trapical

Medicine is a great field. It's salary, meaningfulness, and prestige are all but unmatched in the job market. However, it is excruciatingly difficult to get into medical school. I went to a college that had 720 students in the "pre-medical" program, meaning all of these college freashmen wanted to get into medical school when they graduated. 8 people made it, 700+ had to find other jobs in the science field.

You're that worked up over a library page? I feel like I'm watching Moral Orel :lol: But really, its not that big of a deal, its a title page. I have checked out books that were missing entire chapters and some books in my library don't even have covers. A title page is torn and you're worried.... Am i getting punked?

meh. I didn't bother to save a copy, I just hit edit and, well, edited. Nothing too exciting in there really, pretty much the same way it is now but with more specific naming out of artists and I said the line: "rappers these days just need a beat, a thesaurus, and lyrics about sex and blow. and if your a black musician you also need to swear a lot and talk about [garden tool]'s and drugs" :lol:

The exact same thing happened to me, and I waited in the ER in excess of 2 hours with a broken wrist and a gash in my knee. And then the nurse was a [puncture] and somehow, despite the anesthesia, managed to hurt me during my knee stitches. And I'm in America. Yea I used to work in an ER, the waiting period is terrible. I saw a guy with an accidental stab wound in the leg who was literally dripping blood on the floor... and he had to wait for a good 20 minutes. People confuse the waiting necessary with socialized health care. Socialized health care means you often have to wait for surgeries and routine check ups. This is because everyone gets preemptive medicine and gets checkups frequently since its free. The ER is then there for real emergencies. Capitalistic health care means people don't go to the doctor's office or the hospital that often, they don't want to pay for it. However they eventually get sick and then have to enter the healthcare system at the most expensive level: the ER. This means the ER is clogged with patients that have problems that would have been avoided if they had gone to their doctors years ago, but didn't since they didn't want to pay the money back then. Capitalistic health care = No real waiting time for surgery and doctor's visits, but the ER is overflowing and delayed. Socialized health care = Long lines for surgery and doctor's visits, but the ER is there and ready to take emergencies. I think I would prefer the latter.

You are well informed, I was hoping no one would catch that. : \ The brain stops developing around the age of 25. Car insurance and rental car companies know this. In the US you pay a huge extra charge when you rent a car if you're younger. Younger people are more likly to wreck the cars. At what age can you rent a car at the same price as an adult? Twenty five. ;)

I'm split on the issue. Free health care is an awesome and effective idea when you're country is small and manageable. If you live in Luxembourg or Switzerland its very easy to give free healthcare to everyone since there are a finite amount of hospitals and the government can cover costs quite easily. However, the United States isn't Canada, the US has over 320 million people spread over ten thousand hospitals. Its a nightmarish task, especially when you consider how many illegial immigrants there are, and they will all get the benefits of free health care without paying a dime (leaving the rest of us to pay the expensive costs). Free health care isn't free, you pay for it in taxes. The other fact is that the United States is traditionally on the forefront of medical advances. Open heart surgery, organ transplants, cancer treatments, endoscopic surgery, and the first use of stem cells were all things first done in US hospitals. This has happened since there is so much money in the system that people are driven to discover new techniques so they can sell them to surgeons in the US and make millions. Remove the wealth, remove a lot of the motivation. It's also easier for other countries to go socialized since the US remains a capitalistic system. Like the commercial showed, citizens of other counties have little to loose by getting socialized medicine since if they want they could just go to the US for new and expensive treatments. Not so sound arrogant or patriotic but the U.S. has what is widly known as the best hospitals in the world. In the hieght of the cold war the Russian Prime Minister needed eye surgery and he went to Johns Hopkins (in Balitimore) since no hospital in his country could do the surgery. So like I said, its easy and conviniant for places like Canada or France to go socialized health care. Everyone gets access to free basic care, and medical advances are still being developed by counties like Japan and the US. If someone gets really sick and the system can't care for them, they just go to the U.S. and get world class treatment. The U.S. going full socialized medicare will be... interesting. But all that being said, I'm still for the idea. I just pray it doesn't bankrupt the tax payers and hinder our medical advances that much.

