"Quoth the raven 'Nevermore!'" Just because it is not in all versions does not make it incorrect, or non-existent. "Ain't" exists in South-eastern American as well as Received British, but you treat it as being non-standard. The more interesting question, with English, is "What is standard?"
There is no global answer, or even a regional answer. We have "media" Englishes that many people accept as a kind of standard, but they are often accented strongly. There are high-status varieties (like Received British or "Queen's") but they are usually contained within small populations (like a 1%). Since we have no language authority (like the Academie Francais) to decide what is ENGLISH, we all get to make it up as we go along. The only question becomes one of mutual comprehension. If you understood the poster then he succeeded, if not then he failed (for you and others like you). Capeche?
My family owns 160 acres of forest in the George Washington NAtional Forest: a "working" forest with a high proportion of hardwood. The problem is more complex than anyone wants to touch here. Basically though, trees are cut at "maturity" which is determined to be about 50 to 70 years. I was retiring up at the cabin there when a local woodcutter came by to "warn" me that I would need to cut my pine because of the pine bore beetle infestation that was sweeping the forest. Not only would I lose money, but I would be a disease vector if I didn't let him cut the trees and pay me buckets of cash for them. So I called in an old family friend, a retired forester from the old school. He called bullshit on the whole thing and I told the woodcutter to f**k off. 10 years later, I was overseas and my little brother was stopped on the road and told the same story by another wood cutter. The value had almost doubled at that point. He took it and let them cut the little bit of pine we had. Stupid, but it did help to care for our mother in her final days, even though we didn't really need the money at that point. Anyway, everyone around us now has had their land "selectively cut." That means that they take the best and leave the rest. The recovery is ugly. Since I have held firm against any wood sales since then the value of some of our hardwood is doubling each decade. My great-great grandchildren will be able to live off the sale of a tree. And they will be some kind of awesome trees at that point as well. We already have oak and maple that can't be wrapped by a tall man's arms. The deal is that the woodcutters equipment is setup for the logging of trees of the expected size, we can't really expect that trees of the size that ours will be in a hundred years will be an easy cut and haul, but when you do it will be worth it.
Dude, I live in Florida where a man and his wife were texting their babysitter during the trailers to a movie and a man sitting behind them started to bust their chops about it. I would like to say that hilarity ensued, but instead the texter "attacked" the good citizen (who was just insisting on his god-given right to come armed to the movie theater) with a dangerous bag of popcorn so of course he protected himself by shooting him dead in front of his wife.
Amazingly, the shooter didn't get out on a personal recog bond. Will wonders never cease?
golly, scarey ceramic swords on airplanes! And I know that if you can manage a ceramic sword you're not going to try to get one on a plane because of those fancy x-ray thingys at the airport. They can't get nothin' by those thingys, no they can't. except guns and knives and bombs of course, but shoot, as long as they stop the ceramic swords.
Would ya'll just quit fussing! Yesterday news was that there is a new interface for auto touchscreens that reads number of fingers, spread or contraction of the fingers and direction of movement to give control over volume, station change input source etc. for the media and then a similar thing for climate and so on. It did not matter where you touched the screen, but rather the number of finger and etc. Thus your concerns are addressed by the evolution of technology. So sit down now and quit fussin'
Your ideas about housing costs are... quaint. I bought my house, which is three houses down from one important bus stop (Stright to work for me) and two blocks away from three other bus stops that take me north, south and higher speed to the north for $70,000. I'm bicycle distance from cultural/restaurant/tourist areas in one direction and downtown in another (museums, aquarium, restaurants, music festivals, etc.). Its the fools that live in the burbs that are paying 250-500,000 for houses without public transit. My son walks to school in the morning and afternoon, plays outside with neighbor kids after school and generally has a great life. Screw the burbs.
