I regularly used to take the shortcut through the cemetery, even after sundown. That scared me worse than the thought of bears.

My wife wants to retire later with more money, I want to retire earlier with more health. She said, "With more money we'll be able to travel more." I said, "I'll be damned if I'm going to visit the Great Pyramid using a walker." The debate continues.

Actually legal pot in Washington is cheaper and higher quality than what was available before. My only complaint is that I don't really care for the high-potency stuff, I prefer to smoke a joint or a bowl and then go out and **DO** something, weed the garden, paint a bedroom, go for a walk, whatever. Don't really like being so stoned I'm non-functional. Give me a baggie of leaf and I'm a lot happier, but then I'm not typical either.

I think that's the old normal. It wasn't until about 1900 that having a physician present actually improved your chance of survival, in many previous eras it would have increased your chance of dying instead. (George Washington was bled to death by his doctors, for example.)

You know what they call the guy who graduates dead last in his class at medical school? Doctor.

Actually the 'new normal' will soon be charging for those bits. Currently the data is free only because administrators don't realize that there is any actual value to it.

If hospital IT departments weren't such shitholes to work in you might be better staffed. HCA is notorious for underpaying IT staff and understaffing their department. In Anchorage they insisted on paying Lower-48 salaries, with the result that the entire IT department quit the same week. If your manager won't ask to increase head count then he's in the wrong position. If he asked and got turned down then he's working for the wrong employer, as are you.

It doesn't hurt that it creates a revenue stream being able to supply that particular model at an inflated price.

I think that is really the reason for it. Computer manufacturers are notorious for this. We had a critical server down with a failed network card. Compaq tech looked inside, said "That's not a Compaq-brand hard drive in bay 3, I can't touch this machine. Take it out and generate another service call." Three hours later he was back and replaced the NIC with a Compaq-branded card that cost three times what it should, and we were charged for both visits. Turned me off of factory warrantee service forever.

From the viewpoint of residents of the Middle East, Central America, or the former Soviet Union those were just the tiniest of pin pricks of retaliation. If 15 million people had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks then it would have been similar to what the population of Iran experienced under our puppet the Shah. Knock off 40 million Americans and you'd be close to the percentage of the population of Central America killed under Reagan and Bush the Elected. There aren't an awful lot of populations around the world where an attack originating from them could be considered 'unprovoked'.

Ah, so you haven't read it. It's not that long, check it out. Certainly better-written and more interesting than 'Atlas Shrugged'.

So he's not stupid, just evil. I think I'd prefer stupid.

You have no idea what Marxism actually is, do you? Ever read the Communist Manifesto? In what way does the corporatist banking clique currently running the Democratic party resemble the credo "From each, according to his ability, to each according to his needs"?

Bill Clinton is still the best conservative president of my lifetime. For that matter, the only conservative that wasn't utterly incompetent.

The S&M market?

large portions of the Federal budget
Social Security and Medicaid are not budget items, they're trust funds. Interest is not a budget item either.