There are a lot of those "Jesus is _____" billboards on the buses here in Seattle, and sometimes stuck in traffic it's fun to play mad libs. But I never thought of that one. Kudos to you, couchslug!
It's not that I hate America. I love this place, warts and all.
I'm sorry but what you feel is not love. People fight to save/protect the things they love. They don't run from them at the first sign of trouble - Coward.
Thing is, I suspect that PopeRatzo (among others) loves himself, his family, and his freedoms more than the abstract notion of "nation", especially when that nation is changing for the worse, relatively rapidly and in long-term ways that will be hard to change back.
It's not a question of courage. It's a question of smarts -- should I stay and try to turn a tide of stupidity that could very well cost me my life (at least figuratively), or should I arrange for my loved ones and myself to have a place of safety and greater relative freedom somewhere else? And, mark you, this particular SCOTUS ruling isn't the first sign of trouble; there are signs all over that things aren't going quite right.
Sometimes it's just smarter to get out of the way of an avalanche.
Now, if you want to argue about whether the changes in the US constitute an avalanche, that's all well and good. But that's not what you're doing. Calling someone chicken for doing what looks to me like simple self-preservation and seeking that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that Americans love to talk about, that's just dumb. I sure don't think my great-great grandad was a chicken for leaving Germany and coming to the US. He did the smart thing, as clearly evidenced by the course of history for the next 50-odd years after he left, bringing his family with him. (And yes, that branch of my family would have vanished had they stayed.)
How is the carrier supposed to know that the device was stolen?
It says how right there in the fine summary -- "Police chiefs like D.C.'s Cathy Lanier are asking U.S. mobile carriers to brick phones that are reported stolen..." Presumably a police report has some legal backing.
I agree with your main point, and agree that the modern Hebrew vocabulary is subject to diverse influences, including European languages.
That said, Hebrew (modern or otherwise) is not that hard to classify -- it is firmly in the Semitic language grouping, itself part of the Afroasiatic language family. Hebrew is a cousin to Arabic, and a cousin to ancient Egyptian, Touareg, Somali, and Amharic (Ethiopian).
From TFA, the researchers were analyzing Google's corpus of primarily English texts. Anything they have to say about the development of language can thus only be said to hold true for English.
Different languages work differently, and are subject to different pressures of usage and culture and global politics. Somehow I doubt that Mori or Arabic or German are changing in quite the same ways or at quite the same rates as English.
FWIW, Asgard is the "gard" of the "Æsir" (singular "As"). "Gard" is the root from which we get the modern English words garden and yard. In Norse, it apparently meant something similar, but with extended meanings of world or realm. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard.
WARNING -- Long post here.:) I reply to each of CAIMLAS's points, describing my related experience. TL;DR: It still comes down to the individual doctors.
My uncle lived in Tokyo for 10 years. I don't know where you went to the hospital, but here's my understanding of how it really works, based on what he's mentioned:
* You go to the doctor's office. They ask you what's wrong but don't really care. * More than likely, they subscribe antibiotics or pain killers for it.
I think that's common to many places and many systems -- it depends a lot on the individual doctor you get to see. We had a couple shit doctors in Japan, who took the easy "here's some drugs, now go away" approach; but we mostly had better luck with good people who actually seemed to pay attention and care, and who followed through with real healthcare.
* If you need dental work done, it will more than likely result in a hasty tooth removal.
I never had much dental work done in Japan, but this doesn't jive at all with what I've heard from other zainichi gaijin (i.e. foreigners in Japan). The Japanese healthcare system's reimbursement plan for dentists is based in part on the number of visits, and I heard numerous stories of people going in for basic cleaning that was split across multiple visits -- top left one day, top right the next, bottom right a week later, and finally the bottom left, for instance -- as the dentist in question worked the system to their own gain. "Hasty tooth removal" would mean one single visit, which would mean the dentist was short-changing themselves. The more likely scenario would be many appointments spaced across weeks as the dentist did various things to fix the issue while also generating as many visits as possible.
* Any work done will likely require a full day of waiting in line at a clinic.
Maybe dental, dunno. But that was never our experience in the medical system. We were generally done within a few hours, and that includes mucking about with check-in, waiting to be called, seeing more than one doctor, and then waiting at the PX afterwards for whatever meds were needed.
