I wish I could remember which (conservative) radio host went off about Cat Stevens getting flagged. He kept playing the "la la la la la la la la la la la" phrase from Wild World and screaming, "This is the voice of Islamofascism! This is the voice of terrorism! This is the voice of hatred!" (Sarcastically of course.)
It could be because it's the child, but I hadn't heard anything about anyone's children getting excluded from health insurance either. Since I worked for a medical software company, and talked quite a bit to my coworkers about their and their childrens illnesses to learn more about respiratory disorders, I would have thought that it would have come up.
I hadn't had health care coverage for quite a long time (about ten years) prior to going to work for my former employer - I had been excluded from coverage at my previous employer in Oklahoma and Kansas for a pre-existing condition.
The company I worked for was still considered a small business at the time I started there (before it was bought out and expanded) and no one was ever turned down for health care due to the wonderful Colorado health care laws. Prenatal care and childbirth were covered too, including for someone who started work when she was three months pregnant.
Colorado is funny that way - we are a primarily conservative state, but on some issues (i.e. health care, domestic partner rights, etc) we are pretty progressive - which is the kind of conservatism I prefer.
I noticed that the author of question 10, regarding health insurance, is from Colorado. I am from Colorado, and when I applied for health insurance I was told that by Colorado law I could not be turned down for health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. This did not change when I left my job and was added to my husband's health insurance.
The company that I worked for would have had a lot of people turned down if asthma was a pre-existing disqualification - I worked with about 50 resipiratory therapists, and at least half of them had asthma. Everyone had health insurance.
Does anyone have any insight into why this person would think that her son had been turned down because of his asthma? Is there something with the Colorado law that I am unfamiliar with, or has something recently changed?
You don't have to have local law enforcement serve papers. In Colorado, at least, (yes, I know it's not Missouri) it just has to be someone not directly involved in the case and not residing with anyone directly involved with the case (to discourage serving the summons from coming to blows). I have served summonses for my next-door neighbor, an attorney, because if he gives a summons to law enforcement to deliver they wait until the last minute to attempt to serve, and don't make a very good effort at it.
The convention is held to officially announce the candidates and to announce the party platform.
Interfering with the election process goes beyond the people influencing how the government is run - otherwise, it would be OK for me to, for instance, publish fliers with the incorrect date for the election and post them in areas that are heavily populated with the political party I oppose. Or for me to put up roadblocks to polling places in areas that are heavily populated with the political party I oppose.
Bottom line is, messing with the election process just isn't cool, no matter which side it's coming from.
The conventions are more than a political rally, they are part of the election process. Why in the world would you think it's OK to disrupt the election process?
The intent was to "Shut down the RNC!". If the intent was just to send letters, the list wouldn't have included the names of the hotels that the delegates were staying at while at the convention.
It can take ten years or more for someone with HIV to become symptomatic - but an HIV antibody test will still show infection.
One of the guys I mentioned above had even had a viral load test done, and it came up negative too. He definitely was not infected.
(A viral load test measures actual amounts of the HIV virus in the blood. The standard HIV test looks for antibodies in the blood, which is why it can take up to six months after infection for someone to test positive.)
About ten years ago, I did volunteer work for an HIV-testing clinic. I met two men while I was there who were convinced that they were both HIV-immune. One had been very sexually active during the late 70s and early 80s and had had most of his friends and sexual partners die of AIDS-related causes, and the other had repeatedly had sex with multiple HIV-positive partners out of survivors guilt. Talk was just beginning around then of people who seemed to be immune to HIV.
It's not something I'd especially want to gamble on, though - HIV mutates nearly every time it infects, and at some point I think these people who are now immune won't be immune any longer.
And then there would have to be counts at the end of the election to make sure the ballots were truly randomly distributed, since this new lump of bodies who just vote to enter the lottery has been added...
Bottom line, if someone isn't motivated to show up to vote because of the intrinsic importance of voting, why pay them to do it?
The popular vote determines who goes to the electoral college. So, even though your vote does not directly influence the outcome of the election, it helps determine the electors, who do determine the outcome of the election.
