But Disney doesn't directly control what Pixar creates.
Only because they choose not to interfere. Pixar has a few flops and I promise you that state of affairs will not last longer than this sentence. Disney is smart enough to not interfere with something that is working but I promise you they will get heavily involved the moment something goes even slightly off the rails.
If the content is premium content, something that I know is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere, then I have no problem paying for it.
The problem with that argument when applied to newspapers is that news is an experiential good and by definition you cannot possibly know if it "is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere" until after you have the information. So you have to pay for it and hope that it turns out to be valuable. You can rely on the reputation or reliability of the source, but that still doesn't tell you in advance that the information is good. Even if others tell you it is valuable, you might not find it to be so - think of a movie that all your friends like but you don't.
The problem with news is that it is an experiential good meaning you can't determine it's value in advance. You only know whether it was worth something AFTER you read it. So why would someone pay for news that might or might not be valuable? Usually because the source has a track record of providing good information (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc) or you have some other reason to suspect that the information might be valuable (information about a stock that is not widely known for instance). But the seller of information by definition cannot know what the information is worth to the buyer in advance. Generally the seller finds out it was worth something to the buyer if the buyer buys information from them again.
There is money to be made in paying for content that can be had for free elsewhere. Apple's iTunes is proof enough of that. BUT it has to provide something you can't easily get from the free (even if illegal) alternatives. That could be convenience, it could be support, it could be complementary technology (iPod/Kindle), it could be reliability, it could be unusually insightful analysis, and it could be other things. Just copying the latest AP news has some value but not enough many people will pay for it directly.
You bring up an important point. Most doctors and hospitals have no idea about this...
Kind of pointless arguing with the ignorant but whatever... If you think doctors are uninformed about "alternative medicines" you are mistaken. They have conducted studies and for the most part the studies have concluded the treatments were not effective. What's worse for your argument is that doctors are scientists and they've actually conducted rigorous studies of "orthomolecular medicine" as well as many other forms of alternative medicine and the evidence has come up lacking. If it worked doctors would be thrilled but there is no substantial evidence that it works or that it should work. Ergo it is snake oil.
...the medical system is controlled by doctors who are controlled by drug companies and hospitals.
And they all cackle maniacally while rolling naked in piles of money right? Please... Most doctors are not employed by hospitals and in fact in some states like California they are prohibited by law from being employed by a hospital. Hspitals don't control most doctor's reimbursement, they certainly don't get much if any say in patient care decisions, and there is no mechanism I'm aware of by which they can "control" doctors not in their direct employ. If anything it is the doctors who control the hospitals, no the other way around.
Furthermore if you think more than a few corrupt doctors are "controlled" by drug companies you don't actually know any doctors. The vast majority view drug companies and their representatives with deep suspicion. Most of the doctors I know personally (a lot of them btw) refuse to even see drug reps directly. That said drug companies produce products that are proven to work. There evidentiary hurdles required for them to sell their products are high and I know it. Sorry but if you want to convince me otherwise you'll have to present solid evidence and I'm pretty sure you haven't got any.
Drugs and surgery bring in big bucks. Un-patentable vitamin supplements do not.
So I'm supposed to trust a bunch of unregulated over-the-counter supplements with uncertain quality control and a dubious supply chain over highly regulated medicines backed by deep scientific evidence proving their efficacy which has been peer reviewed by some of the best medical minds? Yeah, that's a toughie...
Vitamins are important but I'm already aware of the paucity of evidence to support "orthomolecular medicine". If you think there is no money to be made in vitamins you are a fool. Walk into a GNC sometime and tell me you think there is no money there. The margins are low but so are the costs and there is plenty of profit. You don't need a patent to be profitable. Furthermore as dietary supplements" they are largely unregulated with poor quality assurance and no requirement to demonstrate efficacy. To be clear the "make your dick bigger" pills fall in the same category.
Pick up a copy of Fire Your Doctor or Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone for a multitude of interesting studies on the subject.
