I believe that, if it's possible to choose a "person of the century", he should be Henry Ford. This has, very definitely, been the century of the automobile. People often do not think about it, because it's so trivial, but the way we live today is entirely shaped around the automobile, for better or worse.
I won't disagree that this is the century of the car, but does that make Henry Ford person of the century? Put another way, was Henry Ford neccassary or sufficient to create the changes you're talking about? That is my criterion for even considering the "great man" theory of history, and it is rarely satisfied.
(To give you a hint on how rarely, after spending a semester reading about the life and times of Martin Luther, I wrote my final paper on the thesis that the Reformation would have happened just fine without him and he couldn't have brought about the reformation if he had lived a few decades earlier.)
From what I know of the history of the automobile, Henry loses out on both counts. Our car culture and other modern life would be largely the same if Ford had never lived. And Henry Ford a few decades earlier would not have had the same impact.
Einstein, on the other hand, seems to have been nessaccary, if not sufficient, for the changes that occured in the world at the time they occured.
Basically, he seems to be saying that the reason this has not been confirmed by other reputable labs or examined in any mainstream news sources is that it's too close to "cold fusion" and therefore his work has been automaticly rejected by everyone as a political move, even when they are getting results that it works.
Sorry, conspiracy theories aren't going to make me relax my expectations of peer review. In fact, it increases them. This has too much of an X-Files-y "They don't want you to know" feel for me to take it seriously. In the real world, anything that he could be doing without any grants or backing (in an old factory, no less) could be easily tested.
And his overall story seems like a parody of the American Dream. Poor boy goofs off in school, has major life-changing event that turns him into super-brain, works outside the establishment which won't listen to his ideas, fights prejudice to bring hope to millions... Wait, I think they left out a part with him working a menial job at an energy plant and doing brillient work with the equiptment after everyone had gone home. Kinda a Tucker meets Good Will Hunting sort of thing.
When I get a robot it will be one that can accept the voice command "IPA", go to the beer cupboard, read the badly-printed homebrew label and bring me what I asked for. Preferably it will be able to open the bottle, too.
Well, aside from the OCR and such, I wouldn't recomend this if you homebrew. Afterall, most homebrewers use a variety of sizes of bottles, depending on what's avalible. If you just trained the robot to "pick up a bottle" it would drop the little ones and smash the big ones.
This is also relevant to doing dishes or picking up anything in your room but clothes and papers. How much programming and sensory attachements would it take for a robot to be able to consistently pick up a novel object? You have to know the shape and where you can safe-ly lift it, how slippery and/or heavy it is (so you don't apply to little pressure and drop it), how fragile it is (so you don't apply too much and smash it), and if it is a container which must be kept in one orientation.
And thats just to pick up an object. I don't even want to try enumerating all the issues that would come up with cooking!
It seems like it will be a long time before we have a real household robot - that is, one that can acomplish regular household tasks without the price or time investment outweighing any energy saved.
I have always wanted a robot around the house, not the useless but fun Sony Aibo, but something which can actually do things for me.
I don't know that I would actually want something like this. It would be cool to play with and all, and maybe if you could get one that vacumed I'd think it was cool - except I'm such a slob letting any machine clean my room would lead to either something I really wanted being thrown out, or some sort of bizzare damage to the robot.
So, if something like this was cheap, how many people could honestly see themselves getting it for a practical use, and how many are just entranced by the neatness of the idea?
oh yeah, and it would scare the hell out of my cat, and if I get a dog it would chew on the robot (or play shake games... how sturdy is this thing?)
This may seem like a nit, but it may be useful to understanding the debate. You are not going to find a "pro-censorship" person to ask questions of. You will find people who "want to respect parental rights to guide their children's education." Or maybe someone who worries about "the effect of inflamatory material on tense social situations". And of course, tons of people who feel "that freedom of speech is very important but does not trump all other freedoms and rights". (Well, actually, that last one is me.)
My point is, if you look for a "pro-censorship" boogyman, you will never understand the people you are trying to oppose. And if you don't understand them, you will never sucessfully engage them.
It might be interesting to ask the interviewees to describe the type of person or group which produces, endorses or uses filtering software. Their ability to do so without reversion to "evil censor" mode would say a lot about how successful they will ever be in their goals.
The only difference is that, if it's a privately owned forum, then it doesn't implicate the 1st amendment or the 14th amendment which only apply to government actions. Don't mislead yourself by thinking it's anything other than censorship; for you are silencing someone's expression solely on the content of that expression.
Hmm... If I choose not to rent a porno, is that censorship? Is not buying or reading Hustler magazine "silencing someone's expression"? What if I simply don't go to porn sites? What if I find that porn sites use dishonest (IMHO) tactics to get me onto them and I'd rather just be able to eliminate them from my searches and links? How is that any more censorship than ignoring the "adult" section of the video store?
