Actually, the Orthodox also have a similar, but slightly different, tradition, which indicates that the practice is even older. In some of the Orthodox Churches, a priest can be married as long as he gets married before his ordination. In those Churches, bishops in the Orthodox are selected from the men who've never been married.
Let me tell you, when I was considering being a priest, I didn't want to be a married priest. I wanted to be a priest or be married, but I didn't want both. And from the stories pastor's wives from the Protestants, I don't think I would have been interested.
Think about the money aspect of it. 10 years ago, when I was considering being a priest, starting salary was less than 15,000 plus use of the rectory, minus self employment taxes. Think about what it would mean to the resources of congregations of the church if the priest needed to make significantly more that to support his wife and kids. People already complain about how rich the Church is. Just think if the priest had to answer to a wife who wants a larger income.
We have that problem because our voting system forces us to only have two candidates, because if two similar candidates who would get the support of the same voters in a head to head (Bush Sr and Perot), then those voters lose out for splitting their vote. If you correct the ballot as lexman said, you can then allow more candidates on the final ballot, say 3 or 5 per party, and a total of 15-30. Then, people should have plenty of choices and apathy should no longer be an issue because most people should have somebody they like on the final ballot.
Why would it be a good idea to buy just because of this news? The cash will be paid out, and the stock will go down a similar amount between close on the ex dividend date and open the next morning. What the stock does after that will depend upon the perception of the company to continue growing beyond that point. It's only really beneficial if you are planning on selling the stock for a loss while getting the dividend at a lower tax rate. You'd have to own a pretty hefty chunk to make that worth the effort.
For people who aren't familiar, there are two considerations on how often you renew. One is your expire date and the other is your minutes. Anytime you buy minutes, your expire date is moved back by the amount of time on your card, usually 90 days or a year.
With minutes, they are boosted by how many minutes you buy when you buy more time. There are two ways to get extra minutes when you get new minutes. Most phones have double minutes for life, which means when you add a 400 minute/1 year card ($80 at Amazon) you get 800 minutes. A few phones come with triple minutes. I currently see a Samsung phone on Amazon for $32. Triple the 400 minute card for 100 minutes for $7/month. That's the best deal to use Tracfone I've seen.
If you buy directly through Tracfone's website, you can get the same number of minutes plus a small bonus (search Google for "Tracfone Codes") for cutting out the middle man, but the cost is $100. You're probably better off just renewing your minutes with another 400 minute card early instead of paying the extra $20.
If you use a lot more minutes, you can get 4500 (over 350 a month) with a triple minutes phone for $200 after your initial minutes are gone. That's only available directly through Tracfone's website. If that's more than you need, you can buy that card one year, and then back off to the 400 minutes card for the next year or two while you burn through those minutes.
If you really want to save your money, and you have solid Internet, look into an Ooma VOIP home phone system. It's a box you plug a regular phone into (200-250 initial purchase, the only monthly cost only is to pay taxes (https://go.ooma.com/tax_calculator), if you find it for 200 and pay $5/month in service, instead of paying $25 for another phone service, it will pay for itself in 9 months, after that, you pocket the $20 difference). I think you currently get 5000 minutes a month (not unlimited local like AT&T, but free long distance which more than makes up for it), and has free caller ID and call waiting. If you buy their Premier service for $120 a year, you can get a bunch of extras like a second line (two people can talk on different calls), 3 way calling, and multi-ring (calls automatically ring your cell when you're out). They also have great international rates. I know that there were concerns with the fact that there box may send internet using info to them, but if you use a router and don't pass your internet info through their box, it shouldn't be a concern.
My wife's cousin is in a bad situation. Got his girl friend pregnant just before they graduated high school. They got married, child was born 4 months later, and then they ended up divorced in 12-18 months. A couple of years later, and he's married to somebody else, and they are fighting over custody of their son. She accuses him of abuse to get the social workers involved and make visitation time a living hell. Fortunately for him, social workers were willing to consider that she's a liar, and it's now on the record that she is a liar, and the judge knows it. I haven't heard anything since that bit of drama. Perhaps she realized that she couldn't use the courts as a weapon now that in all he-said-she-said matters, he's going to be the one with the benefit of the doubt, and if she fights reasonable requests, it's liable to be seen as her using her son to hurt her ex instead of doing what's best for the boy.