No I don't think I will. I'm pretty sure what I'll find is some random "evidence" from some poorly conducted and cherry picked studies that has been misinterpreted in order to convince paranoid and desperate people they should buy the book. That is snake oil being sold for a profit and I've seen it before. If there were any actual scientific basis for it I would be reading it in Nature or some other reputable publication instead of some fringe conspiracy theory book. Interesting that you are so ready to believe in a great conspiracy of doctors because some snake oil salesmen have convinced you they know better. Pity you don't know who your friends actually are because your tinfoil hat is on a little too tight.
I'd extend that to the fact that nowadays, any "normal" doctor is basically a fraud.
Or when was the last time a doctor cared about the actual cause of a disease. Or maybe even how to prevent it the next time and where it came from.
Wow are you cynical. You don't actually know any doctors personally do you? Because if you did you would know how absolutely fucking absurd that claim is. My wife happens to be an MD and it happens to be her life's work to study and figure out the cause of disease. Don't confuse profit motivated drug companies with the doctors who make use of their medicines.
This is because usually, they actually can't fix much.
Let me let you in on a secret. You're going to die. The most any doctor can ever do is delay that for a while. But you're going to die and every doctor on the planet will tell you that fact. I suggest you come to terms with that and you'll live a more contented life.
Actually, naturopathic medicine is not only legitimate, it is superior to and will eventually replace allopathic medicine (mainstream, drug-and-surgery medicine), assuming the Singularity does not occur first.
Glad we had you to clear that up for us. Nice to know that all those incredibly smart doctors have wasted their time and energy and have no idea what they are talking about. I assume you are just waiting for your Nobel prize in medicine because you know better than all of them? Sorry to hear the Nobel committee screwed you again this year.
For proof, read a book or two by Linus Pauling.
Very smart people say very absurd things all the time. Hero worship does not constitute proof of anything.
As for chiropractics, I am not sufficiently informed to make a judgment.
You're pretty clearly not informed enough about medicine to make an informed judgment either.
Chiropractors have lots of evidence to support their claims.
Actually they don't for many of them. Many consider subluxation to be the basis of most disease which is a theory that is highly disputed and not held in much regard throughout most of the medical community. This is the bit of chiropractic medicine that is considered borderline if not outright quackery.
I started going on the recommendation of a full fledged MD because misalignment in my neck.
Nothing wrong with that. Joint alignment is what chiropractors do and as a form of massage therapy there is good reason to suspect it might help a condition like what you describe. The problem is that they too often claim to cure diseases with little evidence to support their claims. What evidence they do provide tends to be weak and the studies tend not to be especially large or rigorous. The overall effectiveness of chiropractic medicine is a subject of much dispute.
Wow, what arrogance. Who the fuck are you to say that those people did not heal anyone?
I'll bite. Among other things I'm a logical thinker and am a trained (though not practicing) scientist. My wife is an MD and we've discussed this very issue many times.
My dad lasted five years longer with his cancer than the doctor told him he would,...
That is a happy state of affairs but your logic is failing you. Doctors are wrong all the time. I know because I'm married to one who specializes in cancer diagnosis. It is an imperfect science and cancer is nowhere near being completely understood. Some cancers regress spontaneously for no explainable reason. Some cancers progress more slowly than average. No doctor can tell you more than a statistical likelihood for time to live and their answer is most likely incorrect - the only question is by how much. If your father sought unproven "alternative" medicines that is his right but the burden of proof is on you to show that they had some effect. I'm not about to assume that some snake-oil works just because some people believe it may have helped without any evidence to back up that assertion. That may sound cold but science is cold in a way.
I know a ton of doctors personally and I don't know a single one that wouldn't use something to save a patient that could be *proven* to work or even had a logical premise for why it should work. All progress in medicine is exploratory and comes about through trying things that we don't know if they'll work. But there is a threshold for absurdity. Claiming that you can cure cancer through chiropractic joint manipulation or acupuncture is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.
We still don't know which one of those "absurd lying pieces of worthless trash" delayed his death this much.
Quite possibly none of them. Cancer doesn't always behave the way we think it will. Survival statistics are simply probabilities and sometimes people beat the averages by quite a lot.
Maybe it was the placebo effect, who knows. But do you think we care? When you live with someone who should've been dead for 3 years already, you tend to look a bit differently at medical science.
