I sometimes wonder if this is a result of the large population. Bureaucracy may have exponential growth against population size, allowing smaller European countries more agility with their social programs. Or perhaps it is the notoriously corrupt (for a first-world country) US political scene and the power of lobby groups. Or maybe it's some random cultural factor.

At best encouraging population growth is medium-term gain. Structuring your society to require an ever-expanding population is long-term suicide.

Tread carefully. Porn is one thing, but imagine the shame if the MPAA told your neighbours you pirated Avatar.

As a side note this is what leads to the argument that communism is more efficient. All those wasted resources trying to convince people over and over that your useless product is better than the next company's, why not eliminate that and centrally plan the distribution?

The fact that even with double the costs capitalism appears to be more efficient is interesting, as if the only way to get us to work is to fight us off against each other like rats after a single piece of cheese*.

* There only being one type of cheese available in a typical communist country of course

I think this depends. I was told by the birth centre that the research is starting to come out that men suffer in the same proportion as women (about 1 in 7). As a random annecdote my wife's friend's husband had it badly, to the point where their marriage almost broke up (they had twins, he had no interest in them, so compounded stress).

Possibly this wasn't true in the past when men had less to do with child rearing. Also society doesn't 'allow' men to have PND, they are expected to be real men and suck it up.

This is completely incorrect. It varies with the woman. There are stories of women in fields stopping to have their baby then getting right back to plowing, but for most women the hormone relaxin has loosened the muscles to the extent where it takes weeks to get back to the same level of strength and physical activity. Of course physically mundane things like office work and cooking are achievable.

Yes, but in the same way that requiring disabled parking discriminates against the able-bodied. The rules of society tend to be about managing the welfare of the whole, not adhering to individualistic philosophy (taken as a whole the philosphies evinced by our behaviour is a contradictory mess).

This is easily solved (and is in some countries) by allowing the primary carer to take the longer leave. Thanks to social mores and the biology of boobs this is almost always the woman.

Also maternity leave is not just for the mum to spend time with her baby, it is for her to recover from the birth.

Fortunately there's an xkcd about your attitude.

The poor are sold the lie that anyone can strike it rich but the U.S. actually has the worst chance for an individual to change their socioeconomic status of all first-world nations.

It's tempting to consider this as a fraud of economic deregulation theory, however the second worst country is the much more 'socialist' UK.

Why is that? Once the team is mature there is a relatively constant points-per-hour figure. Is there a psychological mechanism whereby people estimate differently in hours? If so then perhaps, like the article, the knowledge that you're tricking yourself with points doesn't matter, the placebo still orks.

Right, my company has a top-down directive for all divisions to go Agile, and this was my chief concern. It sounds sensible to break things down into two-day tasks that can be estimated accurately, but when I tried to envisage that with my upcoming projects I couldn't figure out when we had the time to do this.

According to the consultants at the training session the answer was that the team did it in the 4-hour backlog grooming sessions. Perhaps that works in some simpler industries. The point was made that we did projects that could take 2 people 6 months to design and architect. The response? Place that design time as a user story into the system.

So now you're back to square one. Management can create an epic "We want a product that does X, Y and Z" but still won't have any idea how long that will take until most of the hard design work is done much, much later.

It's more like you're a cashier at McDonalds and a rowdy group at a couple of tables ask why the new McAwesome burger doesn't come with mayo. You explain that it was done this way for a variety of reasons - cost, balance of flavours, space in the burger - but they yell and chant about it continually, some go outside and hold up signs to passing traffic to complain. Eventually you get sick of it and say "Mayonnaise is your Grandma's ingredient, I wish none of our burgers used it. Deal with it."

Stretched analogy, but the internet is a tedious echo chamber where the loudest, most annoying people get amplified by news media. I too detest DRM, and especially always-on DRM, but it's refreshing to see a manager say what's he thinking rather than spouting vague placations. Wouldn't hire him for my (theoretical) company though.

My work is through Optus, can access the MFU site fine at this time.

Odd, I'm Australian and found it to be more of a character study. It certainly didn't glorify war but also doesn't criticise the U.S. involvement. In fact I was left wondering how someone who chose to be with James Cameron could demonstrate such subtlety.

Coincidentally a few weeks ago I read a review of it in a Balinese newspaper, I think for expats. The English, or translation, was quite rough, but they did indeed slam it as pro-American propaganda.