@kronosposeidon, not sure I get why people think that oil spill is the effect of lax federal oversight. I do believe oil companies have strict regulations. If you don't believe it, start an oil drilling expedition in your backyard and see how long that goes before you're paid a visit by Uncle Sam.

The oil company should be held accountable for fucking up our ocean! But all the regulation in the world most likely wouldn't prevent that.

I like the civil service idea. I'm pretty liberal, too and the idea of "picking and choosing" illegal immigrants to give loans that even some Americans are not capable of getting (didn't register with selective service, dishonorable discharge, etc) doesn't seem right to me.

However, I'm all for helping folks who want to live in this country to do so, thusly, to expedite her citizenship, a military term of enlistment (or similar program that I may be unaware of) would work out great in this case.

>> ^rougy:
Non-wage compensation has certainly increased much more than 9%.
So what kind of compensation are you talking about?
And for whom? For how many? Most Americans don't get any compensation at all other than maybe sick days. A very large portion of our work force receives no compensation whatsoever and they never have.
And again, what are the real numbers here and who are the real beneficiaries? To claim that the average compensation has risen but neglect to provide a break-down of that data renders it meaningless.
Elizabeth Warren's claim is that the middle class has been "hacked at." That's different from saying rich people make too much money, which, even if it's right, doesn't decrease the standard of living of the middle class.
Isn't it obvious that the money that is getting funneled to the rich is the money that would have otherwise been distributed to the middle class?
Furthermore, I think it's obvious that our health care costs are rising at an expedited rate unrelated to any rise in sickness or real costs.
Our health care costs are rising because the insurance industry itself has seen fit to write its own check.


Healthcare costs are skyrocketing in every single country in the world that provides socialized medicine. You're getting stuck because you're only looking at the country of your nationality.

Elizabeth Warren has a made a mistake. We can say 'it can be argued she meant it this other way in which she'd be at least partially correct," but her job is to make statements that are accurately worded and best fit the data. An outsider to this issue would find it surreal that she would refuse to talk about the complete picture of "compensation."

The burden of proof isn't on reasonable skeptics. She needs to prove that there's reason to intentionally not look at the big picture. If skepticism turned out to be wrong in this case, I'd certainly admit it. Would her defenders admit it if she turned out to be wrong?

Non-wage compensation has certainly increased much more than 9%.

So what kind of compensation are you talking about?

And for whom? For how many? Most Americans don't get any compensation at all other than maybe sick days. A very large portion of our work force receives no compensation whatsoever and they never have.

And again, what are the real numbers here and who are the real beneficiaries? To claim that the average compensation has risen but neglect to provide a break-down of that data renders it meaningless.

Elizabeth Warren's claim is that the middle class has been "hacked at." That's different from saying rich people make too much money, which, even if it's right, doesn't decrease the standard of living of the middle class.

Isn't it obvious that the money that is getting funneled to the rich is the money that would have otherwise been distributed to the middle class?

Furthermore, I think it's obvious that our health care costs are rising at an expedited rate unrelated to any rise in sickness or real costs.

Our health care costs are rising because the insurance industry itself has seen fit to write its own check.

I hope this is his last climbing expedition with lady bad luck.

>> ^peggedbea:
yes, really.
in high school i interned with a herpetologist in the biology department of a university. so people would find freakish amphibians or reptiles around town and bring them to us. i would have to study them, catalog them and report them. i thought this was incredibly adorable when the 6 legged little nuclear freak show toads would do this. the little kid in my head decided it must be a gift!! and i would grow up to the worlds most amazing herpetologist and live my life on perpetual field expeditions!!..... until the professor came in, saw me petting a toad affectionately and cooing at it, and informed me that i was in fact scaring the shit out of him and he was trying to poison me.
my childlike dreams, CRUSHED!!!
>> ^Matthu:
>> ^robbersdog49:
The toad's main defense is the poison in it's skin on it's back and the top of it's head. It's trying to defend itself by keeping the poisoned areas where the attention is. It's terrified and is acting defensively.

Really?


...isn't a herpetologist what you would call your gynecologist?

yes, really.

in high school i interned with a herpetologist in the biology department of a university. so people would find freakish amphibians or reptiles around town and bring them to us. i would have to study them, catalog them and report them. i thought this was incredibly adorable when the 6 legged little nuclear freak show toads would do this. the little kid in my head decided it must be a gift!! and i would grow up to the worlds most amazing herpetologist and live my life on perpetual field expeditions!!..... until the professor came in, saw me petting a toad affectionately and cooing at it, and informed me that i was in fact scaring the shit out of him and he was trying to poison me.

my childlike dreams, CRUSHED!!!

>> ^Matthu:
>> ^robbersdog49:
The toad's main defense is the poison in it's skin on it's back and the top of it's head. It's trying to defend itself by keeping the poisoned areas where the attention is. It's terrified and is acting defensively.

Really?

>> ^cybrbeast:
>> ^ryanbennitt:
>> ^cybrbeast:
You know there is such a thing as aquaculture or fish farming.
Tell that to the massive fishing fleets driving species to extinction...

Regardless, that does not make your statement "We don't farm and cultivate the sea, we just hunt and poach the fish from it." any more true.
I speculate that before we drive the fish to extinction the massive fishing fleets will become uneconomical due to lack of fish. They will stop and species hopefully recover. This could be expedited by strict resolutions


A species could easily become extinct just by bringing the numbers down to a certain point. And other species could still become extinct in the process causing chain reactions. It seems like a pretty dangerous speculation.

