Having used XEmacs for a very long time, I recently tried switching to GNU Emacs just to gain access to one particular Emacs-only feature that seemed supremely useful to me. I spent a couple of days hacking my .emacs file to get GNU Emacs configured more less the same as my XEmacs config, but even then things weren't quite the same. In the end, the "one feature" proved not to be as useful as I thought it would be, and I went back to XEmacs. Reason: call it a combination of my old habits and the silly but nigglingly painful differences between the two.
The NYT's book review of a Rand biography seems to be little more than a tedious, sermonizing, simplistic, and unconvincing ad hominem against Rand herself. This is what qualifies as journalism these days?
Am I misunderstanding something? I have to sign up, buy credits, and if I lose an auction, I then have to refund the unused credits? What a waste of time and effort. I'd rather bid in an accepted currency, not some web site's funny money. (Sad, too, because I'd really like to bid on the book, but can't be bothered with all the buy/refund hassle.)
It sounds like you haven't actually tried to obtain affordable private medical insurance. I have. A few years ago, I spent almost two years working sans paycheck on a startup and found it easy to satisfy one of my prerequisites, which was an affordable high-deductible medical insurance policy.
The notion that medical insurance has to be expensive is a myth. The notion that medical insurance has to cover every bout of the sniffles is a myth. My policy had a $1000 deductible, which meant I was on the hook for routine medical visits (I didn't have any in two years), but that policy relieved me from worries about financial ruin due to any potential major medical problems. The high-deductible policy that I purchased was less than half the cost of my former employer's COBRA plan. It was well within the realm of ramen profitability. It doesn't take much effort to be an informed consumer in the medical insurance marketplace, but many people (it seems) can't be bothered to try.
pg's argument cannot explain the reality that we've all seen: companies hire droves of H1B folks who are anything but exceptional.
Only a fool fails to understand why.