ultimania92: At this point the PMs arn't about the sarcasm or not, but people are quite passionate about their music preferneces and are angrily declaring, to paraphase one PM: "Back the **** off, Kanye West has more talent than you ever will, your post saying otherwise just proves how worthless you are to society" So... yea. I grossly misjudged my audiance, and like I said, it seems on the internet you can poke fun at anything except someone's music preference : / Really? You're okay with the fact that Hannah Montana has made about 20 million dollars so far for the simple fact that she had connections to music producers? Meanwhile the people who invented the Internet, cured polio, founded the Red Cross, made the first the cell phone, or discovered antibiotics all made less than 40k a year? And presently people who are going after and arresting child molesters, people getting shot at fighting terrorists or people risking their lives fighting fires make about 30k a year. You really "disagree with me totally" when I say Hannah Montana makes too much money for what she does when you compare it to other people in society? Wow, I really misjudged my audiance, Tip.it has changed so much over the years :|

Wow, i learned something today. Judging by some of the PMs I'm still recieiving from not-so-happy people, I learned that on the Internet you can poke fun at almost anything. Sure its commonplace to make fun of someone's sports teams, country, hieght, sex, climate preference, favorite fast food chain, brand loyalty, gaming style, sexual orientation, or even religion... but make fun of their favorite music artist and you better be ready to flee the country. -.-

Yea I noticed a trend, everyone that thought I was serious and racist posted in the first 5 minutes, meaning they didn't watch the videos. I figure anyone that took the time to watch the videos would be laughing to hard to take me seriously. Katie Couric (the CBS anchor woman) is awkwardly awesome with AutoTune. Very thin ice, very thin ice very very very thin ice \

Wow pretty hot debate going on here. Ill just add the fact that trust me, once your in your twenties you will see there is a huge difference between a 18 year old and a 21 year old. People get so much more mature in those years, 18 year olds are high school kids who think the word poop is hilarious. 21 year olds are seniors in college ready to join the work force with an advanced degree. I mean, loot at this picure. 18 year old on the left: Hey guys, lets go play pokemon and drink vodka! 21 year old on the right Why I do declare, I think a glass of Gin would go well with my research thesis Both pics are from google images. Anyway my point is there is a huge difference in maturity in those 3 years. Also the brain stops growing by that age, while a light alcoholic intake wont hurt either brain, an alcoholic binge will have a lot more detrimental affects on the 18 year olds brain. In many counties teenagers above the age of 17 are allowed to drink beer and wine, but harder liqueurs like rum and vodka require the age of 21 or in some cases, 25. This actually makes a lot more sense, but its harder to enforce so the US just covers everything at 21.

I enjoy her music very much, Poker Face is perhaps the best dance song I have heard all year. She is alse very nice to her fans. She will actually reply to any letter you send her and people that have gone backstage with her report that is extremly friendly and sincere. I just used her as an example of someone that uses Autotune in some songs. She was also mentioned in the video I posted, which was awesome, and I wanted to link my post to the video a bit more.

Heh, yea I read it over again and I apologize. I figured people would know me well enough to know that if I began a paragraph with "black people only sing about sex" it's obvious thats its sarcasm, but I guess I don't post that often these days. And the entire time I was writing the post I had those videos playing in the backround so everything seemed hilarious at the time :lol: I hope I didn't horribly offend anyone back there :?