* Even though it's state-funded, you still have to pay to see the doctor.
You could make the same gripe about the US mostly-private system -- Even though it's already funded through ever-rising premiums, you still have to pay to see the doctor..
The truth of the matter is that, for most things, all you pay out of pocket is a simple co-pay, which tends to be around $5 to $20 in US dollar terms. (Any meds would be separate from this, but still quite inexpensive out-of-pocket compared to the US.) If you're doing something on an in-patient basis, you can opt to pay a bit extra for a private room, for example, or for special meals -- but those are extras, and the fees weren't that high in our experience (my wife had her appendix out while we were in Japan, and due to some minor complications, she spent about a week in hospital).
* Doctor's offices and hospitals are crowded, and if you can do without going, you're better off not: you'll get a secondary infection while there, more than likely.
Very much not our experience. Japanese healthcare facilities are more decentralized than anything I've seen in the US, with oodles of smaller clinics scattered around the neighborhoods, some getting quite specialized. The huge multi-wing hospitals like you see in the US are generally (but not always) university setups. We got my wife's bicycle-accident broken arm treated at a local place of only maybe a dozen rooms, and her appendicitis treated at a similarly small surgical clinic. Meanwhile, we went to a different and much larger place for her asthma care after we moved to Tokyo. Despite being larger (large enough to get lost in, like most US hospitals I've been to), the Tokyo place we went to was never "crowde
Wow, was your doctor in Virginia a Jewish lobster-person by any chance? What sort of quack sees someone with post-nasal drip and decides it must be the ovaries!?
It's been many years, but what I recall of the ethnicities was your basic white-bread caucasians.
The line from "chronic runny nose" to "removing ovaries" did at least have a detour through "chronic gut problems", so there was some connection to the torso at least. But the quacks didn't connect the dots, and thought my wife's gut issues and abdominal sensitivity were because of ovarian cysts, rather than the true cause of irritable bowel due to chronically excess mucus and some undiagnosed minor food allergies.
My guess was that basic respiratory health management advice and the occasional albuterol inhaler prescription wouldn't make Kaiser as much bank as hospitalizing my wife and removing her organs. Cynical, sure, but I really can't think what else would have prompted their line of bizarre thinking.
Suffice it to say, we didn't follow through with the ovarian removal, and instead changed "healthcare" providers as soon as possible. (Actually, after that was when we moved to Japan for two years.)
I think you are missing a large chunk of where the difference shows up, waiting lists, technological improvement, underfunding, overworking, cost cutting in the places where it makes the least sense, because it is needed to make a political point, lack of flexibility, capacity planning. Then later on come the attempts at saving money with economies of scale, which will be poorly thought out, and even worse execution.
Huh. Up to here, I was right with you -- only I thought you were describing the mess of the US quasi-public / quasi-private system, where costs are cut to boost profits where possible (depending on the HMO/etc's structure -- non-profits seem to do less of this) and where various regulatory regimes make things interestingly difficult.
FWIW, I saw more problems from what you describe here in the US than I did in Japan. YMMV, and all that, of course.
...it is still better than a government run system, as I at least have choices of carriers and coverage.
Have you ever lived under a government-run healthcare system?
I'm from the US, and I've lived in Japan for years at a stretch. In Virginia, Kaiser Permanente listened to my wife's explanation of her symptoms (chronic sinusitis, excessive post-nasal-drip, resulting digestive issues, among other issues) and decided that the trouble in her gut was actually evidence that she needed her ovaries removed. Um, no.
In Tokyo, the local hospital (as part of the government-run healthcare system) listened to her symptoms, and then also to her lungs, and said "hey, you have light asthma -- here's how you manage it." Problems (mostly) solved.
Just because a healthcare system is government run doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. Just because a healthcare system is left to run on market dynamics and choices doesn't mean that it's necessarily better.
FWIW, the opposite is also true -- we've also experienced crappy medical care in Japan, and good care in the US. Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to the quality of the doctors themselves.
And let's not forget that it wasn't so much the earthquake that devastated Japan. But it was the wall of water that mowed down everything in its path.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but earthquakes are much more common in Japan than tsunami are. Remember Kobe? There's a list of major earthquakes in Japan that might put things in perspective. Saving houses from substantial earthquake damage would be a major gain for the country.
