Someone intentionally runs down another person with their car and Ford gets sued?
Ginsu gets sued because some nutso housewife decided to stab her spouse and their spawns?
The local water company gets sued when someone drowns someone in a bath tub, because after all, the water company provided the water....
From TFA:
The Golden Shield system included a library of Falun Gong Internet activity enabling the Chinese government to identify Falun Gong members online, according to the lawsuit. The case also contains strong evidence that Cisco created systems for storing and sharing information about “forced conversion”—i.e. torture—sessions for use as training tools.
The cooperation was also documented in internal marketing literature, where a Cisco engineer described the company’s commitment to China’s security objectives, including the “douzhung” of Falun Gong practitioners. Douzhung is a term describing abuse campaigns against disfavored groups comprising of persecution and torture.
Denying countries the tools they need to commit human rights violations is not a new tactic. Even if the lawsuits fail, companies have been named and shamed. This is quite effective a lot of the time. The US has performed far fewer lethal injection executions after the EU named and shamed the companies that make the drugs. It wasn't worth the bad publicity for a tiny part of their business.
It will be interesting to see how Cisco responds. Supplying large and presumably very expensive IT systems to the Chinese government is probably a much larger business than 100 or so doses of specialized drugs that have no other good uses. It may be worth it to Cisco to try to weather the PR storm.
Aren't military medals supposed to be for noble things like bravery, heroism, or honour? What's honourable about taking out an opponent from so far away that the risk to yourself is nonexistent?
Which is exactly why their morale is so low - which in turn is what military medals are for...to raise the morale of someone doing a shit job well so that they keep doing it well.
I would say you have a poor understanding of morale then. Morale is not simply how "good" or "happy" everybody feels. Morale is also about having everyone working towards the same goal. A group of people with excellent morale believe that they are the best XYZ in the world, that they do an excellent job, and that nobody can beat them at it. The trick is that when you start to believe that, you want to defend those beliefs by taking action to ensure that the group truly is what you believe it to be. So performance and morale are linked quite closely.
The problem with the drone program is that the individuals operating the drones are really working against the best interests of the United States, and some of them know that. Every innocent person killed has a brother, father, son, uncle, cousin etc that now hates the USA and wants revenge. It's like running over dandelions with a lawnmower. Yes, the dandelion is gone, but the seeds get spewed everywhere. You can get rid of dandelions with a lawnmower. It is the wrong tool. A lot of drone operators seem to realize that they aren't helping the situation, and are only making it worse in many cases. That is what is causing their low morale. A medal isn't going to do anything to fix that. If anything, it will lower morale further.
This. My wife and I were chatting to an Aussie couple in Copenhagen who were asking where they could get a taxi. I was about to suggest Uber as an option, but my wife pointed out to them, it's a 20 minute walk and the streets are pedestrianised the whole way. And if they don't want to walk, there's a bus every 5 minutes.
Not long ago getting public transport in a foreign location (even an English speaking one) could be a challenge. But with Google maps showing public transit it has become much more accessible.
They still went and got a taxi from a local hotel AFAIK.
Determining a public transportation route that will work has never been a problem for me, in any country. There are almost always maps, signage, designated waiting areas, etc. Instructions for this are built into almost all public transportation systems, and most public transportation systems are similar in respect to routing.
Buying the ticket, the correct ticket, and managing the transaction are where I have experienced problems when visiting somewhere new. Every single country and city is different in that respect. The most frustrating problem is when there are only certain ticketing machines that accept credit cards. Systems which have multiple different possible single-use tickets you could purchase, with different costs and different advantages/drawbacks, are the worst. Payment and ticketing at the biggest problems I see with tourists using public transportation. Maps are easy for people to understand. Complicated ticketing systems are much harder.
It won't be long before China or Russia sells them a delivery vehicle, if they haven't done so already.
They have Seoul with a population of almost 10 million only 35 miles from the border and that's as good a hostage as any. North Korea must have people who know about the outside world and that they'd be obliterated if they attacked anyone. Even China might just roll over them to avoid western forces on their borders if necessary. He's realized that if you only seem "half dangerous" like Iraq, Afghanistan etc. you get invaded. If you are armed to the teeth and batshit crazy maybe you're not. He would, as far as I can tell be the first nuclear force to be invaded.
Having been to the DPRK, I don't think anyone can really understand it without visiting. 99% of what is written about the country is written by outsiders, and a substantial amount of that is written by South Korea, which is still at war with the North. So propaganda abounds.
Having said that, I don't completely understand the DPRK either, but many of the things they do make sense from their perspective. Many people there sincerely believe that South Korea and the USA plan to invade their country by force at some point. It isn't an unrealistic idea- the USA has a long history of invading and bombing places that we don't like. Every single year in April there are joint South Korea / USA exercises right off the coast of North Korea. These happen in disputed waters- Look at the Northern Limit Line and how it compares to the land border. If you look at it impartially, it is skewed in favor of the South. This is the part of the ocean where the USA and South Korea do combined exercises every single year in April. The USA and South Korea say these are defensive exercises to practice coordination of forces. I have no doubt that statement is both honest and true.
The problem is that North Korea sees that we are using landing craft in these exercises. There is one in the very first photo on the Foal Eagle wikipedia page. Hovercraft aren't generally classified as defensive vehicles. They are for making beach landings. I'm sure there are perfectly valid reasons (opening up additional fronts in a defensive war, etc) for having hovercraft in defensive military exercises. But North Korea doesn't see it that way. The US and South Korea escalate the situation every single year with the military exercises. They aren't stupid- they know they would lose a war, and they are quite understandably fearful of one. Paranoia isn't crazy when it has a solid basis in reality and history. Having nuclear weapons is the only card they can possibly play to ensure the survival of their way of life in the event of a real conflict. You may not agree with their way of life, but most people around the world are willing to defend their way of life to the death.
Poking North Korea annually with a stick hasn't worked. The only realistic action we can expect under the current circumstances is for them to continue sharpening their own sticks. It is time to stop believing that isolationism, military threats, embargoes, and sanctions can work on a country that has resisted for over 60 years. It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere. I expect the first few talks will accomplish a whole lot of nothing. However, it is my opinion that so long as the US is spending billions propping up the South Korean military, making honest efforts to to end the conflict through discussions is the least we can do.
Ascention Island is a hunk of volcanic rock stuck in the middle of the atlantic. Does a country really get jurisdiction of 234,291 sq km (a zone roughly 500km across) out of that? I suspect someone is overstating the claim.
Such claims often come down to "does anybody care strongly about this?", and in the case of an island 1000 miles from anything and with little to offer economically, militarily, or politically, I would assume that nobody really cares that much.
I agree - just publish it. If you're afraid that the population will be seduced by it, you have bigger problems than the book.
Better still, every book sold could have a percent of the proceeds donated to a Jewish charity. It wouldn't be the first time. I borrowed the idea from a January 1939 newspaper article
Last time I traveled from the US the only part of the trip that gave me a giant hassle was returning home. Pretty much everywhere else was just "scan your passport and go" but the US sent me through a two hour line to get through customs (as a citizen, mind you, there was a different "non-citizen" line) that combined with a delayed flight meant I missed my connecting flight home. Which I then had to go through a giant hassle to rebook because while the (foreign) airline I booked the flight through rebooked me on a new connecting flight, the US-based airline handling that flight refused to give me a boarding pass for that new flight. So then there was a second round of arguing with ticketing agents while jetlagged.
And that was before I had to go through US airport security because foreign airport security doesn't count and the international terminal was a separate part of the airport than the domestic terminal anyway.
It's the same with visiting Canada - getting into Canada as a US citizen is fairly easy. Returning to the US is a couple of hours as you deal with US customs.
Sounds like you haven't traveled that much to me. The USA is basically average in my opinion. Anyone complaining about US immigration hasn't experienced the circus at MNL (Manila, Philippines). It resembles a free for all. Long lines, a stink that is similar to the Paris subway, etc. Oh, and those airline fees that normally are just added on to your ticket? At MNL you have to pay them in cash. Inbound and outbound.
Let's not forget that many countries require an actual visa to travel there, even as a tourist. China's L visa (tourist visa) is a pain in the butt, and costs $140. More if you want a 3rd party company to do the inconvenient work of actually going to the Chinese consulate on your behalf. Even just getting a 48 hour transit visa in Beijing is more difficult than it should be. There are many countries that have similar requirements and ordeals.
Most USA visitors can just do the ESTA, buy their ticket, and come for a visit of up to 90 days, with very little scrutiny. That's not unreasonable in my opinion, and is much easier than many other countries. Not as easy as going from one EU country to another, but quite easy when compared to China, Russia, and a long list of other countries.
Yucca Mountain cost more than $96B dollars so far. I just read an article stating that the spent nuclear fuel is fine where it is, cooling in the ponds local to the reactors. So which is it? Do we need to spend another $96B, or more, and then not use that facility too? Is shipping nuclear waste to some repository far away safe and cost effective?
That's the wrong question. We don't have a centralized depository because that was planned to be built in Nevada, and Senator Harry Reid, arguably one of the most powerful senators, must answer to the Nevada NIMBY voters.
On the other hand, we have nuclear power plants in 30 states, all with senators who have to answer to those NIMBY interests who wanted to relocate the waste. So what we got was a big fight, a lot of money spent, and the end result of nothing.
It's fairly obvious why we tried to do something. It's also fairly obvious why we failed to accomplish anything. The real question is how can we avoid such waste in the future. There are no easy solutions to that problem. It would require a fundamental shift in how politicians behave, or major changes to how our government operates so that self-serving behaviors on the part of politicians are not rewarded.
This was for a college course, but should work for middle school students too. I distributed fun packs of M&Ms to my students and had them count the number of each color and the total number of pieces in each pack. Nice illustration of mean, median, and mode, and a good lead-in to a discussion of variation.
I was going to suggest exactly this. Over 20 years ago I had a teacher use this on me in the 2nd grade. You can cover anything from basic counting and arithmetic (K-4) all the way up to standard deviations and bell curves (High school). Did it make an impression? It must have since I still remember doing it.
The candy trick isn't just for math either. You can hand out random fun size candies and then teach economics. For small children, the lessons can be about sharing and trading in a general sense. For older students, you can give a satisfaction survey with the random candies, then instruct the students to trade candy as they like. After 5 minutes of trading, repeat the satisfaction survey. Unless the students are terrible traders, they will most likely have "generated value" and created "win-win" situations by increasing the average satisfaction. Without the experiment, many people have a hard time grasping how value can be created without actually making a physical product or providing a service.
It's always been clear why women aren't competitive with men at the 100-meter dash, but it's not clear why women aren't competitive with men at professional poker.
I think there might be other reasons for young people moving away. Their narrow-minded elders, a town council willing to be swayed by nonsensical arguments, the simple pure idiocy that seems to prevail. The people who stay are happy with the situation (or just can't get out).
He may actually be a cunning politician. The argument "solar farms don't pay taxes and don't employ anybody permanently" isn't strong enough to extract concessions from whatever developer is putting the solar farm together. If you want to extract concessions, you have to show that you can seriously threaten the project unless you get what you want. Is that extortion and/or payola? Maybe it is. An industrial project that will make lots of money and pay little or nothing in taxes isn't my idea of how things are supposed to work either though.
This politician used the strongest card available to him- capitalizing on the fears of the people he represents.
The only way to fix this problem is by taxing the products when they enter the country.
Except we have treaties that forbid us from doing that. If we violate trade agreements, other countries will retaliate, and the world economy will spiral downward. For an example of this scenario actually happening, Google for "The Great Depression".
It's ridiculous to allow corporations to hide billions overseas.
It is ridiculous for America to tax profits on a product made in England and sold in France. It is ridiculous to have absurd tax laws that encourage companies to move jobs overseas. We should tax domestic sales, or domestic revenue, or domestic payrolls, or even domestic profits. But instead we tax worldwide profits, of only companies domiciled in America, giving them a huge incentive to go elsewhere. No other country has a tax like that. It is economic self-sabotage.
No, that's the price these companies need to pay if they want to enjoy the strongest IP laws in the world. If they want to have HQ in China or India, let them. Viagra is about $25 a pill here in the US, because Pfizer has patents and strong laws to back it up. The same pill is about 30 cents in India. Some of that is due to "what the market will bear" and some is probably due to inflation caused by most patients having no idea what a drug actually costs. But India's policy on drug patents (they don't recognize them as valid) has quite a lot to do with it also.
This a million times over. The three most recent examples being South Korea, Japan and Germany. In all instances we are still there more than half a century later. Well OK I am British so we are not technically in South Korea or Japan these days, but we still have bases in Germany 70 years later.
That only works if the host nation is willing to be your buddy and ally. In the middle east, everybody hates each other. They hate the USA too, to a slightly smaller extent. Any politician in that region can score political points by pot-shotting the US, and bringing the various groups together in their shared distain for the USA. If you're a politician in a country that has serious issues, you'd be foolish to not try deflecting blame and anger at an overseas country. It works 90% of the time. Keep in mind that many of the borders in the middle east were drawn not based on culture or religious differences, or around old and established borders. They were drawn up after the end of WWI by France and the UK with a ruler.
