Ron Pauls solution: only the wealthy may attend college.
Is that really what he said? I didn't read the article (this is Slashdot, after all), but it wasn't all that long ago that you didn't need student loans to go to college. Even for people who are low income.
You used to be able to work your way through college, but that's not really possible anymore. Universal access to unlimited government-guaranteed loans have driven up tuition rates into the stratosphere. I paid only $5k/yr in tuition to attend state school. I lived in a group house for $500/mo including utils/phone/food (yes, food) and waited tables earning $15/hr. I worked 10 hrs/wk during school and 40 during breaks.
My costs were about $10k/yr or so and my income was $13.5k, give or take. I didn't really pay any taxes because of the various tax credits you get for being a student. This is how non-trust-fund kids *used* to attend university.
Now, tuition rates are much higher and so are other costs. This is because consumers are consuming using Other People's Money, and the taxpayers are on the hook for the defaults. In my opinion, this is a huge mistake and leads to bad outcomes like students graduating with crushing debt loads and students who flunk out of school needing to repay loans without the benefit of a college degree.
And what of the flip side? The people who really achieve in the field they studies at University, but wouldn't have been able to go were it not for student loans. Are they a price worth paying for libertarian ideology?
Can America afford to be less educated?
That is a minor problem that can be solved easily with need-based merit scholarships.
The current situation, where everybody and his dog have access to nearly unlimited government-guaranteed loans, inflates the cost of post secondary education for everyone. Also, most high schoolers (and frankly most adults) have no idea how to calculate whether or not that degree is really worth it. There are a lot of people who would be better off not going to college, but they are easily manipulated by university marketing departments. They basically have the whole nation convinced that it would be to your benefit to attend the most prestigious university you can get into, irrespective of the cost.
I learned a lot in college and I'm glad I went, but I went to an in-state school and lived in a group house which kept costs way down. The total cost, including opportunity cost of not working full time those 4 years, was just over $100,000. But the total cost for someone to get an undergrad at the average $30k/yr school, including student loan interest and opportunity cost, is through the roof! For most people, there is no way in hell that will ever pay off.
And what about the people who aren't really all that prepared for university but are encouraged to go anyway. They go and get the loans and stay for a year or two until they get booted for bad grades. Did they benefit? Now they have big student loans and no college degree to supposedly earn them more money. Not smart.
Is there really a need for this app? I mean, if you're arrested, you get a phone call. It's public record. It's not like the authorities can just "disappear" you.
You may want the app, but I don't think you really need it, per se.
Didn't stop the union protesters in WI last year (although that was freezing rain, not just frost).
Wisconsinites attend outdoor winter football games with no shirts on. You can't extrapolate what type of weather Wisconsinites can tolerate onto pansy Easterners.
Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right.
What types of banking activities do you object to?
The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.
You were probably trying to make a point there, but it got lost in your (mis)understanding of derivatives. Maybe you should be more specific.
The reason that I say that you misunderstand derivatives, is that all derivatives are between two parties, a long and a short. There is nothing wrong with this; with no short interest there could be no long interest. I can give you an example of how this is good if you still need it, but something tells me that you are smart enough to already see that ire against parties that short derivatives is completely misplaced.:)
Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act
Good.
impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets
Bad. Markets are best when there is more liquidity. Discouraging liquidity is bad.
re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation
I don't have any idea what that means. Perhaps you should elaborate.
"Consultant" is just an invention of big business which allows them to underpay workers and not give them any benefits. I get a kick out of people who think that "consultant" is some sort of elevated status when in fact it's just a sign on your head that you have been bent over a desk and well and truly fucked.
Many years ago when I went from W-2 to consultant, I tripled my income. Don't project your shitty negotiating skills onto the rest of the population.
If nothing else, if you can get in on a Federal contracting IT program as a W2...get in, get some experience and foot in the door and meet people. Makes it much easier on the next gig...to get them to let you sub contract to them and go the 1099 route.
Do you really have to suffer through the whole contractor bit to get a federal IT job? Isn't there somewhere that federal IT jobs are posted? Is it possible for a random Joe to get one?
My dream is to get an entry-level federal IT job that I'm vastly overqualified for that I could do in my sleep, that's 90+% telework, and get all of the awesome benefits. How do I make my dream a reality?
