That's the kind of bubblewrap I like to save for when I trade seeds with other gardeners. Gardenweb.com has a great seed exchange forum, and experienced seed swappers know that seeds need protection in the mail from all the automated sorting equipment. So small pieces of bubblewrap are great for that purpose. Don't know if you garden, but maybe finding some use for the stuff would be a small consolation for the aggravation and waste of junk mail.
I'm sure some North Americans view our British transport system through rose tinted glasses, just as some will be blind to its successes. Of course it isn't perfect. I'm bi-located in London and Brighton. London's public transport is a mix of good intention and foundering infrastructure. It takes me an hour to get to work by bus, it would take half that by tube but be less comfortable. The buses are clean and usually bearably crowded and frequent. There are bike lanes and provision is increasing but of course there's never enough. The clincher for me is cost. My monthly bus ticket costs £50 for no limits bus travel and a single journey ticket costs just 90p. Brighton has a good bus service but more expensive. There are bike lanes but again not enough. Still the town is relatively cycle friendly.
What people need to consider though is not just urban transport but national transport. Like most Britons I complain constantly about our train system but it gets me where I'm going at a reasonable price most of the time. Frankly almost any honest person will admit that many of the severe problems began with deregulation (quasi-privatisation). My experience in Europe convinces me that a national rail service needs to be nationalised.
Yum! I love homemade pudding! (Especially the pudding skin.) I agree that if you want something natural, homemade is the way to go. I would love to do this sometime!
I am in the car appearance business,where I have to repair dents sometimes.I have a set of PDR (paintless dent removal)tools,but they are not that great to use.So I decided to look up better ways to remove dents ,and came across videos like the ones shown for dent removal.Let me tell you I think it's BS!!! I specifically used dry ice on the same kind of dents,sizes etc.. and had no luck.I have a heat gun also,which brought the paint temp. up to 257 degrees and I then applied dry ice and had no luck.I even tried on another day and different car and it still doesent work!! Don't get your hopes up of saving money on crap that don't work..
Real pudding is very very simple to make in a microwave, and you don't have to buy packaged anything. You control what goes into it--none of those extra chemicals--just cornstarch, sugar, milk, flavoring (vanilla, chocolate, etc) and eggs if you want them as they're not really necessary. It won't scorch in a microwave and you can make as much as you want. Try it--it cooks 12 minutes in mine and I have a low-wattage one. You can mix up the dry ingredients ahead of time if you want, keep them in a jar, and have your own pudding mix.
I've never tried the 12V battery one, but I know for a fact that SOME 9V batteries can be opened up to yield six 1.5V cells, that are roughly the same size as AAA's. Other 9V batteries have a different size/shape of cell in them.
Also, it should be noted that the 1.5V cells that you get out of a 9V battery don't have the little tit on the end, and therefore might not be able to make contact with whatever device you intend to use it in.
James Michener said: "A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing.
As this quote suggests, the challenge is to develop a career for yourself that is flexible and that you enjoy enough that you can "live to work" instead of just "working to live".
That's why I work online, on my own businesses, and help other people do the same. Life is too short to spend it making other people rich.
Scott Fox The E-Commerce Success Blog
That's why once the temperatures got past 85 degrees and the humidity stays above 50% I do not bike to work. I'll walk or bus if I have no imperative places to go ontime. I save up worse than ever all of my driving trips for an afternoon and route planned. Not many cars are being made with clutches but I coast alot by engaging my clutch like the way I bike, especially on hills and the traffic is light around me.
the sprayer attaches to garden hose ,as the water is turn on and the water runs thru the sprayer it sucks up the tonic from the sprayer in which mixes the right amount of water.If your sprayer has adjustment set it as close to 3.6 oz as possible .as your hose sprays 1 gallon of water then 3.6 oz of tonic mixed with that 1 gallon will go on your lawn.simple?
My poor Husband has been working 24/7 for years, now.
He works at his main job on Mon-Fri, and that's usually around 50+ hours, then on Sat-Sun, he works a weekend job, usually about 8 hours each day.
He is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO depressed these days.
He has time to do NOTHING.
Our kids are 9 and 5, and he's barely seeing them grow up.
He sees them at night, (tonight and all this week, he's gotten home at 8pm, after going in at 6am.) and he sees them a little on the weekend, when his hours are more normal (8-4pm)
He enjoys golfing, fishing, spending time with friends, etc....but gets time to do NONE of it.
Sometimes on Fri and Sat nights, he'll "chill out" with a few beers and socialize with the neighbors, and he has so much fun, he'll stay up WAY WAY too late, and then DRAGS himself around the whole next day.
He was just trying to enjoy life!!
I don't work, and the guilt is thick for me. But I watch the kids all day, and that in itself, would cost as much as I would make at a job, and someone ELSE would be raising them, which is NOT acceptable to us.
When they go to school full time, I intend to get some sort of job, but I have no skills, and no talents, so it won't be much.
It never was for me.
My Husband just wants his family to have all the things he couldn't have when he was growing up. (they were pretty poor.)
He wants us to move ahead. He wants a new place to live for us, instead of living here in the center of town, away from the nature that our kids love so much.
He wants it all for us, even though I remind him all the time, that what WE want, is all of HIM.
Pretty soon the kids will be too old to care about "family time", or fishing with Dad, and that breaks my heart.
He needs to stop this, YESTERDAY!!!!
His entire body hurts all the time. His bones ache, his shoulder hurts when he lifts it up. His legs are so sore, he can't even take a nice walk with us at night, or slowly stroll the local carnival. He doesn't even enjoy fishing anymore lately, because it's just too much "work" to fish.
He's in great shape, but I worry everyday, that his body will suddenly give out.
He can't take much more of this, and neither can we.
That's what you get for living the American Dream.
You work around the clock for peanuts, live in a roach infested house (they are not REAL roaches...another species of cockroach, not like the NYC ones you think of!) and barely scrape by when the food and gas prices go up, and gradually dip into your tiny savings account that you worked SOOOO hard to build up (the highest has only ever been about $3000.) just to put food on the table and feed the dog, and stay in your little, crappy, no closets, row home, where you can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel.
That's the American Dream.
That's how MOST of America lives.
And we can't figure out how to have better lives and help ourselves as a nation. (for a start, let's NOT help EVERYONE ELSE!!!! Eh???? Ehhhh?????? Light Bulb moment here?? Ehhh?!!?)
I'm not impressed.
Sorry, but I would NOT die for this country, and I would NOT allow my kids to, either. (I'd knock them out and smuggle them into Canada if I had to, to keep them from war!)
There's a whole world out there, beyond borders and map lines.
And we'll live our whole lives, doing the SAME crap, every single day, just to survive, have a cell phone, and a car that gets you there....AND back!
Somewhere along the lines, Humans lost their way, and no one even cares enough to TRY and get back on the right path.
And no, I don't even know what the right path is.
But there's gotta be something better than THIS.
Yay Kevin! You were thinking many of the same things I was :) I've seen many successful programs in my community as well. And no, I'm not going to name them, Kelja. You made the claim that no programs were effective and efficient, the burden of proof is on you. Besides, I live here and you don't.
I think we're all agreed that no one's health care system (or insurance) is perfect :)
I would just like to thank you for such an informative post, and having the dedication to keep up with people asking the same 4 questions with different wording for such an extensive amount of time. You should just add at the end of the article that if people have any further questions to just read the comments. The comments go far and above what the original article and by comment 60 there was nothing left that you hadn't already repeated at least 3 times. Again thank you for the information and happy brewing.
Just cut and sell your own hair and then donate the money you get to the charity of your choice, because then you know that it is truly for a good cause and there is no way you are getting scammed.
We had those growing up too! I don't know how us kids didn't lose the sticks... mine would have them in the trash in no time. Thanks for bringing back those good memories, Michelle!
