For frame of reference, an average day laborer in India makes about $0.50 USD/day.
I visited there recently, and a $12 pizza at the local Pizza Hut was a luxury few Indians have experienced. Their large was smaller than a medium here.
Regarding number 5, it is illegal for healthcare professionals to post their prices....something about price fixing and stuff. As a physician, I cannot ask other physicians how much they charge for the same services that I render.
There is a game with more than an us vs them mentality. If you've ever played an online free-for-all game in Warcraft 3 you know what I'm talking about. It's one of the hardest variations you can play on battle.net.
That's because the point of books 2-4 of the series, which incidentally were not originally intended to be linked to the novel Ender's Game, is Card's attempt at exposing the general public to some of the fundamental beliefs of Mormonism (LDS). If reread the three books, keeping in mind that Card is a Mormon author, you'll start to see how his theology pervades and drives the story.
This is easily the most important aspect of SciFi. Any time a story involves anything considered "fantastic," be it supernatural, scientific or whatever, the story still needs to lie within the realm of what people would deem believable. And I don't mean believe as in "Aliens in outer space scanning my mind so let me go get my tinfoil hat." It's more like stepping outside the boundaries set by your perception of how things should be.
>it's much easier to permanently blind someone with the green laser than a standard red one
There have been actual scientific studies done on people with medical diseases that required removal of their entire eye (like cancer). Before they did the surgery on that eye, they shone a red laser in the patient's eye to see if any damage would occur. It was interesting to note that no damage occured even after a full 20 minutes.
From what I know about stem cell banking, everything is still done on a private pay basis. I've seen a few brochures on banking fetal umbilical cord blood cells for possible use in future stem cell transplants. One thing those brochures never mention is the small percentage of people that will actually make use of those stem cells. Reading through the brochures, it seems more like they're playing off your fears that your child MIGHT get a cancer in the future that MIGHT get cured by those stem cells you're paying a couple hundred dollars a year to store. If you actually compared the number of banked stem cells that have been used in this manner to the total number of accounts at these cell banks, you'd find that a very small percentage (less than 1% i think) are actually used. We sat down and did the math and it comes out to a little over $200,000 per PERSON. This is definitely not financially viable which is why insurance companies will never pay for it.
It's just like those ads you see on TV that advertise getting full-body CT scans. Sure you can go and get scanned and possibly find some sort of cancer and end up having your life saved, but if you extend this to the whole country, it's not financially viable. The yield of finding cancer (especially in young, healthy people) is so low that it is impractical to scan everyone.
One other thing they didn't bring up in the article was the amount of maintenance involved in this massive project. The moon's thin atmosphere will be a two-edged sword for this project. The thin atmosphere allows more energy to pass through unfiltered, but on the other hand, that same property does not protect the surface from asteroid/comet strikes. On earth, our thicker atmosphere creates the friction necessary to "burn up" a lot of those particles. Some might argue that it's pretty rare for those asteroid strikes to occur or that it's just sensationalism (a la Armageddon/Deep Impact) but the number of smaller objects that hit the earth and the moon is actually quite high. The last time I looked in a telescope at the moon, it was covered with craters. Earth doesn't even come close. Imagine having to put a permanent team on the moon just to run around and replace broken panels.
Considering the Lord of the Rings trilogy is an allegory for the Christian mythos, you're pretty much saying that Christianity is racist as well. Light is symbolic for good, darkness for evil. I have yet to see a dark-skinned christian arguing for the opposite (dark = good, light = bad) because of the "racist undertones." And when you get into the third book, Saruman the WHITE turns out to be really bad (taking over the shire, etc.) so your argument doesn't really hold up there either.
It's not really 0 probability. I know a friend of a friend who got screwed over by the 3-strikes law here in California. He recently got out of jail for grand theft auto. He was out cruising with his friend when they got pulled over by the police because their car's license plate came up as stolen on the computer. It turns out that his friend stole the car from his other friend (some sort of sick joke, I guess) who had stolen the car from someone else. The original owner had reported the theft a couple days before.
ENTRAPMENT - A person is 'entrapped' when he is induced or persuaded by law enforcement officers or their agents to commit a crime that he had no previous intent to commit; and the law as a matter of policy forbids conviction in such a case.
I can see it all now... thief: "Really officer, anyone dumb enough to leave their car unlocked in DC is just ASKING to get their car stolen. I didn't WANT to do it. The car made me do it."
