IMO the problem with leaving health care law at the state level is that it didn't work before. Perhaps because states with universal care policies were either financially unsupportable in their current form (Massachusetts) or unpopular with the major interstate HMO/insurance companies (Washington).
We are having a similar problem in Canada with some provinces not honouring other provinces' right to be reimbursed for providing care to visitors from those other provinces. Fact is, both Canada and the United States need, and lack, a truly universal health care delivery system. Citizens must work, live, and travel further and more frequently now than ever before in history. It only makes sense for universal coverage to actually be, you know, universal. Multinational and interstate corporations ARE in fact doing a better job of ensuring continuity of care than governments do, if those people are well enough to work full-time in the first place.
Hey Klug, I recently played EDH with some friends and got to see some of your anime alters up close. Man, they are as sharp and pro in real life as they are in scans. You have strong fans here in Canada and I look forward to seeing some more stuff.
I don't think it was a cash grab - the doubts people had about his sexuality seriously derailed his career. Coming out merely put the last nail in the coffin, so to speak.
It is a media event because he is a media event.
Ordinary people come out all the time and nobody televises it. Even wealthy people. And sometimes it even doesn't affect their income. Because they're not trying to market themselves as a sex symbol by way of their music.
FYI I still like Ricky Martin about as much as I did before. Knowing someone is gay or whatever doesn't change how I view their music unless the music itself changes.
While it's clear the message is that the US should shoulder its share of "austerity" measures, for the US those austerity measures may be different from those which apply to say, the EU countries in the worst straits.
Some austerity measures that apply equally to EU and US:
-Regulation of housing and commodity markets
-Limiting or eliminating some entitlement programs
-Allowing existing tax cuts to expire and maintaining (or raising) taxes in other areas
Some apply specifically to the US:
-Limit or terminate foreign military involvement
-Real health care reform, not this bloated mess borne of poison pills and half-measures we have now.
-Refocus American manufacturing sector on durability and versatility of goods, lasting behavioural impact of services.
-Reducing or eliminating subsidies to failing banks
-Reforms to farm subsidies, especially going into any attempt to rein in commodity speculation.
It's because cancer tissue is not healthy. If you look at human tumours, they are not just big pieces of their source organ growing in odd places. They are disorganized, sometimes dying because they outgrew their nutrient supply, sometimes morphed into something different, sometimes producing toxins.
Imagine a bell pepper with cancer. A large tumour is growing alongside the bell pepper. At first it looks like a second pepper is growing out of the first. Next thing you know, part of it is lignified and inedible because it acquired a genetic ability to create pith. Another part is mouldy and black and sopping wet because its cells lost the ability to form vascular channels or absorb a nutrient. A third part has reactivated a gene that produces a toxic alkaloid.
In all probability, long before this happens, the entire pepper plant is wilting and covered with inedible, woody boils and galls.
There are some cities in the Midwest and South where you see nary a homeless person anytime, anywhere. It's not something to be proud of. In fact it is a sign things are definitely not right.
I was visiting a fairly large city in the Midwest and noted there were no visible homeless people, which was somewhat of a shock coming from the West Coast where there are flocks of homeless people from every other state, in parks, in front of shelters and train/bus stations, under the highway bridges, etc.
After a while I met some folks to play Magic with and we went to an all night cafe to play EDH. A lot of the people in there were ragged and seedy. I discovered that this and similar private cafe's and restaurants were havens for the homeless and runaway kids. Why didn't they go to a shelter? You needed a disability check or a welfare check to get into a shelter. Curiously enough, you also need a permanent mailing address to be eligible for either check. This place served the needs of anyone who needed a temporary addy to get enrolled in benefits.
Secondly, the reason why you didn't EVER see any homeless on the streets or in parks, not even during the day, was because they were systematically rounded up and beaten black & blue and dropped off outside of the city limits. The cops simply had a zero tolerance policy for looking like you didn't have somewhere to be. Local businesses had a lot to do with that.
