They could probably spend 1/10th of the amount of money it would cost to kill the guy, to instead, HIRE the guy for 10+ years...

You think Neymar built everything up for himself...by being good at a sport? Are you fucking high?! He's paid an amount of money that's absolutely criminal. In no way is any human worth that much, Doctors and Teachers aren't paid 1% of the money he makes. The fact that we as a society have decided to elevate certain people to the status of god because they're skilled at a sport is really stupid.

But the MOST stupid thing is believing that somehow he did something great and has EARNED his paycheck. No he hasn't, he is simply at the right place at the right time in history to be paid a ridiculous amount of money for something useless. It was GIVEN to him what he makes, it isn't something that he has earned. This is like dangling promises to inner city black youths if only they work really hard at basketball then they won't end up living in a giant open air prison in Harlem.

Football is not destroying the world, it's wonderful and I love it. FIFA, Governments, and Money are destroying peoples lives. That's plain to see and if you don't get that then you're fucking stupid.

I'm surprised there is no cutting fluid being sprayed on it. Most all the multi-axis CNC machines I've seen (not many, admittedly--not my department), required a pretty constant flow of oil. Is this some advancement in cutting tool technology, or is it just that aluminum is soft enough not to need it?

I understand NASA has used 3D printing to create fuel injectors (or something like that) for rocket engines with considerable success. Since it's a solid metal shape with lots of vacant internal channels, there would otherwise have to be a lot of design and construction concessions if it's going to be cut or forged. I suspect that sort of 3D printing will be quite revolutionary for manufacturing once it doesn't cost stupid amounts of money.

Indeed, however with small exception I thought we were being fairly civil. That said, we all know what to expect from the 'little f*#king thing'. It's why the admins are constantly on his ass, and he may be banned again.

My point about veracity was that one has to trust the 'reporting' by others who may have an agenda to further. Without first hand knowledge, it's difficult for some (like me) to give full trust in ANY reports. I tried to read the first link you provided, but it started with a 'letter' to Saddam and I admit I didn't go farther.
As I recall, the numbers were more in the 1-300K dead from the ethnic cleansing (I have 175K in my head, but I don't know if that's right). I was old enough to watch the reports live when it happened in the 80's-90's and worry I might be drafted. I have not intended to imply Saddam wasn't terrible, only to imply he was not as bad as possible.

What I've seen so far from ISIS were hundreds if not thousands of 'prisoners' marched to their execution after surrender, even after swearing allegiance to ISIS, reports of mass rapes, village destruction, 'warnings' to all those not in line to leave or die, takeover of 1/2 the country in weeks (or less), all by 5000 people. Reports are that they are gaining members, allies, and massive amounts of money and arms. For their size, they appear to be worse than Saddam, who had hundreds of thousands, if not millions at his disposal. If you multiplied the videoed crimes of ISIS in just the last week by 200+, you would understand my point that they seem worse than most weeks of Saddam's rule....when you consider their respective sizes.
I'll hope you are correct, and ISIS is soon to be wiped out, but it's certainly not happening yet. No matter how it plays out, you are certainly right that ugly times are ahead for Iraq.

A consensus is not reality, as I've already stated.

I don't care what people believe about global warming. My problem is that when govt's believe we can do something about it, they begin to take my private property i.e. money, to fight it, when gov'ts do little but waste huge amounts of money and increase our debt.

Do whatever you want about global whatever, just don't ask me to believe that what you do will accomplish anything.

Oh god yeah, plus it's EA so you'll probably start out with no weapons and have to buy everything with microtransactions.

BUT... this flips a switch in me marked "playing with my snowspeeder against AT-ATs on xmas day as a kid", and I love it for that.


@ant and @Ashenkase, I would pay an unholy amount of money for a new X-Wing/TIE Fighter game. Throw in oculus support and I'd probably sell my house to pay for it.

Well, first of all, I said "most", not all. Second, I'm not making any value judgements, simply stating my experience. Most women I know spend varying amounts of money on products designed to keep their skin soft and hair free etc.

Who doesn't want to be perceived as competent? Plenty of people. I know lots of women who profess proudly to not being able to change a tyre. To be fair, I also know plenty of women who are extremely competent, but I know almost no men who would admit to not knowing how to change a tyre.

Again, I'm talking in broad generalisations, and that's how marketing works. I'm not saying women can't be tough or competent or that men can't have soft skin, but that is not the norm and marketing is targetted at a wide demographic (unless you are specifically marketing to a nice audience).

