Most Americans don't have this magical life style you are talking about. And many people, btw, don't require it to feel rich or be happy. I earn enough right now to buy a million dollar home in Japan (2000 square foot condo near downtown tokyo) and have a car and lounge in the AC all day long. So am I rich? not by any of your standards. I share a 500 square foot apartment with my friend and ride a bicycle to work(which everyone gets a good chuckle at when I walk in wearing bike shorts before I change clothes).
The thing is, if he works where he says he does, he definitely could afford a far higher standard of living than what I could right now and your complete ignorance of what living in india is like shows through(yeah, 90% of my family was brought up there so I learned that one). He could have 2 servants, cars, a big house, etc easily. The fact you think these things are REQUIRED to make you rich or happy, though, is very closed minded.
worse than thinking this is required, you ignore the fact that lots of things we do in the US could be done with less energy usage. Yeah, your ac doesn't need to run at 65 degrees when it's 100 outside. 75 degrees saves tons of energy and given a week, you WILL NOT recognize the difference. The human body is amazingly fast at adapting to new temperatures and it reduces the shock of the outside temperature by not running your AC as strong. I try not to run the heat ever in the winter(low temp is mild around 35 degrees F) because it's easier to just wear a sweater in the house and reduces the shock of stepping outside.
This isn't a reduction to living like they do in some parts of india with poorly insulated homes, fires for heating, and lack of clean food or water. It's just basic conservativeness. I recycle my garbage, carry small items I buy rather than have a store put them in a plastic bag, and a few other small things(use public transportation when my bike won't suffice). These are the simple steps countries would like the US to adopt.
Indian servants are in no where comparable to slavery. I remember growing up and visiting my family in india. We had servants (even the children of my grandparent's servants were there). While The mother would never move outside of this line of work, our family made sure her daughter went to school every day and finished high school so she could move on. Lot's of families I know in india are like this. These children have to work to relieve monetary strains at home but many of the middle class in india so their education as an important thing.
Now, this isn't universal like I wish it was but there is a belief that these jobs help the next generation if you do your part to encourage school attendance.
really? I thought standard fair was to go to google and type : wikipedia + key words. I've never not found an article using the built in search engine:-)
and the worst part is, the definition of notable is worthy of notice! The fact that someone, anyone in this world, feels that something is worth researching and putting together citations for that information to be shared is making it notable. that it isn't relevant to knowledge 99% of people have interest in is irrelevant because most knowledge is like that.
For all the freedom an internet based forum gives, the admins on wikipedia seem determined to impose limits that are only meaningful on a standard encyclopedia.
the thing is, those lists are great starting points. For someone who doesn't edit or never has, those lists act as a thing they run across. It would be better to tag it with something that says : This is a trivia section. For professionalism, we would like it to be worked into the article.
But instead, they get rid of it. no one likes to have to start over and frankly, it makes sections look poorly researched rather than poorly written.
IF the British government wants to get rid of the page 3 girl, they would have to do it themselves, directly and show it to the public. In the US, the government would just hint at regulation, then the industry would self-regulate and nobody would be any the wiser.
The UK and most European countries have very broad amounts of self censorship. That the AC can't be found in many libraries does not mean it cannot be found or that it is illegal to carry. Granted, the fact you don't realize why yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal means you have no idea about laws that exist in all countries that claim to be free. Your speech is free as long as you do not willfully endanger a group or incite people to do illegal things. i.e. the KKK has a march through my home town almost every year(or at least used to when I was younger) and that was completely allowed. Police would even be sent out to see that they were not harassed or put in danger. But if their leader stood up and told everyone to go kill the blacks, Mexicans, and catholics then he would be charged.
Yeah, it sucks to have self censorship. It's generally better to take the bull by the horns, but don't act like it's something unique to the US(or that something Europe is in any way free from). But it seems europe has far more severe censorship laws implemented by the governments of those respective countries. Germany probably has the biggest censorship laws in existence(in reference to anything to do with the Nazis).
Some people are born *without* arms and live to have children, so arms obviously are no longer needed, either.
