7545 replies to this topic

[donquijote]

<That was an interesting article on Kerala. Another example of good things coming from the bottem up, eh DonQ.>

Aloha Bader (I just think of myself in Hawaii)

Thanks for your valuable comments and your time. We always learning from you. We trust your expertese...

I'd argue for *preventive medicine* but, by any chance, you got a fovorite Health Care System in the West? How about the Canadians' Single Payer (private)?

< The right wing political parties rubbished everything that
had anything socialistic about it and pushed for the privatisation
of everything like health, transport systems, even prisons,
telephone, water, education - virtually everything except the army and government.>

Just a brief comment. Even war is for profit! The more wars the more profits! :confused:

"Wars, conflict, its all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
-Charlie Chaplin

Have Guns, Will Travel
By P. W. SINGER

It is often said that war is too important to be left to the generals. But what about the C.E.O.'s? The Pentagon's plan to hire a private paramilitary force to guard sites in Iraq may have surprised many Americans, but it was really just another example of a remarkable recent development in warfare: the rise of a global trade in hired military services.

Known as "privatized military firms," these companies are the corporate evolution of old-fashioned mercenaries ? that is, they provide the service side of war rather than weapons. They range from small consulting firms that offer the advice of retired generals to transnational corporations that lease out battalions of commandoes. There are hundreds of them, with a global revenue of more than $100 billion a year, operating in at least 50 countries.

full text...

http://engforum.prav...?threadid=26709

< Truth and reality are not in issue, it's all about ideology and the politically correct ideology that rules is the free-market. The
last time it was in vogue, during the nineteen twenties it led to the great depression and world war because it destablises nations. The world is being destablised again, some call it perpetual revolution, or managed chaos as a pretext for world government. >

Not only it can lead to a great depression but to a great catastrophe, environmentally or militarily...:confused:

http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

[donquijote]

<Interesting observations in your last message. I feel that this response is too feeble and unfocused, but maybe I will be able to elaborate later. This thread is to me somewhat removed from our current practicalities (which in any case are so depressing), but in any sort of better future I would see a kind of world government.>

Howdy MH
I think his response and the subject of this thread is about practicalities. He was talking about Health Care having suffered from becoming another profit making machine. What could be more practical than our health!?

Now, guys, I'll like to expand some more on Health Care. *It should not be for profit* because the more sick you get the better it is! No wonder the powers that be remain indifferent to preventive medicine, and, say, feed our children the worst of the worst junk food.

Preventive medicine though would emphasize a healthy life-style and a healthy diet...

> What physicians call prevention is hugely expensive. Most of the gain in
> life expectancy over the past 100 years came from social changes, NOT
> medical interventions. It is vastly cheaper to treat an illness than to try
> to 'prevent' it. Even stopping smoking does not save money because smokers
> tend to die young and don't spend many years in retirement.

I absolutely disagree with it. Prevention is the way to go. Actually
some companies are actively promoting their employees to lead a
healthy lifestyle...

Cost Benefit of Wellness
There are data to justify the benefits of health promotion. Scores of
studies have documented reductions in absenteeism and health care
costs when wellness programs have been implemented. There is also
research that quantifies the costs associated with employees who
exhibit unhealthy lifestyles. A study conducted at Steelcase
Corporation by the University of Michigan determined that for every
Steelcase employee who had excessive alcohol consumption, the company
paid $597 more per year in health care costs. For every Steelcase
employee who was sedentary, the company paid $488 more. For every
Steelcase employee who had hypertension, the company paid $327 more.
Smokers cost the company $285 more, etc. A similar study was conducted
at DuPont and, although the dollar values associated with each risk
factor differed from what Steelcase found, there was collaboration on
the fact that unhealthy employee lifestyles cost the company more in
health care costs.

