You're right, I moved the decimal place, but that is still a significant chance and I do not see how you are in a position to tell someone that they cannot defend themselves.
The numbers I found said that there were over 75,000 violent crimes in New York City in 2010 (the most recent year I could find numbers for). While that is low, it means that your chance of being the victim of violent crime in NYC is just shy of 10%.
You obviously have not been listening to the solutions the GLobal Warming Alarmists have proposed. They are not talking about just "green initiatives". They are talking about determining who can, and cannot, emit carbon dioxide. That amounts to regulating all aspects of economic activity. The idea that regulating CO2 is the same sort of effort as regulating SO2 is ludicrous.
There have, however, been other centrally planned economies. They have always had poorer economic performance than free market economies. What makes you think that centrally planning the entire world's economy would work better than doing so on a smaller scale?
As I said, Global Warming Alarmists are calling for centrally planned economies. Centrally planned economies have always caused immensely more environmental damage than free market economies.
They live in some sort of libertarian/conservative Post Modern construct where they're told that THEIR reality is as valid as anyone else's.
You know I believe that is the first time I have ever seen conservatism linked to postmodernism. Most conservatives that I know categorically reject postmodernism. Additionally, most of the people I know who hold to postmodernism are staunch supporters of AGW.
You just proved a point I made a couple of posts up. Someone said that "deniers" don't want to allow anyone to make the argument for Anthropogenic Global Warming and I pointed out that that was just not true. It is the Alarmists who want to silence those who disagree with them. Then a couple of posts down, here you come and prove me right by saying that anyone who disagrees with your understanding of Global Warming and thus does not want to give the government the authority to centrally plan all aspects of the world economy is a mass murderer and should be treated as such.
Let's keep in mind that the deniers don't even want mention of the possibility that we humans just might be making a real mess of the eco system that we rely upon to exist.
I just love how Global Warming Alarmists lump everybody who disagrees with them in to one group. Personally, I have never met anyone who opposes allowing people to argue for Anthropogenic Global Warming, yet I have heard numerous Global Warming Alarmists say that those who disagree with them should be silenced.
This is something I have noticed that those who propose government control of all aspects of our lives (as Global Warming Alarmists do) will do, they will accuse their opposition of supporting tactics that their own side openly espouses.
There was actually very little disagreement over the size of the earth, even in Columbus' time. Columbus was a crackpot who got lucky. North America was the distance from Europe that he calculated Asia should be. Ferdinand and Isabella were desperate for a trade route to Asia that did not rely on travel through Muslim lands (having just finished gaining control of Spain from the Muslims). Additionally, Portugal had been granted the trade routes around Africa by the Pope (and had thoroughly established control of them in any case).
The only people who claimed the earth was flat at any time in history were considered, in their own time, to be cranks and crackpots on the order of Lyndon LaRouche and his followers.
As to whether you believe in climate change being caused by humanity, what's the harm in believing it if it means we make less of an impact on the climate? A few bucks here and there?
The "harm" is that the global warming alarmists are promoting a program of central planning of the world's economy to "combat global warming".Central planning of the economy has consistently been proven to result in poorer economic performance, increased human hunger, and damage to the environment. So, basically, we have people who, in the name of protecting the environment, are promoting a program that has been demonstrated repeatedly to cause harm to the environment.
No, I am saying it is unlikely to happen because modern medicine is capable of treating a flu pandemic as is evidenced by what happened in every flu pandemic since 1919. It is not as if the last major outbreak of a flu pandemic was the 1918-19 occurrence. There have been three flu pandemics since 1918 and none of them have been anywhere close to as devastating as the 1918 outbreak. So, this is not a case of being a pollyanna, it is a case of looking at the history of flu epidemics and noticing that the last major outbreak occurred before the development of modern medicine.
Does this mean that I think that those who work in public health should not consider the possibilty of a 1918-19 like flu outbreak? No. It just means that I think that those of us not involved in the public health field don't need to spend any time worrying about it, since the evidence suggests that it is highly unlikely.
I am confused as to what your response has to do with the part of my post you quoted. However, in later portions of my post, I pointed out why it is improbable that we will have a reccurrence of the 1918-19 flu pandemic, as that one occurred before the development of modern medicine.
