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I know that the way religious people frame their arguments means they will find some way to weasel out of their beliefs being disproved with an irrational argument (ie. "God won't let you prove he exists, because then you wouldn't need to have faith."). Funny how so many religious people cite scientific studies that found people in hospitals who were prayed for had better recovery rates, but when a double-blind study was performed, where the patients didn't know they were being prayed for, and there was no difference between the prayed-for and not-prayed-for groups, they either ignore it or use it as evidence that god demands faith without proof (never mind that this ignores the faith of those who were prayed-for in the double-blind study).

But this is also why I like certain mixtures of Science and Religion. I love that fact that the Dalai Lama has said that when science and religion conflict, you must go with science, and has encouraged his monks to work with scientists to uncover the mental health benefits of meditation (and they are myriad if you read the published journal studies). Carl Sagan challenged the Dalai Lama on this point, asking if he would even abandon the belief in reincarnation if science disproved it. The Dalai Lama replied that yes he would, but you would find it very hard to disprove such a thing.

This is also why I enjoy the work of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson who spent a lifetime at UVA studying the phenomenon of children remembering past lives that he could take details from and research to see if these people and events did exist and took place. He calls the phenomenon "reincarnation" but is very careful to point out that there is no evidence that a soul is transferring from one person to the next and that some other natural phenomenon could be taking place to explain it. He also provides many case studies where the things a child remembers of a past life are demonstrably false. His work was considered so interesting that a team of researchers continues to investigate it at UVA to this day, and they construct experiments, such as passwords that only one person knows to unlock an account, to see if a child ever comes along after that person dies and can tell it them.

I know this sounds flaky, but it is science and I'm willing to entertain it. At the same time, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... so the research is interesting, but has fantastic hurdles to overcome before anyone can accept it.

> But then again...I guess I can't put the blame on this guy....hey, they taste good.

They have 23 varieties of Doritos chips.

22 of the 23 are rich in Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). That's what makes them taste so good.

MSG is tasty. I don't think MSG is evil, however just like artificial sweeteners that trick our taste buds to thinking we are getting calories, MSG kind of tricks our taste sensors and making our bodies go yeah this is real hearty healthy food with protein and nutrition. Why? Because protein-rich foods are high in Glutamic acid, which provides the Umami flavor. And umami is nice. and MSG is just glutamic acid but with no inherent nutrition or protein.

so, we taste MSG and then we think, mmmmmm, body wants to hoard this (faux) nutrition.... I think I will have 7 pounds of these and just keep eating more and more and more.

Only the special variety that I've NEVER bought --- the one that is Kosher and Milk/Casein free and additive free... --- doesn't have MSG. You can identify that one on this page as the one with the all the icons indicating its specialness.

If i'm gonna have doritos, i want MSG and weird orange color.

But it's important to watch how much consumed in one sitting, because the MSG makes us want to keep eating them, and high amounts of carbs, fat, and salt aren't great for ya. For me, it's the carbs reduction that is helping me lose weight.

According to this site, 49 grams of doritos is 13 grams fat and 28 grams non-fiber carbs. And a 14.5 oz bag of chips is 411 grams.

So multiply by 8 and the bag is 104 grams fat and 224 grams carbs!!!

> But then again...I guess I can't put the blame on this guy....hey, they taste good.

They have 23 varieties of Doritos chips.

22 of the 23 are rich in Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). That's what makes them taste so good.

MSG is tasty. I don't think MSG is evil, however just like artificial sweeteners that trick our taste buds to thinking we are getting calories, MSG kind of tricks our taste sensors and making our bodies go yeah this is real hearty healthy food with protein and nutrition. Why? Because protein-rich foods are high in Glutamic acid, which provides the Umami flavor. And umami is nice. and MSG is just glutamic acid but with no inherent nutrition or protein.

so, we taste MSG and then we think, mmmmmm, body wants to hoard this (faux) nutrition.... I think I will have 7 pounds of these and just keep eating more and more and more.