Now, while the rest of your post made sense, this is just stupid. Unless you can show a genetic trait that causes you to be born without arms then you don't have a comparable situation. The problem with studies looking for a purpose to the appendix is that you ignore the fact that even without an appendix, there is no loss in fertility or meaningful life expectancy(basically, up till you can't have kids anymore). So while it may have uses, it is not necessary.
That an evolutionist can admit an error freely and move on is what makes it science. If historically all you can say evolutionists have jumped the gun on declaring some vestigal (especially the appendix) then you limit yourself to only those scientists you want to use as examples. There are many, many, scientists that study the appendix for a living or else we wouldn't have this story today.
The real question is why do you feel that it's so bad to admit you were wrong and update your theory? Scientists got used to it a while ago (as did most of the rest of the world). If the fact that scientists are constantly correcting their own errors makes you feel uncomfortable, then maybe scientific endeavors are not for you. I would be scared if science stopped doing that(which, I will admit, they have a penchant for doing every once in a long while) because they science will degrade to the intellectual level of religion (basically, everything bad in religion), and not have any of the good that can come with it(spirituality). That will be an example of a vestigial discipline.
yeah man, I gotta tell ya, I loved thelast time I installed linux. I didn't have to mess with video drivers at all (I wish someone had told me before hand). I mean, the damn thing just didn't exist... all that time wasted trying to get a 3D card working....
wow, I decided to try a macbook a year ago and I'll never buy one again. it is cheap plastic casing that cracks easily, I've had 2 major hardware failures(and for some reason, though both had nothing to do wtih the hard drive, they decided to , instead of trying to preserve all my work, just invoke their right to give me a new mac book.
so I've actually had 3 macbooks and find them to be the flimsiest, worst performing computers I've ever used. the computer is a far slower performer than my really old pentium 4 2.2 laptop (I can't open quicktime, azerus, and firefox at the same time without the computer going completely unresponsive). I'm always surprised because I find the exact same things lacking in everyone else's macbooks and frankly, don't know what they are talking about when they say they don't have those problems.
I find a lot of offerings by Sony and creative to be competitive with iPods for quality across the board(but then, I'm in Japan so I have access to a much larger array of offerings) and the macbook contends for flimsiest piece of computer equipment over 1k dollars...... pretty much ever.
these are extremely high growth numbers for a country still with deflation, a shrinking workforce, and now a shrinking population. Japan is much further down the population curve than the EU is(especially as a hole).
Now, with no inflation, let's compare this to the EU:
Over the whole year 2006, GDP grew by 2.7% in the Eurozone and by 2.9% in the EU25, compared to +1.4% and +1.7% respectively for the year 2005.
compare to Japan: 2.7%, 2.9%, 2.6% (real gdp, so adjusted for inflation),
adjust for inflation. japan has had prices coming off as much as 2% per year while eurozone has had inflation for 2%-4% per year. suddenly those stellar growth numbers aren't so great and are definitely lagging behind Japan.
this means at least for the last 2 years, japan has blown the eurozone 25 or 12 out of the water.
nah, bit torrent is pretty main stream, I have buddies that can't set up a router or connect a printer using it because someone showed htem how to once. really all someone does is put a client on your computer and teach you about meganova or mininova or torrentportal and it's just like any other downloading.
I'm betting it's far more htan that, and I say that simply by the range of stuff available by torrent now adays. 5 years ago it was were nerds got linux and anime, now it's pretty frickin' common.
I agree with you, but someone needs to correct this idea that Japan's economy is still in stagnation. It has been growing far faster than the Eurozone for the last several years. The economic stagnation basically ended 3 to 4 years back. on top of the high rate of growth, prices are stable to slightly falling in the country amplifying the gains. I won't go into the structural problems that remain and social issues that still hold back this economy, but it is by no means stagnant.
massive demand. my family works in medicine in the rural community and we can't hire Americans to come work out here for a 30 to 40% increase in pay(and we are only 80 minutes from 2 large cities and COLA is probably -35 to 40% vs. the cities).
