At 2:06 - literally my son on our first trip to Hawaii. He had never been to the ocean before and the first wave knocked him on his ass and he never went in for the rest of the trip.

eh, kinda, sorta, maybe, could be true depending on your circumstances...

It's a pretty short treatment of a very complex topic.

Buying a home has a lot of positives.
Financially, while you might not be building equity in the first few years, eventually, you ARE building equity. Don't buy a home unless you can afford to pay the damn thing off.

There's also a big difference between rents and mortgages. Rents go up over time and mortgages (depending on the structure) generally go down (either on a reducing mortgage or as a function of your income).

Also, mortgages stop when you've paid them off. Rent doesn't. If you're renting when you retire, well, have fun paying the same rent (or more!) until you die.

Also, if you get that dream job in Hawaii... you can actually SELL your house. Or even better, rent it out.

That doesn't even cover the intangibles like the fact that you can do whatever you want to the house. Don't like that wall? Knock it down. No asking a landlord! *

Also, no property inspections and while the bank can kick you out if you don't pay... that's the ONLY reason they can kick you out, unlike renting where you can be evicted for "damaging the property", "being a disturbance" or "because the landlord doesn't like you".

All that said, there are plenty of reasons not to buy, and they are highly dependent on your income, ambitions and the local property market.

Just don't ever buy anything where your mortgage is more than 30% of your take home pay.


* you should really ask an engineer and your local government in case your house falls over and/or you need building consent.

I love Snopes. Of course, the devil is in the details:

"The editor of the biographical text about Barack Obama which was included in the booklet maintained that the mention of Kenya was an error on her part and was not based on any information provided to her by Obama himself:

"Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

"'You're undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton & Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time," Goderich wrote. "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.'

"A New York Times article about Barack Obama published in 1990, a year before the Acton & Dystel promotional booklet was issued, correctly identified his birthplace as Hawaii.

"A variant of this item paired the image shown above with the statement "Big Oops! Harvard Law Review did not cleanse its 1991 yearbook which states he was born in Kenya." As noted above, the biographical sketch pictured above was put out by a literacy agency; it was not part of any yearbook published by Harvard."

Whenever something irritates me this much on the Internet I have to first wonder if someone is trolling for effect. If not then she belongs in a sanitarium, I'll pay for the Lyft.

I'm just glad her type wasn't around when Hitler invaded Poland and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Oh wait, was that an insensitive reference to the continent of Hawaii?

Just a couple of points.

While concealed carry is legal in all states, that does not accurately cover the difficulty in getting permits. In many states, the requirements are so dramatic that it is effectively impossible to become certified. For instance, in California you may only be licensed to concealed carry if you can show a reason to need to carry AND get permission from your local sheriff or city police. In addition, one of the cornerstones of CCW is reciprocity, the allowing of other states CCW permits to be recognized in your state. California is one of the 'may carry' states that doesn't allow any other state or country's CCW holders to carry in California. You must be a resident. Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island are similar. In fact, in Hawaii and a couple of the others, offices that grant permission have been specifically told by superiors to not issue for any reason.

Secondly, other than suicides, CCW holders are far less likely to commit any sort of crime versus a non-CCW holder. With suicides, having a gun of any type handy is going to make them easier. It should be a win win for hardcore anti-gun people anyway, since they have one less 'gun nut' to worry in their sleep about.

In any case, I am a proud CCW permit holder. I carry every day and have never had need to use it. But if need arose, I would have it available. I don't like all of the whack job laws that I have to put up with in Texas, but at least that one I agree with fully.

Nothing is going to get done in Congress because the animosity between the two parties at this point in Congress is at Defcon 1. Bipartisanship is completely DOA. Both sides are just looking to criticize the other while crafting the narrative that their side is the one that knows what's best for the American people.

I think what you're going to see more of are things like what's happening in Hawaii. State representatives are going to realize the untapped voter potential that's out there by crafting gun laws before Congress does. In fact, probably the best solution to this problem right now is for States to work with each other and standardize all disparate gun laws across the U.S.

The real question here is how the Supreme Court is going to view these state laws when they (inevitably) get challenged on 2nd Amendment grounds. Scalia is gone now, so I honestly don't know how the Court will decide. But if you look at how gay marriage was essentially legalized in the U.S. state-by-state, I think you can see a road-map to how gun control laws could follow a similar path.

