Money also has value culturally, e.g., status. There are certain clubs and institutions where having a minimum amount allows consideration for admission,

There's also the matter about their kids -- not all of the brood are as driven or ambitious as the parents. How much do you need to make sure Jr III doesn't blow it all? It may be important if the little nipper has no skills and the parenting philosophy is the kids get used to living it up.

And yes, I do know rich families who intentionally raise their kids to only know/live the wealthy lifestyle.

You need to install the sarcasm driver -- or just use the Snarkix distro.

For the last time -- off my couch!

Easy.

For example: my mother.

As a non-techie senior, all she wanted was easy internet computing and a little word processing and spreadsheet on occasion.

First up: a little Win7 netbook. Worked fine with a USB GSM internet device but it was heavy, bulky, hard to type on, and was inconvenient to switch between English and Traditional Chinese.

As soon as I introduced her to the iPad, she ditched the netbook and is happily working in both languages.

"Boss, I'll need some special equipment to see our data in the cloud ..."

How many toes do you have?

Also, any discount for diabetic amputees?

My bad -- someone saw me dance and word got back to SOCAN how I was hurting music sales.

In the near future, I believe that's called an election.

I wonder if USAID would be willing to sponsor a similar program up here in Canada?

We have lots of friendly college folk who need ESL training and an economic leg up -- so what better way than to operate your call centers up here?

It's as near shore as you can get and these ESL trained immigrants would do the natural, Canuck thing, and spend their USAIDed wages across the border at Costco and Wal-Mart.

Cue uncomfortable silence.

What was considered "routine care" for the CT?

I can't think of anything in bread and butter dentistry that a CT would actually help with to any practical extent.

You fool!

Now he's going to become a shock jock!

China, which has a far superior train system, has airport like security at its stations.

For some reason, though, I've found the Chinese security even at airports to be much more reasonable and even helpful compared to the NA variety, e.g.

guard: What's in your pocket?
Me: My hat.
guard (double take): But what's THAT?
Me: A banana.
guard: (laughs and waves me through)

Mind you, it's funnier in Mandarin.

I belive that's the first sign that terrorists are winning.

Assure her it's nonsense and that you even wear a Bluetooth headset.

Then scream, play a recording of Soundwave, and hang up.