You're not (in general) getting a good deal even with the discount. The insurance company is a big buyer's club and just about the only thing good they do is negotiate a competitive price for services from the hospital. Sometimes it makes sense to get insurance with a high deductable just to take advantage of this bargaining position.
Since so few people pay out-of-pocket, and since hospitals often try so hard to hide what they plan to charge you for, there really isn't much of a single-patient market economy. Your nice small family doctor might be different, but in general expect to pay a lot more with your own cash.
Okay I get it and I get the picture. But it looks like the ceiling lights are communicating with the computers, what about the computers communicating back? We would need bright LED lights on all our gadgets blinking all the time. Are these going to be focused? This sounds annoying.
I think we would need to have some idea of what level of death or natural selection would be necessary to maintain or improve the fitness of a population. While there certainly are unlucky individuals in even the wealthiest communities, the level of natural selection can still be way off from that observed thousands of years ago, and thus be appropriately described as "little".
There is evolution of the individual, and evolution of the species. What is good for the individual is not necessarily good for everyone. If we end up evolving our way into a nuclear holocaust, nobody will be around to say I told you so. I think one of the main questions nobody is addressing here is if as a society we should be concerned about engineering our genetic future, because I think it is certainly within our power to do so.
It's easy to dis money, but really it should be a good measure of a person's contribution of productivity to society. So yes, someone (rich or poor) receiving government support or otherwise gaming the system is a net drain on everyone else's standard of living, and if everyone was in the same pot we would be in a sorry situation. It's not about $$$, it's about what you contribute.
Sure it's good to keep this in mind, but people aren't way off the mark when they imply that society will benefit from having smarter, healthier members. Sure we can save incredibly sick people, but that might come at a great cost (think of the cost of health care) to the rest of the population. Similarly being intelligent might not give you a reproductive advantage in modern society, but society would be on the whole more wealthy and productive with a greater average intelligence.
So it is a mistake to simply make a direct identification between what we think are "good" traits for people to have, and what makes them "fit", but there is a fair amount of correlation.
Actually women do go after intelligent and creative men. However, sitting in the basement moping reflects other aspects of one's personality which women may find undesirable.
Modern medicine certainly does affect evolution by allowing weak young people to survive, but also by allowing older people to reproduce.
However, I'm going to bet that birth control and other social effects like monogamy have a much greater impact.
I don't see why modern LCD shutter glasses need to be particularly bulky or have huge cables. Power and sync can be transmitted over very light cables. Or alternatively we have much better batteries than 20 years ago, and those Disneyland glasses aren't even that bad.
What about the fact that using the shutters will essentially cut your FPS and brightness in half - more when you consider needing to vsync and non-ideal polarizing filters and shutter window. Most people probably think the cool 3D effect is not worth this tremendous reduction in picture quality. Think of how much people spend on video cards to get that 2x increase in FPS.
What I'd like to see along these lines is full resolution passive polarized 3D, which should be totally possible with LCD technology at about twice the cost.
most head-mounted-displays will have some kind of position or orientation sensing so that head movement will be tracked and the display will respond accordingly.
It's true there is limited accuracy in measuring the mass of a single particle.. which is related to how long it sticks around before blowing up, but for many particles the uncertainty is very small!
Furthermore, these experiments can run until they pick up tens, hundreds, or thousands of particles of a certain type, and eventually the average mass of such particles can be measured to arbitrary precision.
It is wrong to think you need infinitely precise measurements (which have never been the case in the history of science) to compare theory with experiment. Random processes can still have predictable elements and be characterized.
in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic
These are ALL in the northern hemisphere.. that is a huge systematic with respect to the sun, and some handwaving is not going to get rid of it. Huge variation in sunlight? While the average direction of the sun is ALWAYS south??
How about asking the question: even if the cows had a natural compass, how does it benefit them to face north instead of some other direction or not at all?
Slashdot Mirror
You're not (in general) getting a good deal even with the discount. The insurance company is a big buyer's club and just about the only thing good they do is negotiate a competitive price for services from the hospital. Sometimes it makes sense to get insurance with a high deductable just to take advantage of this bargaining position.