The only reason we got away with it in Japan and Germany was because both countries were completely and utterly destroyed. The remaining leaders could take the carrot and play ball, resign, or refuse to play ball and be forcibly removed and/or accused of war crimes. There was not much choice.
Korea was a completely different situation. The Korean war has not officially ended, so being best buddies with the #1 military power in the world made sense, and still makes sense, no matter the cost.
Given that there are several wealthy countries in the middle east waging proxy wars for their own selfish reasons, sectarian civil wars, the whole "new cold war" dynamic shaping up, plus widespread terrorism against basically any kind of target, civilian or military, a Japan/Germany style occupation can not work in the middle east. It probably never could.
WTF is with the US utility tie-in? Did California declare war on Nevada overnight? Is the South risin' again?
The problem here is that there's a low-grade civil war brewing in Crimea after Russia's invasion. Wake me up when/if the US has a similar problem. Zzzzzz....
It's an odd tie-in, but the point that the US has this kind of vulnerability is valid. Especially in the Southwest. California's environmental regulations are so strict that it is easier to build a power station just on the Utah border and then run the power line all the way to Los Angeles. Arizona has similar issues, where the power plants are in the north of the state, but supply power to the cities. In Arizona's case, they depend on that power for pumping water also. You would not have to sever many lines to create real and serious problems. The difficulty would be in severing them in a way which could not be repaired quickly.
There are more important things. Like the behavior of professional bowlers. I mean those guys make footballers look like school girls.
And let's get into the problems in the Gin Rummy and Bridge communities. I mean come on! There are more important things to talk about!
Curling is an interesting sport because the physical fitness requirements aren't terribly rigorous. Anyone who can lift/push 40 pounds or sweep a broom continuously for about 60 seconds can play. That's a very low bar compared to other sports. It is much more of a game of skill and teamwork than a game of pure athleticism. That means that players can continue playing competitively into their 30s, 40s, and even 50s. It's refreshing to watch a game where some players have decades of experience. You don't see that in most other sports where ~30 can be a common retirement age.
I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.
My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear.
No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't.
The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits.
These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.
That's completely fine. Don't forget that sports are just games. The rules of the game don't matter, as long as the rules are the same for everybody. Rules are often, and perhaps are unavoidably, arbitrary. I don't see a problem with that. Many rules in sports are arbitrary. Some rules arbitrarily try to make the game more exciting. Some rules draw a line on a level of risk to the players or spectators at some arbitrary point and prohibit dangerous behavior. Some rules arbitrarily try to ensure that the "rightful winner" should always win. As long as the rules are set and made known to all players well in advance, I have a hard time feeling any outrage, no matter how arbitrary the rules are.
I've been stranded waiting for a taxi. The taxi that was sent never made it. This happens about 50% of the time for a pickup where hailing is common, and never in locations where hailing isn't common. Taxis are allowed to take a hail while going to a dispatched call. If the dispatched call is too short of a distance, they'll try to get out of it. An airport fare is much better than a shorter in town fare.
That you think it shouldn't happen isn't proof that it doesn't.
Uber doesn't steal from taxis. People hail taxis. People dispatch Uber. Dispatched cars in NYC don't need medallions. They are private cars.
Uber drivers play all sorts of games with canceling fares which are too short or not "ideal" for them. And Uber's real-time map is a lie, which is obvious in several places that I have tried it. At least the taxi companies are regulated so there are complaint channels and potential consequences. With Uber you're relying on a sleazy company to police themselves.
Given that this is specifically about NYC, which I've done a bit of study on, it's actually worse than you say.
Similar story here. The Taxi plate was up to about $400k prior to Uber, but this was driven by a corrupt industry that invested huge dollars in lobbying to keep the plate pool deliberately small.
Technology has made the whole concept of taxi plates obsolete. It was a form of regulation to try and keep some sanity in an era where there zero surveillance or tracking. These days with electronic driving records, insurance histories, GPS, and camera in everyone's hand, there is simply no need for such outdated monopolies.
Clearly you have never been to a place with too many taxis. Having too many taxis is a drag on society as empty taxis occupy valuable space on the roads, take up parking spaces on the sides of streets, and add unnecessary pollution and noise.
The medallion system is a market-based system that tried to solve that problem. Do you have an idea that might work better? The problem of "too many taxis" may not exist for your city now, but if the market was completely opened up it could become a major problem very fast. Good luck trying to close the barn door at that point.
A similar idea is to use electric vehicles in people's garages to "time shift" demand. Nevada Power (and I'm sure others) offers a rate plan for EV owners where power is much cheaper after 11pm and more expensive in the afternoons. Cars can already be set to start to wait until a set time to begin charging.
Power companies spend a lot of money building "peaker" power plants that are only needed between 4pm and 7pm. Theoretically, when a power company hits its supply limit, it could put a call out to any EV currently plugged in saying "I'll pay 6 cents per kWh for what's in your battery". If they don't get as much power as they need, they would put out another request at 7 cents. If you paid 4 cents the previous night, that's a good deal for everyone. The car would be set up with rules about what price you want and how much power you're willing to part with.
If I had an electric car, there is no way in hell that I would take that deal. Intentionally increasing the charge/discharge cycles of my $x0,000 car battery to at least double the normal usage to make a few pennies is incredibly foolish.
The first hint that this isn't purely about "liberal demoncrap" is that it is filed under business, not environment. The second hint is that they're talking about aging plants that won't be shut down if they are upgraded with carbon capture. It is also possible that other upgrades or maintenance is necessary, but unmentioned. In other words, cost is a factor here. The third hint are mentions of economic and political issues, such as energy security.
There are other subtle (as in subtle as being hit by a sledgehammer) issues being mentioned, none of which indicate that environmental considerations are secondary issues.
There are two big problems with your argument-
1. Nobody has demonstrated carbon capture using the full exhaust stream. Typically they extract carbon from only 1 to 10% of the exhaust gasses. The reason is because the amount of carbon is large, and the parasitic losses from even a partial treatment system make the plant uneconomical. These projects are just good enough to attract government subsidies and grants. A full scale system would never be economically viable in most countries.
2. Nobody is going to install such a system on an old coal plant without a fat government subsidy. The economics aren't viable, especially given that the government may change their mind in 5 years.
Killing coal like this is like saying "all girls on the cheerleading team must be slim and petite". It sounds like a great idea until you need to make a pyramid.