Even without insurance it would cost you less than $100 to be seen at a hospital and given medicine specifically mixed/made for you here in Japan.
Even foreigners? In Mexico, you could show up at a hospital with life-threatening injuries, but if you don't have a credit card, they'll kick you to the curb. That would never happen in the US.
Maybe you should go somewhere with a working medical system and experience it first hand, then look back at the American system and re-evaluate it.
Everybody seems to like the Canadian system. Say we should model the US system after Canada's. But I went to an ER there with a fractured toe, and they said that they wouldn't be able to see me for 7 hours! 7 hours! My wife drove me across the border to Detroit and I was seen immediately.
By the way my son had a high fever and he was maybe a year old at the time. If you wouldn't want to have your child seen by a medical professional immediately under those conditions then in my opinion you are irresponsible.
How high was his fever? If one of my kids had a high fever, you're right, I'd have 'em seen. But I wouldn't go to the ER because a high fever in a child of 1 year is not an emergency.
Here's an example of one time when my son had a high fever. He was 3 years old to the day (happened on his birthday). I went to give him a hug, and he felt like a frickin' radiator. This was on a weekend and his pediatrician's office was closed, so I brought him to a walk-in clinic where he was seen immediately by a nurse practitioner. She examined him and performed a rapid strep test, which came back positive. They immediately dispensed antibiotics and sent us on our way. Time from entering the clinic to exiting with medicine in hand, approximately 30 minutes. Total cost without using our insurance: $25.
So you can sit here and tell me our system is broken, but I'm sitting here and telling you that you just did it wrong. At the ER they should have advised you that your situation was not an emergency and that you should go somewhere else. I don't know why they didn't, but ultimately you went to the wrong place. You should have gone to a walk-in clinic, a pediatrician that accepts walk-ins (about half do), or urgent care.
Also, I have no idea why cost should have been an issue for you. Everyone who has ever traveled internationally knows that you need to have medical insurance that covers you in the foreign country that you're visiting, unless your national health care provides this for you. It sounds like you just were completely unprepared for a health-related event to occur while you were away from home. I can see why, since you were naive enough to think that you could just go to a hospital and get free care in any country in the world, you wouldn't bother preparing for such an event. Hopefully now you are older and wiser.
Let me see if I can explain something to you: YOU DON'T GO TO THE HOSPITAL FOR A COMMON COLD. You go to the emergency room for emergencies. The common cold is not an emergency.
You could have been seen by a nurse practitioner at the corner drug store for $25. You could have been seen by a real doctor at urgent care for $100. Many internal medicine docs will see patients on a walk-in basis for varying costs. The fact that you chose to misuse our system is not indicative of a broken system. It is indicative of a broken patient.
Doesn't every politician especially from the GOP say that the American Healthcare system and its actual care are the "best" in the world?
By the way, this is despite the fact that various metrics indicate the USA is no where near the top!
There are lots of reasons for Medical Tourism. Canadians come to the US to jump the waiting lists. Americans go to India due to cost reasons. British people go to France due to insufficient capacity. This is to be expected due to the law of comparative advantage. No one locality has an absolute advantage over every other locality, and we would never expect it to.
The US does, due to our sheer size, have a pretty big advantage over many other parts of the world. For instance, my wife is currently suffering from an extremely rare cancer. There are very few hospitals in the world who have any serious expertise in treating it, and most of them are in the US: Chicago, Boston, Chapel Hill, NC, and London. None of those are local to us, so I guess you could say that she is a medical tourist. She is being treated at the hospitals at UNC and Northwestern (Chicago).
People in the comments are saying that Cuba has the best health care system in the world. Maybe in terms of infant mortality, but my kids are plenty alive, while my wife is at serious risk of death, so Cuba doesn't offer us much. A quick search through the literature does not turn up a single instance of the Cubans curing a female patient with her cancer having reached stage IV.
So if we were Cuban, she would likely be quite dead right now. She may yet not celebrate her next birthday, but at least her odds are up to 50/50 now. She arrived at the hospital with about 48 hours to live, so I'd say this is a pretty big improvement. There is no other country in the world that we'd rather have her treated in. If there was, she'd be there right now, believe me.
I've talked to over 40 canadians about how they feel about their single-payer system and NOT A SINGLE ONE agreed with the US-paid-pundits that lie about how canadian's don't like their healthcare. Matter of fact, more than 25% of them laughed when I first asked, knowing that I had been exposed to the US-paid-pundits and required truthful answers.
