You are obviously choosing to ignore the one great difference between men and women - it's the woman that bears the child, the man does not.
They are treating everyone equally - every person that actually delivers a baby gets three months paid maternity leave. Every person that impregnates another person gets two months off. That "tends" to fall along gender lines, but let's consider same-sex couples:
If two men "arrange" for a surrogate to carry their baby, do both men get two months paid leave?
If two women "arrange" for a surrogate to carry their baby, do both women get three months paid leave or two?
If two women draw straws and one of them carries a baby and delivers, do both women get three months paid leave, or does the woman that carried & delivered the baby get three months paid leave and her partner gets two months?
I suspect the answers to the above answers will show the policy to be legal and fair, and by the way, if the whiners are going to have any impact on Yahoo to change their policy, I strongly suspect they will back on the benefit for new mothers 33 1/3% rather than increase the father's paid leave 50%.
Ah, so you're from the camp that defines equal in whatever what you want. So, women should get the same pay as a man for the same job (they should), they should have the same chance for a promotion as an equally qualified man (they should). Oh, they should get the same time off as a man? No, they get more because they're women.
Your logic could also be easily used to justify lower pay for women (they tend to get pregnant and leave you in a lurch), fewer promotions (same reason) and probably other things I haven't thought of.
You cannot argue for equal rights between the genders and then turn around and say that a clearly unequal policy is equal because it "tends to fall on gender lines". Policies are either racially and gender blind or they are not. I'm not saying whether I'm for or against women getting more time off. What I am saying is that you cannot simply construct some backwards logic to say that this is 'equal' in the manner in which it is unequal and therefore not discrimination.
The policy at hand is clearly discriminatory and blatantly unequal. Whether that is a bad thing or not I leave as a separate question but by supporting the policy you support discrimination and unequal policies and there is no way around that.
The thing is the Dems wanted to increase spending and raise taxes on "the rich" with no real cuts and no real decrease in spending. The point above is still valid. With government sucking up more and more money all the time there is absolutely no reason or way to justify giving them even more to piss away.
Cut spending. Real honest cuts. Only after cuts are passed and in effect should any increases in revenue be discussed.
you are claiming its impossible to look excited about killing some one. Because that's what he was saying and if you missed it int the comment about the "crazed glint" then I would say that says more about you then the GP. And yes there is a chance though very slim that the one shot from an excited concealed weapons carrier.But take into consideration that the police miss far more often then then hit when they fire their weapons and there are constantly training unlike the civilians with ccw's.
The discussion was prompted by the fact that during the latest round of FBI suspect interviews conducted for the third book in the Officer Assaulted and Murdered trilogy (“Violent Encounters”), it was revealed that those suspects believed that police officers trained between two and three times a week with their firearms. In reality, most police departments only train about two times a year, averaging less than 15 hours annually. In contrast to our frequency of training, those same suspects revealed that they practiced on average 23 times a year (or almost twice a month) with their handguns.
Police are training constantly? Really? Are you sure about that? Given anecdotal 'evidence' says that police actually don't practice or train anywhere near as much as you might think, which google searches backup, I'm not sure you can say they train constantly. On the other hand most CCW people tend to go to the range at least once a month if not more frequently than that.
People have been stocking up. That's what it boils down to. If you want to find a paranoid personality, look no further than someone who owns an assault rifle. Now get a bunch of these people together and convince them that people are out to not only kill them, but take their guns and ammo as well.
Tada. You've just created demand. And supply apparently can't keep up.
So, it doesn't count because it's Canada, or more people with guns shooting through a crowd of people would have somehow led to fewer people being shot?
It mainly doesn't count because you're attempting to compare and equate a group who makes a life of breaking the law and semi-indiscriminate violence to a group that is generally more law abiding than the general public and frequently more so than the police and with lower incidents of violence.
Concealed carriers don't shoot up innocent bystanders. People with guns shooting at other people often hit innocent bystanders. It doesn't matter whether it's police, criminals, or concealed carriers doing the shooting. Idiots with guns are trouble, no matter who they are.
Your point about crossfire is true, but unless you can point up a case where it's happened with concealed carriers I'm not sure it is a valid comparison. In the cases where CCWs have had to defend themselves there aren't any that I'm aware of where innocents have been hit.
Hey, be fair, it's entirely possible that he won't be ambushed. For instance, he could repeatedly miss his target and kill one or more innocent bystanders, like the chuckleheads on Danzig street.