If you're really interested in the subject. I'd suggest reading: "Cod, a Biography of the Fish That Changed the World" by Mark Kurlansky. It's a fascinating book in it's own right and definitely covers the dangers involved with this subject.

>> ^ryanbennitt:
>> ^cybrbeast:
You know there is such a thing as aquaculture or fish farming.
Tell that to the massive fishing fleets driving species to extinction...


Regardless, that does not make your statement "We don't farm and cultivate the sea, we just hunt and poach the fish from it." any more true.
I speculate that before we drive the fish to extinction the massive fishing fleets will become uneconomical due to lack of fish. They will stop and species hopefully recover. This could be expedited by strict resolutions

>> ^shole:
>> ^SunTzu:
flying around the planet at thousands of miles an hour, a man who puts his life in danger to further the knowledge of mankind.

what do they actually even do up there?
i now i'm being ignorant and that they probably do a lot of great stuff but we never specifically hear about any of it
there's never been a news story like "bananas made of jam invented on ISS! astronaut Jamforbrains gets nobel for being awesome!"


Rofl..

He's probably involved in various zero gravity experiments up there, acting as proxy on behalf of people on earth who come up with new questions as to what happens if you do this in zero gravity. I don't know the specific purpose of the ISS unfortunately, but i suspect your question is a bit like asking "Why are you looking through this telescope at the moon?"

And the answer is, who the hell knows what you'll find? Why did we sail around the world and discover new countries, new species of animal.. why do we still search for new species? Why do we test those species of plant and animal to see what they do, what they're made of, what properties they have? Why step outside of our front door?

Because if we didn't, we'd never have invented the wheel or mastered fire.

Imagine how much shit we've found in our own oceans that we didn't know about a few hundred years ago. Imagine what we've done with that new knowledge.

Can you possibly begin to imagine the sort of shit we might find out there in space, which is infinitely bigger than our ocean?

Imagine if you'd asked marie curie why she was messing around with a luminous material? "Did you make a banana made of this new material? Stop wasting your time!" And we've just lost the x-ray machine.

Cmon, man.. that sort of question depresses me.. of all the amazing things we've found out through stargazing, through expeditions into space (the hubble deep field picture, to me, is worth all the money on earth) the one thing that would validate such a trip, to you, is a fucking jam banana?

Anyone else see the space shuttle and feel depressed about our pathetic reliance on chemical propulsion?

I feel that way every time I get in my car.

@Doc_M

Makes sense for stuff like this and other near-Earth expeditions, but I wager NASA has a hell of a time with transmissions between ground control and deep space probes and whatnot. It's easy to take for granted the massive infrastructure we have here on terra firma and the thousands of satellites above us at any given second. The little Mars rovers don't have such luxuries, and they are over 36,000,000 miles away.

Well, it can be a bit convoluted but:

1). Yes, if the waiting list is too long, we can go to another hospital. My son needed his tonsils and adenoids removed and the wait list was a year (in Prince George). So we just called up a specialist in Kelowna, and boom he was in, within a week.

2). There are some private clinics that operate outside the government system and work on a pay per use system. The average person doesn't use them, but they are there for who can afford it.

3). At my last job, we had a special broker who handled all of our medical claims. If it meant that we could end up missing work and costing the company money, it was their job to expedite the paperwork and bump us to the front of the list. We got medical attention right away. Not everyone has this but in that case, it was to the benefit of my employer to bare the costs of this agency instead of paying sick pay for us to wait on a waiting list.

4). Also, hospitals, generally, try to be fair, when I had my ACL replaced, the surgeon, himself expedited my surgery date, because I was in danger of re-injuring and causing more damage if I waited too long. The hospital emergency rooms that I know of are working on a two tear level to speed up wait times. (those that need a bed and those that don't. Also, within those groups, they work with a triage mentality where, those that can be patched up quickly, or the very serious will get attention first. The less people waiting the better.

I think a lot of people imagine us standing in hospital line-ups for months, dying out in the cold. That's just not true. Yes, there can be wait lists when the jobs out-man the doctors, but for the most part, if there were more doctors and more equipment, we wouldn't be waiting so long. In Quesnel, where I lived a year ago, the town started their own fundraiser and bought their own MRI Machine, because the government wasn't. Now they have one and the wait times went from traveling out of town to making the appt.


>> ^alizarin:
Question for Canadian sifters:
In Canada if you don't want to wait you can go to another area where there's a shorter waiting list correct (next town over or whatever)? The only reason to go to the US is if what you want is just a waste of money that won't do you any good no?

All this silliness aside, I'm very excited for this game. The art design is being done by Wayne Barlowe, who is one of the most amazing contemporary artists out there. He did character designs for the Hellboy movies, wrote Expedition (about a fictional trip to another world where there is biologically plausible extraterrestrial life)and of course a whole series on hell...

^You don't want to bring in additional lights than what is absolutely necessary for unaided eye navigation because the light can actually expedite the erosion of the space.

>> ^blankfist:
Yawn.
[puts head down, feigns interest]


You and the rest of the whole fucking site.

Stumbling in to make jokes on your own roast to drum up interest.
We all know you're an attention whore but damn .. can't you let the roast go half a day before begging?

But seriously ..

Would you most prefer to be involved in a monumental one-of-a-kind hiking expedition, working on a breakthrough cure for a debilitating illness , or presenting the discovery of a revolutionary new way to parse data?
Debilitating illness.

hard to find a joke in there.
Yeah .. HAHA! you Fuck Knuckle! You want to fight disease ..
sigh.

thanks again gwizz