Víkendové surfovanie

básnička k Medzinárodnému dňu žien

sexuálna výchova inak:

výborné fotky (zaujímalo by ma, či je nejaká mama, ktorej sa nepritrafilo to, čo je na tej poslednej – použitie WC s dieťaťom v náručí)

Leonard Nemoy (Spock) odpovedá na list od dievčaťa zo zmiešanej rodiny (1968)

o tých, čo sa potápali a potápajú do veľkých hĺbok (skoro ako Magická hlbočina, ale nie celkom)

Today it is an economic and even geopolitical necessity for oil companies, in order to maintain pipelines and offshore rigs, to send divers routinely to depths of a thousand feet, and keep them at that level of compression for as long as a month at a time. The divers who do this work are almost entirely male, and tend to be between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Were they any younger, they would not have enough experience or seniority to perform such demanding tasks. Any older, and their bodies could not be trusted to withstand the trauma. The term for these extended-length descents is “saturation diving,” which refers to the fact that the diver’s tissues have absorbed the maximum amount of inert gas possible.

niečo, čomu Američania nerozumejú

Pooling risk in this way is arguably the most important function of the modern welfare state, which began to emerge in America in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. In times of crisis, social insurance functions as a kind of disaster relief. Private insurers have neither deep enough pockets nor the administrative apparatus to insure the population as a whole against disruptions on this scale. And while it’s easy to say our neighbours should be responsible for themselves, it’s hard on society when a large number of citizens fall sick or lose their jobs. Keeping the general population healthy and able to provide for itself is clearly a public good in the sense that it increases productivity, lowers crime, and so on.

But Americans have a poor understanding of how this core business works, and how they benefit. Instead of thinking about entitlement programmes as insurance against economic hardship, they think of them as a kind of charity that goes to other people. They are quick to scold others for taking “handouts”, unaware that they are stretching out their own hands. In 2008 a Cornell Survey Research Institute poll found that 57% of Americans said that they had never used a “government social program”. But when those respondents were asked about specific programmes—like Social Security, unemployment insurance, student loans and the home-mortgage interest deduction—94% had used at least one. On average, in fact, they had used four different social programmes over the course of their lifetimes. A more recent Census Bureau survey found that nearly half of Americans received direct benefits in 2011.

making sense of the world

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