Can I ask, wasn't any of this covered in your junion high civics class? I attended an urban, poor school system with a very high minority population but they still covered this stuff...
If choosing your elected officials isn't motivation enough to vote, than you shouldn't be voting. With a lottery, you'd end up with people voting that just went in and marked the first candidate on the ballot in each category, or marked the ballot 'randomly'. It would be a simple matter for election officials to garner a few more votes for their favored candidates by making sure they were first in their categories.
Re:The one feature that I would really like...
on
Gmail Adds Features
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· Score: 4, Informative
I sent them this question about two months ago. Here is the reply I received:
Hello Alice,
Thank you for your message.
Once you have a Gmail account, it is valid. This means that even after Gmail becomes more widely available, you will be able to keep your account, and your username will remain unchanged. Hopefully, this eases your concern.
Uh, I hate to break this to you, but it is a little harder to end up on a no-fly list than the press makes it out to be...for instance, my mother (who is, by the way, very politically active - and no, it's not stuff that the GOP looks favorably on) got caught carrying a can of Mace onto a plane, AND she didn't have her ID with her. The airport security just took the Mace away and let her go on her merry way. She got a letter a few weeks later stating that she was investigated but that charges wouldn't be filed.
The really scary thing is, she got caught on her return flight - but she had the Mace in her purse on her departing flight too.
(My mother is not some grey-haired little old lady, either - she could out-benchpress most of you, and has been mistaken for my younger sister)
The damage to a child's psyche that happens due to growing up with gay parents is much more attributable to the bigotry and cruelty of other children rather than the role models that the parents provide. Hopefully this is easier now than it was 20 years ago (when my mother came out) since it is not as fashionable now to gay-bash - I would hope that most parents would at least not encourage their children to make fun of children with gay parents, although this may not be the case.
I learned a lot about hatred growing up with a gay parent - my mother and her partner ran the gay helpline for the city we lived in, and the phone company 'accidentally' published our home address as the address for the helpline. We finally ended up taking the house numbers down to discourage any further vandalism. Before we lived there, we were evicted from an apartment complex for not having my mother's partner on the lease - despite the fact that LOTS of people had live-in partners of the opposite sex that weren't added to leases. I was ridiculed in school to the point where I begged my mother to transfer school districts (fortunately, this was right before we were evicted, so I indirectly got my wish).
My mother's partner was, and is, my closest and most supportive parent. I feel lucky to have her as a parent and as a grandmother to my son, and I am fairly certain she is my husband's favorite (or a close second to my geek father) in-law.
That said, I don't understand gay support for the Democratic party, or for John Kerry. Clinton's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy was a load of crap - my mother's partner was in the Guard, and she wasn't directly asked about her sexual orientation, but questions like 'Who's waiting at home for you?' were frequent. Hell, Kerry and Edwards couldn't be bothered to show up to vote against the amendment banning same-sex marriage, and Kerry has spoken against gay marriage in the state of Massachusetts.
I hadn't even thought about it until I read your post, but something that we've used in our catbox room (don't ask) is a Gonzo Odor Eliminator. Maybe make room for it in the case somehow - the bag is about 5x5 inches.
The only downside is that the bag would have to be removed every 10 months to recharge.
If the dude asking the question wrote to Gonzo and explained the situation, he might be able to get a bag as a promo item in exchange for being able to use his testimonial if it worked...
(On a mostly unrelated side note, Gonzo stain remover is the only thing I have found that gets Sharpie marker out of clothes reliably without damaging the color or fabric of the clothing)
So what, exactly, does radio stations sounding alike have to do with Microsoft stealing brand recognition? Or for that matter, any of your late-added sentence fragments? It seems to me that it would work in the opposite direction, i.e. it wouldn't matter what station Microsoft used the playlist from - all they would have to advertise is 'here's an easy listening station', here's a smooth jazz station', and the listeners would understand that they are getting the general playlist from that type of station.
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I wish I could remember which (conservative) radio host went off about Cat Stevens getting flagged. He kept playing the "la la la la la la la la la la la" phrase from Wild World and screaming, "This is the voice of Islamofascism! This is the voice of terrorism! This is the voice of hatred!" (Sarcastically of course.)
