"if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas".

Good luck to them. They deserve whatever comes of this now and in the future.

Poor folk will benefit from this, too. Eventually, after enough people have died working out the kinks in space travel, those rich folks will start flying around at ever increasing altitudes (as if looking down their noses at us isn't high enough). After a while, they're going to get tired of roughing it and start taking some poor folk with them to be their servants, as they do on their yachts and planes.

I think you missed something. She is a physician and I am a dentist and we are telling him if he wants to make real money, skip medical/dental school and become an administrator. How does that sound like my wife and I chose our professions because of money? And of course, money should enter into one's career decisions. It seems like it doesn't for many people, which is why you have people studying anthropology/paleontology/art history/french poetry/etc. and racking up $50-100k in student loan debt without any thought as to how they will repay it with a degree in anthropology/paleontology/art history/french poetry/etc.

I used to be an engineer. After going back to school for 6 years to become a dentist and accumulating $150k+ (at 6.8%) in student loan debt I now make about what I used to make as an engineer. Clearly, $ is not my only motivation.

this is from the final scene in "Killing Them Softly":

"Thomas Jefferson is an American saint because he wrote the words 'All men are created equal', words he clearly didn't believe since he allowed his own children to live in slavery. He's a rich white snob who's sick of paying taxes to the Brits. So, yeah, he writes some lovely words and roused the rabble and they went and died for those words while he sat back and drank his wine and fucked his slave girl. This guy wants to tell me we're living in a community? Don't make me laugh. I'm living in America, and in America you're on your own. America's not a country. It's just a business."

I vote for the candidate who most looks like Darnell on "My Name is Earl".

This is 'merica, goddammit, we have a RIGHT to vote on any single issue that bothers us, irregardless of weather it matters or not!

I don't know. I get exposed to a lot of stuff others wouldn't. I now test positive on TB skin tests so I have to have chest x-rays instead of skin tests. Every time I get a cold and start coughing I wonder "is this TB?".

say that the system for loaning students money is completely screwed up. There is no discrimination with regard to course of study- loans are made to study medicine and underwater basket weaving and everything in between. That's just stupid policy. Loans should be made and interest should be charged based on the risk of the loan going into default. People who want to study the most workplace demanded fields should get the most money at the lowest interest rates and those who want to study fields that have low demand should either not get funded or should pay a much higher interest rate.

I know, I know, the world needs art historians and paleontologists, but the world doesn't need 50,000 art historians/paleontologists every year. The world can only support a few of each. Such fields of study should be reserved for those who can afford to fund the study themselves, or a lottery should determine who gets student loans for those fields in proportion with the number that can be supported by the economy.

If the feds aren't going to discriminate in lending based on field of study they have no business preventing people from escaping the debt through bankruptcy.

That's like saying that rich people have to pay taxes shown in the tables that the IRS provides to everyone with their tax forms. There are so many accounting tricks and loop-holes in the laws that that 15-20% limit is NEVER going to be achieved. The real solution to the problem is universal healthcare funded directly by tax payers. The republican complaint against it is that you'll have to hire an army of people to administer it- BIG GOVERNMENT! What we have now is insurance companies with armies of administrators and lawyers working to prevent spending on health care because it is more profiable to collect premiums and not pay money out. With a single-payer system you have an army of people working to ensure spending is going to health care and not fraud. I know which I would rather fund.

You don't understand. Your visit to the doctor costs what it does because of the complexities of the insurance system, including both health insurance and malpractice insurance. Doctors have a lot of overhead to pay, and in hospitals, they are just employees with no control over their schedules. If the administrators put 40 people per day into their schedule, they see 40 people per day. People without insurance use the emergency room to fix problems after they occur, a very expensive way to deal with health problems - something which Obamacare was feebly attempting to address. Everyone else who uses the place has to pay more to cover those costs. Every time a doctor makes an error the patient calls a lawyer. Doctors order test after test to cover their asses against malpractice suits- they are told to do so in "risk management" seminars put on by insurance companies that they must attend every year to maintain their malpractice insurance. The system is full of waste at every level. Doctors are not the cause of the problem. They have been made to look that way by insurers and hospital administrators who want to deflect attention away from themselves.

When you look at Las Vegas, what do you see? You see huge luxury hotels, bright lights, excitement, partying, etc. Where does that money come from? From losers. Yet it's the winners who get the attention. Yeah, great, Vegas baby! Now look at insurance companies. Huge luxury office buildings, executives who make millions- it's a lot like Vegas. Where does the money come from? Losers like you and me who have to pay ridiculous premiums for minimal coverage. Yeah, Insurance baby!

My son has expressed an interest in studying medicine when he graduates from high school. My wife is a physician and I am a dentist. We have suggested that he get a degree in business and become a hospital administrator. Those people make $ millions with no special skill set and without the arduous training imposed on healthcare providers.

I see two other problems as issues.

1) not familiar with the iWatch, but if I have to touch it with my opposite hand to display the time it's a loser. People stopped wearing LED watches (except for a recent resurgence among hipsta-doofusses) because you had to touch them to display the time. Also the fact that you couldn't see them in bright light was a problem. They were replaced by LCDs that didn't require touching any buttons to see the time, but still require buttons to see them in darkness. Many analog watches aren't visible in darkness anyway, so this isn't such a big deal by comparison.

2) Current rechargeable battery technology will require that the battery or the entire watch will require replacement every two years or so. Maybe not such a big deal because the technology will surely change and people will want to upgrade just like they do with their phones. Problem or not, better plan on getting a new one every two years. Maybe they'll just bundle them with phones so both stay in sync technology-wise.

Now I can pay much too much for a 3D printer that can duplicate a chess piece or salt shaker.

I can't see the point of a 3D scanner that only scans small objects, unless it does so with very high resolution. In fact, I can't see the point of any 3D scanner that doesn't scan with very high resolution.

that don't want to pay taxes that fund education. What the hell did they expect?

Until you start wondering if someone on a plane you're sitting in might have ebola. The disease isn't the problem, the fear is the problem. Fear spreads faster than the flu.

You don't understand. While ebola might be a poor weapon compared to something like smallpox in terms of its ability to kill large numbers of people, it is readily available (just a plane ride or two away) and produces HUGE amounts of fear. Fear is the goal of terrorism, and fear is what is expensive. All those people blowing themselves up don't usually manage to kill more than a few others in their immediate vicinity but that's OK because killing a lot of people isn't necessary to instill fear. People never know when someone is going to try to do it near them, so they stay away from markets, cafes, etc. that are easy targets. Airlines can't sell tickets when people are afraid they'll catch ebola on a flight. If people aren't traveling, all the associated businesses suffer. Everything shuts down.

Remember 911? What did the response cost? Trillions of dollars wasted on pointless wars, lost business, creation and operation of the TSA, universal government surveillance of US citizens, etc. And what did it cost the terrorists? A few hundred thousand to have a few guys trained to fly jets.

The day a news story breaks about government agents arresting a terror suspect at a border and finding that they recently traveled to west Africa is the day everything stops working for months.

You are apparently not familiar with 3D printing. The effort required to get a good print for most of these machines is far greater than the effort to make a gun by other means.