Only the special variety that I've NEVER bought --- the one that is Kosher and Milk/Casein free and additive free... --- doesn't have MSG. You can identify that one on this page as the one with the all the icons indicating its specialness.

If i'm gonna have doritos, i want MSG and weird orange color.

But it's important to watch how much consumed in one sitting, because the MSG makes us want to keep eating them, and high amounts of carbs, fat, and salt aren't great for ya. For me, it's the carbs reduction that is helping me lose weight.

According to this site, 49 grams of doritos is 13 grams fat and 28 grams non-fiber carbs. And a 14.5 oz bag of chips is 411 grams.

So multiply by 8 and the bag is 104 grams fat and 224 grams carbs!!!

And Judea was one of the last places they would have tolerated it, since it was between Egypt (breadbasket of Rome, where even Senators were not allowed to visit because of the risk that they would start a revolt and cut off the food supply)

I believe that the grain supply from Egypt was delivered to Rome via the Alexandrian grain fleets. It really makes sense, too, if you glance at the map and compare land vs. sea routes. Rome would want the annona tax-in-kind delivered in the most efficient manner possible: it's not as if they had railroads. Furthermore, there really was no purely "land route" anyway, because the first bridge across the straits of Bosphorus wasn't completed until 1973. So, if they had to load that massive amount of grain onto ships at one point or another—regardless of route—why not just take the shorter overall route across the Mare Nostrum?

You are correct that Judea was a crossroads of commerce from the far east and so forth, though. I can't comment on the veracity of the claimed prohibition of Senatorial visits to Egypt.

How many realize that EDRs are installed in nearly all vehicles: "As of 2003, there were at least 40 million vehicles equipped with the devices."[wikipedia] That has more than risen since. I don't say they are the same, but essentially, every new vehicle carries a blackbox which can potentially be accessed by "others" without necessarily enduring a collision. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Event_data_recorder

... a 380 which uses some carbon-fiber in certain areas.

Certain areas like the central wing box, the tail, the leading edges, the central fuselage, etc?

There's not much there that would need a "different architecture", right...? You talk like they just changed a couple of doors or something.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Airbus_A380#Advanced_materials

If that were the case, we should be able to accelerate particles to faster than light speeds. There's nothing that prevents a particle from traveling above c in a material with an index of refraction > 1; see Cherenkov radiation.

You don't understand the article you are reading.

"While electrodynamics holds that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant (c), the speed at which light propagates in a material may be significantly less than c. For example, the speed of the propagation of light in water is only 0.75c. Matter can be accelerated beyond this speed (although still to less than c) during nuclear reactions and in particle accelerators. Cherenkov radiation results when a charged particle, most commonly an electron, travels through a dielectric (electrically polarizable) medium with a speed greater than that at which light would otherwise propagate in the same medium."
emphasis added.

I'm not sure engineers are really thinking about safety for people on the ground with their new designs. The opening paragraph of the 787's Wikipedia page implies that the 787 is a more fuel efficient replacement for the 767, consuming 20% less fuel. At the same time, according to the specifications sections for the 767 and 787, the 787 can carry about 50% more fuel than the 767, which did most of the damage in the September 11 attacks.

Perhaps it would be better if the aviation industry reversed their current trend towards bigger aircraft. We need to make passenger aviation less interesting to terrorists, not more so.

I'm not sure engineers are really thinking about safety for people on the ground with their new designs. The opening paragraph of the 787's Wikipedia page implies that the 787 is a more fuel efficient replacement for the 767, consuming 20% less fuel. At the same time, according to the specifications sections for the 767 and 787, the 787 can carry about 50% more fuel than the 767, which did most of the damage in the September 11 attacks.

Perhaps it would be better if the aviation industry reversed their current trend towards bigger aircraft. We need to make passenger aviation less interesting to terrorists, not more so.