It is messedup, I agree. For most of my life I had my own companies and my own policies that I used for all my employees and my family. It was easy, I chose a medium good policy that fit what I needed and ran with it. It was a cost of doing business. Then I retired, went back to school and got a BA, and left to teach in Asia. I had a credit card with a $5000 limit that was our insurance policy. All our insurance. Never needed it or used it, even paid for the birth of my youngest out of pocket. Then, two years ago, we came back to the US. Jesus what an effin' mess! It took me a year to get everything the way I wanted it, coverage for the people who needed it, the right coverage for our needs and within my income and, and , and. Interestingly, the first thing I saw was that the best deal by far was using an HSA (Health savings Account) as the primary component of my family's policy. I pay in a small paycheck deduction (pretax) and the university pays in twice that (also untaxed) which goes into a personal savings account that accrues over time and can be used to pay off the deductible or whatever is needed. For this I get a 67% reduction in the cost of the policy and a higher deductible. After one year now I have almost the entire deductible in savings.
I tell colleagues about this program and they are not interested. They don't even bother to read their paycheck to see how much is coming out for the various deductions or consider how to improve that cost to them. But they will keep a crap car for another year because they can't yet afford to buy a new one. They will move into a cheaper apartment because not only can't they afford to buy a house, they can't pay their rent in their apartment.
Maybe its because I was in business before, but I don't see any reason not to understand my money.
Calling BS (after 25 years as a building contractor/job superintendent and project manager). Straw Man> The mason works under contract to build a wall. The nature of bricks, and mortar, and the process preclude the possibility of "bricks falling out the bottom."
Now, if the dev was hired on contract and found, on testing, that his work had a bug then it should be in the contract what the devs responsibility should be. Exactly and clearly what his responsibility is. Now, if the dev is hired as an employee, then they are working on the clock and their work on the clock is based on their employment contract. Nothing more and nothing less.
What other world is there? Oh yeah, the world where you fools accept a contract that doesn't have a 40 hour week or over time compensation or all the things that protect a brick mason from being raped by their employer. So you have gladly accepted an employment contract that lets your employer treat you like crap and all you can do is write in to a forum and risk getting raped for that too? Too bad, just too bad.
i'm gonna' mod you up to11, you have hit it all on the head. (I'm a parent -- of 6 kids, three natural and three step--, a teacher, the brother of a teacher and brother in law of two other teachers; i do know a lot about both sides of the fence)
What? I'm missing your creds or your sources, my wife is a doctor nd specializes in inflammation and "heat" stuff (I'm not the doctor obviously) and she just snorted and wandered off when I showed her this. To translate that means you are stupid.
while I don't like or support the current devolution of Apple, We did have a blue and white iMac from 1998 that not only lasted a good long while, it stayed competitive with windows in terms of speed for many years. BUT, in the end the problem came from the inability to replace parts that died (first the USB ports on the keyboard, then the keyboard, then the HDD, then the CD drive. The CD drive required the purchase of a second one (European model, tray loader, only made them for two or three months while waiting for the slot loaders to come in) to replace the CD. Then another HDD died, no update past OSX10.3. fuggetaboutit. My daughter kept it for a few more years and then dumped it.
But now,you can't do stuff like this to a Mac for the most part you have to let Apple rape you for the repair or dump it in China and buy a new one. Screw that.
DC is a massive coven of rats. They run the entire city from dusk till dawn. I used to watch them from my townhouse waddle across streets, alleys, in my back yard, up the walls of the house, in the windows......
Did you realize that ten percent of the people in Russia are also the stupidest in the world. Same for China and Poland.
When I was working for the University (of Virginia) in the late nineties I was helping Chinese PhD students with their theses. These people were absolutely brilliant, the top ten percent in the world.
Then I went to China. The top ten percent had already gone to the US and the west to study so the remainder were pretty normal, many were downright stupid. Hmmmm. Funny thing about that, people in the US thought that all the Chinese were as brilliant as the PhD students really were, but they aren't. Some of them not only can't read or write, they can't read numbers, add, subtract or even count.
I returned 5 years later and many of the first wave had returned, they definitely helped to bring the country up. Nonetheless, the educational system is.... well there are good things and bad things about it. Math is a good thing, critical thinking is a bad thing.