Lol holy crap people, its a satire post based around the music videos I posted. Heck I pretty much made the entire thread just as an excuse to post those video's, and the humor of my post revolved around the comedic use and oversimplification of rap shown in the vids. Wow, I mean wow, was the humor really that subtle? Yes I think a lot of today's stars are superficial but I mean come'on. "If your black use more sex references and swear a lot", lol how can anyone take that seriously. Sorry I rubbed so many of you the wrong way I guess, but watch the music videos and lighten up :)

EDIT: Several people took offense to my original post, which was written in a satirical way. To avoid getting the wrong message across I heavily cropped the post and removed statements that I wrote in sarcasm that some took seriously. I don't like censoring what I wrote but I recieved a dozen angry PM's and I really don't want to give the wrong impression to anyone else. Auto-Tune. A powerful program used by studios and singers to make anyone a popstar. For centuries the entertainers of the world had to rely on their honed voices and perfect pitch to be successful, but it seems that many of today's popstars are just people with connections to record labels. While there are still real bands that make traditional songs, an increasing amount of today's popstars are heavily reliant on programs like Auto-Tune. For those of you that dont know what Auto-Tune is, you sing into a microphone and it quickly and effectively modifies your tune and pitch so it sounds cool. Lady Gaga, T-Pain, Kanye West, and tons of others all use this program. Its laughable how easy it is to make a 50 million dollar song now, you dont even have to sing. Im not kidding, you can just talk in a normal voice into a microphone and a song pops out the other end. To prove this point a group on YouTube bought the high end version of the software to show how easy it is to make a song. To really prove how easy it is they make a song, they wanted to use it on people just talking casually. What is a public recorded source of people just talking? Cable News. They used AutoTune on news broadcasts and added a basic beat, the results are hilariously awesome. [hide=][yt]1dqTrUpmwPg[/yt][/hide] [hide=][yt]b0OzxvClwoU[/yt][/hide] Kind of depressing how the guys that made those video got no profit what-so-ever for their work, and its better quality than half the stuff on the radio :D

I made mention to this in the original post, that's why the protesters don't care that Mousavi really isn't that different from Ahmadinejad. Many are using this election sham as an excuse to finally speak out against the dictatorship. Side not, has anyone else watched that video that magekiller posted of the girl dying on camera? I know I made comments on it already, but it haunts me. I have seen blood and gore and even dissected dead humans in my medical classes... but that video haunts me. It was too real, too heart wrenching. I haven't prayed in 14 years, but tonight I pray for her, her name was Neda.

If you listen to the protesters in the streets many are just using the elections as an excuse to protest the regime. True Mousavi isn't that different but he is being used as a figure to lead something much greater.

Words fail me.

Shadowfax, like I just said, 4chan does a lot more than Scientology, I don't even think their Scientology attack is worth mentioning it was so minor and pointless compared to the other things 4chan has done. I'm repeating myself here but they tracked down a rapist, brought police to the door of a an animal torturer, coerced a pedophile to turn himself in, and are providing the only ways news is getting out of Iran. What have you done on the internet that has had a beneficiary affect on the world? Heck even the entire tip.it forums haven't done anything as real and concrete as track down a pedophile or arrest a animal torturer. And more on topic, the 4chan proxies are the only way anyone in the world can get information on whats going on in Iran.

Extremely useful? The only thing that 4chan has proven to be effective in is ruining people's lives. It's a bunch of bored losers with a hive mentality. Get your facts strait. Sure a lot of it is mindless fun but a lot of it is more serious than that. They have tracked down rapists, brought police to the door of a an animal torturer, coerced a pedophile to turn himself in, and are providing the only ways news is getting out of Iran. As for current status in Iran... not so good. Like I predicted last night, the government decided "enough is enough" and brought the hammer down. There was a 300,000 person rally planned to meet in a city square, so the government blocked off the entire square with firetrucks and rubber bullet firing riot police. Without a central place to gather they were unable to form a peaceful mass protest, so now the city is a f-ing war zone with thousands of groups of 20-30 protesters running into riot police and Revolutionary Guard everywhere in the city. Mass chaos. Reports say the Revolutionary Gaurd deployed its special forces, who are wearing plain clothes, and they are going around the city beating people up using chains, clubs, and small knives. Not a fair fight, these are military special Op's people going around and attacking regular everyday citizens. They are makoing sure not to kill anyone but they are beating the **** out of anyone who had the guts to show up to rally today. Not good. Video of current state of Tehran