Realize there are different measures of quality. Once upon a time, as this article attests, most cars would develop some sort of issue that would have to be fixed. If you got the right kind of car and got a little lucky, maybe you never needed to get repairs, but often you had to get work done before 50-70,000 miles. Now, most cars will get the first 100,000 miles without significant issues.
You are talking about longevity, that is if a car made to last 100,000 or 200,000 or 500,000. I once read that Japanese cars of the 1980s were 200,000 mile cars. That is all of the parts in the car were engineered to last 200,000 miles, but beyond that, lots of parts would rapidly start to wear out all at once. I don't know if that's true, but maybe they did a really good job of building cars that would last 15 years before having to be hauled off to the junk heap. Analyzing this issue is a little difficult because we won't have good information on how quickly new cars are failing until 4-7 years down the road, and for a look at the Bell curves indicating how long new cars are lasting, the information is much further out.
Take the current coins, and round them up to the next highest coin, and people won't complain too much. That is, pennies, nickels and dimes are all worth 10 cents, and quarters, half dollars and dollars are worth a dollar. Mint only makes new dimes and dollars as the old coins are automatically removed from circulation.
Look into Mark's Daily Apple. He was a marathoner. Then, the wear and tear on his body finally got to him.
He started researching, and the info on his blog will tell you what makes you fat.
Here's a brief run down: Grains (all, but most commonly consumed are oats, wheat (cereal, bread and pasta) and corn (including corn syrup and tortilla chips) Potatoes (Potatoes are a starchy white carbohydrate) Sugar
As much as possible, eat Natural meat, and a large variety of vegetables with a few fruits.
I read a health blog that recently linked to a program called Body by Science. I think you could probably get your local library to buy the book. They recommend 12 minutes a week of exercise similar to what the GP recommended.
The exercise works by doing 2-4 minutes of several exercises very slowly. The muscles get so oxygen deprived that you start breathing like you are running a 5k at a full sprint. At the end of the 12 minutes, you then have to wait another 15-20 minutes before your body stops the aerobic work.
I haven't actually read the book, but it sounds like your body will build all of the muscle and work on your cardiovascular health based on this half hour of effort, such that you don't need to do anything else for a week.
It's probably still a good idea to go for a 30 minute walk and occasionally do some running.
The only thing is, a meteor is an easily provable phenomenon. The factors are well known, and predictions can easily be made and verified. I can go and reproduce Newton's equations, or re-measure the speed of light, or retest hundreds of other theories that have been proven. These are not contested.
I have yet to see anybody make a verifiable prediction with regard to climate change on anything less than what will happen decades from now. If the science is so settled as claimed, shouldn't the scientists be able to isolate a few variables, and say that if this happens (with regard to sun activity, and any other variables they want to quantify) and lay down some solid numbers so we know what is predicted. Nothing like last year's after the fact statements that year's winter storms or tornado activity was caused by human activity.
I want real prediction that say if sun output is low, temperatures will be stable or slightly down. If sun output is average, temperature will be up.1 and if it's high temperatures will be up.25. If they want to add in modifiers for cloud cover, and other weather conditions and any other factors they can think of, great. Then if their predictions are accurate, we have some sort of confidence that they model actually takes into account all of the necessary variables. If the numbers come in significantly different than what they predict, then we know that the models are far from complete and the science isn't settled yet. Until I see the science actually giving us predictions that conform to reality, I choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't it all figured out. Extraordinary claims (like complete confidence in predictive powers concerning climate) require irrefutable evidence. Since these predictions haven't been made yet (since I'm sure they would be big news and nothing of the sort has ever been printed), and the time scale of all predictions concerns what will happen at mid or end of century, it's entirely possible that scientists are making claims that can't be falsified in their lifetimes.
John Paul II did apologize for Church's Inquisition. I don't know how many times it needs to be done for it to be done. If once is enough, then consider it done.
Only Catholic and Orthodox Christians (and according to polls, only half of the Catholics) believe that the host (think about what that word means) becomes Jesus. The Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants and every other variety of Christian reject that particular teaching. They believe it's only a symbolic presence, so they what they consider the the most outrageous of orthodox teachings as well.
First, the length of patents should be significantly shorter. If you get your product out there, and get people buying it, 5 year should be enough of a head start for you to get brand awareness built, get the bugs worked out, and grow enough to be able to fend off competition.