I have lived with dying people. My wife has worked in a hospice and diagnoses cancer patients daily. It hasn't changed my view on medicine one bit. The human body is incredibly complicated and there is far more that we don't understand than what we do. Getting cynical about medicine because we can't cure or even diagnose every disease is a waste of energy and time. If seeking emotional solace in "alternative medicine" or religion or whatever else help you cope, I guess I can't argue with that. But I certainly can and will argue against quackery because it hurts more people than it helps.
I want some protection in case of another incident like the time the gas company accidentally billed me $8000. If that had been set up for direct withdrawl, my rent check and three other utility checks would have bounced before I got the charge reversed, and I'd still be fighting to get it off my credit record.
This is exactly the reason that I allow no direct debit of bills. Some I have charged to a credit card which I can dispute and pay (or not) in the event of an error but they don't get any cash from me directly without me explicitly authorizing it. I'm an accountant and I've seen more than enough screwed up bills to think auto debit is a horrible idea most of the time.
The reason I mostly insist on paper bills still fundamentally that I have to go find the bill instead of the bill coming to me. Each vendor I deal with does it differently and I have zero interest in logging on to a half dozen different websites, each with their own password and interface to find out the amount of the bill. With a paper bill, the bill comes to me instead of me going to the bill. If they want to deliver an ecrypted pdf in the format *I* want, then I'll be happy to receive electronic statements. Ideally I could download the pdf directly into Quicken.
a) Send encrypted, digitally signed pdfs, provide the passcode via logging in once with https
Fails the mom test. I can't wait to get the phone call to explain this to my parents. ("Honey? Is this attachment safe? Why is it asking me for a password? I don't know any password. I don't like this. What's wrong with a paper bill.... etc. etc.)
CFLs *hate* heat. CFLs hate cold. CFLs hate humidity. CFLs hate dimmers.
I have CFL's above my stove, in an unheated garage, on my porch (get's below 0F where I live) and in both of my bathrooms. Never had a problem with any of them in 3 years. I also have about 70 (yes 70) CFLs on dimmer switches in my house due to one indirectly lit room. I have had very few bulbs burn out in the last 3 years - maybe 5 total. True, most CFLs don't work with dimmers, but some are ok for select applications. You just have to get the right bulb. While CFLs aren't the right choice for every application, they work just fine in a wide variety of environments and circumstances.
New technologies have allowed folks like GE to build 60 watt incandescants that only use 30 watts while still providing the same brightness. So the net usage is the same as the CFL.
GE discontinued development of those bulbs and the other companies experimenting with them have found they use 70% of the power of regular incandescents which is still much higher than CFLs. 70% of 60W is 42W versus the 15W-18W required from my 60W equivalent CFLs. Sorry but if I have a choice it's going to be a CFL. Most of the time I'll save money in the long run AND have to replace fewer bulbs.
CFLs hate being turned on and off. Rapid cycling makes them die as quick as an incandescent bulb.
I have over 110 bulbs in my house total - mostly CFL and some incandescent. I've replaced maybe 5 (out of over 85) in the last 2 years and I turn them on and off all the time. The rest of the bulbs are incandescent and I've replaced most of them at least once in that time. Frequent cycling really hasn't been a problem for me.
CFLs have a warm-up time. Turn it on to read your paper, and you have to wait 5 minutes before you can see the writing.
There are plenty of "instant on" CFL bulbs on the market. They reach usable brightness almost immediately. I don't have to wait at all for most of the bulbs in my house. Your information is wrong.
10 years? I've yet to have the spiral CCFLs last over 1.5 years.
Then I would question either the quality of the power in your house, the quality of your bulbs, or maybe you are selectively picking data from just a few bulbs. I have a house with far more than the average number of CFL bulbs (around 100 total including 72 in one indirectly lit room) - more than enough to get something close to a normal distribution. Roughly 5% of them have burned out or been bad to start with in the last two years. Most have been working just fine - those that fail usually do so within the first few weeks.
The gas tax is one of the few instances where the users of government services (roads) pay for the use of roads, and in (rough) proportion to how much they use.
It's quite possible to estimate the (rough) proportion of electricity used by cars and set a tax rate accordingly. While desirable it is not actually necessary for a tax to relate to what it is paying for. Most taxes don't. Most taxes go into a general fund and are used where needed. Besides, a tax on energy regardless of where it is used encourages efficient use which is a good thing.