Is this the same in Russia, and in relation to what others are saying? Yes, of course. Just because the Russkies you've met are brilliant, so effin' what! They aren't exporting their idiots.
So, you agree with the Betamax=Apple comparison just for different reasons. I like how this is building. What I find interesting is that for the most important emerging markets (like Africa, India, Central Asia and South America) Apple is the Ferrari versus the Ford that is Windows and Android. You might wnt the prestige of the Ferrari, but the reality is a Ford. (for those who prefer car comparisons)
Actually, the only reason I am posting is that it has bothered me for years that every Apple mention in American media bases itself on data from the 300 million count American population. Yes it is an American company, the articles are being read by Americans, but without using world-wide data you are in a filter bubble that says that Apple is an important player in the world market. It is, outside the US, not an important player except in the way that Ferrari is an important name in cars: a symbol of something unattainable asnd ultimately useless for the work and interests of the vast majority of the population of the world.
Just last week somebody sent me a spreadsheet in the.numbers format. They were shocked (shocked I say) that I couldn't read it. Checking the format I discover it is the Apple spreadsheet format. I wrote back and said to send it to me as a PDF. They didn't know how. "Everybody else can read it." Needless to say they live in a rich little island where they don't normally have to interact with the plebes. That is the Apple world, and the Apple world view.
You do run on a bit, but the point(s) are well taken. When I was in China I had a chance to hook up with one of the largest banks through their "internet banking."
First, it required IE6. Yes, required, nothing else would work Second, it required pop-ups because your user name and password had to be input in a pop-up Third, if you tried to use something like Firefox you would get a notification that the certificate was invalid and had been revoked
So, I went to talk to them about it. Shocked, they were. Incapable of caring they were. Useles they were. So I tried the USB dongle which they said was a more secure option.
The USB dongle had a little script in it that would trigger IE6 to open to the pop-up mentioned above.
I'm sure you are confused about the "help" they provide to Fedora, or to the Linux kernel development, or even why a company that provides their software for free, to anybody, any time would help to develop that software "for anybody, any time." Somehow I guess you don't really "get" FOSS at all.
Let me explain why they would do something so very intuitive to FOSS: 1) They build goodwill. When a CentOS customer needs help they happily turn to Red Hat. 2) CentOS is a big player on the internet. RedHat is also a big player on the internet. INstead of seeing CentOS as a rival, they see them as collaborators, they are working together to run the internet. The more and better their systems interact the better it is for Redhat, CentOS and the internet as a whole. We call that Win-Win. 3) the commenters below are actually huirting my feelings, comparing RedHat to Windows pirate warez. You fools just don't understand that short term profit did not build RedHat. RedHat takes a long view to growth, to profits and to building the company. That is why the bubbles never hurt them.
BTW, in the interest of disclosure i have been an investor in RedHat for many years, and am today. I believe in how they run the company and support it.
no, but I would also want to know how well the company could manage the cost of damages from another spill: which will undoubtedly happen if they don't invest more heavily in preventive measures and remediation preparation. his would be important to me as an environmentalist and as someone who wanted to make sure my legislators were thinking with information instead of cash.
What pisses me off is the number of bags used. Locally the baggers just grab a new bag when they have two or three things in a bag. And double bagging-- get outta here.
Years ago I would have agreed with you, but had an unusual conversion to the other side. The conversion was without benefit of consideration or thought and resulted from reading "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" by Doris Lessing (who just died two weeks ago at age 94). When I began the book I was on one side, after reading, to my surprise and confusion, not. I can't rationalize my conversion or my opinion, it just is.
The thing that strikes me here is the complicity of the society to allowing someone to die without adequate care, without caring at all except to end it. I am not accusing Adams of being heartless (although it is in ignorance of his state of mind, not in knowledge) but society that allows money to be a factor. When my father died, many years ago, his body was eaten up with cancer, he was in horrible pain. The doctors prescribe a mix of morphine and cocaine, which helped the pain tremendously and kept him aware enough to be human. My mother requested that he be given a "prescription" for bourbon, because he had been a bourbon drinker for most of his life. Her rationale was that there was no reason for him to live without it and since everything required a prescription, write him one: they did, and with grace and a smile. He had sunshine in his room at the hospital and kind care from everyone: they spent time with him.