Along with that, I would overturn the current 'obvious' test. Instead, give a description of the invention. If anybody can come forward in three or six months with the same idea, then your idea was obvious enough to not warrent protection. On the other hand, if nobody comes close, and your invention is in a completely new category with no alternatives and you have to build a brand new market for your product from scratch, then you qualify for a longer protection.
Also, somebody must be able to take your documentation and build your invention without assistance from somebody involved in submitting the patent.
Instead of children, it should be young men and women who want to get trained in plane maintenance. Before you learn how to fix them, you start by building them. The Air Force could take over a final stage of assembling the drones. Send approved (for security) vendors a parts list, and buy from each what you need. Have parts delivered to an Air Force assembly location. Have young men who want a free education in assembling and repairing planes put them together, for which they get paid. Force the defense contractors to compete for price on parts, which would hopefully drive down prices instead of allowing them to run out of control like in the F-22 and F-35 boondoggles, where the companies don't need to worry about price because they know they've already won the bidding and the government is unlikely to walk away from buying the hardware because voters will vote out a few representatives and senators if the spending is shut down.
The first stage of fixing our cost problem for medical service should have been eliminating insurance companies being able to negotiate lower prices from the provider. The doctor/clinic/hospital should be charging every buyer (insurance company, private individual, Medicare) what ever price, and everybody pays it. This will make pricing close to what is actually paid instead of a multiple of the actual price. This would force the insurance companies to negotiate with providers on behalf of all of us, or use their ability to pay a portion of their customer's bill to encourage doctors to compete on price.
I make 48k, and we currently are looking to downsize our home because we decided we could afford more than we really can. We can continue to live in a house we owe $135,000 (3500sq ft, 4BR) on outside of Topeka KS and worry about money constantly. We've decided to downsize and are looking at homes in town. There are 2000 sq ft foreclosed homes in decent neighborhoods for under $50,000. I can drop my house payment from my current 1000 (including taxes and insurance) to 500 (pocketing the difference to give us breathing room) and be debt free in 15 years instead of 27. More likely, we'll make double interest payments (average about 225 over the life of the loan) and pay it off in 8. If something happens to my job, I should easily be able to find something in the $30,000 range, which would put is in a little bind, but much better than being in a house we can't afford and losing it within a year. The actual calculated payment is $390.
Maybe as you say, people do think they need to spend 1000-1200 a month. But it totally doable to live on much less, and to live as well as people in much more expensive houses if you prioritize correctly.
I'd rather have the federal government reform copyright, then we could give the students access to better materials than textbooks, and the schools could get a dozen different printers to print them at the lowest cost (or encourage parents to buy their student's ereaders for a discount on book fees).
What it's done is drive Bachmann and Perry out out of the primary. People who would vote for those two candidates will now choose somebody else. People who would vote for those two will not gravitate towards Romney, so they will strengthen non-Romney candidates. Santorum is a likely candidate since he's not Gingrich, and his finish in Iowa will give him an edge.
Romney's strategy for the nomination is to keep enough candidates in the race for long enough to keep the other candidates from consolidating support so that he eventually becomes the candidate by plurality and is Mr. Inevitable, and enough convention voters switch to voting for him. The conservatives are trying to be the last conservative standing, consolidate all of the Tea Party, Libertarian, and other voters who don't want Romney, and win the nomination.
Personally, I'm a pro-small business and social conservative, and I haven't really looked at Santorum's history or policies. Ann Coulter's article this week supports Romney, but I'm rather leery of him since he won't admit the Massachusetts health care reform on which Obamacare was enacted is a bad law.
It depends on which part of show your work you are talking about. For instance, simple calculation (the basic operators, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) shouldn't really be a "show your work" kind of problem. We should be teaching kids how to calculate much more efficiently than the old pen and paper method. My wife and I home school, and we're working with Alabacus which uses manipulative items and the children should develop the ability to do the math in their heads quite well. Any manipulative program should be able to help do the same. I think there also might be other methods that I've seen sold on video, but I'm not sure how well they work.