Did you link the wrong thing or are you, to be kind, misreading incredibly badly? That's an article from Canada. Known as one of the anti-rights, gun control, people's utopias. There is effectively no concealed carry. There gun laws out the ass. Canada is frequently pointed out as "the way it should be!"
Yet, you put in a link to a gang shooting with 25 victims, two dead. While trying to say that Concealed Carriers shoot up innocent bystanders. Way to go.
This is how laws are done today. You think a law gets voted down and that's it? Think again. Whenever you see some company not getting its way, be it due to public outcry or be it because even politicians could see that it's not a good idea, rest assured that they won't drop it. It will come back again. In some other form, maybe with less public exposure and much more hushed up, but it WILL COME BACK.
Companies don't back down when it comes to getting their laws approved. They will keep pushing more money into Capitol Hill hos 'til they have enough to actually get it passed.
You seem to think this is just the way laws that companies want works. Look at gun control. Those who are against it have to keep fighting it over and over and over and over and over again. Whereas the bad guys, those who want to take away rights, only have to win once. Well, until they decide they want more then they only have to win that part once.
Bad laws rarely die unless those pushing them finally give up.
And you are a complete idiot if you think progressives are implementing "racism in a different direction"
The very definition of racism (in this context) is policy, processes or procedures designed to benefit one race or set or races at the exclusion of others. The antithesis of that would be MLK jr's vision of a color blind world. Progressives are absolutely promoting and continuing the exist of racism by turning their back on a color blind world. You cannot end racism but instituting it in a different direction with different targets.
If you think that can be done, please explain how.
Also, if Bloomberg is not a Progressive he sure as hell acts like one. About the only "progressive" idea I haven't heard him come out in favor of, yet, is sky high taxes.
You are setting up a strawmans argument, you fail.
Progressives DO NOT want more control and regulation of EVERY aspect of peoples lives.
They want more control and regulation over the parts of peoples lives that are explicitly used to infringe on the liberty, equality and justice of others, and they want less control and regulation over the parts of peoples lives that are not explicitly used to infringe on the liberty, equality and justice of others.
Straw man argument? Not at all. I've seen few limits as to what Progressives are willing to regulate on some level or other. Bans on sodas that are "too big"? How is that used to infringe on the liberties of others? How does my ownership of guns infringe on any ones liberty?
Progressives absolutely want to meddle in the private affairs of practically everyone for practically any purpose that they think they know better than you. They know how your money should be spent, how much soda you should drink, how much salt you should have and so on.
Also, the solution to racism is not to institute more racism in just a different direction. The solution is to adhere to MLK's vision of a color blind society.
You want Liberty and Freedom? If no one is harming anyone, leave them alone.
So you're saying that Progressives demand ever greater government power, government intrusion into people's lives and ever greater control over people's lives to promote Liberty and Freedom? Interesting definitions you have there.
In which universe exactly can you achieve ever greater freedom and liberty by way of ever greater control and regulation of every aspect of people's lives? How exactly does that work?
Feinstein has to be doing something, that is how she will get reelected. The NRA is willing to do anything the gun manufacturers want, that is who they really represent.
Either one will support anything that does not infringe on the groups they actually represent, the rich and the gun manufacturers respectively, the more publicity the better for them.
You're quoting a hard core gun control group known to fabricate "evidence" and hoping to capitalize on people's confusion to trick them into supporting their agenda as "proof" that the NRA really represents the "rich and gun manufacturers"? You've got to be kidding me.
VPC: "The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."
Translation: "We can lie to people and encourage them to think that we're talking about machine guns when we're really talking about simple rifles that look scary!"
The thing you have to remember with the US is that there are large sections of the country where you can go and not see another person for weeks (or hours if you're moving fast enough). Not a car, not a house, nothing. So that high speed train would go out all that way and find no one who wants ride most of the time.
But apparently I can fly there using a normal plane that travels to airports?
Anywhere there is enough population density to have an airport, there is enough to have a fast rail system.
Not necessarily. It may make economic sense to run a small puddle jumper plane to some smallish place where building and maintaining high speed rail lines to that place makes no sense at all. Running a high speed train line all the way out to Great Falls, Montana probably makes no sense. Yet I bet you can get a flight out there.
