Honda of China makes and sells a nice 125cc motorcycle there for $900. Here that bike would probably cost $3,000 but Honda won't even ship that bike to the US as it would screw up sales of other models. We have tons of riders in the US shelling out $25,000 or even more for a motorcycle. Oddly the creepy little 50cc bikes are the smartest deal of all right now. The weed eater like motors cost $100. so one need not worry much about a motor breaking. The transmission is the type with pulleys that swell and shrink and are super easy and cheap to replace. A new carb costs about $15. These engines have even been used to power a highly collectible mini car in decades past and at this time actually produce as much as 7.5 horsepower and that is more than twice what a Vespa 125 produced in 1960. Plus it is such a lite motor and transmission the bike needs less power than ever before. And we are talking greater than 100 mpg..

Sales people usually do not have to track down customers. Normally we have people who specialize in lead generation. Most tiny businesses either do not have time nor the money to hire lead generators. A simple example is that you go into a Pizza joint and pay a few bucks to the owner to put a prize box on the table offering free vacations. customers waiting for their meal to cook casually fill out the win a vacation form. A week later they get a phone call congratulating them for filling out the form. They are then told that the motel is free except for the taxes. The cruise ship is free except for tax and port charges and that the hotel in the Bahamas is free except for the taxes. It usually stacks up to about $350. which is a bargain and some people actually enjoy the vacation. They are required to attend a two hour presentation of a time share in the Bahamas. The cruise ships have casinos. the hotel in the Bahamas has some gaming as well. Both the cruise ships and the hotel pay the marketing firm and the sales person is the one on the phone that completes the deal. The sales person usually gets about $10. per hour and $100 per person sold. As these schemes are always on the edge of being illegal the sales room is not in the same state as the confirmation room which takes the charge card and finalizes and records the conversation. using two states confuses jurisdiction and creates a legal barrier to investigation. You could easily go out and put up a prize box with your cell number making a special offer for PC repairs. You'll need boxes and slips printed and you'll need to bribe a pizza joint a bit to display your box on every table. You could also go to hotels and motels and leave cards with front desk workers such that when a resident has an issue with hooking up from their room you can quickly come out and set up a better connection to the net for them. Offer the desk clerks $10 for each job you get from them.

Laissez faire has really never been actually tried. It is rather like capitalism which also has never been tried. If you think about it a bit some terms are absolute. It is like my sister being pregnant. She either is or is not. There is no in between. Free markets have never, ever existed. All kinds of taxes, rules, regulations and controls always exist to some degree. Even primitive tribes have taboos that restrict freedom of trade. The simple reason is that no group or nation has ever been dumb enough to allow a free market or trade. In the US we have a mixed economy and always have. We have social and religious customs regulating business or trade. We have taxation and we have laws designed to protect the public in place as well. Many of these controls are socialist in nature. We have no way to judge whether pushing more towards socialism or capitalism would be better for us. But due to technology beginning to eliminate human employment we have no choice but to shift towards socialism. But the worst of it is that society and government are not adjusting for what will soon be upon us. Rising seas in America will cause more social disruption in the next ten years than we ever saw in WW2. Your taxes are already being altered by planning for rising sea resistance.

Harvard does give extra credit for children of Harvard graduates and they surely are also appreciative of wealthy graduates who donate large sums who have sons and daughters seeking admission. Also athletes may get some extra consideration and some areas of the world emphasize sports other than what we play in America. Factors like that may well completely explain the apparent disparity in admissions. There is also the matter of comparing grades when the quality of high schools in foreign nations may not be recognized or known. I would not want to be a lawyer attacking Harvard for discrimination based solely on the items in this complaint. I also wonder if Harvard reserves a certain number of seats for in state applicants.

I have been hammering this point for at least a year and daily on Slashdot. Taxi drivers are also about to be eliminated. Fast food workers will rapidly almost vanish. School teachers are even more prone to no longer being employable. After all one Algebra 1 teacher can serve the entire nation. The challenge is not unemployment . Massive unemployment is a given. But as jobs vanish businesses will fold quickly. The REAL CHALLENGE is a complete change in social and economic policies so that people are well payed, not to work. Sales taxes will have to support the system as income taxes will be quite restrained except from the investment sector. If we do not do this quickly we are a dead nation. If we believe in survival of the fit over the weak then what we are seeing is that socialism is fit to survive under conditions that capitalism can not.

There is no doubt that whether it is for education, socialization, entertainment or even life saving medical research computers are a blessing. But the other shoe must also drop. Disruption took place as well as all of the good that was done. That disruption is increasing rapidly and elimination of jobs and trades is now a pressing problem. The next leap with a quantum computer breakthrough may well cause even greater levels of disruption as well as bring fourth new blessings. But the horror is that despite the critical need to do so there has been no social or economic policy adjustment to help with the disruptions. We will need and entirely new economic model for society or we will have chaos. Yet we lag behind in very basic ways. For example we can not afford for urban neighborhoods to have second rate schools. We can not afford for any ethnic group to be locked out or disadvantaged. We need all the educated minds that we can create to have any hope of sustaining ourselves in international trade. We need large numbers of engineers, scientists and top drawer artisans to have any hope of competing with other nations. China, Japan, Taiwan and others are turning out very potent scholars and we must turn out scholars who are even more deeply educated in large numbers. this is very challenging as we are essentially low in population compared to China and India.

Humans fry up pretty well. Humans are much like pork. And we don't have to scour the ocean depths to snag humans. Sadly most of my neighbors are simply too old to make a decent meal so when hard times come i'll have to get out of my neighborhood to find a young tenderonni.

I can see that it would be illegal if the teaching was aimed at a person under investigation for a specific crime and that the instructor knew that he was teaching that suspect. But if the guy wanted to reach the whole world how to beat a polygraph without knowing who or why people wanted such training i don't think it should or could be illegal.

Really nobody should be playing football. Brain injuries are just one of the numerous medical problems caused by football. One might consider why one has hostile moods in the first place rather than trying to control that demon by feeding it.

It was assumed that anyone using AOL was park of a herd of lesser minds and I suppose it still is. Apple products pretty much were taken as i am a fool type of signal as well.

When companies steal from their customers or anyone else they should be forced to pay far, far more than what they took in. If they stole two million fine them two hundred million and the nonsense will stop. Allowing any profit from wrong doing cause more crime.

A wind turbine or water turbine could continue for decades. Since part of the power generated is fed back to coils within the turbine they both use and create electricity. I do wonder how much of a windmill farm can survive one good tornado.

Miami Beach Florida is already having rising seas flooding in some streets. I ask you to consider the massive economic impact on the entire nation that the loss of Miami Beach would create. The investments in Miami Beach structures and land is enormous. A loss of Miami Beach would be enough to wipe out numerous insurance companies and banks with perhaps enough losses to totally crash the US economy. Consider that even way back in 1950 land on Miami Beach was valued in the hundreds of dollars per square foot. Most of Miami Beach is about 30 inches above sea level. A high tide is already enough to create some flooding. The area is also prone to hurricanes. Storm surges can reach 20 feet. Even a very minor storm could easily have a five foot surge. But storms also have huge waves so you might have a 30 ft. wave on top of the surge water. Plainly said a decent storm with rising seas could erase Miami Beach from the face of the Earth. Miami is only one example. But rising seas are a much more immediate threat to all of us than what we see in the news media. We can have a hell of a price to pay right now. For climate deniers we did not face this much of an issue fifty years ago. Right now people really should be very afraid.