Have you tried explaining that to a manager? According to management if you haven't built a major system in it you aren't proficient and can't learn it on the fly quickly. That's why they label as "c programmers" or "java developers", etc.

That's all and good, except the HPV vaccine is being sold as protection against cervical cancer which IS extremely rare. That is why is being pushed to young girls, and not boys. If it was just for protecting against genital warts, they would be pushing it equally to boys and girls.

Additionally, HPV is like the flu in that there are multiple strains and the vaccine only protects against a handful that they feel are the most common. Most people with HPV aren't even aware they have it, so it isn't some terrible disease killing and disfiguring people left and right.

Like chicken pox? I'd be interested to also know your thoughts on the HPV vaccine considering the disease it protects against is already incredibly rare.

A better question is why does it matter?

However, if the universities keep lowering the bar for entry and saying "well this sucks but I guess it's what we have to work with", the high schools will keep lowering their standards. You are settling for sub-par students and hoping that the problem will fix itself magically while all the time the high schools are saying "Hey, we don't need to put all this effort into preparing kids for college because the universities will take them no matter how little they actually know."

People are lazy. They aren't going to fix a problem because you and I sit on the internet whining about it. They are going to fix the problem when we make it hurt them. Lowing the standards and covering up for the incompetence of the K-12 system will only send the message that it is ok to not actually educate our children.

Alternately, why don't we teach the kids in high school the things they need to learn in high school so they aren't playing catch up when they go to college?

If the skills are valuable, why do we keep pushing them further down the line? If each grade level / course is expected to impart a certain level of proficiency on the students, why do we pass them if they are not proficient? If you passed pre-calc, you should have some level of proficiency with the material. Otherwise, why did you bother? What is the point of being able to say "I passed pre-calc!" if it does not imply a baseline proficiency sufficient to move on to calculus?

You are probably buying your forgotten toothbrush from the hotel gift shop at a 10x markup in that situation and still aren't supporting local shops :P

However, if the community wishes to regulate itself, it needs to be willing to hand over it's own. If a police office shoots and unarmed civilian, his fellow officers should hand him over for criminal proceedings. If a lawyer commits fraud, his fellow lawyers need to disbar him... The problem is when in the desire to avoid outside interference you allow misconduct to continue through a sense of comradeship.

It is not self regulation per say that people object to, but the fact that self regulation often leads to protecting your own instead of seeking justice. Justice relies on the honest and compassionate among us having a louder voice than the sociopaths. If you are honest, speak up when you see evil. If, however, your community refuses to speak up and instead hides the crimes, then the logical conclusion is that the sociopaths outnumber the honest and you cannot be trusted.

Bullshit. The online retailer also has to pay shipping costs on that TV. I just bought a swingset (full 20ft x 30ft playground when assembled) from the internet with free shipping... The in store price (where I had to go and get it myself) was the same as the online price, but buying it online got it delivered to my door. Don't tell me they didn't spend a pretty penny shipping that across the country. They are now shipping me new 4x4's, also at no cost to me, cause I broke the original ones.

So what kinds of items are left? Either I know exactly what I want or I want or I'm ok with whatever is on the shelf in front of me... I have found more variety and better stuff on line. I have also found the luxury of actually doing research on the product I am trying to buy. I buy diapers and cat food from Amazon, shipped to my door on a regular basis. There are actually very few items that you really do need NOW and not in two days, assuming you are capable of forethought and planning. There actually people that buy ALL their groceries online and have them delivered to their door.

I bought a swing set online the other day and it was shipped to my door with free shipping. Had I bought the swingset from the storefront I would have had to find a way to transport it home.

I'm confused as to how you find that hateful. The media recently has been in love with people who do not fit into traditional roles and are thus oppressed or misunderstood by society.

Do you take exception with the word "pretending"? If you dangle and have a Y chromosome, you can put on a dress and take hormones and have surgery so you don't dangle, but at the end of the day you still have that Y chromosome and lack a uterus and thus will always only be pretending. That is a fact and cannot be changed by current technology.

I agree with you, but find your logic flawed. Sex is an action. If it was created by god and is therefore good, murder is also an action that was created by god...

Your reasoning falls into the "all natural things (like arsenic) are good and all man-made things (like computers) are evil" bucket.

And yet if he liked to cross dress in his free time and instead was claiming to be transgendered or something, everyone would be clapping and cooing about how wonderful he is for pretending to be a woman...

I'm actually having trouble differentiating this from 'marketing'? Companies create spokespeople and fictional stories about themselves all the time. Unless he is not planning on actually paying his investors, should it matter if you are going into business with a real 19 year old girl or a middle aged man using the face of a 19 year old girl? The non-existent girl could not have signed any contracts or anything, so I find it hard to believe that real investors didn't know who they were dealing with.

It is also pretty distracting to be fishing around the backseat for a stuffed bear that the 2 year threw on the floor and is now having a screaming fit cause she can't reach it and the world will absolutely positively end if she can't have it back. But we don't have metrics for that :)

How do you know he was a texting teen?