There are a lot of cases where couples live together for a period of time - then they get married and the shit hits the fan. the marriage doesn't last as long as the shacking-up.
But while there are laws/taxes/etc. preferring marriage to living single, this will continue on indefinitely
So move to Quebec. Absolutely no difference in the tax treatment for people shacked up as opposed to married. Same thing with child support and custody. The majority of Quebeckers now don't bother getting married when they decide to start a family - marriage is pretty much on the way out as a lifestyle. And single people living alone get an additional tax break to "even things up" a bit.
The crude marriage rate was highest in Prince Edward Island in 2003, where it was 6.0 marriages for every 1,000 population. It was followed by Alberta (5.6) and Newfoundland and Labrador (5.5). The lowest rates in the country were in Quebec with 2.8 marriages for every 1,000 population, and Nunavut (2.3 per 1,000).
Quebec's low crude marriage rate is due partly to the high proportion of cohabitation in this province. Data from the 2001 Census indicate that in Quebec, 29.8% of all couples lived common-law, compared to 11.7% in the rest of Canada.
In 2003, Canada's crude marriage rate at 4.7 marriages per 1,000 population was lower than that of its neighbour, the United States, where the rate was 7.5. However, it was practically the same as that of several European countries, notably France, Austria and Germany, which had a rate of 4.6 in 2003.
Canada's rate is lower than the US by 2/3, and Quebec's is lower by a factor of 2.6 to 1.
Ask Guy Laliberte why he didn't get married (search for "guy laliberte alimony" - unless you're in Canada, in which case it's supposed to be a secret... not that it wasn't hard to figure out even without a search - there aren't that many billionaires in Quebec who had kids with a woman born in Brazil). For more details, search for "quebec billionaire alimony".
The end result, at least in Quebec, is that if you're not married and have kids, you still have to share in the cost of supporting your kids, but no alimony for either party. Each person is responsible for themselves as an adult.
So all those well-educated people who are losing their homes are an illusion?
Don't commit a crime and end up in jail
Don't use drugs (at least unless you can easily afford them)
All those unemployed people who aren't in jail don't have even a GED or owe their newfound poverty to a non-exstent drug habit?
Don't end up in a situation where you are raising children as a single parent
Nice thing to tell a widow. Try that line of reasoning out at the next funeral you attend. "Wanna hook up later? After all, if you stay single, your kids will be poor, but if you're really good in the sack, maybe I'll save them from a life of poverty."
Get a job - any job will do, even fast food or other low paying job that anyone can get
... and what sort of insurance policy will they be able to buy at the minimum wage? And how will they afford the co-pay?
As for pre-existing conditions, at some point in your life, you're pretty much guaranteed to have a "pre-existing condition" if you apply for new coverage.
If you had been following the news, the majority of people who lose their job also lose their health insurance, and can't afford to replace it simply because they're, you know, out of work. Many will also soon be out of home.
Everyone in the US has the option of getting insurance, they just have to work for it.
Can someone working at the minimum wage get comprehensive health insurance - and still have enough money to live anywhere but in a box over a heating grate? How about someone with an "existing condition?" How about someone who's just lost their job? How about when the insurance companies renege on the contract, as happens a LOT?
For those people, you might as well be saying "Everyone has the option of getting a BMW, they just have to work for it."
search for "cygna whistleblower" - for-profit health care in the US is a fraud.
With 1/9 the population, our firearm death toll should be 30,000/9, or 3,333 - it's 1,300 (of which 1,000 are suicides), so the homicide rate (15,000 in the US, 300 in Canada ) adjusted for population is more than 5 times higher, and the suicide rate 60% higher, in the US.
If you think government healthcare is the way to go look to England and Canada for inspiration. Their numbers may be better but both systems are having major problems.
Actually, all those phony ads that have been run about that woman who "had to go to the US to get operated on for a brain tumor" turned out to be full of shit. She never had a brain tumor, and the cyst was stable and didn't need to be operated on. She wasted $100,000 for nothing. She even admitted afterwards that the Canadian system had monitored it correctly for years, and that it wasn't in fact a tumor. But of course, when there's $100,000 to be made, the doctor says "you should have this removed." So much for for-profit health care.
No system is perfect, but Canada's is the envy of the Brits (in Canada you choose your doctor). It's also the envy of Americans who have no health insurance.
any one can go into an emergency room and get treated for an emergency.
And what about chronic conditions? Oh, just wait until it turns into a health emergency, and if you make it to the hospital ER, great! Sort of mitigates against preventative care, which helps explain the higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates in Canada vs. the (dis)United States, where those that have, get care, and those that don't, don't.
So the best way to immediately increase everyone's health and economic performance is easier access to birth control for teenagers. Funny how the religious right screams against it because it would lift people out of poverty, and the poorer you are, the more heavily you lean on some sort of religious belief to make your sodded life more tolerable.
there are several studies that show that Americans rarely stay in the socio-economic level they were born at.
Nope, the gun stats are from the FBI, the crappy medical coverage being the #1 cause of bankruptcies is from Harvard. Of course, you could have just googled for it... but if you're an obese american who's going to die younger, that's too much work.
Ya know, i'd agree with a lot of your post, but to say the higher death rates are due to guns and lack of health care, that's idiotic.
Canada and the United States share a common culture, same foods, etc, but the murder rate in the US is 3x what it is in Canada (4.2 instead of 1.4). If you remove US homicides committed by guns, the murder rate is the same. This is quite ironic, given that Canada has more firearms per capita then the US - Canada just does a better job of gun control.
As for the lack of health care in the US, the US has more people who have no coverage than the entire population of Canada. People without health care will die of untreated chronic conditions, as well as treatable acute conditions that are not tended to in time.
Canada -- Life Expectancy: 78 years (men), 83 years (women) (UN) - average is 80.4 years.
Yes, we need to get people to take responsibility for themselves. Allow doctors to refuse repeated treatment to smokers who don't quit, Ditto for alcoholics and crackheads and people who thing that "all you can eat" is a order from god, not a suggestion. Give custody to the other parent when one continues to smoke, binge drink, do crack, and/or over-stuff their pie-holes.
Make them "pay at the pump" with additional sin taxes on sweetened soft drinks, junk food, booze and simply ban the all-you-can-eat buffets outright.
Make it as socially unacceptable to be fat as it is to smoke - people get fat one bite at a time, and want to lose it without the hard work that going on a diet calls for. A waist is a terrible thing to mind, but so is seeing a couple of 400 pounders of blubber at the next table in a restaurant. Cows eat more gracefully - and they take more time to chew.
To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money.
So someone who's born into a poor family made a poor lifestyle decision? Gee, I guess people should choose better parents.
People born into poverty don't have the same access to all the good things - like healthy diets, etc. Parents scrimp even on essentials because they're poor, not because they want to.
Things like failure to get an education
Education is no guarantee of a well-paying job - the ability to BS, and an innate streak of dishonesty, have been better rewarded over the last couple of decades. There are well-educated people who, through no fault of their own, are out of a job. It's the economy, stupid! Or is everyone who is unemployed just a lazy, shiftless don't-wanna-know slob in your book?
And then there's the "shit happens" stuff. For example, recent studies have shown that it can take up to 2 DECADES for both sexes to recover economically from a divorce, and that even after "recovery" they never make up all the lost income. So they didn't have a crystal ball - they should stay in a bad marriage because it means they'll have more money? Sure, the kids might eat a bit better, but the fighting is also detrimental to their health.
There ARE two Americas in the United States, and this study goes to show how it impacts on health, including longevity.
"Stupid people do stupid things that cause them to die sooner." Not that there aren't stupid people everywhere, but in America we still have the
right to be wrong to a much greater extent than the nanny states in Europe.
Riiiight - McDonalds are banned in Europe, as are all fast foods, drugs, booze and tobacco, and all American culture. Except they're not. The higher death rates are from two things - guns and a lack of a comprehensive health-care system. Until the housing crisis, the #1 cause of bankruptcy was medical bills, and 74% of all those had medical insurance. The high cost of co-pays, and the insurance carriers weaseling out of paying for coverage to make a profit, meant that they had to go broke. So much for for-profit health care.
What are the cell towers powered off of when the grid cuts out?
Generators. And because each cell tower services a smaller area than a land-line central office, AND there's overlap, you're more likely to maintain service over the cell network during a disaster. Also, what good is your landline unless you're at home? Most car accidents, for example, don't happen in your living room where you can just pick up a land-based phone.
Did anyone notice that it's all based on vacuum tubes?
My question is why you need a vacuum tube in a vacuum? Just put the parts out in open space, save a bit of weight, no problem with the tube getting deposits on it over time, or thermal expansion and contraction stressing the tube, etc.
Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
... so what reason did the rest of them give for not buying a new 360?
Seriously, you can bet that the other 96^ have more than one game, so they're locked into the platform - or they can trade their games and buy a PS3 or a Wii.
Wii failure rate of 7% - "see, we TOLD you to use the wrist strap!" - consoles dinged by flying WiiMotes?
Because getting the obscenely large percentage of the world's population familiar with the World Wide Web to switch from the web they know to some new (or old) software uniformly across all platforms is a fool's errand?
The point of the web was not to move processing out to the cloud, it was to build a multi-way communications medium (hence web) that anyone on the Internet could participate in. Moving processing to "the cloud" (i.e., someone else's computer) is the point of Google, not the web.
Exactly. The original web was supposed to be read-write. A combination of companies that wanted to ream people for $50/month for hosting a simple hobby site and ISPs that wanted to upsell you a $100/month "business internet package with 1 static IP" are the guilty parties.
Of course, the Internet routes around such damage, so we have home servers operating on alternate ports, ultra-cheap hosting plans, and dynamic dns.
All this talk about camels... time for some camel jokes:
Captain in the foreign legion was transfered to a desert outpost. On his orientation tour he noticed a very old, seedy looking camel tied out back of the enlisted mens barracks. He asked the Sargent leading the tour, "What's the camel for?". The Sargent replied "Well sir it's a long way from anywhere, and the men have natural sexual urges, so when they do, uh, we have the camel." The captain said "Well if it's good for moral, then I guess it's all right with me." After he had been at the fort for about 6 months the captain could not stand it any more so he told his Sargent, "BRING IN THE CAMEL!!!" The sarge shrugged his shoulders and led the camel into the captains quarters. The captain got a foot stool & proceeded to have vigorous sex with the camel. As he stepped, satisfied, down from the stool, and was buttoning his pants he asked the Sargent, "Is that how the enlisted men do it?" The Sargent replied, "Well sir, they usually just use it to ride into town."
Two old ladies are outside their nursing home, having a smoke, when it starts to rain. One of the ladies pulls out a condom, cuts off the end, puts it over her cigarette and continues smoking. Lady 1: What's that? Lady 2: A condom. This way my cigarette doesn't get wet. Lady 1: Where did you get that? Lady 2: You can get them at any drugstore. The next day, Lady 1 hobbles herself into the local drugstore and announces to the pharmacist that she wants a box of condoms. The guy, obviously embarrassed, looks at her kind of strangely (she is after all over 80 years of age), but very delicately asks what brand she prefers. Lady 1: Doesn't matter son, as long as it fits a camel.
This guy named Joe was going into the desert for a week and he needed a camel for the trip. Joe was a stranger to the desert but was able to locate a rent-a-camel office. Joe tells the rent-a-camel man that he will be making a long trip through the desert for one week. The rent-a-camel man says even his best camel can only go 4 days without water. After some discussion, the rent-a-camel man says "I don't like to suggest this, but you know a good camel can go an extra 3 days or more if he is bricked." Joe agrees to take the best camel. As he leaves the rent-a-camel office, the rent-a-camel man reminds Joe to brick the camel. Not wanting to display his ignorance, Joe doesn't ask about the procedure for bricking the camel. Well Joe knows that it is a long difficult trip for the camel and lets it eat ant drink its fill. He encourages the camel to take on all the water it can by offering it often. Sure enough 4 days into the trip the camel drops dead. Poor Joe barely makes it back to town alive and can't wait to confront the rent-a-camel man. "You rented me a poor camel", Joe says, "It died after only 4 days in the desert, and I almost perished with it." The puzzled rent-a-camel man looks up at Joe and says, "He was my best camel. Did you brick him?" Mad as hell, Joe replies, "Brick him, what the hell do you mean." The rent-a-camel man explains that when the camel bends over to take water, you take two bricks and slam his gonads, as the camel gasps with his head in the water he takes on another 3 to 4 day supply of water. "My GOD", Joe says," Doesn't that hurt?" The rent-a-camel man answers, "No! Just keep your thumbs out of the way when you slam the bricks together."
A man was stranded in the desert with his camel for a long time. He hadn't seen a woman for so long that he became interested in mounting the camel. He would set up a box behind the camel, climb up on the box and attempt to mount it. The camel would just take a few steps forward. After trying this technique over and over for several days, the man became increasingly frustrated and obsessed with his desire for the camel. So obsessed in fact that he hardly noticed a caravan passing through the desert. Well luck have it, a beautiful young woman came over to him, and offered him food, water, or anything he needed. The now crazed man said, "Just hold the camel for me."
