Politics.NET

So there I was, watching TV on a Sunday afternoon, when a news item crawled along the bottom of the screen. It said that a 49ers fan who crashed the Seahawks post-Superbowl party turned out to be a 15-year old ward of the state who lives in an homeless shelter. It also said a GoFundMe page had been set up for him. GoFundMe is a fundraising site. So I started thinking, Americans are so generous when a poor person manages to make himself stand out from the rest. Waitress got stiffed by obnoxious guests, we raised money for her. When a bus monitor was insulted by her students, we raised a LOT of money for her. A homeless man with a great voice enthralled us all a few years ago and we all came to his aid. The point is we Americans are very generous when it comes to this kinds of one-on-one giving. But what if we decide that in addition to helping poor people on an individual basis, we come up with a systematic way to raise ALL poor people? I am talking about social welfare programs. F...

When I was growing up, there used to be a game called " Spot the difference " in the newspaper. That and the sports section are just about the only parts of the paper I read (the cartoons back home tended to be more political than funny). Basically, you are given two pictures with slight differences between them. Your task is to spot the differences between the two pictures. Sounds pretty simple, right? Except some are really tough because the differences are where you least expect them to be. Which brings me to the reason for this post. Grocery shopping these days has become an exercise in spotting the difference. Except here, your hard earned money is at stake, you are forced to play and the game is rigged. See if you can spot the difference between these 2 packages of flushable wipes from Costco : If you can't spot the difference, here's a hint: You still what happened there? The package went from 6.8 x 5.9 inches to 7.1 x 5.1 inches. That's a ...

So my birthday was last Saturday. Mixed in with all the "happy birthday" calls and posts on Facebook was this: That's my insurance company sending me an email to wish me a happy birthday. Maybe something is wrong with me but I found this to be a useless waste of time. My relationship with Liberty Mutual is strictly cash (or in this case, electronic payments from my bank). We are not friends so why the pretense? I got the email and I was hoping they'll include some discount in it. But no, nothing of the sort. Just a happy birthday wish. What am I, 3 years old?

When it comes to public policy, you almost have to have 2 approaches: one for your family and one for the general public. Take sex for example. Most parents probably have "no sex before marriage" as the goal. But when you are talking about public health, you have to be pragmatic and know that you won't get 100% compliance. So what happens to the kids that miss the goal? Unplanned pregnancies, self esteem issues etc Even if you have just 1% failure rate, that's a whole lot of people that you haven't planned for. Take abortion, even pro-choice people know this is a life-altering decision. Sure, as a Christian/Muslim, you may abhor abortion but what about the non-Christians/Muslims in the population? Are you not going to plan for them? If you close all abortion clinics (or make it extremely difficult for them to remain open), maybe that'll force some people to have their rape/incest babies but do you think others won't try risky means to abort the baby? So ...

In 2013, why does Microsoft's Outlook.com have this option? : The only option in that dialog ought to be "No".

The Washington Wizards are a bad team. That's a fact. The numbers bear it out. That's not even news. But what surprised me was a blog by the team's owner Ted Leonsis . Ted writes a blog called Ted's Take where he opines on a lot of things. I don't usually read it but I read what he wrote following the Wizards' loss to the Atlanta Hawks (the 4th loss to that team this season). He wrote: Another Winnable Game We just can’t close out tight games to get a win. That has been the biggest disappointment to me this season so far. We are simply losing too many winnable games.  We lost last night in over time – again – to the Hawks. You can read the rest yourself here .  But what struck me was the fact that Ted actually thinks the Wizards have anything resembling a "winnable game" on their schedule. For the non-sports fan, a "winnable game" is a game where one team is so much better than the other that the conclusion is forgone. For example, B...

When it comes to Costco vs BJ's, I have always thought they were about the same. And since I lived just 5 minutes away from a Costco at my old house, I've had a Costco membership for the past 7 years. But we moved recently , and Costco was no longer a hop, skip and jump away. In fact, it's about a 15 minutes drive away. So we decided to try BJ's after a couple of their coupons arrived in our mailbox. This is my review of the shopping experience at BJ's. Put simply, shopping at BJ's is chaotic, confusing and stress-inducing. Why? Let me list the ways: first you have to present your coupons to the cashier at checkout. Now if you've never shopped at Costco, you might wonder why is that a big deal. The big deal is that Costco doesn't do this! If an item has a coupon, the coupon is automatically applied at checkout. Apart from feeling that company is working with you to save money, that should also speed up the check out process. Especially when you conside...