Since so few people pay out-of-pocket, and since hospitals often try so hard to hide what they plan to charge you for, there really isn't much of a single-patient market economy. Your nice small family doctor might be different, but in general expect to pay a lot more with your own cash.
Okay I get it and I get the picture. But it looks like the ceiling lights are communicating with the computers, what about the computers communicating back? We would need bright LED lights on all our gadgets blinking all the time. Are these going to be focused? This sounds annoying.
I think we would need to have some idea of what level of death or natural selection would be necessary to maintain or improve the fitness of a population. While there certainly are unlucky individuals in even the wealthiest communities, the level of natural selection can still be way off from that observed thousands of years ago, and thus be appropriately described as "little".
There is evolution of the individual, and evolution of the species. What is good for the individual is not necessarily good for everyone. If we end up evolving our way into a nuclear holocaust, nobody will be around to say I told you so. I think one of the main questions nobody is addressing here is if as a society we should be concerned about engineering our genetic future, because I think it is certainly within our power to do so.
It's easy to dis money, but really it should be a good measure of a person's contribution of productivity to society. So yes, someone (rich or poor) receiving government support or otherwise gaming the system is a net drain on everyone else's standard of living, and if everyone was in the same pot we would be in a sorry situation. It's not about $$$, it's about what you contribute.
Sure it's good to keep this in mind, but people aren't way off the mark when they imply that society will benefit from having smarter, healthier members. Sure we can save incredibly sick people, but that might come at a great cost (think of the cost of health care) to the rest of the population. Similarly being intelligent might not give you a reproductive advantage in modern society, but society would be on the whole more wealthy and productive with a greater average intelligence.
So it is a mistake to simply make a direct identification between what we think are "good" traits for people to have, and what makes them "fit", but there is a fair amount of correlation.
putting people in prison is already a big hit to their reproductive capacity.
Actually women do go after intelligent and creative men. However, sitting in the basement moping reflects other aspects of one's personality which women may find undesirable.
Modern medicine certainly does affect evolution by allowing weak young people to survive, but also by allowing older people to reproduce. However, I'm going to bet that birth control and other social effects like monogamy have a much greater impact.
I don't see why modern LCD shutter glasses need to be particularly bulky or have huge cables. Power and sync can be transmitted over very light cables. Or alternatively we have much better batteries than 20 years ago, and those Disneyland glasses aren't even that bad. What about the fact that using the shutters will essentially cut your FPS and brightness in half - more when you consider needing to vsync and non-ideal polarizing filters and shutter window. Most people probably think the cool 3D effect is not worth this tremendous reduction in picture quality. Think of how much people spend on video cards to get that 2x increase in FPS.
What I'd like to see along these lines is full resolution passive polarized 3D, which should be totally possible with LCD technology at about twice the cost.
As for embarrassing, DDR seems popular enough.
most head-mounted-displays will have some kind of position or orientation sensing so that head movement will be tracked and the display will respond accordingly.
It's true there is limited accuracy in measuring the mass of a single particle.. which is related to how long it sticks around before blowing up, but for many particles the uncertainty is very small!
Furthermore, these experiments can run until they pick up tens, hundreds, or thousands of particles of a certain type, and eventually the average mass of such particles can be measured to arbitrary precision.
It is wrong to think you need infinitely precise measurements (which have never been the case in the history of science) to compare theory with experiment. Random processes can still have predictable elements and be characterized.
short answer.. yes you should be critical of what you read, and not make some blind appeal to authority instead of addressing what's argued.
good catch. the new scientist article is a lot more informative and convincing than the one from the telegraph.
link
as many people have suggested though, this begs for an actual controlled experiment with cows in boxes, etc.
Do you really buy that argument?
in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic
These are ALL in the northern hemisphere.. that is a huge systematic with respect to the sun, and some handwaving is not going to get rid of it. Huge variation in sunlight? While the average direction of the sun is ALWAYS south??
How about asking the question: even if the cows had a natural compass, how does it benefit them to face north instead of some other direction or not at all?
TFY (think for yourself)