Well I'm a PC gamer and PC's are the far superior platform, as any real gamer like me knows. Anyone who doesn't use a mouse and keyboard is clearly inferior to me and lacks my intelligence and superior taste in gaming.
The Wii can use a mouse and keyboard (for surfing the net...) as well as Wiimotes - guess that makes the Wii the uber-superior platform. (Not really - but when the next version comes out with hi-def video and a faster cpu...)
Kid #1: "You got a trojan in my worm!"
Kid #2: "You got a worm in my trojan!"
Voiceover: "Two bad ideas that are even worse together. Be BAAAAD! Get Vista! Grind your dual quad-core into the dust!"
(rapidly): "May cause dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, feelings of desperation, boredom, suicide, homicide, chair-throwing, offensive body odor, birther syndrome, loss of control-alt-delete, and excessive weight gain or bloat. If symptoms persist, see your Apple retailer."
That's because you don't have enough ram... what Bill Gates REALLY said was "640 gigabytes should be enough for anyone!"
Remember Weird Al's song about Windows 95 - "
There's so much stuff to buy
I need a new harddrive
It's gonna suck me dry.
My CPU says,
'don't have the speed',
it takes an hour just to bring up the screen
Life imitates art. Microsoft is taking its' HID cues from Weird Al (which explains a lot:-)
Camels are even-toed ungulates within the genus Camelus. The dromedary, one-humped or Arabian camel has a single hump and is well known for its healthy low fat milk, and the Bactrian camel has two humps. They are native to the dry desert areas of western Asia, and central and east Asia, respectively.
The term camel is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel like creatures in the family Camelidae: the two true camels, and the four South American camelids, the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña.
The dromedary or Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius) is a large even-toed ungulate with one hump on its back. Its native range is unclear, but it was probably the Arabian Peninsula. The domesticated form occurs widely in North Africa and the Middle East;[1] the world's only population of dromedaries exhibiting wild behaviour is an introduced feral population in Australia.
The dromedary camel is one of the best-known members of the camel family. Other members of the camel family include the llama and the alpaca in South America. The Dromedary has one hump on its back, in contrast to the Bactrian camel which has two. A good mnemonic for remembering which way around these terms apply is this: "Bactrian" begins with "B", and "Dromedary" begins with "D"; "B" on its side has two humps, while "D" on its side has only one hump.
The Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactrianus) is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of north eastern Asia. It is one of the two surviving species of camel. The Bactrian Camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped Dromedary Camel.[2]
Well, if the person engaged in a short position, and the price soared, they're screwed. Also, if they traded on margin, they can lose a lot more than their original investment - so when comparing stocks to gambling on horses, margin trading can make playing the ponies look conservative.
The real problem is that the stock market no longer fulfills its' primary purpose - the raising of capital for business ventures. Making money off trading stocks has become more important than making money off the underlying business and collecting a share of the profits.
"Suggesting we take the liquidity out of the stock market would only serve to crash it. People invest because it's liquid, because they have access, because they can make money or bail out if things turn south"
In other words, its for the quick buck, rather than investing in a business in the hope that it will grow and you'll eventually show a profit.
Slashdot Mirror
How about the liability anyone faces for 3rd-party actions not under their control (hint - there is none).
A simple disclaimer would suffice - even one written in Engrish, like the "Do not iron clothes while wearing them" on irons.
There are a lot of cases where couples live together for a period of time - then they get married and the shit hits the fan. the marriage doesn't last as long as the shacking-up.
So move to Quebec. Absolutely no difference in the tax treatment for people shacked up as opposed to married. Same thing with child support and custody. The majority of Quebeckers now don't bother getting married when they decide to start a family - marriage is pretty much on the way out as a lifestyle. And single people living alone get an additional tax break to "even things up" a bit.
Marriage rates on the decline in Canada - and particularly in Quebec
Canada's rate is lower than the US by 2/3, and Quebec's is lower by a factor of 2.6 to 1.
Ask Guy Laliberte why he didn't get married (search for "guy laliberte alimony" - unless you're in Canada, in which case it's supposed to be a secret ... not that it wasn't hard to figure out even without a search - there aren't that many billionaires in Quebec who had kids with a woman born in Brazil). For more details, search for "quebec billionaire alimony".