Language used to describe addictive disorders can be misleading because the words describe other conditions. Commonly used, abuse is a pejorative term that implies voluntary unlawful conduct and does not necessarily connote a disease state, as such. Dependence is a term derived from pharmacology and describes a physiologic state of adaptation that occurs after chronic use of a drug. Tolerance refers to the state in which the physical or behavioral effects of a constant dose of a drug decrease over time, or when a greater amount of the substance is required to produce the same effect. Dependence and tolerance occur with many pharmacologic agents, besides addictive substances. The word addiction is commonly used to describe a repertoire of pathologic behaviors that serve to maintain drug use (e.g., lying, stealing, purchase of illegal drugs).
Although the above text relates more to abuse/dependence of pharmacologic agents (i.e. illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine) the definitions also apply to other things that can be abused and lead to addictive behaviors.
The actual amount of time spent doing a given activity is not neccessarily what determines if a person is addicted or not. It's related more to how that person's life is negatively affected. For example, let's compare two people: Person A works a regular 9-5 job and is responsible for providing financial support for his family. He plays 30 hours a week. Person B is a teenager on summer vacation who's staying home all day to play Everquest for 60 hours a week. He has fewer responsibilities than Person A. It's obvious that if Person A's playing interferes with his life to the point where he's neglecting his family and his job, he's an addict. Person B might not be considered an addict if his life isn't as dysfunctional. It's not a matter of how long you play, it's how your playing affects your life.
"The center was having none of it, politely and compassionately but firmly refusing to release any of his information. This is primarily because they don't want to expose themselves to lawsuits, which can be tremendous, if there's any shred of a sign that something could have been done - which, with 20/20 hindsight, there always is.
If our society was less litigous, things like this might be more likely, but despite the fact that we weren't looking for anyone to blame, just for understanding, and even offered to sign a promise not to sue under any circumstances, they still had to say no. My lawyer told me I can't sign away my right to sue in any legally binding fashion, even of my own free will."
Actually it's because of our litigious society that they cannot release that information. There's this thing called "Patient Confidentiality" that protects your father's privacy. If that hospital did give you those records, you actually turn around and sue them for violating your father's privacy. Laws concerning patient confidentiality are in place to prevent that patient's medical information from being abused. For example, how would you like it if your boss could call up your doctor in order to find out your HIV status, or even the results of your urine drug screen?
I just came from Best Buy. Their customer rep said that if you cancel the ISP during the 1st year, you have a $400 cancellation fee. $200 during the 2nd and $100 during the third. You'll still make some money in the end, but not the full $400 like we all wish it would be.:(
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For frame of reference, an average day laborer in India makes about $0.50 USD/day.
I visited there recently, and a $12 pizza at the local Pizza Hut was a luxury few Indians have experienced. Their large was smaller than a medium here.
well, a quick google found this:c lock.ht m
http://users.actcom.co.il/meccano/riefler_
the main site:
http://users.actcom.co.il/meccano/
They have examples of a bunch of meccano clocks and other devices.
Regarding number 5, it is illegal for healthcare professionals to post their prices....something about price fixing and stuff. As a physician, I cannot ask other physicians how much they charge for the same services that I render.
There is a game with more than an us vs them mentality. If you've ever played an online free-for-all game in Warcraft 3 you know what I'm talking about. It's one of the hardest variations you can play on battle.net.
That's because the point of books 2-4 of the series, which incidentally were not originally intended to be linked to the novel Ender's Game, is Card's attempt at exposing the general public to some of the fundamental beliefs of Mormonism (LDS). If reread the three books, keeping in mind that Card is a Mormon author, you'll start to see how his theology pervades and drives the story.
This is easily the most important aspect of SciFi. Any time a story involves anything considered "fantastic," be it supernatural, scientific or whatever, the story still needs to lie within the realm of what people would deem believable. And I don't mean believe as in "Aliens in outer space scanning my mind so let me go get my tinfoil hat." It's more like stepping outside the boundaries set by your perception of how things should be.
>it's much easier to permanently blind someone with the green laser than a standard red one
There have been actual scientific studies done on people with medical diseases that required removal of their entire eye (like cancer). Before they did the surgery on that eye, they shone a red laser in the patient's eye to see if any damage would occur. It was interesting to note that no damage occured even after a full 20 minutes.
if everyone's response to Adobe will be as vehement as if Microsoft did it...
From what I know about stem cell banking, everything is still done on a private pay basis. I've seen a few brochures on banking fetal umbilical cord blood cells for possible use in future stem cell transplants. One thing those brochures never mention is the small percentage of people that will actually make use of those stem cells. Reading through the brochures, it seems more like they're playing off your fears that your child MIGHT get a cancer in the future that MIGHT get cured by those stem cells you're paying a couple hundred dollars a year to store. If you actually compared the number of banked stem cells that have been used in this manner to the total number of accounts at these cell banks, you'd find that a very small percentage (less than 1% i think) are actually used. We sat down and did the math and it comes out to a little over $200,000 per PERSON. This is definitely not financially viable which is why insurance companies will never pay for it.