(Mind, I'm not saying that tsunami aren't an issue -- just that earthquakes are also an issue, and a different problem set.)
Microsoft wouldn't know anything about data center running if it were chase aftering them at full speedo.
Well, THANK YOU so very much for putting that image in my head! All that brought to mind was Ballmer chasing people while wearing nothing but a Speedo.
I've always had to laugh at the name "Office 365" -- the fact this happened on Leap Day amuses me to no end.
In light of Excel's horribly buggy code of handling Leap Day, I have to wonder if Microsoft's problems here might not be because it's Leap Day? Whaddaya bet Azure comes back up all fine and dandy once the date rolls over to 1 March instead of 29 February? I'm actually serious about this conjecture, this is not just an attempt at humor.
On a different angle, does anyone else find it amusingly ironic that this service is named Azure, and now it's blue-screened? They've only gone up one letter -- now it's the ASOD.
I never could understand the Catholic's refusal to let priests marry, considering that one of the Apostles (Peter maybe? I'd have to look it up) said that men should marry to avoid being tempted into sinful sex, and there's surely not much that's more sinful than raping children.
I get a lot of history across my plate sideways as it were, since my wife is a history and English teacher. It's kinda fun actually -- she's already mostly vetted the books by the time they make it to the house, so I don't have to slog through lots of BS to find the good reads.:)
On-topic here, the reason the Church (big-C Catholic Church) explicitly outlawed the clergy marrying was because of clergy folks setting themselves up as little hereditary fiefdoms, complete with lines of succession and all the fun politicking and internecine warfare that usually accompanies such an arrangement. Disallowing marriage meant breaking that line of power, and is not too dissimilar from policies at the State Department that forcibly rotate diplomats -- this prevents anyone from getting too cozy (at least in theory).
In more detail, celibacy was general Church policy possibly as far back as AD 300 and is certainly mentioned in the mid-400s. This policy was often overlooked though in the hurly burly of northern European politics, and it wasn't explicitly decreed against until the mid-1000s with the Gregorian reforms. Suffice it to say that it's complicated, but the crux of the issue was inheritance and power struggles related to it.
Besides, why should the tutors care? - If people waste the lessons updating Facebook instead of getting smart, they'll simply fail and thus have wasted their tuition. I hope Facebook was worth it, but the tutors shouldn't care less if the students are that stupid.
Because most teachers go into teaching to get students to learn? Because a lot of institutions tie student performance into their evaluations? Because students that aren't paying attention are more likely to distract their neighbors? etc etc...
Because teachers with no classroom management skills can't handle potential distractions? Because intro classes are too big for anyone to manage? Because a lot of institutions incorrectly apply industrial metrics to human dynamics?
There are other concerns about unfettered Internet access in the classroom that go beyond the ideals you mention. My wife has had unfettered internet access in her classrooms for seven years now, in three different schools, and has had very few problems and none recurring. Granted, she's at the middle-school / high-school level instead of university, but plenty of her students have had laptops and smartphones in class. The keys are 1) having small enough class sizes that you can manage them effectively, and 2) having the classroom management skills to get in front of any potential issues and making sure the kids are paying attention to you instead of Lady Gaga. She's found that classes upwards of about 28 students really start to spiral downwards.
As such, the many intro uni courses with 100+ students can't possibly work, unless the students themselves are invested in their own learning. That said, cutting off internet access is no guarantee that otherwise distracted students will suddenly find themselves raptly attending the teacher's words.
Ultimitely working for what you get is better for the human spirit than handouts. And there really is a trade off between the amount of handouts and the difficulty of self-sufficiency. But it's easier to just accuse people of greed and meanness than think things through, I guess.
It sounds like you're trying to put words in my mouth. At the bare minimum, you seem to have understood my post to mean "Free handouts for everybody, permanently!" That's not my point.
My point in my previous post is that the Republican party espouses certain policy goals that have been harmful to the working poor, and the party's strategists have been very successful in selling an emotional ideal of independent, belligerent, strike-it-rich boot-strapping to many of these working poor, such that they pledge their support of Republican policy even as it destroys their livelihoods. I've watched this dynamic play out for decades, and it fascinates and worries me.