So what do we do? we hire foreign doctors and lock them in for 6 years. We get a hard working, dedicated doctor for 6 years, they make great money(better than they were offered in cities), and because the rural areas are under-served, we can guarantee them citizenship for their family. this is in pediatrics but very similar situation as family practitioners. Foreigners will live in a boring quiet town for 6 years to work hard to get started. Fresh grads out of med school who are american just won't. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that they care about quality of life far beyond their work, but it's why we have almost completely given up on hiring americans.
wow..... I didn't realize that raping, killing, and demoralizing the native populace into either subjugation or slavery was considered an option in order to be successful at intervention....
you're right, lots of the commonwealth countries are great successes. It's just like the US's intervention into NA outside the original 13 colonies was very successful. I hear when you kill/subjugate/enslave the entire native populace and put your own people in power over an area, it can give the look of stability. Maybe I should be on the phone with our people in Iraq and tell them it's perfectly acceptable to go from house to house, destroying everything people own and killing at random until the country lays down(south africa is where I'd get that method from). we can also bring back the concentration camps if you really want.....try to look at why those certain countries were successful and others weren't.
btw, McCarthy was American. the model you are pointing to was started by the US(maybe not, but I know of no other effort until the US did it after WWII where a country completely rebuilt the economies of the defeated nations to try and create allies, up to that point it had been a system of demanding money out of the country). turns out that it requires a completely cooperative population(or at least a vast vast majority) in order to work.
It so happens that every European imperial power, except for Spain, decolonized their empires in a pretty constructive fashion.
the simple fact is they didn't. for many of the colonies, it was a complete clusterfuck that the european imperial colonies left and generally, it was a complete clusterfuck in the non-white countries. That you can cite some moderate success stories doesn't mean there weren't horrific consequences in many areas of the world.
Now, in all but a few instances, most modern problems in those countries have little to do with colonialism but don't try and act like the europeans somehow did something other than partially clean up a mess they created in many countries.
So let's go about answering your very complex quesitons: Why is Tibet in such a terrible situation: The Chinese government has killed, raped, and tortured their way to control of the country adn continue to do these things on a regular basis.
you want a pratical solution for tibet, it's easy: Chinese folks who have no right to be there and are causing all the problems should get the hell out. Yeah, it is that simple. Tibet was an autonomous nation for an extremely long period of time and has never had any cultural connection to China.
There is still a functioning tibetan government living in exile in India.
Now why is this solution not practical? Easy, the CCP would have to admit they are a bunch of douchebags. Worse yet, they would then lose access to the massive amounts of natural resources in Tibet they use to fuel development in the Easy. So if you mean how can we fix this problem while maintaining China's access to a large network of free resources and labor, well, that is more difficult. But then again, I didn't realize that was considered a solution.....
yeah the french did a great job with Vietnam and the Brits did amazing things with Hindustan(now 6 countries) and the middle East (Israel, etc)./sarcasm
I'm not saying what american is doing right now is good, but you are just being revisionist.
well, as of 10 years ago lots of people born and raised in a British HK were scared to death about the Chinese hand over. It happens to be that the last 10 years have been nice and people's feelings have changed. And I wasn't talking to the upper class that generally always gets away unscathed. Taxi drivers, shop keepers, etc. were pretty unanimous that they now have good feelings about the current govt and it's far far better than what they expected 10 years ago.
but if you don't even know the horrific things your government does every day in Tibet then you are just ignorant, far more so than the parent. The fact you don't know now but would have been accutely aware of 15 years ago when the British controlled HK should tell you something as well.
asking the chinese people in my office, 100% of people know how to use pinyin and cangjie is limited to those who want to go much faster(but with a much more complex method). Looks like even the professional 20 somethings don't know how to use it(the people in my office) but say there is a subset that uses it
not true, computer offerings in japan( I live in tokyo) are on par with the US for size. houses are smaller but most other things are more efficient with space(including their desks, household appliances, beds, etc). game consoles are the exact same as here.