Why yes, yes you can. Depending on where you're coming from it would end up costing around 500 bucks round trip. Assuming a future train line had prices similar to Amtrak it would probably be double that and still take twice as long. No train will likely ever beat a relatively quick plane or even most commercial slow ones.
Erh... not wanting to contradict you, but THAT is what you consider excellent roads? Maybe I was in the wrong parts of the US...
Possible. Of course it also depends on what you're comparing to as well. That said, you can generally drive at 70 - 110MPH from one end of the country to the other (setting aside whether it is legal to do so) and that is no small engineering feat.:)
I took a 21h train from Chicago to Boston. If I factor in travel to and from the stations, it was a total of 27 hours. I liked it enough to take it on the way back, too. I would do that every trip I could over ever stepping foot in an airport again.
Don't get me wrong, I love flying, and as a pilot I think GA and private aircraft are wonderful. The airlines are just so shit at providing anything resembling 'service' and the government is so retardedly set on backing the ever-invasive Theatrical Security Agency(at Boston's South Station there was a single cop on the platform, chatting with passengers, with a really friendly dog) that I just won't deal with it anymore.
I'd much rather spend an entire day in a large comfortable seat, with huge windows, tons of leg room, and proper 120v outlets, in a place I can (as far as I can tell) always use my cell phone(even as a tether if the train doesn't have WiFi of its own). If you have trouble working on a train, with its whole cars full of tables, and enormous seatback desks, you are broken as an employee and should probably be fired.
Let's not forget to mention that there are enormous bathrooms, entire dining cars with cheap and normal-sized food, hour-long stops at stations with awesome cafes and restaurants, BEDS(sleeper cars FTW), and even SHOWERS on the train. Flying has become a joke, and if you can afford the time and somewhat higher fare, trains are ALWAYS going to be a better travel experience.
Having spent a fair bit of time on trains in China I can agree that traveling by train is nice. However, it is only nice if you're okay loosing an entire day getting there and another getting back. Plus paying more for it. You and people below already mentioned that it is awesome if you have all the time in the world and a company that will allow you to work from a train. Many wouldn't of course. I've known several companies that would automatically consider that vacation time or just down time.
It also only works in nearly the exact situation you specify. If you live in a major rail hub and am traveling to another major rail hub. Where I live there isn't a single AMTRAK station within more than a hundred miles. Driving at least an hour and a half just to get to the station doesn't sound like a good way to start a trip. Sad too. I rather wish that AMTRAK wasn't such a waste of time, money and energy for most people.
Actually, I was under the impression that high speed rails make MORE sense on long distance due to rather long acceleration and breaking distances trains have. Here they use the 250+ kph trains only for trips where the stations they actually stop at are at least 50-100 kilometers apart, the rest is serviced by rather slow (80-100 kph) local trains.
The thing you have to remember with the US is that there are large sections of the country where you can go and not see another person for weeks (or hours if you're moving fast enough). Not a car, not a house, nothing. So that high speed train would go out all that way and find no one who wants ride most of the time.
There are parts where it would make sense. Along the Coasts and down certain corridors currently served by Interstates. A line that follows Interstate 65 from top to bottom might do well. One that runs along Interstate 40 out west to Dallas might do well too.
The biggest thing that kills trains here though is a combination of relatively cheap cars with excellent roads and frequently cheap flights. You can fly half way across the country, from Kansas City to San Diego, for about 300 bucks round trip and do it in just 4 or 5 hours. No train will ever match that speed and even that cost might be a stretch. $400 will take you from New York to San Diego and back. 7 hours of travel time.
Unless airline prices spike stupid high why would we want to take a train which can't help but take at least twice as long, if not three times as long. Given it would likely take billions of dollars to build at this point for relatively little benefit.
I wouldn't blame her specifically for the reaction. Anyone can tweet things, but here someone actually took actions based on random tweets (someone was fired because a third party they had never met posted some tweets). I would blame those people at least as much. And then the people who fired her for similar reasons. There are a bunch of parties in this case firing people for pretty stupid reasons, and it's not the people Tweeting who are responsible for it.
True, the people tweeting are not necessarily responsible for the actions of others. That doesn't excuse her for handling things in what seems to me to be a rather immature way.
If sexism were to be defeated, it would mean hearts and minds would change and it would become a non-issue.