I'm not sure engineers are really thinking about safety for people on the ground with their new designs. The opening paragraph of the 787's Wikipedia page implies that the 787 is a more fuel efficient replacement for the 767, consuming 20% less fuel. At the same time, according to the specifications sections for the 767 and 787, the 787 can carry about 50% more fuel than the 767, which did most of the damage in the September 11 attacks.

Perhaps it would be better if the aviation industry reversed their current trend towards bigger aircraft. We need to make passenger aviation less interesting to terrorists, not more so.

If that were the case, we should be able to accelerate particles to faster than light speeds. There's nothing that prevents a particle from traveling above c in a material with an index of refraction > 1; see Cherenkov radiation.

F and P are easy to you, and all those D's are just as easy to the Punjabi speaker.

Indeed. There is no F phoneme in tagalog or cebuano so it's going to be pretty difficult for a pilipino to differentiate. Not impossible, but in no way easy.

F and P are easy to you, and all those D's are just as easy to the Punjabi speaker.

Indeed. There is no F phoneme in tagalog or cebuano so it's going to be pretty difficult for a pilipino to differentiate. Not impossible, but in no way easy.

Content triggering epilepsy. ....

No. Photosensitive epilepsy is different for each individual. If you have this, it's your responsibility to to avoid triggers.

Is anyone familiar with any other countries that get a the?

Three from memory: "The United States of America." I've also heard "The Sudan" used; Wikipedia suggests and redirects "The Sudan" to "Sudan," but I didn't see an explanation therein, (nor did I look very hard). I've also heard "The Congo" used, which Wikipedia suggests and redirects to a disambiguation page, which is were I stopped.

[H]ow did the the even come about as common usage when referring to Ukraine?

Although it's common usage, it's not proper form...
Short version: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ukraine#Etymology
Long version: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine

Is anyone familiar with any other countries that get a the?

Three from memory: "The United States of America." I've also heard "The Sudan" used; Wikipedia suggests and redirects "The Sudan" to "Sudan," but I didn't see an explanation therein, (nor did I look very hard). I've also heard "The Congo" used, which Wikipedia suggests and redirects to a disambiguation page, which is were I stopped.

[H]ow did the the even come about as common usage when referring to Ukraine?

Although it's common usage, it's not proper form...
Short version: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ukraine#Etymology
Long version: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine

Simple statement: If there is going to be a war -- which there is -- I prefer that fewer of our people die than theirs. Quite rational.

Not so simple. If there is going to be a war, there had better be justification. Proof and overabundance of evidence for the necessity of invasion, even.

You conveniently leave off the next sentence, "As to whether the war was a good idea from the beginning, that's a different issue and quite debatable."

Left off because it could only be supportive or tangential to the point, and your use of the shifting standards fallacy is frequent. But hey, maybe your support, opposition, or mixed-feelings neutrality on the Iraqi invasion somehow makes calling the killing of 600 000+ innocent civilians "efficient" is something other than an indoctrinated abstraction.

Those who have undergone successful government indoctrination do not question the validity of their leaders' wars. However, those who have undergone successful liberal indoctrination do unerringly question the validity of any military action, although there are exceptions for when the liberals are in power.

This presumes people are government indoctrinated or liberal indoctrinated, a false dichotomy since many people are not indoctrinated. (Your skill with fallacies is strong, Winston!) If you want to try baby steps, how about this: Those who have undergone successful indoctrination do not question the validity of their leader's military actions. Those who have not undergone indoctrination always question the validity of any military action. (See how that second one leaves out "leaders," which avoids the "appeal to authority" fallacy?)

From the article:

Translators do not get paid. They do enjoy many perks however, like access to the game text to be translated (not the game itself, god forbid they could actually test their translation within the game and not have to pay for it), and⦠and⦠thatâ(TM)s about it.

