of them within the zone and many states have all or most of their area within the border zone. For example, all of Maine is in the border zone. If you live in Maine, theoretically you could have your car searched without a warrant at any time because you're within 100 miles of the border. I live in NY and it's hard to tell for sure on the map, but I think I live barely outside of the zone. Still, most of New York State is within the zone including all of New York City.
I heard this years ago. I think the key is idling time. When you try to turn left, you often need to wait for traffic to clear in both directions before going. While you're doing that, the UPS truck is sitting there burning gas and getting 0 mpg. If the driver makes right turns, they might drive further, but they'll wind up still moving and thus won't be wasting gas waiting on a clearing. By using special mapping software, they can find the ideal route to deliver packages so that the truck is idling as little as possible and uses the minimum amount of gas needed.
Exactly this. It would take minimal effort for a would-be terrorist to make a "clean" Facebook account. Have it only friend pro-US people and be completely innocuous - not even discussing US politics, but discussing which pop band is the best and the results of "Which Hogwarts House Am I In" quizzes. A clever terrorist organization could even have a whole division dedicated to maintaining these accounts for years before handing them over to the would-be-terrorist. DHS gets the clean Facebook account and doesn't see the secondary account where he's liked every anti-US Facebook post there is. This won't protect us from terrorists (except, maybe extremely stupid ones), will weaken the security of people entering the US, and will lead to abuse.
It was filed on November 21, 2000, though it looks like it was approved February 6, 2007.
I bought a Seagate 3TB drive awhile back and it's currently not being recognized by my computer all the time. It gets noticed, works for a bit, and then dies. I have everything backed up in other locations, but I'm going to buy another (non-Seagate) drive to replace it with before it goes completely.
That's something I thought of right away. Not having a service you would pay for, mind you, but that any terrorist could run a clean, pro-America social media profile meant to be given to anyone who questioned them. Once they were let through, they could maintain the clean profile (in case they are being watched), while also posting their "death to America" stuff on their actual profile.
If they did, Disney would have Spider-Man fully in the MCU (not just some cross-promotion deal that lets them use each other's characters for now).
It's good form (and the law) to get permission first, though. Not just do it without consent because "they let you do it when you're a celebrity."
The last one (calling publications that he doesn't like "failing" or "fake news") could be a calculating move. By delegitimizing anyone who reports bad things about him, he could:
- Shut out reporters working for organizations he deems "Fake News." (He's already said that some news organizations will be left out of the White House Press Corps and refused to take a question from a CNN reporter, calling CNN "Fake News".)
- Try to pressure other organizations to fall in line lest they be labeled fake as well. (He went on to call NBC "fake news" for unflattering coverage of him. The implication clearly being "fall in line or you're fake.")
- Fulfill his campaign promise to "open up libel laws." (Not that there are Federal libel laws, but he could have Federal legislation passed that would let him sue news organizations.)
- Only allow positive press coverage of him. Anything else is "libel" and illegal.
Now, this doesn't mean him calling CNN and NBC "fake news" is calculating, but his own statements and actions don't point to a very pro-free-press version of Donald Trump.
Technically speaking, about 3 million more people voted for Hillary than Donald. It's just that, thanks to our electoral college system, those votes were divided up such that he won.
(Not saying his not a legitimate President because of that fact. We can argue about whether or not the electoral college should be changed going forward, but those were the rules going in and should be respected as such.)
Unfortunately, for me, my only option for wired high speed Internet is TWC (now called Spectrum). If I don't like their prices or speeds, I really have no other option.
Don't forget: Cable companies price TV+Internet bundles at a much lower cost than Internet-only thus luring cord-cutters back in the fold "to save money." (And even if you put the cable box in the closet without ever connecting it, you're counted as a subscriber.)