Around here Metro PCS advertises $40/month, unlimited everything. Their billboards say "Not $40-ish. $40". Taxes included.

Sign me up.

[sigh]

Should have known better.

It's only $35k!

I'll personally commit $100 to create a fund to outbid him.

Who's with me?

I have to disagree with much of your post. I don't think your in-laws' experience is that close to typical.

Norway's system may be superior, I'll take your word for it. But honestly speaking, it SHOULD be. Norway's problem is much more manageable because Norway is quite a bit wealthier than the US (53k per capita GDP vs 45k) and has a population the size of Kentucky.

Kaiser Permanente, which is a single insurance provider in the US, has twice as many members as Norway has people (and rates extremely highly for quality of care, by the way).

Have you ever asked your in-laws why they go to a doc-in-a-box and don't pick a primary physician? Every insurance plan I've ever had has let me pick a primary doc and see them any time - I've had the same doctor for 15 years.

Most people I know have "their" doctor and stick with them until they decide to switch or a change of insurance takes them out of their list of approved providers. The only people I know that don't have a primary physician are younger people who haven't had a reason to see a doctor since they left their parents insurance.

Also, maybe I haven't been paying attention, but I've never seen an employer require a doctor's note for sick leave of any length. Maybe companies put language to that effect in their employee handbook in case they need it to deal with abuse of the system, but in 20 years working I've never known of anyone being asked for a note.

I think you're missing the operative words: incident to arrest.

They can't just stop people going about their business and demand to see the contents of their backpacks in the hopes of finding something incriminating.

[X] wristwatch battery doesn't go dead every 3 days

I've been running a Dell Studio Hybrid for 6 months. They're assembled from laptop parts so they're very low power. It's completely silent. It has a fan but I've never heard it. It's about the size of a mac mini and starts about $100 less. Looks very inconspicuous in the living room - more like stereo equipment than a computer.

I couldn't compare speed between it and the mac mini, but mine is running windows 7 (because I couldn't get Ubuntu to send sound through the HDMI to the TV) and 2 instances of Ubuntu simultaneously under Sun's Virtualbox and I've never had a speed problem except some sketchiness when running the blu-ray dvd player (regular dvd is fine, Hulu is fine).

It comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse that has a pretty good range - I use it from across the living room.

That may be true at the level of the individual borrower, but the system of higher rates for lower quality credit evolved over time because it makes money for the lenders. The higher resultant default rates are part of the calculation when they determine the interest rates.

The problem with preferring birds to mammals is that you have to kill a bird just about every day to feed a family of four, whereas the death of a single cow will suffice for most of a year.

Agreed on the crustaceans, though - they're practically insects.

Yep. The Mission Viejo store became a Boot Barn.

That closed, too.

In the same way lightning is nearly identical to lightning bugs.