More than once, I've seen a couple of my Chinese co-workers break out their queueing theory and linear programming math skills to solve some problem with a facility that I almost never see in Americans.

One of my Chinese co-workers, who spoke English with a sometimes difficult to understand accent rewrote 3-4 paragraphs of a document written by a native English speaker and vastly improved it.

One of the better SW engineers I know is a 40+ year old white guy who got an internship while in school, dropped out and worked his way up. I doubt he could get hired at that company today and  even with his experience  has a difficult time getting in the door in most companies without an in-house reference to mitigate his lack of a degree. It has held him back with promotions even though he was doing  work superior to that of his degreed co-workers.

I'm not that familiar with "trade" schools but it would seem that there could be some way of training people that just want to code without getting 4 year bachelors degree.

Furthermore, I once worked at a software contracting/consulting company that played the H1B warm body game. I don't know all of the legal procedures and details but it went something like this:

We would place some foreigner with a client, write a job ad that only he could meet, place the ad in a free, weekly throw-away paper that no one hired from. This apparently met the legal requirements.

Some of these guys were pretty good but I don't remember any that were exceptional, who's skills and abilities could not have been found at any of the local colleges.

I have mixed feelings on this. I've worked as a mid-level software engineer for a couple of well-known Silicon Valley companies over the last 15 years with teams that were mostly from the PRC, at least 30 Chinese software engineers. Most were better than average, some exceptionally good and some had practical math skills I've never seen in an American engineer.

On the other hand, Derb has a point: true shortages send a price signal that I'm not seeing.

I don't begrudge my Chinese co-workers their jobs. They are exactly the quality of engineers that we want but I have heard enough stories about minimally competent, cheap warm bodies being hired over Americans to make me wonder about any H1B legislation.

I remember the Chicago Sun Times editorializing years ago about "multi-clip rounds".

See this video on the multiplier effect. The borrower borrows money and puts the money back into the bank as a deposit. The bank then lends out a portion again. It winds up being more than double.

No, the bank  can lend out more money than it has. This is called "fractional reserve banking".  The Fed sets a certain percentage of deposits that can't be lent out called the "reserve requirement". The bank is in effect creating money by lending more than it has. The borrower can deposit this money in a bank which in turn can lend a percentage out again. This is called the "multiplier effect".

Here's the page I was thinking of.

I recently saw an analysis of this. If I can find the web page I'll post it. Distributed over the number of agents it worked out to less than a thousand rounds per guy per year. This is not a lot of ammo considering that maintaining basic proficiency with a weapon takes practice.

The armored vehicles are more troubling. Do they really need them for domestic law enforcement? Also it bothers me that many agencies have their own internal police forces instead of relying on the FBI.

I've always liked the "Eat the rich" sign in front of the Ashkenaz bar in Berkeley. I was in a quiet little bar/restaurant on Telegraph and smelled pot. I looked around and saw some guys passing a joint. No one else seemed to care. And this was in the mid-90s before pot was legal in CA.  One Sunday morning around noon  I was walking down Telegraph and saw a couple of topless women in their 40s with big, floppy boobs standing on the corner chatting. No one seemed to notice. There's always some guy on Telegraph selling dozens of leftist bumper stickers with "eat the rich"-quality slogans on them. There's no place like Berkeley. Someone described it as : "Too small to be a nation state, too big to be an insane asylum".

There is an unspoken assumption in male/female relationships that the man will defend and protect the woman. From a secular view, I assume that the "obey" part was put in to the vows to address this. You can't expect someone to protect you if you are going to do what ever you want. The President may be the most powerful man in the world but he can't go out for a some beers or a round of midnight basketball in the park because he has to obey the Secret Service.

Until recently laying down your life to protect your woman was a much more realistic prospect. As society has become safer the protector role has become less obvious and devalued so the function of  obedience has become less obvious.

They don't seem to be doing videos these talks and distributing them. I could only find one of VDH from 2012. Many computer conferences do this. They delay release by 3-6 months so as not to undercut attendance. Some charge for them. I don't know how profitable this is but with all of the complaints about media bias and lack of conservative media exposure this seems like a missed opportunity.

Excellent points. Men are responding the way they have been trained and calling them losers and telling them to "man up" is not going to fix things.

Pre-Roe many men would have married their pregnant girlfriends because they understood that to be the honourable thing to do. Now, after decades of hearing "my body, my choice" many men are in effect responding "Then I guess you can figure out how to finance your reproductive choices." Dishonourable, but understandable given society's attitude .

Women  30+, with good jobs and plenty of male attention in their 20s don't seem to realize how spoiled they sound  complaining about a lack of marriageable, willing men. If she's dissatisfied with the men she's met to this point how long will it take for her to feel she's "settling" and be fed up with you?

Something - George Harrison

Actually he has: here and here. Funny, and he uses some   simple, direct, vulgar  language to make the point.

Apparently they call "fanny packs" "bum bags".

Does anyone know if "botheration" for "bother" is British? I've heard Indians use it:

Doing my taxes is a big botheration.

Also "updation" for "update":

The software crashed after the latest updation.

I like the word "dodgy" for bogus, corrupt.