I think I agree. When I clicked the link, I expected a review of a book that would cover things such as how screen reading technology is changing in the world of AJAX 3.5-rc2 where a webpage's DOM model can be generated entirely after the.html document has loaded. Personally, the more I delve into "HTML 5" technologies, I wonder if there's something I might do to make sure that I won't break assistive technologies. There was some of that in the review.
However, I wasn't sure what treating autism with VR based therapies had to do with accessibility or where ADHD even comes into the picture.
That being said, I've been learning over the years that if one assumes that one's users all have ADHD, the intelligence of a 7 year old, the domain knowledge of somebody hired yesterday, and possibly a cocaine addiction and then uses that assumption to build user interfaces, it works a lot better. That's just me being cynical I suppose.
That's kind of the point and one of the reasons, perhaps, that the free market or even the insurance model doesn't work for health care.
I also read an argument once that the reason that chiropracty and homeopathy work is because the provider spends more time with the patient and thus obtains a better understanding of the risks that patient might be subject to. Of course, homeopathy itself is bunk; and chiropracty might have specific uses, but I lol every time I see the banner down the main drag in town that this chiropractor can cure ear infections. However, it does seem to reason that better outcomes would result if patients and their providers shared more information.
Profits create a perverse incentive that minimize the contact between patient and provider.
Why was this modded troll?
I very much believe that the lack of women in computer careers is a problem, however, I believe that discriminatory and punative measures against men and trans women in the profession will accomplish NOTHING.
This is feminism being its own worst enemy. By continuing the narrative that computer careers are somehow hostile to women because of all us mean men and trans women, they turn young women off to the idea of computer careers. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Add to that the stereotype that those of us who are "geeks" are all aspies who can't "score." I don't know about anyone else, but I score all the time. It's just that it's with men, not womyn-born-womyn. I have *utterly* *no* *sexual* *use* for womyn-born-womyn. I'm waiting for the day when a womb of my own can be grown from my own tissue; and if that day never comes, then I have decided I will never have children because I could not ever entrust another woman with the life of my own child, especially if she has womyn-born-womyn hubris and privilege. Womyn-born-womyn can only entice me as intellectual equals, and that's a very low bar! Yet, they can't even do that.
Feminism has done good things, but on this issue it needs to soak its head.
I know, right? Of course, for some reason, making paternity leave available to men and changing our attitudes that the Mother must necessarily attend all needs of the newbord, for some reason, is utterly unacceptable to feminism.
There are numerous reasons for that, most that it undermines womyn-born-womyn privilege. Striving for equality necessarily means that we must re-examine our attitudes that womyn-born-womyn are "sugar, spice, and everything nice," and that any individual with a womb is equipped with all the necessary skills she'll need to raise a child by virtue of being a womyn-born-womyn.
No, the parent comment is a short-sighted troll. There are other, bigger questions that feminism needs to start answering about why womyn-born-womyn take absolutely no interest in computer careers but yet why we need to push them into computer careers. Imo, feminism can start by answering the question of how long womyn-born-womyn can have the privilege of being unaware of their womyn-born-womyn privileges that prevent them from needing to seek jobs such as IT, construction, plumbing, etc.
From there, feminism can answer why womyn-born-womyn have the privilege of not being accountable for their individual choices. If womyn-born-womyn choose not to get into computer careers, why do we suspect trans women and men have some kind of collective responsibility for that choice? No, only the individual womyn-born-womyn can be indivudally responsible for her choice to pursue, for example, motherhood or accounting over computer careers.
My car insurance doesn't cover oil changes; my homeowner's insurance isn't going to cover replacing a screen door that went kaput during the storms last weekend; so why the hell does health insurance cover routine check-up visits?
I'll even go one step further. If I were to use my prescription coverage for my meds, it'd end up costing me more out of pocket. Here's what I want. I want health insurance that doesn't play stupid games with deductibles and routine services. I need my meds every day, and I know how much those cost. I need bloodwork every now and then as a completely routine matter, and I want to know how much that costs so I can budget for it. However, if I get run over by a bus tomorrow, I want to wake up in a hospital knowing that I'm insured and will only have to worry about a small deductible, same as if a drunk driver plows into my car and I need $10k of body work or if a tree falls on my house and I need to replace the roof.
Why do we have a system where "insurance" covers routine things and it's nearly impossible to get a price for so many things?
I don't want to pay for womyn-born-womyn to use the pill. It's not my problem. You don't want to pay for me to take estrogen. It's not your problem. These aren't life-threatening things.
The only problem is that unlike you and me, the vast majority of people aren't and never will be perfect, virtuous Randians[!]
Now, the following is a misogynist rant, sure, but I hope to illustrate the larger problem. If it's more useful, imagine I were writing about some other failure of human behavior like dudebros cruising around town drunk and having a near-fatal crash wherein somebody innocent, but lacking any kind of insurance, requires intensive medical care for some extended period of time.
If womyn-born-womyn have to pay some amount per month to have access to the pill, then there are a good number of them that won't. However, being falliable human beings, they'll go out and have sex anyway. Then, since if they weren't willing to take a basic precaution that somebody with a womb should take before going on a wild sex adventure (not saying there's anything wrong with wild sex adventures, but we have the technology to go about it safely!), they're sure as hell not going to have the cash sitting around for an abortion. Then, 9 months later we have a real problem: an unwanted or at least unexpected mouth to feed.