"Everyone" says you'll go nowhere without a college degree. But guess what? This is neither what many kids want nor society needs.
Vocational schools need to amp up the sales pitch. Machinists of the Tools and Die variety make 40$ and 50$ an hour, and that ain't bad.
Some people just are not interested in the 4 year menu.
Some don't need to amp up the sales pitch. All the technical schools I know [Houston area, welding / aircraft technology / millwright type programs] are full and have acceptance rates of ~25%. That's more exclusive than the university I went to. They can afford to be very picky also, rejecting anyone who has a criminal record, and expelling anyone or who shows up late (even 5 minutes late) 3 times within one semester. They don't have a problem finding students. Their students don't have problems finding jobs. They don't have a problem finding companies to donate training equipment either, in exchange for that company getting first dibs on their students.
In other parts of the country, maybe these are problems. But in my industry, in Houston, technical schools are constrained more by capacity than anything else. Maybe this will all come crashing down as the oil crisis drags on. Maybe it won't. One thing to keep in mind though is that with the competition for welders and technicians like it is, the welders and technicians have power. I am a white collar worker in a Houston manufacturing shop. You can't have a manufacturing shop in Houston without AC. Nobody will work there. You can't have a disagreeable foreman. Nobody will work for them over the long term. Companies are being forced to build up loyalty through good treatment of their workers. If you want the good workers, you have to be a good company too. A paycheck alone is not enough in this town.
We might very well have too many college grads. I think we do. We should be careful not to tilt the rudder too far in the other direction, however. Labor markets are like a slow-turning supertanker, results don't appear until long after the rudder has been turned. We've all seen, and are still seeing, the results of the "we need more IT workers!" movement. Too many workers in a given industry creates just as many problems as too few.
This. I'd like to see Congress adopt some sort of revision control system. Wanna modify a bill? Check it out, make your change, check it in. Lotsa changes? Branch it. Every commit has somebody's name on it, no more "gee, I dunno how that got in there" BS.
That wouldn't work either. Senior congresspeople bully their juniors all the time into doing their dirty work. Want someone to support you in getting on the XYZ committee? You better sneak their pork into the "must-pass" bill for them. Etc. It's all power and influence behind the scenes.
It isn't a money grab. The PE test in the USA is very difficult. Most engineers can't pass it. I studied about 6 hours a week for an entire year, and while I passed, I wasn't sure I was going to. The only book lookups I did were related to data table lookup, not "how to solve this problem". I calculated as fast as I could, wrote furiously for 8 hours, and still ran out of time and had to leave some questions unanswered. It's a hard test.
The PE test proves 2 things- the person holding it probably knows what they are doing in their field of expertise, and they have the dedication to work on a long-term project that doesn't show immediate results. Anybody can flub their way through college, and college difficulty varies by school and even by professor. The PE test is the same for everybody (in a given subject). There are many useless pieces of paper available to an engineer, but the PE is not one of them.
The PE in other countries does differ, and some may be money grabs. The USA PE is not.
Yes, they do. We get a message at least weekly for the former residents of our house, trying to collect various debts. Note, I've lived there over 9 years and we still get those calls. It's basically harassment, but there isn't much I can do because it's a bunch of different debt collectors, rather than just one company.
You can prepare a standard form letter and send it to every debt collector which calls. You can use this one-
I am writing in response to your letter or phone call dated (DATE). I do not believe that I owe this debt or what you say I owe.
Pursuant to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Section 809(b), Validating Debts:
“If the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period described in subsection (a) that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, or that the consumer requests the name and address of the original creditor, the debt collector shall cease collection of the debt, or any disputed portion thereof, until the debt collector obtains verification of the debt or any copy of a judgment, or the name and address of the original creditor, and a copy of such verification or judgment, or name and address of the original creditor, is mailed to the consumer by the debt collector.”
I respectfully request that you provide me with the following:
1. The amount of the debt;
2. The name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed;
3. Verification or copy of any judgment (if applicable);
4. Proof that you are licensed to collect debts in the state of [STATE]
5. Proof of the last payment made on the account.
I am asserting my rights under the federal and state Fair Debt Collection Practices Acts and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, including these rights:
Because I have disputed this debt in writing within 30 days of receipt of your initial notice, you must obtain verification of the debt or a copy of the judgment against me and mail these items to me at your expense.
You cannot add interest or fees except those allowed by the original contract or state law.
Any attempt to collect this debt without validating it violates the FDCPA.
Also be advised that I am keeping accurate records of all correspondence from you and your company, including recording all phone calls, and I will not hesitate to report violations of the law to my State Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau.
I have disputed this debt. Therefore, until it is validated, your information concerning this debt is assumed to be inaccurate. Accordingly, if you have already reported this debt to any credit-reporting agency (CRA) or Credit Bureau (CB), then you must immediately inform them of my dispute with this debt. Reporting information that you know to be inaccurate or failing to report information correctly violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act 1681s-2. Should you pursue a judgment without validating this debt, I will inform the judge and request that the case be dismissed based on your failure to comply with the FDCPA.
Finally, if you do not own this debt, I demand that you immediately send a copy of this dispute letter to the original creditor so they are also aware that I dispute the debt.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
If they contact you again after receiving such a letter, even once, you can sue them. Up to $1000 per incident. Plus they would have to pay big fines $50-100k to the government as well. It's enough of a deterrent that I have never been contacted again after sending such a letter.
>> 90% of my after-tax income, and throwing that in student loans...$22,434 worth of student loans, and has paid it down to $16,449...four months
That's only $1,500 paid down on student loans per month. If that's 90% of his after-tax income (even in California), he's making maybe $22K/year, and spending just $150 month on other stuff.
Yeah, something doesn't make sense. I owed slightly more than him at the start and could have paid it off in a couple years if I was willing to throw $1000/month at them rather than the minimum of $300-something.
According to his blog-
"I'll be investing approximately 95% of all of my post-tax, post-401k, post-benefits income"
. Depending on what rate he has on his student loans, it is very possible that he decided he should max out his 401k, pay down his truck loan, or invest the money. I dragged out my college loans for a very long time because at the end, the rate was 0% (several years of cumulative 0.25% rate decreases for always paying on time). It would have been stupid to pay it off sooner. Maybe he paid attention in accounting 101.
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this is just ridiculous.
What's next?
Someone intentionally runs down another person with their car and Ford gets sued?
Ginsu gets sued because some nutso housewife decided to stab her spouse and their spawns?
The local water company gets sued when someone drowns someone in a bath tub, because after all, the water company provided the water....