Employees' Health Status
Researchers have looked at a large number of employee populations to
determine the most common health risks. On the average, for every 100
workers in this country, 27 have cardiovascular disease, 24 have high
blood pressure, 50 or more have high cholesterol, 26 are classified as
being obese, 26 smoke, ten are heavy drinkers, 60 don't wear seat
belts regularly, 50 don't get adequate exercise, and 44 suffer from
excessive levels of stress. (See Table V.) Obviously, employee groups
differ based upon their demographics. If you have employees with a low
education level, a different racial mix, a different age group, more
women than men, etc., your employee risks will differ. You can use
these data, however, as a guide for determining what types of risks
your employees may have and what programs to offer.

full text...

http://www.healthyli...ch/wellprog.asp

Also look at this...

Is obesity a U.S. public policy issue?
By Lou Marano

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- Americans are fat. But is obesity a
problem that lends itself to public policy solutions?

Shannon Brownlee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is
inclined to think it does. James Glassman, an economic analyst at the
American Enterprise Institute, thinks it does not. The two presented
their arguments at a New America Foundation forum on Tuesday.

Brownlee said the issue is not whether the government has a right to
interfere with your right to eat Big Macs, but whether it is
contributing to the "epidemic" of obesity in the United States and
whether it should play a role in reducing the rate of obesity.

She said obesity is a public health problem, not a matter of
aesthetics, and asked to what degree government policy is subsidizing
obesity.

Brownlee said the medical establishment defines obesity as being 100
or more pounds over one's optimum Body Mass Index. Obesity rates have
increased dramatically since 1970. Now nearly one-third of the
population is considered obese. Another 35 percent is considered
overweight. "Sixty percent of Americans are at increased risk for all
kinds of diseases," she said.

Brownlee quoted Harvard economist David Cutler as saying that even
small improvements in health can justify the high cost of medical
insurance. "Health is worth an enormous amount to the wealth of this
country," Brownlee said.

"Imagine a disease that kills almost as many people as tobacco kills.
It disables you and kills you slowly, like AIDS. It kills more than
AIDS, drugs and guns combined. Your kids are at risk from this
disease. It's not communicable like AIDS, but is rather the result of
behavior and environment.

"Not only is local, state, and federal government not doing anything
about this disease, they are promoting the disease through taxes and
other policies."

Government is actively encouraging obesity by failing to have any
credible anti-obesity campaign, Brownlee said. "We subsidize the
advertising of junk food, we allow the advertising of all kinds of
food to children, when we don't allow everything to be advertised to
children ... We allow entire subdivisions to be built without
sidewalks or bike paths. We're letting junk food into schools, and
even hospitals have junk food franchises these days.

< I am not a very great believer in the natural goodness of the humankind (or even in the natural badness) - we would best exist within certain accepted and rational structures which most libertarians would undoubtedly reject, but I can't see liberty without community. >

I say to people, "It's not the same to live in Sweden as to live in Zimbabwe," and most of them agree with me, which shows that society if not perfect, can be *perfectible*.

As for the sense of community and individual freedoms I think it's like Yin and Yang--too much of either can be bad and each one contains an element of the other.

Also some people are more cooperative and some more competitive. Let's make room for everybody, without sacrificing each individuality. Sadly the way the jungle is set up now you either compete or die...

You get a trip from roaring? Go ahead and do it, just don't eat me!

<It's just that I think that I see your causes as concequences, and in many respects current Western symptoms of the illness are actually less severe than what went before.>

True, but not good enough to save us. Actually those policies of health-for-profit, war-for-profit are killing us--literally!:confused:

http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

[donquijote]

Another area that shouldn't be for profit...

Hey 'business is business'...

The Prison Business

The US Prison system houses literally millions of Americans. Americans
who have been convicted of various crimes for with the American
Judicial System feels incarceration is warranted. Yet it is this
system that is being used increasingly as a Labor Force in which
industries and corporations have a literal captive labor force and
where legal recourse in response to exploitation economic and
physical, is difficult, if not impossible to obtain. The prison
industry is a big, multi-billion dollar business. Following are some
statistics from the US Department of Justice on Incarcerated
Americans:

5.9 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole
at year end 1998 -- 2.9% of all U.S. adult residents.

State and Federal prison authorities had under their jurisdiction
1,333,561 inmates at midyear 1999: 1,254,577 were physically in their
custody.

Local jails held or supervised 687,973 persons awaiting trial or
serving a sentence at midyear 1999. About 82,000 of these were persons
serving their sentence in the community.

Between 1990 and midyear 1999, the incarcerated population grew an
average 5.8% annually. Population growth during the 12-month period
ending June 30, 1999 was significantly lower in State prisons (up
3.1%) and local jails (up 2.3%) than in previous years. The Federal
prison population rose by 9.9% (up 10,614 prisoners, the largest
12-month gain ever reported.

In 1979, Congress passed the Public Law 96-157 which created the
Private Sector/Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program. This
act allowed corporate America the ability to tap into this vast human
resource, inmates. These programs have been given credit for a
reduction in recidivism. This has been a primary justification for
allowing inmates to work for pay while being incarcerated. And
statistics show that this reduction actually seems to be the case.
Inmates are, by law, supposed to receive a wage not less than the rate
paid for work of a similar nature in the locality of which the work
takes place. Yet, inmates in some states are making just over one
dollar and hour. With a wink from the Federal Government, these
practices continue and are even encouraged by Congress and the Senate.
Even the Administration, who rode into office with the votes of
minorities whose party historically has claimed to care about minority
issues, has done nothing to see to it that prisoners, of whom a large
part are minorities, are not the victims of this economic
exploitation. Yet this trend is not surprising given the nature of law
enforcement today. The nation is becoming a police state. Even the
Nazis did not have many of the legal powers given which are given to
Federal Law Enforcement agencies in America today.

Consider:

In every state the National Guard flies low-level surveillance
helicopter missions searching for drug dealers.

Federal Agencies are ignoring Subpoenas for documents which could
exonerate defendants in 'National Security Courts'.

Citizens are undergoing various harassments by federal and State Law
enforcement for the 'crime' of driving on interstate highways.

Inner city Buses are being boarded by DEA agents to search for drugs
and conduct 'voluntary' searches on passengers.

The INS bursts into homes of foreigners, with axes and hammers,
incarcerate them without charges for suspected 'terrorist' activities.

Police are using violence to curb peaceful demonstrations and then
escort scab workers to replace higher paid employees.

Banks, telephone companies, utility companies, and other institutions
are providing the Federal Government with information about their
customers, without the customers consent.

The Federal Government is confiscating property from Americans who
have been charged with nothing. The proceeds are auctioned off, or
'lost' in Federal warehouses.

Prisoners have become a valuable commodity and an increasing demand
for them and their hard work is a key issue in the debate. The
increasingly unconstitutional nature of our legal system (Supreme
Court rulings included), make it far easier, using the law to obtain
workers which are paid very low wages. The issue is an important one,
as many of the nations largest corporations are now hopping onto the
the prison labor bandwagon. Boeing for example uses prison labor in
the making of its aircraft. Boeing, having made significant cuts in
its work force in just about every area but has actually increased its
work force in two areas 1)China and 2)Washington State Reformatory
(WSR) in Monroe, Washington. The losers, it seems, are not only the
poor, who are unable to afford competent legal representation to keep
them out of the prison system, but the American workers who do not
know the true nature of the beast. The nature of the system has two
groups who are being victimized by the same system at odds with one
another. White skilled workers who are losing their jobs to prison
inmates in China and America, and minorities, who are being
incarcerated for victimless crimes (of whom many guilt is
questionable) are used as low paid labor in corporate factories for
greater profit. This is all being done in a legal system that is
calling, perhaps not coincidentally, for longer and longer sentences
for most crimes.