4chan declaring open war on the Iranian government was hilariously awesome. The posts went something like this: "Iran has publicly labeled 4chan as a terrorist organization... We deem this an act of war" : Oh the poor Iranian government. Like I said in the 4chan thread on this forum a few days back, these are people you do NOT want to piss off. Should be interesting. On a more depressing note, I stayed up to 3am to hear the speech on Al Jazzera and dam, pretty depressing. Sure the Supreme Leader didn't exactly quell the rebellion with his calm and boring speech, but he pretty much said "Hey, I'm not budging on this, and you all have your last warning" How did he put it? "If people stand in front of flying bullets, it's their fault they get killed." To make matters worse, the Revolutionary Guard has taken over from the police in all matters of domestic law and order. This effectively means that they are going to be yet another entity to crush dissent, and it means that they have allied themselves to the regime, previously they were neutral on the matter. The only entity left to choose sides is the Army. No one knows what they will do or if they will ever get involved. TL,DR: More violence is going to come this weekend. The regime shows zero sign of budging from these peaceful protesters which them deem enemies of Islam. The only way the "revolution" will succeed at this point is through some form of violence or a coup at the highest, highest levels.

I'm really doubting it. I mean, I would love it if they did but it would be a way too political move for Google to do. It also has the potential for them to be boycotted by millions of people in the future. Finally, if they do act here, they will forever be expected to act in future events. "Google, do a logo for Rwanda's farmers under oppression!" "Google, do a logo for Taiwan!" "Google, why didn't you do a logo for the Equatorial Guinea Civil War... you did one for Iran!!!" #-o Other websites have though, http://thepiratebay.org/ is the most obvious. Fark has a comically small green ribbon attached to its logo now too : *EDIT* Haha, it appears Google gave them a simple gesture. Google just added Persian to the list of languages it can translate to English: http://translate.google.com/# Notice how its not even listed in the JPEG, you have to look at the drop down menu. This isn't so much a sign that Google supports one side or the other, but there is a huge increase in Persian webtraffic and online postings so Google hastily gave us a tool to translate it. Thanks guys ;)

