Re: No Name Given -- I can't help but be a little offended at your characterisation of immigrant workers, particularly H1Bs, as users and abusers who take what they need and give nothing in return.

Personally, in the three years I worked in the US on an H1B, I paid an awful lot of tax, including at least twenty grand into Social Security. Do I get any benefit from that? Not so much.

All I knew about California was from watching Chips as a child (in black and white!), but now I've come to know the place and the people, and I wherever I go in the world I tell everybody how great y'all are. That's not such a tangible benefit, but I'm certainly not the only one who goes on like this.

And isn't it a positive thing to have highly educated, intelligent people from all over the world working for you? I'm sure I met one or two. It not only improves your selection of restaurants, it also stops them working for the competition.

I left in the end because it turned out I wasn't that smart, not that educated, and the need to justify my presence wore me down. I hope my presence there wasn't entirely destructive.

tomcatv1: "channel serf" I don't know if that was deliberate, but it was good.

Eagle: I care. In fact, I'd like to see the torso speculation level raised if possible. The nice thing about television is that everybody, except for the comic relief fat guy, is totally ripped.

Who knew Heather was secretly a big nerd? Lawful evil indeed.

Thrasher: get over it. No, really.

rupert_c: I know what you mean, but I also love this quote from Primo Levi: "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way: If we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."

Yes, the Dutch are freakishly tall -- in Australia where I grew up, I'm quite tall (183cm); here, I'm barely average. And that's just compared to the women. It's like walking the streets with a bunch of Amazons.

I think it's all the milk they drink. Every lunchtime, adults sit around the table at the office, eating sandwiches and drinking milk. This may also explain the extraordinary teeth everybody seems to possess.

It's a good thing it's such a small country, otherwise I fear the world would be run by giant Dutch mutants.

You little people run along now, the grown ups need to discuss things. We would have been winning the sprints long before now, we just never got around to it (you know, because of all the cash we're earning from our careers, and the near constant sex. It's not easy)

He's in a clown costume because he's a maverick, and that's what mavericks do. Because it's mavratastic.

Dear Max, if you're going to be a pedant, you should at least do the research before posting. Obama becomes President-elect when the electors vote, and President at noon on January 20.

I've been on the Internet for twenty years, and the one constant over all that time is this bizarre alpha intellect thing, like dogs pissing on trees. Someone should do a study.

(Not that I'm immune - http://xkcd.com/386)

Well, here in the Netherlands we spend half as much per person on health care with our centrally planned quasi-socialist system. And nobody has to worry about "pre-existing" conditions, nobody loses access to their doctor because they lost their job.

Sure, I lived in the States for a while (although I confess I didn't swim, the Pacific is kind of big), because that's where my career took me. When I compare Europe with the US, what strikes me is the lack of humanity in your free market obsession. I regularly read articles complaining that Europe lags behind because high government spending retards economic growth, as if growth was the one and only important thing that people should worry about.

It's disingenuous to rate an economic system by looking at the number of foreigners who want to work there. Saudi Arabia is full of westerners attracted by boatloads of cash. It's called being used. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all those H1Bs actually like it there.

Dear crazarkianicsonovski,

I didn't say you should give H1Bs free health care, I said they were there for the cash. Not for the joys of free market living, or because of this fantasy you have about being the only free society in the world. It's because you pay them lots of money.

The reason I brought this up was because Mr Reptilian was making a connection between foreigners wanting to work in the US and a working free market. This, clearly, is crap.

The health care system works in the sense that you have doctors, but it's more expensive than any other health care system in the world. Do you really get twice as much medical care as people in other countries? Where does all that money go?

Finally, what is it about non-Europeans that make healthcare systems go bad? Do they smell or something?

Dear hawkpsd,

Who said it was exclusively about health care? It was an example. The things which are really great about Europe are hard to measure. For example, I live beside a 15th century canal in the middle of a city -- what's that worth? For me, a lot. I can get on a plane and within two hours be in a different country, with a different language, culture and history. Also worth a lot.

I don't follow your Belgium point. The Netherlands is not becoming predominantly Muslim. There are 400 million people living in the EU; exactly when does a society-oriented system break down?