So, it makes financial sense to make the pill and abortions available to womyn-born-womyn at no cost, because the alternative is that my tax dollars, instead of going to services I may wish in a perfect world a womyn-born-womyn would consider before having sex (simply because life isn't fair and they'd be perfect Randians in this ideal world and realize that their self-interest is served by taking precautions even if guys don't have to but it's just the way it is no matter what anyone wants), will now go towards feeding a child for 18 years.
People (regardless of gender) are bad at judging risk. People are especially bad at making financial judgements when it comes to health.
I used to be a libertarian (and intend to keep voting Libertarian because I think we need to seriously reconsider the scope of the federal government and I have this abstract hope that one year, enough people will vote Libertarian and Green not just to send a message to the two big parties but that the form of that message will be a number of gold and green seats in Congress), but the older I get the more I realize that the free market does not work for health care.
Our current system is utterly broken. Romney/Obamacare is even more broken, and as others have said, the more information that comes out about the failure of the healthcare.gov rollout, the more it becomes apparent that Obamacare at least is more about shuffling money around Washington than it is about attempting to do anything about the things that ar
True that. I suppose I'm sorry for being to overly sensitive that such a program would be applied only to non-womyn-born-womyn. Actually, I'd love to see the faces on the day such a program were applied to womyn-born-womyn en masse.
I've observed your other comments. I have no tactics other than the desire that, despite that I cannot have children of my own genetic descent, this planet continue to strive toward progress and continued life. I believe you are a shill, although possibly just a troll, and when I get my next mod points, I believe I will mod you appropriately. The only salve is that I prefer to upmod and I very rarely downmod. I am honestly not sure whether your comments are healthy for the/. community.
I believe that you are guilty of the tactic you accuse me of. If you wanted me to recognize your rhetoric, please attempt to be less vitriolic next time.
I understand your frustration with eco-nuts, but please do not advance polarized, fundamentalist agendas.
Nobody will ever catch AIDS from my blood. That's because they've figured out that only fags get AIDS/GRID, so they won't let me donate blood unless I'm comfortable about lying about when the last time I slept with a hot guy was.
Since I don't have AIDS/GRID, it does make me quite a bit uncomfortable about the possibility that I might receive blood. I don't want that infection.
If the precautions you straight people take against AIDS/GRID is only limited to the idiocy of beliving it only affects t3h g4h, I'm safer refusing all treatment that might involve some straight idiot's blood.
Of course there is. On Fox News at least. That was three halfs the point of the post.
btw, I am glad it was downmodded. Shows that the other mods at least have sense, although I'm surprised how many folks responded to it.
I'm a transsexual homosexual transgendered from Transsexual, Transylvania. I'm destroying America, and my time-travelling estrogen caused 9/11.
You know what?
I HAVE NO FUCKING STDS.
So do it. I don't give a shit.
You might just unintentionally label a bunch of womyn-born-womyn who have children with 5 different men as diseased, though. Are you sure you can handle that?
No, cayenne8 has a point. As a homosexual, I am fucking sick of being considered AIDS/GRID-infested because straight folks like you can't think fucking twice before fucking. Some of us have control over our urges.
#1: Somehow, despite being homosexual and/or trans or whatever, I don't have AIDS/GRID. Amazing!
#2: My genitals were mutilated and I suffered all that physical pain that forced me to effectively chose impotence as the solution so that now I'm protected from AIDS/GRID and don't need to worry about it, right?
So, my question is, why should I trust the idiots in the medical profession who think that #1 is because I'm a mentally ill psychopath and that I'm even more mentally ill because in #2 I wish I had been intact and hadn't known 19 years of genital pain?
Karma to burn, etc. Thought this would be better than spending my mod points on this thread.
Yes... the NSA is going to assassinate Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds
That's not the point. If they did that, they'd lose a great deal of credibility, and I mean real credibility---the kind of credibility loss that wakes the people up, sparks real debate, and gets congress critters elected that really will defund this crap on a meaningful level. Of course they wouldn't do that.
If I were going to compare the NSA to a character from The Matrix, I'd rather pick the Architecht. The Architecht is an interesting character because of his complete disinterest in how the goal of funneling bio-energy from the humans in the matrix to the machine city is accomplished as long as it's accomplished. In the same way, the NSA/FBI/CIA/TSA/DHS/OMG/WTF/BBQ seem to be in a role, domestically at least, of ensuring that a steady stream of tax revenue find its way to the military-industrial complex.
The average person has absolutely no idea how web pages are served or what the infrastructure of the internet looks like beyond the physical of copper and fiber, and they have no idea how to gauge whether their sensitive, private data is being stored according to best practices or whether there are some serious concerns to be had. Sure, when somebody "breaks in" to a computer system and gains access to sensitive information, it's not right, but it's not always a crime either. Did the stewards of that information use best practiceses, was there a lapse and somebody forgot to lock a door behind them, or did they leave it out on the sidewalk with a giant "take one!" sign next to it? The public, at present, is completely unequipped to evaluate that, because networked computers are sufficiently advanced technology. They're indistinguishable from magic.
That may not always be the case, and there's definitely room for improvement in primary education to include basic introductions to what constitutes information security and how the internet works.
The point is that "hacking" is a scary thing to the public. If government websites are being hacked, there must be some very scary enemies out there, and it might even be an act of war. Our lifestyle might be under attack once again in the same way it was during the height the cold war.
That's a very profitable thing for the military-industrial complex.
The last thing they'd want is a public that, weary of over a decade of security theater, might actually question whether all the military spending is necessary, especially given national debt and budget deficits and the revelations that the NSA might not be making the best use of its funding, and start cutting that funding.