This is something very different. This is a chilling effect and a one-way weapon against males. The same would never happen if the roles were opposite. This is no different than the mentality we generally maintain that it's funny for women to hurt men but tragic and horrific for men to hurt women.
This doesn't "fight" sexism, it defines it. The worst thing is all of this harm is done without the benefit of a trial, a warning or any sense of fairness.
Truth.
The reaction was completely out of proportion and entirely based on her claim. I'm not saying she's lying. I'm saying there was no evidence and I doubt anyone even bothered to listen to the guy's side of it.
Two employees, in public, on company time, wearing badges clearly identifying what company they work for, making totally inappropriate comments - they most certainly should be fired.
Firing Richards herself is the moronic thing. You don't fire the messenger. I have zero idea what SendGrid does - but "all publicity is good publicity" is a lie.
So random comments should get you fired because someone somewhere could possibly find them offensive? We don't even know what was really said. It likely, based on the odds, was probably fairly innocuous. Yet two people got fired and have had their lives severely damaged because someone else was slightly offended.
If certain groups are supposed to get special "don't offend" privileges then don't be shocked when other groups view that group as trouble and lawsuit magnets and don't want to associate with that group in any context where a single phrase or word could get them damaged.
we damned sure need to answer the question of would Iraq be better off now if the US hadn't gone there
That is begging the question of whether it was the US's problem in the first place.
Would the people of Zimbabwe, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Belarus be better off if the US unleashed its military might on those countries' rulers and introduced democracy and prosperity?
An absolutely fair question. I'd argue it was generally not the US's problem in the first place. It just annoys me that people automatically assume that things were all cake and donuts over there prior to the evil evil action. The question is simply never asked and answered.
I don't believe you can introduce 'democracy' by force of arms. You can win it. You can take it. But the people themselves must want it or you just end up with a mess.
Slashdot Mirror
You are obviously choosing to ignore the one great difference between men and women - it's the woman that bears the child, the man does not.
They are treating everyone equally - every person that actually delivers a baby gets three months paid maternity leave. Every person that impregnates another person gets two months off. That "tends" to fall along gender lines, but let's consider same-sex couples:
I suspect the answers to the above answers will show the policy to be legal and fair, and by the way, if the whiners are going to have any impact on Yahoo to change their policy, I strongly suspect they will back on the benefit for new mothers 33 1/3% rather than increase the father's paid leave 50%.
Ah, so you're from the camp that defines equal in whatever what you want. So, women should get the same pay as a man for the same job (they should), they should have the same chance for a promotion as an equally qualified man (they should). Oh, they should get the same time off as a man? No, they get more because they're women.
Your logic could also be easily used to justify lower pay for women (they tend to get pregnant and leave you in a lurch), fewer promotions (same reason) and probably other things I haven't thought of.
You cannot argue for equal rights between the genders and then turn around and say that a clearly unequal policy is equal because it "tends to fall on gender lines". Policies are either racially and gender blind or they are not. I'm not saying whether I'm for or against women getting more time off. What I am saying is that you cannot simply construct some backwards logic to say that this is 'equal' in the manner in which it is unequal and therefore not discrimination.
The policy at hand is clearly discriminatory and blatantly unequal. Whether that is a bad thing or not I leave as a separate question but by supporting the policy you support discrimination and unequal policies and there is no way around that.
Socialism.
And when those who provide, create and actually work refuse to give those who are lazy and do nothing the fruits of their efforts what then?
There's a word for those who work solely for the benefit of others with little to no practical choice but to do so. Slaves.
The thing is the Dems wanted to increase spending and raise taxes on "the rich" with no real cuts and no real decrease in spending. The point above is still valid. With government sucking up more and more money all the time there is absolutely no reason or way to justify giving them even more to piss away.
Cut spending. Real honest cuts. Only after cuts are passed and in effect should any increases in revenue be discussed.
You're forgetting that, under the current system in the US, no one owes you a job. If you have a job, no one owes you more than minimum wage.
So what if you have a mortgage and bills to pay? That's your problem, not your employer's.
Why should anyone owe you a job? Why does the world owe you anything at all? Why should these things be anyone's problem but yours?
you are claiming its impossible to look excited about killing some one. Because that's what he was saying and if you missed it int the comment about the "crazed glint" then I would say that says more about you then the GP. And yes there is a chance though very slim that the one shot from an excited concealed weapons carrier.But take into consideration that the police miss far more often then then hit when they fire their weapons and there are constantly training unlike the civilians with ccw's.