I think Canadians are trained from birth to love their health care. One of those "if you repeat it often enough it must be true" type of things. If they love it so much, how come my Canadian friends bitch and bitch about it all the time?
One friend had (I shit you not) a broken toe, but refused to seek medical attention because it would have meant a 7 hour wait in the ER just to see someone and she didn't want to take a day off of work. Another's kid had a huge bump on his head, and also refused to seek medical attention for the same reason. Another one is in a huge amount of pain waiting for some type of surgery on his back but is on a waiting list because it's not "urgent". Yet all of them love them their Canadian "free" health care. I can't figure out why. I really really can't figure out why.
My guess is that those of us who pay insurance, and those of us who carry most of the burden for medicare/aid (in the US, mind you), are doing most of the buying for a lot of the people wearing them.
You would be wrong. Most health insurance does not cover hearing aids.
Where are the "cloud" servers located? It would suck if you backed to Dropbox, Google Docs, or whatever, and Irene wiped THOSE out, along with your local hardware.
Depends on the service. Amazon S3 replicates your data to multiple locations (one of which is about to get a wallop by Irene). I would be shocked if any data was lost, however.
And my point to you is that I'm tired of hearing women complain about the lack of men, when their selection criteria contain items that have nothing to do with what makes a relationship successful. Unless, of course, your measurement of a successful relationship is the number of digits in your bank account.
There is a lot of truth to this. Most women will not "date down" socioeconomically, and then they complain about the lack of quality men. Even women who make in the top 10% of US incomes whine that they can't find good looking men who make more than them who are their same age. I guess they give no consideration to the statistical unlikelihood of there being a glut of such men banging down her door competing for her attention.
If I were single, I wouldn't mind dating a woman who was unemployed if she was fun and kind and caring and treated me right. These are the types of things that I value in a woman. I could give a shit how much money she makes.
Employment status is often - not always - but often - a good gauge of whether someone is an adult and whether they are the kind of person I, personally, am interested (read: motivated, adult, capable of supporting themselves). The level they can support themselves at isn't relevant to me, but rather that they are capable of it and that they are driven to do it.
My wife is currently unemployed. Is she not an adult, or is your standard different because she is female?
Have a profile that does a really good job of explaining who really are and include something that would spark someone to say "interesting". In my case, I play music and mention I enjoy writing it. Don't be afraid to share something a little personal (nothing you don't want to be on the Internet forever); I shared an interesting nugget about my formative years. It gives someone who is interested something to latch onto and also gives someone you message with similar interests something to read when they check you out. A paragraph of "love the outdoors and walks on beach" just doesn't do anything for anyone.
This is key. I had forgotten about this, but one time I actually had put up a profile on a dating site.
Basically, I had just returned from a foreign country, missed it, and was looking for someone from there. So in the subject, I wrote a really common interjection in that country's language, and on the inside, I basically said that if you knew what that meant before you googled it to send me an email. I don't think I even wrote anything about myself or what I was looking for beyond that (this was a lot of years ago).
I didn't get a ton of responses, but the responses that I did get were excellent due to the highly-targeted nature of the ad. Anyhow, that's what I'd advise people to do: pick something and get real specific about it. There's your common interest. And then just let things progress from there.
It's funny how people think they know what they want, and how life takes them in a different direction. If you would have told me at age 20 that I was going to move to a part of the country with a shitty climate to marry a woman who was a brainiac (yet can't work the TV remote), goody two shoes who can't carry a tune, gets lost in a paper bag, and can have a nasty temper, I would have looked like you like you were nuts (She has redeeming qualities, I swear!). But, well, there you go.
Also, check your expectations: if you think that a woman you date has to be a super-hottie and a rocket scientist, well, you may want to consider that hot rocket scientist ladies have a much broader field to choose from. I recommend lowering standards to the more achievable: someone you find attractive, finds you attractive, and is smart enough that you enjoy talking with, and someone you share interests and a sense of humor with.
I guess it's human nature to see the other side's self-destructive tendencies. What I see are women who throw themselves gung ho into their careers and wake up on their 35th birthday saying, "Oh shit! If I'm gonna have any kids, I need to get started, pronto! Now where are all the hot, single guys who make $200k/yr (because I won't date down) who want to get married and have kids, like, yesterday??"