Let's say down the road, super efficient solar cells are invented. Then what? We are no longer at a point where we can accurately estimate how much someone is using roads by the energy that they purchase.
That assumes that those solar cells are off the grid which won't happen anytime soon and even if it does there are easy solutions to the revenue shortfall. For off-grid power generation taxation you could for instance use a sales tax on the purchase of that same solar equipment based on it's projected output. And if that doesn't work there are nearly unlimited other ways to tax that make more sense than mileage. You don't HAVE to support infrastructure with energy taxes, we just happen to do so right now because it makes sense.
Besides, taxing electricity is not an accurate measure of miles driven, either. To eliminate any issues with that, you'd have to install a meter on the vehicle.
Doesn't matter - we're taxing electricity to replace lost gas tax revenues. The fact that it isn't perfectly traceable to auto use is not important. Not all gasoline use is for transportation either. Taxing the use of power (in any form) creates an incentive to conserve energy and the infrastructure already exists. Instead of taxing one energy source we tax another and apply those tax revenues to the roads. The fact that electricity is also used for other things is unimportant. Without the roads and infrastructure, you wouldn't have the electricity in the first place.
Everyone benefits from having roads, so everyone should pay whether they drive or not.
Everyone already does pay. Gasoline taxes are passed on to consumers. This is called the tax incidence. You think the cost of gasoline isn't factored into your groceries?
Just because he/she is taxed now because of an energy source limitation doesn't mean they should be taxed in the future when the ability not to presents itself.
And just because he might avoid a tax in the future due to a quirk in the present tax code doesn't mean he shouldn't be taxed in the future. Even if he never drives a particular vehicle off his property, he still relies on the road infrastructure and needed it to get that vehicle to his property. He can suck it up and pay his share.
How? This seems like it would be very easy to evade,
I should think the answer is obvious. If you live in a building there is already a meter attached to your house. There also is one attached to nearly every business in the country. Virtually all electricity used in the US is generated by the grid and is ALREADY metered and taxed. The electric company does a good job of collecting and shuts you off if don't pay. No DRM system is necessary and it is very difficult to dodge.
If you want to tax off grid generation there is an easy solution for that too - sales tax. The infrastructure already exists, the enforcement mechanisms are in place and it's difficult to dodge.
Yes, but the problem is that as more and more bybrid and pure alternative fuel cars use the roads, less and less tax money will be available for road upkeep.
Only if the tax structure never changes. How likely do you think that is?
Imagine in 20 years if _every_ car were 100% electric (won't happen, I know). That would be a _huge_ drop in taxes earned through gasoline sales.
So tax electricity. The meters already exist and there are no invasion of privacy issues. Furthermore it provides an incentive to reduce electricity the same as gas which is a good thing. A mileage tax provides no incentive to be especially efficient.
Basically this is an early change over to a system that will work regardless of fuel source.
The feasible options are gas and electricity. It's far easier to tax electricity than to create a whole new tax infrastructure for mileage measurement.
What happens when gasoline isn't the primary fuel source for vehicles using Federally funded roads?
You tax electricity. MUCH easier and the metering infrastructure already exists. The car has to get power from somewhere, so tax the energy consumption wherever it originates. Taxing mileage is stupid and provides incentives for the wrong behavior.
We also have some of the best wind power resources in the world and some of the best nuclear fule resources in the world.
The US has 2.5% of the worlds supply of uranium and plutonium is mostly synthesized. The US does NOT have even close to the best supplies of nuclear fuel. Canada and Australia actually have the largest supplies of uranium.
As for wind, yes the US does have the potential for excellent wind power generation and in fact already leads the world in total (not per-capita) wind power production.
Per Capita China probably doesn't have as much (even if they produce way more than the USA).
China mines more coal but only has about half the proven reserves of the US. So per-capita it's not even close since the US has a quarter of the population of China and twice the amount of coal. At their current rate of consumption China will run out of domestic coal in 50 years or so. The coal China has unfortunately is a rather dirty kind with lots of sulphur. Australia is the biggest exporter but only has a quarter of the coal reserves of the US.
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined.