The discussion was prompted by the fact that during the latest round of FBI suspect interviews conducted for the third book in the Officer Assaulted and Murdered trilogy (“Violent Encounters”), it was revealed that those suspects believed that police officers trained between two and three times a week with their firearms. In reality, most police departments only train about two times a year, averaging less than 15 hours annually. In contrast to our frequency of training, those same suspects revealed that they practiced on average 23 times a year (or almost twice a month) with their handguns.
Police are training constantly? Really? Are you sure about that? Given anecdotal 'evidence' says that police actually don't practice or train anywhere near as much as you might think, which google searches backup, I'm not sure you can say they train constantly. On the other hand most CCW people tend to go to the range at least once a month if not more frequently than that.
You really think the authorities are buying .22LR? You might want to double check your conspiracy theory.
No, of course not and I didn't say they were. :P
People have been stocking up. That's what it boils down to. If you want to find a paranoid personality, look no further than someone who owns an assault rifle. Now get a bunch of these people together and convince them that people are out to not only kill them, but take their guns and ammo as well.
Tada. You've just created demand. And supply apparently can't keep up.
Only paranoid people only "assault rifles"? Huh.
So, it doesn't count because it's Canada, or more people with guns shooting through a crowd of people would have somehow led to fewer people being shot?
It mainly doesn't count because you're attempting to compare and equate a group who makes a life of breaking the law and semi-indiscriminate violence to a group that is generally more law abiding than the general public and frequently more so than the police and with lower incidents of violence.
Concealed carriers don't shoot up innocent bystanders. People with guns shooting at other people often hit innocent bystanders. It doesn't matter whether it's police, criminals, or concealed carriers doing the shooting. Idiots with guns are trouble, no matter who they are.
Your point about crossfire is true, but unless you can point up a case where it's happened with concealed carriers I'm not sure it is a valid comparison. In the cases where CCWs have had to defend themselves there aren't any that I'm aware of where innocents have been hit.
Online stores are showing no shortage.
Wal-mart is showing no shortage.
What online stores and wal-marts have you been going to? LoL.
When you can't even find bricks of .22LR I'd say there's a bit of a shortage.
Hey, be fair, it's entirely possible that he won't be ambushed. For instance, he could repeatedly miss his target and kill one or more innocent bystanders, like the chuckleheads on Danzig street.
Did you link the wrong thing or are you, to be kind, misreading incredibly badly? That's an article from Canada. Known as one of the anti-rights, gun control, people's utopias. There is effectively no concealed carry. There gun laws out the ass. Canada is frequently pointed out as "the way it should be!"
Yet, you put in a link to a gang shooting with 25 victims, two dead. While trying to say that Concealed Carriers shoot up innocent bystanders. Way to go.
This is how laws are done today. You think a law gets voted down and that's it? Think again. Whenever you see some company not getting its way, be it due to public outcry or be it because even politicians could see that it's not a good idea, rest assured that they won't drop it. It will come back again. In some other form, maybe with less public exposure and much more hushed up, but it WILL COME BACK.
Companies don't back down when it comes to getting their laws approved. They will keep pushing more money into Capitol Hill hos 'til they have enough to actually get it passed.
You seem to think this is just the way laws that companies want works. Look at gun control. Those who are against it have to keep fighting it over and over and over and over and over again. Whereas the bad guys, those who want to take away rights, only have to win once. Well, until they decide they want more then they only have to win that part once.
Bad laws rarely die unless those pushing them finally give up.
Am I the only one who is getting a login page on the last link?
Bloomberg is not a progressive.
And you are a complete idiot if you think progressives are implementing "racism in a different direction"
The very definition of racism (in this context) is policy, processes or procedures designed to benefit one race or set or races at the exclusion of others. The antithesis of that would be MLK jr's vision of a color blind world. Progressives are absolutely promoting and continuing the exist of racism by turning their back on a color blind world. You cannot end racism but instituting it in a different direction with different targets.
If you think that can be done, please explain how.
Also, if Bloomberg is not a Progressive he sure as hell acts like one. About the only "progressive" idea I haven't heard him come out in favor of, yet, is sky high taxes.
You are setting up a strawmans argument, you fail.
Progressives DO NOT want more control and regulation of EVERY aspect of peoples lives.