(The argument of whether that would be effective or not in balancing budgets is beyond the scope of this post.)
Your entire argument in this thread seems to boil down to a.) maybe AGW is happening b.) eco-nuts have greatly overblown the consequences (not that I'm disagreeing) c.) therefore, any consequences that are being argued are overblown or at least on too large of a timescale for me to be bothered with d.) attempting to do anything to prepare ahead of time or to mitigate those consequences is too unpopular e.) why? because it might make industry less profitable or because we might need to rethink our fossil fuel dependant infrastructure f.) what's popular is what's right, so let's do nothing.
This is why we can't have nice things.
As an aside, where are any arguments on any side of this debate for sustainable bio-diesel? It may be the case that petrochemicals are the best way to store energy, so why not find a way to use them in a way that won't adversely affect the only planet we know of that can sustain any kind of intelligent life?
It sounds like yet another data point to support the idea that attempting to apply the paradigm of a free market to medical care creates perverse incentives.
Healthy patients don't make doctors and hospitals a terrible lot of money, not nearly as much as chronically ill patients.
Of course, that's not to say that a transition to, say, single payer wouldn't be very painful up-front as individual hospitals vie for funding by "creating" (essentially) a sick population, but there has to be some way of eliminating the kinds of perverse incentives that lead to the pharmaceutical treadmills where generics fall out of use because they're no longer marketed, the things you quoted about cardiovascular care, and even the practice of routine infant circumcision/genital mutilation (if there is a difference).
I remember reading a book that was about how strength training was a better method of weight loss and control than cardiovascular exercise and that cardiovascular exercise was detrimental. It was written by a cardiologist, but I don't remember who. It wasn't a particularly good book; the author would often go on tangents about how the drug warfarin was falling out of favor (is that a blood thinner? i don't remember) despite new drugs not being particularly more effective, costing more, and having a less established side effect and interaction profile and how angiograms were often read by individuals who lacked the experience to properly read them yet raked in the cash anyway. I wish I could remember the author or the title. He wasn't able to convince me that cardiovascular exercise is detrimental, but he did mention a number of things that would make any rational person raise eyebrows about how we practice medicine in the USA.
These devices give no indication about traffic or weather conditions. One of my friends owns a fairly decent sports car, and rapid acceleration and deceleration has never once led to a collision because he picks safe times and places to drive his car in that manner.
That being said, these devices should also be easy to game, at least as long as you're only required to keep it hooked up for a few weeks before sending it back. Then it becomes an arms race between insurers and drivers that only has one conclusion: 24x7 monitoring with wireless reporting (that also handily reveals your approximate location and gives crude tracking, which the current devices don't) or they'll put you in the worst risk category.
You're probably right. The work is already tainted in my mind.
That being said, when a book gets made into a movie, sometimes it turns out very, very differently from the book. Sometimes the movie is very faithful. Sometimes the tone of the story is changed or certain thematic elements are added or removed and certain characters and scenes get a tweak---sometimes that's not entirely bad either or may be necessitated because of the inherent differences between books and movies. Sometimes (as was the case with two of Matheson's works I've recently [past few years] both read and watched, I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come) you end up with something that only barely and superficially resembles the original work at all.
This is a false dichotomy. It's quite possible to drive smoothly if you pay attention to traffic and use something like the Smith System for safe driving. I know it's a popular meme here on/. when it comes to driving that we believe that our safety depends on expert, tire-screeching manuevering, but if you're in a tire-screeching manuever, in most cases you're already "doing it wrong" even if you do manage to avoid a collision.
I've found that ever since I got a stick shift I rarely need to use my brakes when I'm in 2nd or 3rd gear (unless I'm anticipating a full stop) since the engine will slow me down just fine unless I'm stuck behind a tailgater (gas! brake! gas! brake! good grief!) in an SUV I can't see around. Even then, I merely identify that person as a poor driver, increase my following distance, and attempt to drive at their average speed, which works fairly well most times. Sure, occasionally I get cut off when doing that, but overall I manage to maintain pace with traffic without stressing myself out.
Rule #1 of safe driving: there are no accidents. There are only collisions. Sure, you may not be "at fault," such as when you get rear-ended, but somebody is.
When I was younger, before I got my CDL*, I nearly rear-ended someone and wound up rear-ended myself. I always think of it as a collision that I (even though I was the one who was rear-ended) could have prevented if I had been paying better attention to traffic 3 or 4 cars ahead of me and if I had been more aware that I was being followed closely and the other driver wouldn't stop as suddenly as I had. If I'd had the experience and training I have today, I'm certain that I would have been able to prevent that collision, even though the other guy really shouldn't have been following me so closely.
(And yes, I realize that people do get rear-ended even after they've been at a full stop at a red light for minutes. Driving is dangerous business, no matter whose fault that is.)
Now, that being said, every time I've considered putting one of those insurance company boxes in my car to get a lower rate, I've decided against it. It seems like too much of an invasion of privacy.
Overall, I'm fairly ambivalent on the issue. Maybe it would be a good way to gauge the driving skill of a young person with very little or no record, but I don't think I'm convinced that it's a good idea for experienced drivers. On the other hand, it sounds like a better alternative to being discriminated against on the basis of my assigned gender at birth if I were to be in a position to buy a sports car in the next few years. On the other, other hand, it's unclear whether the data from these devices completely supersedes more nebulous "risk" factors such as being assigned one gender or another at birth, as one would hope it would, or if in the light of objective evidence about driving habits, insurance companies would still view a legal male with a higher performance car as more of a risk than a womyn-born-womyn with the same car. (There would certainly be no reason for them to change, and I imagine feminists would lose their shit like they always do when objective evidence shows that there's nothing about being a womyn-born-womyn that makes one a better person.)