When I was growing up, all of our popsicles and fudgesicles were made in special Tupperware keepers. Fruit popsicles were made from Jell-O and Kool-Aid, and fudgesicles made with pudding mix and milk. I recommend picking up the popsicle holders if you find them at a garage sale, etc., as they are easy to hold. They look like this:
"Wasteful, Inefficient companies in the real world get punished by the market and go bankrupt."
Halliburton, Exxon, and AT&T are all wasteful yet successful companies.
"Government programs, no matter how wasteful and stupid, don't ever go away."
The Civilian Conservation Corps is the first disbanded government agency that comes to mind. There are others.
"Anything a federal agency can do, private enterprise could do better."
That's one heck of a broad claim and I really doubt it could be defended against every real or hypothetical service. Why were private firefighting services abandoned for municipal ones?
In most cases it's an apples-to-oranges comparison anyway because companies can select their clients while government agencies are beholden to service everyone. FedEx can close unprofitable branches, but USPS is beholden to service practically everywhere. Getting back on topic, Medicare has to cover everyone over a certain age yet private insurers can choose to avoid expensive individuals.
I did have crappy experiences with long lines and surly service at the post office back in the 1980s when I lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It may be that the difference these past 20 years has more to do with moving to the Midwest than with any change in the Post Office.
On the other hand, at the Post Office there actually is someone there at the counter when I go in. At my (soon to be former) health insurance provider there was not even an "in" to go to. Routine claims were processed well enough, but anything out of the ordinary landed you in a nightmare of calling and speaking to someone for whom English was a second language, working from a script, the purpose of which was to find some way to deny your claim.
Wow, holding up the USPO as the paragon of effeciency!
We have vastly different experiences. As part of a business, I have sent out hundreds of thousands of piece of mail through the U.S. mails. A good of percentage of mail that was either destroyed or never received by recipients was sadly expected. It was, after all the post office.
Maybe your local post office is different, but I've enjoyed lines that would be the envy anywhere in Eastern Europe during the old Soviet era. Haven't you had the experience where one or more of the clerks has simply taken a break when there's a long line of customers?
Inefficiency has always been part of the Post Office. If not, alternative delivery services wouldn't have been born and prospered - UPS, FedEX, etc.
My dad got a job at the post office in the 1940's when he was a teenager. Too many of the men were off fighting the war. First day he delivered the mail, he was too quick. He finished his route early and came back to the post office to find out what else he could do. The supervisor's eyes got real wide and he yelled, 'what are you doing back here so soon?'. When my dad told him he finished delivering the mail, the supervisor told him to go hide somewhere - a poolhall, a friend's house, anywhere, but not to show back at the post office until the end of the day.
Do you think the USPO has changed that much?
And, Kevin ------------ you have to be kidding!
Wasteful, Inefficient companies in the real world get punished by the market and go bankrupt. Anyone who's run a company is acutely aware of that fact! Government programs, no matter how wasteful and stupid, don't ever go away.
You mention the Coast Guard, a branch of the military I have a high regard for. It might do a good job at what they do, but like the rest of the military, it's laughable how wasteful they are.
Anything a federal agency can do, private enterprise could do better.
Making a game of trying to put my foot on the gas as little as possible and making use of the forward motion of all the hills and slopes I run into. Also drifting to stops whenever I can rather than accelerating & then braking. Seems like a lot of other folks are doing it, too! Although sometimes I get tailgaters who just won't go into the faster lane -
I wouldn't really call myself a believer in "big government," but I'll take a stab at your challenge.
Let's begin by agreeing that you can only talk about effectiveness and efficiency at some particular goal. With that in mind, if you'll let me define the goal as "provide universal delivery of letters at a uniform price," I'll nominate the Post Office as an effective, efficient government program.
I know that it's held up as an example of the opposite, and it's true that it's been partially privitized, but I think it may qualify.
It's effective--I send letters all over the country, and I've never had a verified instance of the letter not reaching its destination, usually within just a few days.
It's efficient--it costs only 42 cents to send a letter.
It's also very versatile. My DVDs from NetFlix are routinely delivered, unbroken, in one business day. (Not something that was envisioned when postal systems were created.)
