Just out of interest a bit. I'm a referee, I used to referee American football but now it's just Soccer (Football). High schools are not the best competition but they pay well and it's steady so I do those games sometimes cause they're easy. Nearly every school I go to has a million dollar almost turf field for all their sports. The larger schools have stadiums with huge stands and scoreboards and just ridiculous amounts of money being thrown everywhere.

Also the kids are the worst...complete idiots who are entitled as hell. Who wouldn't feel entitled when they get this huge stadium to play their really bad (Seriously these kids suck) level of soccer in and a really expensive coaching staff to coach them. Badly I might add, either that or they just don't listen.

That's education...training morons to be absolute stars at a sport in high school. None of these kids is going to get a scholarship to a college for the sport either because that will go to awesome club players. Awesome club players hardly ever play for High Schools, most coaches won't let them.

We have money...it's priorities. You see parents spending THOUSANDS on fucking Prom...one fucking night of these peoples sad miserable lives. Get a fucking education instead of just being absolute nothings that don't matter.

>> ^Trancecoach:

@davidraine, @NetRunner: Please read the article, then we can have a discussion.


Done. That was a very entitled and misogynistic read, and the arguments sounded exactly like the ones the Republican on Meet The Press presented. The $40k/$47k line was used specifically -- except that it's a figure that's now eleven years old, so who knows how valid it is anymore. In any event, I claim that based on this sample of his work, the book represents a very misogynistic viewpoint. Not everything in the book is going to be anti-woman, but there's enough there to form a clear pattern.

"Give women ways of earning more rather than suing more." / "Give companies ways of teaching women how to earn more."

Both of these statements stem from the belief that women think they are a privileged class and should get more rights and protections then men. It further states that the playing field is already level, and if women were just a little smarter they'd figure out how to earn more and wouldn't need the courts to fight their battles for them. This is misogynistic on its face -- It is a belief that women aren't as bright as men and need special training to "earn more", and a belief that women aren't already doing the same work men are. It also assumes that the playing field is actually level, which it is not.

"At this moment in history, gender-specific research is funded with a consciousness toward making women in the workplace look equally engaged but unequally paid."

This espouses a belief that there is an agenda behind equal-pay studies and that the researchers were biased and cannot be trusted. It's a form of "projecting" -- Modern Republicans (among others) love this tactic and truly believe in it because their studies have an agenda and are biased, so all studies must be the same way. The fact is that biased studies don't hold up to scrutiny (peer review), and research methodologies are published to help verify the quality of a study. It's also the same argument that you used in an earlier post: "The statistics can be shown to prove anything, so I can raise a counterargument without supporting it with data."

"From the Jobs Rated Almanac’s worst-job list: We often hear that women are segregated into lower-paying jobs. What is probably true is that women are more likely to take lower paid jobs precisely to avoid these worst jobs." / "The fields with the highest paid workers bias toward engineering, computers and the hard sciences while the lowest paid are doing work that almost any adult can do—therefore there is no end to the supply of available people."

The fact that this is still used as an argument means that those using it are being deliberately misleading. This misses the point and always has. If unequal pay was a function of occupation choice, then a man and a woman in the same job at the same company would make the same amount of money. This is provably false.

"Men’s Weakness As Their Façade Of Strength; Women’s Strength as Their Façade Of Weakness" / "In most fields with higher pay, you can’t psychologically check out at the end of the day (corporate attorney vs. librarian)"

These comments espouse a belief in seriously outdated gender roles. Assuming women should be shrinking violets that do their work behind the scenes and do amazing things that surprise the men she is working under is not the way it works anymore, and thank goodness because that was a bunch of crap when it was expected (which was what, five decades ago?). The concept that women can't handle the stress of not leaving work behind when you leave work is equally misogynistic.

"People Who Get Higher Pay..."

This is the last one I'll tackle, and I'm going to repeat myself here, because it bears repeating. This is the heart of what's wrong with the "equal-pay is a myth" counterargument. The whole chapter and the next is predicated on the belief that women make less because they're making the wrong choices, not risking as much as their male counterparts, and are working less than the men even though they're in the same position. Therefore women *should* earn less because women are *doing* less.

Except that women *aren't* doing less. They don't just occupy the same positions, they do the same work. In some cases they do more work, and are still stiffed and passed over for promotion. Women are willing and able to do exactly what men do for their jobs, and yet they make considerably less for no reason other than their gender. There isn't an "effort gap" or "reverse sexism" or "societal factors" in play here -- Those have been modeled and they don't explain the disparity. It is discrimination, plain and simple. It's literally the only explanation left over.