In response to your post here, I quite agree with your initial statement, that working for something is generally the better option for an individual's psychological well-being. This is borne out in my own experience and from others that I've known, where people who have had to work for things in their lives tend to have a more grounded sense of worth, be hard workers, and strive to succeed; whereas people who have had things just given to them tend to not appreciate what they have, be listless, and avoid striving if possible. Of course, this is a gross generalization, it's just my own observation, YMMV, and all that.
However, cutting off social safety net funding is not a very effective way to help people work for their keep, especially when the jobs just aren't there, and instead will do much more to destabilize society and hurt people already down on their luck. And that's just a recipe for misery and violence.
Well, hopefully they all die. That way demand will dry up.
The crowd at a Republican debate cheered this approach for uninsured sick people in need of health care.
Well, one or two people in the crowd, but even at that I agree that was still a WTF?! moment.
I found it to be not a "WTF" moment, and instead more a "wow, they're being really honest about their 'fuck everyone else' attitude..."
I'm no fan of either of the major political parties in the US -- both appear to be full of unprincipled mercenaries perfectly happy to sell the country down the shitter for the right price. That said, the Republican party seems much more the party of bald-faced sociopaths, actively courting like-minded authoritarians, selling the theme of anti-social, anti-public policy, and cultivating and capitalizing upon their audience's near-complete lack of cognitive dissonance. "I've got mine; screw you!" could well be their rallying cry.
As widely reported in the US media, such as the NY Times article, "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It", the common people self-identifying as Republican are very often the very people being hurt by the espoused Republican approach to policy. More disturbingly, they've been so successfully hoodwinked that these very people have absorbed the Republican talking points about dismantling the very systems that keep themselves afloat, and happily parrot them back to anyone that asks.
That's some masterful propagandizing. I doff my cap, I really do.
So then having even a few people in a crowd, let alone a whole room, cheering for the idea that all those sick people will die off and thereby "solve" the problem of healthcare, that's just more evidence of how successful the pro-corporate, pro-wealth, anti-public idea machine has been.
All this really just helps the rest of us still capable of more rational thought to see the signs of where this might go. And it's not a pretty outlook.
A few even wear their hypocrisy like a badge of honor..."I refuse to put my children through any risk of complication whatsoever since I know everyone else will risk their own children and my child will be safe anyway." They fully realize how herd immunity works, and that it's a shared risk, but they totally don't give a shit and are perfectly happy being selfish little fuckwits.
It's ridiculous how ignorant people are of history that we're going to end up having to suffer another major epidemic to squash this stupid anti-vaccination bullshit.
On the other hand, this kind of self-selected exposure to risk might mean that when that shit does hit the fan, the portions of the population most likely to be hit by said flying feces will be the ones that are riskiest to the rest of us -- and thus, statistically speaking, the safest ones to be rid of.
The Arab Spring, Occupy, Anonymous... these are but the tip of the potential iceberg, and the rich and powerful are putting some serious effort into chilling these movements right back into frozen immobility.
Their efforts are in vain
That's certainly my hope (that the fat cats are pissing into the wind), but I'm cynical enough that I won't get too happy about things until some real substantive changes come to pass. The Arab Spring has certainly changed some of the major players in that part of the world, but the worry now is how much backroom dealing is going on to ensure that whoever comes to power next in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, etc. plays by the same kowtow-to-the-corporations rules as the fellows who got kicked out. And I'm not sure if you could claim that either Occupy or Anonymous has done more yet than just putting flies in the ointment.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus is Entropy? Cool!
There are a lot of those "Jesus is _____" billboards on the buses here in Seattle, and sometimes stuck in traffic it's fun to play mad libs. But I never thought of that one. Kudos to you, couchslug!
It's not that I hate America. I love this place, warts and all.
I'm sorry but what you feel is not love. People fight to save/protect the things they love. They don't run from them at the first sign of trouble - Coward.
Thing is, I suspect that PopeRatzo (among others) loves himself, his family, and his freedoms more than the abstract notion of "nation", especially when that nation is changing for the worse, relatively rapidly and in long-term ways that will be hard to change back.
It's not a question of courage. It's a question of smarts -- should I stay and try to turn a tide of stupidity that could very well cost me my life (at least figuratively), or should I arrange for my loved ones and myself to have a place of safety and greater relative freedom somewhere else? And, mark you, this particular SCOTUS ruling isn't the first sign of trouble; there are signs all over that things aren't going quite right.