* Too bad my short career driving truck didn't work out. I really liked doing long haul, and despite the downside of not much hometime, it beats what I'm doing now. Turns out I'm spectacularly bad at going in reverse! (But of course all that means is I didn't use the GOAL method--Get Out And Look--as often as I should have.)
Personally, I didn't like the book, so I won't be seeing the movie. I thought it was too preachy---to the point where I decided I wanted to know more about the author and only then learned about all the other stuff about him besides being a sci-fi author!
That being said, being a member of a group that is just completely and utterly incompatible with the Mormon world-view and seeing as how Card most likely will be using any profits from this movie to push forward an agenda that wants to see me become a second-class citizen, it does make me a bit squeamish when I do think about popping into a theater to see if I might like the movie more than the book.
Maybe I'll torrent it.
It's also a bit misleading to suggest that we should excuse Card's political leanings and activism while we're still here in the time when he's doing it because decades and centuries after the fact of other injustices, we no longer believe the specific political learnings of other authors who contributed to those things are relevant to their work.
Simply put, if I give Card money, he will use it against me on an issue that is far from settled (albiet getting there), and in fact since money is speech now, he will be able to speak his views with a much larger voice than I could ever possibly hope to use in refutation. On the other hand, if I give money to the estate of somebody who lobbied against the civil rights movement for example, there's not much to worry about.
I'm sure in 50 years when we have a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between any two people regardless of gender or biological weirdness or legal status that overrides and makes invalid other things such as the amendment to Michigan's constitution that defines marriage as one man and one women (whatever those are besides legal statuses), we'll all have a much easier time approaching Card's work.
I think what he said did respond to the point. It's like turning out the lights on the way out.
Then again, maybe I'm just misunderstanding what GGP meant by a "real" shutdown, and I'm hoping he wasn't making a no true Scotsman fallacy.
Now, if the building were under attack from military hardware or in the direct path of an F5 tornado, then yes, I might raise an eyebrow at spending the time to put up a page that says, "Our building is about to be destroyed and has shut down."
It's just... you know... when you know something is going to happen... you kind of prepare for it... and when it's something as trivial as changing a DNS entry or throwing up a static site... it really is just like switching off the lights on the way out.
That being said, I am left shaking my head at the ACA federal exchange rollout. That thing about knowing something is going to happen and being prepared.... I just don't understand how the higher-ups could have allowed such a debacle. Didn't they understand how much of a political field day the opponents of the ACA would have if the rollout went poorly? And then it went poorly, and the political field day goes on a month after the fact...
Obviously, a successful rollout is something that could have happened. Now, granted, I am aware that I'm partially comparing apples to oranges but I'm also not quite. As we're aware, Kentucky managed to do a bang-up job. Now granted, Kentucky's exchange only had to handle traffic from one state instead of, what was it, 37? Yet, somebody high up in the Obama administration should have known that was going to happen, that they were going to be building a national exchange with a couple of exceptions of states that would actually build their own. Hell, I guessed it was going to happen like that two years ago! (Although I would have thought Kentucky would have been one of the states not to do their own exchange, but who knew.)
Of course, I can join the bitching and moaning, but truth be told, I really have no idea what political forces may have designed the thing to fail. It could be the case that actors who didn't give a flip whether or not they played nice with Kentucky were the same actors who may have contributed to the roll-out problems, perhaps in technical ways, perhaps in other political ways. The only thing I can say from having been part of software rollouts that not everybody wants to succeed is that when somebody who has enough clout doesn't want something to succeed, it's going to be a very painful rollout for everyone, and it's very easy to point the finger of blame when one is creating the very problems one is seeking to blame others for.
If I'm wrong and there's evidence that millions upon millions of dollars were spent designing the shut-off notice static sites and rolling them out, please let me know. I don't think that's the case, but sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if I were wrong these days.
Also I'd like to say that like others have noticed, many of the services that federal websites provide continued to be available. For example, I go to noaa.gov to get my weather (and to read the forecast discussion). Well, during the "shutdown," noaa.gov was unavailable (for the pedantic, it resolved and served up a shutdown notification, but for all intents and purposes was down). Now, I know that when I put in a zipcode, it actually sends me over to weather.gov. I still go to noaa.gov because occasionally they have an interesting story in between the parade of AGW stories on their front page. Well, as it turned out, weather.gov was up and functional the whole time.
It did make me wonder, though, getting to GGP's point about a "real" shutdown. What would happen if the data the NWS posts to weather.gov and the web services related to forecast and weather information at weather.gov were unavailable? That would have a far bigger impact than not being able access the fluff at noaa.gov. What would wunderground.com (or everybody's favorite---weather bug) do to
Slashdot Mirror
I think I agree. When I clicked the link, I expected a review of a book that would cover things such as how screen reading technology is changing in the world of AJAX 3.5-rc2 where a webpage's DOM model can be generated entirely after the .html document has loaded. Personally, the more I delve into "HTML 5" technologies, I wonder if there's something I might do to make sure that I won't break assistive technologies. There was some of that in the review.
However, I wasn't sure what treating autism with VR based therapies had to do with accessibility or where ADHD even comes into the picture.