I'll give you a hint: the hot, single, 35 year old guys who make $200k/yr are all dating 24-year-olds who aren't already married to their careers.
Wow, that came out as pretty bitter, but I'm not. I'm actually happily married. The self-destructive behavior is more of an amusement to me than anything else.
I wouldn't expect you to agree that men being more obnoxious than we already are is a great way to read women's minds. After all, it's you who has to tolerate our loogie hocking and farting noises.
On the other hand, I think we're more or less saying the same thing, just looking at it from two different perspectives. You are trying to solve for p (the female perspective: would I give this clown a second date?), while I am trying to solve for A (the male perspective: is this chick even into me, or am I wasting both of our time here?)
It does, however, seem that a quick algebraic manipulation proves that if I increase my offensiveness, she'll increase her attraction. Or maybe A was intended to be held constant, and it's actually her moodiness that will increase as a result of my obnoxiousness?
Sounds like a fun theory to test. Wish I would have thought of this 20 years ago!
So here's my theory, and you can feel free to correct me if you want, but let's say that I was actually available, and that I was having a conversation like that with a woman who I had just met (basically good natured, but a few detours that were overtly sexual), throw in a few jokes at her expense, and see whether or not she politely (or impolitely) dismisses me. Because if she sticks around for that, I like my odds of wondering why the hell her panties are rotating round and round from my ceiling fan.
Remember, there are groups like the 'conscious men' and the 'mens' movement' that claim they are for mens' interests but are really just feminist astroturfing.
I do not know of these groups. I was just posting my interpretation of the fine article based on a quick skimming.
I'm not totally certain that I know what a "reformed" man is, but based on your description of him, I doubt he'd have much success with women.
Let me tell you a story about a desk that belonged to my then-girlfriend. She didn't like it; its configuration gave her a sore neck. Anyway, it was time to get rid of it, but the hutch part was glued onto the desk part and as such, would not fit through the door. Being a practical kind of guy, I brought over a crowbar to pry the hutch from the desk, and as I was surveying the situation to determine the best prying strategy to minimize fuss, mess, etc., my then-girlfriend walked in, took the crowbar from my hand, and inside of approximately 3 minutes had beaten the fully-assembled desk into parts small enough for trash collection.
In other words, she is a 5'1" tall can of whoop-ass. Have you ever seen the Tasmanian Devil from the Loony Toons cartoons? That's what you should be picturing, here. Great, if you're into that sort of thing I guess (god knows there's probably a porn site out there for it somewhere), but sometimes it's best not to play with fire!
Hmm. Interesting point. I guess it is a fine line between confidence and obnoxiousness.
I still like the idea of teetering on the wrong side of that line, though. Not to act like a complete jackass for the entire conversation, just enough of a jackass to tease out if she wants to do unspeakable things with me on the neighbor's lawn at 2am or if she was just continuing the conversation so as not to appear rude.
Again, hypothetically speaking, of course. I like my neighbors and wouldn't want to defile their yard like that. Not to mention that I'm assuming that my wife would be less inclined to join in the fun and more inclined to just get really pissed off.
Networking is a great and totally neglected technique. I've found every single client that I've ever had via networking. If I hadn't met my wife while we were still in school, I would have definitely used it for dating.
Self effacing is the one that constantly has to prove how much of a feminist he is, basically by being a spineless twat himself.
I think it's possible to overdo the self-effacing bit. Most women are not seeking invertebrates. The fine article was describing men who are self-aware and know their strengths and weaknesses and aren't afraid to admit to them.
Nobody is perfect, so anyone who presents him or herself as 100% perfect is going to invite suspicion. I think that's all the article was getting at.
Cockiness sets off alarm bells for me because it reeks of overcompensation, and guys who are overcompensating for insecurities are not going to be honest with themselves or anyone else about who they are or what they need.
Sounds like a good reason to act cocky. If she's super interested in me, she'll ignore the alarm bells, but if she's only lukewarm toward me, she'd tell me to get lost.
I think you've identified a great way to separate the maybe interested from the interested.
P.S. This is all in the hypothetical, of course. It's been a long time since I waded into the dating pool.
Slashdot Mirror
Ron Pauls solution: only the wealthy may attend college.