Well, it would be hard for the next flu pandemic to not be worse that the last one, since the last flu pandemic killed fewer people in the U.S. than the flu usually kills each year (I do not have worldwide numbers, but my impression is that they were pretty low as well).
The problem with discussions of flu pandemics is that a significant number of people trot out the 1918-19 flu pandemic as what we should be afraid of. The problem with that is twofold. First, it came right on the heals of WWI, with most of the developed world not yet having recovered from the devestation of that event. Second, and more importantly, it was the last flu pandemic before the development of modern medicine (which I date to the development of the first antimicrobial drugs in the 1930s, the sulfonamides). Unless there is a complete collapse of our modern medical establishment, we will not see a repeat of the 1918-19 flu pandemic.
The thing is that for most people acetaminophen is utterly harmless up until the point where it causes severe irreversible liver damage. Additionally, it is a very effective complimentary pain killer (that is, it amplifies the effectiveness of other pain killers).
Of course the main problem with acetaminophen is that, unlike most other drugs, there is both a short-term and longer term overdose level. Dosages that are completely safe for the first three days become deadly if continued into a fourth day (I do not remember the numbers, but there is a dosage that is significantly lower than the dangerous daily dose that can be terminal if taken daily for more than three days, with the window extending up to somewhere around 6 days to 2 weeks).
Not my (or your) problem. I want access to that information because I can make use of it. I am not going to stop consulting my doctor, but having access to my medical records helps me to know whether a symptom is a sign of something that requires treatment or if it is something transient (I have several issues that flare up every so often that mimic warning indicators for very serious health problems, because I am aware of the issues I know to check the symptoms for secondary symptoms that accompany those symptoms if the serious problem is occurring).
The problem is not noting that the patient apparently has an overeating problem, the problem is referring to it in pejorative terms. Additionally, doctors should be very cautious in making such a diagnosis, I have known three women who had a rare thyroid problem that their doctor's misdiagnosed as overeating for 5 or so years (it is an extremely rare, progressive disorder that the doctors never thought to look for--probably were unaware of--until it had reached a point where the conflicting symptoms no longer disguised it). Most of these women's friends(completely different groups, none of these women knew each other and I and one other person were the only common friends among any of them) thought the doctors were correct, except in one case where about three of us realized that one of them ate very little and yet was gaining weight (one of the three was the woman's roommate).
You know what? In the cases where that happens, that's not really anybody's problem except those who did it to themselves. It is not your (nor society's) responsibility to prevent those people from making those mistakes.
I will give a perfect counter example. When my sister was an infant, she had a fall where she severely injured her head. This has led to serious neurological problems for her throughout her life. While she was in high school, she was diagnosed as having petit mal epilepsy (this later turned out to be a minor misdiagnosis, the actual disorder has similar symptoms, but different neurological causes). The thing is, she had been having seizures for about 5 years at that point and no one noticed. Her seizures were what are known as "absence" seizures where she would just stare off into space for a few seconds to a few minutes or she would continue doing whatever repetitive action she had been doing when it started (such as walking in a particular direction). It was diagnosed when a particularly astute gym teacher observed one in gym class. Except that it turns out that the neurologist my parents had been taking her since just after the fall was aware that epilepsy(the distinction between epilepsy and her actual disorder was not made at that time) was a significant possibility with this sort of brain injury and never told my parents to watch for the symptoms. If my parents had been aware of this possibility, it is probable that my sister would have been diagnosed much sooner and would have avoided many of the discipline problems she had in school (teachers were often upset with her failure to pay attention or follow instruction, when in fact, she had probably been suffering a seizure).
I happen to have Gilbert Syndrome and there's really no reason why I even need to know about that, at least not unless I come into the doctor worried about jaundice.
You mention one reason for you to be aware of the fact that you have Gilbert's Syndrome (recognizing that mild jaundice is not a cause for you to be concerned). I was unfamiliar with Gilbert's Syndrome, so I googled it and discovered another reason for you to be aware of it. You are at an increased risk of acetaminophen overdose (not a very significant risk, but acetaminophen overdoes is an extremely unpleasant and slow way to die). Perhaps you do not take acetaminophen for minor pain and perhaps you will never have a procedure done which leads a doctor to prescribe one of the pain killers that combines very large doses of acetaminophen with other pain medication, but your doctor does not know that. Additionally, that means that you should remind your doctor that you have Gilbert's Syndrome any time they prescribe you a pain killer (unless you are one of those people who know what medication is in each particular type of pain medicine on the market, in which case only when they prescribe something with acetaminophen) because that fact may have slipped you doctor's mind.
