I travelled around the middle east for 6 months spending $100 per month in 1997. I hitch hiked and slept with Bedouin or in monasteries. It is possible in other parts of the world too - maybe not Europe though. Save Europe for when you are rich.
How did the sleeping with Bedouins thing work? Do you, like, walk into a coffee house in a Bedouin neighborhood and hope to meet someone who will invite you to stay at their house? Or is it more a meeting on the road kind of thing? Do the monasteries charge you hotel-room-like fees, or do you have to belong to their religion, or what?
Well...there are no Bedouin neighborhoods. I am talking about Bedouin that are still Bedouin traveling around in the desert. So yes...meet them, befriend them...sleep the night and get fed. But sometimes you can stay a week or so and help work, etc. Let them know where you want to go and they will tell you how to get there..and hook you up with more contacts. Sometimes those are family that live in towns and you stay with them at their house. The monasteries and convents were about $10 to even 7$ a night in Syria and Jordan and included a clean room and a breakfast. Convents were generally about $5 more expensive and the women there were kind of mean.....so we went to the monasteries most often.
We did meet people on the road that helped us out too...but most of the time is was from walking around in the remote parts of a town or area and looking lost or walking up to a Bedouin tent.
You do realize that the Norman French were Vikings right? The area was settled by a massive group of Vikings under Rollo. They became the Normans and from Rollo would eventually come William the Conqueror? These Normans were in no way French.
They spoke French, having adopted it after their conquest of, and settlement in Normandy. French, not Norse, was their court language both in Normandy, and later, after the 1066 conquest, in England.
Yes it is. Herein lies part of the problem; the way GDP is calculated and what is meant by GDP. The whole GDP idea has little merit. Essentially the health of the economy is measured by how much money is spent. We should stop relying on GDP to measure economic health and measure wealth and lack of debt instead.
For instance, if I have ten billion dollars in gold in my vault but choose to do nothing with it, then it has no impact on what we could call the economy but would still count as 'wealth'. If I have ten billion dollars in my vault that I never do anything with and the rest of the economy has a total of six cents, we would care how the six cents were being used, disproportionately to my trillion cents.
Or if everyone has 10 billion dollars in gold in their vaults in aggregate, if the price of gold rises, on paper their wealth would increase. But if everyone actually tried to expend their gold then the price of gold would decrease, but much more production would happen in the economy. If the price of tech stocks octuples then paper wealth increases but GDP does not necessarily change.
Or, if everyone just spent their money twice as quickly (e.g. the velocity of money increases). The economy would be able to do twice as much, but total 'wealth' need not necessarily change.
'wealth' is entangled with money and prices. The amount of production is affected by those things probably but not as directly.
Government economic policy is currently directed, in large part, toward making sure that there are regular increases in GDP. I get that.
I'm trying to figure out what government policy might look like if it was directed toward increasing net household wealth. Just hoarding gold does little for the economy. But this is irrelevant. At issue is what it would look like, economically, to focus on increasing a nation's economic wealth (after inflation). It seems like it would be awfully difficult to increase after-inflation wealth without a fair amount of genuine value being created, no?
Could focusing on combined household wealth cause there to be more attention paid to median household wealth? And how might economic policy behave differently if increasing this was its focus?
Another reason to pay closer attention to wealth is that it doesn't suffer from the "broken window fallacy".
There are more complex things at play here. Some foods actually contain compounds that reduce or prevent tumor growth. Cabbage for example has highest levels of two anti-cancer glucosinolates and protects against breast cancer and bread crust; has highest levels of Interlukin-B which protects against colon cancer.
As a real world example; Polish women have the lowest incidence of breast cancer and the highest consumption of cabbage.
Sage advice, and yes it IS possible to follow (and I know it is too late for you now but here it is anyway):
1. Do not have sex if you do not want a baby.
2. Do not get married unless you can support a baby.
If you are a parent are you entitled? -- The answer is Yes. You have certain rights, responsibilities and trust vested in you by society for that child. WHEN you give your child up to the school system, you divest those rights, responsibilities and trust to the school system.
And it is true, respect is earned - for people; but not position. I respected very few of my teachers individually. However I respected the office that any one of them held and I gave respect to all of them no matter if I respected them as a person or not. This is both right and wise.
This does not make sense. You are willing to send your child away for more hours per day than you spend with him and place him with adults you don't trust? If you are not going to divest your authority and trust these teachers with it, which you must if you send your child to a public or private school, then you should home school your children.
Also, your job as a parent is only to protect your children from things they can not protect themselves against - and to eventually empower/teach/train them to be able to protect themselves. If you hover over them all the time they will, as the article said, end up 25 and still in your house. For instance, if the child got a 79 on an assignment...tough; it was within his power to get an A if he worked hard enough. If he is somehow being targeted by a malicious mean teacher and purposefully given a low grade...tough as well. In reality, it won't affect his chances at a happy and successfully life. Plus, life is not fair and he will meet people like that in real life that he will have to learn to deal with when you are dead and gone. It too is a learning lesson - and nothing you need to protect him against.