I get the feeling from Adams that his father, being basically inanimate or otherwise unaware, was just ignored. This makes sense in a world where the caregivers are underpaid and over-worked. The hospitals are understaffed, full of deadly, antibiotic resistant bacteria and essentially full of fear and loathing. Who would go there for any reason? Who would want to die there under any circumstances. If ObamaCare helps improve hospitals by helping to improve care-giving through funding then it will be gamechanging: but that has not been its goal. Perhaps it is time to change the focus to affordable quality care, not just affordable care.
I use a crap bike, on purpose. I don't need or want to race cars. I don't need or want to have serious money tied up in a fragile and insecure bike, I just want to get to where I want to go, eventually. I use a crap lock because nobody will steal a crap bike. I go slow, often in lower gears just because my crap brakes don't stop so good. I would never even consider using a system like this because I don't care if I have to stop and figure out where to go next.
The best part of my way is that I don't have to wear those stupid biking clothes and a stupid bike helmet, or pay for them, or change clothes and shower when I get somewhere (besides just biking in a circle, I actually use my bike to go to work and go shopping and visit friends and pick up the kids and stuff).
While it is not a popular idea here, and certainly not in western journals, Traditional Chinese Herbology has thousands of drugs that can do all of what western medicine can do. And more. My only worry is that the same idiocy will happen: over and inappropriate use of medicines (and the herbs are medicines, especially when compounded together in synergistic teas) will again cause the loss of both utility and availability.
Not to be too much of a wacko, but the sources of the problems with our medical system are: Diet Lifestyle Overpopulation
Solve these and the medical problems will reduce to insignificance
Slashdot Mirror
"Quoth the raven 'Nevermore!'"
Just because it is not in all versions does not make it incorrect, or non-existent. "Ain't" exists in South-eastern American as well as Received British, but you treat it as being non-standard. The more interesting question, with English, is "What is standard?"
There is no global answer, or even a regional answer. We have "media" Englishes that many people accept as a kind of standard, but they are often accented strongly. There are high-status varieties (like Received British or "Queen's") but they are usually contained within small populations (like a 1%). Since we have no language authority (like the Academie Francais) to decide what is ENGLISH, we all get to make it up as we go along. The only question becomes one of mutual comprehension. If you understood the poster then he succeeded, if not then he failed (for you and others like you). Capeche?
My family owns 160 acres of forest in the George Washington NAtional Forest: a "working" forest with a high proportion of hardwood. The problem is more complex than anyone wants to touch here. Basically though, trees are cut at "maturity" which is determined to be about 50 to 70 years. I was retiring up at the cabin there when a local woodcutter came by to "warn" me that I would need to cut my pine because of the pine bore beetle infestation that was sweeping the forest. Not only would I lose money, but I would be a disease vector if I didn't let him cut the trees and pay me buckets of cash for them.
So I called in an old family friend, a retired forester from the old school. He called bullshit on the whole thing and I told the woodcutter to f**k off.
10 years later, I was overseas and my little brother was stopped on the road and told the same story by another wood cutter. The value had almost doubled at that point. He took it and let them cut the little bit of pine we had. Stupid, but it did help to care for our mother in her final days, even though we didn't really need the money at that point.
Anyway, everyone around us now has had their land "selectively cut." That means that they take the best and leave the rest. The recovery is ugly. Since I have held firm against any wood sales since then the value of some of our hardwood is doubling each decade. My great-great grandchildren will be able to live off the sale of a tree. And they will be some kind of awesome trees at that point as well. We already have oak and maple that can't be wrapped by a tall man's arms.
The deal is that the woodcutters equipment is setup for the logging of trees of the expected size, we can't really expect that trees of the size that ours will be in a hundred years will be an easy cut and haul, but when you do it will be worth it.
