True. His basic point is valid tho. Programmers tend to like swing dancing more than they expect when they get the face that the steps are like programming codes.
The tricky bit (which I never mastered) is smoothing the steps transition into each other with little pushoffs, or step placement. I'm a big galoot and it was also very emotional for me. Lots of fun but also lots of stress. I've bounced off it twice now- perhaps third time is the charm. I got very smooth at the first three lessons (about 18 steps) but past there I wrenched arms instead of dipping knees.
Swing is sort of stuttering in Houston. I wants to take off and there is a large community but the travel times keep it from taking off (that is true of a lot of social activities in houston-- the city is 150 miles across on one axis.)
Real dance isn't choreographed. A good swing dancer is making up the dance to fit the mood and the music as they go along. The female is constantly being surprised, touched, brushed and it's all part of the dance.
I am not a good swing dancer- at best I got to be average but women like good dancers so I took lessons.
Fortunately, I'm tall, make good money, have muscles, and good dental hygiene.
The last is a lot more important that most guys realize to keeping her once you catch her.
I suspect regular dancers are in better physical condition for sex once they get it.
These numbers are the manipulated numbers. Real unemployment is higher. (once your unemployment benefits run out, you are no longer unemployed!) Real underemployment is much higher. (once you take a job paying $36k out of desperation, you are no longer unemployed!)
College grads have it better so I'm not sure what their rate is but the overall "real" rate is estimated at 17.8%. That's one is five to six. That rate is how they used to measure it back during the great depression (when it was 25%).
See shadowstats.gov. They calculate the numbers without adjustments introduced under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. CPI is also understated. Real inflation is higher than reported inflation. This helps avoid COLA's.
Chinese and Indian labor is experiencing incredible inflation. Each year makes a significant difference but I estimate 5-7 more years before they make enough that there is insufficient finanacial incentive to offshoring and outsourcing.
A few years ago, I went through an absolutely brutal SQL interview for a technical lead position. I wasn't really interested in the position so much as signaling that I was interested in moving up.
The person they ended up promoting was in the position for 60 days and then they moved him to an entirely soft skill lead position (i.e. people managing). I was promoted to a later soft lead position and was there only 8 months before being moved to a soft skill but technical lead position and then 13 months later moved in as a "hot shot technical" person.
Companies often do not keep you where they hire you. So I wonder why they are so insistent on peculiar technical demands and then almost immediately put you in a different technical area or in a managerial role.
I might look into that (time stressed with a big conversion thru december).
At a trivial level, making $75,000 a year and living in Belize would be awesome. Making $75,000 a year and living in a posh area of most cities (much less New York) would be terrible.
Took me 11 years. At times I went 40 hours without sleep and worked 55 hours and then did over 60 hours of homework in the same week.
The changes it made to me as a person (not the education) were worth every minute. But it cost me very little financially (probably under $14,000) and I graduated debt free. It was kind of fun until year 8. Then I realized I still had 54ish hours to go out of a 130 hour degree (and 38 hours sunk on a change of majors).
College for who it makes you as a person- worth it. For the income- not worth it any more. So choose a small inexpensive college- go 4 years. Graduate with little debt.
I suspect happiness is *relative* to the average income of your neighbors and friends.
Personally, I have made above and below six figures and find that I am much happier above six figures when surrounded by middle class people. Basically, anything a middle class person could want, I can get and still have money left over.
Be 20% richer than your block or your friends and you'll be happy. Be 20% less wealthy than they are and you'll be unhappy (because you can't take that trip with everyone, your car sucks compared to theirs, etc.)
No the first season or two were that funny as you watched them. I remember laughing so hard I couldn't breath back when gilda radner, chevy chase, dan akroyd and the rest were on. And the cool parts were really cool too. Only lasted a few years that way.
Out of all the stars in Hollywood, Cruise is the only one who messed up his brand so badly that I don't want to see his films. His mixup with Brooke Shields was the end for me. Attacking pregnant women with post partam depression is pretty callous.
I think scientology has messed him up but apparently a lot of it was getting a big ego and firing his publicist (who had been successfully managing his image for a long time apparently). He didn't want to be managed any more.
Angelina Jolie is close. I really like Jennifer Aniston to start with and then Jolie seems increasingly creepy over time. However, a date wanted to see Salt so we went and it was a decent, well acted film.
From the ads in our houston press and in craigslist before it went dark, I think rates are dropping.