Sometimes it's just smarter to get out of the way of an avalanche.
Now, if you want to argue about whether the changes in the US constitute an avalanche, that's all well and good. But that's not what you're doing. Calling someone chicken for doing what looks to me like simple self-preservation and seeking that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that Americans love to talk about, that's just dumb. I sure don't think my great-great grandad was a chicken for leaving Germany and coming to the US. He did the smart thing, as clearly evidenced by the course of history for the next 50-odd years after he left, bringing his family with him. (And yes, that branch of my family would have vanished had they stayed.)
This might be the stupidest thing I've read all year.
Agree. Modems were never 32k, 16k or 8k. They were 19.2k, 9600, 4800, 2400, 1200, 600, and 300
Don't forget 14.4k. I had one of those for ages.
What you wrote:
What I first saw:
Gah.
How is the carrier supposed to know that the device was stolen?
It says how right there in the fine summary -- "Police chiefs like D.C.'s Cathy Lanier are asking U.S. mobile carriers to brick phones that are reported stolen..." Presumably a police report has some legal backing.
Cheers,
I agree with your main point, and agree that the modern Hebrew vocabulary is subject to diverse influences, including European languages.
That said, Hebrew (modern or otherwise) is not that hard to classify -- it is firmly in the Semitic language grouping, itself part of the Afroasiatic language family. Hebrew is a cousin to Arabic, and a cousin to ancient Egyptian, Touareg, Somali, and Amharic (Ethiopian).
Cheers,
From TFA, the researchers were analyzing Google's corpus of primarily English texts. Anything they have to say about the development of language can thus only be said to hold true for English .
Different languages work differently, and are subject to different pressures of usage and culture and global politics. Somehow I doubt that Mori or Arabic or German are changing in quite the same ways or at quite the same rates as English.
TL;DR: "Universal", my shiny white honky ass.
& etc.
"etc." means "et cetera". Using "&" before it means you don't know its meaning. Stop using it.
"And et cetera." Bite my shiny metal ass. We are using a dead language, ffs.
Wow, you learn something new every day. I had no idea that English was dead.
Will Netcraft confirm it? Is English dying? Film at 11.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of SSDDs! ...
... oh, wait, that's SSDDs. My bad.
But, well, I guess that still works -- that's essentially what we have now with the TSA in all our airports / bus stations / pants.
Anyone else care to dance the Charlie Foxtrot? It's awfully popular these days...
FWIW, Asgard is the "gard" of the "Æsir" (singular "As"). "Gard" is the root from which we get the modern English words garden and yard. In Norse, it apparently meant something similar, but with extended meanings of world or realm. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard.
Cheers,
WARNING -- Long post here. :) I reply to each of CAIMLAS's points, describing my related experience. TL;DR: It still comes down to the individual doctors.
My uncle lived in Tokyo for 10 years. I don't know where you went to the hospital, but here's my understanding of how it really works, based on what he's mentioned:
* You go to the doctor's office. They ask you what's wrong but don't really care.
* More than likely, they subscribe antibiotics or pain killers for it.
I think that's common to many places and many systems -- it depends a lot on the individual doctor you get to see. We had a couple shit doctors in Japan, who took the easy "here's some drugs, now go away" approach; but we mostly had better luck with good people who actually seemed to pay attention and care, and who followed through with real healthcare.
* If you need dental work done, it will more than likely result in a hasty tooth removal.
I never had much dental work done in Japan, but this doesn't jive at all with what I've heard from other zainichi gaijin (i.e. foreigners in Japan). The Japanese healthcare system's reimbursement plan for dentists is based in part on the number of visits, and I heard numerous stories of people going in for basic cleaning that was split across multiple visits -- top left one day, top right the next, bottom right a week later, and finally the bottom left, for instance -- as the dentist in question worked the system to their own gain. "Hasty tooth removal" would mean one single visit, which would mean the dentist was short-changing themselves. The more likely scenario would be many appointments spaced across weeks as the dentist did various things to fix the issue while also generating as many visits as possible.
* Any work done will likely require a full day of waiting in line at a clinic.