In japan though, it's common to have a 1 to 2 hour commute which is almost always done on public transportation. what does that mean? you have 2 to 4 hours a day where you can play games, check email, send messages, with NOTHING better to do! Trains are crowded so the only thing you can do is sit around and play these games or read books. Cars are far less common as a method of transportation than in the US.
In general, convenience is easy to get in Japan if you have the money. cell phone usage is generally 1 cent a text message and 20 cents a minute for talking(yeah, highway robbery). I can get GPS, a charge system to pay for goods at the convenience store, and electronic passes that cover all the public transportation systems. in new cabs, I could use my cell phone to pay rather than toting around cash.
still, no one enters kanji directly. in japanese, you have about 2200 that get use and in chinese I've heard over 7000 for daily use. even chinese use a mapping from the roman alphabet to their script, I'ev never seen a direct input method.
not sure about the specifics of the insurance market you are referring to, but I promise it has nothing to do with a stock market slide in the US in the last 4 years. the market has been a buyers dream for most of the last several years. now , 2 years ago for a while it didn't go up as much as expected, but that happens.
now you could be talking about the bond market because that was hammered as greenspan agressively rose rates. If insurance premiums are basically interset free deposits you make with the company, then they take that and buy bonds to hedge their payout risks in the future. in a big sell off, their hedges can underperform because higher interest rates do not generally improve the chances of an insurance policy being called. but I doubt it has much to do with the US stock market.
so you live in the same place, drive the same value car with the same amt of coverage, use the same amt of electricity in your home and use your phone the same amount?
I'm betting that just isn't the case. inflation doesn't make amends for you trying to improve your quality of life (unless it's with tech where prices have downward pressure on them due to the speed of advancement).
it's probably not reflective because you've gone from being single living on ramen every day and possibly sharing an apartment to living on yoru own with a family. yeah, your cost of living has gone up but it has nothing to to with actual cost of goods, you just consume way more now.
how is this different from how they have acted for about the last... since they were founded? They are just as bad as MS, they just failed miserably in the PC world so you probably didn't notice it.
Slashdot Mirror
Most Americans don't have this magical life style you are talking about. And many people, btw, don't require it to feel rich or be happy. I earn enough right now to buy a million dollar home in Japan (2000 square foot condo near downtown tokyo) and have a car and lounge in the AC all day long. So am I rich? not by any of your standards. I share a 500 square foot apartment with my friend and ride a bicycle to work(which everyone gets a good chuckle at when I walk in wearing bike shorts before I change clothes).
The thing is, if he works where he says he does, he definitely could afford a far higher standard of living than what I could right now and your complete ignorance of what living in india is like shows through(yeah, 90% of my family was brought up there so I learned that one). He could have 2 servants, cars, a big house, etc easily. The fact you think these things are REQUIRED to make you rich or happy, though, is very closed minded.
worse than thinking this is required, you ignore the fact that lots of things we do in the US could be done with less energy usage. Yeah, your ac doesn't need to run at 65 degrees when it's 100 outside. 75 degrees saves tons of energy and given a week, you WILL NOT recognize the difference. The human body is amazingly fast at adapting to new temperatures and it reduces the shock of the outside temperature by not running your AC as strong. I try not to run the heat ever in the winter(low temp is mild around 35 degrees F) because it's easier to just wear a sweater in the house and reduces the shock of stepping outside.
This isn't a reduction to living like they do in some parts of india with poorly insulated homes, fires for heating, and lack of clean food or water. It's just basic conservativeness. I recycle my garbage, carry small items I buy rather than have a store put them in a plastic bag, and a few other small things(use public transportation when my bike won't suffice). These are the simple steps countries would like the US to adopt.
Indian servants are in no where comparable to slavery. I remember growing up and visiting my family in india. We had servants (even the children of my grandparent's servants were there). While The mother would never move outside of this line of work, our family made sure her daughter went to school every day and finished high school so she could move on. Lot's of families I know in india are like this. These children have to work to relieve monetary strains at home but many of the middle class in india so their education as an important thing.
