I have seen the future.

The very best part of that was the PBCC ad to the right side of the article taking up a third of my screen width.

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You see advertising?

Weird.

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If I could figure out how to do a screenshot in Firefox I would.

They seem to have random ads in the spot, but more often than not this fills a fair portion of the right side of the screen...

http://ads.cimedia.com/PBP/advertising/2006/pbcc/06feb/336x850pbcc_steppin.gif

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No, no, I understand that there are ads.

I simply do not see them. They are spam. All advertising is spam, and since it wastes my time to view it, I destroy it before it reaches my screen.

And if you're using firefox, there's no reason to subject yourself to spam, either.

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Ahh, I understand.

Actually I see a lot more then most of the people around me seem to see. Advertising annoys me, but after many years of being taught to Pay Attention it's hard to turn off.

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This is why I turn them off in the software, so advertising never gets to me.

Anything being served from doubleclick.net, for example, is spam, and so everything from doubleclick is block. Anything from ads.anything else is spam, and so it is blocked.

Advertising does not reach my browser, and so it does not reach my eyes. Advertising that does not exist is the only acceptable form of advertising. Dammit.

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Hmm, I see how to make exceptions for sites but I don't see how to add sites. I shall have to poke.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention though.

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torrain.livejournal.com

With FireFox, the AdBlock extension helps. For other browsers, I think a hosts file might...

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Thanks muchly! :D

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What does this have to do with homosexuality or gay rights? Domestic partner means ALL partners regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Your note is also completely incorrect. Group insurance plans are based on numbers of claims. The more claims, the more the college pays the insurance company in premiums. So if they add domestic partners to the plan, the number of claims will go up, and so will the premiums. That's how group insurance works, and the article also clearly states it is the reason they haven't done it.

The pet coverage was strongly implied by the article to be a free benefit offered by one of the college's insurance companies, not something they put in place. They took advantage of something offered by a third party and passed it on to their staff, as opposed to going out and getting coverage for pets while ignoring domestic partners. It's like giving your employees free suckers when they wanted ice cream because somebody gave you a box of free suckers while ice cream costs money.

I've noticed you put this kind of spin on many of the news stories you post. In this case, it's bad enough that I question whether or not you actually read the story.

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Your note is also completely incorrect. Group insurance plans are based on numbers of claims. The more claims, the more the college pays the insurance company in premiums. So if they add domestic partners to the plan, the number of claims will go up, and so will the premiums. That's how group insurance works,

Ignoring, of course, that the increased number of payers means a larger pool of income over which to spread the risk. If your group policy price really does go up with number of claims and does not go down based on number of participants, you're being assfucked by your insurance company.

Which is a common practice in the US, but you're from Alberta. You should know better than most Americans how the more people in your plan, the cheaper and more reliable the plan is capable of being for everyone involved in it.

(And they *do* offer it to married couples, which includes common-law marriage by definition. Meaning it's only denied, really, to those who cannot get married. Meaning gays.)

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"Ignoring, of course, that the increased number of payers means a larger pool of income over which to spread the risk. If your group policy price really does go up with number of claims and does not go down based on number of participants, you're being assfucked by your insurance company."

The article clearly states that the college pays the premiums for it's employees. That rate could go up depending on the claim rate among the domestic partners of their employees, and that's what their worried about. We may not agree with that decision, but we don't have the information that went into how they made it, so we aren't in a position to judge.

"And they *do* offer it to married couples, which includes common-law marriage by definition. Meaning it's only denied, really, to those who cannot get married. Meaning gays."

Where are you seeing this in the article? I don't see it stated anywhere that hetero couples are covered. They mention dependendants (ie. children) being covered, but there's nothing about sexual orientation in the article at all. Toss in the in Califournia, the phrase "domestic partner" is a legal term equivalent to common law, and there's really nothing indicating gay rights are even involved here.

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PS: I don't claim to be news. I do, however, not feel bad in the slightest about pointing out the parts of news that really piss me off.

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I'm all for coming out swinging at people who dehumanize homosexuality, but in this case I don't think it's warranted.

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publius1.livejournal.com

It's a little disingenuous to say that domestic partnerships have nothing to do with homosexuality or gay rights. It's fairly obvious that DP's are intended to give gays rights that they wouldn't normally get under the law. Other forms of Significant Other are mainly along for the ride.

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