You seem to have things backward. We got to where we are today, not because of corruption, but because people fail to recognize that a bigger, more regulating government necessarily results in concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few. When something bad happens, politicians (and others) proclaim that the people demand that something be done even when, as is often the case, the "something bad" is a result of what those politicians had done about the last "something bad" that had happened in that industry. The problem is not corruption so much as the fact that regulations and laws are written so as to not damage the interests of those who have the time to make legislators and/or regulators aware of how such and such a proposal would hurt them (or the money to hire people to do that for them).
Those with wealth have no choice but to do what they can to influence these decisions, otherwise these decisions will be made so as to eliminate their wealth. Just take a look at the OWS protests, at one point they marched past the homes of actual Wall Street bankers (and others who make much of their money from manipulating investment vehicles) to protest in front of the homes of people who made their money from industry (among others the Koch brothers who made their money from the oil industry).
The reason things are so harsh right now is because government regulations make it extremely difficult to start and run a small business. Compounding that is an Administration that has no respect for the rule of law (and perhaps no understanding/belief in the concept) and keeps changing the rules.
Actually in the U.S., elections (for all levels) are regulated by the individual states. Additionally, all of the offices (local, state and federal) are on one ballot. I am not sure why you are making this argument with me, I oppose e-voting because I think that whether or not it is honest and fair is opaque to the average voter.
Now if you are talking about machines with more than one CPU and a lot of memory then sure. Those are called workstations. They may use the same motherboard as a server but they are not being used as a server.
And what OS are they running? If they are running the Server version of Windows (or any other OS) then your entire post is a nitpick and misses the OP's post.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, I moved the decimal place, but that is still a significant chance and I do not see how you are in a position to tell someone that they cannot defend themselves.
The numbers I found said that there were over 75,000 violent crimes in New York City in 2010 (the most recent year I could find numbers for). While that is low, it means that your chance of being the victim of violent crime in NYC is just shy of 10%.
There is no legitimate reason for a normal person to carry a gun in New York.
So, defending oneself against assault is not a legitimate reason to carry a gun?
You obviously have not been listening to the solutions the GLobal Warming Alarmists have proposed. They are not talking about just "green initiatives". They are talking about determining who can, and cannot, emit carbon dioxide. That amounts to regulating all aspects of economic activity. The idea that regulating CO2 is the same sort of effort as regulating SO2 is ludicrous.
There have, however, been other centrally planned economies. They have always had poorer economic performance than free market economies. What makes you think that centrally planning the entire world's economy would work better than doing so on a smaller scale?
As I said, Global Warming Alarmists are calling for centrally planned economies. Centrally planned economies have always caused immensely more environmental damage than free market economies.
They live in some sort of libertarian/conservative Post Modern construct where they're told that THEIR reality is as valid as anyone else's.
You know I believe that is the first time I have ever seen conservatism linked to postmodernism. Most conservatives that I know categorically reject postmodernism. Additionally, most of the people I know who hold to postmodernism are staunch supporters of AGW.
You just proved a point I made a couple of posts up. Someone said that "deniers" don't want to allow anyone to make the argument for Anthropogenic Global Warming and I pointed out that that was just not true. It is the Alarmists who want to silence those who disagree with them. Then a couple of posts down, here you come and prove me right by saying that anyone who disagrees with your understanding of Global Warming and thus does not want to give the government the authority to centrally plan all aspects of the world economy is a mass murderer and should be treated as such.
Let's keep in mind that the deniers don't even want mention of the possibility that we humans just might be making a real mess of the eco system that we rely upon to exist.
I just love how Global Warming Alarmists lump everybody who disagrees with them in to one group. Personally, I have never met anyone who opposes allowing people to argue for Anthropogenic Global Warming, yet I have heard numerous Global Warming Alarmists say that those who disagree with them should be silenced.