I used to mock filtering software to "protect the children" because I believed that no one found porn on line without going out and looking for it. Then I and my friends began dealing with sites that deliberately used search strings with no connection to their content (a search on a political term found thousands of porn sites and forced me to use a more indirect and less effective search to find what I wanted) or misleading main pages before dumping you into hard core porn (with the wonderful extra windows that don't close, etc). I still don't directly buy any "for the sake of the children" arguments, but I have found myself much more interested in filtering software.
But anyway, here's a real question : In times past, I heard a lot about companies selling filtering software without being entirely honest about what it was filtering. A school would want to block porn in its computers and find out that they were also blocking resource pages for gay youth or some other site that the software maker found "objectionable". Does that problem remain with commercially avalible filter-ware, or are products being developed now that allow the user to customize what is viewed?
Take a chill pill. I think that the previous poster was simply trying to provide an explanation (bordering on conspiracy theory) that there may not be as many "clinically depressed" people as the media/big business would like you to think.
What the previous poster said was, amoung other things :
But whatever you do, don't try to live life through a haze of drugs - I don't care what some 'authority' says, it aint worth the loss you *will* suffer as a result of letting drugs dominate your life.
No doubt, some pro anti-depressant user may come along and attept to refute my perspective in this thread, maybe some psych student will have some smart rebuttal, that doesn't matter. A little public flaming never really hurt, and I don't suffer from any DSM-documented "social disorders" that are likely to be triggered by a bit of controversy on Slashdot.
The average brainwashed American drug user doesn't scare me.
I am fairly confident that they know, deep down inside, under all that fog, that they're really not getting their moneys worth with Prozac or Paxil, and that no, it's not really working the way it was supposed to work, is it? If you don't notice it now, you will soon... but don't worry, the Big-P's will have a nice 'alternative' drug ready for you to use once you stop reaping 'rewards' from whatever it is you're on now.
Feeling cheated by Prozac? Not getting the life improvement you thought you'd get from Paxil?
That's coz it's a lie. Drugs don't make any difference.
If he was trying to say what you said, he was doing a piss poor job of it. If he was trying to say that psychoactive drugs haven't progressed since valium and just numb people to the point where they don't have to deal with life's everyday problems, he was doing a great job of it, and is an asshole. I perfer to think of him as a competent asshole.
As to what you said, yes, overdiagnosis happens, probably more-so in well-to-do families, (sort of like a friend who's parent's got him braces because they wanted to show their friends that they could afford to get their kid braces,) but underdiagnosis is also a problem - because school counselors never get involved unless you do something bad, not when you're hurting, because teachers see a hundred kids a day, and even if they know you well enough to see that you have problems they don't think it's their place to talk about it, because your parents have enough problems and it seems oh so much easier to just let it slide, because with everything so out of control in your head, you don't want to give up that last little bit by going to a doctor and saying you can't handle it yourself.
If the surgon general's plan can educate teachers, counselors and administraters to start breaking down some of those barriers to getting help when it's needed, great. If while telling them what is mental illness, they help them understand what isn't as well, and give them the tools to face down the overmedicaters, even better.
I have no doubt that these drugs are truly helpful, but often times "situationally depressed" people are perscribed Prozac by docs due to the pressure of the insurance companies.
I had a friend who had a seratonin imbalance, and the doctor recommended him some Prozac, which he didn't need. After 6 months, he stopped, and is now still recovering (over 4 years ago).
Sometimes they don't need to be depressed at all. I had a friend who was perscribed prozac for pain management. Her gyn (with no psychiatric background, but hey, he's got a perscription pad!) eventually raised her to 100 mg a day giving her free pills and then when she ran out and didn't have the money for a refill, she crashed HARD. (for those outside of the psychopharm taking community, average prozac intake for clinical depression is 20 to maybe 40 mg.) Not to mention she was drinking at the same time (he never told her not to) and going through all sorts of other problems with no cousuling to go with the drugs.
The point? Believe me, I know these drugs can be abused. I know you can grow psychologicly dependent on them just when you are ready to ease off and try it on your own. I know that a wide range of not normal exists before you get to unhealthy. But none of these problems warrent a blanket condemnation of psychopharm. The solution in most cases seems (to me) to be more integrated health care where counseling is at least initially accompanying the drugs and you have regular feedback with a proffessional psychologist and psychopharm. I fear that some of the "just drug them" attitude comes from health plans that cover drugs but not counsling.
Last random thought - perhaps the overmedicate stories actually come from the same main source as undermedicating - the stigma against mental illness. Its probably easier to say "you're kid needs this well known drug" than to say "Your kid seems to be having some problems, we'd like to get him into some one-on-one counseling and see if he is just jumpy and bored cause he's ahead of his class, if he's acting out for other reasons and you should be seeking some family counseling or if he has a brain chemical imbalance which is effecting his behaviour."
I think the problem is that normal sadness/depression is too often mislabeled as a mental disorder, either by the psycs or by the people themselves.
Thats half the problem. The other half is when people who have never dealt with emotional illness lable a mental disorder as normal sadness and deride people as "weak willed".
I won't draw a line on which is the worse problem either in frequency or potential damage. I am seriously against unnessaccary perscriptions (I rarely take cold medicine for mild illness because the side effects are worse for me than coughing a little) but I've also expereinced the social stigma against getting help with real problems because "when I'm depressed, I just get over it, I don't need a pill to make me happy."
What we need as a society is an actual understanding of mental illness, what it is and what it isn't. What we have now is a media blitz of overreactions in both directions, and the majority of responsible clinicians being tarred as either drug pushers or neglecters, depending on who's ranting.
I am, like many others, writing from work, or I would take the time to tear into you the way you deserve. But likely it wouldn't do any good. Let me just inform the rest of the/. readership that this asshole has no idea what he is talking about. I have spent most of my life with clinical depression, and the last several year on medication for it. Walks in the wood, socializing, and other things the previous poster flecklessly recomends will help you feel better when you are situationally depressed. When I was chemically depressed, I had friends, enjoyable pasttimes and people who loved me. I also had episodes of unshakable depression. You don't tell diabetics that they would have more energy if they just stopped taking insulin and got some fresh air, don't insult depressives the same way.
And before you dismiss me as "lost in the fog of prozac" maybe you should learn something about modern antidepressants instead of spouting your own assumptions as revealed truth. Prozac and similar drugs give me no "fog." In fact, on a moment to moment or even day to day basis, they have no overall effect on my mood. My kitten purring makes me happy, fighting with my NICOE makes me sad. But when I look back over my week, I don't have any incidents where I spent 6 hours curled up in a ball crying for no reason, or wandered across the street without looking on the assumption that if I got hit by a truck it wouldn't matter much.
And if those kind of unprovoked depressions are something you don't have to worry about in your life - CONGRADULATIONS! You probably aren't clinicaly depressed.
The only thing I have ever regretted about psychoactive medication is that lies like those told in this post prevented me for so long from getting the help I needed. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Actually a breakdown of this sort will be far worse in a big city than a small one. Think about it - if you live somewhere where just about everyone has a backyard, they can dig a hole and toss it there for a couple of days - unpleasant but it will be covered up and out of the way. In a large city like I live in (Boston) where you have hundreds of people in one building and no yard space, people will have no option but to toss it in the gutters. Assume each person "excretes" a pound a day, and you could have literally 300 lbs of shit in the gutters of one block in many boston neighborhoods. If this wacky weather continues and its above freezing, you have a major health crisis waiting to happen. This is not fear mongering or hysteria. This is a simple mathematical and biological extrapolation of what could happen if the sewage system backed up for ONE DAY.
And lets face it, are the couple of guys who know how to run the manual backups for an automated plant gonna be available on the day after the biggest party night of the year which also happens to be saterday, ie two days before they have to worry about being back at work?
My very honest advice is to call your city hall and ask if any automated systems in water and sewage treatmant have been tested for Y2K compliance. If they don't give you an answer you're comfortable with, you have a few choices:
1) Don't worry about it until jan 1st and then deal with it however you choose.
2) Put aside several gallons of water for drinking. For toiletries, make sure you have at least two large buckets, a toilet seat that will sit on them without you falling in, some heavy duty trash bags, and about 30 bls of clumping cat litter (preferable the kind with baking soda, or you can get a couple of boxes and mix it in.)
3) If you live in a densely populated area and don't trust your neighbors to take the sanitary percautions just described, and you are getting worrying responses from your local gov, I would think seriously about celebrating with some friends farther into the burbs, or being prepared to get out of town for a few days if things do go wrng. Its not gonna cause the sort of widespread panic that the lights going out might, but the possible long term effects are actually _far_ more severe.
-Glad to be living in one of the better ranked cities for Y2K preparedness,
Scientists didn't consult religious leaders about whether or not they should do their best to wipe out smallpox. They don't even mention religious leaders as a blip on the horizen when discussing whether to get rid of what strains we have in storage.
We've already made self replicating molecules. we can probably build viruses. They are just choosing the mark of "self replicating structures with DNA" and calling it life. For some reason it doesn't really thrill me.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the governor, November 11, 1755
A well spun quote and an impressive author do not make an idea any more true. If you think no one would dare to call Ben Franklin wrong, let me help you out - "Ben Franklin was wrong in that statement, made doublely foolish since he was addressing a body of govenment rather than calling for it to disband" But more to the point...
Privacy being what many consider to be an essential Liberty.
Where? Not 'where does it say that?' I'm willing to grant you privacy as an important liberty (but not nessaccarily essential, since that implies to me that there could be no other liberty that can trump it), but in what locations are you entitled to privacy?
In your own home? Certainly, most would say.
In the middle of the Macy's parade? Certainly not!
In a public park area? You might expect people to give each other space, but you have no right for them not to come across you.
In a commercial parking area where you park your car by the owner's sufferance and know you're on his property?
In a department store outside of the bathrooms and changing rooms?
In an airport?
How on earth could your right to privacy be relavant to survelance cameras in publicly or privately run places that have a vested interest in preventing theft or assault? Help me out, I really don't see it at all.