That being said, I've been learning over the years that if one assumes that one's users all have ADHD, the intelligence of a 7 year old, the domain knowledge of somebody hired yesterday, and possibly a cocaine addiction and then uses that assumption to build user interfaces, it works a lot better. That's just me being cynical I suppose.
That's kind of the point and one of the reasons, perhaps, that the free market or even the insurance model doesn't work for health care. I also read an argument once that the reason that chiropracty and homeopathy work is because the provider spends more time with the patient and thus obtains a better understanding of the risks that patient might be subject to. Of course, homeopathy itself is bunk; and chiropracty might have specific uses, but I lol every time I see the banner down the main drag in town that this chiropractor can cure ear infections. However, it does seem to reason that better outcomes would result if patients and their providers shared more information. Profits create a perverse incentive that minimize the contact between patient and provider.
Why was this modded troll? I very much believe that the lack of women in computer careers is a problem, however, I believe that discriminatory and punative measures against men and trans women in the profession will accomplish NOTHING. This is feminism being its own worst enemy. By continuing the narrative that computer careers are somehow hostile to women because of all us mean men and trans women, they turn young women off to the idea of computer careers. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Add to that the stereotype that those of us who are "geeks" are all aspies who can't "score." I don't know about anyone else, but I score all the time. It's just that it's with men, not womyn-born-womyn. I have *utterly* *no* *sexual* *use* for womyn-born-womyn. I'm waiting for the day when a womb of my own can be grown from my own tissue; and if that day never comes, then I have decided I will never have children because I could not ever entrust another woman with the life of my own child, especially if she has womyn-born-womyn hubris and privilege. Womyn-born-womyn can only entice me as intellectual equals, and that's a very low bar! Yet, they can't even do that. Feminism has done good things, but on this issue it needs to soak its head.
I know, right? Of course, for some reason, making paternity leave available to men and changing our attitudes that the Mother must necessarily attend all needs of the newbord, for some reason, is utterly unacceptable to feminism.
There are numerous reasons for that, most that it undermines womyn-born-womyn privilege. Striving for equality necessarily means that we must re-examine our attitudes that womyn-born-womyn are "sugar, spice, and everything nice," and that any individual with a womb is equipped with all the necessary skills she'll need to raise a child by virtue of being a womyn-born-womyn.
No, the parent comment is a short-sighted troll. There are other, bigger questions that feminism needs to start answering about why womyn-born-womyn take absolutely no interest in computer careers but yet why we need to push them into computer careers. Imo, feminism can start by answering the question of how long womyn-born-womyn can have the privilege of being unaware of their womyn-born-womyn privileges that prevent them from needing to seek jobs such as IT, construction, plumbing, etc.
From there, feminism can answer why womyn-born-womyn have the privilege of not being accountable for their individual choices. If womyn-born-womyn choose not to get into computer careers, why do we suspect trans women and men have some kind of collective responsibility for that choice? No, only the individual womyn-born-womyn can be indivudally responsible for her choice to pursue, for example, motherhood or accounting over computer careers.
Well, then, good. Let's get on with it.
My car insurance doesn't cover oil changes; my homeowner's insurance isn't going to cover replacing a screen door that went kaput during the storms last weekend; so why the hell does health insurance cover routine check-up visits?
I'll even go one step further. If I were to use my prescription coverage for my meds, it'd end up costing me more out of pocket. Here's what I want. I want health insurance that doesn't play stupid games with deductibles and routine services. I need my meds every day, and I know how much those cost. I need bloodwork every now and then as a completely routine matter, and I want to know how much that costs so I can budget for it. However, if I get run over by a bus tomorrow, I want to wake up in a hospital knowing that I'm insured and will only have to worry about a small deductible, same as if a drunk driver plows into my car and I need $10k of body work or if a tree falls on my house and I need to replace the roof.
Why do we have a system where "insurance" covers routine things and it's nearly impossible to get a price for so many things?
I don't want to pay for womyn-born-womyn to use the pill. It's not my problem. You don't want to pay for me to take estrogen. It's not your problem. These aren't life-threatening things.
The only problem is that unlike you and me, the vast majority of people aren't and never will be perfect, virtuous Randians[!]
Now, the following is a misogynist rant, sure, but I hope to illustrate the larger problem. If it's more useful, imagine I were writing about some other failure of human behavior like dudebros cruising around town drunk and having a near-fatal crash wherein somebody innocent, but lacking any kind of insurance, requires intensive medical care for some extended period of time.
If womyn-born-womyn have to pay some amount per month to have access to the pill, then there are a good number of them that won't. However, being falliable human beings, they'll go out and have sex anyway. Then, since if they weren't willing to take a basic precaution that somebody with a womb should take before going on a wild sex adventure (not saying there's anything wrong with wild sex adventures, but we have the technology to go about it safely!), they're sure as hell not going to have the cash sitting around for an abortion. Then, 9 months later we have a real problem: an unwanted or at least unexpected mouth to feed.
So, it makes financial sense to make the pill and abortions available to womyn-born-womyn at no cost, because the alternative is that my tax dollars, instead of going to services I may wish in a perfect world a womyn-born-womyn would consider before having sex (simply because life isn't fair and they'd be perfect Randians in this ideal world and realize that their self-interest is served by taking precautions even if guys don't have to but it's just the way it is no matter what anyone wants), will now go towards feeding a child for 18 years.
People (regardless of gender) are bad at judging risk. People are especially bad at making financial judgements when it comes to health.
