Your video, Wolverine attack on reindeer in Norway, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Look it up.

America was 50th out of 55 countries in 2014, according to a Bloomberg index that assesses life expectancy, health-care spending per capita and relative spending as a share of gross domestic product. Expenditures averaged $9,403 per person, about 17.1 percent of GDP, that year — the most recent for which data are available — and life expectancy was 78.9. Only Jordan, Colombia, Azerbaijan, Brazil and Russia ranked lower.

Cuba and the Czech Republic — with life expectancy closest to the U.S. at 79.4 and 78.3 years — paid much less on health care: $817 and $1,379 per capita. Switzerland and Norway, the only countries with higher spending than the U.S. — $9,674 and $9,522 — had longer life expectancy, averaging 82.3 years.

Less than 1/10 the cost for better results sure sounds better to me.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/u-s-health-care-system-ranks-as-one-of-the-least-efficient

@worm
you do realize that you literally just made @Januari 's point...right?

and i get it...government spending BAD.
government can't do anything blah blah blah...gotcha.

but instead of using the VA as an example of government malfeasance and incompetence,why not use medicare/medicaid?

the VA is run by the DoD and considering that during rumsfelds tenure they lost over a trillion american dollars..POOF..where is that money? nope..can't find it.the pentagon is a mess.

medicare/medicaid is run by the dept of health,which runs on a 3% overhead,has the ability to negotiate with pharmacuticals,and is a system that is already in place AND we all already pay in to.

see,
i am not a fan of obamacare.
i think single payer is the way to go,and the only way to go.
people like to make the comparison of obamacare insurance with car insurance.
forgetting that driving is a privilege...
breathing is not.

so if we take the "profit motive" out of health care.then the majority of people NOT covered would not wait until something dire or life threatening was going down with them to head to the doctor.preventive care has been shown to reduce medical costs dramatically.
see:norway
see:denmark
see:france
see:britain

while i understand many liberals defense of obamacare,i see it only a half measure that can easily be remanded and/or gotten rid of all together.however unlikely that may be.the threat will be enough.

people forget that obamacare was basically written by the heritage foundation in 1992.a right wing think tank and not much was changed (though the pre-existing clause was a positive).

they forget that then Governor mitt romney implemented a similar health care system in massechusetts.which saw steady increases in premiums yearly.

and here is the thing that really eats at me.
it is mandatory.

so here is my prediction:
obamacare is not going anywhere.
while it may be used as apolitical football and health insurance companies will use (and already HAVE used) the threat of leaving due to little or no money (this is a lie) in order to force the government to raise their subsidies.

this is corporate welfare on a scale that over-shadows the bank bailouts of 2007.which at final tally was over 17 trillion.

so obamacare is going nowhere because it is the goose that lays the golden egg,and the gift that keeps on giving.

oh there will threats,and over-politicizing,and wringing of hands,and committee meetings.

but that will be just for show.
we put the fox in charge of the henhouse,and the fox is gonna make damn sure it is going nowhere.

I've always found it interesting that Norway's PRISONS rehabilitate people much better than North America's CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES.

blocked in norway, it also said removed by user on the front page.

This should work for some of you who are blocked @notarobot @makach
https://theobamadiary.com/2010/10/31/flashback-behind-the-mask/
(edit)
oops, sorry @makach, doesen't seem to work in Norway

*blocked in norway

@erik3579

*backup=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2neyQA5TDo

I think perhaps we have more of a semantic disagreement here than a conceptual one.

That's fine, "meaning is use" as Wittgenstein would say.

I do take some contention with the idea that rule by intellectual elite would be necessarily "depressing". I'd happily take something like that over the kind of chucklefucks we get now. (as I said before, just trading one kind of political elite for another)

& the kind of meritocracy I'm talking about can be very broad. Any citizen could earn their votes within each branch of governance (and if they were very accomplished, most/all of them). It's just a matter of limiting the influence of mindlessly held opinions, which undermine the whole idea of "democracy" as you are defining it.

I don't think the existing examples of stable quasi meritocratic governments occurred by luck. Those places (Norway, Denmark and such) have considerably better educated populations and a greater cultural emphasis on intellectual elites.

As for the AI thing, I suspect we won't have a great deal of choice in the matter anyway.

I for one welcome our new robot overlords!

Much Love.

...maybe I'm reading you wrong but it sounds like you got it backwards? It's a Norwegian kid being sued by a US company, threatening to go to court in the kid's home territory. Of course it's not actually going to go to court there, because it's Norway, but still.

Not until they actually file a case. Until then, a lawyer is a waste of money....and maybe even after then as well.
They have no case....at least in America where he did what they complain about (and where it's perfectly legal and not actionable if it's opinion or true, which is the best, and an absolute defense to a libel suit), and I think a civil judgement in Norway is not transferable to other countries, so means nothing outside Norway as far as I know.
Also....you can't get a civil judgement against a minor in America, at least not one worth the paper it's printed on.
He needs to wait to be served, then go on YouTube and beg for a decent pro-bono lawyer in Norway to defend him, I'm sure there's plenty of them out there, unemployed, that would love to take this case and counter sue the company for all it's worth for their 1/3 of the judgement.

ALL depictions of Calvin & Hobbes, barring the comic itself and the comic binders from Norway, are knockoffs and stolen IP. All stickers, t-shirts, posters, sweaters, shorts, lunchboxes and whatever is non-licenced stolen IP.
There's the comic itself, plus the sole footnote of the Norwegian comic binders.
As for the peeing sticker: https://triviahappy.com/articles/the-tasteless-history-of-the-peeing-calvin-decal
The interesting part is of course that even the nice looking, respectful stuff are unlicensed knockoffs.

The only official Calvin and Hobbes merchandise item ever made was sold in Norway, branded under the Norwegian name Tommy & Tigern (Tommy and the Tiger) - a binder for the monthly localized Calvin & Hobbes comic. I got most of the issues.
You can see several of the binders on a table here: http://m.finn.no/bap/forsale/gallery.html?finnkode=69073070#image1

Sure - here in Norway it's quite common to have windows like that. Triple-pane, really well insulated

If you break it down to just intentional homicide per 100,000 population, it averages out to 3.8 deaths for the US and 1 for the UK based on recent stats.

Some other countries for comparison:

Russia - 9.0
Jamaica - 39.3
India - 3.5
Canada - 1.4 (Probably died from starvation apologizing to one another)
China - 0.8 (Of course, this is just what they admit happening)
Norway - 2.2