From TFA:
The Golden Shield system included a library of Falun Gong Internet activity enabling the Chinese government to identify Falun Gong members online, according to the lawsuit. The case also contains strong evidence that Cisco created systems for storing and sharing information about “forced conversion”—i.e. torture—sessions for use as training tools.
The cooperation was also documented in internal marketing literature, where a Cisco engineer described the company’s commitment to China’s security objectives, including the “douzhung” of Falun Gong practitioners. Douzhung is a term describing abuse campaigns against disfavored groups comprising of persecution and torture.
Denying countries the tools they need to commit human rights violations is not a new tactic. Even if the lawsuits fail, companies have been named and shamed. This is quite effective a lot of the time. The US has performed far fewer lethal injection executions after the EU named and shamed the companies that make the drugs. It wasn't worth the bad publicity for a tiny part of their business.
It will be interesting to see how Cisco responds. Supplying large and presumably very expensive IT systems to the Chinese government is probably a much larger business than 100 or so doses of specialized drugs that have no other good uses. It may be worth it to Cisco to try to weather the PR storm.
For what?
Aren't military medals supposed to be for noble things like bravery, heroism, or honour? What's honourable about taking out an opponent from so far away that the risk to yourself is nonexistent?
Which is exactly why their morale is so low - which in turn is what military medals are for...to raise the morale of someone doing a shit job well so that they keep doing it well.
I would say you have a poor understanding of morale then. Morale is not simply how "good" or "happy" everybody feels. Morale is also about having everyone working towards the same goal. A group of people with excellent morale believe that they are the best XYZ in the world, that they do an excellent job, and that nobody can beat them at it. The trick is that when you start to believe that, you want to defend those beliefs by taking action to ensure that the group truly is what you believe it to be. So performance and morale are linked quite closely.
The problem with the drone program is that the individuals operating the drones are really working against the best interests of the United States, and some of them know that. Every innocent person killed has a brother, father, son, uncle, cousin etc that now hates the USA and wants revenge. It's like running over dandelions with a lawnmower. Yes, the dandelion is gone, but the seeds get spewed everywhere. You can get rid of dandelions with a lawnmower. It is the wrong tool. A lot of drone operators seem to realize that they aren't helping the situation, and are only making it worse in many cases. That is what is causing their low morale. A medal isn't going to do anything to fix that. If anything, it will lower morale further.
This. My wife and I were chatting to an Aussie couple in Copenhagen who were asking where they could get a taxi. I was about to suggest Uber as an option, but my wife pointed out to them, it's a 20 minute walk and the streets are pedestrianised the whole way. And if they don't want to walk, there's a bus every 5 minutes.
Not long ago getting public transport in a foreign location (even an English speaking one) could be a challenge. But with Google maps showing public transit it has become much more accessible.
They still went and got a taxi from a local hotel AFAIK.
Determining a public transportation route that will work has never been a problem for me, in any country. There are almost always maps, signage, designated waiting areas, etc. Instructions for this are built into almost all public transportation systems, and most public transportation systems are similar in respect to routing.
Buying the ticket, the correct ticket, and managing the transaction are where I have experienced problems when visiting somewhere new. Every single country and city is different in that respect. The most frustrating problem is when there are only certain ticketing machines that accept credit cards. Systems which have multiple different possible single-use tickets you could purchase, with different costs and different advantages/drawbacks, are the worst. Payment and ticketing at the biggest problems I see with tourists using public transportation. Maps are easy for people to understand. Complicated ticketing systems are much harder.
It won't be long before China or Russia sells them a delivery vehicle, if they haven't done so already.
They have Seoul with a population of almost 10 million only 35 miles from the border and that's as good a hostage as any. North Korea must have people who know about the outside world and that they'd be obliterated if they attacked anyone. Even China might just roll over them to avoid western forces on their borders if necessary. He's realized that if you only seem "half dangerous" like Iraq, Afghanistan etc. you get invaded. If you are armed to the teeth and batshit crazy maybe you're not. He would, as far as I can tell be the first nuclear force to be invaded.
Having been to the DPRK, I don't think anyone can really understand it without visiting. 99% of what is written about the country is written by outsiders, and a substantial amount of that is written by South Korea, which is still at war with the North. So propaganda abounds.
Having said that, I don't completely understand the DPRK either, but many of the things they do make sense from their perspective. Many people there sincerely believe that South Korea and the USA plan to invade their country by force at some point. It isn't an unrealistic idea- the USA has a long history of invading and bombing places that we don't like. Every single year in April there are joint South Korea / USA exercises right off the coast of North Korea. These happen in disputed waters- Look at the Northern Limit Line and how it compares to the land border. If you look at it impartially, it is skewed in favor of the South. This is the part of the ocean where the USA and South Korea do combined exercises every single year in April. The USA and South Korea say these are defensive exercises to practice coordination of forces. I have no doubt that statement is both honest and true.
The problem is that North Korea sees that we are using landing craft in these exercises. There is one in the very first photo on the Foal Eagle wikipedia page. Hovercraft aren't generally classified as defensive vehicles. They are for making beach landings. I'm sure there are perfectly valid reasons (opening up additional fronts in a defensive war, etc) for having hovercraft in defensive military exercises. But North Korea doesn't see it that way. The US and South Korea escalate the situation every single year with the military exercises. They aren't stupid- they know they would lose a war, and they are quite understandably fearful of one. Paranoia isn't crazy when it has a solid basis in reality and history. Having nuclear weapons is the only card they can possibly play to ensure the survival of their way of life in the event of a real conflict. You may not agree with their way of life, but most people around the world are willing to defend their way of life to the death.
Poking North Korea annually with a stick hasn't worked. The only realistic action we can expect under the current circumstances is for them to continue sharpening their own sticks. It is time to stop believing that isolationism, military threats, embargoes, and sanctions can work on a country that has resisted for over 60 years. It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere. I expect the first few talks will accomplish a whole lot of nothing. However, it is my opinion that so long as the US is spending billions propping up the South Korean military, making honest efforts to to end the conflict through discussions is the least we can do.
Ascention Island is a hunk of volcanic rock stuck in the middle of the atlantic. Does a country really get jurisdiction of 234,291 sq km (a zone roughly 500km across) out of that? I suspect someone is overstating the claim.
Something like this would probably go through the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the IMO (International Maritime Organization). The list of member states of the IMO does include China and Russia, as well as many other countries (including the nearest ones of significance). It has probably been discussed at the UN as well, since IMO and UN matters usually overlap. Or maybe it wasn't discussed at all, and the UK just did this unilaterally.
