Yep, that's why I said "Of course not all of that money makes it down to the common populace" ;-)

And yes, if we want peace in the middle east, the first place to start is with regime change in Saudi Arabia......not easy to accomplish but shouldn't be done militarily.

"Fix the Middle-East's economy".

I'm pretty sure that lack of money isn't a problem for most of the Middle East economies. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait are pretty well off. Of course not all of that money makes it down to the common populace, thanks to their dictator/royal governments. I can't think of an easy way to change their form of governments without massive upheaval, just like we're seeing in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

"Build schools, staff them - an educated populace won't fall for the simple rhetoric of the mob-leader."

This will work, but will probably take well over 100 years. Again, you can't implement this with the type of social system and governments they currently have in place. Religion and tradition are so ingrained in their culture that the ideas of democracy and free speech are not only alien to them, but down-right heresy.

"Build infrastructure so they can actually communicate with the rest of the world"

Well ISIS is using Twitter, so they are communicating with the rest of the world, just not in the way we would like. All of the infrastructure, evidence, and knowledge in the world will do no good if you choose not to believe in it (hell, look at how much evidence we have for global warming and evolution that gets ignored in the U.S.).

The only solution I can see is to get away from middle-eastern oil as soon as possible. Their sources of funding will dry up, and the royal families/dictators currently in place will have no choice but to open up their society in order to build an economy that isn't based on oil.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or confusing Ridley Scott with the director (right there in the summary):

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

FWIW, I haven't seen any of his movies.

Back in 2007, Anderson Cooper asked a pediatrician if PlumpyNut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut) was affecting people in developing countries suffering from malnutrition with peanut allergies. The Dr. said "We just don't see it. In developing countries food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries." Sounds like this study backs up that claim.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-...

"people are getting better coverage cheaper than before"

a lot of people are making this claim too......can you back it up? :-)

"Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment"

Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?

Or how about Linux 2015? And if another release comes out mid-year we can go with Linux 2015 R2?

Stallman, is that you? ;-)

"The fact that you have talked about dissemination of culture in terms of 'doing business'"

The whole point of the embargo was to prevent US businesses from doing trade with Cuba. So the solution is to maintain it so that Cuban culture can be protected?

How has opening a Ford dealership in France or an Apple Store in Italy stifled their culture? Not much based off of the last visit I had. Do you expect this to be different for Cuba?

Besides, free speech and personal freedom are cultural attributes worth sharing, is it not? The implementation of this in the USA is debatable, but the best way to share those attributes is through exchange of ideas enabled through international trade and openness. The only other way is through armed conflict, and we can see how well that worked out in their past conflicts.

If the US embargoes Cuba, they're being imperialistic. If the US decides to do business with them, they are going to ruin their culture and make it another satellite. Talk about "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

"This is about RECRUITERS. They go out and find candidates."

This doesn't change what I said. In this case the recruiter is passing on qualified people just so they can hit a %20 quota. It's not like they have infinite candidates to begin with.....they may be limited to 100, or 50, or whatever. If there aren't enough qualified people to fill the candidate quota to begin with, they'll have to start reaching out to unqualified female candidates to fill that 20%.

And I did read the article thanks.

So if 100 people apply, and only 10 of them are women, I still have to exclude 10 male candidates that are more qualified than those 10 women.

"1) Push your technical recruiters to hit 20% thresholds for female candidates"

At the expense of the qualified candidates?

Have a look at Xojo. It used to go by the name REALbasic.

What's the matter Colonel Sanders? CHIIIIIICKEN?!?