Now, this isn't universal like I wish it was but there is a belief that these jobs help the next generation if you do your part to encourage school attendance.
really? I thought standard fair was to go to google and type : wikipedia + key words. I've never not found an article using the built in search engine:-)
and the worst part is, the definition of notable is worthy of notice! The fact that someone, anyone in this world, feels that something is worth researching and putting together citations for that information to be shared is making it notable. that it isn't relevant to knowledge 99% of people have interest in is irrelevant because most knowledge is like that.
For all the freedom an internet based forum gives, the admins on wikipedia seem determined to impose limits that are only meaningful on a standard encyclopedia.
the thing is, those lists are great starting points. For someone who doesn't edit or never has, those lists act as a thing they run across. It would be better to tag it with something that says : This is a trivia section. For professionalism, we would like it to be worked into the article.
But instead, they get rid of it. no one likes to have to start over and frankly, it makes sections look poorly researched rather than poorly written.
IF the British government wants to get rid of the page 3 girl, they would have to do it themselves, directly and show it to the public. In the US, the government would just hint at regulation, then the industry would self-regulate and nobody would be any the wiser.
This just isn't true. read here
The UK and most European countries have very broad amounts of self censorship. That the AC can't be found in many libraries does not mean it cannot be found or that it is illegal to carry. Granted, the fact you don't realize why yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal means you have no idea about laws that exist in all countries that claim to be free. Your speech is free as long as you do not willfully endanger a group or incite people to do illegal things. i.e. the KKK has a march through my home town almost every year(or at least used to when I was younger) and that was completely allowed. Police would even be sent out to see that they were not harassed or put in danger. But if their leader stood up and told everyone to go kill the blacks, Mexicans, and catholics then he would be charged.
Yeah, it sucks to have self censorship. It's generally better to take the bull by the horns, but don't act like it's something unique to the US(or that something Europe is in any way free from). But it seems europe has far more severe censorship laws implemented by the governments of those respective countries. Germany probably has the biggest censorship laws in existence(in reference to anything to do with the Nazis).
Some people are born *without* arms and live to have children, so arms obviously are no longer needed, either.
Now, while the rest of your post made sense, this is just stupid. Unless you can show a genetic trait that causes you to be born without arms then you don't have a comparable situation. The problem with studies looking for a purpose to the appendix is that you ignore the fact that even without an appendix, there is no loss in fertility or meaningful life expectancy(basically, up till you can't have kids anymore). So while it may have uses, it is not necessary.
That an evolutionist can admit an error freely and move on is what makes it science. If historically all you can say evolutionists have jumped the gun on declaring some vestigal (especially the appendix) then you limit yourself to only those scientists you want to use as examples. There are many, many, scientists that study the appendix for a living or else we wouldn't have this story today.
The real question is why do you feel that it's so bad to admit you were wrong and update your theory? Scientists got used to it a while ago (as did most of the rest of the world). If the fact that scientists are constantly correcting their own errors makes you feel uncomfortable, then maybe scientific endeavors are not for you. I would be scared if science stopped doing that(which, I will admit, they have a penchant for doing every once in a long while) because they science will degrade to the intellectual level of religion (basically, everything bad in religion), and not have any of the good that can come with it(spirituality). That will be an example of a vestigial discipline.
yeah man, I gotta tell ya, I loved thelast time I installed linux. I didn't have to mess with video drivers at all (I wish someone had told me before hand). I mean, the damn thing just didn't exist... all that time wasted trying to get a 3D card working....
wow, I decided to try a macbook a year ago and I'll never buy one again. it is cheap plastic casing that cracks easily, I've had 2 major hardware failures(and for some reason, though both had nothing to do wtih the hard drive, they decided to , instead of trying to preserve all my work, just invoke their right to give me a new mac book.
so I've actually had 3 macbooks and find them to be the flimsiest, worst performing computers I've ever used. the computer is a far slower performer than my really old pentium 4 2.2 laptop (I can't open quicktime, azerus, and firefox at the same time without the computer going completely unresponsive). I'm always surprised because I find the exact same things lacking in everyone else's macbooks and frankly, don't know what they are talking about when they say they don't have those problems.
