Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Wonderful, I think this will finally make having had children worth it.
You deserve extra points for not calling this post "The Life of Otters".
-
Sleep with dogs = wake up with fleas.
Possibly not entirely warranted?
-
The systems don't compare too well, but NZ used to have living support which wasn't income tested.
Not when the boomers went to university, no.
-
It actually cost quite a bit to attend university, mainly for books and sundry fees. I was a law student at Canterbury for 4 terms (1968/69)
It now costs anywhere between five and twelve times as much, depending on your course, in real terms.
I very much doubt it. It might, if you only consider fees. But living expenses still trump your fees, in New Zealand at least. When I did my BA it was 3,000 for fees and I spent five times as much to just live (and it wasn't a lavish lifestyle). Medical students pay more but I doubt it exceeds the cost of living. And if they charge that cost on their loan, again, it's an option that was simply not there for the boomers, so counting the amount borrowed for anything other than fees to the massive transfer of wealth you're talking about seems misleading.
-
ps: anyone interested in my Hitchhikers Guide... sequel pitch - The Two Towels
If you open your front door you'll find me asleep on the mat.
-
I must say that - having started my BA in 1997, with yearly fees of perhaps a little less than $3,000, and at a time when jobs weren't plentiful, I didn't find it very difficult to support myself. The loan was an option that was there, and that wasn't available to me back home; and conversely whilst back home we had no fees, it was much harder to keep up with your exam schedule, and so the extra time you had to support yourself and forego income made studying actually more expensive. There are a lot of variables.
-
One of my favourite bloggers ripping into Stewart's rally. Long quote, but do read the whole thing:
Stewart began his speech by saying that we live in bad times, not end times. This is dangerous bullshit. To pick only one example, there is an almost complete scientific consensus that global warming represents an existential threat to the existence of human life on earth. The Obama administration has done virtually nothing about it, because petty politicians in places like Kentucky don’t want him to do anything about it. And so he hasn’t. Certainly a news media that is beholden to energy companies is part of the problem — NBC is owned by General Electric, for example — but the more basic problem is this: if you accept that Global Warming is a big fucking deal, then you have to acknowledge that our system of dealing with that problem is broken. The image Stewart gives us of American citizens nicely deferring to their fellow man in order to get through the tunnel is dangerously wrong, on this issue at least. But you can make a similar point about all the other completely unacceptable elements of the status quo that our system has not so much failed to solve as it has refused to address or admit exist: health care, civil liberties, war, Wall Street, the “war on drugs,” etc. When Jon Stewart pretends the system isn’t broken — or presents us with a false choice between insane irrational panic and satisfied liberal quiescence — he hides this fact under comfortable illusions. The rational response to the state of the nation might not be panic, but the fact that so many people who are panicked are also reading the situation wrong doesn’t mean they’re wrong to panic, it just means they don’t understand why the system is fucked. Because the system actually is pretty fucked.
-
The cartwheeeling was seriously bizarre. "Look at what I can do!" But no, really, you had me at the amazing voice and the fact that you can play the harp.
-
He might have been more restrained last night, but I didn't notice any of that. And he had a very tender moment with the drummer at the end when they walked off which I thought was actually quite unguarded.
Also, it probably didn't help that he was standing next to one of the five coolest persons on the planet in Bob Freaking Metzger.
-
I always think of that exchange when I catch one of my Facebook friends joining or hinting at joining an anti-fluoridation group.