What's missing right now is an advocacy group that cares as much about this issue as the NRA does about "gun rights." It's easier to get people behind the legalization of gay marriage because it's a human rights issue and at the end of the day most people have a relative or friend (or several of each) who is affected. Sadly, it may take a day to come when everyone has a relative or friend who has suffered from gun violence to get the same kind of groundswell necessary to nudge things meaningfully forward.

Lucky bastard!
I didn't live in the same house for two years in a row after 3rd grade (1980) until I bought the house I live in today back in '99. As if that wasn't enough for me to lose all my toys, when I was shipped off to boarding school my Jr year (cry a river for me, it was in Hawaii) all my stuff disappeared and no one would take responsibility for it. That was a big part of why I moved out of my mom's house before I finished high school. (I did eventually go to college and got a degree anyway).

That's certainly your choice. I'll roll the dice any day if it means bacon. I respect your right to take or avoid the risks you wish until you try to remove my right to make my own choice.

It would be nice, but no, wild boar are notoriously dangerous and aggressive, and also incredibly destructive and fertile, I don't think a sterilization program would work for many reasons. What they really need is a huge, repeating, mass hunt with big prizes (to get enough people to join for a clean sweep) so they actually eradicate them. Leaving them alive in the wild, even if neutered (which I don't think could work on pigs, since one missed female can repopulate so quickly) means years of horrendous destruction of the already endangered habitats in Hawaii.
BUSTED!!! I knew it. I've wanted to ask one of you...do pigs know what to say to someone who says to them "When pigs fly"?
.
.
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A: 2009 buddy....swine flu.

I'll disagree that's it's perfectly fine food. Bacon is a type 1 carcinogen. Which means there is no doubt that it causes cancer. Non processed pork, is a type 2 carcinogen, which means it causes cancer, but they need more data to confirm it.
The risks aren't quite as high as with cigarettes but it's an extra set of dice I'm not going to roll. That's information from the W.H.O.

I'm not sure if this method would work in Hawaii, but they've had a lot of success in Europe with stray animals by using a catch a release program http://carocat.eu/the-catch-neuter-and-release-approach/. It's a little slower, but not that much since cats and dogs have a pretty short life-cycle when they are stray. I think you could make a few alterations and, the invasive boars instead of running away from hunters, would begin to approach them instead, and you could register, and neuter them.

Damn you blew my cover. I'm am indeed a pig, hence my bias in this thread. Here's a picture of me and my boat driver in the bahamas http://www.tecnologia-ambiente.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/maiale-isola.jpeg

You're going to wish you hadn't said that....I just thought of an actual good reason.
In Hawaii, invasive boar (pigs) are destroying the fragile native eco system. The only solution anyone has put forth is kill them. This means a large amount of pork exists that is killed either way...is not wasting that meat not a good reason to eat it?
Send the URL of the bloody steak video. ;-)

Good thoughts, but all that gear makes it much harder to bend and flex without resistance and compression which is the whole point.
Also, the cold causes uncontrollable muscle contraction, making it all more difficult in another way.
I just need to move to Hawaii where shorts are fine in winter. ;-)

Thanks, that's nice of you to say.
Unfortunately, snorkeling up here means subjecting myself to hypothermia, so it probably won't happen much. There will be some while I set up my pond, but I doubt that will be as therapeutic as warm Hawaii waters. Maybe I should move!

I really wish I knew about this 15 years ago when I broke my back the first time. I'm sure it could have helped my recovery, which instead took months partially paralyzed on the couch and years for even partial recovery, and I'm now permanently 'broken'.
I live in N Cali, where it's not usually warm, so I don't go swimming often. It wasn't until last year in Hawaii that I realized how good snorkeling was for my back, because it let me exercise and stretch without the pressure, weight, and jarring I get when exercising on land.
I have a hot tub which helps, but it's not the same by far when you can't stand up and still be under water.
Knowing what I know now, I should have found an indoor pool and spent a lot of time there. I would likely be in much better shape today had I done that right away.
*quality stuff

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Helicopter-Crash-In-Hawaii