Is that really what he said? I didn't read the article (this is Slashdot, after all), but it wasn't all that long ago that you didn't need student loans to go to college. Even for people who are low income.
You used to be able to work your way through college, but that's not really possible anymore. Universal access to unlimited government-guaranteed loans have driven up tuition rates into the stratosphere. I paid only $5k/yr in tuition to attend state school. I lived in a group house for $500/mo including utils/phone/food (yes, food) and waited tables earning $15/hr. I worked 10 hrs/wk during school and 40 during breaks.
My costs were about $10k/yr or so and my income was $13.5k, give or take. I didn't really pay any taxes because of the various tax credits you get for being a student. This is how non-trust-fund kids *used* to attend university.
Now, tuition rates are much higher and so are other costs. This is because consumers are consuming using Other People's Money, and the taxpayers are on the hook for the defaults. In my opinion, this is a huge mistake and leads to bad outcomes like students graduating with crushing debt loads and students who flunk out of school needing to repay loans without the benefit of a college degree.
And what of the flip side? The people who really achieve in the field they studies at University, but wouldn't have been able to go were it not for student loans. Are they a price worth paying for libertarian ideology?
Can America afford to be less educated?
That is a minor problem that can be solved easily with need-based merit scholarships.
The current situation, where everybody and his dog have access to nearly unlimited government-guaranteed loans, inflates the cost of post secondary education for everyone. Also, most high schoolers (and frankly most adults) have no idea how to calculate whether or not that degree is really worth it. There are a lot of people who would be better off not going to college, but they are easily manipulated by university marketing departments. They basically have the whole nation convinced that it would be to your benefit to attend the most prestigious university you can get into, irrespective of the cost.
I learned a lot in college and I'm glad I went, but I went to an in-state school and lived in a group house which kept costs way down. The total cost, including opportunity cost of not working full time those 4 years, was just over $100,000. But the total cost for someone to get an undergrad at the average $30k/yr school, including student loan interest and opportunity cost, is through the roof! For most people, there is no way in hell that will ever pay off.
And what about the people who aren't really all that prepared for university but are encouraged to go anyway. They go and get the loans and stay for a year or two until they get booted for bad grades. Did they benefit? Now they have big student loans and no college degree to supposedly earn them more money. Not smart.
Is there really a need for this app? I mean, if you're arrested, you get a phone call. It's public record. It's not like the authorities can just "disappear" you.
You may want the app, but I don't think you really need it, per se.
Didn't stop the union protesters in WI last year (although that was freezing rain, not just frost).
Wisconsinites attend outdoor winter football games with no shirts on. You can't extrapolate what type of weather Wisconsinites can tolerate onto pansy Easterners.
Go Badgers!
Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right.
What types of banking activities do you object to?
The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.
You were probably trying to make a point there, but it got lost in your (mis)understanding of derivatives. Maybe you should be more specific.
The reason that I say that you misunderstand derivatives, is that all derivatives are between two parties, a long and a short. There is nothing wrong with this; with no short interest there could be no long interest. I can give you an example of how this is good if you still need it, but something tells me that you are smart enough to already see that ire against parties that short derivatives is completely misplaced. :)
Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act
Good.
impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets
Bad. Markets are best when there is more liquidity. Discouraging liquidity is bad.
re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation
I don't have any idea what that means. Perhaps you should elaborate.
"Consultant" is just an invention of big business which allows them to underpay workers and not give them any benefits. I get a kick out of people who think that "consultant" is some sort of elevated status when in fact it's just a sign on your head that you have been bent over a desk and well and truly fucked.
Many years ago when I went from W-2 to consultant, I tripled my income. Don't project your shitty negotiating skills onto the rest of the population.
If nothing else, if you can get in on a Federal contracting IT program as a W2...get in, get some experience and foot in the door and meet people. Makes it much easier on the next gig...to get them to let you sub contract to them and go the 1099 route.
Do you really have to suffer through the whole contractor bit to get a federal IT job? Isn't there somewhere that federal IT jobs are posted? Is it possible for a random Joe to get one?
My dream is to get an entry-level federal IT job that I'm vastly overqualified for that I could do in my sleep, that's 90+% telework, and get all of the awesome benefits. How do I make my dream a reality?
Don't judge me; I have my reasons.