Reminds me of something somebody rich and famous once said (no, it was NOT Steve Jobs):

There are two hundred million idiots, manipulated by a million intelligent men.

- Pablo Escobar (Ref: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pablo_Escobar)

(replying to self) Oops, mixed the names up. libvpx is the Google codec. ffvpx is the alternative VP8 decoder, and I think it's still more performant than the libvpx decoder. A new encoder based on the x264 framework is in the works. Other hardware and software implementations are also being developed. You can't pretend it's just one opaque codec owned by Google. WebM might not formally be a standard yet, but it's an open and well specified format.

So I understand. That's pretty much in character for Google anyway: they're incredibly opaque in terms of their internal operations, but remarkably open when it comes to their choice of Internet standards and public APIs. I doubt they'd have bothered with VP8 or anything like it if there'd been an existing standard that was adequate for their needs (both technically and legally.)

Funny, stumbled upon PLAYtern two weeks ago and found it cool. But what I wanted to do was posting videos of me playing Zork on YouTube so I wrote a PHP script that converts ttyrec recordings into a bunch of PNGs and an AviSynth script that generates a video (demo). Different TrueType fonts and much of the VT100 command set is supported but I haven't yet found the time to clean up the code. If you are interested voice yourself and maybe I make a release out of it.

Funny, stumbled upon PLAYtern two weeks ago and found it cool. But what I wanted to do was posting videos of me playing Zork on YouTube so I wrote a PHP script that converts ttyrec recordings into a bunch of PNGs and an AviSynth script that generates a video (demo). Different TrueType fonts and much of the VT100 command set is supported but I haven't yet found the time to clean up the code. If you are interested voice yourself and maybe I make a release out of it.

Have a link, son, and educate yourself.

(replying to self) Oops, mixed the names up. libvpx is the Google codec. ffvpx is the alternative VP8 decoder, and I think it's still more performant than the libvpx decoder. A new encoder based on the x264 framework is in the works. Other hardware and software implementations are also being developed. You can't pretend it's just one opaque codec owned by Google. WebM might not formally be a standard yet, but it's an open and well specified format.

It gets better: rennet, the enzyme used to make cheese, is extracted from these slaughtered calves' stomachs. So if you're against the production of milk due to it causing the slaughter of newborn bovine then stop eating cheese, too. I'll assume that if you're the type to do this, though, that you've already avoided veal on principle.

As for me, I drink milk, I eat cheese, and I avoid veal only because it costs too much. I'm fine with "exploiting" cows for their milk, and insemination to encourage lactation is good animal husbandry. Good tasting meat and well cultured cheese being a byproduct is a benefit in my opinion, not a fault. As long as the animals aren't treated cruelly during life I don't have an ethical or moral objection to the practice. Feel free to join PETA if you disagree, just don't be surprised if I stand with the farmers when you come to "liberate" their livestock.

It gets better: rennet, the enzyme used to make cheese, is extracted from these slaughtered calves' stomachs. So if you're against the production of milk due to it causing the slaughter of newborn bovine then stop eating cheese, too. I'll assume that if you're the type to do this, though, that you've already avoided veal on principle.

As for me, I drink milk, I eat cheese, and I avoid veal only because it costs too much. I'm fine with "exploiting" cows for their milk, and insemination to encourage lactation is good animal husbandry. Good tasting meat and well cultured cheese being a byproduct is a benefit in my opinion, not a fault. As long as the animals aren't treated cruelly during life I don't have an ethical or moral objection to the practice. Feel free to join PETA if you disagree, just don't be surprised if I stand with the farmers when you come to "liberate" their livestock.

My lady who has traveled through Europe says that she was never harassed so much as in Italy,

Because your wife must be an uptight anglo-saxon woman, who doesn't like being complimented by strangers a lot. In countries with "latin" culture, like all of South America and also Spain and Italy, it's socially accepted for a man to yell "que bella ragazza!!!" or similar. Sometimes (playfully) standing in their way. If you do that in any anglo-saxon country, the woman is likely to scream for help. It's a culture thing. Oddly enough, anglo-saxons like to be flattered. Saying "you look so good" to someone will generate a "thank you!" response from an american, but more like "oh please, don't say that" from a mexican.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Complimentary_language_and_gender#Cross-cultural_overview_of_compliments

and she's been to Peru... where she got grabbed and fondled by a stranger the minute she was alone for two minutes

So what did they do to her in Italy? Introduced her to Berlusconi?

I agree with most of your post, except that you say I am misleading. You quote the word "opportunity" and prefer the word "utilize". I used neither of those terms however. I simply said that the rich benefit more....which they indeed do from a financial perspective.

Otherwise, I agree with you mostly. Call it class warfare then, fine with me, it is justified. When the democratic process has failed because the wealthy control the vote....it is justified. I would go so far as to say criminal....but unfortunately the wealthy have had the power to change the laws to legalize their actions.

I would believe he has a degree in engineering. Most creative minds I know have such backgrounds. No surprise there...but he is going to have less and less customers as money continues to be concentrated at the top.

All I know is that I shouldn't be paying a lower tax rate on my capital gains than someone who actually moves heavy stuff. Isn't right. Slashdot has never been a good place to find people with any form of empathy however. Either way, your last statement is where I think most of us agree. No deductions. None. Done. Except maybe for stuff I buy.

Anyway, i found this interesting when doing some reading on the topic
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg

Because we're talking about mines in context of the Ottawa Treaty, not UXO.

You keep bringing up the Ottawa Treaty, which bans land mines. Your support of clever designs in land mines violates the treaty you keep mentioning. Do you know the the US has not signed the Ottawa Treaty?

Killing people automatically is the problem.

Then we have no problem, because we don't do that.

1600-2600 people in Pakistan killed by drones from 2004 to 2011 (for a specific event: NY TImes).

Good point. Convince those people to stop trying to kill us, and we'll stop killing them.

Let's take Iraq as an example. No one from Iraq attacked the US. From 2003 to 2006 the US military killed some 600 000+ people in Iraq, mostly civilians. During which time Iraqis killed some 3000 US and UK soldiers. A reasonable interpretation of the sequence of events is that the US started the killing. This leads to the view that the Iraqis defended themselves against aggressors. A typical ethical position would be for the US to stop killing Iraqis, with the result that Iraqis would probably stop killing their attackers.

The policy is post-Vietnam. More recent policy is post-Desert Storm after we had experience with scatterable mines. Even then, policy says to not use them indiscriminately as in Vietnam, but for specific targets with specific tactical goals just as we would use artillery. We only shot about a thousand groups of these in Desert Storm, and none since.

So the US attacked Vietnam and used a huge number land mines, similar with some kind of policy modifications in 1990s Iraq, and "only shot about a thousand groups of these" during the 2003 invasion of Iraq (emphasis added). Therefore, by your own admission, the US kills people indiscriminately, automatically. The opposite of what you say above.

And the above would put the US is in violation of the Ottawa Treaty, which you and I agree is a pretty good treaty, if the US were a signer.

But I have a feeling all of these facts will fall on deaf ears/blind eyes. You've made up your mind that all of this is EEEEEEVILLLLL! and no facts will get in the way of that.

Comments like this show an emotional attachment to your position. Such attachments make you vulnerable to selecting data, misinformation, and opinions that agree with your position. Facts which disagree with your position make you feel even stronger that you're right. You would like me to consider your views, and reassess mine. I have done so and learned about mine history and policies, and am a little less ignorant thanks to you. Are you willing to do the same?

I dont see those participating in Humble Indie Bundle with problems in marketing... in fact, they are making a good money

Big publishers releases today are mostly just remakes of the same games, with better graphics... in fact, many times the game is even less fun to play, because "all" the development work was put in the graphic and very little on new ideas, the game story, bug fix, balance or simply in the fun of playing!