Such claims often come down to "does anybody care strongly about this?", and in the case of an island 1000 miles from anything and with little to offer economically, militarily, or politically, I would assume that nobody really cares that much.
I agree - just publish it. If you're afraid that the population will be seduced by it, you have bigger problems than the book.
Better still, every book sold could have a percent of the proceeds donated to a Jewish charity. It wouldn't be the first time. I borrowed the idea from a January 1939 newspaper article
The hassle is returning to the US.
Last time I traveled from the US the only part of the trip that gave me a giant hassle was returning home. Pretty much everywhere else was just "scan your passport and go" but the US sent me through a two hour line to get through customs (as a citizen, mind you, there was a different "non-citizen" line) that combined with a delayed flight meant I missed my connecting flight home. Which I then had to go through a giant hassle to rebook because while the (foreign) airline I booked the flight through rebooked me on a new connecting flight, the US-based airline handling that flight refused to give me a boarding pass for that new flight. So then there was a second round of arguing with ticketing agents while jetlagged.
And that was before I had to go through US airport security because foreign airport security doesn't count and the international terminal was a separate part of the airport than the domestic terminal anyway.
It's the same with visiting Canada - getting into Canada as a US citizen is fairly easy. Returning to the US is a couple of hours as you deal with US customs.
Sounds like you haven't traveled that much to me. The USA is basically average in my opinion. Anyone complaining about US immigration hasn't experienced the circus at MNL (Manila, Philippines). It resembles a free for all. Long lines, a stink that is similar to the Paris subway, etc. Oh, and those airline fees that normally are just added on to your ticket? At MNL you have to pay them in cash. Inbound and outbound.
Let's not forget that many countries require an actual visa to travel there, even as a tourist. China's L visa (tourist visa) is a pain in the butt, and costs $140. More if you want a 3rd party company to do the inconvenient work of actually going to the Chinese consulate on your behalf. Even just getting a 48 hour transit visa in Beijing is more difficult than it should be. There are many countries that have similar requirements and ordeals.
Most USA visitors can just do the ESTA, buy their ticket, and come for a visit of up to 90 days, with very little scrutiny. That's not unreasonable in my opinion, and is much easier than many other countries. Not as easy as going from one EU country to another, but quite easy when compared to China, Russia, and a long list of other countries.
Yucca Mountain cost more than $96B dollars so far. I just read an article stating that the spent nuclear fuel is fine where it is, cooling in the ponds local to the reactors. So which is it? Do we need to spend another $96B, or more, and then not use that facility too? Is shipping nuclear waste to some repository far away safe and cost effective?
That's the wrong question. We don't have a centralized depository because that was planned to be built in Nevada, and Senator Harry Reid, arguably one of the most powerful senators, must answer to the Nevada NIMBY voters.
On the other hand, we have nuclear power plants in 30 states, all with senators who have to answer to those NIMBY interests who wanted to relocate the waste. So what we got was a big fight, a lot of money spent, and the end result of nothing.
It's fairly obvious why we tried to do something. It's also fairly obvious why we failed to accomplish anything. The real question is how can we avoid such waste in the future. There are no easy solutions to that problem. It would require a fundamental shift in how politicians behave, or major changes to how our government operates so that self-serving behaviors on the part of politicians are not rewarded.
This was for a college course, but should work for middle school students too. I distributed fun packs of M&Ms to my students and had them count the number of each color and the total number of pieces in each pack. Nice illustration of mean, median, and mode, and a good lead-in to a discussion of variation.
I was going to suggest exactly this. Over 20 years ago I had a teacher use this on me in the 2nd grade. You can cover anything from basic counting and arithmetic (K-4) all the way up to standard deviations and bell curves (High school). Did it make an impression? It must have since I still remember doing it.
The candy trick isn't just for math either. You can hand out random fun size candies and then teach economics. For small children, the lessons can be about sharing and trading in a general sense. For older students, you can give a satisfaction survey with the random candies, then instruct the students to trade candy as they like. After 5 minutes of trading, repeat the satisfaction survey. Unless the students are terrible traders, they will most likely have "generated value" and created "win-win" situations by increasing the average satisfaction. Without the experiment, many people have a hard time grasping how value can be created without actually making a physical product or providing a service.
It's always been clear why women aren't competitive with men at the 100-meter dash, but it's not clear why women aren't competitive with men at professional poker.
Most likely it's the testosterone.
I think there might be other reasons for young people moving away. Their narrow-minded elders, a town council willing to be swayed by nonsensical arguments, the simple pure idiocy that seems to prevail. The people who stay are happy with the situation (or just can't get out).
He may actually be a cunning politician. The argument "solar farms don't pay taxes and don't employ anybody permanently" isn't strong enough to extract concessions from whatever developer is putting the solar farm together. If you want to extract concessions, you have to show that you can seriously threaten the project unless you get what you want. Is that extortion and/or payola? Maybe it is. An industrial project that will make lots of money and pay little or nothing in taxes isn't my idea of how things are supposed to work either though.
This politician used the strongest card available to him- capitalizing on the fears of the people he represents.
The only way to fix this problem is by taxing the products when they enter the country.
Except we have treaties that forbid us from doing that. If we violate trade agreements, other countries will retaliate, and the world economy will spiral downward. For an example of this scenario actually happening, Google for "The Great Depression".
It's ridiculous to allow corporations to hide billions overseas.
It is ridiculous for America to tax profits on a product made in England and sold in France. It is ridiculous to have absurd tax laws that encourage companies to move jobs overseas. We should tax domestic sales, or domestic revenue, or domestic payrolls, or even domestic profits. But instead we tax worldwide profits, of only companies domiciled in America, giving them a huge incentive to go elsewhere. No other country has a tax like that. It is economic self-sabotage.
No, that's the price these companies need to pay if they want to enjoy the strongest IP laws in the world. If they want to have HQ in China or India, let them. Viagra is about $25 a pill here in the US, because Pfizer has patents and strong laws to back it up. The same pill is about 30 cents in India. Some of that is due to "what the market will bear" and some is probably due to inflation caused by most patients having no idea what a drug actually costs. But India's policy on drug patents (they don't recognize them as valid) has quite a lot to do with it also.
This a million times over. The three most recent examples being South Korea, Japan and Germany. In all instances we are still there more than half a century later. Well OK I am British so we are not technically in South Korea or Japan these days, but we still have bases in Germany 70 years later.
