A trivial partial solution is to require reader ratings of at least X to get a share, or a rating of at least Y to get a higher share.
Or require that the subscriber actually read a certain portion of the book, which is Amazon's implementation. Since they control the Kindle market and can track what you do with your Kindle, I suspect that it will work pretty well. There are probably ways of abusing it, but they are not exactly trivial.
And Russians stand uncomfortably close by American standards. If I were to stand as close to an American student as most Russians would, I would be considered weird and creepy. Americans also consider eye contact to be very important when, say, disciplining a child. Lots of Hispanic cultures prefer that children look down and away when being disciplined, which causes a lot of American teachers to assume that their Hispanic students are ignoring them or being defiant.
Moral of the story: different cultures accept different things. Americans often smile at each other, and a male teacher should not be considered suspicious because of this.
Also, I did not imply that you had claimed that hunter gatherers have it easy, although you may have been misled by my british turn of phrase. I would claim that 13-20hrs of work a week is having it easy, my question to you was whether or not that was true that hunter/gathers worked less than this? My assumption is that they would need more time than this to acquire food each week.
A typical person in a hunter/gatherer society spends (on average) less than four hours per day on subsistence activities (acquiring food, shelter, clothing, etc.).
You are rebutting an argument that I did not make. I said that hunter/gathers generally have more leisure time. I did not claim that hunter/gatherers "have it easy." Note that I specifically attempted to rebut such arguments a priori: hunter/gatherer societies are vulnerable to natural disasters (and even minor disasters that probably wouldn't have much impact at all on an industrial society, such as a bad season for the pinon trees) and hunter/gatherers don't have the resources to live a modern lifestyle. They have more leisure time, though significantly fewer choices in how they spend it.
As to your argument that only 1/3 of your wages cover basic living expenses: if you are spending 8 hours a day performing an activity that is used to pay for your food and shelter, that is time spend procuring food and shelter, whether or not you have an excess. If you can earn enough to feed yourself in 3 hours a day but don't have the option of heading home for another 5 hours, that isn't leisure time. If, on the other hand, you really do have the option to work fewer hours and choose not to, I congratulate you on finding a job that you enjoy spending your leisure time doing (not many of us are that lucky).
True that it's political nonsense, but can you honestly agree that a study to find out how to buy worcestershire sauce is worthy of government funding?
I have no idea. Can you provide a copy of the actual report? Or only third-hand accounts of this report from an obviously biased source (Wikipedia links to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that describes the organization the gives out the Golden Fleece Awards, with a three line summary of the report in question---what assurances do we have that this summary is accurate?)?
If the report's only purpose in life was to explain how to buy a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, then there is a problem. But is that really why the report was commissioned? Is that really all it says? Is is possible that the report is about purchasing food in general, with the sauce as an example? Is it possible that the report was commissioned in order to demonstrate how Byzantine the process of buying supplies is in an effort to cut down on paperwork in the long run? How do we know that the report actually cost $6,000?
If nothing else, the way colleges could be improved is to offer a beginner's degree and an advanced degree. Not "Master" advanced, rather just a way to distinguish "came to class and didn't fail most tests" with "was an avid student and learned a crap ton."
Wouldn't it be great if there were some kind of scale to indicate the quality of the work that a student does? I'm just spitballing here, but I'm thinking that a four point scale might make sense. Your "avid student [who] learned a crap ton" could get four points for their efforts, while a student who "came to class and didn't fail most tests" might only get two points. After a student graduates, all of the scores that they get in their classes could be averaged together in some manner, which might give potential employers an at-a-glance summary of the student's level of performance in college, and a record of all of the scores could be transcribed into a document of some kind that could be given to potential employers at their request. That really would be wonderful!
What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie