Ambassadar

My source is reading it multiple times in different history books. I'll do a quick web search since you don't feel inclined for some references. http://www.taots.co.uk/content/view/25/30/ You can find more if you want.

Actually in the second Mongol invasion attempt of Japan in 1281 the Mongols had a huge fleet that the Japanese couldn't match on the water. As the fleet lay offshore of Japan units of Japanese troops would silently row out in the middle of the night, board a ship, kill everyone on board, set the ship on fire and slip back into the darkness. They were so effective at stealthily taking out ships one by one that the Mongols had to start lashing their ships together with planks between them to be able to repel the attacks.

I used to work with a guy that was driving along once and got in an altercation with a car full of gang bangers. The gang bangers pulled a pistol and this guy who is a Vietnam War Vet pulls out his 45 and starts blasting away. He shot their back window out as they floored it to get away from him. The cops came and nothing happened because it was self defense. Otherwise my business associate could very well have been dead. The way I understood the law I thought if you feared for your life you could take action. Half these people saying how terrible that is are European or Australian. My guess is none of them have shot a gun either so the "scary mystique" scares the crud out of them. Guns are merely a tool. If you learn how to use them responsibly they are great. Also, guns don't just "accidentally discharge." They only discharge if you pull the trigger with the safety off and a round in the chamber. Someone could accidentally pull the trigger but that is just them being stupid so don't blame the gun. Blame the moron using the gun. My thoughts on the situation: I thought you handled yourself well. I might suggest finding new friends that would call the cops instead of beating the guy down in the first place. Aside from having stupid friends I think you acted well. Whoever kept saying "You shouldn't pull a gun unless you are willing to fire." He was ready to fire so please quit saying that. He should have been ready to fire. That is some crazy nut if he comes at a group of four guys with a butterfly knife. There's no telling what that guy might do. I would have been scared for my life and I would have pulled the gun as well since that was the only weapon at hand to protect me and my friends' lives.

I would be curious to hear someone from Canada's take on this. "Queuing Queuing is a controversial measurement, not least because there may be many explanations for the queuing, many of them medically justifiable, so that aggregate queuing figures may conflate those whose waiting poses no health or other risk with those whose health may be impaired or may suffer pain while waiting. That being said, in a system in which health services are free at the point of consumption, queuing is the most common form of rationing scarce medical resources. And since patient satisfaction plays no part in determining incomes or other economic rewards for health care providers and administrators in the public system, patients' time is treated as if it has no value. There are no penalties in the system for making people wait. It is thus not surprising that the measures of queuing now available, including the Fraser Institute's annual report card, "Waiting Your Turn,"9 indicate a lengthening of queues for a great many medical services, including access to some specialists, diagnostic testing, and surgery. What is surprising is that those administering the system must rely on external studies, not having implemented modern information systems to monitor waiting periods and identify those who have had an excessive wait. I would also like to point out that while we talk a lot about queuing in the Canadian health care system, and we talk as if we know how many people are waiting and how long they wait, in fact we do not know this at all. Ironically for the largest single program expenditure of governments in Canada, we know astonishingly little about what we get for our money. As my colleague David Zitner, Director of Medical Informatics at Dalhousie University in Halifax and Health Policy Fellow at my Institute, likes to say, no health care institution in Canada can tell you how many people got better, how many people got worse, and how many people's condition was left unchanged by their contact with their institution. None of them can give you an answer. No one knows how many people died while waiting for needed surgery. No one knows how many people are queuing for any particular procedure or how many people cannot find a family doctor. Mostly we have guesswork, anecdote, and subjective measures, not objective ones (such as the Fraser Institute reports mentioned earlier). We do not even know how long someone has to wait before he or she has waited "too long," because the health care system does not establish official standards for timely care--although presumably even Mr. Romanow would agree that someone who died while waiting for care may have waited a tad too long. All of this is due, as I argued in a major paper I co-authored in 2002,10 to the conflict of interest at the heart of Medicare, in which the people who are the ultimate providers of health care services in Canada are also the people charged with regulating the system and quality assurance. Since no one is a competent judge of his or her own performance, and no one likes to be held accountable for his or her work, the result is that the health care system simply does not set tough standards or collect the information that would allow us to hold the system's administrators accountable for their stewardship of our health care and the billions of dollars that they spend. The people who would collect the information are also the people whose performance would be assessed if useful information were made available. There appears to be no legal obligation on governments actually to supply the services they have promised to the population as their monopoly supplier of health insurance. This is an appalling double standard, as no responsible regulator would permit a private supplier of insurance to behave in this way, as a recent background paper for my Institute makes clear.11 Access to Doctors and Medical Technology Aggregate numbers of doctors per 1000 population do not give a good picture of access to physicians in, say, cities versus rural areas within countries, nor of proportions between scarce specialists and plentiful general practitioners, nor of the quality of medical training. On the other hand, it is a crude measure of the overall state of access to qualified practitioners. On this measure, Canada performs badly. In 1996, this country had 2.1 practicing physicians per 1000 population, while of the comparison group only two (Japan and the UK) had a lower ratio: Australia (2.5), France (3.0), Germany (3.4), Japan (1.8), Sweden (3.1), Switzerland (3.2), UK (1.7) and U.S. (2.6). Thus, even in countries with lower per capita spending than Canada, there is greater access to physician services. With respect to medical technology, Canada's performance is also unimpressive. In a study12 comparing Canadians' access to four specific medical technologies (computed tomography [CT] scanners, radiation equipment, lithotriptors, and magnetic resonance imagers [MRI]), with access by citizens of other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Canadians' access was significantly poorer in three of the four. Despite spending a full 1.6 percent of GDP more on health care than the OECD average, Canadians were well down the league tables in access to CT scanners (21st of 28), lithotriptors (19th out of 22), and MRIs (19th out of 27). Moreover, access to several of these technologies worsened relative to access in other countries over the last decade. " The article is pretty long but if you want to read the entire thing here it is. I found it informative and insightful. http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/hl856.cfm

You are forgetting the added cost of Government Bureaucracy. That cost can be massive. I don't know if it is in Norway's particular case but in general(there are always exceptions) governments do a horribly innefficient job at things when compared to a free market. Just look at FEMA after the hurricane hit New Orleans. Do you want those same idiots running our Healthcare system?

Your teaching may not be, I don't know because I haven't heard it. The general trend in teaching history is garbage though... Too much time is spent on names and dates without giving things like the context, why it is important, how it fits into everything else, how we are impacted today from that past event, etc etc. I have always loved history. I hated history as taught in school when I was growing up. It seemed like most of it was schools just going through the motions out of obligation to the subject. History taught the right way is the most incredible subject out there because it encompasses every other subject as well as gets the whole dynamics of human love, hate, brilliance and stupidity thrown in with it. I went to a top 30 in the nation high school and most of my teachers did a poor job of teaching history. Another thing that drove me nuts is there is something wrong when you spend 2 days on the Civil War and a month on reconstruction after the Civil War. War isn't even talked about in history aside from just saying it happened and a couple of main facts about it. War is the biggest catalyst of human technological innovation as well as an incredible lesson on human nature and the way different people and cultures respond to different events. I could go on and on but hopefully that is enough for you to understand where I am coming from. I would be interested on your take and also your feelings on the curriculum they make you teach. If you want to keep talking about it maybe we can start another thread so we don't hijack this one.

The way our schools teach History in the US is absolutely garbage. Those people are clueless as to what the Christians in Lebanon have been through and they are just being too stupid and ignorant to find out. I have a big chip on my shoulder against people being racist. Racism is the stupidest thing ever. If people were intelligent they would dislike cultures based on that culture's merits vs disliking someone for their skin color. That would solve so many problems of the wrong people being disliked. It would help people differentiate between a Moronite from Lebanon and a hard core extreme Wahhabi from Saudi Arabia that wants to destroy everyone's rights to living in a non Sharia state. It would also force people to get off their butt and learn something about the world and the different cultures people come from so they would be more willing to give someone a chance before just blindly disliking them for a stupid reason. As a side note I wouldn't talk Arabic at school. I think it is kinda rude to speak another language around people if you have the choice to speak in their language. I find it very distracting.