Dude, I live in Florida where a man and his wife were texting their babysitter during the trailers to a movie and a man sitting behind them started to bust their chops about it. I would like to say that hilarity ensued, but instead the texter "attacked" the good citizen (who was just insisting on his god-given right to come armed to the movie theater) with a dangerous bag of popcorn so of course he protected himself by shooting him dead in front of his wife.
Amazingly, the shooter didn't get out on a personal recog bond. Will wonders never cease?
golly, scarey ceramic swords on airplanes! And I know that if you can manage a ceramic sword you're not going to try to get one on a plane because of those fancy x-ray thingys at the airport. They can't get nothin' by those thingys, no they can't. except guns and knives and bombs of course, but shoot, as long as they stop the ceramic swords.
Would ya'll just quit fussing! Yesterday news was that there is a new interface for auto touchscreens that reads number of fingers, spread or contraction of the fingers and direction of movement to give control over volume, station change input source etc. for the media and then a similar thing for climate and so on. It did not matter where you touched the screen, but rather the number of finger and etc. Thus your concerns are addressed by the evolution of technology. So sit down now and quit fussin'
Your ideas about housing costs are... quaint.
I bought my house, which is three houses down from one important bus stop (Stright to work for me) and two blocks away from three other bus stops that take me north, south and higher speed to the north for $70,000. I'm bicycle distance from cultural/restaurant/tourist areas in one direction and downtown in another (museums, aquarium, restaurants, music festivals, etc.). Its the fools that live in the burbs that are paying 250-500,000 for houses without public transit. My son walks to school in the morning and afternoon, plays outside with neighbor kids after school and generally has a great life. Screw the burbs.
It is messedup, I agree.
For most of my life I had my own companies and my own policies that I used for all my employees and my family. It was easy, I chose a medium good policy that fit what I needed and ran with it. It was a cost of doing business.
Then I retired, went back to school and got a BA, and left to teach in Asia. I had a credit card with a $5000 limit that was our insurance policy. All our insurance. Never needed it or used it, even paid for the birth of my youngest out of pocket.
Then, two years ago, we came back to the US. Jesus what an effin' mess! It took me a year to get everything the way I wanted it, coverage for the people who needed it, the right coverage for our needs and within my income and, and , and.
Interestingly, the first thing I saw was that the best deal by far was using an HSA (Health savings Account) as the primary component of my family's policy. I pay in a small paycheck deduction (pretax) and the university pays in twice that (also untaxed) which goes into a personal savings account that accrues over time and can be used to pay off the deductible or whatever is needed. For this I get a 67% reduction in the cost of the policy and a higher deductible. After one year now I have almost the entire deductible in savings.
I tell colleagues about this program and they are not interested. They don't even bother to read their paycheck to see how much is coming out for the various deductions or consider how to improve that cost to them. But they will keep a crap car for another year because they can't yet afford to buy a new one. They will move into a cheaper apartment because not only can't they afford to buy a house, they can't pay their rent in their apartment.
Maybe its because I was in business before, but I don't see any reason not to understand my money.
Calling BS (after 25 years as a building contractor/job superintendent and project manager). Straw Man> The mason works under contract to build a wall. The nature of bricks, and mortar, and the process preclude the possibility of "bricks falling out the bottom."
Now, if the dev was hired on contract and found, on testing, that his work had a bug then it should be in the contract what the devs responsibility should be. Exactly and clearly what his responsibility is.
Now, if the dev is hired as an employee, then they are working on the clock and their work on the clock is based on their employment contract. Nothing more and nothing less.
What other world is there? Oh yeah, the world where you fools accept a contract that doesn't have a 40 hour week or over time compensation or all the things that protect a brick mason from being raped by their employer. So you have gladly accepted an employment contract that lets your employer treat you like crap and all you can do is write in to a forum and risk getting raped for that too? Too bad, just too bad.
Why did you let yourself get into this?
i'm gonna' mod you up to11, you have hit it all on the head.
(I'm a parent -- of 6 kids, three natural and three step--, a teacher, the brother of a teacher and brother in law of two other teachers; i do know a lot about both sides of the fence)
What? I'm missing your creds or your sources, my wife is a doctor nd specializes in inflammation and "heat" stuff (I'm not the doctor obviously) and she just snorted and wandered off when I showed her this. To translate that means you are stupid.