Maybe dental, dunno. But that was never our experience in the medical system. We were generally done within a few hours, and that includes mucking about with check-in, waiting to be called, seeing more than one doctor, and then waiting at the PX afterwards for whatever meds were needed.
* Even though it's state-funded, you still have to pay to see the doctor.
You could make the same gripe about the US mostly-private system -- Even though it's already funded through ever-rising premiums, you still have to pay to see the doctor..
The truth of the matter is that, for most things, all you pay out of pocket is a simple co-pay, which tends to be around $5 to $20 in US dollar terms. (Any meds would be separate from this, but still quite inexpensive out-of-pocket compared to the US.) If you're doing something on an in-patient basis, you can opt to pay a bit extra for a private room, for example, or for special meals -- but those are extras, and the fees weren't that high in our experience (my wife had her appendix out while we were in Japan, and due to some minor complications, she spent about a week in hospital).
* Doctor's offices and hospitals are crowded, and if you can do without going, you're better off not: you'll get a secondary infection while there, more than likely.
Very much not our experience. Japanese healthcare facilities are more decentralized than anything I've seen in the US, with oodles of smaller clinics scattered around the neighborhoods, some getting quite specialized. The huge multi-wing hospitals like you see in the US are generally (but not always) university setups. We got my wife's bicycle-accident broken arm treated at a local place of only maybe a dozen rooms, and her appendicitis treated at a similarly small surgical clinic. Meanwhile, we went to a different and much larger place for her asthma care after we moved to Tokyo. Despite being larger (large enough to get lost in, like most US hospitals I've been to), the Tokyo place we went to was never "crowde
Wow, was your doctor in Virginia a Jewish lobster-person by any chance? What sort of quack sees someone with post-nasal drip and decides it must be the ovaries!?
It's been many years, but what I recall of the ethnicities was your basic white-bread caucasians.
The line from "chronic runny nose" to "removing ovaries" did at least have a detour through "chronic gut problems", so there was some connection to the torso at least. But the quacks didn't connect the dots, and thought my wife's gut issues and abdominal sensitivity were because of ovarian cysts, rather than the true cause of irritable bowel due to chronically excess mucus and some undiagnosed minor food allergies.
My guess was that basic respiratory health management advice and the occasional albuterol inhaler prescription wouldn't make Kaiser as much bank as hospitalizing my wife and removing her organs. Cynical, sure, but I really can't think what else would have prompted their line of bizarre thinking.
Suffice it to say, we didn't follow through with the ovarian removal, and instead changed "healthcare" providers as soon as possible. (Actually, after that was when we moved to Japan for two years.)
Cheers,
I think you are missing a large chunk of where the difference shows up, waiting lists, technological improvement, underfunding, overworking, cost cutting in the places where it makes the least sense, because it is needed to make a political point, lack of flexibility, capacity planning. Then later on come the attempts at saving money with economies of scale, which will be poorly thought out, and even worse execution.
Huh. Up to here, I was right with you -- only I thought you were describing the mess of the US quasi-public / quasi-private system, where costs are cut to boost profits where possible (depending on the HMO/etc's structure -- non-profits seem to do less of this) and where various regulatory regimes make things interestingly difficult.
FWIW, I saw more problems from what you describe here in the US than I did in Japan. YMMV, and all that, of course.
...it is still better than a government run system, as I at least have choices of carriers and coverage.
Have you ever lived under a government-run healthcare system?
I'm from the US, and I've lived in Japan for years at a stretch. In Virginia, Kaiser Permanente listened to my wife's explanation of her symptoms (chronic sinusitis, excessive post-nasal-drip, resulting digestive issues, among other issues) and decided that the trouble in her gut was actually evidence that she needed her ovaries removed. Um, no.
In Tokyo, the local hospital (as part of the government-run healthcare system) listened to her symptoms, and then also to her lungs, and said "hey, you have light asthma -- here's how you manage it." Problems (mostly) solved.
Just because a healthcare system is government run doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. Just because a healthcare system is left to run on market dynamics and choices doesn't mean that it's necessarily better.
FWIW, the opposite is also true -- we've also experienced crappy medical care in Japan, and good care in the US. Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to the quality of the doctors themselves.