True but when you have a quarter of the worlds supply of coal, it's going to be an economic factor whether it hurts the climate or not. Global warming is a huge issue but there is NO economically feasible scenario whereby coal will not be a major part of the US energy supply for the next 30+ years. I don't like it, and I suspect you don't either but coal is here and we'll have to deal with it. There simply is nothing available, not even nuclear, that can scale large enough to take coal's place in the US economy in the next few decades.
Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Not with present or near-term technology, I agree. Good area for research.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
The answer is a diversified energy supply (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and yes even fossil-fuels) with careful emissions controls on the dirtier technologies. Nuclear and solar are not magic cure-alls but they should have an important part to play in the mix and definitely should be a bigger part of our energy policy. I absolutely agree with you on that.
I've recently driven myself insane trying to explain to climate change "skeptics" that searching for a scientific consensus isn't the way to approach scientific topics because science isn't democratic. It's about evidence.
Absolutely correct but not really what I was getting at. Science is based on facts and does not require a consensus in the short run. However policy based on science IS democratic an does depend on a consensus, at least in the US where I live. Policy makers will (except for George Bush and similar religious nut-jobs) listen to the scientists but the scientists have to speak with a relatively unified voice. Scientific consensus matters because it's the only way that non-scientists have to determine what might be the facts as we understand them. If scientists disagree, it can be nearly impossible for non-scientists determine the correctness of a given theory.
I've had the same frustrations as you with fools (usually religious nut-jobs) who can't fathom science. Climate change, stem cells, etc. They dislike something they don't even remotely understand and are unwilling to actually become educated on the known facts.
If nukes are not economically feasible, why does France get ~80% of their power from them?
Because they made a policy decision to do so based on their particular economic situation and resources. I give them kudos for doing it but like any policy decision it has it's upside and downside. France has been trying to privatize their energy sector recently but the primary energy company EDF is still 70% owned by the French government. Were it private to the degree the US energy sector is, the liability costs would be more difficult to justify.
Countries have to use what they have. The US, Russia and China are INCREDIBLY rich in coal deposits. The US is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. The US has about 27% of the known deposits. This makes energy derived from coal cheap in the US compared to France which has virtually no coal of its own. Hence US policy is going to favor coal more than French policy and nuclear in the US becomes less attractive thanks to the economies of scale coal has achieved in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
But Disney doesn't directly control what Pixar creates.
Only because they choose not to interfere. Pixar has a few flops and I promise you that state of affairs will not last longer than this sentence. Disney is smart enough to not interfere with something that is working but I promise you they will get heavily involved the moment something goes even slightly off the rails.
If the content is premium content, something that I know is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere, then I have no problem paying for it.
The problem with that argument when applied to newspapers is that news is an experiential good and by definition you cannot possibly know if it "is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere" until after you have the information. So you have to pay for it and hope that it turns out to be valuable. You can rely on the reputation or reliability of the source, but that still doesn't tell you in advance that the information is good. Even if others tell you it is valuable, you might not find it to be so - think of a movie that all your friends like but you don't.
The problem with news is that it is an experiential good meaning you can't determine it's value in advance. You only know whether it was worth something AFTER you read it. So why would someone pay for news that might or might not be valuable? Usually because the source has a track record of providing good information (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc) or you have some other reason to suspect that the information might be valuable (information about a stock that is not widely known for instance). But the seller of information by definition cannot know what the information is worth to the buyer in advance. Generally the seller finds out it was worth something to the buyer if the buyer buys information from them again.
There is money to be made in paying for content that can be had for free elsewhere. Apple's iTunes is proof enough of that. BUT it has to provide something you can't easily get from the free (even if illegal) alternatives. That could be convenience, it could be support, it could be complementary technology (iPod/Kindle), it could be reliability, it could be unusually insightful analysis, and it could be other things. Just copying the latest AP news has some value but not enough many people will pay for it directly.
You bring up an important point. Most doctors and hospitals have no idea about this...
Kind of pointless arguing with the ignorant but whatever... If you think doctors are uninformed about "alternative medicines" you are mistaken. They have conducted studies and for the most part the studies have concluded the treatments were not effective. What's worse for your argument is that doctors are scientists and they've actually conducted rigorous studies of "orthomolecular medicine" as well as many other forms of alternative medicine and the evidence has come up lacking. If it worked doctors would be thrilled but there is no substantial evidence that it works or that it should work. Ergo it is snake oil.