Apple would only allow a limited set of hardware, finding those was difficult and they were expensive, cheaper to buy a pre-dead computer for parts.
this is an excellent reason to not go into that business. Why are you doing this? Money? Fucking money?
stupid humans....
while I don't like or support the current devolution of Apple, We did have a blue and white iMac from 1998 that not only lasted a good long while, it stayed competitive with windows in terms of speed for many years. BUT, in the end the problem came from the inability to replace parts that died (first the USB ports on the keyboard, then the keyboard, then the HDD, then the CD drive. The CD drive required the purchase of a second one (European model, tray loader, only made them for two or three months while waiting for the slot loaders to come in) to replace the CD. Then another HDD died, no update past OSX10.3. fuggetaboutit. My daughter kept it for a few more years and then dumped it.
But now,you can't do stuff like this to a Mac for the most part you have to let Apple rape you for the repair or dump it in China and buy a new one. Screw that.
DC is a massive coven of rats. They run the entire city from dusk till dawn. I used to watch them from my townhouse waddle across streets, alleys, in my back yard, up the walls of the house, in the windows......
had a job offer this past Friday, abut 30% better pay, excellent benefits, real step .... up .... oh hell, Texas. Delete :(
Did you realize that ten percent of the people in Russia are also the stupidest in the world. Same for China and Poland.
When I was working for the University (of Virginia) in the late nineties I was helping Chinese PhD students with their theses. These people were absolutely brilliant, the top ten percent in the world.
Then I went to China. The top ten percent had already gone to the US and the west to study so the remainder were pretty normal, many were downright stupid. Hmmmm. Funny thing about that, people in the US thought that all the Chinese were as brilliant as the PhD students really were, but they aren't. Some of them not only can't read or write, they can't read numbers, add, subtract or even count.
I returned 5 years later and many of the first wave had returned, they definitely helped to bring the country up. Nonetheless, the educational system is .... well there are good things and bad things about it. Math is a good thing, critical thinking is a bad thing.
Is this the same in Russia, and in relation to what others are saying? Yes, of course. Just because the Russkies you've met are brilliant, so effin' what! They aren't exporting their idiots.
So, you agree with the Betamax=Apple comparison just for different reasons. I like how this is building. What I find interesting is that for the most important emerging markets (like Africa, India, Central Asia and South America) Apple is the Ferrari versus the Ford that is Windows and Android. You might wnt the prestige of the Ferrari, but the reality is a Ford. (for those who prefer car comparisons)
Actually, the only reason I am posting is that it has bothered me for years that every Apple mention in American media bases itself on data from the 300 million count American population. Yes it is an American company, the articles are being read by Americans, but without using world-wide data you are in a filter bubble that says that Apple is an important player in the world market. It is, outside the US, not an important player except in the way that Ferrari is an important name in cars: a symbol of something unattainable asnd ultimately useless for the work and interests of the vast majority of the population of the world.
Just last week somebody sent me a spreadsheet in the .numbers format. They were shocked (shocked I say) that I couldn't read it. Checking the format I discover it is the Apple spreadsheet format. I wrote back and said to send it to me as a PDF. They didn't know how. "Everybody else can read it." Needless to say they live in a rich little island where they don't normally have to interact with the plebes. That is the Apple world, and the Apple world view.
You do run on a bit, but the point(s) are well taken. When I was in China I had a chance to hook up with one of the largest banks through their "internet banking."
First, it required IE6. Yes, required, nothing else would work
Second, it required pop-ups because your user name and password had to be input in a pop-up
Third, if you tried to use something like Firefox you would get a notification that the certificate was invalid and had been revoked
So, I went to talk to them about it. Shocked, they were. Incapable of caring they were. Useles they were. So I tried the USB dongle which they said was a more secure option.
The USB dongle had a little script in it that would trigger IE6 to open to the pop-up mentioned above.
I gave up.