Two main companies are behind involved in the private prison industry,
The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Wackenhut
Corporation. The CCA was formed by investors who were behind Kentucky
Fried Chicken. Wackenhut was formed by a former FBI official in 1954
and is probably the largest and best known private security company in
the world. These companies and others like them argue the merits of
prison privatization. And indeed the merits are compelling. Yet the
temptations of private prisons, and Large Corporations lobbying for
longer prison sentences for relatively minor crimes is a danger
that would spell doom to any sense of justice and fairness that the
legal system is supposed to represent. Instead, in America, the purely
economic interests of the lobbyists and campaign contributors are
always heard loudest and best.

The prison labor force provides a corporate monsters dream. It
provides 3 things that the regular labor force in America cannot
provide.



1)It provides inexpensive labor that is fairly well skilled.

2)It provides a 'just in time' labor force that works only when it is
needed and the corporation is not required to pay overhead for workers
who are not needed.

3)It provides employees who are not able to bargain for better working
conditions, better wages or any form of collective bargaining.

This is the tragic, ugly, yet very real aspect of the prison
privatization and prison labor debate that is not often heard on the
corporate media outlets, bought and paid for, to at least some extent
by the exploiters. Unfortunately this is where the majority of the
voting public gets its (mis)information.

With the extremely high concentration of African Americans in prison
and the proclivity of law enforcement to focus on inner city blacks in
drug cases rather than Wall Street, where drugs are also used in a
very large degree and where the drug money is often laundered, the
question of a new type of slavery must be asked. Is America ready to
re institute slavery on a selective scale? Is Corporate America ready
to deal with the issue honestly, apart from its balance sheets? Do
African-Americans, or poor and economically challenged Americans even
know what is going on?

These new 'slaves' are not slaves in a classical sense. Many actually
earn money, one prisoner in California works 9 hour days and earns a
whopping 45 cents an hour ($60/month). California no longer pretends
that they are rehabilitating criminals and now appears simply wants to
keep inmates occupied and productive. The scene of this type of
exploitation is played out all over the nation. And prison officials
are pushing the limits. One Chicago area prison secretly shipped
prisoners to a Toys-R-Us to stock shelves, only a protest by the Union
stopped the practice. Wackenhut pushed the envelope in Texas when it
refused to negotiate with labor in Texas, as the Law requires before
contracting with a local business. These companies are vying to
create demand, that demand is for criminals. Criminals to man their
factories and industries.

[donquijote]

Meanwhile...

Study Finds 2.6% Increase in U.S. Prison Population
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

The nation's prison population grew 2.6 percent last year, the largest increase since 1999, according to a study by the Justice Department.

The jump came despite a small decline in serious crime in 2002. It also came when a growing number of states facing large budget deficits have begun trying to reduce prison costs by easing tough sentencing laws passed in the 1990's, thereby decreasing the number of inmates.

"The key finding in the report is this growth, which is somewhat surprising in its size after several years of relative stability in the prison population," said Allen J. Beck, an author of the report. Mr. Beck is the chief prison demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical arm of the Justice Department, which releases an annual study of the number of people incarcerated in the United States.

At the end of 2002, there were 2,166,260 Americans in local jails, state and federal prisons and juvenile detention facilities, the report found.

Another important finding was that 10.4 percent of black men ages 25 to 29, or 442,300 people, were in prison last year. By comparison, 2.4 percent of Hispanic men and 1.2 percent of white men in the same age group were in prison.

The report, which was released yesterday, found that this large racial disparity had not increased in the past decade. But Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a prison change research and advocacy group, said that with the number of young black men in prison remaining so high, "the ripple effect on their communities, and on the next generation of kids growing up with their fathers in prison, will certainly be with us for at least a generation."

Mr. Beck, Mr. Mauer and other experts said the growth in the prison population last year, despite the efforts by some states to reduce the number of inmates, was a result of the continuing effect of draconian sentencing laws passed in the 1990's when the states could afford to build more prisons and politicians competed to sound tough on crime.

Mr. Beck said increases in inmates in several of the largest states contributed to most of the national increase. Those states included California, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, he said. In Florida, he said, local judges used their discretion under the tougher laws to sentence more people convicted of felonies to prison rather than probation or some other program.

