Hah hah, enjoy your "Free" healthcare! You get what you pay for!

The chart is interesting, but as others have mentioned, a lot of it is choice. Unless you are a single parent, you really don't need to send your kids off to babysitting (i.e. daycare, pre-school, childcare, whatever feel-good you want to call it).

It IS possible for one parent to stay home whilst the kids are young (at least) to care for them. Yes, you might need to scale back the mommy & daddy toys and trips a little, but the kids will be a lot smarter from the attention and less sickly from the constant immersion in daycare germs.

In any event, stop whining about how the government should provide you with free healthcare, babysitting, schooling, &c. They are YOUR kids --- YOU are responsible for their well-being and future. Don't schlep if off on the backs of others. Know what you are getting into when you have kids (they are well worth it), but shoulder the responsibility yourself.

I do recycle my #1 and #2 plastics, but I'd like to see a detailed energy analysis of how much energy the collection trucks, reprocessing, &c. really takes. I agree with Scott when it comes to reuse, though. I've got a zillion glass & plastic jars (baby food, pickles, spaghetti sauce, &c.) that get used for screws, paint thinner, &c. and never make it to the recycle bin for that reason.

I love how avraamov (while acknowleding the basic veracity!) openly condemns the story because it was published in the Daily Mail! Who cares where the story was published, as long as it is accurate? What a dodge!

@Sylvia-
New Jersey isn't on the list, because most of it is a great place to live. You could make a case for Camden and Newark being on there, but the rest of it has a very high standard of living and the highest property values & millionaire fraction in the country.

Lists like these always have a lot of faults (as many have noted), because it all depends on how you rank everything. NYC gets dinged for the taxes & high cost of living & commute times, but if you are an urban-loving person, there's no place better -- the list doesn't adequately comprehend all the things city-lovers love cities for. That said, Detroit and Flint are complete cesspools...

A couple comments:
1. Christo's projects (including "The Gates") are generally fully funded by the artist and own financing. I might not appreciate it as art, but at least he didn't do it on the public dole, picking the pockets of hardworking folks. On the other hand, I've no knowledge of anyone getting killed by the Panopticon sculptures, whilst Christo has a mounting death toll.
2. The Atom looks like it fell off the truck hauling leftover stuff from "The Prisoner" TV series to the dump. Frankly, a Lotus 7 up on a hill would be prettier.

I have some empathy for the guy, but oh, his gambit was quite the gamble! What a huge risk!

The article says that the law reads essentially "if you have the structure up for 4 years and there are no objections you can keep it". But hiding it behind bales of hay for those 4 years clearly evades the *spirit* of the law. Whether he is successful or not will depend on how good his lawyer is. Either way, though, they will wind up paying *somehow* for their snubbing of authority -- you can bet on it. I know in my piss-ant little town, you would not want to try this, even if you got away with it, they'd figure out some other way to screw you.

A few years ago, my wife and I put up a large gazebo on our 2.5 acre property. I looked up all the regulations in advance and the peak of the roof was going to make the structure 6 inches too high (!). Rather than change the design or risk fines, we had to go through a rather onerous zoning variance process that delayed us a couple months and go before a review board, &c. It was a pain in the ass, but since we kissed their rings, they weren't out to get us on that or future issues, either.

Ted Kaczynski wasn't all crazy -- having a little cabin in the woods away from petty town officials has some merit.

Sounds like President Ryan might need to send John Clark and the Rainbow Team out on a mission to recover it.

Not that I'm in favor of drinking and driving, but this lady is a double idiot.

Bah, humbug :-)
Better to have just paid off the "artists" not to have left this crap lying about soiling the view.

Yeah, there's a country that is MUCH better off now than when they were getting oppressed by those imperialistic Europeans.

The store would need to stock a LOT of sizes to get all the permutations of waist, inseam, and shoe size covered! Wow... Definitely a custom made sort of thing and not practical for real-world marketing....

@NiteWhite-

FYI. The "old woman" was a man. If the name Pio (not "Pia") wasn't a tip, the article (which you read, right) called him "Mr." a whole bunch of times.

You know, it isn't that hard to keep from having an obese cat -- you feed it a bit less every day. Unless your house is *loaded* with dumb vermin, the cat is only going to eat what you feed it -- it's not like it's going to pick your pocket, hop in the car, and drive to market or order pizzas on the sly. Granted, limiting food intake gets harder if you've got multiple cats and they aren't all fat ... some of these critters are major loads, though. T'ain't healthy for them and all.

ummm.... I'll need to look it up, but I think the *original* "Panopticon" was Jeremy Bentham's design for an 18th century prison that wouldn't require very many guards to mind all the convicts.

Is the use of "panopticon" here intended to be perjorative? They sure are ugly & pointless -- what a waste of taxpayer resources.

@Tim-
Did you read the article or even the short blurb?
1. The ambulance crew was called.
2. They declared the guy dead. (apparently they had authority to do so -- in the US, you need a doctor I think)
3. Apparently the local law is that once the guy is declared dead, the ambulance crew cannot legally move them w/o the local magistrate arriving. He wasn't there, so they couldn't move him.
4. Life went on for the living as they prayed for the departed and they waited for the magistrate to OK moving the body.
5. The dead guy's son thought his father (a devoted Catholic & faithful Mass attender) would have wanted it that way and had no problems with the way things went down. So, what's the big deal?