I'm sure you are confused about the "help" they provide to Fedora, or to the Linux kernel development, or even why a company that provides their software for free, to anybody, any time would help to develop that software "for anybody, any time." Somehow I guess you don't really "get" FOSS at all.
Let me explain why they would do something so very intuitive to FOSS:
1) They build goodwill. When a CentOS customer needs help they happily turn to Red Hat.
2) CentOS is a big player on the internet. RedHat is also a big player on the internet. INstead of seeing CentOS as a rival, they see them as collaborators, they are working together to run the internet. The more and better their systems interact the better it is for Redhat, CentOS and the internet as a whole. We call that Win-Win.
3) the commenters below are actually huirting my feelings, comparing RedHat to Windows pirate warez. You fools just don't understand that short term profit did not build RedHat. RedHat takes a long view to growth, to profits and to building the company. That is why the bubbles never hurt them.
BTW, in the interest of disclosure i have been an investor in RedHat for many years, and am today. I believe in how they run the company and support it.
no, but I would also want to know how well the company could manage the cost of damages from another spill: which will undoubtedly happen if they don't invest more heavily in preventive measures and remediation preparation. his would be important to me as an environmentalist and as someone who wanted to make sure my legislators were thinking with information instead of cash.
What pisses me off is the number of bags used. Locally the baggers just grab a new bag when they have two or three things in a bag. And double bagging-- get outta here.
Years ago I would have agreed with you, but had an unusual conversion to the other side. The conversion was without benefit of consideration or thought and resulted from reading "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" by Doris Lessing (who just died two weeks ago at age 94). When I began the book I was on one side, after reading, to my surprise and confusion, not. I can't rationalize my conversion or my opinion, it just is.
The thing that strikes me here is the complicity of the society to allowing someone to die without adequate care, without caring at all except to end it. I am not accusing Adams of being heartless (although it is in ignorance of his state of mind, not in knowledge) but society that allows money to be a factor. When my father died, many years ago, his body was eaten up with cancer, he was in horrible pain. The doctors prescribe a mix of morphine and cocaine, which helped the pain tremendously and kept him aware enough to be human. My mother requested that he be given a "prescription" for bourbon, because he had been a bourbon drinker for most of his life. Her rationale was that there was no reason for him to live without it and since everything required a prescription, write him one: they did, and with grace and a smile. He had sunshine in his room at the hospital and kind care from everyone: they spent time with him.
I get the feeling from Adams that his father, being basically inanimate or otherwise unaware, was just ignored. This makes sense in a world where the caregivers are underpaid and over-worked. The hospitals are understaffed, full of deadly, antibiotic resistant bacteria and essentially full of fear and loathing. Who would go there for any reason? Who would want to die there under any circumstances. If ObamaCare helps improve hospitals by helping to improve care-giving through funding then it will be gamechanging: but that has not been its goal. Perhaps it is time to change the focus to affordable quality care, not just affordable care.
Dark energy effect. Prove me wrong>
I use a crap bike, on purpose. I don't need or want to race cars. I don't need or want to have serious money tied up in a fragile and insecure bike, I just want to get to where I want to go, eventually. I use a crap lock because nobody will steal a crap bike. I go slow, often in lower gears just because my crap brakes don't stop so good. I would never even consider using a system like this because I don't care if I have to stop and figure out where to go next.
The best part of my way is that I don't have to wear those stupid biking clothes and a stupid bike helmet, or pay for them, or change clothes and shower when I get somewhere (besides just biking in a circle, I actually use my bike to go to work and go shopping and visit friends and pick up the kids and stuff).
While it is not a popular idea here, and certainly not in western journals, Traditional Chinese Herbology has thousands of drugs that can do all of what western medicine can do. And more. My only worry is that the same idiocy will happen: over and inappropriate use of medicines (and the herbs are medicines, especially when compounded together in synergistic teas) will again cause the loss of both utility and availability.
Not to be too much of a wacko, but the sources of the problems with our medical system are:
Diet
Lifestyle
Overpopulation
Solve these and the medical problems will reduce to insignificance