And let's not forget that it wasn't so much the earthquake that devastated Japan. But it was the wall of water that mowed down everything in its path.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but earthquakes are much more common in Japan than tsunami are. Remember Kobe? There's a list of major earthquakes in Japan that might put things in perspective. Saving houses from substantial earthquake damage would be a major gain for the country.
(Mind, I'm not saying that tsunami aren't an issue -- just that earthquakes are also an issue, and a different problem set.)
Cheers,
Microsoft wouldn't know anything about data center running if it were chase aftering them at full speedo.
Well, THANK YOU so very much for putting that image in my head! All that brought to mind was Ballmer chasing people while wearing nothing but a Speedo.
Where's the brain bleach?
I've always had to laugh at the name "Office 365" -- the fact this happened on Leap Day amuses me to no end.
In light of Excel's horribly buggy code of handling Leap Day, I have to wonder if Microsoft's problems here might not be because it's Leap Day? Whaddaya bet Azure comes back up all fine and dandy once the date rolls over to 1 March instead of 29 February? I'm actually serious about this conjecture, this is not just an attempt at humor.
On a different angle, does anyone else find it amusingly ironic that this service is named Azure, and now it's blue-screened? They've only gone up one letter -- now it's the ASOD.
Cheers,
I never could understand the Catholic's refusal to let priests marry, considering that one of the Apostles (Peter maybe? I'd have to look it up) said that men should marry to avoid being tempted into sinful sex, and there's surely not much that's more sinful than raping children.
I get a lot of history across my plate sideways as it were, since my wife is a history and English teacher. It's kinda fun actually -- she's already mostly vetted the books by the time they make it to the house, so I don't have to slog through lots of BS to find the good reads. :)
On-topic here, the reason the Church (big-C Catholic Church) explicitly outlawed the clergy marrying was because of clergy folks setting themselves up as little hereditary fiefdoms, complete with lines of succession and all the fun politicking and internecine warfare that usually accompanies such an arrangement. Disallowing marriage meant breaking that line of power, and is not too dissimilar from policies at the State Department that forcibly rotate diplomats -- this prevents anyone from getting too cozy (at least in theory).
In more detail, celibacy was general Church policy possibly as far back as AD 300 and is certainly mentioned in the mid-400s. This policy was often overlooked though in the hurly burly of northern European politics, and it wasn't explicitly decreed against until the mid-1000s with the Gregorian reforms. Suffice it to say that it's complicated, but the crux of the issue was inheritance and power struggles related to it.
There's plenty more online via Google, or starting from this Wikipedia article.
Cheers,
Besides, why should the tutors care? - If people waste the lessons updating Facebook instead of getting smart, they'll simply fail and thus have wasted their tuition. I hope Facebook was worth it, but the tutors shouldn't care less if the students are that stupid.
Because most teachers go into teaching to get students to learn? Because a lot of institutions tie student performance into their evaluations? Because students that aren't paying attention are more likely to distract their neighbors? etc etc...
Because teachers with no classroom management skills can't handle potential distractions? Because intro classes are too big for anyone to manage? Because a lot of institutions incorrectly apply industrial metrics to human dynamics?
There are other concerns about unfettered Internet access in the classroom that go beyond the ideals you mention. My wife has had unfettered internet access in her classrooms for seven years now, in three different schools, and has had very few problems and none recurring. Granted, she's at the middle-school / high-school level instead of university, but plenty of her students have had laptops and smartphones in class. The keys are 1) having small enough class sizes that you can manage them effectively, and 2) having the classroom management skills to get in front of any potential issues and making sure the kids are paying attention to you instead of Lady Gaga. She's found that classes upwards of about 28 students really start to spiral downwards.
As such, the many intro uni courses with 100+ students can't possibly work, unless the students themselves are invested in their own learning. That said, cutting off internet access is no guarantee that otherwise distracted students will suddenly find themselves raptly attending the teacher's words.
Ultimitely working for what you get is better for the human spirit than handouts. And there really is a trade off between the amount of handouts and the difficulty of self-sufficiency. But it's easier to just accuse people of greed and meanness than think things through, I guess.
It sounds like you're trying to put words in my mouth. At the bare minimum, you seem to have understood my post to mean "Free handouts for everybody, permanently!" That's not my point.