I walk around with a paper, briefcase, or other object hiding my face.
I stood at the edge of the tracks and watched 5 trains go by.
I stood on or climbed onto the railings of a bridge, skyscraper, or other tall structure.
What other suggestions?
Only 2 of those are illegal. The rest are none of the fucking pigs business. And I've done several of them, including the Airport bag thing, I reached in, got 3$ out, then walked to the wendy's across the aisle from where I was sitting and got a burger. And if I had been hassled by a security guard for that I'd have seriously thought about telling him to fuck himself....
Three men walk towards a bank together purposfully, all carrying large duffle bags with hard shapes visible against the sides.
The car that they got out of pulls around behind the bank to the service entrance/exit.
All three men pause at the door to the bank and pull on ski-masks.
NONE of these actions are illegal. So I guess the cop across the street should just keep writing parking tickets rather than "hassling" these nice men by calling it in or moving to intercept. Just wait until he's actually informed of or sees a real crime in progress rather than being alert to signals of possible illegal behaviour ahead.
"Just don't try to prevent people from commiting murder or rape, because in the end, it is an impossible task, and all you can hope to do is infringe people's human rights."
I'm sorry, this is borderline sociopathic. What you can hope to do is prevent someone from being murdered or raped. In case it never occured to you, being murdered or raped is a bit of an infringment on a person's human rights as well. Quite a bit more of one than being observed while in a public place where you have no right to the expectation of complete privacy.
I'm new to posting here, and some of the topics are quite interesting, but I'm seeing a disturbing trend here. How many people actually agree with this idea that the police should make no attempt to prevent crime, but only show up with the corenor (sp?) and try to gather evidence to convict after the fact? But only incontrevertable evidence, because it wouldn't do for one guilty guy to go to jail to get a thousand repeat offenders off the street. Oh wait, trying to prevent repeat offense would be preventing crime. never mind.
Have you always been this paranoid? I hate to start a conversation this way, but your "harmless explainations" for these triggering events are just silly. A precursor to criminal activity should always be investigated. The examples you give will be a tiny percentage of the real crimes prevented, and will result in a "excuse me... ok fine" conversation that shouldn't bother any rational person.
Did you actually read the article? The movement patterns they talked about have been tested. Close to 99% accurate as I recall. Guess police officers shouldn't worry if they see someone fleeing another preson. _Could_ just be a couple playing tag so lets not risk bothering them. Don't bother that guy who's got someone pinned up against the wall and screaming. Maybe they're just having a tickle fight.
Do you honestly think that police or security guards should wait until someone is already dead, raped or robbed before they do anything just because you think your behaviour is so special it'll set off all these "false positives" that the system isn't having?
Um, where did we get the idea that the point of the Human Genome Project was to genetically engineer perfect children? OK, nothing is used only for its intended purpose, but this makes it sound like Human Genome is a eugenics program.
1) By finding the markers for specific genetic diseases, a couple who both have a family history can still have children together by doing invitro cloning and testing the embreyos and only implanting those who are recessive or negitive. This is already possible for those diseases we have a marker on, but very expensive. Actually adjusting the genes is still scifi.
2) By mapping the genome, they are making better treatments possible for existing diseases. Thats genetic and viral diseases (if you know the exact code for the cells that HIV infects, you are much farther along on finding a way to block the infection.) Why do you think private pharmacutical companies are racing the genome project to completion? They want to copywrite those genes (a subject in itself) not to offer genetic selection to parents, but so that they can own any drug treatments based on that info. The Genome Project is racing them to make that genetic info "open source" and reduce the chance of one company getting a monopoly on a life-saving drug and ransoming peoples lives to the bottom line. (they do that anyway, but its way worse when there's no chance of a generic equivelent.)
Long story short, there's incredibly more to this project than the "Quest for Knowledge vs Dark Eugenics Dystopia" stuff I'm seeing here.
This message brought to you by your friendly neighborhood bio major who lives with a HGP tech.
"Insurance companies base much of their rates on statistics. That's why even though you may be a perfect driver, if you're 25 years old and male, you're going to pay a lot for insurance. You personal record means diddly to them.
If the insurance company knows that your genes give you a predisposition to heart attacks or cancer, then they will adjust their rates accordingly."
Well, actually, your record means plenty to them. The statistics on your demographics set the baseline, but they adjust it up and down based on your personal record.
"There are few viruses or bacteria that I immediately that are genetic specific at all. Most of the viruses and bacteria and other nasties are usually equal opportunity infectors."
1) Incorrect, most viruses in particular are species specific. Rabies is about the only virus that effects all mammals, and it doesn't spread to the rest of the animal kingdom. As a vet tech I worked around animals that had airborn viruses that could kill another of their species, but I never so much as caught a cold from a pup with kennel cough.