On the other hand, word problems, and other problems that require the numbers to be put into an equation, or the equation to be manipulated should be shown. For instance, if you are doing a problem about two trains moving at certain rates with different distances, the important part of the problem isn't the calculation, it's being sure the student understands properly how the numbers go together in the d=r*t, and how you take the formulas for two different trains and join them depending on if the trains are going the same direction or opposite. This problem is about learning to analyze a situation, and know how to build the math problem from the clues in the text. If you are allowed to give just a final answer, how is the teacher supposed to know if you are understanding the solution you gave, or if you lucked into the right answer, or just cheated?
What is important is how many ancestors you have going back that far. (I'm a conservative and don't like the president's policies.) If you go back those 12 generations, you'd have 4096 ancestors 12 generations back being related to 1 of GW's 8 great grandparents. That's a pretty small likelihood, especially when you eliminate his' father's side. I don't have any relation to GW as my family is all German and Irish that came over in the late 18th century. Some of my cousins might be marrying people with a wider gene pool that may tie in, but BO having mutual family with GW is pretty unlikely.
Makes sense. A large group of people (bureaucrats or corporate employees) working at the whims of somebody with power/immune to the rules (politicians, shareholders) with enough money they don't really feel like they need to play by the rules.
I agree. I may like a little more law and order than the fans at a Ron Paul campaign rally, but we've gone so far beyond reasonable that getting back to where the libertarians want to go wouldn't be a bad idea. Once you get there (eliminating Medicare, Social Security, Welfare, the Dept. of Education), the states or counties can step in and fill the void and come to more reasonable solutions to the concerns each of those programs or departments was created to fix than the federal boondoggle we now have.
See, I don't have a problem helping with the social safety net, I have a problem with the current retirees getting something even if they don't need it, and getting it in a way that is hurting the rest of us.
For instance, instead of getting a check for social security, I'd rather (when I can't work any more) have a room, meals and medical care provided at a senior's home without having to worry about the money situation. Let the county pay for a campus with 1 room apartments or assisted living facilities, a cafeteria and a medical staff. Those that don't need it can make do on their own and know that it's there if they ever need it. If you want to live in your house, donate it to the county, and they can hold it while you continue to live in it. When you die, the county can let other people live in it or sell it to pay for other people's expenses. And I bet all of this could be done for a fraction of what we pay for social security. Some areas might turn this over to religious groups, but I would not allow a for profit company take it over.
Big organizations do not breed solutions. There are very few big companies that I am truly fond of, and even those I'd rather see broken down into dozens of competitors in order to see more competition.
I've been tracking what a lot of the writers at Minyanville have to say about various things. Mauldin especially has done very good work on what the debt is going to do to us. Compound the collapse of the Euro due to their situation, and I think we are due for a very big fall.
Some of the other indicators are that if you look at the stock market, it's been very boom and bust since the Depression (not much data from before). It' basically goes in 17 year cycles, (Slow Growth from 1932-1949, accelerating from 1949-1966 (This 34 years was unnatural due to the recovery from the Depression and WWII and the US being the only economy not devastated by the war IMO). Then 1966-1983, flat for 17 years. 1983-2000, the debt boom compounded with the tech bubble, 17 years. Now we are in year 11 since the boom. Any ideas on when we'll be seeing better times? Not for the next 5 year by cyclical estimates. Maybe more if the effects of recent measures extends this (a reverse of the boom after the depression) compounded by the wreckage of the policies of every administration going back to Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, and every kick the can down the road Congress and administration since.
I have a 36" CRT, and it's not a given that I'll be catching the Hobbit at the theater. Of course, I am planning on a TV upgrade in a few years, when the TVs over 50" can be found for around $500, and at that point, I'll be able to rewatch anything that I want to see on a bigger screen for free (library has anything I'm interested in, on Blu-Ray, so I've got a pretty big catalog to choose from).
Did you used to work for the US Postal Service? When the USPS went to DHCP about 7 years ago, our DHCP pool ran out of addresses within a year. One day, I couldn't get get RIS to connect in order to install Windows. After a while, we released an address from a PC and it worked perfectly, and the other machine couldn't get an address again. Our system administrator had to call and the first thing out of the guy's mouth was about sunspots or solar flares. It was about all our SA could do not to blow his top!! I even got him years later by having the new help desk guy (my replacement) ask him if he'd ever heard of sunspots causing DHCP problems.
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Former seminarian (now married with kids) here.