They want more control and regulation over the parts of peoples lives that are explicitly used to infringe on the liberty, equality and justice of others, and they want less control and regulation over the parts of peoples lives that are not explicitly used to infringe on the liberty, equality and justice of others.
Straw man argument? Not at all. I've seen few limits as to what Progressives are willing to regulate on some level or other. Bans on sodas that are "too big"? How is that used to infringe on the liberties of others? How does my ownership of guns infringe on any ones liberty?
Progressives absolutely want to meddle in the private affairs of practically everyone for practically any purpose that they think they know better than you. They know how your money should be spent, how much soda you should drink, how much salt you should have and so on.
Also, the solution to racism is not to institute more racism in just a different direction. The solution is to adhere to MLK's vision of a color blind society.
You want Liberty and Freedom? If no one is harming anyone, leave them alone.
So you're saying that Progressives demand ever greater government power, government intrusion into people's lives and ever greater control over people's lives to promote Liberty and Freedom? Interesting definitions you have there.
In which universe exactly can you achieve ever greater freedom and liberty by way of ever greater control and regulation of every aspect of people's lives? How exactly does that work?
Why? This makes perfect sense.
Feinstein has to be doing something, that is how she will get reelected. The NRA is willing to do anything the gun manufacturers want, that is who they really represent.
Either one will support anything that does not infringe on the groups they actually represent, the rich and the gun manufacturers respectively, the more publicity the better for them.
Evidence : http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/nraindus.htm
You're quoting a hard core gun control group known to fabricate "evidence" and hoping to capitalize on people's confusion to trick them into supporting their agenda as "proof" that the NRA really represents the "rich and gun manufacturers"? You've got to be kidding me.
VPC: "The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."
Translation: "We can lie to people and encourage them to think that we're talking about machine guns when we're really talking about simple rifles that look scary!"
Source: http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm
The thing you have to remember with the US is that there are large sections of the country where you can go and not see another person for weeks (or hours if you're moving fast enough). Not a car, not a house, nothing. So that high speed train would go out all that way and find no one who wants ride most of the time.
But apparently I can fly there using a normal plane that travels to airports?
Anywhere there is enough population density to have an airport, there is enough to have a fast rail system.
Not necessarily. It may make economic sense to run a small puddle jumper plane to some smallish place where building and maintaining high speed rail lines to that place makes no sense at all. Running a high speed train line all the way out to Great Falls, Montana probably makes no sense. Yet I bet you can get a flight out there.
Why yes, yes you can. Depending on where you're coming from it would end up costing around 500 bucks round trip. Assuming a future train line had prices similar to Amtrak it would probably be double that and still take twice as long. No train will likely ever beat a relatively quick plane or even most commercial slow ones.
Erh... not wanting to contradict you, but THAT is what you consider excellent roads? Maybe I was in the wrong parts of the US...
Possible. Of course it also depends on what you're comparing to as well. That said, you can generally drive at 70 - 110MPH from one end of the country to the other (setting aside whether it is legal to do so) and that is no small engineering feat. :)
I took a 21h train from Chicago to Boston. If I factor in travel to and from the stations, it was a total of 27 hours. I liked it enough to take it on the way back, too. I would do that every trip I could over ever stepping foot in an airport again.
Don't get me wrong, I love flying, and as a pilot I think GA and private aircraft are wonderful. The airlines are just so shit at providing anything resembling 'service' and the government is so retardedly set on backing the ever-invasive Theatrical Security Agency(at Boston's South Station there was a single cop on the platform, chatting with passengers, with a really friendly dog) that I just won't deal with it anymore.
I'd much rather spend an entire day in a large comfortable seat, with huge windows, tons of leg room, and proper 120v outlets, in a place I can (as far as I can tell) always use my cell phone(even as a tether if the train doesn't have WiFi of its own). If you have trouble working on a train, with its whole cars full of tables, and enormous seatback desks, you are broken as an employee and should probably be fired.
Let's not forget to mention that there are enormous bathrooms, entire dining cars with cheap and normal-sized food, hour-long stops at stations with awesome cafes and restaurants, BEDS(sleeper cars FTW), and even SHOWERS on the train. Flying has become a joke, and if you can afford the time and somewhat higher fare, trains are ALWAYS going to be a better travel experience.
