However if the Chinese are ever coming for the USA, it will be through the courts with a small army of debt collectors.
Cute sound bite but the US has the Chinese over a barrel here. China has bought about $1.1 trillion dollars of US debt which is about 9% of total US debt. (Japan has a similar amount an total foreign debt obligations are around $5.8 tillion) Most of this debt was purchased to maintain the yuan's peg to the dollar in order to keep their exports cheap. (a weak currency helps exports) Exactly how do you propose the Chinese force the US to pay? The courts can't force the US government to do a thing. They can't sell the debt to someone else. No one else wants or could buy that much debt. If they let their currency get stronger (buys more dollars per yuan) then it hurts their exports by making them more expensive abroad. Since their economy is heavily export based, any action they could take carries a strong probability of badly damaging their economy. No the Chinese are in a tough spot. They have lent a lot of money to the US to keep their currency cheap and to ward off currency speculators. There is no way they could collect in a short time without a mushroom cloud appearing over their economy.
When you owe the bank a little money, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a lot of money, the bank has a problem.
Thinkpads are very popular with people who need to do their own maintenance. They use them on the ISS for that very reason.
ISS stands for INTERNATIONAL Space Station so we're not talking about especially sensitive gear. And thinkpads are hardly the only feasible option. They were used because until 2005 IBM produced them. Since that is no longer true in some cases it may be prudent to look for alternative vendors.
Sounds like fear of the boogyman and a bit of racism are really going to hurt the US in the long run.
Little bit eager to throw out the race card aren't you? Only an imbecile would trust a computer system built by a rival nation with sensitive information. There is a very good reason that the military ensures contractors take reasonable precautions regarding where they source equipment. The US would be foolish to trust China and China would be foolish to trust the US. For many uses it doesn't matter who made the laptops but when it does matter, it matters a LOT.
having the ability to scan all employees' email is not wise from a security perspective.
NOT having the ability to scan email is not wise from a security perspective. If someone is doing something they ought not to be doing, exactly how is the NSA going to find out? They claim they need this ability to find out if civilians are dangerous so why would the same logic not apply to their internal operations? Makes NO sense whatsoever.
The Samsung Galaxy phone is better and any tablet in the world is better than the iPad.
Nothing against the Galaxy but "better" is a pretty ill defined term. For my Grandmother, who mostly wants to play solitaire and facetime with her grandkids, the Galaxy is a demonstrably worse choice. For your needs or mine it might be the better choice. "Better" depends on what you are doing with it.
As soon as people realize it has no HDMI, no micro-SD port, and no USB port for flash drives, they can go spend 5x less on a tablet that can or get the vastly superior Galaxy tablet for the same price.
There is a market for tablets with those connectors but it is, for better or worse, a minority. My several of my family members have iPads. Most of them would never use any of those ports and in fact most of them don't even know what an HDMI or micro-SD port is. That's not to imply that a tablet with those ports would be pointless. For someone like me they might actually be an attractive feature but I have no illusions that most iPad buyers would need or want them. Furthermore those extra ports add cost, complexity and opportunities for hardware failure. Furthermore there are other ways to accomplish things like file transfer, video display, etc without those ports so it is unclear why they would be necessary in most cases. You don't need HDMI to display video. You don't need USB to store or transfer files. I'm sure some people appreciate those ports but I'd wager a tidy sum that most of the time they go completely unused.
Outdoor lighting is nice to have, we're not really creatures of the dark.
Sometimes but mostly it seems to just be a waste of energy and just obscured the night sky. If you are actively doing something outside then sure, use whatever lights you need. But most lights seem to be just wasteful and unnecessary.
Doctors who wont prescribe birth controls, because of the doctors faith, not the patients
These are so rare that they are a man-bites-dog sort of story. Seriously, doctors who do this are actually pretty hard to find unless you are actively looking for them.
Any a time a doctor screws up its a news worthy event
I assure you that this is not even remotely true. Doctors are quite talented are hard working but they are human and they are almost always working with imperfect information. Most mistakes doctors make do not make it to the evening news and nor should they. If doctors could never make mistakes, we would be unable to effectively train doctors. It is impossible to practice error free medicine. Even if you somehow were to manage the miracle of making the statistically perfect diagnosis every time (which isn't possible), you would still be wrong a significant percent of time because you are working with imperfect information.
Everyone has a friend who went to a doctor (or doctors) that misdiagnosed something major
That is primarily because the human body is incredibly complicated and a lot of diagnoses are hard to make. Sometimes what the problem turns out to be not so obvious except in hindsight.
All doctors are paid by drug companies to play golf, everyone knows that.
Everyone does not "know that" because it demonstrably isn't true. I'm married to a doctor. She regards drug reps as something close to sub-human. Some doctors will listen to their spiel, many won't. Sure, the drug companies try to persuade and influence but most of the time they have little effect. If anything the doctors tend to use them to get free samples for patients and occasionally for some required continuing "education" credits. There are some shady doctors to be sure but most of them are pretty honest and keep the drug reps at arms length or further.
Everything in the media screams "don't trust doctors", why take the risk of autism, doctors have been wrong before?
If you listen carefully what you'll actually hear is "don't *blindly* trust doctors". Huge difference.
What rights are being trodden on here? I'm not preventing anyone from their religious beliefs. They can believe whatever crazy thing they want. But there is copious legal precedent of religious objections getting overridden in the interest of public health, both for individuals as well as for society at large. Nobody should enjoy the right to endanger the public health needlessly.
By your same logic we should ban aspirin and alcohol too.
You are seriously comparing prevention of a dangerous pathogen with a vaccine for completely unscientific reasons to using improper administration of aspirin and a overdoses of a recreational intoxicant? Neither aspiring (or other NSAIDs) are particularly dangerous when administered properly. The fact that they aren't is a separate issue of education. As for alcohol related problems, there already are laws to deal with that. Hurt someone due to your inappropriate use of alcohol and you will go to jail.
Does this extend to all behavior that can be shown to be statistically more likely to result in injury, illness, or death?
Ahh, the slippery slope argument. The answer is of course we don't extend it to everything. However we do have to examine each activity and decide if it presents an undue risk. Some will, some won't. Not getting vaccines for a child that demonstrably prevent acquisition and transmission of potentially fatal pathogens at very low risk in my opinion is pretty clearly negligence. If that child ever gets sick from the disease or worse causes another child to get sick, that parent should have to explain themselves to a court. If a parent can convince a (scientifically educated) court that their objections to getting the child vaccinated somehow outweigh the public health risk they are presenting, then I have no further objection. Arguments I dismiss out of hand include religious practice applied to someone other than one's self (like a child) as well as arguments based on discredited or psuedo-science.
There are millions of children who are obese due to diet. Parents are in charge of the diet, obesity statistically leads to illness and death, so by your logic, shouldn't parents of obese children should be charged with child abuse?
Tempting but there is one BIG difference. Your child being obese is not going to result in another child becoming sick. Vaccines serve two purposes. One is prevention of a disease in a person and the other is to prevent transmission of that disease. While I think that parents who do not pay attention to their child's diet are indeed negligent, I think the public interest there is lower because obesity is not contagious nor is it acutely fatal.
While measles can be fatal so can be Chicken Pox, so it would be like our children saying the same thing about Chicken Pox when they are adults. Sure it is uncomfortable and not at all desirable to get the parents should not be charged.
Around 150,000 people around the world die from measels each year and about 38% of young children who get it end up being treated in a hospital. About 3 out of 1000 children who get the disease will die even with the best available medical care. Given that the vaccine demonstrably reduces the incidence and number of fatalities, I think your argument is severely flawed.
Also there more than a fear of Autism there is a moral reason some choose not to have their children vaccinated, some of these vaccines were developed using aborted fetuses
I don't care AT ALL about people's religious objections to vaccines. Such objections are a danger to public health. If these people want to endanger just themselves and are consenting adults, then fine. But I will never support them in endangering either their own children or other people based on some crazy mythology. Their right to religious freedom ends when it becomes a public health hazard. If they want to come up with an objection based on actual verifiable facts then I'm willing to discuss it.
While that's true, there's also no evidence that using mercury in shots was ever a good idea.
So find me some evidence that it is actually a problem. Otherwise you are simply using scare tactics not based on any actual evidence. I'm willing to concede that based on what we know about mercury that the problem is worth investigating even unrelated to autism. In fact the various health agencies and vaccine makers are working to eliminate mercury from the vaccines as a precaution and have removed it from childhood vaccines since 2001. However just because something in theory seems like it might be harmful does not mean that it actually is harmful. And even if it is harmful you have to establish that the harm suffered exceeds the benefits provided by the treatment. All vaccines have some percent (typically very small) of the patient population who have adverse reactions. This fact does not mean we should stop using the vaccine nor does it mean that the formulation should be changed without any scientific basis.
Mercury is bioaccumulative. Using mercury where it is unnecessary to maximize profit is unacceptable.
Did it occur to you that using a preservative might be to ensure that the drug can be sufficiently distributed? Vaccines do have a shelf life and it's not hard to argue that someone who doesn't receive a vaccine because it has expired is a worse problem than using a preservative.
But that information, counter to what your doctor was saying, would not be nearly as effective, or convincing enough to get on the news n the first place
Yes because the truth is just soooo boring.
if the medical field did not have a long history or getting things wrong spectacularly
Say what? While sometimes science goes down some wrong paths, modern medicine has a spectacular track record. They have DOUBLED live expectancies in the last one hundred years. In what bizarro universe is that somehow a failure?
and was not widely known as being completely corrupted by money.
Medicine is no more corrupted by money than any other profession and arguably less so than many. You'll have a hard time convincing me that journalism is some paragon of integrity and journalists are the ones convincing people of a (false) link between a treatment and a disease.
Also it would of helped if they had not used mercury in the shots.
There is no evidence that mercury that used to be in some vaccines ever caused a problem.
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals.
People didn't vaccinate their kids because they heard a (false) series of stories on the news. The problem wasn't that they didn't trust their doctor too little but rather that they trusted the news too much. If you saw a steady parade of (dis)information from a news source you regard as credible, why would you doubt it? Saying vaccines cause autism is a nice sound bite which is easy to understand whereas the counter argument that there is no credible evidence of any link is harder to explain.
As long as big pharma is taking meds off the market and replacing them with inferior versions in order to drive down demand for a generic and force people to continue to pay them, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Name one medicine that has been "taken off the market and replaced" with an inferior version.
One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"
So she didn't listen to her physician. Sigh...
I'm of a mind that people like this should be charged with child abuse, regardless of their intentions. They are putting not only their own child at risk but other children as well. The science on this topic is unequivocal. Vaccines demonstrably save lives and not getting them demonstrably costs lives. Children who do not get the vaccines (without a documented medical needs exemption) should not be permitted to go to school or participate in activities with other children. Parents who do not vaccinate their children (again without a medical needs exemption) should have to explain to a court why they think they are entitled to put their child and others at risk of some very serious diseases. Yes I'm being harsh and yes I think it is appropriate the the magnitude of the problem. A vague fear of autism which is not based on credible scientific research is not sufficient grounds to not get vaccinated.
Of course it's much easier to control one point than many, but until the EPA gets serious about a carbon cap or other controls on the dirtiest power plants -- I'll stand by my argument.
Last time I checked, internal combustion engines emit quite a lot of carbon dioxide, not to mention a lot of other nasty stuff. Even the cleanest gasoline powered cars are still pretty dirty. Just because coal plants aren't clean doesn't make continuing to use internal combustion engines more than necessary a compelling alternative. The EPA doesn't control motor vehicle emissions notably better than they do power plant emissions and it is a global problem, not just one in the US. Shifting to a power regime where you can focus on relatively few sources makes the scope of the problem a LOT more manageable.
You *can*, but many folks don't have the option of choosing where their power comes from.
Look at it this way. My current car is powered by gasoline 100%. I have no ability to influence that percentage and never will. If I buy a Tesla Model S, where I live my car would be powered by 66% coal, 22% nuclear, 8% natural gas and 4% renewables. Per state law by the end of 2015, 10% will be powered by renewables (wind mostly in place of coal) and the state is on track to accomplish that. I also that the option via my power company to source all of my electricity from renewables (for a price). I also have the ability to put a wind turbine or solar panel on my house to generate my own electricity if I am so inclined and have the means. In other words I gain the ability to influence in some measure (however small) how my vehicle is powered. Without an internal combustion engine I completely lack that ability.
The beauty of electric vehicles from a power perspective is that we can power them with a diverse set of sources. These sources can be optimized based on fuel availability and emissions targets. In places like France that make heavy use of nuclear power going to electric vehicles is a huge win on pollution. For places like the US and China which use a lot of coal it will take longer. But just staying with the status quo because it will take a while to show full benefits is stupid.
As you can see, the aggregate manufacturing output is 12% of the GDP, less than that attributed to real estate. The aggregate value of industrial production in the US is $1.7 trillion dollars. If you honestly believe the aggregate value of all manufacturing in the world is $8.5 trillion, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
The US has 18% of global manufacturing output according to the link YOU provided. That means that the $8.5 trillion number is pretty close if you accept those numbers. The fact that manufacturing is a smaller portion of the economy is not an indication of any failure on the part of US manufacturing but rather speaks to the success of other sectors, particularly services. The only country with a manufacturing sector of comparable size is China.
The US does have some industry, but it is not relevant to the employment and purchasing power of the average citizen.
Per the link YOU provided the US is the largest manufacturer in the world with a manufacturing output greater than India, Germany, France and Brazil combined. Explain to me how we can have such a large manufacturing sector, employing about 12 million people and have it be "not relevant to the employment and purchasing power of the average citizen". Additionally manufacturing is responsible for 60% of US exports and 29% of total economic growth since 2009.
PS: Your 1/5 number was probably true in the 1950s and 1960s. I'm not going to lookup that data however.
I suggest you do look it up because that number is correct. 18% is a pretty good approximation of 1/5. You pretty clearly have not looked at any actual data on US manufacturing.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Price for his efforts at various hot spots around the world...
And deservedly so. Unfortunately Barack Obama was also awarded the same prize apparently for getting elected president rather than any actual actions on his part in support of peace AND he used the acceptance speech to argue that war is sometimes justified AND he has failed to close Guantanamo Bay or to even keep making the argument that it should be close which makes the credibility of the prize a bit more suspect than it used to be.
While he may have not accomplished much of note while in office, Carter has far and away been the most active, most influential, and best ex-president this country's ever seen.
I very much agree with that. Carter appears to be a very genuinely decent human being and has been a real force for good in the world.
It sounded like, from the article, the Model S had a replaceable battery pack, and you would simply replace that at a station like a propane cylinder, rather than actually charge it...
It is replaceable and Tesla has demonstrated this technology. However I think it is unlikely to become widespread anytime soon. The logistics and infrastructure simply don't make it economical. I think it is VERY likely however that recharge times will be brought down to 5-10 minutes in the not terribly distant future.
My probably with that is this. What is the cost of a replacement battery pack?
Doesn't much matter. The battery pack is under warranty for the better part of a decade and if you do swap it you are getting an identical unit. There is some cost obviously but it's kind of irrelevant.
Also, the packs are said to get 300 miles, but that's with extended-range mode enabled which is apparently not recommended for day-to-day use, and it also means no AC or heat. In tests done by third parties, they saw 200-220 mile ranges on a pack without extended-range enabled, and that dropped to around 180 miles with heat on in the winter or AC enabled.
I know a guy who owns one of the performance models with about 7000 miles on it and he uses it as a daily driver. According to him in normal driving you'll see 240-270 miles which is pretty close to the pickup I drive right now as a daily driver. He also said that worst case scenario (100mph lead foot driving in frigid temps) you'll see 170-180 miles. He can charge it at work and home and has enough range to drive from Detroit to Cleveland without stopping (about 200 miles). Obviously you can come up with circumstances where a gasoline/diesel engine would be a better option but with the Tesla Model S the only common circumstances are very long distance drives (>250 miles) or in some parts of the world extreme cold conditions.
I'm going to go ahead and guess whatever model of Audi they showed, probably gets at least 300 and more likely 400 miles on a 20 gallon fill-up... so, you can change a battery in half the time, but you have to do it twice as often... doesn't seem like a benefit to me.
You have a bladder that can drive 400 miles in one sitting? Frankly I pretty much have to get out of the car every few hours anyway to stretch my legs so I don't really care if I need to plug in (or battery swap) while I do it. If you just like driving an Audi that is fine but it doesn't make the Tesla a bad alternative. You're just picking a different set of tradeoffs.
The caveat being, battery tech gets better all the time, so eventually it may be better... then again, gas engines are getting more and more economical as well.
Gas engines do not have the upside potential of electric motors. They simply aren't as efficient. There is a reason locomotives use electric motors and the diesel just provides the juice to power them. (I'm hoping trucks do that someday) They'll continue to improve but electric motors are going to take over a big chunk of the market in time. Hybrids in the near term with electric vehicles taking over as recharge times fall below the magic 10 minute mark.
Slashdot Mirror
However if the Chinese are ever coming for the USA, it will be through the courts with a small army of debt collectors.
Cute sound bite but the US has the Chinese over a barrel here. China has bought about $1.1 trillion dollars of US debt which is about 9% of total US debt. (Japan has a similar amount an total foreign debt obligations are around $5.8 tillion) Most of this debt was purchased to maintain the yuan's peg to the dollar in order to keep their exports cheap. (a weak currency helps exports) Exactly how do you propose the Chinese force the US to pay? The courts can't force the US government to do a thing. They can't sell the debt to someone else. No one else wants or could buy that much debt. If they let their currency get stronger (buys more dollars per yuan) then it hurts their exports by making them more expensive abroad. Since their economy is heavily export based, any action they could take carries a strong probability of badly damaging their economy. No the Chinese are in a tough spot. They have lent a lot of money to the US to keep their currency cheap and to ward off currency speculators. There is no way they could collect in a short time without a mushroom cloud appearing over their economy.
When you owe the bank a little money, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a lot of money, the bank has a problem.
Thinkpads are very popular with people who need to do their own maintenance. They use them on the ISS for that very reason.
ISS stands for INTERNATIONAL Space Station so we're not talking about especially sensitive gear. And thinkpads are hardly the only feasible option. They were used because until 2005 IBM produced them. Since that is no longer true in some cases it may be prudent to look for alternative vendors.
Sounds like fear of the boogyman and a bit of racism are really going to hurt the US in the long run.
Little bit eager to throw out the race card aren't you? Only an imbecile would trust a computer system built by a rival nation with sensitive information. There is a very good reason that the military ensures contractors take reasonable precautions regarding where they source equipment. The US would be foolish to trust China and China would be foolish to trust the US. For many uses it doesn't matter who made the laptops but when it does matter, it matters a LOT.
having the ability to scan all employees' email is not wise from a security perspective.
NOT having the ability to scan email is not wise from a security perspective. If someone is doing something they ought not to be doing, exactly how is the NSA going to find out? They claim they need this ability to find out if civilians are dangerous so why would the same logic not apply to their internal operations? Makes NO sense whatsoever.
The NSA says that there is no central method to search its own email.
[cough] Bullshit [/cough]
The Samsung Galaxy phone is better and any tablet in the world is better than the iPad.
Nothing against the Galaxy but "better" is a pretty ill defined term. For my Grandmother, who mostly wants to play solitaire and facetime with her grandkids, the Galaxy is a demonstrably worse choice. For your needs or mine it might be the better choice. "Better" depends on what you are doing with it.
As soon as people realize it has no HDMI, no micro-SD port, and no USB port for flash drives, they can go spend 5x less on a tablet that can or get the vastly superior Galaxy tablet for the same price.
There is a market for tablets with those connectors but it is, for better or worse, a minority. My several of my family members have iPads. Most of them would never use any of those ports and in fact most of them don't even know what an HDMI or micro-SD port is. That's not to imply that a tablet with those ports would be pointless. For someone like me they might actually be an attractive feature but I have no illusions that most iPad buyers would need or want them. Furthermore those extra ports add cost, complexity and opportunities for hardware failure. Furthermore there are other ways to accomplish things like file transfer, video display, etc without those ports so it is unclear why they would be necessary in most cases. You don't need HDMI to display video. You don't need USB to store or transfer files. I'm sure some people appreciate those ports but I'd wager a tidy sum that most of the time they go completely unused.
It would seem that your definition of "less dorky looking" is radically different form mine....
Apparently so, especially if you thing the miner light gets all the babes...
no, pollution is something that damages life. gives people cancer, kills fish and other animals, kills trees, etc
Of you mean like disruption of sleep rhythms, or disruption of ecosystems? Five seconds of research would have pointed out the negative effects of light pollution.
There is no such thing as "light pollution".
Really? I think you might want to actually try researching the topic first since the existence of light pollution isn't even a debate.
Outdoor lighting is nice to have, we're not really creatures of the dark.
Sometimes but mostly it seems to just be a waste of energy and just obscured the night sky. If you are actively doing something outside then sure, use whatever lights you need. But most lights seem to be just wasteful and unnecessary.
I use led safety glasses which are a lot less dorky looking and work pretty well.
Doctors who wont prescribe birth controls, because of the doctors faith, not the patients
These are so rare that they are a man-bites-dog sort of story. Seriously, doctors who do this are actually pretty hard to find unless you are actively looking for them.
Any a time a doctor screws up its a news worthy event
I assure you that this is not even remotely true. Doctors are quite talented are hard working but they are human and they are almost always working with imperfect information. Most mistakes doctors make do not make it to the evening news and nor should they. If doctors could never make mistakes, we would be unable to effectively train doctors. It is impossible to practice error free medicine. Even if you somehow were to manage the miracle of making the statistically perfect diagnosis every time (which isn't possible), you would still be wrong a significant percent of time because you are working with imperfect information.
Everyone has a friend who went to a doctor (or doctors) that misdiagnosed something major
That is primarily because the human body is incredibly complicated and a lot of diagnoses are hard to make. Sometimes what the problem turns out to be not so obvious except in hindsight.
All doctors are paid by drug companies to play golf, everyone knows that.
Everyone does not "know that" because it demonstrably isn't true. I'm married to a doctor. She regards drug reps as something close to sub-human. Some doctors will listen to their spiel, many won't. Sure, the drug companies try to persuade and influence but most of the time they have little effect. If anything the doctors tend to use them to get free samples for patients and occasionally for some required continuing "education" credits. There are some shady doctors to be sure but most of them are pretty honest and keep the drug reps at arms length or further.
Everything in the media screams "don't trust doctors", why take the risk of autism, doctors have been wrong before?
If you listen carefully what you'll actually hear is "don't *blindly* trust doctors". Huge difference.
Glad you are so happy to tread on another rights.
What rights are being trodden on here? I'm not preventing anyone from their religious beliefs. They can believe whatever crazy thing they want. But there is copious legal precedent of religious objections getting overridden in the interest of public health, both for individuals as well as for society at large. Nobody should enjoy the right to endanger the public health needlessly.
By your same logic we should ban aspirin and alcohol too.
You are seriously comparing prevention of a dangerous pathogen with a vaccine for completely unscientific reasons to using improper administration of aspirin and a overdoses of a recreational intoxicant? Neither aspiring (or other NSAIDs) are particularly dangerous when administered properly. The fact that they aren't is a separate issue of education. As for alcohol related problems, there already are laws to deal with that. Hurt someone due to your inappropriate use of alcohol and you will go to jail.
Does this extend to all behavior that can be shown to be statistically more likely to result in injury, illness, or death?
Ahh, the slippery slope argument. The answer is of course we don't extend it to everything. However we do have to examine each activity and decide if it presents an undue risk. Some will, some won't. Not getting vaccines for a child that demonstrably prevent acquisition and transmission of potentially fatal pathogens at very low risk in my opinion is pretty clearly negligence. If that child ever gets sick from the disease or worse causes another child to get sick, that parent should have to explain themselves to a court. If a parent can convince a (scientifically educated) court that their objections to getting the child vaccinated somehow outweigh the public health risk they are presenting, then I have no further objection. Arguments I dismiss out of hand include religious practice applied to someone other than one's self (like a child) as well as arguments based on discredited or psuedo-science.
There are millions of children who are obese due to diet. Parents are in charge of the diet, obesity statistically leads to illness and death, so by your logic, shouldn't parents of obese children should be charged with child abuse?
Tempting but there is one BIG difference. Your child being obese is not going to result in another child becoming sick. Vaccines serve two purposes. One is prevention of a disease in a person and the other is to prevent transmission of that disease. While I think that parents who do not pay attention to their child's diet are indeed negligent, I think the public interest there is lower because obesity is not contagious nor is it acutely fatal.
While measles can be fatal so can be Chicken Pox, so it would be like our children saying the same thing about Chicken Pox when they are adults. Sure it is uncomfortable and not at all desirable to get the parents should not be charged.
Around 150,000 people around the world die from measels each year and about 38% of young children who get it end up being treated in a hospital. About 3 out of 1000 children who get the disease will die even with the best available medical care. Given that the vaccine demonstrably reduces the incidence and number of fatalities, I think your argument is severely flawed.
Also there more than a fear of Autism there is a moral reason some choose not to have their children vaccinated, some of these vaccines were developed using aborted fetuses
I don't care AT ALL about people's religious objections to vaccines. Such objections are a danger to public health. If these people want to endanger just themselves and are consenting adults, then fine. But I will never support them in endangering either their own children or other people based on some crazy mythology. Their right to religious freedom ends when it becomes a public health hazard. If they want to come up with an objection based on actual verifiable facts then I'm willing to discuss it.
While that's true, there's also no evidence that using mercury in shots was ever a good idea.
So find me some evidence that it is actually a problem. Otherwise you are simply using scare tactics not based on any actual evidence. I'm willing to concede that based on what we know about mercury that the problem is worth investigating even unrelated to autism. In fact the various health agencies and vaccine makers are working to eliminate mercury from the vaccines as a precaution and have removed it from childhood vaccines since 2001. However just because something in theory seems like it might be harmful does not mean that it actually is harmful. And even if it is harmful you have to establish that the harm suffered exceeds the benefits provided by the treatment. All vaccines have some percent (typically very small) of the patient population who have adverse reactions. This fact does not mean we should stop using the vaccine nor does it mean that the formulation should be changed without any scientific basis.
Mercury is bioaccumulative. Using mercury where it is unnecessary to maximize profit is unacceptable.
Did it occur to you that using a preservative might be to ensure that the drug can be sufficiently distributed? Vaccines do have a shelf life and it's not hard to argue that someone who doesn't receive a vaccine because it has expired is a worse problem than using a preservative.
Now that the Losec patents have expired, Losec is back on the market.
So the drug is not off the market nor has it been replaced by an inferior product. Great example...
But that information, counter to what your doctor was saying, would not be nearly as effective, or convincing enough to get on the news n the first place
Yes because the truth is just soooo boring.
if the medical field did not have a long history or getting things wrong spectacularly
Say what? While sometimes science goes down some wrong paths, modern medicine has a spectacular track record. They have DOUBLED live expectancies in the last one hundred years. In what bizarro universe is that somehow a failure?
and was not widely known as being completely corrupted by money.
Medicine is no more corrupted by money than any other profession and arguably less so than many. You'll have a hard time convincing me that journalism is some paragon of integrity and journalists are the ones convincing people of a (false) link between a treatment and a disease.
Also it would of helped if they had not used mercury in the shots.
There is no evidence that mercury that used to be in some vaccines ever caused a problem.
Things are unlikely to improve unless we really improve the quality and availability of education.
Education cures ignorance, not stupidity. In the immortal words of Ron White, "you can't fix stupid".
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals.
People didn't vaccinate their kids because they heard a (false) series of stories on the news. The problem wasn't that they didn't trust their doctor too little but rather that they trusted the news too much. If you saw a steady parade of (dis)information from a news source you regard as credible, why would you doubt it? Saying vaccines cause autism is a nice sound bite which is easy to understand whereas the counter argument that there is no credible evidence of any link is harder to explain.
As long as big pharma is taking meds off the market and replacing them with inferior versions in order to drive down demand for a generic and force people to continue to pay them, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Name one medicine that has been "taken off the market and replaced" with an inferior version.
One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"
So she didn't listen to her physician. Sigh...
I'm of a mind that people like this should be charged with child abuse, regardless of their intentions. They are putting not only their own child at risk but other children as well. The science on this topic is unequivocal. Vaccines demonstrably save lives and not getting them demonstrably costs lives. Children who do not get the vaccines (without a documented medical needs exemption) should not be permitted to go to school or participate in activities with other children. Parents who do not vaccinate their children (again without a medical needs exemption) should have to explain to a court why they think they are entitled to put their child and others at risk of some very serious diseases. Yes I'm being harsh and yes I think it is appropriate the the magnitude of the problem. A vague fear of autism which is not based on credible scientific research is not sufficient grounds to not get vaccinated.
So unless they can return Alan Turing to life this pardon doesn't mean shit.
What is means is that the people in power are pandering to those currently living in the hopes of getting future votes.
Of course it's much easier to control one point than many, but until the EPA gets serious about a carbon cap or other controls on the dirtiest power plants -- I'll stand by my argument.
Last time I checked, internal combustion engines emit quite a lot of carbon dioxide, not to mention a lot of other nasty stuff. Even the cleanest gasoline powered cars are still pretty dirty. Just because coal plants aren't clean doesn't make continuing to use internal combustion engines more than necessary a compelling alternative. The EPA doesn't control motor vehicle emissions notably better than they do power plant emissions and it is a global problem, not just one in the US. Shifting to a power regime where you can focus on relatively few sources makes the scope of the problem a LOT more manageable.
You *can*, but many folks don't have the option of choosing where their power comes from.
Look at it this way. My current car is powered by gasoline 100%. I have no ability to influence that percentage and never will. If I buy a Tesla Model S, where I live my car would be powered by 66% coal, 22% nuclear, 8% natural gas and 4% renewables. Per state law by the end of 2015, 10% will be powered by renewables (wind mostly in place of coal) and the state is on track to accomplish that. I also that the option via my power company to source all of my electricity from renewables (for a price). I also have the ability to put a wind turbine or solar panel on my house to generate my own electricity if I am so inclined and have the means. In other words I gain the ability to influence in some measure (however small) how my vehicle is powered. Without an internal combustion engine I completely lack that ability.
The beauty of electric vehicles from a power perspective is that we can power them with a diverse set of sources. These sources can be optimized based on fuel availability and emissions targets. In places like France that make heavy use of nuclear power going to electric vehicles is a huge win on pollution. For places like the US and China which use a lot of coal it will take longer. But just staying with the status quo because it will take a while to show full benefits is stupid.