That is also why humble indie have lots success, most of the games are original and very fun to play, even if sometimes the graphics arent the state or art.

Taking things to extreme, to show that what is important is the fun to play, nethack and Dwarf Fortresshave almost no graphic feedback, yet are very famous, fun to play and people play it for years, even decades!

Tokyo is being evacuated also.

I live in Tokyo. No one is being evacuated. No one has ever been evacuated from here as far as I know, even during the crisis. The blog post you linked, as well as the Al Jazeera broadcast within it, talks about a citizens' group who is trying to tell the government that we need to evacuate.

During the crisis, many other countries "suggested" that their nationals fly back. And some countries had their embassies fly their people out, free of charge. If that's the "evacuation of Tokyo" you're talking about, it's a bit disingenuous.

Anyone could tell that the official reports were downplaying the severity because all of the real hard numbers we got went against what they were saying.

Actually, anyone can measure the background radiation in their area with fairly cheap devices. And many independent people post their findings on aggregated maps. I watched a number of these fairly carefully for a while after the crisis. To put it into perspective, Rome has much higher background radiation than Tokyo, because the granite buildings give off a slight amount.

The news broadcast talked about average people testing the dirt. It's fairly easy. I'd imagine the actual results are similar to the background radiation, but there are no specifics in your linked article about where and how they got their numbers. The soil near the plant is bad, no doubt. But I'd like you to cite a more reliable source for the Tokyo numbers.

There's radiation everywhere in the world. It's the amount and type you have to look at. The "small amount" that can cause illness or cancer that they mention on the Al Jazeera piece is actually one particle. You are being bombarded with multiple particles of radiation every second that you're out on a sunny day or flying in an airplane. Yet one particle, at any time, may hit a part of DNA and screw up the cell's ability to inhibit cancer.

The Al Jazeera segment also shows a borderline abusive mother who won't allow her child to go outside because of her fear. Yet she claims she can't move away from Tokyo (the most expensive place to live in Japan) for financial reasons. And the size of the rooms shown in the news segment suggest a fairly expensive house/apartment in Tokyo. She's probably using the idea of losing her or her husbands job as the excuse. It's cognitive dissonance. If she wanted to, she could easily find a low paying job anywhere outside of Tokyo, live in a slightly smaller place, and live fairly well (because the cost of living would be so much less).

The mother looks like a borderline case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Children like her child are the true casualties, but not in the way your blog posting suggests.

I think it rhymes with "Hadouken"

Unionize and and watch Wally World close down stores.

Actually, according to wikipedia poverty in the US has been raising since between 1970 and 1980. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/US_poverty_rate_timeline.gif

Ragenomics!

All advertising is good advertising.

On the contrary, there is the Osborne Effect

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=operations/puppet.git;a=blob;f=files/puppet/position-of-the-moon;h=c69a3b3735af47abe925a85152b31145591f9b0d;hb=HEAD

#!/usr/bin/env python

import random, sys

#sys.stdout.write('True')
sys.stdout.write(str(random.randint(0, 24) == 5))

Your definition of acid-base chemistry is most frequently referred to as "Arrhenius theory". That theory was refined in 1923 by Bronsted-Lowry acid-base theory, which is based on proton (H+) donors and acceptors. However, both of these theories fail to describe & accommodate Lewis acids and bases, which are defined as "an electron pair acceptor" and "an electron pair donor", respectively. The Bronsted-Lowry and Lewis theories are related, but distinct.

Basic TEMPEST stuff.

Regarding minors and contracts, wikipedia is your friend. In most states, minors certainly can enter into contracts, but have a special privilege to disaffirm/void the contract at any time, in which case they must disaffirm the entire contract and return any consideration. In the case of an EULA, this is probably not much different from anybody's right to stop using the software if they don't like the EULA. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Capacity_(law)

In fact:

Here's a pic. Plenty of green lights down there.