The end result, at least in Quebec, is that if you're not married and have kids, you still have to share in the cost of supporting your kids, but no alimony for either party. Each person is responsible for themselves as an adult.
So all those well-educated people who are losing their homes are an illusion?
All those unemployed people who aren't in jail don't have even a GED or owe their newfound poverty to a non-exstent drug habit?
Nice thing to tell a widow. Try that line of reasoning out at the next funeral you attend. "Wanna hook up later? After all, if you stay single, your kids will be poor, but if you're really good in the sack, maybe I'll save them from a life of poverty."
As for pre-existing conditions, at some point in your life, you're pretty much guaranteed to have a "pre-existing condition" if you apply for new coverage.
If you had been following the news, the majority of people who lose their job also lose their health insurance, and can't afford to replace it simply because they're, you know, out of work. Many will also soon be out of home.
Can someone working at the minimum wage get comprehensive health insurance - and still have enough money to live anywhere but in a box over a heating grate? How about someone with an "existing condition?" How about someone who's just lost their job? How about when the insurance companies renege on the contract, as happens a LOT?
For those people, you might as well be saying "Everyone has the option of getting a BMW, they just have to work for it."
search for "cygna whistleblower" - for-profit health care in the US is a fraud.
No thanks ... I prefer soap for cleaning, and soup for eating. Maybe I'm funny that way, but I don't think so ...
And Canada's gun-related death rate is MUCH lower, even taking into account the smaller population. http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm
With 1/9 the population, our firearm death toll should be 30,000/9, or 3,333 - it's 1,300 (of which 1,000 are suicides), so the homicide rate (15,000 in the US, 300 in Canada ) adjusted for population is more than 5 times higher, and the suicide rate 60% higher, in the US.
Actually, all those phony ads that have been run about that woman who "had to go to the US to get operated on for a brain tumor" turned out to be full of shit. She never had a brain tumor, and the cyst was stable and didn't need to be operated on. She wasted $100,000 for nothing. She even admitted afterwards that the Canadian system had monitored it correctly for years, and that it wasn't in fact a tumor. But of course, when there's $100,000 to be made, the doctor says "you should have this removed." So much for for-profit health care.
No system is perfect, but Canada's is the envy of the Brits (in Canada you choose your doctor). It's also the envy of Americans who have no health insurance.
And what about chronic conditions? Oh, just wait until it turns into a health emergency, and if you make it to the hospital ER, great! Sort of mitigates against preventative care, which helps explain the higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates in Canada vs. the (dis)United States, where those that have, get care, and those that don't, don't.
So the best way to immediately increase everyone's health and economic performance is easier access to birth control for teenagers. Funny how the religious right screams against it because it would lift people out of poverty, and the poorer you are, the more heavily you lean on some sort of religious belief to make your sodded life more tolerable.
Nope, the gun stats are from the FBI, the crappy medical coverage being the #1 cause of bankruptcies is from Harvard. Of course, you could have just googled for it ... but if you're an obese american who's going to die younger, that's too much work.
Canada and the United States share a common culture, same foods, etc, but the murder rate in the US is 3x what it is in Canada (4.2 instead of 1.4). If you remove US homicides committed by guns, the murder rate is the same. This is quite ironic, given that Canada has more firearms per capita then the US - Canada just does a better job of gun control.
As for the lack of health care in the US, the US has more people who have no coverage than the entire population of Canada. People without health care will die of untreated chronic conditions, as well as treatable acute conditions that are not tended to in time.
Canada -- Life Expectancy: 78 years (men), 83 years (women) (UN) - average is 80.4 years.
Also, the US infant mortality rate sucks 7.8 per thousand as opposed to 5.6 in Canada - almost 40% higher.
Yes, we need to get people to take responsibility for themselves. Allow doctors to refuse repeated treatment to smokers who don't quit, Ditto for alcoholics and crackheads and people who thing that "all you can eat" is a order from god, not a suggestion. Give custody to the other parent when one continues to smoke, binge drink, do crack, and/or over-stuff their pie-holes.
Make them "pay at the pump" with additional sin taxes on sweetened soft drinks, junk food, booze and simply ban the all-you-can-eat buffets outright.