2) Incorrect within the species as well. Ever wonder why genetic diseases could take hold in the first place? Even if they're recessive, you'd think the likely-hood would just go down and down. But it doesn't because the genetic "flaw" is protecting the heterozygous individual from a environmental disease. EI, you get matching genes for scicle cell anemia, you die. You get one gene for scicle cell (yes, I'm mispelling it) and you have an enormously improved chance of survving contact with the malaria virus. Hence, scicle cell anemia is prevelant in those races which spent an evolutionarily significant amount of time in areas with large year round misquito problems.
Same thing for other genetic diseases, though they haven't figured out the exact genetic disease to virus protection correlation on all of them (recently found out that I want to say cystic fibrosis in its recessive form protected against the black plague.) So yes, genetic diversity matters big time in surviving epidemics.
"In any event, I'm not sure you can make a generalization like that. My roommate just started a brand new job out of school, set up a business account at a bank he had never dealt with and they gave him a $15,000 line of credit. (Of course, that is Canadian money, which is basically the same a monopoly money down in the states... *sad grin*)"
Nah, pretty much the same in the US. The "working stiff can't get that credit limit" idea is silly, especially since it was two ccs not one, I thought. Bankruptcy rates are soaring in the US partly because credit card cos will give obscene limits to people who can't afford them. And if you top out your limit and just keep paying off interest and a tiny bit of principal, they'll most likely raise your limit so they can make more on interest. Any then they go to congress and bitch and moan that people keep declaring bankruptcy and why don't they change the rules to make it harder.
People have made a lot of posts to the effect of "people should just take responsibility for their own action". But what about the cc co taking responsibility for their actions? If I personally extended credit well beyond what I knew someone could pay back to engage in a self destructive and addictive habit, I wouldn't expect to see that money again, and I'd probably see my action as endangering to the person in question. Long story short, I'm of mixed minds on any additional damages the ccs may be sued for, but they made a real bad credit decision both economiclly and ethically, and I'm loving it if they have to void the charges. That's just THEM taking responsibility for THEIR stupid actions. PS legally, you might compare the situation to bartenders and drunk driving. They can't just say, 'oh I was just selling them alcohol, its not my responsibility if they drink it all at once'. They are serving alcohol to people they can expect to drink it right there, and they have a responsibility for the consequences. PPS Generally this is just a more egrerious case of why I hate credit cards anyway, so I'm not exactly impartial.
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I won't disagree that this is the century of the car, but does that make Henry Ford person of the century? Put another way, was Henry Ford neccassary or sufficient to create the changes you're talking about? That is my criterion for even considering the "great man" theory of history, and it is rarely satisfied.
(To give you a hint on how rarely, after spending a semester reading about the life and times of Martin Luther, I wrote my final paper on the thesis that the Reformation would have happened just fine without him and he couldn't have brought about the reformation if he had lived a few decades earlier.)
From what I know of the history of the automobile, Henry loses out on both counts. Our car culture and other modern life would be largely the same if Ford had never lived. And Henry Ford a few decades earlier would not have had the same impact.
Einstein, on the other hand, seems to have been nessaccary, if not sufficient, for the changes that occured in the world at the time they occured.
Sorry, conspiracy theories aren't going to make me relax my expectations of peer review. In fact, it increases them. This has too much of an X-Files-y "They don't want you to know" feel for me to take it seriously. In the real world, anything that he could be doing without any grants or backing (in an old factory, no less) could be easily tested.
And his overall story seems like a parody of the American Dream. Poor boy goofs off in school, has major life-changing event that turns him into super-brain, works outside the establishment which won't listen to his ideas, fights prejudice to bring hope to millions... Wait, I think they left out a part with him working a menial job at an energy plant and doing brillient work with the equiptment after everyone had gone home. Kinda a Tucker meets Good Will Hunting sort of thing.
-Kahuna Burger
Well, aside from the OCR and such, I wouldn't recomend this if you homebrew. Afterall, most homebrewers use a variety of sizes of bottles, depending on what's avalible. If you just trained the robot to "pick up a bottle" it would drop the little ones and smash the big ones.
This is also relevant to doing dishes or picking up anything in your room but clothes and papers. How much programming and sensory attachements would it take for a robot to be able to consistently pick up a novel object? You have to know the shape and where you can safe-ly lift it, how slippery and/or heavy it is (so you don't apply to little pressure and drop it), how fragile it is (so you don't apply too much and smash it), and if it is a container which must be kept in one orientation.
And thats just to pick up an object. I don't even want to try enumerating all the issues that would come up with cooking!
It seems like it will be a long time before we have a real household robot - that is, one that can acomplish regular household tasks without the price or time investment outweighing any energy saved.
But, hey - I could be wrong. ;)
I don't know that I would actually want something like this. It would be cool to play with and all, and maybe if you could get one that vacumed I'd think it was cool - except I'm such a slob letting any machine clean my room would lead to either something I really wanted being thrown out, or some sort of bizzare damage to the robot.
So, if something like this was cheap, how many people could honestly see themselves getting it for a practical use, and how many are just entranced by the neatness of the idea?
oh yeah, and it would scare the hell out of my cat, and if I get a dog it would chew on the robot (or play shake games... how sturdy is this thing?)
Ha! I didn't see ep1 or Titanic.
My point is, if you look for a "pro-censorship" boogyman, you will never understand the people you are trying to oppose. And if you don't understand them, you will never sucessfully engage them.
It might be interesting to ask the interviewees to describe the type of person or group which produces, endorses or uses filtering software. Their ability to do so without reversion to "evil censor" mode would say a lot about how successful they will ever be in their goals.
Hmm... If I choose not to rent a porno, is that censorship? Is not buying or reading Hustler magazine "silencing someone's expression"? What if I simply don't go to porn sites? What if I find that porn sites use dishonest (IMHO) tactics to get me onto them and I'd rather just be able to eliminate them from my searches and links? How is that any more censorship than ignoring the "adult" section of the video store?
I used to mock filtering software to "protect the children" because I believed that no one found porn on line without going out and looking for it. Then I and my friends began dealing with sites that deliberately used search strings with no connection to their content (a search on a political term found thousands of porn sites and forced me to use a more indirect and less effective search to find what I wanted) or misleading main pages before dumping you into hard core porn (with the wonderful extra windows that don't close, etc). I still don't directly buy any "for the sake of the children" arguments, but I have found myself much more interested in filtering software.
But anyway, here's a real question : In times past, I heard a lot about companies selling filtering software without being entirely honest about what it was filtering. A school would want to block porn in its computers and find out that they were also blocking resource pages for gay youth or some other site that the software maker found "objectionable". Does that problem remain with commercially avalible filter-ware, or are products being developed now that allow the user to customize what is viewed?
What the previous poster said was, amoung other things :
But whatever you do, don't try to live life through a haze of drugs - I don't care what some 'authority' says, it aint worth the loss you *will* suffer as a result of letting drugs dominate your life.
No doubt, some pro anti-depressant user may come along and attept to refute my perspective in this thread, maybe some psych student will have some smart rebuttal, that doesn't matter. A little public flaming never really hurt, and I don't suffer from any DSM-documented "social disorders" that are likely to be triggered by a bit of controversy on Slashdot.
The average brainwashed American drug user doesn't scare me.
I am fairly confident that they know, deep down inside, under all that fog, that they're really not getting their moneys worth with Prozac or Paxil, and that no, it's not really working the way it was supposed to work, is it? If you don't notice it now, you will soon... but don't worry, the Big-P's will have a nice 'alternative' drug ready for you to use once you stop reaping 'rewards' from whatever it is you're on now.
Feeling cheated by Prozac? Not getting the life improvement you thought you'd get from Paxil?
That's coz it's a lie. Drugs don't make any difference.
If he was trying to say what you said, he was doing a piss poor job of it. If he was trying to say that psychoactive drugs haven't progressed since valium and just numb people to the point where they don't have to deal with life's everyday problems, he was doing a great job of it, and is an asshole. I perfer to think of him as a competent asshole.
As to what you said, yes, overdiagnosis happens, probably more-so in well-to-do families, (sort of like a friend who's parent's got him braces because they wanted to show their friends that they could afford to get their kid braces,) but underdiagnosis is also a problem - because school counselors never get involved unless you do something bad, not when you're hurting, because teachers see a hundred kids a day, and even if they know you well enough to see that you have problems they don't think it's their place to talk about it, because your parents have enough problems and it seems oh so much easier to just let it slide, because with everything so out of control in your head, you don't want to give up that last little bit by going to a doctor and saying you can't handle it yourself.
If the surgon general's plan can educate teachers, counselors and administraters to start breaking down some of those barriers to getting help when it's needed, great. If while telling them what is mental illness, they help them understand what isn't as well, and give them the tools to face down the overmedicaters, even better.
I have no doubt that these drugs are truly helpful, but often times "situationally depressed" people are perscribed Prozac by docs due to the pressure of the insurance companies.
I had a friend who had a seratonin imbalance, and the doctor recommended him some Prozac, which he didn't need. After 6 months, he stopped, and is now still recovering (over 4 years ago).
Sometimes they don't need to be depressed at all. I had a friend who was perscribed prozac for pain management. Her gyn (with no psychiatric background, but hey, he's got a perscription pad!) eventually raised her to 100 mg a day giving her free pills and then when she ran out and didn't have the money for a refill, she crashed HARD. (for those outside of the psychopharm taking community, average prozac intake for clinical depression is 20 to maybe 40 mg.) Not to mention she was drinking at the same time (he never told her not to) and going through all sorts of other problems with no cousuling to go with the drugs.
The point? Believe me, I know these drugs can be abused. I know you can grow psychologicly dependent on them just when you are ready to ease off and try it on your own. I know that a wide range of not normal exists before you get to unhealthy. But none of these problems warrent a blanket condemnation of psychopharm. The solution in most cases seems (to me) to be more integrated health care where counseling is at least initially accompanying the drugs and you have regular feedback with a proffessional psychologist and psychopharm. I fear that some of the "just drug them" attitude comes from health plans that cover drugs but not counsling.