This is something I have noticed that those who propose government control of all aspects of our lives (as Global Warming Alarmists do) will do, they will accuse their opposition of supporting tactics that their own side openly espouses.
"I became a skeptic when they tried to erase the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age." Which climatologists did this exactly?
Michale Mann
There was actually very little disagreement over the size of the earth, even in Columbus' time. Columbus was a crackpot who got lucky. North America was the distance from Europe that he calculated Asia should be. Ferdinand and Isabella were desperate for a trade route to Asia that did not rely on travel through Muslim lands (having just finished gaining control of Spain from the Muslims). Additionally, Portugal had been granted the trade routes around Africa by the Pope (and had thoroughly established control of them in any case).
The only people who claimed the earth was flat at any time in history were considered, in their own time, to be cranks and crackpots on the order of Lyndon LaRouche and his followers.
As to whether you believe in climate change being caused by humanity, what's the harm in believing it if it means we make less of an impact on the climate? A few bucks here and there?
The "harm" is that the global warming alarmists are promoting a program of central planning of the world's economy to "combat global warming".Central planning of the economy has consistently been proven to result in poorer economic performance, increased human hunger, and damage to the environment. So, basically, we have people who, in the name of protecting the environment, are promoting a program that has been demonstrated repeatedly to cause harm to the environment.
No, I am saying it is unlikely to happen because modern medicine is capable of treating a flu pandemic as is evidenced by what happened in every flu pandemic since 1919. It is not as if the last major outbreak of a flu pandemic was the 1918-19 occurrence. There have been three flu pandemics since 1918 and none of them have been anywhere close to as devastating as the 1918 outbreak. So, this is not a case of being a pollyanna, it is a case of looking at the history of flu epidemics and noticing that the last major outbreak occurred before the development of modern medicine.
Does this mean that I think that those who work in public health should not consider the possibilty of a 1918-19 like flu outbreak? No. It just means that I think that those of us not involved in the public health field don't need to spend any time worrying about it, since the evidence suggests that it is highly unlikely.
I am confused as to what your response has to do with the part of my post you quoted. However, in later portions of my post, I pointed out why it is improbable that we will have a reccurrence of the 1918-19 flu pandemic, as that one occurred before the development of modern medicine.
Well, it would be hard for the next flu pandemic to not be worse that the last one, since the last flu pandemic killed fewer people in the U.S. than the flu usually kills each year (I do not have worldwide numbers, but my impression is that they were pretty low as well).
The problem with discussions of flu pandemics is that a significant number of people trot out the 1918-19 flu pandemic as what we should be afraid of. The problem with that is twofold. First, it came right on the heals of WWI, with most of the developed world not yet having recovered from the devestation of that event. Second, and more importantly, it was the last flu pandemic before the development of modern medicine (which I date to the development of the first antimicrobial drugs in the 1930s, the sulfonamides). Unless there is a complete collapse of our modern medical establishment, we will not see a repeat of the 1918-19 flu pandemic.
The thing is that for most people acetaminophen is utterly harmless up until the point where it causes severe irreversible liver damage. Additionally, it is a very effective complimentary pain killer (that is, it amplifies the effectiveness of other pain killers).
Of course the main problem with acetaminophen is that, unlike most other drugs, there is both a short-term and longer term overdose level. Dosages that are completely safe for the first three days become deadly if continued into a fourth day (I do not remember the numbers, but there is a dosage that is significantly lower than the dangerous daily dose that can be terminal if taken daily for more than three days, with the window extending up to somewhere around 6 days to 2 weeks).
Not my (or your) problem. I want access to that information because I can make use of it. I am not going to stop consulting my doctor, but having access to my medical records helps me to know whether a symptom is a sign of something that requires treatment or if it is something transient (I have several issues that flare up every so often that mimic warning indicators for very serious health problems, because I am aware of the issues I know to check the symptoms for secondary symptoms that accompany those symptoms if the serious problem is occurring).
