Haha good one 

By the way, I don't subscribe to the shallow label. I hate political correctness, which is what you said in my opinion, because it is based on lies. You don't 'just' fall in love, subconsiously you fall in love with favourable potential mates. Regardless of the label you put on it and how evolved you are as a person. Favourable as in beautiful (=healthy kids) or an able provider (=healthy kids) or whatever. It's a natural instinct. Going against it or saying you do is political correctness and I'd consider you lame. And if for example I am not usually attracted to Asian women, I also object to that being considered racist: I simply have an aesthetic preference. That's all. I don't discriminate blondes if I seem to have a preference for brown/red/black and occassionally I fall madly in love with a blonde (or they change their hair colour hehe). Same thing as far as I'm concerned.

I am in an objecting/spout my opinion mood, so there you go

In bananaskittles defense, I do believe Canada's healthcare is very good, in fact it is superior to that of the United States, which is "below the OECD median". On a side note, let's not judge people based on their age? I've seen quite a few "old farts" that are so incredibly misinformed, it is almost a crime. I've also met youngsters far wiser than their age would let you believe. It depends on the person, age is a factor, but not the whole picture.

Please read these URLs:
- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/opinion/12sun1.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

As for the health insurance, apparently Canada's system is working quite well. Personally I believe the system you guys have in the US is better from an ideology point of view. My country is sort of stuck in the middle: you are required to purchase a health insurance at a Dutch (private) insurance company. The government enforces a basic health package (coverage) and the insurance companies cannot reject anyone who applies for it. They can for anything beyond the basic plan, but currently these companies are not as cut-throat about it as they are in America. This will undoubtedly change though. I am not sure if the government 'owns' hospitals and such, but at the very least they are subsidized (as in: paid by tax payers). No competition. Apparently, according to international standards we are doing quite well. My personal view however, based on personal experience as well, is that the whole system is still terribly bureaucratic and an incredible money wasting machine, clearly as a result from "the way things were done" in the past (think Canada). As a result things are not running very efficiently (long waiting lists for many things, relatively long waiting lists for pretty much everything else), competition between hospitals is non-existent and the costs of health insurance has gone up almost exponentially in a matter of years. That part of capitalism in healthcare has definitely succeeded!

I wholeheartedly agree with BizB, who wrote "Health insurance should not cover standard office visits.  It should not cover annual exams.  What is should cover is those UNEXPECTED health care costs that one could not reasonably anticipate." This is exactly what I deem wrong with our system as well. An insurance should not cover costs that are expected and reasonable enough to afford. I only need insurance for when I get run over by a truck and every bone in my body has been broken (or something to that effect). Or for people who have diabetes and other chronically ill people, which is very expensive. Why call it an insurance otherwise? I have a car insurance, but that doesn't cover yearly check-ups or in fact, gas. And minor damage you really should pay for yourself (or face a fee increase). I pay for it to prevent a catastrophic event from financially ruining me. The same ought to be true for health insurance.

As it stands I pay about 100 euros every month for absolutely nothing (and it rises at an alarming rate each year, 10-15%, with coverage declining and increasing deductables). I would much prefer that everyone paid a certain amount of their yearly medical bills themselves, whatever the reason (say up to a $1000 a year). This would force everyone to be more conscious of what they are doing, enforcing personal responsibility (something especially the Dutch have lost sight of with a maddening array of rules for everything). Many people here go see the doctor for every little thing, and at the same time those doctors play the system by forcing you to come for re-fills of medicine that are not a hazard to your health and do not need those regular check-ups. Should in fact not be regulated at all (and aren't in America). A seriously reduced monthly fee would leave enough financial space to cover those costs (as in: your own responsbility) and contribute to a system that is much more fair from an idealogy point of view. It is seen as unfair in probably most of Europe. Afterall, you didn't ask to be chronically ill and most medical costs cannot be avoided? That is true (did I ask for my car to be totalled though?). But we're not talking about all or nothing here, there is a limit to how much you as the unfortunate one are supposted to shell out. Life simply isn't fair, it's the same with income and that is generally accepted (don't get me started on "pay more taxes as you earn more" though). Time and again it has been proven that without an incentive, the whole system (any system) breaks down into a bureaucratic mess that is more expensive and of lesser quality than it would have been with competition and inequality. We really ough to fix this. A real health insurance system would still pay for the unfortunate soul who needs a liver transplant or something, just as it did before.

I am not against some government interference: people ought to be helped and it is not right that certain procedures that need to be done are not done because those unfortunate souls cannot afford them, or the insurance is only willing to pay for an abyssmal substitute procedure (which is what happens in America). If laws can prevent unscrupulous companies from trying to weasle out of paying for people who have a legitimate claim on (and need for) health insurance, then that is fine by me. But I hate having to pay for all this bureaucratic fluf and I hate that people actively try to 'recoup' some of the money by playing the system. We've all heard the stories about old folks going to see the doctor, mostly to have someone to talk to... I shouldn't have to pay for that.

Unfortunately... no one seems to care much for my opinion and I will be shelling out well over EUR 100 from next year on. Somehow I think the government will manage to introduce a new "environmental" tax on that as well to add to my misery
(Next up: why am I paying for private day care and other children-related costs through taxes? It doesn't apply to me and I didn't get to have a say in who gets to have children and how many... so why should I pay for them through taxes?)