Even without insurance it would cost you less than $100 to be seen at a hospital and given medicine specifically mixed/made for you here in Japan.
Even foreigners? In Mexico, you could show up at a hospital with life-threatening injuries, but if you don't have a credit card, they'll kick you to the curb. That would never happen in the US.
Maybe you should go somewhere with a working medical system and experience it first hand, then look back at the American system and re-evaluate it.
Everybody seems to like the Canadian system. Say we should model the US system after Canada's. But I went to an ER there with a fractured toe, and they said that they wouldn't be able to see me for 7 hours! 7 hours! My wife drove me across the border to Detroit and I was seen immediately.
By the way my son had a high fever and he was maybe a year old at the time. If you wouldn't want to have your child seen by a medical professional immediately under those conditions then in my opinion you are irresponsible.
How high was his fever? If one of my kids had a high fever, you're right, I'd have 'em seen. But I wouldn't go to the ER because a high fever in a child of 1 year is not an emergency.
Here's an example of one time when my son had a high fever. He was 3 years old to the day (happened on his birthday). I went to give him a hug, and he felt like a frickin' radiator. This was on a weekend and his pediatrician's office was closed, so I brought him to a walk-in clinic where he was seen immediately by a nurse practitioner. She examined him and performed a rapid strep test, which came back positive. They immediately dispensed antibiotics and sent us on our way. Time from entering the clinic to exiting with medicine in hand, approximately 30 minutes. Total cost without using our insurance: $25.
So you can sit here and tell me our system is broken, but I'm sitting here and telling you that you just did it wrong. At the ER they should have advised you that your situation was not an emergency and that you should go somewhere else. I don't know why they didn't, but ultimately you went to the wrong place. You should have gone to a walk-in clinic, a pediatrician that accepts walk-ins (about half do), or urgent care.
Also, I have no idea why cost should have been an issue for you. Everyone who has ever traveled internationally knows that you need to have medical insurance that covers you in the foreign country that you're visiting, unless your national health care provides this for you. It sounds like you just were completely unprepared for a health-related event to occur while you were away from home. I can see why, since you were naive enough to think that you could just go to a hospital and get free care in any country in the world, you wouldn't bother preparing for such an event. Hopefully now you are older and wiser.
Let me see if I can explain something to you: YOU DON'T GO TO THE HOSPITAL FOR A COMMON COLD. You go to the emergency room for emergencies. The common cold is not an emergency.
You could have been seen by a nurse practitioner at the corner drug store for $25. You could have been seen by a real doctor at urgent care for $100. Many internal medicine docs will see patients on a walk-in basis for varying costs. The fact that you chose to misuse our system is not indicative of a broken system. It is indicative of a broken patient.
Doesn't every politician especially from the GOP say that the American Healthcare system and its actual care are the "best" in the world?
By the way, this is despite the fact that various metrics indicate the USA is no where near the top!
There are lots of reasons for Medical Tourism. Canadians come to the US to jump the waiting lists. Americans go to India due to cost reasons. British people go to France due to insufficient capacity. This is to be expected due to the law of comparative advantage. No one locality has an absolute advantage over every other locality, and we would never expect it to.
The US does, due to our sheer size, have a pretty big advantage over many other parts of the world. For instance, my wife is currently suffering from an extremely rare cancer. There are very few hospitals in the world who have any serious expertise in treating it, and most of them are in the US: Chicago, Boston, Chapel Hill, NC, and London. None of those are local to us, so I guess you could say that she is a medical tourist. She is being treated at the hospitals at UNC and Northwestern (Chicago).
People in the comments are saying that Cuba has the best health care system in the world. Maybe in terms of infant mortality, but my kids are plenty alive, while my wife is at serious risk of death, so Cuba doesn't offer us much. A quick search through the literature does not turn up a single instance of the Cubans curing a female patient with her cancer having reached stage IV.
So if we were Cuban, she would likely be quite dead right now. She may yet not celebrate her next birthday, but at least her odds are up to 50/50 now. She arrived at the hospital with about 48 hours to live, so I'd say this is a pretty big improvement. There is no other country in the world that we'd rather have her treated in. If there was, she'd be there right now, believe me.