You are willing to send your child away for more hours per day than you spend with him and place him with adults you don't trust?
In almost all countries of the world, school attendance is compulsory for certain age ranges in default of government-approved alternatives. Perhaps the author of the grandparent comment acquiesces to children attending school more than being actively "willing" to have the children in school. In any event, the statement is correct that it is a parent's responsibility to protect minor children, and that includes protecting children from haughty teachers who are unwilling to allow parents to have the power to shop, the power to CHOOSE teachers as readily as parents choose grocers, physicians, community sports coaches, and other adults who influence children's lives.
AFTER EDIT: This addition to this comment was posted only after the back-and-forth below (to the "great-grandchild" comment level) about the unchanged original version of this comment above. Let me be clear: a lot of the zero-sum head-butting between teachers and parents would go away if only the system were changed so that parents of minor learners have greatly expanded choice in where their children go to school at public expense. Currently, the public policy position of most schoolteacher labor unions in most countries is that school attendance should be compulsory, that schooling should mostly be provided by government agencies, and that learners should be assigned to schools rather than have a wide choice of schools. All of those public policy positions entrench union leaders in political power, but none treat schoolteachers as professionals. Services that are CHOSEN by clients are largely appreciated by clients. Indeed, in the United States even a food stamp recipient doesn't tell off a grocer, because even shoppers who obtain a public subsidy for what they buy are still accorded the basic dignity of being able to choose where they take their business. Not all teachers are a good fit for all learners, no matter how fine the teacher (and no matter how dedicated the learner). It's best for everyone, and promotes more respect for teachers as professionals, to put learners at liberty to shop around for the learning situations that fit them best. The international examples I've read about (particularly the Netherlands) strongly suggest that teachers, learners, and taxpayers all benefit from having more rather than less choice.
How did I indicate arrogance in the grandparent comment? Do I get the choice or whether or not to use your services as a teacher, or must I be assigned and compelled to use your services? If I have but one choice of a teacher, you can be sure that I will question the teacher early and often about how the teacher is designing the class and evaluating the students. That's the right thing to do to make sure that my children are getting a good education.
One of the neglected benefits of school choice for teachers is that parents who don't see eye-to-eye with a teacher, perhaps because of background the parents have gained in their own educations, can simply take their business elsewhere. Meanwhile, parents who are at liberty to shop for the best match for their children are all the more likely to appreciate the thoughtful work of the teachers who fit their children best.
Arrogance was indicated by the tone implying that you knew best... Of course taking an interest in your child's education is good, noone would argue otherwise. But second-guessing the teacher is another matter.
Of course there are bad teachers, just like in any other profession. But I'd like to think that I'm not one, and on the off-chance that you'd have a kid on those rare occasions when I teach something, I'd hope that your presumption is that I'm a competent individual, unless confronted with evidence to the contrary. (And your child scoring low on a test is not.)
Holy shit that's the worst reasoning I've seen here in a while. How about no, because, as the OP said, it does nothing meaningful, likewise with "proving I'm not afraid of cold water to a random dude on HN".
Can you think of a true story of someone saving a person from icy water (something meaningful) and saying as the defining point "Yeah, I totally bitch-slapped that cold water since I'M A MAN."? Hollywood likes to use it as a cheap 'challenge to overcome' (again though with the meaningful goal of advancing the plot), but that's not how it works in real life.
Edit: you argued elsewhere that it could be a 'tree in a forest'. Maybe in general. But not in this specific case. Cold water for a few minutes in the morning is not even a sprout.
Interesting analysis grasshopper. I have noticed though that you and many others assailing this idea offer no path or insight of your own to develop character. Just meaningless statements such as, "but that's not how it works in real life." SO wise one, please tell us how it works in "REAL LIFE".
So can you explain to us how one builds character then - how else is it (character or self-discipline) built but by resisting against a natural pull, thought, or reaction?
The Spartans to General Patton used similar techniques in building the character of their troops and their fruits cannot be disputed.
The author is not claiming that this only will build character, but this is a small tool to to work on building character yet another way. Alone perhaps it would be meaningless, but taken together with his other approaches it can lead to significant results. It may be only a tree in the forest and it takes trees to build a forest; this method can be one of those trees.
Or if you like, to return to the analogy of resisting something in order to become stronger: This is just another exercise, like the plank (among many), that used alone may not produce much; but taken together with a whole exercise program WILL make ones whole body stronger.
"few things about history and don't get the exact dates or details right."
This is exactly what a person needs to get right - the Chronology. Otherwise things do not make any sense.
For instance these facts:
Fact: The U.S. dropped two Nuclear bombs on Japan.
Fact: Japan became the largest debt holder for the U.S.
..can be misconstrued to say something that did not occur, such as, "The U.S. dropped bombs on japan so they did not have to pay back their debt to them."
Now I know this is an extreme example, but the reasoning is the same. History is a study of facts that occurred; who, what, where - chronology provide the "why".