Alfred Blumstein, a leading criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said it was not illogical for the prison population to go up even when the crime rate goes down.

For one thing, Professor Blumstein said, some crimes considered victimless are not counted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual report on the crime rate, including drug crimes, gun possession crimes and immigration offenses.

Another reason, Professor Blumstein said, was that it has become increasingly clear from statistical research that "there is no reason that the prison count and the crime rate have to be consistent." The crime rate measures the amount of crime people are suffering from, he said, while the prison count is a measure of how severely society chooses to deal with crime, which varies from time to time.

Mr. Beck said he did not believe the sizeable increase in the prison population last year was the start of a trend back to the big increases of the 1980's and 1990's, when the number of incarcerated Americans quadrupled. States do not have the money to build more prisons now, he said, and the push by a number of states to reduce inmate populations will have some effect on the numbers.

Among the states that have eased sentencing laws in the past year are Michigan, which scrapped mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, and Kansas, Texas and Washington. Several states, including Kansas and California, have new laws mandating drug treatment rather than prison for nonviolent drug offenses.

Although many advocates of prison change have blamed drug arrests for the significant growth in the prison population, the report found violent crimes responsible for 64 percent of the increase in the number of men in state prisons from 1995 to 2001. Violent crimes also accounted for 49 percent of the increase in the number of women in state prisons in those years. Professor Blumstein said that figure was unusual because women have generally been convicted of drug and property crimes.

In total, 49 percent of inmates in state prisons last year were serving time for violent crimes, the report said. Twenty percent were serving time for drug offenses, 19 percent for property crimes, and 11 percent for public-order offenses, like drunken driving, parole violations and contempt of court.

But in the federal prison system, which with 163,528 inmates is now larger than any state system, 48 percent of the growth in the number of prisoners from 1995 to 2001 was accounted for by drug crimes and only 9 percent by violent crimes.

The number of inmates in federal prisons for gun crimes increased by 68 percent from 1995 to 2001, as Congress, President Bill Clinton and President Bush pushed to federalize some illegal gun possession cases.

In addition to 1.4 million Americans in state and federal prisons in 2002, 665,475 people were in local and county jails and 110,284 were in juvenile facilities, the report said.

California had the largest number of inmates, with 162,317 followed closely by Texas, with 162,003.

Louisiana had the highest rate of incarceration, with 794 inmates per 100,000 residents. Maine and Minnesota tied for the lowest incarceration rate, with 141 inmates per 100,000 residents.

http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

[sourabh]

drastevitte Don,

{I recently posted an article about Kerala--in your own country India!--but I'm sure the West wouldn't want to praise it, not even criticize it, because it may set a "bad example"...

http://www.theatlant...8sep/kerala.htm

Do you know anything about it?}

I dam care about the west--and neither should Russia bcoz imitation is not civilization----Well about Kerela I hav been there many times -when my brother was a research associate there in the ?Shree Chitra institute

[donquijote]

<thus the replacement should be a system -.as stated by our Don a system based on Humanism -------where the mind is without fear and the head is held high , where knowledge is free , where the world has not been broken into fragment by narrow domestic walls -- Rabindranath Tagore>

Thanks Sourabh
Nice quote. The beauty of Humanism is the fact that it places not the market, not State, not religion, but the *human being first*. When you the press trumpets America's success you hear about Wall Street, never about the common people's achievements; when you heard about the Soviet athletles' success you heard about the Soviet State, never the people who suffered scarcity to make it possible.

Another advantage of Humanism is that it offers several definitions of it, fitting you with an option whether you are religious or not...

One particular definition I like is this one: "Renaissance Humanism is the spirit of learning that developed at the end of the middle ages with the revival of classical letters and a renewed confidence in the ability of human beings to determine for themselves truth and falsehood."

Imagine us coming out of the Dark Ages--communism and capitalism--embracing the new technology--the Internet--and rejoycing in the reading of, not some Armageddon theory, but of the Decameron...

http://www.brown.edu...dweb/dweb.shtml

I also liked this about Humanism...

