I just ordered my gift subscription for some friends. I hope it helps!

i am still awaiting an answer as well. it seems like i am missing something if even the new raised rates are lower than the price I am currently paying. I realize the new one is cheaper, but i feel like i am not taking account of something.  

I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but i am going to anyway.  I am a "legacy" subscriber at a rate of $3.47 / month.  That means I currently pay $41.64 a year for my subscription.   How are you making more money on a $29.95 per year or $39.95 per year subscription ?

albert -- i remember seeing that around 2008 when obama was having trouble with the congress.  Im not sure where it came from but its hilarious. 

Adam -- i havent read the decision, and it certainly seems to me like proving citizenship is reasonable, but wouldn't the NVRA preempt state action on the issue of voter registration ?  

I buy a dental program that is not insurance, but gives you pre-defined discounts on some services and flat rates on others. Its pretty cheap, and, while my family is young, is totally worth it.  However, whenever I need to get a "discount" type of service and inquire about cost i get the same "are you out of your mind" reaction.

I am self-employed and buy my own insurance plan for my family through my small business.  I've seen the premiums go up at least 9% per year over the last two years. It had been going up modestly before that but took a very big jump each of the last 2 summers when i renew. It got so bad I actually had to take what was already a "bargain" plan and finagle it to get the increases in a reasonable range. 

I'd warrant that the ratio of musical gems to musical duds, taken as a whole, remains the same. There was just less available distribution in the old days, and that lack of outlet  acted as a filter to keep the cruddy music out. Today, it is incredibly easy to release any old thing and if it has a slightly interesting tidbit get a half a million views online.   

I wouldn't take music like this to imply that good music isn't being written anymore. 

When I visit my father at his vacation spot in Delaware we inevitably visit the Cape Henlopen State Park, which is a very nice beach. However, every time we enter the park and are on our way to the parking area we have to pass a sign for the "The Biden Center" -- an environmental training center. There are a few other signs for places named Biden in that area as well.  

It does seem to me to be in bad taste to have a building named after you when you are just a hired hand tending the government stead.

have fun peter! a week without current events is pretty nice. i took mine last week.

i understand the pessimism that Dr. Sowell expresses, and I am by no means as learned or experienced, however I have come to believe in an almost libertarian inspired version of Marx's historical materialism. I think that, metaphysically speaking, something like an "imperative to freedom" is baked into the actual structure of existence and that no matter what humans do, our social forms will of their own internal force progress toward more freedom rather than less. Especially as we try to broaden the reach of government, the seeds of such an expansion's collapse are sown. The ordering of such a creatively chaotic system as human society is nearly impossible in any long term way. Further, with such a "connected" populace as exists today, would-be dictators springing up to enact crack downs will find their jobs increasingly more difficult. The trick for the freedom lovers will be to persist and endure and keep alive the flame of freedom in their own hearts. When the bureaucratic structures collapse, human ingenuity will step in to reconstruct those parts of society.

maybe i am just an optimist.

In a sense we do, but id tend to belief the loss is only temporary. That the universe is of divine origins and, as such, is filled with divinity, someone who pursues a purely materialistically guided introspection will eventually run smack into the divine presence. Maybe a generation or two can try to ignore the presence of God, but ultimately the basic truths of our existence will naturally re-emerge.

Now, they can reemerge in many contexts. One can reconnect with God through yoga or Zen meditation or through devout Christianity. The trick will be in discovering how to reorient their "self" so that the truth is made clear to them. A monk meditating on a mountain in Tibet will be in touch with God just as a Catholic priest delivering mass. The difference between them is in the upbringing which made one able to "get" God in one context over another. This is what leads me to believe that Westerners will be generally less able to find God through Eastern methods.

Patrick,

I think you have valid points, but i wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that there are interests with a stake in the DSM and those interests might be ones who manufacture drugs. I love the free market, but i would shy away from describing our medical market as free. We have regulatory capture on one end, and then we have governmental capture of medical industry interests on the other.

sometimes i wish we had the ability to write our own regulation that would regulate the regulators. govern the government!

Along with basic algebra, geometry and trig I'd include a few questions about basic symbolic/propositional logic.

Expanding on emily's point, one of the larger issues faced is that this is a "conflict" which lasted for more than half of the 20th century and it was fought largely by proxy.

How can a kid educated in the American system be reasonably expected to describe such a multi-dimensional "conflict" in a couple of sentences ? My own generation, that being the one immediately preceding your kids' generation, were aware of the cold war in the 80s and early 90s and even so they only vaguely recognize the threat that was the Soviet Union. To discuss socialism and communism with my peers is like discussing it with late 20s/early 30s people from 1900 -- they have no awareness of the nature of the conflict of liberal democracy vs statism or the horrors witnessed under the various collectivized system. Good luck in getting them to discuss lenin, trotsky or stalin as well. Heck, just this week i tried discussing the possibility of rational participation in society with a very intelligent good friend from college and was largely told it was an irrelevant subject.

I would say that, logically speaking, the two are possibly unrelated. Just because one argument falters doesn't mean that there aren't equal or stronger arguments available that ultimately achieve the same purpose.

The only way it would blow up on the big O is if people suddenly understood the distinction between an "Equal Protection" argument and a "Preemption" argument.