...the medical system is controlled by doctors who are controlled by drug companies and hospitals.
And they all cackle maniacally while rolling naked in piles of money right? Please... Most doctors are not employed by hospitals and in fact in some states like California they are prohibited by law from being employed by a hospital. Hspitals don't control most doctor's reimbursement, they certainly don't get much if any say in patient care decisions, and there is no mechanism I'm aware of by which they can "control" doctors not in their direct employ. If anything it is the doctors who control the hospitals, no the other way around.
Furthermore if you think more than a few corrupt doctors are "controlled" by drug companies you don't actually know any doctors. The vast majority view drug companies and their representatives with deep suspicion. Most of the doctors I know personally (a lot of them btw) refuse to even see drug reps directly. That said drug companies produce products that are proven to work. There evidentiary hurdles required for them to sell their products are high and I know it. Sorry but if you want to convince me otherwise you'll have to present solid evidence and I'm pretty sure you haven't got any.
Drugs and surgery bring in big bucks. Un-patentable vitamin supplements do not.
So I'm supposed to trust a bunch of unregulated over-the-counter supplements with uncertain quality control and a dubious supply chain over highly regulated medicines backed by deep scientific evidence proving their efficacy which has been peer reviewed by some of the best medical minds? Yeah, that's a toughie...
Vitamins are important but I'm already aware of the paucity of evidence to support "orthomolecular medicine". If you think there is no money to be made in vitamins you are a fool. Walk into a GNC sometime and tell me you think there is no money there. The margins are low but so are the costs and there is plenty of profit. You don't need a patent to be profitable. Furthermore as dietary supplements" they are largely unregulated with poor quality assurance and no requirement to demonstrate efficacy. To be clear the "make your dick bigger" pills fall in the same category.
Pick up a copy of Fire Your Doctor or Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone for a multitude of interesting studies on the subject.
No I don't think I will. I'm pretty sure what I'll find is some random "evidence" from some poorly conducted and cherry picked studies that has been misinterpreted in order to convince paranoid and desperate people they should buy the book. That is snake oil being sold for a profit and I've seen it before. If there were any actual scientific basis for it I would be reading it in Nature or some other reputable publication instead of some fringe conspiracy theory book. Interesting that you are so ready to believe in a great conspiracy of doctors because some snake oil salesmen have convinced you they know better. Pity you don't know who your friends actually are because your tinfoil hat is on a little too tight.
I'd extend that to the fact that nowadays, any "normal" doctor is basically a fraud.
Or when was the last time a doctor cared about the actual cause of a disease. Or maybe even how to prevent it the next time and where it came from.
Wow are you cynical. You don't actually know any doctors personally do you? Because if you did you would know how absolutely fucking absurd that claim is. My wife happens to be an MD and it happens to be her life's work to study and figure out the cause of disease. Don't confuse profit motivated drug companies with the doctors who make use of their medicines.
This is because usually, they actually can't fix much.
Let me let you in on a secret. You're going to die. The most any doctor can ever do is delay that for a while. But you're going to die and every doctor on the planet will tell you that fact. I suggest you come to terms with that and you'll live a more contented life.
Actually, naturopathic medicine is not only legitimate, it is superior to and will eventually replace allopathic medicine (mainstream, drug-and-surgery medicine), assuming the Singularity does not occur first.
Glad we had you to clear that up for us. Nice to know that all those incredibly smart doctors have wasted their time and energy and have no idea what they are talking about. I assume you are just waiting for your Nobel prize in medicine because you know better than all of them? Sorry to hear the Nobel committee screwed you again this year.
For proof, read a book or two by Linus Pauling.
Very smart people say very absurd things all the time. Hero worship does not constitute proof of anything.
As for chiropractics, I am not sufficiently informed to make a judgment.
You're pretty clearly not informed enough about medicine to make an informed judgment either.
Chiropractors have lots of evidence to support their claims.
Actually they don't for many of them. Many consider subluxation to be the basis of most disease which is a theory that is highly disputed and not held in much regard throughout most of the medical community. This is the bit of chiropractic medicine that is considered borderline if not outright quackery.
