The Nazis conquered quite a bit of Europe because of professional pride. They were defeated by Russian blood, and US industry. Sometimes it's not enough to be good, you have to be quantitativly better than anyone else. Despite being evil bastards, they produced some damned fine guns, tanks, and planes. It is a mistake to think that just because someone has beliefs you think of as "evil" that they are not competent. Unfortunatly history is full of quite competent evil. Now, if my attitude constituted "evil" in your mind, to be honest, I don't care. Because someone who thinks like you is to much of a coward to do anything about it.

Oh, but it is so satisfying when you find out that the system killed the people it was intended to kill, or the building, or the other missile, or whatever. There is such a thing as professional pride.

A bit off topic, but Baen has a program to make all its ebooks available at no cost to persons with reading disabilities. The books are in a number of formats, including lit, html, word, rtf, and Mobipocket. I'm not sure if Science Fiction is your schtick, but I thought I'd pimp my favorite publisher.

Um, it's front wheel drive and there are two wheels on the front. Yes the rear wheel steering caused some trouble, but not actually that much. It was a concept car, and yes, there was an accident, caused by someone else, that caused it to not go into full production. We'll never know if it would have worked as a production car or not.

That would be Pro "Choice". For the most part this is limited to while the infant is still inside the mother's womb, but there are some who support "abortions" within the first 6 months after the infant as left the womb.

A 401(k) is not a pension fund. It is an individual retirement account. A pension fund is money that is owned by the company that will be paid out to you at retirment. the 401 (k) is a tax defered investment account. There is no raiding of the fund going on, the fund IS stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Thus to many Americans the economy matters. Yes, there are times when individuals suffer, that happens under any system, but it happens less in a system where there is 5% unemployement than in one with 10% unemployment. One has 2 times as much dead weight slowing it down, and more people supporting that dead weight, by whatever means, be it charity, government programs, or whatever.

Well, where I come from if it's 5 acres we call that the "back yard" and it's ok to have someone else fix your fence. But if you have a FARM you'd best know how to do it yourself. And yes, I have honked cattle back in before. And goats, and sheep, and even the occational dog. But the fact that the animals get out, or deer get in, or foxes, or coyotes, or feral dogs... that's why if you are going to farm, you'd best learn how to handle at least one fencing technology.

The friend of your friend who can't fix a fence. If he owns a farm, and owns the fence, and he doesn't know how to repair it, then yes, he is stupid. If he lacks the hands or tools to fix it, he may not be. Some types of fence are harder to repair than others. For example chain link requires taking down, repairing, and restreching. picket type fences require a lot of hammering. Chicken wire and 4x4 wire both are simply patched. One of the consierations when putting up a fence is "Do I know how to put up this type of fence, and repair it if I need to." Just like if you're writing a program, when you decide what language to use you think "Can I maintain this if I need to"

Economic growth is how unemployment gets lower, which means more jobs, which means a better chance for me to get a job, or to move to a better job. That means better pay for me, and more beer, pizza, and better clothes. It means I can afford to put gassoline into my car, and have money left over for shiny toys. That is why Americans are all so focused on the economy. The better the economy is doing the better EVERYONE does. A rising tide lifts all ships. As far as the stock market goes, many Americans have a 401k or other investments as their retirment plan. When the stock market does well, it means that they will have a more comfortable retirment. If the stock market does poorly, that means a less comfortable retirment. Social security is a joke as far as the payout goes. Our education system is getting worse and worse, but it's not because of how much money goes into it, but rather because of idiodic policies like "No child left behind" Honestly, we'd be better off leaving some behind, and working on making excelence be rewarded. As far as healthcare goes, the biggest problem is paying for care once people get it, not getting it in the first place. People may not seek care because they can't afford it, but hospitals and doctors will provide it regardless of ability to repay, and the laws are written so that any effort to repay medical bills is acceptable. This does raise the costs somewhat because of writeoffs. Just because some people don't like our system doesn't mean its inherently broken.

A few things you're leaving out. 1. European slave traders didn't raid anywhere. All the enslavement and selling was done by other Africans, who mostly sold the slaves to Arabs, who sold them to the Europeans. So really all the Europeans did was give gold for a resource that was already being exploited. 2. Egypt was the worlds most powerful military force before rome came along, and was considered one of the most important provices of the eastern roman empire until the Arabs and Turks took over for them. 3. The library at Alexandria GREW under Roman and Eastern Roman rule for most of history. There were a few exceptions. Also, it was lost because of an earthquake, not because of book burning.

The doctor is advocating nicotine therapy with other delivery mechanisms. I.E. extracting the nicotine from tobacco and delivering it in a controlled manner, such as a patch or some other means, as is currently used for weaning people off cigarettes. The article says that "Oh, evil nicotine, we can't let that be the treatment." The author is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

This isn't a Mac fag story. You don't get points for calling Mac users geeks. You just get laughed at. Sorry about that. Only the Nazi goose stepping allegedly freethinking, yet somewhow all the same poseurs use Macs.

US grades

A: I know my shit, and I can reguritate it to match what the proff wants.
B: I know my shit, or I can reguritate meaningless to match what the proff wants.
C: average
D: I need to retake this class.
F: I KAN SPEL

Um, no you missed the point of what I said. I was rebuffing the comment about most poster stores selling the posters. Of course they sell the posters, as they have expenseses themselves, but the value of a single poster is still nearly negligable compared to that of the original. This is independant of copyright, as a painting cannot be fully duplicated on a poster. One is a hand-crafted slightly 3 dimentional peice, and the other is a machine created reproduction. They have a diffrent look, they have diffrent production costs, they are made from diffrent materials. Nobody will mistake the poster for the original. As an artist, with current copyright laws you get a royalty on each poster sold that copies your art, and given the volume of those sold compared to the originals, it may be a significant part of your income, but that is a seperate matter I didn't address in my post. The difference in the cost/value of the two is inherent.

Well, generally a Piccasso would be worth millions, and a poster worth, about $10, so relativly speaking, yeah, a Piccasso has value, and the poster, pretty much the value of the materials it's printed on, and a reasonable amount of profit.