Courier services are barred from competing directly--but I've never seen one that even wanted to compete, in the sense of providing universal service at a uniform price. The closest equivalent service that they do provide costs several dollars.
Fifteen years ago, the rallying cry of the forces opposing the Clinton health care plan was "Do you want a health care system with all the efficiency and compassion of the Post Office?" At the time, that was a statement that gave me pause. Since then, though, both the coverage and the service of the health insurance my former employer offered got worse and worse. (Although still pretty good, especially if you're not sick.) At this point, I'd say that the efficiency and compassion of the Post Office would be a step up.
I for one have resisted answering your challenge because "efficient" and "effective" are both ill defined terms that are defined relative to an individual world view. I suspect that we have different operational definitions of those two terms, so suggesting examples will lead us down a distracting sidebar debate.
That being said, I have been impressed with the effectiveness of DARPA, NSF, NOAA, my county parks department, community college programs, and the Coast Guard, relative to the size of their budgets. You may not agree, and that's fine, but I don't think debating these programs will be productive.
There are certainly some ineffective and wasteful government programs, but the same can be said of corporations and individuals. You can't prove by example.
I second the idea of using ice cube trays (with sticks, even) for the mold, but I got my mold at Ikea for less than $2 and I love it. Be sure to run the mold under hot water before you try to remove the popsicle - otherwise everything tends to stay frozen together.
We used the same molds you recommend for the frozen fruit bars and poured in a batch of instant pudding for our pudding pops. It's cheaper than using the pre-made stuff (which tastes kinda funny to me for some reason) and it lets you choose how much goes on each popsicle.
When i was a kid we would just pour juice into an empty ice cube tray and eat the frozen juice cubes. You can blend them to make a good slush-like treat as well. Plus, you don't have to buy special molds, and you can probably get a few trays at your local dollar store on the cheap.
That's the kind of bubblewrap I like to save for when I trade seeds with other gardeners. Gardenweb.com has a great seed exchange forum, and experienced seed swappers know that seeds need protection in the mail from all the automated sorting equipment. So small pieces of bubblewrap are great for that purpose. Don't know if you garden, but maybe finding some use for the stuff would be a small consolation for the aggravation and waste of junk mail.
I'm sure some North Americans view our British transport system through rose tinted glasses, just as some will be blind to its successes. Of course it isn't perfect. I'm bi-located in London and Brighton. London's public transport is a mix of good intention and foundering infrastructure. It takes me an hour to get to work by bus, it would take half that by tube but be less comfortable. The buses are clean and usually bearably crowded and frequent. There are bike lanes and provision is increasing but of course there's never enough. The clincher for me is cost. My monthly bus ticket costs £50 for no limits bus travel and a single journey ticket costs just 90p. Brighton has a good bus service but more expensive. There are bike lanes but again not enough. Still the town is relatively cycle friendly.
What people need to consider though is not just urban transport but national transport. Like most Britons I complain constantly about our train system but it gets me where I'm going at a reasonable price most of the time. Frankly almost any honest person will admit that many of the severe problems began with deregulation (quasi-privatisation). My experience in Europe convinces me that a national rail service needs to be nationalised.
Yum! I love homemade pudding! (Especially the pudding skin.) I agree that if you want something natural, homemade is the way to go. I would love to do this sometime!
I am in the car appearance business,where I have to repair dents sometimes.I have a set of PDR (paintless dent removal)tools,but they are not that great to use.So I decided to look up better ways to remove dents ,and came across videos like the ones shown for dent removal.Let me tell you I think it's BS!!! I specifically used dry ice on the same kind of dents,sizes etc.. and had no luck.I have a heat gun also,which brought the paint temp. up to 257 degrees and I then applied dry ice and had no luck.I even tried on another day and different car and it still doesent work!! Don't get your hopes up of saving money on crap that don't work..