Harrington, you look like Fire Marshall Bill in your last picture. Best picture of the thread.

I mean really if the whole thing is an issue of choice then let's send it to the states and let the people choose for themselves what they want instead of having unelected judges choose for them. If people want to vote to allow abortion then they can. If they choose to vote against it then that's their choice as well. It really appears to be the most practical solution I have seen.

Me. Let's see the pics USMC.

ScorchedRose, your post was awesome. As to the topic at hand did anyone read about the guy that went on the shooting rampage in Colorado on Sunday? Let's just say someone else also had a gun... http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/09/church.shooting/ The "security staff" was actually just some private volunteers from the Church. The woman that actually shot the guy is good looking heh. I saw an interview with her and you can tell she is shook up from the experience but you can also tell she is grateful she could save a lot of people from being shot.

So CNN usually has more of a left wing tendency... What do "conservative" right wing newspeople think of Ron Paul? Well Sean Hannity acted like he hated Paul's guts after the first debate when Paul simply made the statement that 9/11 happened because US troops were stationed in the Middle East. Hannity acted like Paul was saying it was the United States' fault and like Paul was trying to blame us for it instead of Osama. That wasn't the case at all. Hannity completely ignores Paul when he gives the reason for his statement which was just saying what the 9/11 commission report concluded and what the terrorists actually said as to their reason for attacking us. All he was doing is stating a simple fact and Hannity was out for blood. It ticked me off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEZO7MPxJIs

Wanna bet? For example who does CNN want you to like and dislike? From images alone... -OR- These are the representative pictures of the candidates according to http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/candidates/ Ron Paul is the second one on the bottom row in case someone didn't know. He also has by far the worst picture of any candidate displayed by CNN.

Did you read what I said about my experience? You might want to before you make up your mind they were just freaking you out.

Hang out with family, work, spend time with my gf, and go backpacking with a friend.

Zeeky, I'm trying to figure out what expression you are trying to convey in that second picture. It's like "Hey, you stole my potato chip! Prepare to die!"

Libertarians believe in personal freedom. The ultimate freedom is life. Abortion is not a religious topic at all. Some people try to make it one but they are being stupid. It is merely a matter of is an unborn child a person or not. This is the way I break it down when I think about it. If a Libertarian believes they are a person then the freedom to life extends to them. The freedom of life would trump the freedom of choice for the mother. (freedom of convenience vs freedom of life) If a Libertarian believes that an unborn child is not a person then the way to give the most freedom to people is to allow the Mother to abort the unborn child if she so chooses. Woo hoo! Spread the word. The media hates him. I am trying to let older people know about him because the media is trying to keep everyone ignorant of him. There are some great speeches with Ron Paul on youtube that you can forward. I have sent my dad and some older business associates some videos.

I wouldn't think you should worry about that Ray. It is on topic with the thread in my opinion. :D

Although if the girl is reduced to saying "I'm not your Mom!!!" it might be a reflection on the guy and not the girl.

Yeah I was wondering about that myself. Why would anyone dislike that the Constitution was upheld?

Really fat women in the crowded mall that walk reallllly slowly and you can't get around them because their huge butt swings back and forth and if you try to scoot by you may very well be smacked by it and knocked over the railing to your doom. That being the case you just get stuck behind that disgustingly wide cottage cheese butt for the length of the mall begging for an opportunity to get by and praying they decide to go in a store so you can pass.

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Go look in the Constitution Assassin. You will notice it's not there. All the Constitution said is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereofÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâæ"

I was responding to this by BlueLancer to make the point that yes in some cases products from "other countries" are lesser quality than domestic products.

Do you know why there are antibiotics in many fish from China? Because they give them to the fish because the fish are grown in sewage infested waters... mmm... They are also having a problem with chemicals including DDT in their fish. http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php ... 2101064738