Actually, the Orthodox also have a similar, but slightly different, tradition, which indicates that the practice is even older. In some of the Orthodox Churches, a priest can be married as long as he gets married before his ordination. In those Churches, bishops in the Orthodox are selected from the men who've never been married.
Let me tell you, when I was considering being a priest, I didn't want to be a married priest. I wanted to be a priest or be married, but I didn't want both. And from the stories pastor's wives from the Protestants, I don't think I would have been interested.
Think about the money aspect of it. 10 years ago, when I was considering being a priest, starting salary was less than 15,000 plus use of the rectory, minus self employment taxes. Think about what it would mean to the resources of congregations of the church if the priest needed to make significantly more that to support his wife and kids. People already complain about how rich the Church is. Just think if the priest had to answer to a wife who wants a larger income.
We have that problem because our voting system forces us to only have two candidates, because if two similar candidates who would get the support of the same voters in a head to head (Bush Sr and Perot), then those voters lose out for splitting their vote. If you correct the ballot as lexman said, you can then allow more candidates on the final ballot, say 3 or 5 per party, and a total of 15-30. Then, people should have plenty of choices and apathy should no longer be an issue because most people should have somebody they like on the final ballot.
Why would it be a good idea to buy just because of this news? The cash will be paid out, and the stock will go down a similar amount between close on the ex dividend date and open the next morning. What the stock does after that will depend upon the perception of the company to continue growing beyond that point. It's only really beneficial if you are planning on selling the stock for a loss while getting the dividend at a lower tax rate. You'd have to own a pretty hefty chunk to make that worth the effort.
I too use Tracfone.
For people who aren't familiar, there are two considerations on how often you renew. One is your expire date and the other is your minutes. Anytime you buy minutes, your expire date is moved back by the amount of time on your card, usually 90 days or a year.
With minutes, they are boosted by how many minutes you buy when you buy more time. There are two ways to get extra minutes when you get new minutes. Most phones have double minutes for life, which means when you add a 400 minute/1 year card ($80 at Amazon) you get 800 minutes. A few phones come with triple minutes. I currently see a Samsung phone on Amazon for $32. Triple the 400 minute card for 100 minutes for $7/month. That's the best deal to use Tracfone I've seen.
If you buy directly through Tracfone's website, you can get the same number of minutes plus a small bonus (search Google for "Tracfone Codes") for cutting out the middle man, but the cost is $100. You're probably better off just renewing your minutes with another 400 minute card early instead of paying the extra $20.
If you use a lot more minutes, you can get 4500 (over 350 a month) with a triple minutes phone for $200 after your initial minutes are gone. That's only available directly through Tracfone's website. If that's more than you need, you can buy that card one year, and then back off to the 400 minutes card for the next year or two while you burn through those minutes.
If you really want to save your money, and you have solid Internet, look into an Ooma VOIP home phone system. It's a box you plug a regular phone into (200-250 initial purchase, the only monthly cost only is to pay taxes (https://go.ooma.com/tax_calculator), if you find it for 200 and pay $5/month in service, instead of paying $25 for another phone service, it will pay for itself in 9 months, after that, you pocket the $20 difference). I think you currently get 5000 minutes a month (not unlimited local like AT&T, but free long distance which more than makes up for it), and has free caller ID and call waiting. If you buy their Premier service for $120 a year, you can get a bunch of extras like a second line (two people can talk on different calls), 3 way calling, and multi-ring (calls automatically ring your cell when you're out). They also have great international rates. I know that there were concerns with the fact that there box may send internet using info to them, but if you use a router and don't pass your internet info through their box, it shouldn't be a concern.
My wife's cousin is in a bad situation. Got his girl friend pregnant just before they graduated high school. They got married, child was born 4 months later, and then they ended up divorced in 12-18 months. A couple of years later, and he's married to somebody else, and they are fighting over custody of their son. She accuses him of abuse to get the social workers involved and make visitation time a living hell. Fortunately for him, social workers were willing to consider that she's a liar, and it's now on the record that she is a liar, and the judge knows it. I haven't heard anything since that bit of drama. Perhaps she realized that she couldn't use the courts as a weapon now that in all he-said-she-said matters, he's going to be the one with the benefit of the doubt, and if she fights reasonable requests, it's liable to be seen as her using her son to hurt her ex instead of doing what's best for the boy.