I used to be a libertarian (and intend to keep voting Libertarian because I think we need to seriously reconsider the scope of the federal government and I have this abstract hope that one year, enough people will vote Libertarian and Green not just to send a message to the two big parties but that the form of that message will be a number of gold and green seats in Congress), but the older I get the more I realize that the free market does not work for health care.
Our current system is utterly broken. Romney/Obamacare is even more broken, and as others have said, the more information that comes out about the failure of the healthcare.gov rollout, the more it becomes apparent that Obamacare at least is more about shuffling money around Washington than it is about attempting to do anything about the things that ar
True that. I suppose I'm sorry for being to overly sensitive that such a program would be applied only to non-womyn-born-womyn. Actually, I'd love to see the faces on the day such a program were applied to womyn-born-womyn en masse.
Thanks for the reply and the sanity. I'm sorry I was a bit off my rocker when I posted that.
I've observed your other comments. I have no tactics other than the desire that, despite that I cannot have children of my own genetic descent, this planet continue to strive toward progress and continued life. I believe you are a shill, although possibly just a troll, and when I get my next mod points, I believe I will mod you appropriately. The only salve is that I prefer to upmod and I very rarely downmod. I am honestly not sure whether your comments are healthy for the /. community.
I believe that you are guilty of the tactic you accuse me of. If you wanted me to recognize your rhetoric, please attempt to be less vitriolic next time.
I understand your frustration with eco-nuts, but please do not advance polarized, fundamentalist agendas.
Thanks,
Velex
Not in Western/Southwestern Michigan. Good thing we don't typically get hurricance force winds. (Although last Sunday coulda fooled me.)
Allow me to elaborate.
#2 was supposed to be ironic. Of course circumcision doesn't protect me in any meaningful statistical way.
I don't.
Nobody will ever catch AIDS from my blood. That's because they've figured out that only fags get AIDS/GRID, so they won't let me donate blood unless I'm comfortable about lying about when the last time I slept with a hot guy was.
Since I don't have AIDS/GRID, it does make me quite a bit uncomfortable about the possibility that I might receive blood. I don't want that infection.
If the precautions you straight people take against AIDS/GRID is only limited to the idiocy of beliving it only affects t3h g4h, I'm safer refusing all treatment that might involve some straight idiot's blood.
Of course there is. On Fox News at least. That was three halfs the point of the post. btw, I am glad it was downmodded. Shows that the other mods at least have sense, although I'm surprised how many folks responded to it.
You know what?
Fucking go for it.
I'm a transsexual homosexual transgendered from Transsexual, Transylvania. I'm destroying America, and my time-travelling estrogen caused 9/11.
You know what?
I HAVE NO FUCKING STDS.
So do it. I don't give a shit.
You might just unintentionally label a bunch of womyn-born-womyn who have children with 5 different men as diseased, though. Are you sure you can handle that?
You know, some of us homosexuals who are destroying America and marriage and caused 9/11 actually believe in.. you know... NOT CHEATING.
I know you straight fucks can't understand that with all the sex you have. It's called a committed relationship.
Idiots. No wonder marriage is falling apart. You straight fucks are all to blame.
No, cayenne8 has a point. As a homosexual, I am fucking sick of being considered AIDS/GRID-infested because straight folks like you can't think fucking twice before fucking. Some of us have control over our urges.
(only care enough to leave this here)
#1: Somehow, despite being homosexual and/or trans or whatever, I don't have AIDS/GRID. Amazing!
#2: My genitals were mutilated and I suffered all that physical pain that forced me to effectively chose impotence as the solution so that now I'm protected from AIDS/GRID and don't need to worry about it, right?
So, my question is, why should I trust the idiots in the medical profession who think that #1 is because I'm a mentally ill psychopath and that I'm even more mentally ill because in #2 I wish I had been intact and hadn't known 19 years of genital pain?
Karma to burn, etc. Thought this would be better than spending my mod points on this thread.
Yes... the NSA is going to assassinate Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds
That's not the point. If they did that, they'd lose a great deal of credibility, and I mean real credibility---the kind of credibility loss that wakes the people up, sparks real debate, and gets congress critters elected that really will defund this crap on a meaningful level. Of course they wouldn't do that.
If I were going to compare the NSA to a character from The Matrix, I'd rather pick the Architecht. The Architecht is an interesting character because of his complete disinterest in how the goal of funneling bio-energy from the humans in the matrix to the machine city is accomplished as long as it's accomplished. In the same way, the NSA/FBI/CIA/TSA/DHS/OMG/WTF/BBQ seem to be in a role, domestically at least, of ensuring that a steady stream of tax revenue find its way to the military-industrial complex.
The average person has absolutely no idea how web pages are served or what the infrastructure of the internet looks like beyond the physical of copper and fiber, and they have no idea how to gauge whether their sensitive, private data is being stored according to best practices or whether there are some serious concerns to be had. Sure, when somebody "breaks in" to a computer system and gains access to sensitive information, it's not right, but it's not always a crime either. Did the stewards of that information use best practiceses, was there a lapse and somebody forgot to lock a door behind them, or did they leave it out on the sidewalk with a giant "take one!" sign next to it? The public, at present, is completely unequipped to evaluate that, because networked computers are sufficiently advanced technology. They're indistinguishable from magic.
That may not always be the case, and there's definitely room for improvement in primary education to include basic introductions to what constitutes information security and how the internet works.
The point is that "hacking" is a scary thing to the public. If government websites are being hacked, there must be some very scary enemies out there, and it might even be an act of war. Our lifestyle might be under attack once again in the same way it was during the height the cold war.