Having spent a fair bit of time on trains in China I can agree that traveling by train is nice. However, it is only nice if you're okay loosing an entire day getting there and another getting back. Plus paying more for it. You and people below already mentioned that it is awesome if you have all the time in the world and a company that will allow you to work from a train. Many wouldn't of course. I've known several companies that would automatically consider that vacation time or just down time.
It also only works in nearly the exact situation you specify. If you live in a major rail hub and am traveling to another major rail hub. Where I live there isn't a single AMTRAK station within more than a hundred miles. Driving at least an hour and a half just to get to the station doesn't sound like a good way to start a trip. Sad too. I rather wish that AMTRAK wasn't such a waste of time, money and energy for most people.
Actually, I was under the impression that high speed rails make MORE sense on long distance due to rather long acceleration and breaking distances trains have. Here they use the 250+ kph trains only for trips where the stations they actually stop at are at least 50-100 kilometers apart, the rest is serviced by rather slow (80-100 kph) local trains.
The thing you have to remember with the US is that there are large sections of the country where you can go and not see another person for weeks (or hours if you're moving fast enough). Not a car, not a house, nothing. So that high speed train would go out all that way and find no one who wants ride most of the time.
There are parts where it would make sense. Along the Coasts and down certain corridors currently served by Interstates. A line that follows Interstate 65 from top to bottom might do well. One that runs along Interstate 40 out west to Dallas might do well too.
The biggest thing that kills trains here though is a combination of relatively cheap cars with excellent roads and frequently cheap flights. You can fly half way across the country, from Kansas City to San Diego, for about 300 bucks round trip and do it in just 4 or 5 hours. No train will ever match that speed and even that cost might be a stretch. $400 will take you from New York to San Diego and back. 7 hours of travel time.
Unless airline prices spike stupid high why would we want to take a train which can't help but take at least twice as long, if not three times as long. Given it would likely take billions of dollars to build at this point for relatively little benefit.
Regardless of your political views, you should be impressed by Cuba's health indicators at least.
And if it is such a paradise why are people willing to jump on practically anything that floats to get the Florida?
I wouldn't blame her specifically for the reaction. Anyone can tweet things, but here someone actually took actions based on random tweets (someone was fired because a third party they had never met posted some tweets). I would blame those people at least as much. And then the people who fired her for similar reasons. There are a bunch of parties in this case firing people for pretty stupid reasons, and it's not the people Tweeting who are responsible for it.
True, the people tweeting are not necessarily responsible for the actions of others. That doesn't excuse her for handling things in what seems to me to be a rather immature way.
If sexism were to be defeated, it would mean hearts and minds would change and it would become a non-issue.
This is something very different. This is a chilling effect and a one-way weapon against males. The same would never happen if the roles were opposite. This is no different than the mentality we generally maintain that it's funny for women to hurt men but tragic and horrific for men to hurt women.
This doesn't "fight" sexism, it defines it. The worst thing is all of this harm is done without the benefit of a trial, a warning or any sense of fairness.
Truth.
The reaction was completely out of proportion and entirely based on her claim. I'm not saying she's lying. I'm saying there was no evidence and I doubt anyone even bothered to listen to the guy's side of it.
Two employees, in public, on company time, wearing badges clearly identifying what company they work for, making totally inappropriate comments - they most certainly should be fired.
Firing Richards herself is the moronic thing. You don't fire the messenger. I have zero idea what SendGrid does - but "all publicity is good publicity" is a lie.
So random comments should get you fired because someone somewhere could possibly find them offensive? We don't even know what was really said. It likely, based on the odds, was probably fairly innocuous. Yet two people got fired and have had their lives severely damaged because someone else was slightly offended.
If certain groups are supposed to get special "don't offend" privileges then don't be shocked when other groups view that group as trouble and lawsuit magnets and don't want to associate with that group in any context where a single phrase or word could get them damaged.
we damned sure need to answer the question of would Iraq be better off now if the US hadn't gone there
That is begging the question of whether it was the US's problem in the first place.
Would the people of Zimbabwe, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Belarus be better off if the US unleashed its military might on those countries' rulers and introduced democracy and prosperity?
An absolutely fair question. I'd argue it was generally not the US's problem in the first place. It just annoys me that people automatically assume that things were all cake and donuts over there prior to the evil evil action. The question is simply never asked and answered.
I don't believe you can introduce 'democracy' by force of arms. You can win it. You can take it. But the people themselves must want it or you just end up with a mess.