Felgercarb from the original Battlestar: Galactica television series, was used as a censor-approved substitute for "bullsh!t". For your perusal: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Felgercarb#Language

Tropico 4 is a game published by german Kalypso Media and requires you to a) register with an email at kalypsomedia.com and b) log in with those credentials every time you want to play. There is no option to NOT receive their "updates" (you cannot opt-out later either!) and other spam mails and they do not reply to questions regarding this issue ... If it's a privacy violation in Germany, apparently most culprits get away with it.

Tropico 4 is a game published by german Kalypso Media and requires you to a) register with an email at kalypsomedia.com and b) log in with those credentials every time you want to play. There is no option to NOT receive their "updates" (you cannot opt-out later either!) and other spam mails and they do not reply to questions regarding this issue ... If it's a privacy violation in Germany, apparently most culprits get away with it.

I think Obama is trying https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Flexicurity

There has been two truly serious (someone gets hurt) accidents in the 60-year history of nuclear power: Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Um, no: Nuclear and radiation accidents

• - 5 power plant accidents where someone was killed
• - 11 radiation accidents where someone was killed
• - Also worth noting: 19 power plant accidents with >US$100MM in property damage

But maybe they can find Russell's teapot at the same time!

SSI is not a federal income tax. The idea of FICA is that you pay in to it now so you can pull out of it later (when OTHERS are paying in to it). It's supposed to be zero-sum.

You do realize that "FICA" stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax, right? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax

It is a payroll tax, imposed by the federal government. Wordsmith all you like, but it IS a federal income tax. What something is supposed to be is irrelevant. What is is is all that matters.

You're right in general, though getting jumped on for your hyperbole.

This will help you get an idea (it's not the real budget -- but it's not far off) of where the US tax money goes.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html

We do spend close to "more than the rest of the world (combined)" on our military (we certainly spend more than the other top 18 spenders combined). We should stop. Not just because it's a fifth of our expenditure (and it's more than that, really, the real costs of the military and the wars they fight are hidden elsewhere in the budget or in places which simply don't show up in the budget at all -- "supplementary appropriations") but because the military takes people out of society and turns them from people who'd earn money and enrich the state to people who cost us money.

If we took half our military budget and popped it into our education budget, we'd be spending roughly SIX times what we currently do on education. I suspect we could come close to promising everyone born in the US a PhD on that budget, if they wanted one. (Some argue that soldiers make better employees. If so, it's the least cost effective way you could imagine to accomplish that goal.)

And as world war one (and modern US history) teaches us, when you have a military, you find places to use it. Which makes all our other costs go up. If we cut our military budget in half, we'd STILL be spending more than the top five countries combined.

See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures -- it's a little out of date but it gets you the general idea.

Turns out that the problem with what you've pointed out, isn't necessarily stem cell treatments in general, but more so, those people were forced to go to Thailand. Why Thailand? Because it's also doing the treatments, but they're cheaper. This article is about the rich people, going to rich progressive countries, with well trained, and well staffed hospitals, and getting the kind of treatments that the scientifically inept politicians have banned... because, after all, politicians know better than doctors and scientists, especially when it comes to, you know, health care and science.

As such your complete argument is both retarded, and false. This IS happening due to the scientifically inept politicians. Unless you're saying that the Swiss are a reckless people with a terrible health care system. If so, the WHO begs to differ. So, for all your harping on, you're completely wrong, and your discussion on whether or not YOU or your unnamed sources believe it's correct/worthwhile/dangerous, is a red herring.

But thanks for your useless input.

I know a bunch of people who came from Israel and certain other nations for getting treated in India.

Medical tourism as they call it. And it has been on a rise, mostly because of the lower margins in healthcare insurance business. The problem is for people who don't have insurances and can't pay for traveling outside their nation. They are fucked either ways then. :/

1) Demand is growing.

It really isn't.