Now that America's housing market has turned down, what happened to all of the others about which I used to hear? UK, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Denmark, South Africa, among others were often mentioned to have appreciation rates that put American ones to shame. Are they still going strong? Have they stopped? Are they having problems?

Everyone knows Americans pay too much for healthcare.  What many do not know is that, according to the neocons at the OECD, its governments (federal, state, local) spend more per capita on health care than any other country in the world except for Norway and Luxemborg. 

So, how does the rest of the world save so much money when we spend so much?

I do a lot of scripting for data processing and presentation work.  I used to work in UNIX, primarily using SAS, perl, and various UNIX scripts in born shell.  I now work in a much more limited Windows environment.  I am having trouble getting used to the Window command prompt having a much more limited set of commands. 

In the United States, Labor Unions have had a long and notorious history with organized crime.  Jimmy Hoffa controlled the Teamsters and the Mafia basically decides what gets built in New York City, to cite just the two most famous examples.  Unions in the United States are not above viciously assaulting strike breakers and physically threatening management. 

Does Europe have the same problem? 

Yes, I should be using UNIX/LINUX, whatever.  Unfortunately, my employer uses windows XP.  I am trying to create a batch file that will use xcopy to copy selected folders and their contents to another directory.

Given the declining health of Margaret Thatcher, it is time to admire the fruits of the labor of the greatest woman born since the Virgin Mary who saved England and its territories of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland from the specter of socialism and transformed England into the world's most advanced economy, free of unionized tyranny of manufacturing and fully immersed the 21st century service economy.

England, once derisively referred to as the 51st state, the sick man of Europe, or America's unsinkable aircraft carrier, has risen to the proud status of becoming Europe's Manhattan - the unquestioned cultural and financial center of the EU and possibly the planet. 

I keep reading stories on the BBC about how UKia is suffering an epidemic of binge drinking for about at least 10 years now.  Is it really that bad?  Is drunkeness and street crime really that out of control in UKia?  When I read the details, an occasional brawl or someone throwing up, it seems quaint by American standards.  How many american cities, despite vast improvements, would love to have those problems.

Yes, I understand you don't want crapflooding, but I don't think my question was obscene, irrelevant, or unfair *cough* rogerborg *cough*.  If the suburbs and urban center are going to have a dialogue, I think it is fair ro bring up.  If you really don't want this, fine.  It's your site, and I am just a guest.  I accept that. 
 

    

I always wondered why the Japanese put up with the ridiculous hours and bizarre company work habits that they have. Why do that? With their insane high savings rates and still jaw droppingly expensive real estate, why not just cash out and move somewhere cheaper like the US or Canada?

Then, I guy in my dorm from Germany who had worked on engineering Japanese bridges said something. "Cooperation is everything in Japan. In Japan if you don't understand something, a teammate will sit down with you for 14 hours until you understand." Are the Japanese really that commited to the team? For all the team "takes" from a Western perspective, does it really give back in Japan?

I just found out that both US women's soccer and softball have had victories.  Big surprise.  I get the feeling that there are some Olympic sports deliberately set up so that certain countries can get easy wins - usually the United States.  Basketball (though maybe not this year), and women's softball and women's soccer come to mind.  While I will concede that soccer is the world's sport, the rest of the world seems so pathetically far behind in women's teams sports with the exception of progressive Skandinavia and "anything-to-get-a-gold-our-woman-athletles-look-like-the-east-german-ones-from-the-70s" China, that it's hard not to get the impression that it is a gimme to the US.  Are there any other gimme sports, to the US or to other countries?

I think womens sports should be encouraged, thought something doesn't feel right about doing it this way, like a corner that will come back to poke us in ass is being cut.