It's just like those ads you see on TV that advertise getting full-body CT scans. Sure you can go and get scanned and possibly find some sort of cancer and end up having your life saved, but if you extend this to the whole country, it's not financially viable. The yield of finding cancer (especially in young, healthy people) is so low that it is impractical to scan everyone.
that heads are gonna roll before the week is out.
"Seriously sir, if we do it for a whole week, people will start tuning in every day!"
One other thing they didn't bring up in the article was the amount of maintenance involved in this massive project. The moon's thin atmosphere will be a two-edged sword for this project. The thin atmosphere allows more energy to pass through unfiltered, but on the other hand, that same property does not protect the surface from asteroid/comet strikes. On earth, our thicker atmosphere creates the friction necessary to "burn up" a lot of those particles. Some might argue that it's pretty rare for those asteroid strikes to occur or that it's just sensationalism (a la Armageddon/Deep Impact) but the number of smaller objects that hit the earth and the moon is actually quite high. The last time I looked in a telescope at the moon, it was covered with craters. Earth doesn't even come close. Imagine having to put a permanent team on the moon just to run around and replace broken panels.
Considering the Lord of the Rings trilogy is an allegory for the Christian mythos, you're pretty much saying that Christianity is racist as well. Light is symbolic for good, darkness for evil. I have yet to see a dark-skinned christian arguing for the opposite (dark = good, light = bad) because of the "racist undertones." And when you get into the third book, Saruman the WHITE turns out to be really bad (taking over the shire, etc.) so your argument doesn't really hold up there either.
It's not really 0 probability. I know a friend of a friend who got screwed over by the 3-strikes law here in California. He recently got out of jail for grand theft auto. He was out cruising with his friend when they got pulled over by the police because their car's license plate came up as stolen on the computer. It turns out that his friend stole the car from his other friend (some sort of sick joke, I guess) who had stolen the car from someone else. The original owner had reported the theft a couple days before.
I can see it all now...
thief: "Really officer, anyone dumb enough to leave their car unlocked in DC is just ASKING to get their car stolen. I didn't WANT to do it. The car made me do it."
Language used to describe addictive disorders can be misleading because the words describe other conditions. Commonly used, abuse is a pejorative term that implies voluntary unlawful conduct and does not necessarily connote a disease state, as such. Dependence is a term derived from pharmacology and describes a physiologic state of adaptation that occurs after chronic use of a drug. Tolerance refers to the state in which the physical or behavioral effects of a constant dose of a drug decrease over time, or when a greater amount of the substance is required to produce the same effect. Dependence and tolerance occur with many pharmacologic agents, besides addictive substances. The word addiction is commonly used to describe a repertoire of pathologic behaviors that serve to maintain drug use (e.g., lying, stealing, purchase of illegal drugs).
Although the above text relates more to abuse/dependence of pharmacologic agents (i.e. illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine) the definitions also apply to other things that can be abused and lead to addictive behaviors.
The actual amount of time spent doing a given activity is not neccessarily what determines if a person is addicted or not. It's related more to how that person's life is negatively affected. For example, let's compare two people: Person A works a regular 9-5 job and is responsible for providing financial support for his family. He plays 30 hours a week. Person B is a teenager on summer vacation who's staying home all day to play Everquest for 60 hours a week. He has fewer responsibilities than Person A. It's obvious that if Person A's playing interferes with his life to the point where he's neglecting his family and his job, he's an addict. Person B might not be considered an addict if his life isn't as dysfunctional. It's not a matter of how long you play, it's how your playing affects your life.
"The center was having none of it, politely and compassionately but firmly refusing to release any of his information. This is primarily because they don't want to expose themselves to lawsuits, which can be tremendous, if there's any shred of a sign that something could have been done - which, with 20/20 hindsight, there always is.
If our society was less litigous, things like this might be more likely, but despite the fact that we weren't looking for anyone to blame, just for understanding, and even offered to sign a promise not to sue under any circumstances, they still had to say no. My lawyer told me I can't sign away my right to sue in any legally binding fashion, even of my own free will."
Actually it's because of our litigious society that they cannot release that information. There's this thing called "Patient Confidentiality" that protects your father's privacy. If that hospital did give you those records, you actually turn around and sue them for violating your father's privacy. Laws concerning patient confidentiality are in place to prevent that patient's medical information from being abused. For example, how would you like it if your boss could call up your doctor in order to find out your HIV status, or even the results of your urine drug screen?
I just came from Best Buy. Their customer rep said that if you cancel the ISP during the 1st year, you have a $400 cancellation fee. $200 during the 2nd and $100 during the third. You'll still make some money in the end, but not the full $400 like we all wish it would be. :(