Make it as socially unacceptable to be fat as it is to smoke - people get fat one bite at a time, and want to lose it without the hard work that going on a diet calls for. A waist is a terrible thing to mind, but so is seeing a couple of 400 pounders of blubber at the next table in a restaurant. Cows eat more gracefully - and they take more time to chew.
Idiot!
So someone who's born into a poor family made a poor lifestyle decision? Gee, I guess people should choose better parents.
People born into poverty don't have the same access to all the good things - like healthy diets, etc. Parents scrimp even on essentials because they're poor, not because they want to.
Education is no guarantee of a well-paying job - the ability to BS, and an innate streak of dishonesty, have been better rewarded over the last couple of decades. There are well-educated people who, through no fault of their own, are out of a job. It's the economy, stupid! Or is everyone who is unemployed just a lazy, shiftless don't-wanna-know slob in your book?
And then there's the "shit happens" stuff. For example, recent studies have shown that it can take up to 2 DECADES for both sexes to recover economically from a divorce, and that even after "recovery" they never make up all the lost income. So they didn't have a crystal ball - they should stay in a bad marriage because it means they'll have more money? Sure, the kids might eat a bit better, but the fighting is also detrimental to their health.
There ARE two Americas in the United States, and this study goes to show how it impacts on health, including longevity.
Riiiight - McDonalds are banned in Europe, as are all fast foods, drugs, booze and tobacco, and all American culture. Except they're not. The higher death rates are from two things - guns and a lack of a comprehensive health-care system. Until the housing crisis, the #1 cause of bankruptcy was medical bills, and 74% of all those had medical insurance. The high cost of co-pays, and the insurance carriers weaseling out of paying for coverage to make a profit, meant that they had to go broke. So much for for-profit health care.
Generators. And because each cell tower services a smaller area than a land-line central office, AND there's overlap, you're more likely to maintain service over the cell network during a disaster. Also, what good is your landline unless you're at home? Most car accidents, for example, don't happen in your living room where you can just pick up a land-based phone.
My question is why you need a vacuum tube in a vacuum? Just put the parts out in open space, save a bit of weight, no problem with the tube getting deposits on it over time, or thermal expansion and contraction stressing the tube, etc.
Seriously, you can bet that the other 96^ have more than one game, so they're locked into the platform - or they can trade their games and buy a PS3 or a Wii.
Wii failure rate of 7% - "see, we TOLD you to use the wrist strap!" - consoles dinged by flying WiiMotes?
Thanks, but I'd rather slit my wrists. Why not learn Java and build a real application, where you don't have to deal with the browser at all?
3 words: Java Web Start.
Exactly. The original web was supposed to be read-write. A combination of companies that wanted to ream people for $50/month for hosting a simple hobby site and ISPs that wanted to upsell you a $100/month "business internet package with 1 static IP" are the guilty parties.
Of course, the Internet routes around such damage, so we have home servers operating on alternate ports, ultra-cheap hosting plans, and dynamic dns.
Besides, my point was that only the more stupid would fall for this scam - so there is no way their kids are all going to be above average.
All this talk about camels ... time for some camel jokes:
Captain in the foreign legion was transfered to a desert outpost. On his orientation tour he noticed a very old, seedy looking camel tied out back of the enlisted mens barracks. He asked the Sargent leading the tour, "What's the camel for?".
The Sargent replied "Well sir it's a long way from anywhere, and the men have natural sexual urges, so when they do, uh, we have the camel."
The captain said "Well if it's good for moral, then I guess it's all right with me."
After he had been at the fort for about 6 months the captain could not stand it any more so he told his Sargent, "BRING IN THE CAMEL!!!" The sarge shrugged his shoulders and led the camel into the captains quarters.
The captain got a foot stool & proceeded to have vigorous sex with the camel. As he stepped, satisfied, down from the stool, and was buttoning his pants he asked the Sargent, "Is that how the enlisted men do it?"
The Sargent replied, "Well sir, they usually just use it to ride into town."
Two old ladies are outside their nursing home, having a smoke, when it starts to rain. One of the ladies pulls out a condom, cuts off the end, puts it over her cigarette and continues smoking.
Lady 1: What's that?
Lady 2: A condom. This way my cigarette doesn't get wet.
Lady 1: Where did you get that?
Lady 2: You can get them at any drugstore.
The next day, Lady 1 hobbles herself into the local drugstore and announces to the pharmacist that she wants a box of condoms.
The guy, obviously embarrassed, looks at her kind of strangely (she is after all over 80 years of age), but very delicately asks what brand she prefers.
