Herd instincts?

And note that one American dollar now only buys 0.675675 euro.

Ripping off the work force always looks good to the employers, but it ends up costing them money.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

He's obviously conceded enough to get the unions back to the negotiating table. An unbiased observer might see that as a tactical victory for the unions.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

As opposed to the U.S. scheme of putting "everybody" in prison - putting them on the dole is cheaper.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You forget than I am an Australian citizen, planning on returning to Australia in a few years, where we spend a lot of our time diiging up stuff to sell to China and Japan

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

It could well be that europe is in for interesting times. Sarcozy is trying to deal with the demographic landslide that is on the way down the mountain and maybe can't be stopped.

And there's no actual basis for the run-up of the euro, so it may well be a bubble. Anyone who cheers the appreciation of the euro as they would cheer a football score probably hasn't thought out the consequences.

This is especially radical:

Meanwhile, I'm selling a bunch of stuff to Pratt&Whitney and GE and Boeing. I wonder what the euro thing, and a potential Airbus crash, will do to Rolls Royce jet engine sales?

John

Reading stuff you don't understand can be kind of boring - at least until you do get to understand it. Since you don't seem to understand much, you could well find my posts boring.

You'd probably be better off concentrating on stuff you can understand

- 101 things a boy can do with a 555, and the like.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

But YOUR genes are NOT going to be found in your nieces' and nephews' kids, dumbfuck!

What sort of cloud-cuckoo land do you live in?

Principals of big companies don't have a clue about the sort of detailed engineering that I work on and could reasonably expect to sell. I did get to know the managing directors of most of the companies I worked for, but mainly because I knew weird stuff that the other engineers hadn't been exposed to, which isn't really a saleable skill.

Purchasing departments know even less about detailed engineering, and never got to select sub-contract designers at any place where I've worked, though they often did negotiate the contract details, with a lot of input from engineering .

Save your lame advice for people who know even less than you do.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I've always fretted over the artificiality of the monetary markets... drawing my own conclusions from the basis economies.

We're booming... Europeons think they are riding high. I think it's a Hitleresque ride-up before the big crash. Wonder if the Europeons will try to blame the Jews again ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

I find that remarkable too.

IOW, you're useless.

Nonsense. Work is readily available for the well qualified.

Nice system you got there. You're a bumb in a bum's country, and like it.

...and have been bumming off her ever since. You forgot to mention that bumming off the taxpayer makes it even more comfortable.

Your alter-ego?

At least he has a job. How does it feel to be living off his work?

A lazy bum too. A half acre is a piece of cake, particularly for the unemployed.

It *SHOULD* be everywhere. No one should be getting a free ride at the expense of everyone else. Apparently you're a bum wannabe.

Corporations? Who said anything about corporations? We're discussing Sloman, the bum.

Mrs. S. is hardly needy, as Mr. Ass tells the story. No, the government shouldn't "help" his lazy ass out (except, of the country).

That's a piss poor way to look at life. I suppose it's natural for a socialist Europeon to think that way though.

Can you imagine how bad it would be if they/he were/was adequate?

$100K is around the +1sigma point, I believe. I've had recruiters tell me that their client *really* needed people and was wiling to pay. They started back-peddling when I told them what I was making. Suddenly other things became more important. Outside silly valley, I believe $100K is good money. ...and yes, the general manager of a large chain grocery store can easily get to $100K.

IOW, even you don't believe you're worth hiring.

"Employment Compensation"? You _are_ an idiot. Unemploymnet insurance, if that's what you're *trying* to yammer on about, most certainly is *IS* tax funded. The employer's contributions don't come close to paying the bill.

Dimbulb, you do realize that Sloman isn't an American and we're not talking about the US? ...or taxes, for that matter.

We approve drugs years after other nations. We're far too cautious. It makes no sense to be more cautious with drugs and less cautious with surgery.

We do more tests (again, degree of caution can't be the reason) and surgery because we give better care than any public program could.

Of course they are. It's just a smaller fraction. Since the fraction always diminishes each generation, nephews are just one generation ahead of sons in that respect.

No, it wasn't, Dimbulb.

snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org hath wroth:

I beg to differ. My friends in Canada tell me that it takes forever to obtain even an evaluation appointment, much less surgery, in Canada. I can supply a few horror stories if you're interested. It's the long wait that inspires the pilgrimage.

Yep. I just went through that myself. I had my prostate and a large piece of my bank account surgically removed at a local hospital. Patients that have insurance, Medicare, medical, medicruz, or other reluctant payers, tend to over test. Similar surgeries required a wide spectrum of pre-operative testing, most of which were to assure the financial provider that the surgery is really necessary and that some alternative treatment isn't possible. It also satiates the legal departments appetite for cover-thy-posterior test to avoid subsequent litigation for malpractice or damage mitigation.

The usual result is that surgery and other expensive procedures are delayed until the absolute last moment. All manner of alternative remedies are attempted in the hope that the condition will fix itself or the patient will die prematurely, thus avoiding patient compensation. Only after all the cheaper alternatives have been explored, is surgery authorized.

In my situation, I paid cash, mostly in advance. Strangely, after the price was renegotiated multiple times, it was almost as cheap to pay for local surgery, than to make the pilgrimage to India or Mexico. Take out the insurance companies and government assistance, and what's left is fairly affordable medicine. Anyway, instead of a multitude of pre-operative tests, I had exactly 2 invasive tests (other than the usual blood test and chest x-ray). Most of the others were apparently un-necessary to properly perform the surgery.

Maybe. I have a dim view of sites that have a financial agenda (selling some potion or procedure). Chochrane is not one of those. They have no obvious agenda, but are lacking in the numerical detail to substantiate their conclusions. They also tend to be rather simplistic. Methinks it is much better to dig through the complex and confusing medical research reports reference on Medline or various online medical journals, than to rely on what I consider to be a simplistic conclusion. For those that want fast answers, sites such as Cochrane are good enough.

I agree on the wait-n-see approach. Many conditions magically fix themselves without any intervention or treatment. I know of one person with an obvious case of prostate cancer that juggled his diet a little, but basically did nothing. The cancer was gone in about 6 months and hasn't come back in the last 2 years. I decided to try several alternative treatments, each with their fan clubs and promoters. Nothing worked. When it was obvious that I was headed for surgery (or radiation), it took about 3 months to schedule the surgery (which was rescheduled 3 times). Judging by the pathology report, another month or two, and the cancer would have spread. Wait-n-see has it's benefits, but don't drag it right to the bitter edge.