That only works if the host nation is willing to be your buddy and ally. In the middle east, everybody hates each other. They hate the USA too, to a slightly smaller extent. Any politician in that region can score political points by pot-shotting the US, and bringing the various groups together in their shared distain for the USA. If you're a politician in a country that has serious issues, you'd be foolish to not try deflecting blame and anger at an overseas country. It works 90% of the time. Keep in mind that many of the borders in the middle east were drawn not based on culture or religious differences, or around old and established borders. They were drawn up after the end of WWI by France and the UK with a ruler.
The only reason we got away with it in Japan and Germany was because both countries were completely and utterly destroyed. The remaining leaders could take the carrot and play ball, resign, or refuse to play ball and be forcibly removed and/or accused of war crimes. There was not much choice.
Korea was a completely different situation. The Korean war has not officially ended, so being best buddies with the #1 military power in the world made sense, and still makes sense, no matter the cost.
Given that there are several wealthy countries in the middle east waging proxy wars for their own selfish reasons, sectarian civil wars, the whole "new cold war" dynamic shaping up, plus widespread terrorism against basically any kind of target, civilian or military, a Japan/Germany style occupation can not work in the middle east. It probably never could.
>> Defending the power grid in the United States
WTF is with the US utility tie-in? Did California declare war on Nevada overnight? Is the South risin' again?
The problem here is that there's a low-grade civil war brewing in Crimea after Russia's invasion. Wake me up when/if the US has a similar problem. Zzzzzz....
It's an odd tie-in, but the point that the US has this kind of vulnerability is valid. Especially in the Southwest. California's environmental regulations are so strict that it is easier to build a power station just on the Utah border and then run the power line all the way to Los Angeles. Arizona has similar issues, where the power plants are in the north of the state, but supply power to the cities. In Arizona's case, they depend on that power for pumping water also. You would not have to sever many lines to create real and serious problems. The difficulty would be in severing them in a way which could not be repaired quickly.
When controversies in curling become news, ...
There are more important things. Like the behavior of professional bowlers. I mean those guys make footballers look like school girls.
And let's get into the problems in the Gin Rummy and Bridge communities. I mean come on! There are more important things to talk about!
Curling is an interesting sport because the physical fitness requirements aren't terribly rigorous. Anyone who can lift/push 40 pounds or sweep a broom continuously for about 60 seconds can play. That's a very low bar compared to other sports. It is much more of a game of skill and teamwork than a game of pure athleticism. That means that players can continue playing competitively into their 30s, 40s, and even 50s. It's refreshing to watch a game where some players have decades of experience. You don't see that in most other sports where ~30 can be a common retirement age.
I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.
My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear. No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't. The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits. These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.
That's completely fine. Don't forget that sports are just games. The rules of the game don't matter, as long as the rules are the same for everybody. Rules are often, and perhaps are unavoidably, arbitrary. I don't see a problem with that. Many rules in sports are arbitrary. Some rules arbitrarily try to make the game more exciting. Some rules draw a line on a level of risk to the players or spectators at some arbitrary point and prohibit dangerous behavior. Some rules arbitrarily try to ensure that the "rightful winner" should always win. As long as the rules are set and made known to all players well in advance, I have a hard time feeling any outrage, no matter how arbitrary the rules are.
I've been stranded waiting for a taxi. The taxi that was sent never made it. This happens about 50% of the time for a pickup where hailing is common, and never in locations where hailing isn't common. Taxis are allowed to take a hail while going to a dispatched call. If the dispatched call is too short of a distance, they'll try to get out of it. An airport fare is much better than a shorter in town fare. That you think it shouldn't happen isn't proof that it doesn't. Uber doesn't steal from taxis. People hail taxis. People dispatch Uber. Dispatched cars in NYC don't need medallions. They are private cars.
Uber drivers play all sorts of games with canceling fares which are too short or not "ideal" for them. And Uber's real-time map is a lie, which is obvious in several places that I have tried it. At least the taxi companies are regulated so there are complaint channels and potential consequences. With Uber you're relying on a sleazy company to police themselves.
Given that this is specifically about NYC, which I've done a bit of study on, it's actually worse than you say.
Similar story here. The Taxi plate was up to about $400k prior to Uber, but this was driven by a corrupt industry that invested huge dollars in lobbying to keep the plate pool deliberately small. Technology has made the whole concept of taxi plates obsolete. It was a form of regulation to try and keep some sanity in an era where there zero surveillance or tracking. These days with electronic driving records, insurance histories, GPS, and camera in everyone's hand, there is simply no need for such outdated monopolies.
Clearly you have never been to a place with too many taxis. Having too many taxis is a drag on society as empty taxis occupy valuable space on the roads, take up parking spaces on the sides of streets, and add unnecessary pollution and noise.
The medallion system is a market-based system that tried to solve that problem. Do you have an idea that might work better? The problem of "too many taxis" may not exist for your city now, but if the market was completely opened up it could become a major problem very fast. Good luck trying to close the barn door at that point.
A similar idea is to use electric vehicles in people's garages to "time shift" demand. Nevada Power (and I'm sure others) offers a rate plan for EV owners where power is much cheaper after 11pm and more expensive in the afternoons. Cars can already be set to start to wait until a set time to begin charging.
Power companies spend a lot of money building "peaker" power plants that are only needed between 4pm and 7pm. Theoretically, when a power company hits its supply limit, it could put a call out to any EV currently plugged in saying "I'll pay 6 cents per kWh for what's in your battery". If they don't get as much power as they need, they would put out another request at 7 cents. If you paid 4 cents the previous night, that's a good deal for everyone. The car would be set up with rules about what price you want and how much power you're willing to part with.
If I had an electric car, there is no way in hell that I would take that deal. Intentionally increasing the charge/discharge cycles of my $x0,000 car battery to at least double the normal usage to make a few pennies is incredibly foolish.
Read the bloody article.
The first hint that this isn't purely about "liberal demoncrap" is that it is filed under business, not environment. The second hint is that they're talking about aging plants that won't be shut down if they are upgraded with carbon capture. It is also possible that other upgrades or maintenance is necessary, but unmentioned. In other words, cost is a factor here. The third hint are mentions of economic and political issues, such as energy security.
There are other subtle (as in subtle as being hit by a sledgehammer) issues being mentioned, none of which indicate that environmental considerations are secondary issues.
There are two big problems with your argument-
1. Nobody has demonstrated carbon capture using the full exhaust stream. Typically they extract carbon from only 1 to 10% of the exhaust gasses. The reason is because the amount of carbon is large, and the parasitic losses from even a partial treatment system make the plant uneconomical. These projects are just good enough to attract government subsidies and grants. A full scale system would never be economically viable in most countries.
