Comment Re:people who provide "valuable services"? (Score 5, Insightful) 313
Yes, to quote Yes Minister;
Sir Humphrey: It sets a dangerous precedent.
Jim Hacker: What, you mean if we do the right thing now we might have to do it again later?
Yes, to quote Yes Minister;
Sir Humphrey: It sets a dangerous precedent.
Jim Hacker: What, you mean if we do the right thing now we might have to do it again later?
That's actually where our alphabet comes from (via the Greeks and Romans).
Entertainingly, I used to date a Chinese girl. We spoke German to each other in England (as well as English) because it was a common language that most other people around us didn't understand.
Links can be a bit weird in Chinese. FIrst example you're likely to come across is ma. Ma (third tone) means horse. Toneless ma is a particle that changes a sentence into a question. The character for the particle is the character for horse with a mouth (kou) next to it, showing that it's a part of speech, and that it sounds like the word for horse.
Several Chinese friends of mine assure me that there are links between meaning/sound and character for all of them, via these 'radicals', but it's a bit too Times-cryptic-crosswordy to be useful for Westerners.
As a taxpayer who is apparently paying extra for public servants to be more inefficient than necessary, let me be the first to say:
Boo-hoo.
Also, realistically, the bank doesn't care about the pen. I wonder if it's the same here? By the time you've got to New York from London (for example), the last thing your wallet is worrying about is an extra $4 on a cab fare.
In London, TfL does the shafting with the ridiculous pricing scheme for Tube fares, clearly designed to spring tourists for money.
Anyone who's visiting London; if you are going to get more than two single tube journeys in zones 1-2, it's cheaper to buy a day travel card. In fact, it's only slightly more expensive to buy an Oyster and a day travel card, and you can get your deposit on the Oyster refunded when you leave.
Yeah. They are. Been on the Tube recently?
If we spent more time fucking instead of fighting the world would be a lot more fun.
It would certainly make war interesting.
And the damn firewall! Every time something goes wrong with something internet related on Windows it blames a firewall that may not even exist! The number of times I've been helping my family and they say "the message says it's something to do with the firewall"...and it never is!
Contrary to many IT departments' opinions, the myriad businesses and concerns in this world do not exist solely to support IT departments.
None of the above is still a valid choice in a democratic society. You just can't express it in the US or the UK other than by staying at home*.
His opinion is not irrelevant, except insofar as our crap-arse voting systems have made it irrelevant. Which is no excuse for you to get all high-and-mighty on him.
*In addition, to take the example of the UK, in the last major swing in parliament (1997), 180 seats changed hands out of 659. That means that, assuming people are evenly distributed in constituencies**, 72% of votes made no difference at all to the outcome of the election. So voting in the UK at least is largely a waste of time.
**A bad assumption, especially back in '97 before Scottish devolution.
Indeed. The principle being that we don't have infinite resources, so you have to be able to justify their allocation. In capitalism, this is done on the free market. Socialism advocates political allocation.
It is up to the reader to do some research and decide which is generally more efficient.
You buy it to participate in a cultural phenomenon and interesting concept.
If it were about £20 then I might join in. Hey, that might still happen as the novelty wears off. Just watching the price alone could be an interesting social experiment.
I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs. -- H.L. Mencken