Realize there are different measures of quality. Once upon a time, as this article attests, most cars would develop some sort of issue that would have to be fixed. If you got the right kind of car and got a little lucky, maybe you never needed to get repairs, but often you had to get work done before 50-70,000 miles. Now, most cars will get the first 100,000 miles without significant issues.
You are talking about longevity, that is if a car made to last 100,000 or 200,000 or 500,000. I once read that Japanese cars of the 1980s were 200,000 mile cars. That is all of the parts in the car were engineered to last 200,000 miles, but beyond that, lots of parts would rapidly start to wear out all at once. I don't know if that's true, but maybe they did a really good job of building cars that would last 15 years before having to be hauled off to the junk heap. Analyzing this issue is a little difficult because we won't have good information on how quickly new cars are failing until 4-7 years down the road, and for a look at the Bell curves indicating how long new cars are lasting, the information is much further out.
My currency plan:
Coins: The dime and the dollar.
Bills: The ten and hundred.
Take the current coins, and round them up to the next highest coin, and people won't complain too much. That is, pennies, nickels and dimes are all worth 10 cents, and quarters, half dollars and dollars are worth a dollar. Mint only makes new dimes and dollars as the old coins are automatically removed from circulation.
Look into Mark's Daily Apple. He was a marathoner. Then, the wear and tear on his body finally got to him.
He started researching, and the info on his blog will tell you what makes you fat.
Here's a brief run down:
Grains (all, but most commonly consumed are oats, wheat (cereal, bread and pasta) and corn (including corn syrup and tortilla chips)
Potatoes (Potatoes are a starchy white carbohydrate)
Sugar
As much as possible, eat Natural meat, and a large variety of vegetables with a few fruits.
I read a health blog that recently linked to a program called Body by Science. I think you could probably get your local library to buy the book. They recommend 12 minutes a week of exercise similar to what the GP recommended.
The exercise works by doing 2-4 minutes of several exercises very slowly. The muscles get so oxygen deprived that you start breathing like you are running a 5k at a full sprint. At the end of the 12 minutes, you then have to wait another 15-20 minutes before your body stops the aerobic work.
I haven't actually read the book, but it sounds like your body will build all of the muscle and work on your cardiovascular health based on this half hour of effort, such that you don't need to do anything else for a week.
It's probably still a good idea to go for a 30 minute walk and occasionally do some running.
The only thing is, a meteor is an easily provable phenomenon. The factors are well known, and predictions can easily be made and verified. I can go and reproduce Newton's equations, or re-measure the speed of light, or retest hundreds of other theories that have been proven. These are not contested.
I have yet to see anybody make a verifiable prediction with regard to climate change on anything less than what will happen decades from now. If the science is so settled as claimed, shouldn't the scientists be able to isolate a few variables, and say that if this happens (with regard to sun activity, and any other variables they want to quantify) and lay down some solid numbers so we know what is predicted. Nothing like last year's after the fact statements that year's winter storms or tornado activity was caused by human activity.
I want real prediction that say if sun output is low, temperatures will be stable or slightly down. If sun output is average, temperature will be up .1 and if it's high temperatures will be up .25. If they want to add in modifiers for cloud cover, and other weather conditions and any other factors they can think of, great. Then if their predictions are accurate, we have some sort of confidence that they model actually takes into account all of the necessary variables. If the numbers come in significantly different than what they predict, then we know that the models are far from complete and the science isn't settled yet. Until I see the science actually giving us predictions that conform to reality, I choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't it all figured out. Extraordinary claims (like complete confidence in predictive powers concerning climate) require irrefutable evidence. Since these predictions haven't been made yet (since I'm sure they would be big news and nothing of the sort has ever been printed), and the time scale of all predictions concerns what will happen at mid or end of century, it's entirely possible that scientists are making claims that can't be falsified in their lifetimes.
John Paul II did apologize for Church's Inquisition. I don't know how many times it needs to be done for it to be done. If once is enough, then consider it done.
Only Catholic and Orthodox Christians (and according to polls, only half of the Catholics) believe that the host (think about what that word means) becomes Jesus. The Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants and every other variety of Christian reject that particular teaching. They believe it's only a symbolic presence, so they what they consider the the most outrageous of orthodox teachings as well.
First, the length of patents should be significantly shorter. If you get your product out there, and get people buying it, 5 year should be enough of a head start for you to get brand awareness built, get the bugs worked out, and grow enough to be able to fend off competition.