Last random thought - perhaps the overmedicate stories actually come from the same main source as undermedicating - the stigma against mental illness. Its probably easier to say "you're kid needs this well known drug" than to say "Your kid seems to be having some problems, we'd like to get him into some one-on-one counseling and see if he is just jumpy and bored cause he's ahead of his class, if he's acting out for other reasons and you should be seeking some family counseling or if he has a brain chemical imbalance which is effecting his behaviour."
Thats half the problem. The other half is when people who have never dealt with emotional illness lable a mental disorder as normal sadness and deride people as "weak willed".
I won't draw a line on which is the worse problem either in frequency or potential damage. I am seriously against unnessaccary perscriptions (I rarely take cold medicine for mild illness because the side effects are worse for me than coughing a little) but I've also expereinced the social stigma against getting help with real problems because "when I'm depressed, I just get over it, I don't need a pill to make me happy."
What we need as a society is an actual understanding of mental illness, what it is and what it isn't. What we have now is a media blitz of overreactions in both directions, and the majority of responsible clinicians being tarred as either drug pushers or neglecters, depending on who's ranting.
And before you dismiss me as "lost in the fog of prozac" maybe you should learn something about modern antidepressants instead of spouting your own assumptions as revealed truth. Prozac and similar drugs give me no "fog." In fact, on a moment to moment or even day to day basis, they have no overall effect on my mood. My kitten purring makes me happy, fighting with my NICOE makes me sad. But when I look back over my week, I don't have any incidents where I spent 6 hours curled up in a ball crying for no reason, or wandered across the street without looking on the assumption that if I got hit by a truck it wouldn't matter much.
And if those kind of unprovoked depressions are something you don't have to worry about in your life - CONGRADULATIONS! You probably aren't clinicaly depressed.
The only thing I have ever regretted about psychoactive medication is that lies like those told in this post prevented me for so long from getting the help I needed. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself.
And lets face it, are the couple of guys who know how to run the manual backups for an automated plant gonna be available on the day after the biggest party night of the year which also happens to be saterday, ie two days before they have to worry about being back at work?
My very honest advice is to call your city hall and ask if any automated systems in water and sewage treatmant have been tested for Y2K compliance. If they don't give you an answer you're comfortable with, you have a few choices:
1) Don't worry about it until jan 1st and then deal with it however you choose.
2) Put aside several gallons of water for drinking. For toiletries, make sure you have at least two large buckets, a toilet seat that will sit on them without you falling in, some heavy duty trash bags, and about 30 bls of clumping cat litter (preferable the kind with baking soda, or you can get a couple of boxes and mix it in.)
3) If you live in a densely populated area and don't trust your neighbors to take the sanitary percautions just described, and you are getting worrying responses from your local gov, I would think seriously about celebrating with some friends farther into the burbs, or being prepared to get out of town for a few days if things do go wrng. Its not gonna cause the sort of widespread panic that the lights going out might, but the possible long term effects are actually _far_ more severe.
-Glad to be living in one of the better ranked cities for Y2K preparedness,
Kahuna Burger
We've already made self replicating molecules. we can probably build viruses. They are just choosing the mark of "self replicating structures with DNA" and calling it life. For some reason it doesn't really thrill me.
A well spun quote and an impressive author do not make an idea any more true. If you think no one would dare to call Ben Franklin wrong, let me help you out - "Ben Franklin was wrong in that statement, made doublely foolish since he was addressing a body of govenment rather than calling for it to disband" But more to the point...
Privacy being what many consider to be an essential Liberty.
Where? Not 'where does it say that?' I'm willing to grant you privacy as an important liberty (but not nessaccarily essential, since that implies to me that there could be no other liberty that can trump it), but in what locations are you entitled to privacy?
In your own home? Certainly, most would say.
In the middle of the Macy's parade? Certainly not!
In a public park area? You might expect people to give each other space, but you have no right for them not to come across you.
In a commercial parking area where you park your car by the owner's sufferance and know you're on his property?
In a department store outside of the bathrooms and changing rooms?
In an airport?
How on earth could your right to privacy be relavant to survelance cameras in publicly or privately run places that have a vested interest in preventing theft or assault? Help me out, I really don't see it at all.
I stood at the edge of the tracks and watched 5 trains go by.
I stood on or climbed onto the railings of a bridge, skyscraper, or other tall structure.
What other suggestions?
Only 2 of those are illegal. The rest are none of the fucking pigs business. And I've done several of them, including the Airport bag thing, I reached in, got 3$ out, then walked to the wendy's across the aisle from where I was sitting and got a burger. And if I had been hassled by a security guard for that I'd have seriously thought about telling him to fuck himself....
Three men walk towards a bank together purposfully, all carrying large duffle bags with hard shapes visible against the sides.
The car that they got out of pulls around behind the bank to the service entrance/exit.
All three men pause at the door to the bank and pull on ski-masks.
NONE of these actions are illegal. So I guess the cop across the street should just keep writing parking tickets rather than "hassling" these nice men by calling it in or moving to intercept. Just wait until he's actually informed of or sees a real crime in progress rather than being alert to signals of possible illegal behaviour ahead.