War on Drugs = War on Freedom

War on Freedom = Terrorism

DEA = Terrorists.


See how easy? Also hilarious, this pot user ends up introduced to Meth by the DEA, forcefully.

Any more absurdity and I'm going to have to pay an insane amount of money to be educated WHY this system is a failure. Oh.... dang....

bradley manning didnt get any speed.

Getting out there is a much more worthy goal than maintaining the empire. If we (U.S.) don't get our shit together, the rest of the world will leave us here. And they should.

My favorite photo. I remember showing this to a friend. After I pointed out that the little spec on the left side, just above the rings, is Earth, he asked "that's a REAL picture?". It is disappointing to me that pictures such as this are not part of our collective conscience. Pictures like this should be on the front page of every newspaper, magazine, and blog when they are released.

Unfortunately, lacking a more expansive perspective or frame of reference, such pictures probably don't register with people nowadays like they may have 30-40 years ago. Maybe we've been so desensitized, in a way, by relatively routine Shuttle flights and countless videos of numerous, nameless somersaulting astronauts, by movies, video games, incredible CGI worlds and "artist's renderings" that it's difficult to grasp just how incredible these pictures and videos really are. I'm old enough to remember how awed I was while watching the moon landings on TV, and that feeling has never left me. It was an amazing, wonderful, historical event.

And now, here we are over forty years later, still spending trillions of dollars on war and empire while NASA has to pay Russia for rides to the ISS and beg congress for relatively miniscule amounts of money for telescopes and exploration. WTF happened?

We need to get to Mars. A Mars mission, I believe, would jolt this country back to reality about what is truly possible and worthwhile. A new perspective. We aren't doomed as a species, yet. But we can't stay here.

Let them handle what? The length of time he'll serve or the amount of money he'll pay?

Because it's a true fact that Zimmerman killed Trayvon. No two ways about it.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

Now now... let the courts handle it.
>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
"Sorry I murdered your son for no reason. ..fuckin' coons"

95 k now

that kid is almost making CEO amounts of money per hour

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^Porksandwich:
I wouldn't have let him give me an account code or 10%. Because I guarantee those people were paying 150+ per account minimum. Back then it'd take you a month to hit max level and another month or two to get it geared. So you're looking at 50-60 box price + 10-15 per month x 3. So 80-105 just in pure cost for the account and add in time on top of that...people are going to want to be able to buy another account..so double it.
And I have no sympathy for someone who deals in areas where someone can flip a switch and you have no recourse in a court of law to even hope to defend yourself. TOS on electronic goods you don't control...you're just asking to get taken advantage of...even if he were the ones buying and selling accounts and controlled every aspect of it.
Hell with how ebay is now, you can have a legitimate product and still end up owing people money and being out your items....and you are SOL unless it's a big money item where the police might look into it.
I really hate gold and account sellers, they do more harm to games than you could even begin to guess at. Them "working around" the game system means that the flaws that keep people from actually playing and learning never get fixed because people skip around them with money....it's a cycle that never gets broken as long as account sales and gold sales are taking place. The games will never expand past it, because no one will admit to buying these things openly with fear of their account and stuff being taken away....so they look like happy customers.

Prices might be a bit high there, they don't buy these things from the biggest most costly store in america. You can buy digital copies of games, or you can even just ask a guy from <choose your loophole country> to buy you a bunch. If you want thousands, then you set up a nice little business deal with him. I only bought BF3 when i could find it electronically for 16 pounds; and thank god i did because it's another crappy EA money spinner that's only worth 15 pounds, any more would have been a ripoff.
Have you haven't considered the deals blizzard have done at least since lich king where you could sign up two new accounts, link them, and power level each other to max level in a matter of a few days. We got about 4 characters each to max level within a week and that was me and a friend doing it, mere amateurs.
Gear's a sticking point, but if someone wants GOOD gear, they'll pay good money because there's nothing for it but to sit through several resets to get all the gear you want.
In summary, i really don't have the patience to look up the prices. But the box prices can be smaller by quite a bit and you wouldn't even need to pay a month of subscription unless they wanted gear (and as i say, you'd charge loads more). I think for a virtually naked level 85 of any class, i'd be pleased to get 50 quid.
Once you start to charge any more, people are way more likely to say "... jeez dude i could do this for myself in a week" and fair point i say. But then again, i'm not a bastard - this could all be true and people might charge double that.
Edit:
I have taken into account exchange rate, don't worry. It adds up to cheaper i think.