Even if they had stayed at $200, that would have been a drop since 2000 but the ads were getting down to $120 to $160. I don't know if they upsell you after you are there but it seems like a glut of prostitutes on the market is having the expected capitalist effect.
Just keep in mind there are a lot of male (homosexual and straight) prostitutes these days.
Would they prefer to be a doctor? Sure.
Do they want to do the work to be one? No.
It is moral for rich people to have mistresses who don't have jobs. It is moral for less rich people to have mistresses and girlfriends who don't have jobs. It is moral to pay $175 for a fine dinner on a date with a girl. It is moral to buy a nice ring or dress or take a girl on a ski trip with you.
And have sex with them.
But it's not moral to directly give them money for the sex. But you can give them money for their rent and then have sex with them.
---
I find most moral rules have a real reason why they were made. We fear mice in the southwest because of hanta virus.
I suspect societies which are against prostitution did better over time than societies which had prostitution and so their moral laws are the ones we live by (and many other societies which were cool with prostitution didn't flourish and so we don't live by their moral laws).
It could be that when you are having sex with 10 people a day, you cause disease to spread much easier. It could be it destroys marriages and that really hurts the kids.
Speculation on my part.
But we allow all kinds of prostitution just short of actually giving them money and having sex with them for an hour and then leaving. Some prostitutes are basically slaves- even in the U.S. And some prostitutes are pretty girls who think they can do this for a few years and get rich and then not do it. In my experience (with three of them), they couldn't. You can't fuck hundreds of people and then settle down and be a soccer mom. They all settled down, became soccer moms, and then started having affairs. Because their husbands couldn't keep up with their sex drives, because they loved the feeling of power over men who desperately wanted sex with them (unlike their husbands), because they liked the dinners and gifts those guys got them. One of them still drifts in and out of my life and she pushes my buttons at will but it would really mess up my social group if I ever acted on it. But we have a lot of fun flirting extremely hard without crossing that line.
Never heard of red tube. My big porn days were back in the 80's and I grew up with dirty books so the stories appealed to me more than the X-rated films. I think I saw one X rated film that was arousing-- and that was not during the sex scene but rather during the seduction scene that lead up to the sex scene. It was just a guy and a girl standing talking in front of a fireplace and it started with no interest at all between then and as they talked things got a little more racy and then hot and then at the end they actually did that bit where you know both of them are going to kiss but neither one is saying anything and you can tell both of them are wanting it but can't quite take the shot yet.
I have occasionally seen porn movie links on google searches but either WOT or my virus scanner says "danger danger danger". However, that didn't happen with red tube so I guess it's relatively safe/legit. These days I mostly just capture celebrity (intentional and slips) and pinup stuff. Not even sure why. I sometimes joke, "you see, men get higher into heaven, the more naked breasts they see" with friends. After 53,271 of them, they lack the same kick they had when I was 16 looking at my step dads magazines. Don't seem to be bored of real women yet tho.;-)
Not sure if he lacked "big screen" presence, just had a couple bad breaks on the big screen, or if he got typecast by Star Trek.
He seemed to break free of the typecasting at the end. Denny Crane is not Kirk.
And as the other person said, Shatner had both a large ego and a unique ability to puncture that ego himself.
Not sure about the bad blood between him and the other stars. Could just be the nature of the game (He and Nimoy were bigger stars and got different treatment).
I thought Galaxy Quest was an excellent send up of the whole trek phenomenon.
I introduced an idea which seems to be catching on (it was probably "invented" by several other people about the same time).
You request a particular term or fact in the subject of the return email.
Like.. "Put a kind of sausage and bun food in the header to show you are real".
And of course anything that refers you to another web site is going to be trash.
But I've had good luck with this when I tried it from m4w (zero luck in w4m).
I have looked at mw4m and got some interesting email chains but nothing panned out mostly because I couldn't drop what I was doing and head over right that second (apparently when couples decide to go for it, they want to close the deal fast).
I mean a wealthy person can only buy 7 or 8 houses and 15 or 20 TV's and a dozen or so cars.
100 people making the same income are going to buy 100 houses, 200 TV's, and a couple hundred cars.
Demand for goods and services is higher when more people have the money to spend.
That tax cut is $1 trillion bucks over 5 years. That is going to help a lot with the deficit. The wealthy are not going to leave the country in droves over it- it's been higher in the past, the economy grew faster then, life was still good.
It's a democracy. As soon as 51% of us decide it is so, then taxes go up, the ability to export jobs goes down.