Humanism teaches us that it is immoral to wait for God to act for us. We must act to stop the wars and the crimes and the brutality of this and future ages. We have powers of a remarkable kind. We have a high degree of freedom in choosing what we will do. Humanism tells us that whatever our philosophy of the universe may be, ultimately the responsibility for the kind of world in which we live rests with us.

full text...

http://www.infidels....s/humanism.html

[Buttersideup]

What would it take for these cut and paste addicts to get some pussy? It's a bandwidth and a humanitarian issue.

[Buttersideup]

[The Beat]

Buttersideup,

There are just some people who prefer to spend their filling posts chock full of ....................... stuff.

It's sorta like the guy who asks, "What time is it?" and someone else responds by telling him, in detail, how a clock works.

There's info and there's nofo. And I say, "No mo'."

[donquijote]

I responded that Communism is not a necessary evil, and yet it upholds up the highest ideals. The problem with it is having replaced one hierarchal productive system with another hierarchal *nonproductive* system. For us to move any closer to cooperation--my favorite word--we need to acknowledge:

-Cooperation should be an *option* not an obligation. (Coops should be widely available.)

-Some people are born to cooperate, some to compete.

-No hierarchal system. (No lion is needed, yet it has a right to exist.)

-What works works, whether is communist-influenced Kerala or humanist-influenced Curitiba, different models different people.

http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

[The Beat]

DonQ

Thanks!. Concise and to the point. And I appreciate the info.

You're absolutely right, different models for different people, that's completely logical.

[donquijote]

<What would it take for these cut and paste addicts to get some pussy? It's a bandwidth and a humanitarian issue. >

Well all the info is out there for those who care to grab it and make a better world. If you got something better go ahead and shoot.

Or try Decameron that will make a nice reading for these plagued days...

[The Beat]

DQ,

I agree that the info is out there if one cares to go and get it. You can even help by providing links. Most of the links I've seen from you have been very informative.

And then, maybe a two-paragraph, or so, summary giving us your personal thoughts on the subject. To be honest, though I like to interact with most people here (including yourself, of course), I am performing a million other tasks (my daughter arrives in two days, I've been cleaning for three days straight. Goodbye, bachelordom.

What do you think?

[donquijote]

<Thanks!. Concise and to the point. And I appreciate the info.

You're absolutely right, different models for different people, that's completely logical.>

At one point the former USSR and the US were ready to destroy the world to impose their views on each other, and neither one was good!:confused:

Now we want to impose American lifestyle on the Iraqui people. Tough job!

The thing is the differences must coexist inside the same country so you can simply vote with your feet. What good is it to me that I'd like to enjoy, say, the Scandinavian system if I don't know the language and my folks are here?

http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

[Buttersideup]

And they all said

[Buttersideup]

Amen to the succinct.....(spelling?)

[donquijote]

<I agree that the info is out there if one cares to go and get it. You can even help by providing links. Most of the links I've seen from you have been very informative.>

Thanks, but if you look at the post before Butter, you'll see I provide links. I always go to the point, and use others' expertise to back it up. Sometimes it comes from restricted access media and I publish it in full, that's it.

I'll like to see some new offer by Butter though...

<And then, maybe a two-paragraph, or so, summary giving us your personal thoughts on the subject. To be honest, though I like to interact with most people here (including yourself, of course), I am performing a million other tasks (my daughter arrives in two days, I've been cleaning for three days straight. Goodbye, bachelordom.>

Also remember, you can skim over it while others go deep into it.

Have you read the Decameron? I did a long time ago, I think is right for the times...

"In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucers, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccios satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianitys loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccios celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccios is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248)."

source...

http://www.age9-12.c...014044629X.html

[The Beat]

DQ,

No I haven't, but I will now, thanks.

[donquijote]

<No I haven't, but I will now, thanks.>

I added something to the last post. The beauty of it is that you can read one story at a time.

[The Beat]

Hey, I said I'd read it, not buy it.