Real pudding is very very simple to make in a microwave, and you don't have to buy packaged anything. You control what goes into it--none of those extra chemicals--just cornstarch, sugar, milk, flavoring (vanilla, chocolate, etc) and eggs if you want them as they're not really necessary. It won't scorch in a microwave and you can make as much as you want. Try it--it cooks 12 minutes in mine and I have a low-wattage one. You can mix up the dry ingredients ahead of time if you want, keep them in a jar, and have your own pudding mix.
I've never tried the 12V battery one, but I know for a fact that SOME 9V batteries can be opened up to yield six 1.5V cells, that are roughly the same size as AAA's. Other 9V batteries have a different size/shape of cell in them.
Also, it should be noted that the 1.5V cells that you get out of a 9V battery don't have the little tit on the end, and therefore might not be able to make contact with whatever device you intend to use it in.
James Michener said:
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing.
To himself, he always seems to be doing both."
[http://www.365motivationalquotes.com/2008/04/the-master-in-t.html]
As this quote suggests, the challenge is to develop a career for yourself that is flexible and that you enjoy enough that you can "live to work" instead of just "working to live".
That's why I work online, on my own businesses, and help other people do the same. Life is too short to spend it making other people rich.
Scott Fox
The E-Commerce Success Blog
That's why once the temperatures got past 85 degrees and the humidity stays above 50% I do not bike to work. I'll walk or bus if I have no imperative places to go ontime. I save up worse than ever all of my driving trips for an afternoon and route planned. Not many cars are being made with clutches but I coast alot by engaging my clutch like the way I bike, especially on hills and the traffic is light around me.
the sprayer attaches to garden hose ,as the water is turn on and the water runs thru the sprayer it sucks up the tonic from the sprayer in which mixes the right amount of water.If your sprayer has adjustment set it as close to 3.6 oz as possible .as your hose sprays 1 gallon of water then 3.6 oz of tonic mixed with that 1 gallon will go on your lawn.simple?
My poor Husband has been working 24/7 for years, now.
He works at his main job on Mon-Fri, and that's usually around 50+ hours, then on Sat-Sun, he works a weekend job, usually about 8 hours each day.
He is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO depressed these days.
He has time to do NOTHING.
Our kids are 9 and 5, and he's barely seeing them grow up.
He sees them at night, (tonight and all this week, he's gotten home at 8pm, after going in at 6am.) and he sees them a little on the weekend, when his hours are more normal (8-4pm)
He enjoys golfing, fishing, spending time with friends, etc....but gets time to do NONE of it.
Sometimes on Fri and Sat nights, he'll "chill out" with a few beers and socialize with the neighbors, and he has so much fun, he'll stay up WAY WAY too late, and then DRAGS himself around the whole next day.
He was just trying to enjoy life!!
I don't work, and the guilt is thick for me. But I watch the kids all day, and that in itself, would cost as much as I would make at a job, and someone ELSE would be raising them, which is NOT acceptable to us.
When they go to school full time, I intend to get some sort of job, but I have no skills, and no talents, so it won't be much.
It never was for me.
My Husband just wants his family to have all the things he couldn't have when he was growing up. (they were pretty poor.)
He wants us to move ahead. He wants a new place to live for us, instead of living here in the center of town, away from the nature that our kids love so much.
He wants it all for us, even though I remind him all the time, that what WE want, is all of HIM.
Pretty soon the kids will be too old to care about "family time", or fishing with Dad, and that breaks my heart.
He needs to stop this, YESTERDAY!!!!
His entire body hurts all the time. His bones ache, his shoulder hurts when he lifts it up. His legs are so sore, he can't even take a nice walk with us at night, or slowly stroll the local carnival. He doesn't even enjoy fishing anymore lately, because it's just too much "work" to fish.
He's in great shape, but I worry everyday, that his body will suddenly give out.
He can't take much more of this, and neither can we.
That's what you get for living the American Dream.
You work around the clock for peanuts, live in a roach infested house (they are not REAL roaches...another species of cockroach, not like the NYC ones you think of!) and barely scrape by when the food and gas prices go up, and gradually dip into your tiny savings account that you worked SOOOO hard to build up (the highest has only ever been about $3000.) just to put food on the table and feed the dog, and stay in your little, crappy, no closets, row home, where you can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel.