2. Nobody is going to install such a system on an old coal plant without a fat government subsidy. The economics aren't viable, especially given that the government may change their mind in 5 years.
Killing coal like this is like saying "all girls on the cheerleading team must be slim and petite". It sounds like a great idea until you need to make a pyramid.
"Everyone" says you'll go nowhere without a college degree. But guess what? This is neither what many kids want nor society needs.
Vocational schools need to amp up the sales pitch. Machinists of the Tools and Die variety make 40$ and 50$ an hour, and that ain't bad.
Some people just are not interested in the 4 year menu.
Some don't need to amp up the sales pitch. All the technical schools I know [Houston area, welding / aircraft technology / millwright type programs] are full and have acceptance rates of ~25%. That's more exclusive than the university I went to. They can afford to be very picky also, rejecting anyone who has a criminal record, and expelling anyone or who shows up late (even 5 minutes late) 3 times within one semester. They don't have a problem finding students. Their students don't have problems finding jobs. They don't have a problem finding companies to donate training equipment either, in exchange for that company getting first dibs on their students.
In other parts of the country, maybe these are problems. But in my industry, in Houston, technical schools are constrained more by capacity than anything else. Maybe this will all come crashing down as the oil crisis drags on. Maybe it won't. One thing to keep in mind though is that with the competition for welders and technicians like it is, the welders and technicians have power. I am a white collar worker in a Houston manufacturing shop. You can't have a manufacturing shop in Houston without AC. Nobody will work there. You can't have a disagreeable foreman. Nobody will work for them over the long term. Companies are being forced to build up loyalty through good treatment of their workers. If you want the good workers, you have to be a good company too. A paycheck alone is not enough in this town.
We might very well have too many college grads. I think we do. We should be careful not to tilt the rudder too far in the other direction, however. Labor markets are like a slow-turning supertanker, results don't appear until long after the rudder has been turned. We've all seen, and are still seeing, the results of the "we need more IT workers!" movement. Too many workers in a given industry creates just as many problems as too few.
This. I'd like to see Congress adopt some sort of revision control system. Wanna modify a bill? Check it out, make your change, check it in. Lotsa changes? Branch it. Every commit has somebody's name on it, no more "gee, I dunno how that got in there" BS.
That wouldn't work either. Senior congresspeople bully their juniors all the time into doing their dirty work. Want someone to support you in getting on the XYZ committee? You better sneak their pork into the "must-pass" bill for them. Etc. It's all power and influence behind the scenes.
It isn't a money grab. The PE test in the USA is very difficult. Most engineers can't pass it. I studied about 6 hours a week for an entire year, and while I passed, I wasn't sure I was going to. The only book lookups I did were related to data table lookup, not "how to solve this problem". I calculated as fast as I could, wrote furiously for 8 hours, and still ran out of time and had to leave some questions unanswered. It's a hard test.
The PE test proves 2 things- the person holding it probably knows what they are doing in their field of expertise, and they have the dedication to work on a long-term project that doesn't show immediate results. Anybody can flub their way through college, and college difficulty varies by school and even by professor. The PE test is the same for everybody (in a given subject). There are many useless pieces of paper available to an engineer, but the PE is not one of them.
The PE in other countries does differ, and some may be money grabs. The USA PE is not.
Yes, they do. We get a message at least weekly for the former residents of our house, trying to collect various debts. Note, I've lived there over 9 years and we still get those calls. It's basically harassment, but there isn't much I can do because it's a bunch of different debt collectors, rather than just one company.
You can prepare a standard form letter and send it to every debt collector which calls. You can use this one-
I am writing in response to your letter or phone call dated (DATE). I do not believe that I owe this debt or what you say I owe.
Pursuant to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Section 809(b), Validating Debts:
“If the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period described in subsection (a) that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, or that the consumer requests the name and address of the original creditor, the debt collector shall cease collection of the debt, or any disputed portion thereof, until the debt collector obtains verification of the debt or any copy of a judgment, or the name and address of the original creditor, and a copy of such verification or judgment, or name and address of the original creditor, is mailed to the consumer by the debt collector.”
I respectfully request that you provide me with the following:
1. The amount of the debt;
2. The name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed;
3. Verification or copy of any judgment (if applicable);
4. Proof that you are licensed to collect debts in the state of [STATE] 5. Proof of the last payment made on the account.
I am asserting my rights under the federal and state Fair Debt Collection Practices Acts and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, including these rights:
Because I have disputed this debt in writing within 30 days of receipt of your initial notice, you must obtain verification of the debt or a copy of the judgment against me and mail these items to me at your expense.
You cannot add interest or fees except those allowed by the original contract or state law.
Any attempt to collect this debt without validating it violates the FDCPA.
Also be advised that I am keeping accurate records of all correspondence from you and your company, including recording all phone calls, and I will not hesitate to report violations of the law to my State Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau.
I have disputed this debt. Therefore, until it is validated, your information concerning this debt is assumed to be inaccurate. Accordingly, if you have already reported this debt to any credit-reporting agency (CRA) or Credit Bureau (CB), then you must immediately inform them of my dispute with this debt. Reporting information that you know to be inaccurate or failing to report information correctly violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act 1681s-2. Should you pursue a judgment without validating this debt, I will inform the judge and request that the case be dismissed based on your failure to comply with the FDCPA.
Finally, if you do not own this debt, I demand that you immediately send a copy of this dispute letter to the original creditor so they are also aware that I dispute the debt.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
If they contact you again after receiving such a letter, even once, you can sue them. Up to $1000 per incident. Plus they would have to pay big fines $50-100k to the government as well. It's enough of a deterrent that I have never been contacted again after sending such a letter.
>> 90% of my after-tax income, and throwing that in student loans...$22,434 worth of student loans, and has paid it down to $16,449...four months
That's only $1,500 paid down on student loans per month. If that's 90% of his after-tax income (even in California), he's making maybe $22K/year, and spending just $150 month on other stuff.
Yeah, something doesn't make sense. I owed slightly more than him at the start and could have paid it off in a couple years if I was willing to throw $1000/month at them rather than the minimum of $300-something.
According to his blog-
"I'll be investing approximately 95% of all of my post-tax, post-401k, post-benefits income"
. Depending on what rate he has on his student loans, it is very possible that he decided he should max out his 401k, pay down his truck loan, or invest the money. I dragged out my college loans for a very long time because at the end, the rate was 0% (several years of cumulative 0.25% rate decreases for always paying on time). It would have been stupid to pay it off sooner. Maybe he paid attention in accounting 101.