Pure egalistarism isn't the answer-- but we've gone too far.
I think you would agree if they have 100% of the resources and income that the rest of society is not going to stand for it (and it's a bad thing). I agree if we limit them to 1% of the resources and income then that's bad because there is no reason to work harder (since all you end up with is the same).
We are too far down the road to 100%. We need to pull things back again before we end up like serfs and nobles in medieval europe. It's bad for the wealthy too- once they get too excessive, there is a revolt, everything they have is taken and a lot of them are killed. They've lost sight of that fact and are being greedy pigs.
Looks like you can't do math or perhaps it is your basic reading comprehension skills.
Okay... if I'm going to take a 2% increase after getting $900 of the tax cut what's my likely income level? Quite a bit over $40-$50k. I just have empathy for them. I'll give you a hint.... I limited to 6% contributions in the 401k since I'm a "highly compensated employee".
Taxes are too low on the wealthy. The share of wealth and income the top 1% have is hurting the economy. I'm all for them being wealthy- they've gone beyond that and have become a parasite on the host and are draining the blood out of it and killing the country.
A few less executives making 500x the average salary and a few hundred more people with jobs instead. Those people will spend the money and it will travel around in the economy.
The chart shows that the benefit to taxpayers is 10% for people making 1 million 3% for people making 200,000 2% for people making 75,000 ~1.9% for people making 50,000.
So let's keep 1.9% of the tax cuts and let the rest roll back. That benefits the wealthy as well as the poor. Or even better,
Let's keep $1,119 of the tax cuts and let the rest roll back.
It would be a 2% tax increase for me in my tax bracket, but I'm willing to take that hit-- we do need to balance the deficit. There is no reason to raise taxes on people making $40k to $50k. They have it hard enough.
Slashdot Mirror
True. His basic point is valid tho. Programmers tend to like swing dancing more than they expect when they get the face that the steps are like programming codes.
The tricky bit (which I never mastered) is smoothing the steps transition into each other with little pushoffs, or step placement. I'm a big galoot and it was also very emotional for me. Lots of fun but also lots of stress. I've bounced off it twice now- perhaps third time is the charm. I got very smooth at the first three lessons (about 18 steps) but past there I wrenched arms instead of dipping knees.
Swing is sort of stuttering in Houston. I wants to take off and there is a large community but the travel times keep it from taking off (that is true of a lot of social activities in houston-- the city is 150 miles across on one axis.)
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy,_France
For elephants smaller than the moon.
When they start dancing ballet's in clubs, your comment will have validity in the context of the parent article.
Real dance isn't choreographed. A good swing dancer is making up the dance to fit the mood and the music as they go along.
The female is constantly being surprised, touched, brushed and it's all part of the dance.
I am not a good swing dancer- at best I got to be average but women like good dancers so I took lessons.
Fortunately, I'm tall, make good money, have muscles, and good dental hygiene.
The last is a lot more important that most guys realize to keeping her once you catch her.
I suspect regular dancers are in better physical condition for sex once they get it.
Intern if at all possible.
These numbers are the manipulated numbers.
Real unemployment is higher. (once your unemployment benefits run out, you are no longer unemployed!)
Real underemployment is much higher. (once you take a job paying $36k out of desperation, you are no longer unemployed!)
College grads have it better so I'm not sure what their rate is but the overall "real" rate is estimated at 17.8%. That's one is five to six. That rate is how they used to measure it back during the great depression (when it was 25%).
See shadowstats.gov. They calculate the numbers without adjustments introduced under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
CPI is also understated. Real inflation is higher than reported inflation. This helps avoid COLA's.
Chinese and Indian labor is experiencing incredible inflation. Each year makes a significant difference but I estimate 5-7 more years before they make enough that there is insufficient finanacial incentive to offshoring and outsourcing.
A few years ago, I went through an absolutely brutal SQL interview for a technical lead position. I wasn't really interested in the position so much as signaling that I was interested in moving up.
The person they ended up promoting was in the position for 60 days and then they moved him to an entirely soft skill lead position (i.e. people managing). I was promoted to a later soft lead position and was there only 8 months before being moved to a soft skill but technical lead position and then 13 months later moved in as a "hot shot technical" person.
Companies often do not keep you where they hire you. So I wonder why they are so insistent on peculiar technical demands and then almost immediately put you in a different technical area or in a managerial role.
I might look into that (time stressed with a big conversion thru december).
At a trivial level, making $75,000 a year and living in Belize would be awesome.
Making $75,000 a year and living in a posh area of most cities (much less New York) would be terrible.
man... no Austin Powers fans here today!
Took me 11 years. At times I went 40 hours without sleep and worked 55 hours and then did over 60 hours of homework in the same week.
The changes it made to me as a person (not the education) were worth every minute.
But it cost me very little financially (probably under $14,000) and I graduated debt free. It was kind of fun until year 8. Then I realized I still had 54ish hours to go out of a 130 hour degree (and 38 hours sunk on a change of majors).
College for who it makes you as a person- worth it. For the income- not worth it any more.
So choose a small inexpensive college- go 4 years. Graduate with little debt.
Unless you have awesome connections.
I suspect happiness is *relative* to the average income of your neighbors and friends.
Personally, I have made above and below six figures and find that I am much happier above six figures when surrounded by middle class people.
Basically, anything a middle class person could want, I can get and still have money left over.
Be 20% richer than your block or your friends and you'll be happy.
Be 20% less wealthy than they are and you'll be unhappy (because you can't take that trip with everyone, your car sucks compared to theirs, etc.)
A non scottish system of ethics? Then it's crap!
I think you mean "fairly lose laws" or perhaps "fairly looose" laws.
We don't want to loose the correct usage.
No the first season or two were that funny as you watched them.
I remember laughing so hard I couldn't breath back when gilda radner, chevy chase, dan akroyd and the rest were on.
And the cool parts were really cool too. Only lasted a few years that way.
Out of all the stars in Hollywood, Cruise is the only one who messed up his brand so badly that I don't want to see his films. His mixup with Brooke Shields was the end for me. Attacking pregnant women with post partam depression is pretty callous.
I think scientology has messed him up but apparently a lot of it was getting a big ego and firing his publicist (who had been successfully managing his image for a long time apparently). He didn't want to be managed any more.
Angelina Jolie is close. I really like Jennifer Aniston to start with and then Jolie seems increasingly creepy over time.
However, a date wanted to see Salt so we went and it was a decent, well acted film.
From the ads in our houston press and in craigslist before it went dark, I think rates are dropping.
Even if they had stayed at $200, that would have been a drop since 2000 but the ads were getting down to $120 to $160. I don't know if they upsell you after you are there but it seems like a glut of prostitutes on the market is having the expected capitalist effect.
Just keep in mind there are a lot of male (homosexual and straight) prostitutes these days.
Would they prefer to be a doctor? Sure.
Do they want to do the work to be one? No.
It is moral for rich people to have mistresses who don't have jobs.
It is moral for less rich people to have mistresses and girlfriends who don't have jobs.
It is moral to pay $175 for a fine dinner on a date with a girl.
It is moral to buy a nice ring or dress or take a girl on a ski trip with you.
And have sex with them.
But it's not moral to directly give them money for the sex.
But you can give them money for their rent and then have sex with them.
---
I find most moral rules have a real reason why they were made. We fear mice in the southwest because of hanta virus.
I suspect societies which are against prostitution did better over time than societies which had prostitution and so their moral laws are the ones we live by (and many other societies which were cool with prostitution didn't flourish and so we don't live by their moral laws).
It could be that when you are having sex with 10 people a day, you cause disease to spread much easier.
It could be it destroys marriages and that really hurts the kids.
Speculation on my part.
But we allow all kinds of prostitution just short of actually giving them money and having sex with them for an hour and then leaving.
Some prostitutes are basically slaves- even in the U.S. And some prostitutes are pretty girls who think they can do this for a few years and get rich and then not do it. In my experience (with three of them), they couldn't. You can't fuck hundreds of people and then settle down and be a soccer mom. They all settled down, became soccer moms, and then started having affairs. Because their husbands couldn't keep up with their sex drives, because they loved the feeling of power over men who desperately wanted sex with them (unlike their husbands), because they liked the dinners and gifts those guys got them. One of them still drifts in and out of my life and she pushes my buttons at will but it would really mess up my social group if I ever acted on it. But we have a lot of fun flirting extremely hard without crossing that line.
Never heard of red tube. My big porn days were back in the 80's and I grew up with dirty books so the stories appealed to me more than the X-rated films. I think I saw one X rated film that was arousing-- and that was not during the sex scene but rather during the seduction scene that lead up to the sex scene. It was just a guy and a girl standing talking in front of a fireplace and it started with no interest at all between then and as they talked things got a little more racy and then hot and then at the end they actually did that bit where you know both of them are going to kiss but neither one is saying anything and you can tell both of them are wanting it but can't quite take the shot yet.
