lbaskin

It's not only TSA personnel (who are, on the whole, so incompetent I wouldn't hire most of the ones I meet to do ANYTHING), it's policy itself. Security policy in much of the world today is reactive and shortsighted - shoe bomber? take off your shoes, Underwear bomber, let's x-ray everyone, etc. etc. - all just to be able to say they "did something," whether or not is effective or efficient in any way at all.

I remember several years back when the shoe-removal policy has just been relatively new, and I was flying out of Israel. The security personnel there had someone devoted solely to going around telling people NOT to remove their shoes, in order to make sure the lines keep moving.

TSA just could not care less whether people actually make their flights, or whether terrorists get through, as long as they don't get blamed for missing something they should have caught.

Your point may stand in the event of negative interest rates, but generally, it seems like you're assuming that what Americans are doing is finding investing avenues that offer greater returns than prevailing interest rates, which does not appear to be the case. Saving money will, by definition, leave you with more money than spending (not investing) it, even if the ROI is near 0.

Exactly. This is an extreme - and ever more prevalent - illustration of why I don't use air dryers in public restrooms. It also bothers when they says it's done to help the environment. Even if that's true (unlikely, but it saves money and generates good PR), it just makes the environment and those in it dirtier, which probably doesn't help most people.

"out that of America’s 350 major metro areas, the cities with more than three million people have rebounded far better from the financial crisis." I assume the writer means metro areas with over 3 million people, but the lack of clarity is confusing at best. Who knows, maybe some readers will assume there are more than 2-3 cities (i.e., not metro areas) in the U.S. with populations of that size.

Assuming this is a positive development, I wonder where else xHamster is also blocking access - what about large parts of the Middle East and Africa?

While he was somewhat of an originalist, Scalia was foremost a textualist - much more than an originalist (the latter term better describes Thomas).

I'm surprised this is news.

If only because of the massive anti-(cigarette)-smoking campaign of the past several years, combined with the massive pro-marijuana-legalization campaign. Good or bad, that sends a pretty clear message to students that tobacco bad, marijuana good.

Exactly. While this may be true for some - as you said "not having enough money is a good reason not to be happy." Status alone isn't the question - it's what "enough money" means. For some, that may mean enough to lord it over all of your friends - and for many it may mean enough to support your family and not ever worry about putting food on the table (along with a vacation and buying most of what you want, mostly whenever you want) - and for others it means enough money being able to do whatever they want whenever they want to do it, period. But saying it's just status alone is just crap.