He said in the video it was the first year of WoW...considering the pricing of blizz games holding value for multiple years..I doubt it was much lower than 50 bucks for the game. And the monthly only goes down if you pay in year lumps, so I think you'd charge for that if you had extra time on the account.

So, deals since Lich King don't matter...and first expansion to the game didn't come out until 2007. WoW was released in 2004. So end of first year would have made it 2005/2006. It was also slower to level pre-BC because there were less levels and the game was competing against EQ so it was a little rougher than it is now. And they are entirely different games, WoW when it was first released versus WoW now.

And only a year or two prior to WoW being released people were paying 5-10 grand for Everquest accounts. So 2-3 grand for a WoW account in it's first year is not absurd in the slightest considering it was half of the EQ prices in a new game that people were signing up to quite frequently. Was a guy in EQ who used to keep a group of 5 accounts subscribed so he could power level one single account to 50. Minimum he got for an account for the longest time was 1 grand, and he could do it in a couple weeks to a month with those 5 accounts buffing and what not to make sure to maximum XP by only grouping the minimum amount of people it needed to make a kill and use the rest to heal outside of group or pull outside of group. 1 grand account got you a minimal amount of money and any equipment he needed to level it, nothing fancy. The high level equipped guys went for 5 grand and up depending on the class, clerics/enchanters/warriors went for a lot. Druids went for the least because there was too many of them in the game, and the rest were somewhere in the middle. Bards were probably the most expensive due to the leveling penalties.

As for the week stuff.....you couldn't do that in WoW pre BC and doubtful you could have did it in BC before they added bonuses to referrals and re-signups...well not without a lot of extra accounts maximizing time. Which would just make pumping out accounts even more expensive since you've have to count all the other subscription prices into your pricing.

From you example of going into debt for war sake is a nice comparison. In today's terms we spent 1 trillion on the Bush war and and a fair amount on Obama continuation of the wars. If we were only in 1 - 2 trillion of debt that's one thing but we are hitting 16 Trillion dollars of debt. That is a whole different kind of debt.

Like I said earlier our government has currently cause each of us to incur a bill of 50K per man woman and child or 137K per taxpayer. Who of us can pay that debt back? Not Me and surly not you.


You basically don't see this as a problem so I ask you when does it become a problem?
>> ^heropsycho:

The government borrowed massive amounts of money to pay for pretty much every war it's been in. By your logic, we shouldn't have fought the Axis Powers in WWII because that would have put the bill on the backs of others to pay.
Just stop, your arguments fail basic historical examples that prove it's overly simplistic and moronic. By your logic, the government should never borrow money. The US debt is a problem, but to never borrow money is utterly ridiculous.
>> ^bobknight33:
Yes I currently paying a loan on a house.
The difference is that I am not putting that bill on the backs of others to pay.
Our government has currently cause each of us to incur a bill of 50K per man woman and child or 137K per taxpayer. Who of us can pay that debt back? Not Me and surly not you.

>> ^Edgeman2112:
>> ^bobknight33:
Only Ron Paul want to move back to the Gold standard.
The debt ceiling is real. He is wrong. If you borrow more than you take in than you are screwed. We borrow 43 cents of every dollar.

So you don't have a house?

The government borrowed massive amounts of money to pay for pretty much every war it's been in. By your logic, we shouldn't have fought the Axis Powers in WWII because that would have put the bill on the backs of others to pay.

Just stop, your arguments fail basic historical examples that prove it's overly simplistic and moronic. By your logic, the government should never borrow money. The US debt is a problem, but to never borrow money is utterly ridiculous.

>> ^bobknight33:

Yes I currently paying a loan on a house.
The difference is that I am not putting that bill on the backs of others to pay.
Our government has currently cause each of us to incur a bill of 50K per man woman and child or 137K per taxpayer. Who of us can pay that debt back? Not Me and surly not you.

>> ^Edgeman2112:
>> ^bobknight33:
Only Ron Paul want to move back to the Gold standard.
The debt ceiling is real. He is wrong. If you borrow more than you take in than you are screwed. We borrow 43 cents of every dollar.

So you don't have a house?

>> ^Deano:

They all earn incredible amounts of money and don't act in a way that is consistent or respectful of the rather sweet lifestyles they've landed.

The idiotic behavior that provides grist for the media mill is a symptom of lack of wisdom and maturity, not stupidity.

I don't know much about Premier Leaguers, but pro American football players are more intelligent on average. A better way to describe it is that their distribution of IQs is much narrower and shifted upwards a bit from the overall population's distribution. American football requires being able to process a lot of information and modifying complex plans all very quickly. It's not a game for idiots.

