If CareFirst didn't want to get hacked, it shouldn't have been wearing a miniskirt!

Half ... of what, exactly? Are you saying that the breakdown of poor to not-poor women should be some percentage other than what it is? As in, you believe that poor women should not be the ones getting abortions? Why would you believe that? Or do you mean simply that the number of women getting abortions itself is "too high" (and it isn't half of women btw; the Guttmacher link estimates that by age 45, about one-third of all women will have had an abortion)? Again, "too high" based on what? And what does the cost of living have to do with your assessment? If anything, that would seem to explain why "such" a "high" percentage of poor women have abortions: because while an abortion may be cost-prohibitive, it's nothing compared to the price of pregnancy, childbirth and raising a kid.

That's self-evidently disingenuous. The words you are typing are not the words of people who mind their own business and don't give a lick what other people do with their own bodies.

Cute. If sarcasm is "emotional language" in your world, you must find the internet a scary place indeed. You're the one who started in with below-the-belt accusations, implicitly accusing "women" of doublespeak because you've heard the term "clump of cells" used in reference to abortion (that phrase is is pretty much a strawman caricature used by anti-choicers, btw -- seriously, google the phrase and tell me how many actual pro-choicers you're able to dig up who actually use it) and yet you're aware of the fact that many women (and men, but why target men when targeting women is so much more fun, right?) feel the pain of loss after a miscarriage. If you genuinely don't understand how ignorant and manipulative your sentiment was, then I apologize for wrongly misjudging you as someone with an ounce of basic understanding regarding emotional context.

As to counties versus states, I was just citing one of the numbers from the link you supplied. I guess you like some of the numbers and not others? I don't deny that counties aren't the only relevant number, although your reference to Texas is hilarious for at least two reasons, both of which tend to underscore my point: Texas is a huge land mass. To say it has "at least" one abortion clinic in the entire state is about as meaningful as saying that England and France have at least one abortion clinic between them. And, unless you live under a rock, you're surely aware that Texas is one of the least friendly states for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, if a recent law passed in Texas is upheld, there will be fewer than ten abortion clinics remaining in the entire state; as it is currently, many women already have to drive more than a hundred miles to the nearest provider.

So just to summarize, in case you are still confused: this shit like what you just wrote here? That's what makes it clear that you absolutely do have a "dog in this race." Your comment is littered with concern trolling and rhetorical sleights of hand. I frankly question whether you have an ounce of sincerity in your body when it comes to this issue. You may find my irritation with your intellectual dishonesty "emotional," but at least I'm not trying to hide my views on the topic.

All this misleading and conclusory claim (on what basis do you deem any particular number "high," by the way?) demonstrates is your own lack of attention to this issue. How easy it may or may not be to get an abortion depends not just on how much money you have, but also on which state you live in. Your own link even points out how stark this issue is: 89% of counties in the U.S. don't have a single abortion provider. 89 percent!

Oh but clearly it's women who don't want politicians having the right to trump medical decisions they make in consultation with their physicians who are the ones with an "agenda." Seriously, what is this tripe? Find me a single pro-choice activist (an actual person who is an actual activist, not a fake personality you create a blog for) who doesn't also advocate for better sex ed, better access to contraceptives and reproductive health care, and better resources for low-income parents. The things you're implicitly tut-tutting about aren't things the left has been standing in the way of. I mean, you do realize, I hope, that Guttmacher is a pro-choice organization (I mean, it's even named after a former president of Planned Parenthood)? It isn't presenting these facts because it views them as an indictment of pro-choice politics. Pro-choicers have never made this an either-or debate as you're implying.

And save your moralizing about diverse perspectives (omg some women want to give birth and others don't? WHAAAT?!) for your weekly anti-choice circlejerk. That "women," just like regular people(!), are not some kind of emotional monolith surprises no actual grown-ups.

I don't understand why the question is framed as one of employment. If the patent is valuable, the submitter should be hiring security specialists, not trying to become one from scratch. If the patent isn't valuable, then it has zero relevance to the job search unless the only reason it lacks value is because the submitter is crap at business. And if that's the case, why isn't the submitter trying to sell the patent for quick buck and use that to fund this interest in security credentials? I'm just having trouble reconciling the whole "I'm pursuing business interests with a security-related patent I own" with "I want to be someone else's hired gun for security work." Perhaps the problem is that the submitter is being disingenuous about the level of involvement in business discussions related to this patent - regardless, the first thing I would work on is creating a narrative that will make an ounce of sense to employers, because this one doesn't.

Also, I'm around the same age as submitter and haven't talked about my GPA in forever. Why are we talking about GPAs at all?? No one cares about your GPA 12 years ago. Seriously, no one. Far more worrying is the implication that a 12-year-old GPA is the most relevant thing you can talk to a potential employer about.

In the US, the legal hurdles aren't so much in the letting people go as in the making sure you don't violate the law while they're employed. I've seen so many employers blithely ignore technical (or sometimes more egregious) requirements for things like vacation rules, IC vs employee status, wage and hour rules, etc. that it's pretty obvious many are playing the odds that workers won't make a fuss.