I've talked to over 40 canadians about how they feel about their single-payer system and NOT A SINGLE ONE agreed with the US-paid-pundits that lie about how canadian's don't like their healthcare. Matter of fact, more than 25% of them laughed when I first asked, knowing that I had been exposed to the US-paid-pundits and required truthful answers.
I think Canadians are trained from birth to love their health care. One of those "if you repeat it often enough it must be true" type of things. If they love it so much, how come my Canadian friends bitch and bitch about it all the time?
One friend had (I shit you not) a broken toe, but refused to seek medical attention because it would have meant a 7 hour wait in the ER just to see someone and she didn't want to take a day off of work. Another's kid had a huge bump on his head, and also refused to seek medical attention for the same reason. Another one is in a huge amount of pain waiting for some type of surgery on his back but is on a waiting list because it's not "urgent". Yet all of them love them their Canadian "free" health care. I can't figure out why. I really really can't figure out why.
My guess is that those of us who pay insurance, and those of us who carry most of the burden for medicare/aid (in the US, mind you), are doing most of the buying for a lot of the people wearing them.
You would be wrong. Most health insurance does not cover hearing aids.
Where are the "cloud" servers located? It would suck if you backed to Dropbox, Google Docs, or whatever, and Irene wiped THOSE out, along with your local hardware.
Depends on the service. Amazon S3 replicates your data to multiple locations (one of which is about to get a wallop by Irene). I would be shocked if any data was lost, however.
And my point to you is that I'm tired of hearing women complain about the lack of men, when their selection criteria contain items that have nothing to do with what makes a relationship successful. Unless, of course, your measurement of a successful relationship is the number of digits in your bank account.
There is a lot of truth to this. Most women will not "date down" socioeconomically, and then they complain about the lack of quality men. Even women who make in the top 10% of US incomes whine that they can't find good looking men who make more than them who are their same age. I guess they give no consideration to the statistical unlikelihood of there being a glut of such men banging down her door competing for her attention.
If I were single, I wouldn't mind dating a woman who was unemployed if she was fun and kind and caring and treated me right. These are the types of things that I value in a woman. I could give a shit how much money she makes.
Employment status is often - not always - but often - a good gauge of whether someone is an adult and whether they are the kind of person I, personally, am interested (read: motivated, adult, capable of supporting themselves). The level they can support themselves at isn't relevant to me, but rather that they are capable of it and that they are driven to do it.
My wife is currently unemployed. Is she not an adult, or is your standard different because she is female?
Have a profile that does a really good job of explaining who really are and include something that would spark someone to say "interesting". In my case, I play music and mention I enjoy writing it. Don't be afraid to share something a little personal (nothing you don't want to be on the Internet forever); I shared an interesting nugget about my formative years. It gives someone who is interested something to latch onto and also gives someone you message with similar interests something to read when they check you out. A paragraph of "love the outdoors and walks on beach" just doesn't do anything for anyone.
This is key. I had forgotten about this, but one time I actually had put up a profile on a dating site.
Basically, I had just returned from a foreign country, missed it, and was looking for someone from there. So in the subject, I wrote a really common interjection in that country's language, and on the inside, I basically said that if you knew what that meant before you googled it to send me an email. I don't think I even wrote anything about myself or what I was looking for beyond that (this was a lot of years ago).
I didn't get a ton of responses, but the responses that I did get were excellent due to the highly-targeted nature of the ad. Anyhow, that's what I'd advise people to do: pick something and get real specific about it. There's your common interest. And then just let things progress from there.
It's funny how people think they know what they want, and how life takes them in a different direction. If you would have told me at age 20 that I was going to move to a part of the country with a shitty climate to marry a woman who was a brainiac (yet can't work the TV remote), goody two shoes who can't carry a tune, gets lost in a paper bag, and can have a nasty temper, I would have looked like you like you were nuts (She has redeeming qualities, I swear!). But, well, there you go.
Also, check your expectations: if you think that a woman you date has to be a super-hottie and a rocket scientist, well, you may want to consider that hot rocket scientist ladies have a much broader field to choose from. I recommend lowering standards to the more achievable: someone you find attractive, finds you attractive, and is smart enough that you enjoy talking with, and someone you share interests and a sense of humor with.
I guess it's human nature to see the other side's self-destructive tendencies. What I see are women who throw themselves gung ho into their careers and wake up on their 35th birthday saying, "Oh shit! If I'm gonna have any kids, I need to get started, pronto! Now where are all the hot, single guys who make $200k/yr (because I won't date down) who want to get married and have kids, like, yesterday??"