Lady 1: Doesn't matter son, as long as it fits a camel.
This guy named Joe was going into the desert for a week and he needed a camel for the trip.
Joe was a stranger to the desert but was able to locate a rent-a-camel office.
Joe tells the rent-a-camel man that he will be making a long trip through the desert for one week.
The rent-a-camel man says even his best camel can only go 4 days without water.
After some discussion, the rent-a-camel man says "I don't like to suggest this, but you know a good camel can go an extra 3 days or more if he is bricked."
Joe agrees to take the best camel.
As he leaves the rent-a-camel office, the rent-a-camel man reminds Joe to brick the camel.
Not wanting to display his ignorance, Joe doesn't ask about the procedure for bricking the camel.
Well Joe knows that it is a long difficult trip for the camel and lets it eat ant drink its fill.
He encourages the camel to take on all the water it can by offering it often.
Sure enough 4 days into the trip the camel drops dead.
Poor Joe barely makes it back to town alive and can't wait to confront the rent-a-camel man.
"You rented me a poor camel", Joe says, "It died after only 4 days in the desert, and I almost perished with it."
The puzzled rent-a-camel man looks up at Joe and says, "He was my best camel. Did you brick him?"
Mad as hell, Joe replies, "Brick him, what the hell do you mean."
The rent-a-camel man explains that when the camel bends over to take water, you take two bricks and slam his gonads, as the camel gasps with his head in the water he takes on another 3 to 4 day supply of water.
"My GOD", Joe says," Doesn't that hurt?"
The rent-a-camel man answers, "No! Just keep your thumbs out of the way when you slam the bricks together."
A man was stranded in the desert with his camel for a long time.
He hadn't seen a woman for so long that he became interested in mounting the camel.
He would set up a box behind the camel, climb up on the box and attempt to mount it.
The camel would just take a few steps forward.
After trying this technique over and over for several days, the man became increasingly frustrated and obsessed with his desire for the camel.
So obsessed in fact that he hardly noticed a caravan passing through the desert.
Well luck have it, a beautiful young woman came over to him, and offered him food, water, or anything he needed.
The now crazed man said, "Just hold the camel for me."
Limewire? Does it run under linux now?
Sorry, I haven't downloaded music in years and years ... back when it was legal to download (but not upload) in my country.
PS: Thanks for the correction. Bob Rivers deserves the credit - he's funny :-)
Thank God. If we all had to drive the crap GM made, we'd have more pollution, and the higher costs of scrapping "bio-degradable" American cars.
GM and Chrysler shouldn't have been bailed out - the poor suckers who bought their crap are more deserving.
The Wii can use a mouse and keyboard (for surfing the net ...) as well as Wiimotes - guess that makes the Wii the uber-superior platform. (Not really - but when the next version comes out with hi-def video and a faster cpu ...)
Kid #1: "You got a trojan in my worm!"
Kid #2: "You got a worm in my trojan!"
Voiceover: "Two bad ideas that are even worse together. Be BAAAAD! Get Vista! Grind your dual quad-core into the dust!"
(rapidly): "May cause dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, feelings of desperation, boredom, suicide, homicide, chair-throwing, offensive body odor, birther syndrome, loss of control-alt-delete, and excessive weight gain or bloat. If symptoms persist, see your Apple retailer."
That's because you don't have enough ram ... what Bill Gates REALLY said was "640 gigabytes should be enough for anyone!"
Remember Weird Al's song about Windows 95 - "
Life imitates art. Microsoft is taking its' HID cues from Weird Al (which explains a lot :-)
How can it be a dromedary and not a camel? Dromedaries are camels. One hump == dromedary camel, two humps == bactrian camel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromedary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactrian_camel
Well, if the person engaged in a short position, and the price soared, they're screwed. Also, if they traded on margin, they can lose a lot more than their original investment - so when comparing stocks to gambling on horses, margin trading can make playing the ponies look conservative.
The real problem is that the stock market no longer fulfills its' primary purpose - the raising of capital for business ventures. Making money off trading stocks has become more important than making money off the underlying business and collecting a share of the profits.
"Suggesting we take the liquidity out of the stock market would only serve to crash it. People invest because it's liquid, because they have access, because they can make money or bail out if things turn south"
In other words, its for the quick buck, rather than investing in a business in the hope that it will grow and you'll eventually show a profit.
Originally,