That's the American Dream.
That's how MOST of America lives.
And we can't figure out how to have better lives and help ourselves as a nation. (for a start, let's NOT help EVERYONE ELSE!!!! Eh???? Ehhhh?????? Light Bulb moment here?? Ehhh?!!?)
I'm not impressed.
Sorry, but I would NOT die for this country, and I would NOT allow my kids to, either. (I'd knock them out and smuggle them into Canada if I had to, to keep them from war!)
There's a whole world out there, beyond borders and map lines.
And we'll live our whole lives, doing the SAME crap, every single day, just to survive, have a cell phone, and a car that gets you there....AND back!
Somewhere along the lines, Humans lost their way, and no one even cares enough to TRY and get back on the right path.
And no, I don't even know what the right path is.
But there's gotta be something better than THIS.
Rant over.
Yay Kevin! You were thinking many of the same things I was :) I've seen many successful programs in my community as well. And no, I'm not going to name them, Kelja. You made the claim that no programs were effective and efficient, the burden of proof is on you. Besides, I live here and you don't.
I think we're all agreed that no one's health care system (or insurance) is perfect :)
I would just like to thank you for such an informative post, and having the dedication to keep up with people asking the same 4 questions with different wording for such an extensive amount of time. You should just add at the end of the article that if people have any further questions to just read the comments. The comments go far and above what the original article and by comment 60 there was nothing left that you hadn't already repeated at least 3 times. Again thank you for the information and happy brewing.
Just cut and sell your own hair and then donate the money you get to the charity of your choice, because then you know that it is truly for a good cause and there is no way you are getting scammed.
We had those growing up too! I don't know how us kids didn't lose the sticks... mine would have them in the trash in no time. Thanks for bringing back those good memories, Michelle!
When I was growing up, all of our popsicles and fudgesicles were made in special Tupperware keepers. Fruit popsicles were made from Jell-O and Kool-Aid, and fudgesicles made with pudding mix and milk. I recommend picking up the popsicle holders if you find them at a garage sale, etc., as they are easy to hold. They look like this:
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/scavenger-ebay/ebay-scavenger-tupperw...
"Wasteful, Inefficient companies in the real world get punished by the market and go bankrupt."
Halliburton, Exxon, and AT&T are all wasteful yet successful companies.
"Government programs, no matter how wasteful and stupid, don't ever go away."
The Civilian Conservation Corps is the first disbanded government agency that comes to mind. There are others.
"Anything a federal agency can do, private enterprise could do better."
That's one heck of a broad claim and I really doubt it could be defended against every real or hypothetical service. Why were private firefighting services abandoned for municipal ones?
In most cases it's an apples-to-oranges comparison anyway because companies can select their clients while government agencies are beholden to service everyone. FedEx can close unprofitable branches, but USPS is beholden to service practically everywhere. Getting back on topic, Medicare has to cover everyone over a certain age yet private insurers can choose to avoid expensive individuals.
I did have crappy experiences with long lines and surly service at the post office back in the 1980s when I lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It may be that the difference these past 20 years has more to do with moving to the Midwest than with any change in the Post Office.
On the other hand, at the Post Office there actually is someone there at the counter when I go in. At my (soon to be former) health insurance provider there was not even an "in" to go to. Routine claims were processed well enough, but anything out of the ordinary landed you in a nightmare of calling and speaking to someone for whom English was a second language, working from a script, the purpose of which was to find some way to deny your claim.
I'll take the Post Office any day.
Wow, holding up the USPO as the paragon of effeciency!
We have vastly different experiences. As part of a business, I have sent out hundreds of thousands of piece of mail through the U.S. mails. A good of percentage of mail that was either destroyed or never received by recipients was sadly expected. It was, after all the post office.
Maybe your local post office is different, but I've enjoyed lines that would be the envy anywhere in Eastern Europe during the old Soviet era. Haven't you had the experience where one or more of the clerks has simply taken a break when there's a long line of customers?