Welcome! And no more bricks for both of you.

Odd xolik, I seem to recall seeing some pictures that had your distinct signature @ ratemypoo.com? I twittered about it, you must have missed it.

Anyway, welcome aboard buddymaxwell!

Good luck bananaskittles! Indeed, bullshitting gets the job ehhh... well, bullshitting gets the job. Period. But once you get it, turns out it wasn't just bullshit afterall and you've actually got skills you took for granted

Thank God I can't hurt my wee-wee while I sit behind my computer

No, definitely the skittles. Too bad your experiment was cut short, now how are we going to prove that hamsters + skittles = super-hamster = missing link for humans?

They are coming.

Yeah... sorry 'bout that.

Hehe, thank God indeed that I don't have that kind of crap every month. Also, if men were to ones bringing children into the world? Things would be far less overcrowded, I can tell you that

Can rants be positive for a change? Was going to share that I'm really pleased with myself or with something that happened. Unfortunately I do not remember what it was about. So instead I'll just complain that it is far too sticky & hot here in Holland and it is very uncomfortable. I'm basically braindead by the time we hit one o'clock, stuck to my chair, stuck to my desk and feeling utterly incapable of doing anything in 35 degrees heat (that's like a 100 F right?) and 99% humidity. Let it rain already!

I can't wait to find out why it was driving you crazy, why you so desperately needed to know this

I dont think my Dad would've pulled such a trick (re: VCR in a Wii box) on us, though. It wasn't like he needed to "teach us a lesson"; we were living the lesson every day. This might be a good technique to use on a kid who is spoiled and doesn't appreciate what he does have or a child in danger of becoming less than thankful for a decent life. If you live your life by your principles, though, your children will pick up on this; and you needn't pull such a trick to teach anything. They will already be living by those principles.

I think you are right. I suppose I find it hard to distinguish kids from brats in general and lump them all together: I just don't seem to care much for children. I don't quite see how that is going to change, people around me are popping out babies already, so it is no longer an age thing I just don't like when parents make their poorly behaving children my business (I mainly just want to be left alone in PEACE) and IMHO those parents are in the majority these days (and here in Holland you cannot avoid them either, we are all too crammed together). It is not my place to explain to either the parents or the children why the hell they can't just NOT annoy other people, but I still find it hard to understand why they can't just 'see' that themselves. Is it really so hard to be considerative of other people, in general? It seems that way.

You also raise an interesting point. I do think children who are 'less well off' might indeed be better off in the long run, simply because they have more an imagination and build-in gratitude when things do come their way. And they suffer less (and take it out on others) when things don't. It is really quite amazing what can make kids actually happy. I bet any kid would take hitting a ball with his patient dad in the park over virtually doing that alone with an overpriced Wii, for example. Also, isn't happily anticipating your birthday a lot more fun if you don't know what your gifts might be? I'd hate to be that parent that must buy that over-expensive gift for his kid or he won't be happy, where's the joy in that for him?

I think that if you teach your kids love and respect and gratitude then the rest usually follows with it. I'm not going to rant on about it because I think it something we all almost agree upon.

You would think so, but how do you "teach your kids love and respect and gratitude"? There are no rule books and most people are in desperate need of one. See, if only the gratitude element in this equation is missing, you end up with ego-centrical people who think highly of themselves, tramp all over their loving parents to get what they want and learned to manipulate others into the same behaviour and are completely oblivious to how other might perceive their actions. Those are the people who might not even be aware that their behaviour is annoying other people, they don't even read the body language because they are simply so focussed on their own needs. Also, if the parents were raised the same way, how are they to see that what they are doing is wrong?

Now if you'll all excuse me, I am going to put up "keep your children on a leash at all time" signs in my neigbhourhood 
(really, despite my rant, I am not yet a grumpy, bitter old man...  )

So basically you started off tired and ended up pissed off? Does that about sum it up? 

As for my, I love my job. But my current project really sucks out all of my energy. It's a web application for a group of universities. I studied at one of them, it was dreadful. The bureaucracy, the utter indifference, horrible, horrible internal communication, money wasting and on top of that poor education, I saw it all. My company reclaims part of the taxes we all waste on this shambles by winning contracts for big money for applications they 'need'. All good, except I have to actually build them. It has happened twice before and I'm currently working on number 3: an application that one bureaucrat decided they needed but won't actually be using himself. I wonder if any of them will. No one cares what I do, I have to design the thing, decide on what it needs to do, how it needs to do that and I get no feedback or testers whatsoever. In fact, meeting or not meeting deadlines doesn't make any difference whatsoever and since I've installed the first alpha-version (two months ago) no one has even bothered to login. I mean, just getting access to the server has cost me countless phone calls, e-mails and entire days of being harrassed by complete morons (their IT department), and ultimately more than a month. Even more when they decided to move the *$@$#@*$ server without informing me and I had to do all this crap of getting access and the right settings etc all over again. How's that for a start of a new project?

I have always hated school and it still haunts me to this day. Anyway, it is nearing the end now. I get no satisfaction from wasting my time, it is hurting my productivity. That's my rant, thank you very much.

It must be great to be a Canadian. You get to speak such a sexy language AND you aren't actually French.