As to the question of whether these distinctions are ingrained or not, it's largely irrelevant. It's not about some genetic marker that makes men want to smell like trees and women smell like flowers, it's about centuries of built-up cultural aesthetics. I don't really have to explain where this comes from, do I?

Again, I'm not saying this is right, merely that there are reasons that marketers do this. Where I have a problem is when it becomes exclusionist. When girls are told they can't play with "boys toys", I say screw that.

now all we gotta do is add neutron laser beams in the headlights and we can get all sorts of military funding to make this real.

pisses me off that we spend ungodly amounts of money on wars of choice instead of stuff like this.

Unions = large groups of people, pooling small amounts of money into large ones.

PACs = tiny groups of people, pooling large amounts of money into huge ones.

Why should 2 or 3 billionaires have a bigger voice than 100,000,000 unionized workers?

...and I don't like unions, but I have to side with them on this.

No wonder, Twister made some amount of money out of clips stolen from people, who stole them from other people..

Gotta love Krugman.. not as an economist but as a world class hypocrite rivaling Molière's Tartuffe. He's getting paid $25,000 a month to do zero work, while calling for the end of income inequality. <scoff> I wonder if he's ready to give up 70% of that to the federal government like he says all "wealthy" ought to do.

The headline might as well read, "Rich economist constantly holds forth on the evils of income inequality, while...." You get the point. Here's the back-of-the-envelope math on his recent windfall:

Not counting the $20,000 in non-transferable travel budget, moving bennies, etc. that they offered him, CUNY is paying Dr. Krugman a nine-month salary of $225,000. I presume he won't be working summer semesters, so let's say that's all his salary from CUNY for the year. Now normal tenured senior professors at CUNY make at most $116,364 a year. Adjuncts at CUNY make about $3,000 or so per course; you can teach at most 9 hours a semester. So let's say you're an adjunct maxed out at a 3/3 load; you make about $18,000 a year for that. So if Dr. Krugman wanted, he could pick out 6 adjuncts at CUNY and *double* their yearly income, just by giving away the amount of money he personally makes *over and above what the best-paid senior faculty make*. If he were willing to do the job (*) for a nominal fee (as you may know, Prof. Krugman has another line of work), he could literally pick some lucky adjunct at CUNY and double their entire year's income -- *every month of the year.

And honestly, @radx, what did the "progressives" expect would happen? This so-called "Democracy" can never be anything other than an "oligarchy," if not a governance by "mob rule" (and sometimes a combination of the two). If "Democracy" is the "least bad" kind of state/government possible as some (like Mark Twain) have claimed, then it's high time "the people" climbed out of the dark ages and lived without rulers, altogether.

The resultant "chaos" that would ensue would not be any worse (and in fact far better) than the kind of unintended chaos that results from the centralized power structures of state governance.

------

*Which, let's be clear, involves no teaching load, and seems to mainly mean that maybe he'll drop by the office every few months to share his brilliance with whoever happens to be there. The point for CUNY is almost certainly to purchase some of the aura from his name on the letterhead

Isn't Spain in seriously hard economic straits right now? I haven't read too much about it but I found it interesting that Real Madrid and Barcelona are getting away with buying Neymar and Gareth Bale for a ridiculous amount of money. I mean Barcelona actually committed Tax fraud to acquire Neymar, and Gareth Bale is the most expensive footballer ever. How is it that the public hasn't risen up and destroyed these two clubs?

Lived in Ontario (28 years), Brisbane, Australia (5 years), Alberta (7 years), and now Texas (14 years).

Agree with pretty much with Boneremake on Alberta, gets more points than Ontario. My Australian experience was good, in both the city and rural (blew an eardrum due to infection in Longreach QLD at Xmas... the doctor was drunk when they wheeled him into emerg, but he was a gentle, caring drunk).

Small things in Ontario are manageable - anything requiring stuff beyond typical emergency room patching up in more rural locations (my definition - anywhere far enough from Toronto that you can't see the nighttime glow, so north of Newfenmarket sort of) is quite lacking (v. long wait times for things like weekly dialysis, MRI, even open MRI, GI tract scoping, ultrasounds, contrast X-rays etc). Parental unit #1 with diabetes requiring 3 times a week dialysis almost snuffed it as there were only 4 chairs in the unit 14 miles from home, got on the list and had to wait for someone to die before getting on the team. Finally snuffed it when they shut down these 4 chairs and the new unit was now a 90 mile round trip 3 times a week for man who could barely walk or see. Died from exhaustion, not diabetes. 2nd parental unit needs an MRI for some serious GI issues, can't keep food down, losing weight rapidly. Wait 4.5 months and we'll see if we can get you in. I'm having her measured for the box.