News from today on friday morning (they are gmt +7) [hide=]18th of June - The protests show no signs of slowing down, and the fact that the government has been less violent so far and concentrating on discrediting the protesters instead shows that they are losing grip and painfully aware of all the attention given to what is happening right now, CNN notwithstanding. It's also a worrying step, because the moment they start feeling they are losing grip even more is the moment where they might begin to unleash brutal waves of violence again, much worse than what we've seen so far. - Iran Human Rights reports that today alone hundreds of members of the opposition and known Reformists have been arrested, some of them tortured in the basements of government buildings. - There is a (so far) quiet march going on, where all the protesters are dressed in black and mourning those who have died so far. The crowds are estimated to be as big as they have been for the last few days, so that puts them between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 in Tehran alone. - Khameini has agreed to a recount of 600 out of the thousands of ballot boxes, but this has been rejected by the opposition, who says that these elections are to be declared null and void, and that new elections have to be rescheduled. Khameini in return rejected this. There are reports that Mousavi went as far as saying that Khameini does not have authority to preside over the state of Iran anymore. - As a sign of growing tension in the governmental apparatus, fist-fights were said to have broken out in Parliament over who to support, but it seems that the Parliament will ultimately back Ahmadinejad and Khameini to the end. The Interior Ministry has ordered a police investigation into the massacre of 7 civilians by a Basij firing in a crowd. There are also reports of police officers deserting their posts and joining the protesters, while others use their position in the police force as a way to warn protesters from incoming arrests or crack downs. The army is still silent. There are reports that the man who leaked results of the election giving Khatami winner and Ahmadinejad as losing in third position has been killed in a car "accident". - The State TV has been turned into a full-blown anti-Revolution machine, constantly hammering on how evil the "thugs" who are smashing around private property are. Problem is that those thugs are in fact Basij dressed in green, but IRIB is reporting it as pro-Moussavi supporters. They have also been showing documentaries about the evils of the internet and how the US, UK and Israel are behind the protests. State Radio is not much better, with talking heads calling for the death of those evil thugs destabilizing the country at the behest of external forces. They have also issued false reports that Moussavi was "condeming the rioters". - The Government has closed Iran to all foreign communication and coverage, according to many reports. It would also seem that the Iranian government has opened an account in the name of Ayatollah Khameini on Twitter. There are reports that senior aides to all reformist candidates have been arrested, but it has yet to be corroborated and this is not the first time we hear such reports. - According to Reuters, Iranian prosecutors have warned of the death penalty for the rioters who are involved in violence. Islamic cleric have warned that not going to Friday's prayer service makes you worthy of the death penalty. It is unclear yet what isn't worthy of death penalty at this point if you protest against the regime. - All the violence reported over Iran is now exclusively done by the Basij, Ansar and, if the rumours are true, Hizbullah and Hamas. The police have completely stopped participating in the repression of the population, and both the Army and IRG are standing still and not doing anything. This is good news, but the Basij are sadly not reducing the level of violence they are unleashing on the population, beating up everyone they can get their hands on. It continued all throughout the night and during the day, but due to the mass of people involved it seems that they are restraining themselves when it comes to the mass rallies, preferring to pick isolated targets. - Universities have cancelled all exams all over the country, and a long list of rebel students was given to all universities and they have to report the students, who are to be arrested on sight. - There have been a few confirmed cases of people threatened inside the United States for providing proxies for the revolution. Their details were available on the internet so they were passed around pro-Government forces. If you are helping this revolution, be careful to do so as anonymously as you can. It doesn't mean you are risking your life, but it could potentially result in harrassment or vandalism. 19th of June - The day has yet to begin in Iran as I write this (19pm EST), but today looks to be by far the defining moment of this week. Supreme Leader Khameini has called for Friday Prayers where he will be present. There are fears that the IRG has been called in support and that they will have a massive presence, which could possibly be a post-prayers trap. On the other hand, not attending makes the reformists enemies of Islam and worthy of the death penalty according to Khameini. Iranian prosecutors have also warned protesters that violence might be punished with the death penalty, according to Reuters. Supporters of Khameini are expected to flood Tehran from all corners of Iran on Friday, so big clashes are expected. As explained above, details are presently unclear as to what the protesters have planned for tomorrow. - As the Basij, they are cracking down on the population as ever, roaming the streets, vandalizing both pro and anti-Mousavi targets while pretending to be pro-Mousavi forces and trying to crack down on all dissenters. The revolution lives on. Long live the revolution![/hide]

You should be fine. I taught myself latin using Wheelock as well. The hardest part of a self taught language is learning how things are said out loud. Thankfully in latin everything is pronounced as it is written so you should be fine. It shouldn't mess with the german either, especially since your fluent and since german isnt a romanace language.

FLASH traffic, Mousavi (the opposition leader) gave a speech, PersianKiwi manged to get a transcript of it out on Twitter. Highlights: - I have come to bring to Iran a future of freedom and democracy. - I have come to improve Iranian International relations - I have come to be accountable to you my people and to make Iran accountable for its actions in this world - [sic] The world and the internet have been supportive of our struggle, I ask the symbol of the Internet, GOOGLE, to change logo to green for 1 day - We will not falter, the World is with us.

Last week was my birthday (turned 22) and at work they were having a cake in my honor. I wanted some coffee to go with the cake and I knew there was a vending machine in the lobby. The party was planned for 2pm so at 1:50 I leave to get coffee. I get there and realize my wallet is in my car so I quickly walk over there, get my wallet and get back... to realize the machine demands exact change only. -.- I go to the business office down the hall and ask for change, they tell me to wait a minute, finally they find some quarters in the drawer and I'm all set to go. I walk back to the lobby and finally get my coffee. At this point I thought back as to why I was getting coffee in the first place... oh crap, the party! :ohnoes: It was 2:08 when I realized this and I hustled back to the floor where I work, I get there at about 2:12. There was an empty room and a slice of cake left on a plate... i missed my own party :cry: