Skin cancer is raising in the northern hemisphere, specifically the US and UK. So there is your control group not affected by the ozone hole.
And the results of your two second "study" are published where exactly? Which form of skin cancer are you referring to specifically? What studies are you citing from which journals?
The proposed reason is bunk and if your wife is a dermatologist, not sure why you said skin doctor, and you asked her you would have known this already.
Glad you are so knowledgeable that you you can post anonymously with no citations to set the record straight. [/sarcasm]
And I said skin doctor because when I say her actual specialty (dermatopathology) most people give a deer in the headlights stare. If you know what that is, good for you but skin doctor gets the point across just fine.
Do we know skin cancer is on the rise due to the ozone hole? There are many plausible explanations, so a simple rise in numbers won't cut it.
I don't mean to seem snide but do you really think that same thought hasn't occurred to anyone else? There are ways of testing and controlling for possible causes. Proving causation in cases like this is challenging but not impossible. It's sort of like proving that smoking causes an increase in lung cancer. It's difficult to prove in individual cases but actually much easier in populations. You check a lot of correlations, you test for overlapping, you slowly control for specific alternatives and over time you get a pretty good picture of how much of the problem is causes by the suspect phenomena.
My wife is a skin doctor and her take on the matter is that yes there appears to be some credible evidence that the ozone hole is responsible for at least some of the increase in skin cancer. The exact amount is unknown and realistically unimportant. What is important is that there appears to be a real and measurable (if imprecise) effect on the population.
it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark.
It's GLOBAL warming. Not local warming. The fact that some random ship go caught in sea ice carries precisely zero relevance, nor does the fact that they happened to be studying global warming. While amusing and a bit ironic this ship getting stuck doesn't remotely constitute evidence against temperatures rising globally. Last time I checked the Antarctic hasn't thawed and thus it is a very dangerous place to sail regardless of time of year. There always is danger from ice in that part of the world.
We'll look back in 20 years and say, "Remember when that ship got stuck in the ice on their journey to drum up fear about receding ice?"
People who do that will basically be publicly acknowledging their ignorance of science. While it may turn out that fears of global warming end up being overstated to some degree, this incident is not going to be relevant in proving that fact one way or the other. Furthermore a cavalier attitude about something like global warming is incredibly dangerous. We only have the one planet to live on and if we want to keep living on it as a species we would to well to tread carefully.
Until someone blows up a satellite, there's no "power" in space.
Both the US and China have blown up satellites in space from the ground within the past few years using missiles. I'm quite sure Russia could manage the trick as well if they felt like it.
Being forced to pay excessive rates for bullshit coverage most pepole don't need is exactly what makes the current system much more expensive than what we had before.
EVERYONE deserves to be able to get healthcare without going bankrupt. If that costs a little more in the end, then so be it. This is a moral issue and a civilized society takes care of their people. Do you think it is ethical to have 40 million people without health insurance in the wealthiest country on earth? You think there is no cost to having 40 million people with no health insurance? Do you think it is ethical to have someone lose all affordable access to health insurance just because they lost their job?
That said, since this whole thing just got started I'm curious what evidence from the future you have that this is more expensive than before. Or are you just bitching because *your* insurance went up? Fact is that we don't know yet whether this will be more expensive or not. Might be, but if it means that everyone has reasonable access to health insurance then that is a tradeoff I'm more than willing to make. Buy a few less bombers for the military if you need to find some extra cash to pay for it.
For people who don't have access to trustworthy financial institutions (or governments), I think it does fill a void.
No it does not, at least not for many people. I've traveled a lot. What happens in countries like Vietnam where the financial/government institutions aren't entirely trusted is that they use alternative currencies and lots of cash. When I was in Vietnam a few years ago most of my purchases were in dollars instead of the local currency, the Dong.. (I kid you not - it really is called that) The merchants I dealt with strongly preferred dollars. Places where the government isn't trusted tend to have cash based economies for which bitcoin simply is not a credible alternative.
I think that it would be better if BTC traded in a narrower band, but I think that as it picks up in use, liquidity will help with that.
Not likely to happen anytime soon. Bitcoin might pick up some tulip-mania craze but that will not reduce the volatility - rather it is likely to increase it and create a bubble that will inevitably pop.
Or at minimal it could potentially work really well.
Why? Paint a clear and defensible roadmap by which bitcoin becomes a currency that makes sense for a significant portion of the population. Explain how bitcoin provides any meaningful advantage over existing currencies. Explain how the volatility, liquidity and exchange rate risk problems will be resolved. I've got a masters degree in finance and am a certified accountant and I cannot see any scenario in which bitcoin is anything other than a silly idea. Perhaps you are smarter than I am.
Sure it has issues, even compared to cash but... cash can't be used for online purchases either.
A dollar is still a dollar whether it is in cash or an electronic ledger and you can easily and cheaply exchange cash in and out of a bank. You can't take a crypto currency offline at all.
Do you really think the niche of providing online transactions to people who are distrustful of other currencies is a failing?
I think the failing is the financial illiteracy of those same distrustful people. There is nothing magical about a fiat currency - it is just an asset. It carries some amount of liquidity, inflationary and exchange rate risk. Only an idiot completely trusts any asset as a store of value including fiat currencies. But only a bigger idiot would trust bitcoin more than the dollar or the euro. Bitcoin is VERY volatile, thinly traded, and there is no guarantee that the cryptography will remain secure. A rational analysis of the advantages of bitcoin versus the drawbacks comes up pretty light on the advantages side of the ledger.
I think bitcoin works pretty well overall and fills in a real gap between cash and traditional bank mediated transactions.
For who? Drug dealers? Money launderers? Libertarians with a hate-boner for fiat currencies and the Fed?
The announcement was made last night at the launch event for the NYC Bitcoin Center, located just up the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
So they are locating this alleged future facility near the NYSE because they hope that will create an illusion of financial credibility.
Center founder Nick Spanos a real estate developer and Bitcoin enthusiast says the Center itself is still in something of a planning stage, existing more as a statement about Bitcoin itself, though he plans on hosting a hackathon later this month."
Oh, so there is no actual center and this is just a bunch of ideological masturbation. Honestly I cannot think of a single reason other than ideology that a real estate developer would have any use for or interest in bitcoin.
Why? Bitcoin has many of the worst aspects of a gold standard. It is useless for transactions that don't involve a computer to facilitate trade - i.e. cash transactions. Bitcoin has very high levels of exchange rate risk due to volatility, speculation and lack of liquidity. Few people really know what it is and even fewer accept it for payment. For most merchants it costs extra resources and adds risk to handle and exchange since they will have to convert it back to dollars anyway - the same problem with them accepting foreign currencies which is why most don't. It's very expensive to use once you account for the full cost of the risk factors. Basically it scratches some ideological itches but as currencies go it doesn't have a lot to recommend it.
It needs to become less speculative and more stable to be a true alternative.
It will NEVER become less speculative. It might become less volatile (though I doubt it) but every single currency gets heavily speculated against. The Dollar, the Euro, etc. Every one. Bitcoin is more vulnerable to fluctuations from speculation for the same reason any thinly traded asset or currency is. If there is a perceived opportunity to make money speculating on bitcoin then the speculation will occur.
The Joy of Cooking - Get a 1950s version before all of the processed food came in.
There are better cooking books than this one though I don't mean to denigrate The Joy of Cooking. The Joy of Cooking was/is important but there are better options out there to seriously learn cooking technique in my opinion. The Joy of Cooking isn't exactly a bible for professional chefs. I put it on par or maybe a little behind Julia Childs "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" which is also well worth reading.
Off the top of my head I might suggest: * Larousse Gastronomique * The Escoffier Cookbook * Professional Chef (by the CIA) (yes these are largely French cuisine based and not really aimed at home cooks but French cuisine is undeniably important - I don't know the equivalents for Chinese, Japanese, Indian or Italian cuisine)
A few other favorites though not definitive references and not really must reads: * Ratio by Michael Ruhlman * anything by Alton Brown * Charcuterie by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman * Cookwise by Shirley Corriher
Paying for contraception is a LOT cheaper than paying for prenatal or pediatric care. Having contraceptive coverage will save you and everyone else in the insurance pool money in the long run.
I doubt it would help people who can't be bothered to buy and use cheap contraceptives, for example.
What you consider to be "cheap" contraceptives are still beyond the means of many people if they had to pay the full price themselves. Good luck affording contraceptives on Walmart wages when you have to pay for rent, transportation and food.
Are you serious? There's a lot of expensive health problems that can be put off for two weeks.
It's only 2-6 weeks during open enrollment which ends in March. After that you have to wait until the next open enrollment period which can be 9 months away. You CANNOT sign up after the fact in most cases. Insurance cannot work if everyone could sign up after the fact. (The economics term for this is adverse selection and insurance companies are WELL aware of it.) Furthermore most of the most likely expensive health problems are unexpected ones like hospital stays. Get in a car accident (no your auto insurance will not cover you for medical expenses) and you could easily rack up many tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs literally overnight. Have a fast moving sickness or a heart attack and you'll owe a LOT of money very quickly. Are you seriously going to argue that you can put off a visit to the ER for weeks if not months? If so then you are a either deluded or a fool.
And in the rare situation where it does, then go with bankruptcy and move on.
That my naive young friend is economic insanity. You clearly do not understand the consequences of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy does NOT wipe your leger clear. You still owe most of the money. At best you'll be able to negotiate a payment plan and maybe reduce a bit here and there. You cannot get a loan of any kind for less than absurd rates if you can get one at all. Want to buy a car or a house? Tough luck. Credit card? Hah! Want a cell phone? Going to be pre-paid. Want a job? Lots of employers look at credit history and will pass you buy if you have a bankruptcy. You seriously are playing with fire if you really think declaring bankruptcy is anything but a terrible option.
You used to be able to get private insurance considerably cheaper than now with the ACA, so the situation has become much worse.
Demonstrably untrue for most people, especially once you take the tax credits into account as long as you are comparing similar plans. If you are comparing a high deductible catastrophic coverage plan to a more conventional plan then your comparison is bogus. I'm relatively young and healthy and I've had to purchase individual insurance in the past when I consulted on my own. I could not get rates that even came close to what one could get through group rates. I had to purchase catastrophic coverage with a $5000 deductible because that was the only economical option.
I run a company with less than 50 employees and we sent all our employees to the exchanges, myself included, because the cost was a big improvement. I've spent a LOT of time looking at health insurance in the last six months. Almost every one of our employees has been able to get equivalent or better coverage for equivalent or less money. Even better while the employee's out of pocket hasn't gone up the company no longer has to kick in anything so the total cost of the insurance is about half of what it was previously once you take the full cost (company share plus employee share) into account.
Of course, what you can do now is simply not bother to get coverage until you get sick
You are dangerously misinformed. You cannot just wait until you are sick to get coverage. Coverage does NOT kick in immediately. There is at minimum a 2 to 6 week wait during open enrollment and outside of open enrollment you cannot sign up at all unless you meet some strict criteria. The law is NOT written in a way that allows you to sign up after you get sick. Insurance companies aren't so stupid as to allow people to sign up once they are sick and the ACA was written with this in mind. The economic term for this is adverse selection. If people could just sign up only when sick, insurance could not work because only sick people would sign up. Economically it only works if you have a pool of healthy and sick people.
Seriously, if you really believe this you are playing with fire. You CANNOT sign up after the fact. If you are in an accident you will take an enormous financial hit.
Let's see: 1) romantic idea that appeals to many people? Check. 2) Implausibly optimistic assumptions about technology and timeframe? Check. 3) A funding model that gets lots of small donations while being deeply unlikely to raise the billions of dollars actually required for a real mission? Check. 4) Mission proposal from a group with a vaguely credible sounding name that no one has ever really heard of and has no credible scientists/engineers/financiers backing it? Check...
Are you getting the idea yet? This is a scam. Nothing more. They will "crowd source" a bunch of funding from gullible romantics with a boner for a Mars mission and then disappear with the money when, to the surprise of no one with a brain, the "mission" proves impossible.
The technology has existed for decades, and in recent years we've learned a lot more.
No it most assuredly has not existed for decades. In fact most informed parties will tell you that the biggest single problem is that the passengers would be unlikely to survive the trip due to lack of effective radiation shielding. In low earth orbit we are still protected by the Earth's magnetic field. No such luck in Mars transit. Never mind that fact that even if the technology did exist, economically it is impossible with the technology we have. This is a trip that will cost many billions of dollars even if done cheaply, which is probably not a good idea.
Paying taxes is a universal requirement. Providing insurance to your employees is not a universal requirement.
Explain to Apple and Google that paying taxes is a universal requirement....
But providing insurance in general IS a universal requirement because we all are going to use health care at some point. If you cannot get reasonably priced coverage because your employer provides it then the employer should have to provide coverage equivalent to what you could get on your own. Their personal morals about issues like contraception should stay personal. If they don't want it for themselves, fine, but their right to impose their morals on me should have strict limits.
It's recognized that it is possible to join the army and not carry a weapon. For instance, medics.
It's not remotely uncommon for a medic to carry a weapon. Furthermore good luck getting through training without being asked to carry a weapon.
So now my plan is gone, I'd have to pay more than four times the amount for a bronze plans that does all sorts stuff I won't use to subsides others. Sorry no fucking thank you.
You seem to be hugely mistaken about how insurance works. We ALL pay into a pool and share the risk so that we individually won't be crushed by the financial burden of an illness. Insurance (even catastrophic coverage) cannot work unless everyone pays for stuff they probably wont need.
I have voluntarily gone uninsured because, the penalties are cheaper and I can always buy a plan for the first time after I have a condition.
You cannot buy a plan after the fact because they do not kick in immediately. Most plans even through the health exchanges take at least 2 weeks (usually more) to take effect and cannot be purchased at any time. In all likelihood you will incur a huge amount of medical bills in the event of an accident or serious illness prior to receiving coverage.
Of course now a catastrophic event might bankrupt me leaving everyone else to pay the costs; something I would have previously felt bad about but now, I see it as hey society tried to pick my pocket first; so screw'em.
You aren't screwing anyone but yourself by being cheap. But enjoy your bankruptcy. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.
For some strange reason, the ACA did not fix this problem.
Actually it mostly did fix it, albeit imperfectly. Now if I lose my employment I can still get health insurance coverage of reasonable quality for a reasonable price and I cannot be denied coverage just because I got sick previously. While I won't argue that the system is ideal (far from it), it is a MUCH better situation.
this is about religious organizations with employees with the same religious values.
No, it's about money and control. Furthermore the point of insurance is to create a risk pool that everyone participates in, i.e. everyone pays. I have to pay for things all the time that I don't agree with and so do you. Personally I resent having to contribute to a health insurance pool for people who sponge off society (i.e. nuns) while contributing limited discernible value back to it but I do it anyway and mostly keep my mouth shut.
here's a pro-tip, don't work for a religious organization if you don't hold their beliefs.
Here's another pro-tip. Sometimes you have to take employment where you can get it.
By forcing "believers" to provide something they oppose, Congress is "prohibiting the free exercise" of their religion.
Baloney. We prohibit lots of looney things that people claim as part of their religion. They can believe whatever they want but as soon as it infringes on someone elses beliefs or needs (like by denying them medicine based on someone else's morals) then their freedom of religion should end. Your right to religious freedom ends where it meets mine.
Just because something isn't covered by insurance doesn't mean it is denied to them.
Actually in many cases it means exactly that, specifically for people who are poor. The cost of contraceptive medicine might not sound like much to you but for many people it is prohibitively expensive. By allowing institutions to deny coverage for this item they are effectively denying that medicine to those who might want it. These institutions cannot possibly speak for the moral values of every one of their employees.
This is supposedly about health *insurance*. Insurance is for contingent, unlikely, but potentially costly events.
True and a baby very much fits that description.
In the olden days, by which I mean pre-Obamacare, you could indeed "pick and choose" what procedures and medications your policy would cover.
For most people no you could not. Most people get their insurance through their work and the type of insurance was chosen by someone else, probably for cost reasons. You did not get to chose most of the specifics of the coverage available to you.
What I don't understand is the people saying they shouldn't even try.
The problem isn't that someone shouldn't try. The problem is that we know a fair bit about how difficult an endeavor this is and what a credible effort would have to look like. We know that the technology to do this just isn't there yet and there is no credible evidence that it will be in the next 5-10 years. Sending even an unmanned probe to mars costs billions of dollars. These people are claiming their are going to send people there inside of 12 years? And they are going to do this by crowdsourcing what amounts to a suicide mission? Your bullshit detector should be in high alert.
This just reeks of a scam to separate gullible people from their money.
This is a scam. Seriously, I know we're all interested in visiting Mars but this whole thing just reeks of a scam. It's not technologically feasible and the costs would be astronomical if it were a real endeavor, particularly given the timelines. Only a motivated nation-state would have the resources to even hope to pull something like this off inside of the next 30 years. Someone is trying to scam a bunch of overly enthusiastic people out of a bunch of money.
Starting in 2018, four astronauts will leave for Mars every two years to begin a human settlement partly funded by crowdsourcing and a reality TV show."
Slashdot Mirror
Skin cancer is raising in the northern hemisphere, specifically the US and UK. So there is your control group not affected by the ozone hole.
And the results of your two second "study" are published where exactly? Which form of skin cancer are you referring to specifically? What studies are you citing from which journals?
The proposed reason is bunk and if your wife is a dermatologist, not sure why you said skin doctor, and you asked her you would have known this already.
Glad you are so knowledgeable that you you can post anonymously with no citations to set the record straight. [/sarcasm]
And I said skin doctor because when I say her actual specialty (dermatopathology) most people give a deer in the headlights stare. If you know what that is, good for you but skin doctor gets the point across just fine.
Do we know skin cancer is on the rise due to the ozone hole? There are many plausible explanations, so a simple rise in numbers won't cut it.
I don't mean to seem snide but do you really think that same thought hasn't occurred to anyone else? There are ways of testing and controlling for possible causes. Proving causation in cases like this is challenging but not impossible. It's sort of like proving that smoking causes an increase in lung cancer. It's difficult to prove in individual cases but actually much easier in populations. You check a lot of correlations, you test for overlapping, you slowly control for specific alternatives and over time you get a pretty good picture of how much of the problem is causes by the suspect phenomena.
My wife is a skin doctor and her take on the matter is that yes there appears to be some credible evidence that the ozone hole is responsible for at least some of the increase in skin cancer. The exact amount is unknown and realistically unimportant. What is important is that there appears to be a real and measurable (if imprecise) effect on the population.
it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark.
It's GLOBAL warming. Not local warming. The fact that some random ship go caught in sea ice carries precisely zero relevance, nor does the fact that they happened to be studying global warming. While amusing and a bit ironic this ship getting stuck doesn't remotely constitute evidence against temperatures rising globally. Last time I checked the Antarctic hasn't thawed and thus it is a very dangerous place to sail regardless of time of year. There always is danger from ice in that part of the world.
We'll look back in 20 years and say, "Remember when that ship got stuck in the ice on their journey to drum up fear about receding ice?"
People who do that will basically be publicly acknowledging their ignorance of science. While it may turn out that fears of global warming end up being overstated to some degree, this incident is not going to be relevant in proving that fact one way or the other. Furthermore a cavalier attitude about something like global warming is incredibly dangerous. We only have the one planet to live on and if we want to keep living on it as a species we would to well to tread carefully.
Until someone blows up a satellite, there's no "power" in space.
Both the US and China have blown up satellites in space from the ground within the past few years using missiles. I'm quite sure Russia could manage the trick as well if they felt like it.
Being forced to pay excessive rates for bullshit coverage most pepole don't need is exactly what makes the current system much more expensive than what we had before.
EVERYONE deserves to be able to get healthcare without going bankrupt. If that costs a little more in the end, then so be it. This is a moral issue and a civilized society takes care of their people. Do you think it is ethical to have 40 million people without health insurance in the wealthiest country on earth? You think there is no cost to having 40 million people with no health insurance? Do you think it is ethical to have someone lose all affordable access to health insurance just because they lost their job?
That said, since this whole thing just got started I'm curious what evidence from the future you have that this is more expensive than before. Or are you just bitching because *your* insurance went up? Fact is that we don't know yet whether this will be more expensive or not. Might be, but if it means that everyone has reasonable access to health insurance then that is a tradeoff I'm more than willing to make. Buy a few less bombers for the military if you need to find some extra cash to pay for it.
For people who don't have access to trustworthy financial institutions (or governments), I think it does fill a void.
No it does not, at least not for many people. I've traveled a lot. What happens in countries like Vietnam where the financial/government institutions aren't entirely trusted is that they use alternative currencies and lots of cash. When I was in Vietnam a few years ago most of my purchases were in dollars instead of the local currency, the Dong.. (I kid you not - it really is called that) The merchants I dealt with strongly preferred dollars. Places where the government isn't trusted tend to have cash based economies for which bitcoin simply is not a credible alternative.
I think that it would be better if BTC traded in a narrower band, but I think that as it picks up in use, liquidity will help with that.
Not likely to happen anytime soon. Bitcoin might pick up some tulip-mania craze but that will not reduce the volatility - rather it is likely to increase it and create a bubble that will inevitably pop.
Or at minimal it could potentially work really well.
Why? Paint a clear and defensible roadmap by which bitcoin becomes a currency that makes sense for a significant portion of the population. Explain how bitcoin provides any meaningful advantage over existing currencies. Explain how the volatility, liquidity and exchange rate risk problems will be resolved. I've got a masters degree in finance and am a certified accountant and I cannot see any scenario in which bitcoin is anything other than a silly idea. Perhaps you are smarter than I am.
Sure it has issues, even compared to cash but... cash can't be used for online purchases either.
A dollar is still a dollar whether it is in cash or an electronic ledger and you can easily and cheaply exchange cash in and out of a bank. You can't take a crypto currency offline at all.
Do you really think the niche of providing online transactions to people who are distrustful of other currencies is a failing?
I think the failing is the financial illiteracy of those same distrustful people. There is nothing magical about a fiat currency - it is just an asset. It carries some amount of liquidity, inflationary and exchange rate risk. Only an idiot completely trusts any asset as a store of value including fiat currencies. But only a bigger idiot would trust bitcoin more than the dollar or the euro. Bitcoin is VERY volatile, thinly traded, and there is no guarantee that the cryptography will remain secure. A rational analysis of the advantages of bitcoin versus the drawbacks comes up pretty light on the advantages side of the ledger.
I think bitcoin works pretty well overall and fills in a real gap between cash and traditional bank mediated transactions.
For who? Drug dealers? Money launderers? Libertarians with a hate-boner for fiat currencies and the Fed?
The announcement was made last night at the launch event for the NYC Bitcoin Center, located just up the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
So they are locating this alleged future facility near the NYSE because they hope that will create an illusion of financial credibility.
Center founder Nick Spanos a real estate developer and Bitcoin enthusiast says the Center itself is still in something of a planning stage, existing more as a statement about Bitcoin itself, though he plans on hosting a hackathon later this month."
Oh, so there is no actual center and this is just a bunch of ideological masturbation. Honestly I cannot think of a single reason other than ideology that a real estate developer would have any use for or interest in bitcoin.
I like the idea of crypto currencies...
Why? Bitcoin has many of the worst aspects of a gold standard. It is useless for transactions that don't involve a computer to facilitate trade - i.e. cash transactions. Bitcoin has very high levels of exchange rate risk due to volatility, speculation and lack of liquidity. Few people really know what it is and even fewer accept it for payment. For most merchants it costs extra resources and adds risk to handle and exchange since they will have to convert it back to dollars anyway - the same problem with them accepting foreign currencies which is why most don't. It's very expensive to use once you account for the full cost of the risk factors. Basically it scratches some ideological itches but as currencies go it doesn't have a lot to recommend it.
It needs to become less speculative and more stable to be a true alternative.
It will NEVER become less speculative. It might become less volatile (though I doubt it) but every single currency gets heavily speculated against. The Dollar, the Euro, etc. Every one. Bitcoin is more vulnerable to fluctuations from speculation for the same reason any thinly traded asset or currency is. If there is a perceived opportunity to make money speculating on bitcoin then the speculation will occur.
The Joy of Cooking - Get a 1950s version before all of the processed food came in.
There are better cooking books than this one though I don't mean to denigrate The Joy of Cooking. The Joy of Cooking was/is important but there are better options out there to seriously learn cooking technique in my opinion. The Joy of Cooking isn't exactly a bible for professional chefs. I put it on par or maybe a little behind Julia Childs "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" which is also well worth reading.
Off the top of my head I might suggest:
* Larousse Gastronomique
* The Escoffier Cookbook
* Professional Chef (by the CIA)
(yes these are largely French cuisine based and not really aimed at home cooks but French cuisine is undeniably important - I don't know the equivalents for Chinese, Japanese, Indian or Italian cuisine)
A few other favorites though not definitive references and not really must reads:
* Ratio by Michael Ruhlman
* anything by Alton Brown
* Charcuterie by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman
* Cookwise by Shirley Corriher
So what does contraception have to do with this?
Paying for contraception is a LOT cheaper than paying for prenatal or pediatric care. Having contraceptive coverage will save you and everyone else in the insurance pool money in the long run.
I doubt it would help people who can't be bothered to buy and use cheap contraceptives, for example.
What you consider to be "cheap" contraceptives are still beyond the means of many people if they had to pay the full price themselves. Good luck affording contraceptives on Walmart wages when you have to pay for rent, transportation and food.
Are you serious? There's a lot of expensive health problems that can be put off for two weeks.
It's only 2-6 weeks during open enrollment which ends in March. After that you have to wait until the next open enrollment period which can be 9 months away. You CANNOT sign up after the fact in most cases. Insurance cannot work if everyone could sign up after the fact. (The economics term for this is adverse selection and insurance companies are WELL aware of it.) Furthermore most of the most likely expensive health problems are unexpected ones like hospital stays. Get in a car accident (no your auto insurance will not cover you for medical expenses) and you could easily rack up many tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs literally overnight. Have a fast moving sickness or a heart attack and you'll owe a LOT of money very quickly. Are you seriously going to argue that you can put off a visit to the ER for weeks if not months? If so then you are a either deluded or a fool.
And in the rare situation where it does, then go with bankruptcy and move on.
That my naive young friend is economic insanity. You clearly do not understand the consequences of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy does NOT wipe your leger clear. You still owe most of the money. At best you'll be able to negotiate a payment plan and maybe reduce a bit here and there. You cannot get a loan of any kind for less than absurd rates if you can get one at all. Want to buy a car or a house? Tough luck. Credit card? Hah! Want a cell phone? Going to be pre-paid. Want a job? Lots of employers look at credit history and will pass you buy if you have a bankruptcy. You seriously are playing with fire if you really think declaring bankruptcy is anything but a terrible option.
You used to be able to get private insurance considerably cheaper than now with the ACA, so the situation has become much worse.
Demonstrably untrue for most people, especially once you take the tax credits into account as long as you are comparing similar plans. If you are comparing a high deductible catastrophic coverage plan to a more conventional plan then your comparison is bogus. I'm relatively young and healthy and I've had to purchase individual insurance in the past when I consulted on my own. I could not get rates that even came close to what one could get through group rates. I had to purchase catastrophic coverage with a $5000 deductible because that was the only economical option.
I run a company with less than 50 employees and we sent all our employees to the exchanges, myself included, because the cost was a big improvement. I've spent a LOT of time looking at health insurance in the last six months. Almost every one of our employees has been able to get equivalent or better coverage for equivalent or less money. Even better while the employee's out of pocket hasn't gone up the company no longer has to kick in anything so the total cost of the insurance is about half of what it was previously once you take the full cost (company share plus employee share) into account.
Of course, what you can do now is simply not bother to get coverage until you get sick
You are dangerously misinformed. You cannot just wait until you are sick to get coverage. Coverage does NOT kick in immediately. There is at minimum a 2 to 6 week wait during open enrollment and outside of open enrollment you cannot sign up at all unless you meet some strict criteria. The law is NOT written in a way that allows you to sign up after you get sick. Insurance companies aren't so stupid as to allow people to sign up once they are sick and the ACA was written with this in mind. The economic term for this is adverse selection. If people could just sign up only when sick, insurance could not work because only sick people would sign up. Economically it only works if you have a pool of healthy and sick people.
Seriously, if you really believe this you are playing with fire. You CANNOT sign up after the fact. If you are in an accident you will take an enormous financial hit.
How exactly, does it reek of a scam?
Let's see: 1) romantic idea that appeals to many people? Check. 2) Implausibly optimistic assumptions about technology and timeframe? Check. 3) A funding model that gets lots of small donations while being deeply unlikely to raise the billions of dollars actually required for a real mission? Check. 4) Mission proposal from a group with a vaguely credible sounding name that no one has ever really heard of and has no credible scientists/engineers/financiers backing it? Check...
Are you getting the idea yet? This is a scam. Nothing more. They will "crowd source" a bunch of funding from gullible romantics with a boner for a Mars mission and then disappear with the money when, to the surprise of no one with a brain, the "mission" proves impossible.
The technology has existed for decades, and in recent years we've learned a lot more.
No it most assuredly has not existed for decades. In fact most informed parties will tell you that the biggest single problem is that the passengers would be unlikely to survive the trip due to lack of effective radiation shielding. In low earth orbit we are still protected by the Earth's magnetic field. No such luck in Mars transit. Never mind that fact that even if the technology did exist, economically it is impossible with the technology we have. This is a trip that will cost many billions of dollars even if done cheaply, which is probably not a good idea.
Paying taxes is a universal requirement. Providing insurance to your employees is not a universal requirement.
Explain to Apple and Google that paying taxes is a universal requirement....
But providing insurance in general IS a universal requirement because we all are going to use health care at some point. If you cannot get reasonably priced coverage because your employer provides it then the employer should have to provide coverage equivalent to what you could get on your own. Their personal morals about issues like contraception should stay personal. If they don't want it for themselves, fine, but their right to impose their morals on me should have strict limits.
It's recognized that it is possible to join the army and not carry a weapon. For instance, medics.
It's not remotely uncommon for a medic to carry a weapon. Furthermore good luck getting through training without being asked to carry a weapon.
So now my plan is gone, I'd have to pay more than four times the amount for a bronze plans that does all sorts stuff I won't use to subsides others. Sorry no fucking thank you.
You seem to be hugely mistaken about how insurance works. We ALL pay into a pool and share the risk so that we individually won't be crushed by the financial burden of an illness. Insurance (even catastrophic coverage) cannot work unless everyone pays for stuff they probably wont need.
I have voluntarily gone uninsured because, the penalties are cheaper and I can always buy a plan for the first time after I have a condition.
You cannot buy a plan after the fact because they do not kick in immediately. Most plans even through the health exchanges take at least 2 weeks (usually more) to take effect and cannot be purchased at any time. In all likelihood you will incur a huge amount of medical bills in the event of an accident or serious illness prior to receiving coverage.
Of course now a catastrophic event might bankrupt me leaving everyone else to pay the costs; something I would have previously felt bad about but now, I see it as hey society tried to pick my pocket first; so screw'em.
You aren't screwing anyone but yourself by being cheap. But enjoy your bankruptcy. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.
For some strange reason, the ACA did not fix this problem.
Actually it mostly did fix it, albeit imperfectly. Now if I lose my employment I can still get health insurance coverage of reasonable quality for a reasonable price and I cannot be denied coverage just because I got sick previously. While I won't argue that the system is ideal (far from it), it is a MUCH better situation.
this is about religious organizations with employees with the same religious values.
No, it's about money and control. Furthermore the point of insurance is to create a risk pool that everyone participates in, i.e. everyone pays. I have to pay for things all the time that I don't agree with and so do you. Personally I resent having to contribute to a health insurance pool for people who sponge off society (i.e. nuns) while contributing limited discernible value back to it but I do it anyway and mostly keep my mouth shut.
here's a pro-tip, don't work for a religious organization if you don't hold their beliefs.
Here's another pro-tip. Sometimes you have to take employment where you can get it.
By forcing "believers" to provide something they oppose, Congress is "prohibiting the free exercise" of their religion.
Baloney. We prohibit lots of looney things that people claim as part of their religion. They can believe whatever they want but as soon as it infringes on someone elses beliefs or needs (like by denying them medicine based on someone else's morals) then their freedom of religion should end. Your right to religious freedom ends where it meets mine.
Just because something isn't covered by insurance doesn't mean it is denied to them.
Actually in many cases it means exactly that, specifically for people who are poor. The cost of contraceptive medicine might not sound like much to you but for many people it is prohibitively expensive. By allowing institutions to deny coverage for this item they are effectively denying that medicine to those who might want it. These institutions cannot possibly speak for the moral values of every one of their employees.
This is supposedly about health *insurance*. Insurance is for contingent, unlikely, but potentially costly events.
True and a baby very much fits that description.
In the olden days, by which I mean pre-Obamacare, you could indeed "pick and choose" what procedures and medications your policy would cover.
For most people no you could not. Most people get their insurance through their work and the type of insurance was chosen by someone else, probably for cost reasons. You did not get to chose most of the specifics of the coverage available to you.
What I don't understand is the people saying they shouldn't even try.
The problem isn't that someone shouldn't try. The problem is that we know a fair bit about how difficult an endeavor this is and what a credible effort would have to look like. We know that the technology to do this just isn't there yet and there is no credible evidence that it will be in the next 5-10 years. Sending even an unmanned probe to mars costs billions of dollars. These people are claiming their are going to send people there inside of 12 years? And they are going to do this by crowdsourcing what amounts to a suicide mission? Your bullshit detector should be in high alert.
This just reeks of a scam to separate gullible people from their money.
They are not going to be sending people starting in 2018.
Or ever most likely. This whole thing just reeks of scam.
This is a scam. Seriously, I know we're all interested in visiting Mars but this whole thing just reeks of a scam. It's not technologically feasible and the costs would be astronomical if it were a real endeavor, particularly given the timelines. Only a motivated nation-state would have the resources to even hope to pull something like this off inside of the next 30 years. Someone is trying to scam a bunch of overly enthusiastic people out of a bunch of money.
Starting in 2018, four astronauts will leave for Mars every two years to begin a human settlement partly funded by crowdsourcing and a reality TV show."
[cough]Bullshit[/cough]