As for the pay, well they're entertainers. Any entertainer good enough in their field will be paid millions simply because there will be so many people that want to watch that entertainment. Actors, athletes, musicians, writers, artists can all become obscenely rich if they are good enough and marketed well. And as messenger points out, most pro athletes work harder than most people ever will to achieve a level of performance that only a handful of people on the planet can even dream of.

>> ^Quboid:

I like the line "who apparently are both billionaires and brain-dead". It bugs me that footballers are labelled thick, as if you have to be thick to get paid well over £1,000,000 a year. I know Mitchell has no interest in football, but he's a bright guy and I'm pretty sure he meant this sardonically. He's got to know better, even if much of the general population falls for this cliché.
Of course some footballers are thick, but on the whole, I'd guess top footballers are on average more intelligent than most.
The reason they aren't hated is because they're not responsible for wreaking the economy.


I can only speak from my knowledge of English football but most footballers aren't especially bright. To earn large amounts of money in the game you have to be good at football and many are, apart from Charlie Adam. Most skipped further education and signed on with professional clubs at a young age or flitted around until they failed to make the grade.
Regardless, their working class backgrounds probably meant there wasn't much of a history of outstanding educational achievement. As soon as the talent is evident the desire to balance sporting and academic achievement evaporates.

I have no idea why you'd think that "top" footballers would be more intelligent on average. Than whom? The entire population? I'd guess their football intelligence is better.

Even the foreigners are capable of acting like twits. Apparently Bendtner's got off today on vandalising cars with Lee Catermole, Meanwhile Ricardo Fuller was sent off over the weekend for violent conduct (again) which his manager labelled "stupid" and my favourite player Balotelli indulged in a series of pretty dumb stunts all season long. They all earn incredible amounts of money and don't act in a way that is consistent or respectful of the rather sweet lifestyles they've landed.

Yes it's always silly to generalise but as a group they don't veer towards smart cookie territory. For example I give you David Beckham, the popular Joey Barton and possibly the most inept in the brain department Wayne Rooney.

If you're on a gold standard, you have to guarantee your money is convertible to gold. That means your central bank sets its interest rates according to how much gold is on hand. If you happen to be losing gold, you have to raise interest rates, reduce the amount of money in circulation, so you can stay on the gold standard.

If — just suppose — you're in an economic downturn, and people are pulling a bunch of gold out of the banks, then you raise interest rates and reduce the amount of money in circulation, which keeps you on the gold standard... but also is exactly the opposite of the monetary policy you want when people are losing their jobs. It stops economic activity dead.

In other words, this modern crying-out for a gold standard in the midst of an economic crisis is of a piece with all the other claims that we ought to adopt policies not because they will help, but because they're painful, and we deserve pain, don't we? We've been very, very naughty, or we must have been, to get into this kind of trouble, and we need to punish ourselves. Or at least, Ron Paul needs to punish you. And trust me, this will hurt you more than it hurts him.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ron-paul-gold-standard-bad-6654238#ixzz1o4oUit5j

People also forget that it wasn't just people who work for GM and Chrysler whose jobs were saved. There's a whole supply chain to think about. Ohio's job market was helped out a lot by the auto bailout because we have a lot of companies who supply parts to GM and Chrysler here.

And of course those effects just keep rippling out, because people who kept their job at the parts supplier also spend their paycheck in the local economy. They buy houses here, eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores, etc.

People seem to have this notion that economic growth is all about profits, but really, it has more to do with making sure money keeps turning over in the economy. You want people to spend money on things, so people selling things have money to hire people to make more things, which gives those people money they can use to spend on things. You want money to flow in a circle, so everyone's kept employed making more stuff which over time makes us more prosperous.

Something like the liquidation of Chrysler or GM would've been a major disruption to that flow, right at a time when the financial crisis was creating a giant disruption of its own.

The bailouts prevented those disruptions, and the amount of money it saved us versus the alternative is much, much greater than the costs of lending the money to GM and Chrysler would be, even if we never got a dime back from either one.

Because if the only reason you're there is to walk out with a piece of paper that will get you a job, then how you get that piece of paper is immaterial. But there's no avoiding paying the tuition and waiting 4 years. You usually have to attend some classes and submit some stuff too.>> ^Sylvester_Ink:

If you're paying large amounts of money to attend some university, why in the world would you squander that investment by cheating?

If you're paying large amounts of money to attend some university, why in the world would you squander that investment by cheating?