That's a very profitable thing for the military-industrial complex.
The last thing they'd want is a public that, weary of over a decade of security theater, might actually question whether all the military spending is necessary, especially given national debt and budget deficits and the revelations that the NSA might not be making the best use of its funding, and start cutting that funding.
(The argument of whether that would be effective or not in balancing budgets is beyond the scope of this post.)
The petulance of this comment bothers me.
If one wants to fly to the moon, one finds a way.
Your entire argument in this thread seems to boil down to a.) maybe AGW is happening b.) eco-nuts have greatly overblown the consequences (not that I'm disagreeing) c.) therefore, any consequences that are being argued are overblown or at least on too large of a timescale for me to be bothered with d.) attempting to do anything to prepare ahead of time or to mitigate those consequences is too unpopular e.) why? because it might make industry less profitable or because we might need to rethink our fossil fuel dependant infrastructure f.) what's popular is what's right, so let's do nothing.
This is why we can't have nice things.
As an aside, where are any arguments on any side of this debate for sustainable bio-diesel? It may be the case that petrochemicals are the best way to store energy, so why not find a way to use them in a way that won't adversely affect the only planet we know of that can sustain any kind of intelligent life?
Interesting stuff. Thanks for the reply.
It sounds like yet another data point to support the idea that attempting to apply the paradigm of a free market to medical care creates perverse incentives.
Healthy patients don't make doctors and hospitals a terrible lot of money, not nearly as much as chronically ill patients.
Of course, that's not to say that a transition to, say, single payer wouldn't be very painful up-front as individual hospitals vie for funding by "creating" (essentially) a sick population, but there has to be some way of eliminating the kinds of perverse incentives that lead to the pharmaceutical treadmills where generics fall out of use because they're no longer marketed, the things you quoted about cardiovascular care, and even the practice of routine infant circumcision/genital mutilation (if there is a difference).
I remember reading a book that was about how strength training was a better method of weight loss and control than cardiovascular exercise and that cardiovascular exercise was detrimental. It was written by a cardiologist, but I don't remember who. It wasn't a particularly good book; the author would often go on tangents about how the drug warfarin was falling out of favor (is that a blood thinner? i don't remember) despite new drugs not being particularly more effective, costing more, and having a less established side effect and interaction profile and how angiograms were often read by individuals who lacked the experience to properly read them yet raked in the cash anyway. I wish I could remember the author or the title. He wasn't able to convince me that cardiovascular exercise is detrimental, but he did mention a number of things that would make any rational person raise eyebrows about how we practice medicine in the USA.
No you aren't.
These devices give no indication about traffic or weather conditions. One of my friends owns a fairly decent sports car, and rapid acceleration and deceleration has never once led to a collision because he picks safe times and places to drive his car in that manner.
That being said, these devices should also be easy to game, at least as long as you're only required to keep it hooked up for a few weeks before sending it back. Then it becomes an arms race between insurers and drivers that only has one conclusion: 24x7 monitoring with wireless reporting (that also handily reveals your approximate location and gives crude tracking, which the current devices don't) or they'll put you in the worst risk category.
You're probably right. The work is already tainted in my mind.
That being said, when a book gets made into a movie, sometimes it turns out very, very differently from the book. Sometimes the movie is very faithful. Sometimes the tone of the story is changed or certain thematic elements are added or removed and certain characters and scenes get a tweak---sometimes that's not entirely bad either or may be necessitated because of the inherent differences between books and movies. Sometimes (as was the case with two of Matheson's works I've recently [past few years] both read and watched, I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come) you end up with something that only barely and superficially resembles the original work at all.
This is a false dichotomy. It's quite possible to drive smoothly if you pay attention to traffic and use something like the Smith System for safe driving. I know it's a popular meme here on /. when it comes to driving that we believe that our safety depends on expert, tire-screeching manuevering, but if you're in a tire-screeching manuever, in most cases you're already "doing it wrong" even if you do manage to avoid a collision.
I've found that ever since I got a stick shift I rarely need to use my brakes when I'm in 2nd or 3rd gear (unless I'm anticipating a full stop) since the engine will slow me down just fine unless I'm stuck behind a tailgater (gas! brake! gas! brake! good grief!) in an SUV I can't see around. Even then, I merely identify that person as a poor driver, increase my following distance, and attempt to drive at their average speed, which works fairly well most times. Sure, occasionally I get cut off when doing that, but overall I manage to maintain pace with traffic without stressing myself out.
Rule #1 of safe driving: there are no accidents. There are only collisions. Sure, you may not be "at fault," such as when you get rear-ended, but somebody is.
When I was younger, before I got my CDL*, I nearly rear-ended someone and wound up rear-ended myself. I always think of it as a collision that I (even though I was the one who was rear-ended) could have prevented if I had been paying better attention to traffic 3 or 4 cars ahead of me and if I had been more aware that I was being followed closely and the other driver wouldn't stop as suddenly as I had. If I'd had the experience and training I have today, I'm certain that I would have been able to prevent that collision, even though the other guy really shouldn't have been following me so closely.
(And yes, I realize that people do get rear-ended even after they've been at a full stop at a red light for minutes. Driving is dangerous business, no matter whose fault that is.)
Now, that being said, every time I've considered putting one of those insurance company boxes in my car to get a lower rate, I've decided against it. It seems like too much of an invasion of privacy.