My point in my previous post is that the Republican party espouses certain policy goals that have been harmful to the working poor, and the party's strategists have been very successful in selling an emotional ideal of independent, belligerent, strike-it-rich boot-strapping to many of these working poor, such that they pledge their support of Republican policy even as it destroys their livelihoods. I've watched this dynamic play out for decades, and it fascinates and worries me.
In response to your post here, I quite agree with your initial statement, that working for something is generally the better option for an individual's psychological well-being. This is borne out in my own experience and from others that I've known, where people who have had to work for things in their lives tend to have a more grounded sense of worth, be hard workers, and strive to succeed; whereas people who have had things just given to them tend to not appreciate what they have, be listless, and avoid striving if possible. Of course, this is a gross generalization, it's just my own observation, YMMV, and all that.
However, cutting off social safety net funding is not a very effective way to help people work for their keep, especially when the jobs just aren't there, and instead will do much more to destabilize society and hurt people already down on their luck. And that's just a recipe for misery and violence.
Well, hopefully they all die. That way demand will dry up.
The crowd at a Republican debate cheered this approach for uninsured sick people in need of health care.
Well, one or two people in the crowd, but even at that I agree that was still a WTF?! moment.
I found it to be not a "WTF" moment, and instead more a "wow, they're being really honest about their 'fuck everyone else' attitude..."
I'm no fan of either of the major political parties in the US -- both appear to be full of unprincipled mercenaries perfectly happy to sell the country down the shitter for the right price. That said, the Republican party seems much more the party of bald-faced sociopaths, actively courting like-minded authoritarians, selling the theme of anti-social, anti-public policy, and cultivating and capitalizing upon their audience's near-complete lack of cognitive dissonance. "I've got mine; screw you!" could well be their rallying cry.
As widely reported in the US media, such as the NY Times article, "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It", the common people self-identifying as Republican are very often the very people being hurt by the espoused Republican approach to policy. More disturbingly, they've been so successfully hoodwinked that these very people have absorbed the Republican talking points about dismantling the very systems that keep themselves afloat, and happily parrot them back to anyone that asks.
That's some masterful propagandizing. I doff my cap, I really do.
So then having even a few people in a crowd, let alone a whole room, cheering for the idea that all those sick people will die off and thereby "solve" the problem of healthcare, that's just more evidence of how successful the pro-corporate, pro-wealth, anti-public idea machine has been.
All this really just helps the rest of us still capable of more rational thought to see the signs of where this might go. And it's not a pretty outlook.
act of god is a legal term, irrespective of one's belief in a deity.
If memory serves, the French-derived term force majeure indicates basically the same thing, only without the religious overtones.
Ah, yes, apparently force majeure is a superset of act of god. FWIW.
Yeah but they underestimated that EU citizens are not fucking stupid, and doped up on high fructose corn syrup and anti-depressants.
You forgot all the Adderall.
C'mon, kids -- you know the schtick! Better Living Through Chemistry!
(...goes and hides in his den and looks for that Canuckistan immigration packet...)
A few even wear their hypocrisy like a badge of honor..."I refuse to put my children through any risk of complication whatsoever since I know everyone else will risk their own children and my child will be safe anyway." They fully realize how herd immunity works, and that it's a shared risk, but they totally don't give a shit and are perfectly happy being selfish little fuckwits.
It's ridiculous how ignorant people are of history that we're going to end up having to suffer another major epidemic to squash this stupid anti-vaccination bullshit.
On the other hand, this kind of self-selected exposure to risk might mean that when that shit does hit the fan, the portions of the population most likely to be hit by said flying feces will be the ones that are riskiest to the rest of us -- and thus, statistically speaking, the safest ones to be rid of.
The Arab Spring, Occupy, Anonymous... these are but the tip of the potential iceberg, and the rich and powerful are putting some serious effort into chilling these movements right back into frozen immobility.
Their efforts are in vain
That's certainly my hope (that the fat cats are pissing into the wind), but I'm cynical enough that I won't get too happy about things until some real substantive changes come to pass. The Arab Spring has certainly changed some of the major players in that part of the world, but the worry now is how much backroom dealing is going on to ensure that whoever comes to power next in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, etc. plays by the same kowtow-to-the-corporations rules as the fellows who got kicked out. And I'm not sure if you could claim that either Occupy or Anonymous has done more yet than just putting flies in the ointment.
I'm hopeful, but cautiously so.