I find a lot of offerings by Sony and creative to be competitive with iPods for quality across the board(but then, I'm in Japan so I have access to a much larger array of offerings) and the macbook contends for flimsiest piece of computer equipment over 1k dollars...... pretty much ever.
these are extremely high growth numbers for a country still with deflation, a shrinking workforce, and now a shrinking population. Japan is much further down the population curve than the EU is(especially as a hole).
Now, with no inflation, let's compare this to the EU:
Over the whole year 2006, GDP grew by 2.7% in the Eurozone and by 2.9% in the EU25, compared to +1.4% and +1.7% respectively for the year 2005.
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10009065.shtml
compare to Japan:
2.7%, 2.9%, 2.6% (real gdp, so adjusted for inflation),
adjust for inflation. japan has had prices coming off as much as 2% per year while eurozone has had inflation for 2%-4% per year. suddenly those stellar growth numbers aren't so great and are definitely lagging behind Japan.
this means at least for the last 2 years, japan has blown the eurozone 25 or 12 out of the water.
nah, bit torrent is pretty main stream, I have buddies that can't set up a router or connect a printer using it because someone showed htem how to once. really all someone does is put a client on your computer and teach you about meganova or mininova or torrentportal and it's just like any other downloading.
I'm betting it's far more htan that, and I say that simply by the range of stuff available by torrent now adays. 5 years ago it was were nerds got linux and anime, now it's pretty frickin' common.
I agree with you, but someone needs to correct this idea that Japan's economy is still in stagnation. It has been growing far faster than the Eurozone for the last several years. The economic stagnation basically ended 3 to 4 years back. on top of the high rate of growth, prices are stable to slightly falling in the country amplifying the gains. I won't go into the structural problems that remain and social issues that still hold back this economy, but it is by no means stagnant.
massive demand. my family works in medicine in the rural community and we can't hire Americans to come work out here for a 30 to 40% increase in pay(and we are only 80 minutes from 2 large cities and COLA is probably -35 to 40% vs. the cities).
So what do we do? we hire foreign doctors and lock them in for 6 years. We get a hard working, dedicated doctor for 6 years, they make great money(better than they were offered in cities), and because the rural areas are under-served, we can guarantee them citizenship for their family. this is in pediatrics but very similar situation as family practitioners. Foreigners will live in a boring quiet town for 6 years to work hard to get started. Fresh grads out of med school who are american just won't. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that they care about quality of life far beyond their work, but it's why we have almost completely given up on hiring americans.
wow..... I didn't realize that raping, killing, and demoralizing the native populace into either subjugation or slavery was considered an option in order to be successful at intervention....
you're right, lots of the commonwealth countries are great successes. It's just like the US's intervention into NA outside the original 13 colonies was very successful. I hear when you kill/subjugate/enslave the entire native populace and put your own people in power over an area, it can give the look of stability. Maybe I should be on the phone with our people in Iraq and tell them it's perfectly acceptable to go from house to house, destroying everything people own and killing at random until the country lays down(south africa is where I'd get that method from). we can also bring back the concentration camps if you really want.....try to look at why those certain countries were successful and others weren't.
btw, McCarthy was American. the model you are pointing to was started by the US(maybe not, but I know of no other effort until the US did it after WWII where a country completely rebuilt the economies of the defeated nations to try and create allies, up to that point it had been a system of demanding money out of the country). turns out that it requires a completely cooperative population(or at least a vast vast majority) in order to work.
It so happens that every European imperial power, except for Spain, decolonized their empires in a pretty constructive fashion.
the simple fact is they didn't. for many of the colonies, it was a complete clusterfuck that the european imperial colonies left and generally, it was a complete clusterfuck in the non-white countries. That you can cite some moderate success stories doesn't mean there weren't horrific consequences in many areas of the world.
Now, in all but a few instances, most modern problems in those countries have little to do with colonialism but don't try and act like the europeans somehow did something other than partially clean up a mess they created in many countries.