Sheesh.
I'm sorry, this is borderline sociopathic. What you can hope to do is prevent someone from being murdered or raped. In case it never occured to you, being murdered or raped is a bit of an infringment on a person's human rights as well. Quite a bit more of one than being observed while in a public place where you have no right to the expectation of complete privacy.
I'm new to posting here, and some of the topics are quite interesting, but I'm seeing a disturbing trend here. How many people actually agree with this idea that the police should make no attempt to prevent crime, but only show up with the corenor (sp?) and try to gather evidence to convict after the fact? But only incontrevertable evidence, because it wouldn't do for one guilty guy to go to jail to get a thousand repeat offenders off the street. Oh wait, trying to prevent repeat offense would be preventing crime. never mind.
Did you actually read the article? The movement patterns they talked about have been tested. Close to 99% accurate as I recall. Guess police officers shouldn't worry if they see someone fleeing another preson. _Could_ just be a couple playing tag so lets not risk bothering them. Don't bother that guy who's got someone pinned up against the wall and screaming. Maybe they're just having a tickle fight.
Do you honestly think that police or security guards should wait until someone is already dead, raped or robbed before they do anything just because you think your behaviour is so special it'll set off all these "false positives" that the system isn't having?
1) By finding the markers for specific genetic diseases, a couple who both have a family history can still have children together by doing invitro cloning and testing the embreyos and only implanting those who are recessive or negitive. This is already possible for those diseases we have a marker on, but very expensive. Actually adjusting the genes is still scifi.
2) By mapping the genome, they are making better treatments possible for existing diseases. Thats genetic and viral diseases (if you know the exact code for the cells that HIV infects, you are much farther along on finding a way to block the infection.) Why do you think private pharmacutical companies are racing the genome project to completion? They want to copywrite those genes (a subject in itself) not to offer genetic selection to parents, but so that they can own any drug treatments based on that info. The Genome Project is racing them to make that genetic info "open source" and reduce the chance of one company getting a monopoly on a life-saving drug and ransoming peoples lives to the bottom line. (they do that anyway, but its way worse when there's no chance of a generic equivelent.)
Long story short, there's incredibly more to this project than the "Quest for Knowledge vs Dark Eugenics Dystopia" stuff I'm seeing here.
This message brought to you by your friendly neighborhood bio major who lives with a HGP tech.
If the insurance company knows that your genes give you a predisposition to heart attacks or cancer, then they will adjust their rates accordingly."
Well, actually, your record means plenty to them. The statistics on your demographics set the baseline, but they adjust it up and down based on your personal record.
1) Incorrect, most viruses in particular are species specific. Rabies is about the only virus that effects all mammals, and it doesn't spread to the rest of the animal kingdom. As a vet tech I worked around animals that had airborn viruses that could kill another of their species, but I never so much as caught a cold from a pup with kennel cough.
2) Incorrect within the species as well. Ever wonder why genetic diseases could take hold in the first place? Even if they're recessive, you'd think the likely-hood would just go down and down. But it doesn't because the genetic "flaw" is protecting the heterozygous individual from a environmental disease. EI, you get matching genes for scicle cell anemia, you die. You get one gene for scicle cell (yes, I'm mispelling it) and you have an enormously improved chance of survving contact with the malaria virus. Hence, scicle cell anemia is prevelant in those races which spent an evolutionarily significant amount of time in areas with large year round misquito problems.
Same thing for other genetic diseases, though they haven't figured out the exact genetic disease to virus protection correlation on all of them (recently found out that I want to say cystic fibrosis in its recessive form protected against the black plague.) So yes, genetic diversity matters big time in surviving epidemics.
Nah, pretty much the same in the US. The "working stiff can't get that credit limit" idea is silly, especially since it was two ccs not one, I thought. Bankruptcy rates are soaring in the US partly because credit card cos will give obscene limits to people who can't afford them. And if you top out your limit and just keep paying off interest and a tiny bit of principal, they'll most likely raise your limit so they can make more on interest. Any then they go to congress and bitch and moan that people keep declaring bankruptcy and why don't they change the rules to make it harder.
People have made a lot of posts to the effect of "people should just take responsibility for their own action". But what about the cc co taking responsibility for their actions? If I personally extended credit well beyond what I knew someone could pay back to engage in a self destructive and addictive habit, I wouldn't expect to see that money again, and I'd probably see my action as endangering to the person in question. Long story short, I'm of mixed minds on any additional damages the ccs may be sued for, but they made a real bad credit decision both economiclly and ethically, and I'm loving it if they have to void the charges. That's just THEM taking responsibility for THEIR stupid actions. PS legally, you might compare the situation to bartenders and drunk driving. They can't just say, 'oh I was just selling them alcohol, its not my responsibility if they drink it all at once'. They are serving alcohol to people they can expect to drink it right there, and they have a responsibility for the consequences. PPS Generally this is just a more egrerious case of why I hate credit cards anyway, so I'm not exactly impartial.