I started going on the recommendation of a full fledged MD because misalignment in my neck.
Nothing wrong with that. Joint alignment is what chiropractors do and as a form of massage therapy there is good reason to suspect it might help a condition like what you describe. The problem is that they too often claim to cure diseases with little evidence to support their claims. What evidence they do provide tends to be weak and the studies tend not to be especially large or rigorous. The overall effectiveness of chiropractic medicine is a subject of much dispute.
But if the sugar pill can save your life and the medical treatment gives up on you, would you take it?
That's a strawman argument. Sugar pills do not save lives and we know they do not save lives.
Would you call other people stupid for taking it?
Stupid? Possibly. Desperate? Definitely. Naive? Probably.
Wow, what arrogance. Who the fuck are you to say that those people did not heal anyone?
I'll bite. Among other things I'm a logical thinker and am a trained (though not practicing) scientist. My wife is an MD and we've discussed this very issue many times.
My dad lasted five years longer with his cancer than the doctor told him he would,...
That is a happy state of affairs but your logic is failing you. Doctors are wrong all the time. I know because I'm married to one who specializes in cancer diagnosis. It is an imperfect science and cancer is nowhere near being completely understood. Some cancers regress spontaneously for no explainable reason. Some cancers progress more slowly than average. No doctor can tell you more than a statistical likelihood for time to live and their answer is most likely incorrect - the only question is by how much. If your father sought unproven "alternative" medicines that is his right but the burden of proof is on you to show that they had some effect. I'm not about to assume that some snake-oil works just because some people believe it may have helped without any evidence to back up that assertion. That may sound cold but science is cold in a way.
I know a ton of doctors personally and I don't know a single one that wouldn't use something to save a patient that could be *proven* to work or even had a logical premise for why it should work. All progress in medicine is exploratory and comes about through trying things that we don't know if they'll work. But there is a threshold for absurdity. Claiming that you can cure cancer through chiropractic joint manipulation or acupuncture is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.
We still don't know which one of those "absurd lying pieces of worthless trash" delayed his death this much.
Quite possibly none of them. Cancer doesn't always behave the way we think it will. Survival statistics are simply probabilities and sometimes people beat the averages by quite a lot.
Maybe it was the placebo effect, who knows. But do you think we care? When you live with someone who should've been dead for 3 years already, you tend to look a bit differently at medical science.
I have lived with dying people. My wife has worked in a hospice and diagnoses cancer patients daily. It hasn't changed my view on medicine one bit. The human body is incredibly complicated and there is far more that we don't understand than what we do. Getting cynical about medicine because we can't cure or even diagnose every disease is a waste of energy and time. If seeking emotional solace in "alternative medicine" or religion or whatever else help you cope, I guess I can't argue with that. But I certainly can and will argue against quackery because it hurts more people than it helps.
I want some protection in case of another incident like the time the gas company accidentally billed me $8000. If that had been set up for direct withdrawl, my rent check and three other utility checks would have bounced before I got the charge reversed, and I'd still be fighting to get it off my credit record.
This is exactly the reason that I allow no direct debit of bills. Some I have charged to a credit card which I can dispute and pay (or not) in the event of an error but they don't get any cash from me directly without me explicitly authorizing it. I'm an accountant and I've seen more than enough screwed up bills to think auto debit is a horrible idea most of the time.
The reason I mostly insist on paper bills still fundamentally that I have to go find the bill instead of the bill coming to me. Each vendor I deal with does it differently and I have zero interest in logging on to a half dozen different websites, each with their own password and interface to find out the amount of the bill. With a paper bill, the bill comes to me instead of me going to the bill. If they want to deliver an ecrypted pdf in the format *I* want, then I'll be happy to receive electronic statements. Ideally I could download the pdf directly into Quicken.
a) Send encrypted, digitally signed pdfs, provide the passcode via logging in once with https
Fails the mom test. I can't wait to get the phone call to explain this to my parents. ("Honey? Is this attachment safe? Why is it asking me for a password? I don't know any password. I don't like this. What's wrong with a paper bill.... etc. etc.)
CFLs *hate* heat. CFLs hate cold. CFLs hate humidity. CFLs hate dimmers.