The problem is not noting that the patient apparently has an overeating problem, the problem is referring to it in pejorative terms. Additionally, doctors should be very cautious in making such a diagnosis, I have known three women who had a rare thyroid problem that their doctor's misdiagnosed as overeating for 5 or so years (it is an extremely rare, progressive disorder that the doctors never thought to look for--probably were unaware of--until it had reached a point where the conflicting symptoms no longer disguised it). Most of these women's friends(completely different groups, none of these women knew each other and I and one other person were the only common friends among any of them) thought the doctors were correct, except in one case where about three of us realized that one of them ate very little and yet was gaining weight (one of the three was the woman's roommate).
You know what? In the cases where that happens, that's not really anybody's problem except those who did it to themselves. It is not your (nor society's) responsibility to prevent those people from making those mistakes.
I will give a perfect counter example. When my sister was an infant, she had a fall where she severely injured her head. This has led to serious neurological problems for her throughout her life. While she was in high school, she was diagnosed as having petit mal epilepsy (this later turned out to be a minor misdiagnosis, the actual disorder has similar symptoms, but different neurological causes). The thing is, she had been having seizures for about 5 years at that point and no one noticed. Her seizures were what are known as "absence" seizures where she would just stare off into space for a few seconds to a few minutes or she would continue doing whatever repetitive action she had been doing when it started (such as walking in a particular direction). It was diagnosed when a particularly astute gym teacher observed one in gym class. Except that it turns out that the neurologist my parents had been taking her since just after the fall was aware that epilepsy(the distinction between epilepsy and her actual disorder was not made at that time) was a significant possibility with this sort of brain injury and never told my parents to watch for the symptoms. If my parents had been aware of this possibility, it is probable that my sister would have been diagnosed much sooner and would have avoided many of the discipline problems she had in school (teachers were often upset with her failure to pay attention or follow instruction, when in fact, she had probably been suffering a seizure).
I happen to have Gilbert Syndrome and there's really no reason why I even need to know about that, at least not unless I come into the doctor worried about jaundice.
You mention one reason for you to be aware of the fact that you have Gilbert's Syndrome (recognizing that mild jaundice is not a cause for you to be concerned). I was unfamiliar with Gilbert's Syndrome, so I googled it and discovered another reason for you to be aware of it. You are at an increased risk of acetaminophen overdose (not a very significant risk, but acetaminophen overdoes is an extremely unpleasant and slow way to die). Perhaps you do not take acetaminophen for minor pain and perhaps you will never have a procedure done which leads a doctor to prescribe one of the pain killers that combines very large doses of acetaminophen with other pain medication, but your doctor does not know that. Additionally, that means that you should remind your doctor that you have Gilbert's Syndrome any time they prescribe you a pain killer (unless you are one of those people who know what medication is in each particular type of pain medicine on the market, in which case only when they prescribe something with acetaminophen) because that fact may have slipped you doctor's mind.
You seem to have things backward. We got to where we are today, not because of corruption, but because people fail to recognize that a bigger, more regulating government necessarily results in concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few. When something bad happens, politicians (and others) proclaim that the people demand that something be done even when, as is often the case, the "something bad" is a result of what those politicians had done about the last "something bad" that had happened in that industry. The problem is not corruption so much as the fact that regulations and laws are written so as to not damage the interests of those who have the time to make legislators and/or regulators aware of how such and such a proposal would hurt them (or the money to hire people to do that for them).
Those with wealth have no choice but to do what they can to influence these decisions, otherwise these decisions will be made so as to eliminate their wealth. Just take a look at the OWS protests, at one point they marched past the homes of actual Wall Street bankers (and others who make much of their money from manipulating investment vehicles) to protest in front of the homes of people who made their money from industry (among others the Koch brothers who made their money from the oil industry).
The reason things are so harsh right now is because government regulations make it extremely difficult to start and run a small business. Compounding that is an Administration that has no respect for the rule of law (and perhaps no understanding/belief in the concept) and keeps changing the rules.
Actually in the U.S., elections (for all levels) are regulated by the individual states. Additionally, all of the offices (local, state and federal) are on one ballot. I am not sure why you are making this argument with me, I oppose e-voting because I think that whether or not it is honest and fair is opaque to the average voter.
Now if you are talking about machines with more than one CPU and a lot of memory then sure. Those are called workstations. They may use the same motherboard as a server but they are not being used as a server.
And what OS are they running? If they are running the Server version of Windows (or any other OS) then your entire post is a nitpick and misses the OP's post.