I have occasionally seen porn movie links on google searches but either WOT or my virus scanner says "danger danger danger". However, that didn't happen with red tube so I guess it's relatively safe/legit. These days I mostly just capture celebrity (intentional and slips) and pinup stuff. Not even sure why. I sometimes joke, "you see, men get higher into heaven, the more naked breasts they see" with friends. After 53,271 of them, they lack the same kick they had when I was 16 looking at my step dads magazines. Don't seem to be bored of real women yet tho. ;-)
Shatner was definately talented.
Not sure if he lacked "big screen" presence, just had a couple bad breaks on the big screen, or if he got typecast by Star Trek.
He seemed to break free of the typecasting at the end. Denny Crane is not Kirk.
And as the other person said, Shatner had both a large ego and a unique ability to puncture that ego himself.
Not sure about the bad blood between him and the other stars. Could just be the nature of the game (He and Nimoy were bigger stars and got different treatment).
I thought Galaxy Quest was an excellent send up of the whole trek phenomenon.
I introduced an idea which seems to be catching on (it was probably "invented" by several other people about the same time).
You request a particular term or fact in the subject of the return email.
Like.. "Put a kind of sausage and bun food in the header to show you are real".
And of course anything that refers you to another web site is going to be trash.
But I've had good luck with this when I tried it from m4w (zero luck in w4m).
I have looked at mw4m and got some interesting email chains but nothing panned out mostly because I couldn't drop what I was doing and head over right that second (apparently when couples decide to go for it, they want to close the deal fast).
And if your "Share" ratio is 1:1, then how many copies did you share for the copy you got?
And if you are a "leecher" and your share ratio is .12:1 then how many copies did you share for the copy you got?
Almost no one runs a 2:1 ratio.
The lawyers need to pick up on that point.
No.
I mean a wealthy person can only buy 7 or 8 houses and 15 or 20 TV's and a dozen or so cars.
100 people making the same income are going to buy 100 houses, 200 TV's, and a couple hundred cars.
Demand for goods and services is higher when more people have the money to spend.
That tax cut is $1 trillion bucks over 5 years. That is going to help a lot with the deficit.
The wealthy are not going to leave the country in droves over it- it's been higher in the past, the economy grew faster then, life was still good.
Of course I have a right to do so.
It's a democracy. As soon as 51% of us decide it is so, then taxes go up, the ability to export jobs goes down.
Pure egalistarism isn't the answer-- but we've gone too far.
I think you would agree if they have 100% of the resources and income that the rest of society is not going to stand for it (and it's a bad thing).
I agree if we limit them to 1% of the resources and income then that's bad because there is no reason to work harder (since all you end up with is the same).
We are too far down the road to 100%. We need to pull things back again before we end up like serfs and nobles in medieval europe. It's bad for the wealthy too- once they get too excessive, there is a revolt, everything they have is taken and a lot of them are killed. They've lost sight of that fact and are being greedy pigs.
Looks like you can't do math or perhaps it is your basic reading comprehension skills.
Okay... if I'm going to take a 2% increase after getting $900 of the tax cut what's my likely income level? Quite a bit over $40-$50k. I just have empathy for them.
I'll give you a hint.... I limited to 6% contributions in the 401k since I'm a "highly compensated employee".
Taxes are too low on the wealthy. The share of wealth and income the top 1% have is hurting the economy. I'm all for them being wealthy- they've gone beyond that and have become a parasite on the host and are draining the blood out of it and killing the country.
A few less executives making 500x the average salary and a few hundred more people with jobs instead. Those people will spend the money and it will travel around in the economy.
Great chart.
Reposting it as non AC so folks can see it.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/GR2010081106717.gif
The chart shows that the benefit to taxpayers is
10% for people making 1 million
3% for people making 200,000
2% for people making 75,000
~1.9% for people making 50,000.
So let's keep 1.9% of the tax cuts and let the rest roll back. That benefits the wealthy as well as the poor.
Or even better,
Let's keep $1,119 of the tax cuts and let the rest roll back.
It would be a 2% tax increase for me in my tax bracket, but I'm willing to take that hit-- we do need to balance the deficit. There is no reason to raise taxes on people making $40k to $50k. They have it hard enough.