Gag! At least they could have a show with the opposite scenario: girl geeks (Yes, we DO exist, MR. Summers)

They did have one girl geek paired with a himbo on last season's BATG, but I only watched a few episodes so I didn't see how they fared.

One thing that I did find interesting was the reaction-shot of the boy geeks and beauty queens when the girl-geek/himbo pair walked onto the set as the "surprise twist" -- something that appeared to be total fear, from both sides. It was like everyone involved knew that this girl saw straight through them: she was geeky enough to know the boys couldn't bullshit her with all their smarts, and girly enough to know the headgames that women pull on each other in competitive situations.

As much as I don't like being on his side, Summers has a point about geek girls, but probably not for the reason he thinks: girls (and women) are schooled in the art of social grace almost from infancy. It's less acceptable (at least that I have noticed) for girls to be socially awkward than for boys, as long as those boys are ridiculously smart. Ridiculously smart girls *still* have to possess some level of social acumen, and therefore rarely attain the level of geekdom that boys can aspire to. So in that sense, anyway, even though some of us may be weird and clever and can fix a bike and think the sun shines out of Neal Stephenson's ass (which it does, by the way) we're not hardcore geeks because we can still navigate a cocktail party.

PEOPLE WHO PAY out of their own pockets should actually be given priority for treatment over those who don't, or who have medical insurance.

So since I didn't have ready access to $20,000 for a hospital stay and, imaging studies, lab work, and 24-hour drug dispensing, I should have been left to probably die while the dude with cash moved to the head of the line?

And they should be given a discount for paying in cash.

That is almost always the case. Most medical facilities offer a self-pay discount for that very reason.

Wasn't there a hue and cry about two weeks ago about a food shortage, rice in particular?

Someone got it wrong...

The socalled Irish Potato Famine really wasn't a blight

Actually the blight itself was very real, it was a fungus called Phytophthora infestans that decimated the potato crops in Ireland and in large swathes of Continental Europe.

Ireland, however, was the only place that suffered starvation on such a massive scale due to the colonial landlord system which prevented tenant farmers from keeping any of the non-potato crops that they grew, and a bizarre insistence on keeping the "Irish" economy high by continuing to export food while 1 million people lay in ditches and another 2 million fled across the ocean.

It was no less macabe and a damn site less funny than Shaw suggesting fattening irish babies for english tables and using their hide for boot leather.

Swift, actually, in a prescient essay written 118 years before the Famine.

Back to this rice thing, though, there *were* articles on a rice shortage due to drought (I thought). I might have made that part up.

A real suggestion: make Barbies (and accessories) out of cellulose-based plastic, and make her clothing out of hemp.

I work in web development, and I think about it all the time. I work for a small startup (basically just me and the owner), and we do sometimes outsource work to a Chinese firm. My boss loves it because we only have to pay them $5/hour. I wonder how much of that the people doing the work actually get. Are they doing technical work for like $2/hour, or do they have a high enough volume of business that they're able to be paid better than that? I hope it's the latter, for their sake, but one never knows.

Unlikely. The outsourcing firm is probably not going accept a margin of less than 30%, and its probably closer to 50%. They have to pay their own administrative costs (rent, electricity, equipment, and the cost of the person to write out the invoice at the very least) out of that $5/hour, so factor that in, plus the 50% margin, and your Chinese coder is probably making less than $2/hour cash in hand.

My god, this is one of the most ridiculous passages I've read in ages.

I read that too and my first thought was the same, but I wonder if it's just poor phrasing.

There is economy of scale to be gained when a large group takes control of a service, let's say healthcare, versus all the individuals within that group trying to handle it on their own. A large organization has more bargaining power -- they can negotiate lower rates, for instance, whereas a single patient doesn't have much of a bargaining chip when dealing with insurance companies. An insurance company will have plenty of business if you choose not to buy their policy, but if a company of 1000 employees chooses not to buy their policy, they'll feel the hit. Even if you take the insurance company out of the picture, a collective is in a much better position to negotiate compensation with individual doctors than an individual.

I don't think (or at least, I hope not) the intent was to say "let someone else deal with it" with no involvement from the individual, but that a company or a government organization -- as long as it is under a watchful eye and employs competent people to do the job -- is better equipped to engage in activites where real efficiencies can be attained when risk and reward are spread relatively evenly across a large population.