As an outsider with no bias here, it occurs to me that the above is probably in the long-term interests of the US as well. India is a big place, with lots of people, many of whom today are struggling with things we take for granted in the West. Helping to improve things like education standards and technological advancement potentially develops a vast export market for US products and services in the future and/or a mutually advantageous trading partner.

People often look at international aid schemes as charity, and support them on that basis, but the truth is that there is often a level of "enlightened self-interest" behind government support for those schemes, because things like global security and having stable economies in your trading partners are in everyone's interest. Much the same arguments could be made, as I understand it, for the US H1-B programme.

Code monkeys are, and that's the way that managers who hire code monkeys like it.

There are plenty of programmers out there creating interesting and useful new software, and plenty of customers/clients willing to pay serious money for the value that software offers them without all the unnecessary bureaucratic overheads and middle management crap.

If you are a good programmer and professional in your general conduct, you owe it to yourself not to be a code monkey for anyone, IMHO. You have to be really, really unlucky with the time and place when your current gig(s) run out not to have better options in 2014.

If you're developing on a platform as developer-hostile as that and you're locked into it so your business can't port to other platforms if necessary, I would submit that you have bigger strategic problems and long-term risks than merely being a small company. An arrangement like that is an axe hanging over the head of almost any size of company and you have absolutely no control over when it might fall.

(No, I don't develop iOS apps or write console games, despite occasionally getting enquiries in those fields, and this is why.)

The cursing thing *might* have come from a bit of reverse semitic paranoia. In some far out fundamentalist theologies- Jews are actually revered and considered *closer* to God than Christians ( a strict literal interpretation of the events of the Pentateuch).

Oddly enough, I've noticed this in non-fundamentalist forms of Christianity as well, especially my own Catholicism. There is a reason why Pope Benedict XVI forbade the sacred name from being spoken in Mass, out of respect for our older brethren, and why a good deal of 20th and 21st century theology has been devoted to the consideration of Christianity as a sect of Judaism.

Had a girl who acted like this in my wife's daycare. One day, due to misbehaving, I put her in what we call a "Daddy time out", which is one of the more serious corrective actions we take (spanking's not allowed in our state, and you can even get your own kid taken away). Instead of sitting with me on the couch, she spent the whole four minutes (a minute per year of age) standing ramrod straight, as if I was about to do something to her.

I found out later she had been abused, and her mother had converted to fundamentalist Xianity to get her some free counseling. Due to my Daddy Time Out and her reaction to it, she was removed from the daycare soon after, presumably to one run only by women.

Yes kids, learn early that authority comes out of a loudspeaker, that's a useful trait for the future you are headed to. Next stop, Dystopia City.

Are you one of the people who pays no taxes?

But it will generally affect competitors equally. Two different taxi companies, or two different electricity generating companies that use coal. Or two different hotels of the same class and size in the same city.

And since competing businesses tend to have to lower prices in order to remain competitive in the same market as they pursue the same prospective customer, the tax burden is going to raise costs (and lower margins) more or less the same for both (or several) parties.

But because such penalties impact all businesses in whatever country is collecting them, it won't really change things - because all of those businesses will simply pass along the new government-mandated increase in their overhead along in the form of higher prices. To the businesses in question, it just goes in one door and out the other. You want to use the heavy hand of the tax collector to damage people's behavior in a way that makes them go out less, drive less, spend less, do less? Tax citizens directly, with a very special line item they can't miss, that says "carbon tax, because you exist" - and they'll act. Well, mostly they'll act to elect people who will undo that tax, but they'll act.

"First, let me say that I was talking about workplace harassment."

For a Roman Catholic Priest, the Church is his workplace, the congregation his customers, the Bishop is his management. For an extremely bad Roman Catholic Priest, it is a very bad idea for the customers to complain to the management about sex abuse. It is in fact the direct cause of the scandal, that the misconduct was reported to the Bishop and not to the police.

There is a lesson in that for any organization.

" People can always call the police (or file a lawsuit), and obviously if your organization covers for harassers then that's the next step. "

It is a safe assumption that all organizations WILL cover for the harassers, because as you point out,
"escalating to the courts is expensive, time-consuming, embarrassing" for the organization, and in the end, the organization only cares about what is profitable for the organization.

But if we fail to do it, we merely perpetuate the rape culture.

#1, as the Roman Catholic Church proved royally, is a complete and utter error forever. You do NOT want your organization's management deciding if a victim can call the police.

#2, every illegal act that is a felony, should result in the loss of a job. Once again, it's law enforcement and the courts that should make that decision, not the good ole boy network in your management.

#3. The standard should be to call the police, each and every time. It is the only way to end rape.

Apparently, if it isn't in the policy manual, women don't know how to call the police. But that's not surprising, because ever since birth control, the free love/rape culture has said that anything sexual is the woman's problem alone.

I am a strident skeptic, but am interested in your statement that warming will reduce Arctic Ice while increasing antarctic ice. Do you have a link that could explain that to me?

Lol what about the supporters of AGW -- everyone ignores that none -- that is correct 0% of their predictions have come true.

No, not really ... The satellite record shows no warming for the last 17 years. So no there isn't current warming happening. The other data sources have all been proven to have been adjusted to the point of untrustworthy.