As you can see, the aggregate manufacturing output is 12% of the GDP, less than that attributed to real estate. The aggregate value of industrial production in the US is $1.7 trillion dollars. If you honestly believe the aggregate value of all manufacturing in the world is $8.5 trillion, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
The US has 18% of global manufacturing output according to the link YOU provided. That means that the $8.5 trillion number is pretty close if you accept those numbers. The fact that manufacturing is a smaller portion of the economy is not an indication of any failure on the part of US manufacturing but rather speaks to the success of other sectors, particularly services. The only country with a manufacturing sector of comparable size is China.
The US does have some industry, but it is not relevant to the employment and purchasing power of the average citizen.
Per the link YOU provided the US is the largest manufacturer in the world with a manufacturing output greater than India, Germany, France and Brazil combined. Explain to me how we can have such a large manufacturing sector, employing about 12 million people and have it be "not relevant to the employment and purchasing power of the average citizen". Additionally manufacturing is responsible for 60% of US exports and 29% of total economic growth since 2009.
PS: Your 1/5 number was probably true in the 1950s and 1960s. I'm not going to lookup that data however.
I suggest you do look it up because that number is correct. 18% is a pretty good approximation of 1/5. You pretty clearly have not looked at any actual data on US manufacturing.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Price for his efforts at various hot spots around the world...
And deservedly so. Unfortunately Barack Obama was also awarded the same prize apparently for getting elected president rather than any actual actions on his part in support of peace AND he used the acceptance speech to argue that war is sometimes justified AND he has failed to close Guantanamo Bay or to even keep making the argument that it should be close which makes the credibility of the prize a bit more suspect than it used to be.
While he may have not accomplished much of note while in office, Carter has far and away been the most active, most influential, and best ex-president this country's ever seen.
I very much agree with that. Carter appears to be a very genuinely decent human being and has been a real force for good in the world.
It sounded like, from the article, the Model S had a replaceable battery pack, and you would simply replace that at a station like a propane cylinder, rather than actually charge it...
It is replaceable and Tesla has demonstrated this technology. However I think it is unlikely to become widespread anytime soon. The logistics and infrastructure simply don't make it economical. I think it is VERY likely however that recharge times will be brought down to 5-10 minutes in the not terribly distant future.
My probably with that is this. What is the cost of a replacement battery pack?
Doesn't much matter. The battery pack is under warranty for the better part of a decade and if you do swap it you are getting an identical unit. There is some cost obviously but it's kind of irrelevant.
Also, the packs are said to get 300 miles, but that's with extended-range mode enabled which is apparently not recommended for day-to-day use, and it also means no AC or heat. In tests done by third parties, they saw 200-220 mile ranges on a pack without extended-range enabled, and that dropped to around 180 miles with heat on in the winter or AC enabled.
I know a guy who owns one of the performance models with about 7000 miles on it and he uses it as a daily driver. According to him in normal driving you'll see 240-270 miles which is pretty close to the pickup I drive right now as a daily driver. He also said that worst case scenario (100mph lead foot driving in frigid temps) you'll see 170-180 miles. He can charge it at work and home and has enough range to drive from Detroit to Cleveland without stopping (about 200 miles). Obviously you can come up with circumstances where a gasoline/diesel engine would be a better option but with the Tesla Model S the only common circumstances are very long distance drives (>250 miles) or in some parts of the world extreme cold conditions.
I'm going to go ahead and guess whatever model of Audi they showed, probably gets at least 300 and more likely 400 miles on a 20 gallon fill-up... so, you can change a battery in half the time, but you have to do it twice as often... doesn't seem like a benefit to me.
You have a bladder that can drive 400 miles in one sitting? Frankly I pretty much have to get out of the car every few hours anyway to stretch my legs so I don't really care if I need to plug in (or battery swap) while I do it. If you just like driving an Audi that is fine but it doesn't make the Tesla a bad alternative. You're just picking a different set of tradeoffs.
The caveat being, battery tech gets better all the time, so eventually it may be better... then again, gas engines are getting more and more economical as well.
Gas engines do not have the upside potential of electric motors. They simply aren't as efficient. There is a reason locomotives use electric motors and the diesel just provides the juice to power them. (I'm hoping trucks do that someday) They'll continue to improve but electric motors are going to take over a big chunk of the market in time. Hybrids in the near term with electric vehicles taking over as recharge times fall below the magic 10 minute mark.