I almost wrecked my car, I was laughing so hard.
I have to wonder if Kerry and Edwards are going to show up to vote on this...
It could be because it's the child, but I hadn't heard anything about anyone's children getting excluded from health insurance either. Since I worked for a medical software company, and talked quite a bit to my coworkers about their and their childrens illnesses to learn more about respiratory disorders, I would have thought that it would have come up.
I hadn't had health care coverage for quite a long time (about ten years) prior to going to work for my former employer - I had been excluded from coverage at my previous employer in Oklahoma and Kansas for a pre-existing condition.
The company I worked for was still considered a small business at the time I started there (before it was bought out and expanded) and no one was ever turned down for health care due to the wonderful Colorado health care laws. Prenatal care and childbirth were covered too, including for someone who started work when she was three months pregnant.
Colorado is funny that way - we are a primarily conservative state, but on some issues (i.e. health care, domestic partner rights, etc) we are pretty progressive - which is the kind of conservatism I prefer.
I noticed that the author of question 10, regarding health insurance, is from Colorado. I am from Colorado, and when I applied for health insurance I was told that by Colorado law I could not be turned down for health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. This did not change when I left my job and was added to my husband's health insurance.
The company that I worked for would have had a lot of people turned down if asthma was a pre-existing disqualification - I worked with about 50 resipiratory therapists, and at least half of them had asthma. Everyone had health insurance.
Does anyone have any insight into why this person would think that her son had been turned down because of his asthma? Is there something with the Colorado law that I am unfamiliar with, or has something recently changed?
You don't have to have local law enforcement serve papers. In Colorado, at least, (yes, I know it's not Missouri) it just has to be someone not directly involved in the case and not residing with anyone directly involved with the case (to discourage serving the summons from coming to blows). I have served summonses for my next-door neighbor, an attorney, because if he gives a summons to law enforcement to deliver they wait until the last minute to attempt to serve, and don't make a very good effort at it.
The convention is held to officially announce the candidates and to announce the party platform.
Interfering with the election process goes beyond the people influencing how the government is run - otherwise, it would be OK for me to, for instance, publish fliers with the incorrect date for the election and post them in areas that are heavily populated with the political party I oppose. Or for me to put up roadblocks to polling places in areas that are heavily populated with the political party I oppose.
Bottom line is, messing with the election process just isn't cool, no matter which side it's coming from.
The conventions are more than a political rally, they are part of the election process. Why in the world would you think it's OK to disrupt the election process?
The intent was to "Shut down the RNC!". If the intent was just to send letters, the list wouldn't have included the names of the hotels that the delegates were staying at while at the convention.
It can take ten years or more for someone with HIV to become symptomatic - but an HIV antibody test will still show infection.
One of the guys I mentioned above had even had a viral load test done, and it came up negative too. He definitely was not infected.
(A viral load test measures actual amounts of the HIV virus in the blood. The standard HIV test looks for antibodies in the blood, which is why it can take up to six months after infection for someone to test positive.)
About ten years ago, I did volunteer work for an HIV-testing clinic. I met two men while I was there who were convinced that they were both HIV-immune. One had been very sexually active during the late 70s and early 80s and had had most of his friends and sexual partners die of AIDS-related causes, and the other had repeatedly had sex with multiple HIV-positive partners out of survivors guilt. Talk was just beginning around then of people who seemed to be immune to HIV.
It's not something I'd especially want to gamble on, though - HIV mutates nearly every time it infects, and at some point I think these people who are now immune won't be immune any longer.
And then there would have to be counts at the end of the election to make sure the ballots were truly randomly distributed, since this new lump of bodies who just vote to enter the lottery has been added...
Bottom line, if someone isn't motivated to show up to vote because of the intrinsic importance of voting, why pay them to do it?
The popular vote determines who goes to the electoral college. So, even though your vote does not directly influence the outcome of the election, it helps determine the electors, who do determine the outcome of the election.
Can I ask, wasn't any of this covered in your junion high civics class? I attended an urban, poor school system with a very high minority population but they still covered this stuff...