Nevertheless, the city had (and AFAIK still has) a huge gang problem. Why didn't the cops get a handle on the gangs the way they did the homeless and runaway kids? Because gang members often have cars and can move along and avoid attention if they really put their minds to it. A car in the South and Midwest = a higher social status. Unless your plates run a big red flag, you are basically safe from police attention if you have a car.
Barring this thread becoming another debate on gun control, I'm going to suggest the following.
Violence in the media desensitizes Americans to violent behaviour. What individual people do with this change in their sensibilities, is up to other factors, such as a person's motivations to violence, social inhibitions, executive and emotional functioning, and mood stability.
Take a normal person and a person with impulse control problems and a tendency to blame others for his or her problems, and feed them a steady diet of increasingly banal and violent programming. At the end of the day you still have one person who is likelier to react violently to perceived slights, and one person who is less likely.
You can argue that even those people who wouldn't ever act in violence may be less likely to intervene to help a victim, or may be less likely to be warned away from potential violence because they are desensitized to escalating behaviours, e.g. swearing, shouting, posture, facial expression, body language).
This latter lack of personal defenses may indirectly contribute to increases in actual violence. If someone shouting at you or giving you a menacing stare doesn't scare you away anymore, you may be setting yourself up for a fight.
@Jeff: the first thing that comes to mind is this: some stores will receive promo mailings and do [insert any option besides distributing them properly here] and lose the trust of the player base in the area.
It's happened before, with release promos being sold on ebay days before the release, and with FNM promo scams and false tournaments.
even if you take into account they already restricted FNM promos and prerelease promos to the B&M shops, a significant minority of players will still find problems at their shops.
Zendikar, because the average pack value is slightly higher than some of the others, and it's a decent set for limited. You don't even have to open a mythic or a fetch, just draft it out.
The actual numbers of people who will trade highly for foreign cards is pretty small. It also depends on your area.
If you live on the coasts, foreign cards are commonplace and won't generate much interest among collectors.
If you live in the interior, foreign cards are less common but you will still find major dealers offering packs in Japanese and occasionally Russian or Spanish.
Most cities have at least one shop which carries a foreign stock of in print packs all year round.
If you like foreign cards but find that most of the time they sit in your binder, then just buy foreign singles for yourself from a reputable German or whatever seller. If you know at least one or two other people who might be interested in foreign cards, ask them if they would go in on a box with you, or draft out some foreign packs. It's easier to deal with packs of foreign cards if you have some buddies to draft them out with you. This way everyone gets a few choice foreign rares/uncommons, and they share the cost. Which can sometimes be considerable, especially shipping from Europe.
We are having a similar problem in Canada with some provinces not honouring other provinces' right to be reimbursed for providing care to visitors from those other provinces. Fact is, both Canada and the United States need, and lack, a truly universal health care delivery system. Citizens must work, live, and travel further and more frequently now than ever before in history. It only makes sense for universal coverage to actually be, you know, universal. Multinational and interstate corporations ARE in fact doing a better job of ensuring continuity of care than governments do, if those people are well enough to work full-time in the first place.
It is a media event because he is a media event.
Ordinary people come out all the time and nobody televises it. Even wealthy people. And sometimes it even doesn't affect their income. Because they're not trying to market themselves as a sex symbol by way of their music.
FYI I still like Ricky Martin about as much as I did before. Knowing someone is gay or whatever doesn't change how I view their music unless the music itself changes.
Some austerity measures that apply equally to EU and US:
-Regulation of housing and commodity markets
-Limiting or eliminating some entitlement programs
-Allowing existing tax cuts to expire and maintaining (or raising) taxes in other areas
Some apply specifically to the US:
-Limit or terminate foreign military involvement
-Real health care reform, not this bloated mess borne of poison pills and half-measures we have now.
-Refocus American manufacturing sector on durability and versatility of goods, lasting behavioural impact of services.
-Reducing or eliminating subsidies to failing banks
-Reforms to farm subsidies, especially going into any attempt to rein in commodity speculation.