I'll give you a hint: the hot, single, 35 year old guys who make $200k/yr are all dating 24-year-olds who aren't already married to their careers.
Wow, that came out as pretty bitter, but I'm not. I'm actually happily married. The self-destructive behavior is more of an amusement to me than anything else.
I wouldn't expect you to agree that men being more obnoxious than we already are is a great way to read women's minds. After all, it's you who has to tolerate our loogie hocking and farting noises.
On the other hand, I think we're more or less saying the same thing, just looking at it from two different perspectives. You are trying to solve for p (the female perspective: would I give this clown a second date?), while I am trying to solve for A (the male perspective: is this chick even into me, or am I wasting both of our time here?)
It does, however, seem that a quick algebraic manipulation proves that if I increase my offensiveness, she'll increase her attraction. Or maybe A was intended to be held constant, and it's actually her moodiness that will increase as a result of my obnoxiousness?
Sounds like a fun theory to test. Wish I would have thought of this 20 years ago!
So here's my theory, and you can feel free to correct me if you want, but let's say that I was actually available, and that I was having a conversation like that with a woman who I had just met (basically good natured, but a few detours that were overtly sexual), throw in a few jokes at her expense, and see whether or not she politely (or impolitely) dismisses me. Because if she sticks around for that, I like my odds of wondering why the hell her panties are rotating round and round from my ceiling fan.
I'm just sayin'. ;)
Remember, there are groups like the 'conscious men' and the 'mens' movement' that claim they are for mens' interests but are really just feminist astroturfing.
I do not know of these groups. I was just posting my interpretation of the fine article based on a quick skimming.
I'm not totally certain that I know what a "reformed" man is, but based on your description of him, I doubt he'd have much success with women.
Let me tell you a story about a desk that belonged to my then-girlfriend. She didn't like it; its configuration gave her a sore neck. Anyway, it was time to get rid of it, but the hutch part was glued onto the desk part and as such, would not fit through the door. Being a practical kind of guy, I brought over a crowbar to pry the hutch from the desk, and as I was surveying the situation to determine the best prying strategy to minimize fuss, mess, etc., my then-girlfriend walked in, took the crowbar from my hand, and inside of approximately 3 minutes had beaten the fully-assembled desk into parts small enough for trash collection.
In other words, she is a 5'1" tall can of whoop-ass. Have you ever seen the Tasmanian Devil from the Loony Toons cartoons? That's what you should be picturing, here. Great, if you're into that sort of thing I guess (god knows there's probably a porn site out there for it somewhere), but sometimes it's best not to play with fire!
Hmm. Interesting point. I guess it is a fine line between confidence and obnoxiousness.
I still like the idea of teetering on the wrong side of that line, though. Not to act like a complete jackass for the entire conversation, just enough of a jackass to tease out if she wants to do unspeakable things with me on the neighbor's lawn at 2am or if she was just continuing the conversation so as not to appear rude.
Again, hypothetically speaking, of course. I like my neighbors and wouldn't want to defile their yard like that. Not to mention that I'm assuming that my wife would be less inclined to join in the fun and more inclined to just get really pissed off.
Networking is a great and totally neglected technique. I've found every single client that I've ever had via networking. If I hadn't met my wife while we were still in school, I would have definitely used it for dating.
Good luck!
Self effacing is the one that constantly has to prove how much of a feminist he is, basically by being a spineless twat himself.
I think it's possible to overdo the self-effacing bit. Most women are not seeking invertebrates. The fine article was describing men who are self-aware and know their strengths and weaknesses and aren't afraid to admit to them.
Nobody is perfect, so anyone who presents him or herself as 100% perfect is going to invite suspicion. I think that's all the article was getting at.
Cockiness sets off alarm bells for me because it reeks of overcompensation, and guys who are overcompensating for insecurities are not going to be honest with themselves or anyone else about who they are or what they need.
Sounds like a good reason to act cocky. If she's super interested in me, she'll ignore the alarm bells, but if she's only lukewarm toward me, she'd tell me to get lost.
I think you've identified a great way to separate the maybe interested from the interested.
P.S. This is all in the hypothetical, of course. It's been a long time since I waded into the dating pool.