The real risk of firing someone isn't that you'll fire them illegally; it's that now you've just taken away the primary reason they weren't calling you on the shit you've been pulling all along hoping you wouldn't get caught. This is why so many employers have taken to asking people to sign "severance agreements" that give them a pittance in exchange for a full release from everything the law will let them get a release for. Most people who've just been let go are either insufficiently savvy, too busy, or just plain too desperate for that last paycheck to be able to turn it down, even if the claims they might have against their ex-employer for labor code violations would amount to more money.

/tangent

33-year-old woman here (i.e., also between generations). If I had to hazard a guess based on your comment, I would say that the problem is your attitude. Women my age have zero problem dating an actually mature, positive, thoughtful, emotionally stable guy within around 5-7 years (+/-) of their age. My single girlfriends regularly bemoan the lack of guys who manage to be stable and mature without being sexist assholes. It would seem that they're exceedingly rare.

I imagine you could counter that, no, it's their attitude that is the problem. I don't know. Pointing fingers is always easiest, I suppose. Certainly beats risking rejection and growth by dating an actual human being instead of holding out for perfection.

"Easily"? You must drive a highly fuel-efficient car or else leave in the middle of the night when there's no traffic. Depending on your starting point, just getting through LA traffic can eat up close to a quarter-tank.

Granted, yes, it could very well take that same almost-quarter-tank to get from your home to the train station, but regardless, "easily" strikes me as a stretch. My husband and I just recently made the drive from SF to LA and back and spent probably closer to 100, 120 bucks in gas AND got to deal with the fun of a mysterious "check engine" light that turned on about 40 miles outside of LA and cost us 300 bucks for the dealer to tell us it was a spark plug, grrrr. This isn't a particular old, finicky, or out-of-shape car, either: 2008 VW sedan, we've been good about maintenance, etc.

Do you know the word "irrelevant"? It describes your comment.

Of course, I proofread this five times and only after I hit "Submit" did I realize that the relationship I'm alluding to is direct, not inverse. Derp. Or as Gene Wilder (as the only Willy Wonka in existence, and I will abide no dispute on this point) more eloquently put it: "Strike that. Reverse it."

The "video games" remark is unfairly dismissive, and denigrating artistic aspirations is hardly the exclusive province of those of us just old enough to look down on 20-somethings. My Boomer parents were doing that decades ago, as I'm sure their parents did as well.

My two minor peeves aside, while there's something to your point, and I appreciate your recognition elsewhere in your comment that there are larger forces at work here too, one key larger force that it seems you haven't accounted for is the resume effect: namely, if I, as a white-collar professional (or aspiring white-collar professional, or aspiring whatever-with-60k-in-student-loan-debt, etc.), find myself unexpectedly laid off and have difficulty finding work in my field, my options pretty much fall into one of three broad possibilities: (1) go back to school, (2) do something creatively/personally rewarding and/or interesting (volunteer work, something creative but still tied to my field, etc.), or (3) take whatever job I can find to put money on the table.

I wholeheartedly agree that option (3) is worthy of consideration and respect, but most employers looking at resumes don't. Period. In fact, in my experience, the average corporate employer's respect for each of the three options has a near-perfect inverse relationship with the cost of each option. This is pure classism, and it is horrific, and it is unquestionably adding to the country's (and the world's) massive economic inequality and countless other problems. A person (with the means to be able to do so) who avoids option (3) isn't necessarily doing it out of laziness or unrealistic expectations. It's highly possible, even probable in many cases, that he or she is doing it because of insight (which may well be subconscious) into the way things are in the modern business world. I'm reluctant to apportion much blame to relatively disempowered individuals for responding in a wholly rational manner to the skewed incentives that the more-powerful create for them.

And what are the "generations just prior"? How prior? Prior to whom, precisely? Someone who's been in the workforce for only 3-5 years is maybe, what, mid-twenties, tops? So this is someone who was born in the early 90s. I hope you realize that the the youngest cutoff most social scientists use to describe "Millenials" is 1984, and most go with an earlier year like 1982 or 1980. So while you're bemoaning the common problem of young people new to the corporate world/professional workforce who haven't yet acclimated and attributing this to a particular generation, you're completely ignoring the fact that the "generation" in question is defined as including people about ten years older than the folks you're griping about.

Do you have the same gripes about your 31-year-old coworkers? If not, then guess what, you're yet another person anecdotally demonstrating that this is not a generational trend, but rather the same, age-old problem of young people seeming annoyingly young to those of us who are a little bit (or a lot) older than them.

Many/most people raised in the 80s and 90s are considered Millenials. Only a very small handful of those still in high school fall into the Millenial category. People here seem to be thinking "Millenial" means teens and brand-new employees. Depending on which of the proposed birth year cut-offs you favor, "Millenials" can include people as old as 35 this year.

... to see Mr. Gates fall into the "Fair Tax" nonsense. I suppose this is why business and economics are such distinct fields. If only more business people understood that.

(relevant part bolded)

34g of beef = 113 calories.

357g of broccoli = 121 calories.

Calories and weight are two different things.