Imagine a bell pepper with cancer. A large tumour is growing alongside the bell pepper. At first it looks like a second pepper is growing out of the first. Next thing you know, part of it is lignified and inedible because it acquired a genetic ability to create pith. Another part is mouldy and black and sopping wet because its cells lost the ability to form vascular channels or absorb a nutrient. A third part has reactivated a gene that produces a toxic alkaloid.
In all probability, long before this happens, the entire pepper plant is wilting and covered with inedible, woody boils and galls.
So, no.
In class exam = get it done and turn your attention to other things which may be more important, and less flexible.
I was visiting a fairly large city in the Midwest and noted there were no visible homeless people, which was somewhat of a shock coming from the West Coast where there are flocks of homeless people from every other state, in parks, in front of shelters and train/bus stations, under the highway bridges, etc.
After a while I met some folks to play Magic with and we went to an all night cafe to play EDH. A lot of the people in there were ragged and seedy. I discovered that this and similar private cafe's and restaurants were havens for the homeless and runaway kids. Why didn't they go to a shelter? You needed a disability check or a welfare check to get into a shelter. Curiously enough, you also need a permanent mailing address to be eligible for either check. This place served the needs of anyone who needed a temporary addy to get enrolled in benefits.
Secondly, the reason why you didn't EVER see any homeless on the streets or in parks, not even during the day, was because they were systematically rounded up and beaten black & blue and dropped off outside of the city limits. The cops simply had a zero tolerance policy for looking like you didn't have somewhere to be. Local businesses had a lot to do with that.
Nevertheless, the city had (and AFAIK still has) a huge gang problem. Why didn't the cops get a handle on the gangs the way they did the homeless and runaway kids? Because gang members often have cars and can move along and avoid attention if they really put their minds to it. A car in the South and Midwest = a higher social status. Unless your plates run a big red flag, you are basically safe from police attention if you have a car.
Violence in the media desensitizes Americans to violent behaviour. What individual people do with this change in their sensibilities, is up to other factors, such as a person's motivations to violence, social inhibitions, executive and emotional functioning, and mood stability.
Take a normal person and a person with impulse control problems and a tendency to blame others for his or her problems, and feed them a steady diet of increasingly banal and violent programming. At the end of the day you still have one person who is likelier to react violently to perceived slights, and one person who is less likely.
You can argue that even those people who wouldn't ever act in violence may be less likely to intervene to help a victim, or may be less likely to be warned away from potential violence because they are desensitized to escalating behaviours, e.g. swearing, shouting, posture, facial expression, body language).
This latter lack of personal defenses may indirectly contribute to increases in actual violence. If someone shouting at you or giving you a menacing stare doesn't scare you away anymore, you may be setting yourself up for a fight.
It's happened before, with release promos being sold on ebay days before the release, and with FNM promo scams and false tournaments.
even if you take into account they already restricted FNM promos and prerelease promos to the B&M shops, a significant minority of players will still find problems at their shops.
Living in Canada now, so no reason to feel either way about buying anything - no door-busting sales, but no anti-consumerist guilt trip either.
Gonna probably buy a long distance phone card to call my family on their holidays
If you live on the coasts, foreign cards are commonplace and won't generate much interest among collectors.
If you live in the interior, foreign cards are less common but you will still find major dealers offering packs in Japanese and occasionally Russian or Spanish.
Most cities have at least one shop which carries a foreign stock of in print packs all year round.
If you like foreign cards but find that most of the time they sit in your binder, then just buy foreign singles for yourself from a reputable German or whatever seller. If you know at least one or two other people who might be interested in foreign cards, ask them if they would go in on a box with you, or draft out some foreign packs. It's easier to deal with packs of foreign cards if you have some buddies to draft them out with you. This way everyone gets a few choice foreign rares/uncommons, and they share the cost. Which can sometimes be considerable, especially shipping from Europe.
Then again I suppose people will pay money for the avatar.