If choosing your elected officials isn't motivation enough to vote, than you shouldn't be voting. With a lottery, you'd end up with people voting that just went in and marked the first candidate on the ballot in each category, or marked the ballot 'randomly'. It would be a simple matter for election officials to garner a few more votes for their favored candidates by making sure they were first in their categories.
I sent them this question about two months ago. Here is the reply I received:
Hello Alice,
Thank you for your message.
Once you have a Gmail account, it is valid. This means that even after Gmail becomes more widely available, you will be able to keep your account, and your username will remain unchanged. Hopefully, this eases your concern.
We hope you enjoy Google's approach to email.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team
Go buy a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans and scarf em down. You'll know what caffeine jitters are then.
An HOA cannot restrict its residents from putting up an antenna. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html
Does your cat try to meow but nothing comes out? We have a cat that does that - our vet said he is meowing outside our range of hearing.
Uh, I hate to break this to you, but it is a little harder to end up on a no-fly list than the press makes it out to be...for instance, my mother (who is, by the way, very politically active - and no, it's not stuff that the GOP looks favorably on) got caught carrying a can of Mace onto a plane, AND she didn't have her ID with her. The airport security just took the Mace away and let her go on her merry way. She got a letter a few weeks later stating that she was investigated but that charges wouldn't be filed.
The really scary thing is, she got caught on her return flight - but she had the Mace in her purse on her departing flight too.
(My mother is not some grey-haired little old lady, either - she could out-benchpress most of you, and has been mistaken for my younger sister)
Speaking from experience here...
The damage to a child's psyche that happens due to growing up with gay parents is much more attributable to the bigotry and cruelty of other children rather than the role models that the parents provide. Hopefully this is easier now than it was 20 years ago (when my mother came out) since it is not as fashionable now to gay-bash - I would hope that most parents would at least not encourage their children to make fun of children with gay parents, although this may not be the case.
I learned a lot about hatred growing up with a gay parent - my mother and her partner ran the gay helpline for the city we lived in, and the phone company 'accidentally' published our home address as the address for the helpline. We finally ended up taking the house numbers down to discourage any further vandalism. Before we lived there, we were evicted from an apartment complex for not having my mother's partner on the lease - despite the fact that LOTS of people had live-in partners of the opposite sex that weren't added to leases. I was ridiculed in school to the point where I begged my mother to transfer school districts (fortunately, this was right before we were evicted, so I indirectly got my wish).
My mother's partner was, and is, my closest and most supportive parent. I feel lucky to have her as a parent and as a grandmother to my son, and I am fairly certain she is my husband's favorite (or a close second to my geek father) in-law.
That said, I don't understand gay support for the Democratic party, or for John Kerry. Clinton's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy was a load of crap - my mother's partner was in the Guard, and she wasn't directly asked about her sexual orientation, but questions like 'Who's waiting at home for you?' were frequent. Hell, Kerry and Edwards couldn't be bothered to show up to vote against the amendment banning same-sex marriage, and Kerry has spoken against gay marriage in the state of Massachusetts.
I hadn't even thought about it until I read your post, but something that we've used in our catbox room (don't ask) is a Gonzo Odor Eliminator. Maybe make room for it in the case somehow - the bag is about 5x5 inches.
The only downside is that the bag would have to be removed every 10 months to recharge.
If the dude asking the question wrote to Gonzo and explained the situation, he might be able to get a bag as a promo item in exchange for being able to use his testimonial if it worked...
(On a mostly unrelated side note, Gonzo stain remover is the only thing I have found that gets Sharpie marker out of clothes reliably without damaging the color or fabric of the clothing)
But that wouldn't TASTE as good as sugar icing...
Best organic, hell, they make some of the best dark chocolate around, period. Great stuff for making chocolate mousse with.
Mmmm, mousse...I think I'll have to make some tonight...
So what, exactly, does radio stations sounding alike have to do with Microsoft stealing brand recognition? Or for that matter, any of your late-added sentence fragments? It seems to me that it would work in the opposite direction, i.e. it wouldn't matter what station Microsoft used the playlist from - all they would have to advertise is 'here's an easy listening station', here's a smooth jazz station', and the listeners would understand that they are getting the general playlist from that type of station.