So let's go about answering your very complex quesitons:
Why is Tibet in such a terrible situation:
The Chinese government has killed, raped, and tortured their way to control of the country adn continue to do these things on a regular basis.
you want a pratical solution for tibet, it's easy:
Chinese folks who have no right to be there and are causing all the problems should get the hell out. Yeah, it is that simple. Tibet was an autonomous nation for an extremely long period of time and has never had any cultural connection to China.
There is still a functioning tibetan government living in exile in India.
Now why is this solution not practical? Easy, the CCP would have to admit they are a bunch of douchebags. Worse yet, they would then lose access to the massive amounts of natural resources in Tibet they use to fuel development in the Easy. So if you mean how can we fix this problem while maintaining China's access to a large network of free resources and labor, well, that is more difficult. But then again, I didn't realize that was considered a solution.....
yeah the french did a great job with Vietnam and the Brits did amazing things with Hindustan(now 6 countries) and the middle East (Israel, etc). /sarcasm
I'm not saying what american is doing right now is good, but you are just being revisionist.
well, as of 10 years ago lots of people born and raised in a British HK were scared to death about the Chinese hand over. It happens to be that the last 10 years have been nice and people's feelings have changed. And I wasn't talking to the upper class that generally always gets away unscathed. Taxi drivers, shop keepers, etc. were pretty unanimous that they now have good feelings about the current govt and it's far far better than what they expected 10 years ago.
but if you don't even know the horrific things your government does every day in Tibet then you are just ignorant, far more so than the parent. The fact you don't know now but would have been accutely aware of 15 years ago when the British controlled HK should tell you something as well.
asking the chinese people in my office, 100% of people know how to use pinyin and cangjie is limited to those who want to go much faster(but with a much more complex method). Looks like even the professional 20 somethings don't know how to use it(the people in my office) but say there is a subset that uses it
not true, computer offerings in japan( I live in tokyo) are on par with the US for size. houses are smaller but most other things are more efficient with space(including their desks, household appliances, beds, etc). game consoles are the exact same as here.
In japan though, it's common to have a 1 to 2 hour commute which is almost always done on public transportation. what does that mean? you have 2 to 4 hours a day where you can play games, check email, send messages, with NOTHING better to do! Trains are crowded so the only thing you can do is sit around and play these games or read books. Cars are far less common as a method of transportation than in the US.
In general, convenience is easy to get in Japan if you have the money. cell phone usage is generally 1 cent a text message and 20 cents a minute for talking(yeah, highway robbery). I can get GPS, a charge system to pay for goods at the convenience store, and electronic passes that cover all the public transportation systems. in new cabs, I could use my cell phone to pay rather than toting around cash.
still, no one enters kanji directly. in japanese, you have about 2200 that get use and in chinese I've heard over 7000 for daily use. even chinese use a mapping from the roman alphabet to their script, I'ev never seen a direct input method.
not sure about the specifics of the insurance market you are referring to, but I promise it has nothing to do with a stock market slide in the US in the last 4 years. the market has been a buyers dream for most of the last several years. now , 2 years ago for a while it didn't go up as much as expected, but that happens.
now you could be talking about the bond market because that was hammered as greenspan agressively rose rates. If insurance premiums are basically interset free deposits you make with the company, then they take that and buy bonds to hedge their payout risks in the future. in a big sell off, their hedges can underperform because higher interest rates do not generally improve the chances of an insurance policy being called. but I doubt it has much to do with the US stock market.
so you live in the same place, drive the same value car with the same amt of coverage, use the same amt of electricity in your home and use your phone the same amount?
I'm betting that just isn't the case. inflation doesn't make amends for you trying to improve your quality of life (unless it's with tech where prices have downward pressure on them due to the speed of advancement).
it's probably not reflective because you've gone from being single living on ramen every day and possibly sharing an apartment to living on yoru own with a family. yeah, your cost of living has gone up but it has nothing to to with actual cost of goods, you just consume way more now.
how is this different from how they have acted for about the last ... since they were founded? They are just as bad as MS, they just failed miserably in the PC world so you probably didn't notice it.