Overall, I'm fairly ambivalent on the issue. Maybe it would be a good way to gauge the driving skill of a young person with very little or no record, but I don't think I'm convinced that it's a good idea for experienced drivers. On the other hand, it sounds like a better alternative to being discriminated against on the basis of my assigned gender at birth if I were to be in a position to buy a sports car in the next few years. On the other, other hand, it's unclear whether the data from these devices completely supersedes more nebulous "risk" factors such as being assigned one gender or another at birth, as one would hope it would, or if in the light of objective evidence about driving habits, insurance companies would still view a legal male with a higher performance car as more of a risk than a womyn-born-womyn with the same car. (There would certainly be no reason for them to change, and I imagine feminists would lose their shit like they always do when objective evidence shows that there's nothing about being a womyn-born-womyn that makes one a better person.)
* Too bad my short career driving truck didn't work out. I really liked doing long haul, and despite the downside of not much hometime, it beats what I'm doing now. Turns out I'm spectacularly bad at going in reverse! (But of course all that means is I didn't use the GOAL method--Get Out And Look--as often as I should have.)
super-super carriers that can fly into outer space
Let's do this thing! Space Battleship Yamato or the SDF-1 Macross?
Personally, I didn't like the book, so I won't be seeing the movie. I thought it was too preachy---to the point where I decided I wanted to know more about the author and only then learned about all the other stuff about him besides being a sci-fi author!
That being said, being a member of a group that is just completely and utterly incompatible with the Mormon world-view and seeing as how Card most likely will be using any profits from this movie to push forward an agenda that wants to see me become a second-class citizen, it does make me a bit squeamish when I do think about popping into a theater to see if I might like the movie more than the book.
Maybe I'll torrent it.
It's also a bit misleading to suggest that we should excuse Card's political leanings and activism while we're still here in the time when he's doing it because decades and centuries after the fact of other injustices, we no longer believe the specific political learnings of other authors who contributed to those things are relevant to their work.
Simply put, if I give Card money, he will use it against me on an issue that is far from settled (albiet getting there), and in fact since money is speech now, he will be able to speak his views with a much larger voice than I could ever possibly hope to use in refutation. On the other hand, if I give money to the estate of somebody who lobbied against the civil rights movement for example, there's not much to worry about.
I'm sure in 50 years when we have a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between any two people regardless of gender or biological weirdness or legal status that overrides and makes invalid other things such as the amendment to Michigan's constitution that defines marriage as one man and one women (whatever those are besides legal statuses), we'll all have a much easier time approaching Card's work.
I think what he said did respond to the point. It's like turning out the lights on the way out.
Then again, maybe I'm just misunderstanding what GGP meant by a "real" shutdown, and I'm hoping he wasn't making a no true Scotsman fallacy.
Now, if the building were under attack from military hardware or in the direct path of an F5 tornado, then yes, I might raise an eyebrow at spending the time to put up a page that says, "Our building is about to be destroyed and has shut down."
It's just... you know... when you know something is going to happen... you kind of prepare for it... and when it's something as trivial as changing a DNS entry or throwing up a static site... it really is just like switching off the lights on the way out.
That being said, I am left shaking my head at the ACA federal exchange rollout. That thing about knowing something is going to happen and being prepared.... I just don't understand how the higher-ups could have allowed such a debacle. Didn't they understand how much of a political field day the opponents of the ACA would have if the rollout went poorly? And then it went poorly, and the political field day goes on a month after the fact...
Obviously, a successful rollout is something that could have happened. Now, granted, I am aware that I'm partially comparing apples to oranges but I'm also not quite. As we're aware, Kentucky managed to do a bang-up job. Now granted, Kentucky's exchange only had to handle traffic from one state instead of, what was it, 37? Yet, somebody high up in the Obama administration should have known that was going to happen, that they were going to be building a national exchange with a couple of exceptions of states that would actually build their own. Hell, I guessed it was going to happen like that two years ago! (Although I would have thought Kentucky would have been one of the states not to do their own exchange, but who knew.)
Of course, I can join the bitching and moaning, but truth be told, I really have no idea what political forces may have designed the thing to fail. It could be the case that actors who didn't give a flip whether or not they played nice with Kentucky were the same actors who may have contributed to the roll-out problems, perhaps in technical ways, perhaps in other political ways. The only thing I can say from having been part of software rollouts that not everybody wants to succeed is that when somebody who has enough clout doesn't want something to succeed, it's going to be a very painful rollout for everyone, and it's very easy to point the finger of blame when one is creating the very problems one is seeking to blame others for.
If I'm wrong and there's evidence that millions upon millions of dollars were spent designing the shut-off notice static sites and rolling them out, please let me know. I don't think that's the case, but sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if I were wrong these days.
Also I'd like to say that like others have noticed, many of the services that federal websites provide continued to be available. For example, I go to noaa.gov to get my weather (and to read the forecast discussion). Well, during the "shutdown," noaa.gov was unavailable (for the pedantic, it resolved and served up a shutdown notification, but for all intents and purposes was down). Now, I know that when I put in a zipcode, it actually sends me over to weather.gov. I still go to noaa.gov because occasionally they have an interesting story in between the parade of AGW stories on their front page. Well, as it turned out, weather.gov was up and functional the whole time.
It did make me wonder, though, getting to GGP's point about a "real" shutdown. What would happen if the data the NWS posts to weather.gov and the web services related to forecast and weather information at weather.gov were unavailable? That would have a far bigger impact than not being able access the fluff at noaa.gov. What would wunderground.com (or everybody's favorite---weather bug) do to