Along with that, I would overturn the current 'obvious' test. Instead, give a description of the invention. If anybody can come forward in three or six months with the same idea, then your idea was obvious enough to not warrent protection. On the other hand, if nobody comes close, and your invention is in a completely new category with no alternatives and you have to build a brand new market for your product from scratch, then you qualify for a longer protection.
Also, somebody must be able to take your documentation and build your invention without assistance from somebody involved in submitting the patent.
Instead of children, it should be young men and women who want to get trained in plane maintenance. Before you learn how to fix them, you start by building them. The Air Force could take over a final stage of assembling the drones. Send approved (for security) vendors a parts list, and buy from each what you need. Have parts delivered to an Air Force assembly location. Have young men who want a free education in assembling and repairing planes put them together, for which they get paid. Force the defense contractors to compete for price on parts, which would hopefully drive down prices instead of allowing them to run out of control like in the F-22 and F-35 boondoggles, where the companies don't need to worry about price because they know they've already won the bidding and the government is unlikely to walk away from buying the hardware because voters will vote out a few representatives and senators if the spending is shut down.
The first stage of fixing our cost problem for medical service should have been eliminating insurance companies being able to negotiate lower prices from the provider. The doctor/clinic/hospital should be charging every buyer (insurance company, private individual, Medicare) what ever price, and everybody pays it. This will make pricing close to what is actually paid instead of a multiple of the actual price. This would force the insurance companies to negotiate with providers on behalf of all of us, or use their ability to pay a portion of their customer's bill to encourage doctors to compete on price.
Aren't all RTS games alike? Aren't all FPS games alike? Aren't all boardgames alike? Similarity is just a matter of degree.
He clearly isn't spending that much on housing.
I make 48k, and we currently are looking to downsize our home because we decided we could afford more than we really can. We can continue to live in a house we owe $135,000 (3500sq ft, 4BR) on outside of Topeka KS and worry about money constantly. We've decided to downsize and are looking at homes in town. There are 2000 sq ft foreclosed homes in decent neighborhoods for under $50,000. I can drop my house payment from my current 1000 (including taxes and insurance) to 500 (pocketing the difference to give us breathing room) and be debt free in 15 years instead of 27. More likely, we'll make double interest payments (average about 225 over the life of the loan) and pay it off in 8. If something happens to my job, I should easily be able to find something in the $30,000 range, which would put is in a little bind, but much better than being in a house we can't afford and losing it within a year. The actual calculated payment is $390.
Maybe as you say, people do think they need to spend 1000-1200 a month. But it totally doable to live on much less, and to live as well as people in much more expensive houses if you prioritize correctly.
I'd rather have the federal government reform copyright, then we could give the students access to better materials than textbooks, and the schools could get a dozen different printers to print them at the lowest cost (or encourage parents to buy their student's ereaders for a discount on book fees).
What it's done is drive Bachmann and Perry out out of the primary. People who would vote for those two candidates will now choose somebody else. People who would vote for those two will not gravitate towards Romney, so they will strengthen non-Romney candidates. Santorum is a likely candidate since he's not Gingrich, and his finish in Iowa will give him an edge.
Romney's strategy for the nomination is to keep enough candidates in the race for long enough to keep the other candidates from consolidating support so that he eventually becomes the candidate by plurality and is Mr. Inevitable, and enough convention voters switch to voting for him. The conservatives are trying to be the last conservative standing, consolidate all of the Tea Party, Libertarian, and other voters who don't want Romney, and win the nomination.
Personally, I'm a pro-small business and social conservative, and I haven't really looked at Santorum's history or policies. Ann Coulter's article this week supports Romney, but I'm rather leery of him since he won't admit the Massachusetts health care reform on which Obamacare was enacted is a bad law.
It depends on which part of show your work you are talking about. For instance, simple calculation (the basic operators, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) shouldn't really be a "show your work" kind of problem. We should be teaching kids how to calculate much more efficiently than the old pen and paper method. My wife and I home school, and we're working with Alabacus which uses manipulative items and the children should develop the ability to do the math in their heads quite well. Any manipulative program should be able to help do the same. I think there also might be other methods that I've seen sold on video, but I'm not sure how well they work.
