I turned out to be pretty happy with the state school's name printed on my diploma. I received an excellent education at in state prices. When your senior lab class is "build an MRI machine" from two magnets, a wire loop and a pulse generator, you can assume that the program is rigorous.

Learning about art history is great. It's absolutely worth dedicating four years, or even a lifetime, to learning about art. At the same time, it's a really good idea to learn how to feed yourself and pay off the debts that you're accumulating to study art. I learned a couple of trades while I was studying physics. I've spent the last 20 years of my life working in one or the other of those trades. The physics degree was incredibly valuable to me personally. Learning to program a computer on my own time has been useful to me financially. Learning to paint houses kept me in food until I could find work programming. It also led me to other fun activities such as tile setting and laying pavers.

Setting tile might not be very erudite, but it is both financially and personally rewarding. It's also putting that study of art history to practical use, because mosaics are cool, and you don't get to build mosaics unless you're a pretty accomplished tile setter.

So what exactly is stopping you from signing up for a trade program at a community college and getting a decent job so you can later study for the thing you want? There are always jobs open for machinists and welders, the money is good and the work is interesting.

Or have you considered military service or national service programs like Americorps?

All of those things will partially or fully pay for your school.

It sounds like instead of going to school to get his Ph.D. he went to school to get his Mrs. I feel sorry for the poor woman he burdened with his profligate ways.

It's always the other guy's fault?

Taking out huge loans that you don't have a way to repay, to get a degree that has no potential for income, show a serious lack of judgement. Military service will fund education, often while drawing full pay. A trade certification from a community college would lead to a stable income that could be used to fund an indulgence degree like Philosophy. It would also allow you to eat after getting the degree, which is the big problem.

There are plenty of degree programs where the student loan problem is a real issue. Philosophy isn't one of those. If you don't have a trust fund or a rich spouse to support you, don't get it.

No, but evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, being a private organisation doesn't require that you act like dick.

(I'm not even going to comment on PETA because they have jack shit to do with the current conversation.)

You are actually complaining about an administrative overhead of 9%? Seriously?

For comparison, Apple's OPEX was a little over 25% of revenues as of March 2015. Google's was a little less than 25%. Microsoft's was 22%

These are all operations that have significant global logistical operations, and involve a combination of scale and skill in their day-to-day operations.

I assisted UNICEF (as a local 'fixer') with their operations when cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu. (See here for a blow-by-blow account.) It is emphatically true that costs are very high in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Spending time nickle-and-diming over expenses can cost lives. We needed phones, cars, room to work (their local HQ was damaged), food and water, and sufficient staff and infrastructure to move hundreds of tonnes of food and supplies at a time.

For the record: The Red Cross and UNICEF were the first organisations to deliver emergency supplies, because they had the foresight to pre-position materials and equipment in-country prior to the disaster. That was money well-spent.

And yet... and yet the biggest problem we faced was middle management second-guessing the people at the operational level, failing to support them because of the expenses they were incurring. And this fear continues to permeate precisely because of stories like this.

Let's be perfectly clear: It was the AMERICAN Red Cross that screwed up so royally here. Not the International Red Cross, which provides unique and necessary services throughout the world.

You wouldn't tar every single technology company with the same brush as games maker Electronic Arts (who really do deserve their own special circle in Hell). So why, when one NGO manages their way to disaster, does giving to charities suddenly become unwise?

I have witnessed—up close and in more detail than anyone could ever want—the effects of disaster. I'm still working to document the many successes and failures of cyclone Pam. And I will say without hesitation that the mantra here in Vanuatu was 'we will not be another Haiti'. Haiti really was a clusterfuck from start to finish, mostly because of the local government's inability to control and coordinate the response. In Vanuatu, government officials stayed on the front foot, and were unafraid to take NGOs to task when they first refused to cooperate.

People need to be reminded: Disaster zones are shitty places to work. They are in fact some of the worst places in the world. And on top of this there are indeed thousand-dollar-a-day careerists who descend on them as a matter of course. But for every one person like that, there are hundreds of dedicated professionals who have devoted themselves simply to helping out. Many of them work on a purely voluntary basis. Mistakes get made every day, for countless reasons, but not least because in a post-disaster situation, you're working with whatever information you've been able to gather by word of mouth; you've got virtually no means to coordinate your efforts, and you cannot know what the worst-affected areas look like until you go there yourself. On top of all that, you're working as much as 20 hours a day, resting for maybe 10-15 minutes at most, and eating whenever someone stuffs an emergency ration into your hand.

Not to put too fine a point on it, It's really fucking hard.

So yes, rag all you like on the American Red Cross. They have clearly raped the puppy. But do not ever attempt to state that there's no place for disaster relief organisations in this world. A lot of my compatriots are alive today because of them. Until you can say the same about your work, I recommend you stop pretending you know what you're talking about.

No there aren't. We lied, you idiot.

I will say that I could find a lot of fun uses for an inexpensive CNC mill that is durable enough to mill aluminum, or better yet steel. That is a valuable product that could find a lot of use in my house.

I don't really have a need for more than one AR-15. The mill alone costs more than a new AR-15 from Colt. It costs twice as much as the Armalite products. It's cool to say I did it and all, but I didn't really. I bought a bunch of parts and did a little bit of milling on one of them. I "made" the gun in much the way that I "made" my motorcycle because I changed the tires and the oil.

For serious energy independent there would also be a wood burner. I don't live in an area where that's practical. But in rural areas its super common.

My wife saw a smaller design for such a thing recently, essentially a small closet in the laundry room with a lot of screens to lay clothes on and a fan to draw air. It's on the todo list when the existing much hated laundry room cabinets are ripped out. It will dry faster than just a rack, and it won't damage the clothes.

And look like a twit, just like that dude. Don't know how he hasn't died of terminal stupidity so far.

Thanks for the tip. We were attracted by the shiny cool aspect of it a year ago, but the need for a water heater was immediate and the lead time was a few weeks. Just had to have our heater serviced again today so the topic came up again.

Also, learn from my mistake: if you're having your floors finished, power down the hot water heater, and consider taping over the leak sensor until the house has been aired out. The acrylic in a water borne floor finish is a hydrocarbon, and once a sensor is tripped it stays tripped until a tech comes out, verifies that there isn't a leak, and a new sensor gets installed. A few cold showers and $230 later we're wiser.