It's pretty much universally frowned upon by management, and if the relationship doesn't work out, both of you are stuck being around each other all day every day for the foreseeable future, which can be pretty horrible. OTOH, I met my wife at my first job out of school (but wisely, she refused to date me while we still worked together).

Nope, my 10 person small business is based in deep blue MD, which is currently contemplating the same dramatic minimum wage increases that LA and others have implemented. We're not in fast food or janitorial work -- we pay about $3-6 above the state's current minimum wage -- and we directly compete with companies in states whose minimum wages are less than ours. So yeah, when state and local politicians do this stuff, it absolutely fucks with small business' ability to compete with other states and jurisdictions that don't do this arbitrary crap. It also increases our payroll taxes, work comp insurance payments, and a lot of other costs. If you want to increase the minimum wage, then do it at the national (Federal) level, or just give people a Scandinavian-style cost-of-living stipend and be done with it -- and / or quit putting in regressive tax increases like sales tax, payroll tax, gas tax, etc. that make the cost of living so unlivable for the working poor. But equating burger flippers with people with 4 year degrees making $13-16 / hour is fucking insulting, to me and to my employees.

Easy to say when it's not your small business that's the subject of some politician's "experiment."

presently the younger generation is less vanilla than the older generation and the older generation isn't being very welcoming to people who aren't like them and never will be.

Ahhh, you youngsters. Do you seriously think that you're the first generation who thinks this? Aren't they teaching history anymore? EVERY generation grows up thinking THEY'RE the cool non-vanilla kids while resenting their elders and mocking everything about them. And then one day (if you're lucky), you wake up and look in the mirror, and you look like your Dad (or grandfather). And you won't even realize it, but you'll make a lot of the same decisions that Dad did too -- decisions that many would consider "safe" or even (gasp!) "conservative" (in a non-political way).

I know -- not you, 'cuz you're different, right?

Look no further than California, Maryland, and Illinois. The 3rd District of MD is an absolute abomination. Hell, the term "gerrymandering" itself is named after Governor Gerry of Massachusetts who was lampooned for signing odd-shaped state senate districts into law. But yeah, fuck all of the Republicans in those deep blue states -- as long as your team wins, right?

. . . people tend to become more conservative once they start paying taxes and have personal responsibilities like families and a mortgage.

Those southern states draw more federal dollars because of the 10s of millions of elderly who have retired down there -- in the warm sun and away from the northeast and west coast's insane taxes and traffic. Damn those burdensome old people!

Shouting lecturers down is yet another form of the whole free speech paradigm you hold so highly.

By definition, free speech doesn't mean anything near what you claim it does. I truly feel sorry for you if you really believe anything that you wrote here.

The trend is to attempt to censor "damaging" or "distressing" (read: conservative / libertarian / right-leaning) speakers and provide "safe spaces" free of any opposing view points, literally in a room supplied with with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets, a video of frolicking puppies, etc. And unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating in the least bit. The NY Times had a great profile on this last month (and from the comment section, its readership, to their credit, was generally appalled by this phenomenon). It's truly frightening when you think that the people advocating this type of crap are supposed to become America's next leaders. How on earth will they deal with difficult situations in the real world, where they can't run away or simply ban those who disagree with them?

Do you really think that people who think Kim Kardashian is interesting and like the NFL are really going to give this any serious thought?

Whoa . . . don't conflate the enjoyment of professional sports with contrived, superficial, reality TV bullshit. There are plenty of us geeks out there who follow both the NFL closely (the draft is a week from tonight and I'm hoping my team lands Bud Dupree!) *and* are interested and aware enough to carefully analyze what Snowden did and form our own opinions. :-)

So your argument is that because some Republicans fucked up, it's OK for Democrats from NY to get a free pass when they fuck up and waste tens of millions in taxpayer money? Your attitude is the absolute embodiment of everything that's wrong with this country, and literally how we got into the mess we're in now.

Pass a law that all politicians' and lobbyists' vehicle whereabouts are automatically posted to a publicly accessible website 24x7x365. In fact, that type of thing would pretty much immediately fix all fucked up laws in the country. E.g., I wonder if the CA governor's mansion is subject to the meaningless, bullshit water restrictions he's inflicted on the serfs?

Nope, it's legit: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/03/more-chromebooks-for-everyone.html

Yes, this country needs more kids studying the sciences, and going into science and engineering-related fields. However, just as important (if not moreso) is the ability to critically think -- something that has been typically emphasized in a traditional liberal arts / humanities-centric education. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater by "de-emphasizing the humanities" here, or else you'll end up with a nation of code jockeys who make shitty decisions and can't think for themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...