Having said that, the situation is easier to describe in Texas, the land of excess (excessive wealth and excessive poverty).

Good health insurance plan, preferably through employer with lots of employees = wait times for advanced procedures measured usually in minutes or hours, sometimes days, but not weeks or months. You get taken care of, and your birthing room at the local maternity ward looks like the Marriott (just Couryard though, so no mini-bar or microwave).

Mediocre or no health insurance plan = pray you never get sick enough to require more than what you can buy at the CVS or splint up by watching do-it-yourself first aid videos on youtube, because an unplanned night in the hospital or a trip to emerg in the short bus with swirly lights followed by admission can, for many, wipe them out or sure eat up Bobby's college fund. No exaggeration. I have insurance, but for a reference point, one night in hospital (elective) for a turbinectomy (google it people) including jello and ice cream came in at $14,635. Yes, one night. 24 hours. Do the math. An emergency room visit for a forearm cut requiring 13 stitches (and I didn't even bleed on their white sheets - just cut through the skin to the fat tissue) was billed at $2,300 bucks. Our new baby tried to exit the meatbag as a footling breach, so emergency C-sectioned him out, and one extra night in hospital (2 in total) - all up, billed at just shy of $24K. We now have 3 full service hospitals within 5 miles of our house, and a full service children's hospital in the same radius. And they just started building another. Somebody's making money. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance is shitty (huge deductibles, huge copays) you will eat much of these types of costs. Rule: cheaper to die than get sick.

Ontario and AB might have longer wait times, but even an 83 year old woman in a rural Ontario village with no pension, insurance, income or large stacks of cash can (eventually) get the health care she needs without spending unjustifiable amounts of money. Happy birthday mom.

My 2¢

You poor man you, maybe you should join a christian support group for the discriminated. Or better, tell someone at FoxNews about the injustice you have to suffer.
Quick, name all jobs where women get paid more than men and then start naming all (yes, all of them) where men get paid more.
The only ones where women make more I can name involve sex. They do because men (like me) are pigs and, unlike women, are willing to spend huge amounts of money on it. That's why models get a lot of cash, men like to look at their well formed, half or more naked bodies.
And before I forget...
Never bed a man who won't bed self-respecting women - he's weak.

All I have are my experiences. Before I discovered the torturing effects of what is called "The Loop" (a period of time before and after being moved to court for arraignment and the period leading up to being housed in a jail cell) I perceived justice as possible. After I was wrongly put through this system, I have discovered that Justice is possible but not probable; or rather, your probably of justice increases with the amount of money you're willing to put into the justice system when it comes knocking.

I did not have money to put up, so I was put through a near 24 hours of waiting, moving from holding pin to holding pin to holding pin, with only concrete and the beleaguered advice of my new peer -- the criminal -- as my companion. Robbed of your sense of time and perception of beginning to end. When will it be over? How long have I been here? What is the purpose of these events? Am I guilty? Am I in jail? Who are these hardened criminals surrounding me? Am I a criminal now as well?

I was a boy with a bright future and I've struggled to reintegrate myself into society ever since. No one gets it. Depression and a sense of constant injustice are my companion. I wasn't an alcoholic before these events and I never did drugs, but afterwards I have struggled with alcoholism, depression, suicide attempts, all of my personal relationships failed until recently (and still it is a struggle to care about... anyone or anything), drug abuse, and I'm only barely past my yearly, near monthly visit to jail or the drunk tank.

Honestly, I know personal responsibility is important, but I was a fucking clueless child put into a den of thieves. I learned their ways and my nihilistic conclusions are the only bit of optimism that seem apparent in any system. Chaos; anarchy -- my only desires.

But this understanding of the the defects in any and all systems is what has given me an edge in my workplace where we invent new systems every day. That gives me hope, but it is a hope based on the purposeful destruction of systems. I'm good at it. And it protects the powers that employ me.

All forms of government and religion; rules and regulations; city planning and software design -- ALL of it easily manipulated and quick to topple -- like my innocence and sense of JUSTICE...