Inefficiency has always been part of the Post Office. If not, alternative delivery services wouldn't have been born and prospered - UPS, FedEX, etc.
My dad got a job at the post office in the 1940's when he was a teenager. Too many of the men were off fighting the war. First day he delivered the mail, he was too quick. He finished his route early and came back to the post office to find out what else he could do. The supervisor's eyes got real wide and he yelled, 'what are you doing back here so soon?'. When my dad told him he finished delivering the mail, the supervisor told him to go hide somewhere - a poolhall, a friend's house, anywhere, but not to show back at the post office until the end of the day.
Do you think the USPO has changed that much?
And, Kevin ------------ you have to be kidding!
Wasteful, Inefficient companies in the real world get punished by the market and go bankrupt. Anyone who's run a company is acutely aware of that fact! Government programs, no matter how wasteful and stupid, don't ever go away.
You mention the Coast Guard, a branch of the military I have a high regard for. It might do a good job at what they do, but like the rest of the military, it's laughable how wasteful they are.
Anything a federal agency can do, private enterprise could do better.
Making a game of trying to put my foot on the gas as little as possible and making use of the forward motion of all the hills and slopes I run into. Also drifting to stops whenever I can rather than accelerating & then braking. Seems like a lot of other folks are doing it, too! Although sometimes I get tailgaters who just won't go into the faster lane -
@Kelja:
I wouldn't really call myself a believer in "big government," but I'll take a stab at your challenge.
Let's begin by agreeing that you can only talk about effectiveness and efficiency at some particular goal. With that in mind, if you'll let me define the goal as "provide universal delivery of letters at a uniform price," I'll nominate the Post Office as an effective, efficient government program.
I know that it's held up as an example of the opposite, and it's true that it's been partially privitized, but I think it may qualify.
It's effective--I send letters all over the country, and I've never had a verified instance of the letter not reaching its destination, usually within just a few days.
It's efficient--it costs only 42 cents to send a letter.
It's also very versatile. My DVDs from NetFlix are routinely delivered, unbroken, in one business day. (Not something that was envisioned when postal systems were created.)
Courier services are barred from competing directly--but I've never seen one that even wanted to compete, in the sense of providing universal service at a uniform price. The closest equivalent service that they do provide costs several dollars.
Fifteen years ago, the rallying cry of the forces opposing the Clinton health care plan was "Do you want a health care system with all the efficiency and compassion of the Post Office?" At the time, that was a statement that gave me pause. Since then, though, both the coverage and the service of the health insurance my former employer offered got worse and worse. (Although still pretty good, especially if you're not sick.) At this point, I'd say that the efficiency and compassion of the Post Office would be a step up.
@Kelja
I for one have resisted answering your challenge because "efficient" and "effective" are both ill defined terms that are defined relative to an individual world view. I suspect that we have different operational definitions of those two terms, so suggesting examples will lead us down a distracting sidebar debate.
That being said, I have been impressed with the effectiveness of DARPA, NSF, NOAA, my county parks department, community college programs, and the Coast Guard, relative to the size of their budgets. You may not agree, and that's fine, but I don't think debating these programs will be productive.
There are certainly some ineffective and wasteful government programs, but the same can be said of corporations and individuals. You can't prove by example.
I second the idea of using ice cube trays (with sticks, even) for the mold, but I got my mold at Ikea for less than $2 and I love it. Be sure to run the mold under hot water before you try to remove the popsicle - otherwise everything tends to stay frozen together.
Never heard of that, but it sounds incredible. I will be slicing in minutes....
We used the same molds you recommend for the frozen fruit bars and poured in a batch of instant pudding for our pudding pops. It's cheaper than using the pre-made stuff (which tastes kinda funny to me for some reason) and it lets you choose how much goes on each popsicle.
When i was a kid we would just pour juice into an empty ice cube tray and eat the frozen juice cubes. You can blend them to make a good slush-like treat as well. Plus, you don't have to buy special molds, and you can probably get a few trays at your local dollar store on the cheap.