On the other hand, word problems, and other problems that require the numbers to be put into an equation, or the equation to be manipulated should be shown. For instance, if you are doing a problem about two trains moving at certain rates with different distances, the important part of the problem isn't the calculation, it's being sure the student understands properly how the numbers go together in the d=r*t, and how you take the formulas for two different trains and join them depending on if the trains are going the same direction or opposite. This problem is about learning to analyze a situation, and know how to build the math problem from the clues in the text. If you are allowed to give just a final answer, how is the teacher supposed to know if you are understanding the solution you gave, or if you lucked into the right answer, or just cheated?
What is important is how many ancestors you have going back that far. (I'm a conservative and don't like the president's policies.) If you go back those 12 generations, you'd have 4096 ancestors 12 generations back being related to 1 of GW's 8 great grandparents. That's a pretty small likelihood, especially when you eliminate his' father's side. I don't have any relation to GW as my family is all German and Irish that came over in the late 18th century. Some of my cousins might be marrying people with a wider gene pool that may tie in, but BO having mutual family with GW is pretty unlikely.
Makes sense. A large group of people (bureaucrats or corporate employees) working at the whims of somebody with power/immune to the rules (politicians, shareholders) with enough money they don't really feel like they need to play by the rules.
I agree. I may like a little more law and order than the fans at a Ron Paul campaign rally, but we've gone so far beyond reasonable that getting back to where the libertarians want to go wouldn't be a bad idea. Once you get there (eliminating Medicare, Social Security, Welfare, the Dept. of Education), the states or counties can step in and fill the void and come to more reasonable solutions to the concerns each of those programs or departments was created to fix than the federal boondoggle we now have.
See, I don't have a problem helping with the social safety net, I have a problem with the current retirees getting something even if they don't need it, and getting it in a way that is hurting the rest of us.
For instance, instead of getting a check for social security, I'd rather (when I can't work any more) have a room, meals and medical care provided at a senior's home without having to worry about the money situation. Let the county pay for a campus with 1 room apartments or assisted living facilities, a cafeteria and a medical staff. Those that don't need it can make do on their own and know that it's there if they ever need it. If you want to live in your house, donate it to the county, and they can hold it while you continue to live in it. When you die, the county can let other people live in it or sell it to pay for other people's expenses. And I bet all of this could be done for a fraction of what we pay for social security. Some areas might turn this over to religious groups, but I would not allow a for profit company take it over.
Big organizations do not breed solutions. There are very few big companies that I am truly fond of, and even those I'd rather see broken down into dozens of competitors in order to see more competition.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
I've been tracking what a lot of the writers at Minyanville have to say about various things. Mauldin especially has done very good work on what the debt is going to do to us. Compound the collapse of the Euro due to their situation, and I think we are due for a very big fall.
Some of the other indicators are that if you look at the stock market, it's been very boom and bust since the Depression (not much data from before). It' basically goes in 17 year cycles, (Slow Growth from 1932-1949, accelerating from 1949-1966 (This 34 years was unnatural due to the recovery from the Depression and WWII and the US being the only economy not devastated by the war IMO). Then 1966-1983, flat for 17 years. 1983-2000, the debt boom compounded with the tech bubble, 17 years. Now we are in year 11 since the boom. Any ideas on when we'll be seeing better times? Not for the next 5 year by cyclical estimates. Maybe more if the effects of recent measures extends this (a reverse of the boom after the depression) compounded by the wreckage of the policies of every administration going back to Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, and every kick the can down the road Congress and administration since.
I have a 36" CRT, and it's not a given that I'll be catching the Hobbit at the theater. Of course, I am planning on a TV upgrade in a few years, when the TVs over 50" can be found for around $500, and at that point, I'll be able to rewatch anything that I want to see on a bigger screen for free (library has anything I'm interested in, on Blu-Ray, so I've got a pretty big catalog to choose from).
Did you used to work for the US Postal Service? When the USPS went to DHCP about 7 years ago, our DHCP pool ran out of addresses within a year. One day, I couldn't get get RIS to connect in order to install Windows. After a while, we released an address from a PC and it worked perfectly, and the other machine couldn't get an address again. Our system administrator had to call and the first thing out of the guy's mouth was about sunspots or solar flares. It was about all our SA could do not to blow his top!! I even got him years later by having the new help desk guy (my replacement) ask him if he'd ever heard of sunspots causing DHCP problems.