I have CFL's above my stove, in an unheated garage, on my porch (get's below 0F where I live) and in both of my bathrooms. Never had a problem with any of them in 3 years. I also have about 70 (yes 70) CFLs on dimmer switches in my house due to one indirectly lit room. I have had very few bulbs burn out in the last 3 years - maybe 5 total. True, most CFLs don't work with dimmers, but some are ok for select applications. You just have to get the right bulb. While CFLs aren't the right choice for every application, they work just fine in a wide variety of environments and circumstances.
New technologies have allowed folks like GE to build 60 watt incandescants that only use 30 watts while still providing the same brightness. So the net usage is the same as the CFL.
GE discontinued development of those bulbs and the other companies experimenting with them have found they use 70% of the power of regular incandescents which is still much higher than CFLs. 70% of 60W is 42W versus the 15W-18W required from my 60W equivalent CFLs. Sorry but if I have a choice it's going to be a CFL. Most of the time I'll save money in the long run AND have to replace fewer bulbs.
CFLs hate being turned on and off. Rapid cycling makes them die as quick as an incandescent bulb.
I have over 110 bulbs in my house total - mostly CFL and some incandescent. I've replaced maybe 5 (out of over 85) in the last 2 years and I turn them on and off all the time. The rest of the bulbs are incandescent and I've replaced most of them at least once in that time. Frequent cycling really hasn't been a problem for me.
CFLs have a warm-up time. Turn it on to read your paper, and you have to wait 5 minutes before you can see the writing.
There are plenty of "instant on" CFL bulbs on the market. They reach usable brightness almost immediately. I don't have to wait at all for most of the bulbs in my house. Your information is wrong.
10 years? I've yet to have the spiral CCFLs last over 1.5 years.
Then I would question either the quality of the power in your house, the quality of your bulbs, or maybe you are selectively picking data from just a few bulbs. I have a house with far more than the average number of CFL bulbs (around 100 total including 72 in one indirectly lit room) - more than enough to get something close to a normal distribution. Roughly 5% of them have burned out or been bad to start with in the last two years. Most have been working just fine - those that fail usually do so within the first few weeks.
The gas tax is one of the few instances where the users of government services (roads) pay for the use of roads, and in (rough) proportion to how much they use.
It's quite possible to estimate the (rough) proportion of electricity used by cars and set a tax rate accordingly. While desirable it is not actually necessary for a tax to relate to what it is paying for. Most taxes don't. Most taxes go into a general fund and are used where needed. Besides, a tax on energy regardless of where it is used encourages efficient use which is a good thing.
Let's say down the road, super efficient solar cells are invented. Then what? We are no longer at a point where we can accurately estimate how much someone is using roads by the energy that they purchase.
That assumes that those solar cells are off the grid which won't happen anytime soon and even if it does there are easy solutions to the revenue shortfall. For off-grid power generation taxation you could for instance use a sales tax on the purchase of that same solar equipment based on it's projected output. And if that doesn't work there are nearly unlimited other ways to tax that make more sense than mileage. You don't HAVE to support infrastructure with energy taxes, we just happen to do so right now because it makes sense.
Besides, taxing electricity is not an accurate measure of miles driven, either. To eliminate any issues with that, you'd have to install a meter on the vehicle.
Doesn't matter - we're taxing electricity to replace lost gas tax revenues. The fact that it isn't perfectly traceable to auto use is not important. Not all gasoline use is for transportation either. Taxing the use of power (in any form) creates an incentive to conserve energy and the infrastructure already exists. Instead of taxing one energy source we tax another and apply those tax revenues to the roads. The fact that electricity is also used for other things is unimportant. Without the roads and infrastructure, you wouldn't have the electricity in the first place.
Everyone benefits from having roads, so everyone should pay whether they drive or not.
Everyone already does pay. Gasoline taxes are passed on to consumers. This is called the tax incidence. You think the cost of gasoline isn't factored into your groceries?
Just because he/she is taxed now because of an energy source limitation doesn't mean they should be taxed in the future when the ability not to presents itself.
And just because he might avoid a tax in the future due to a quirk in the present tax code doesn't mean he shouldn't be taxed in the future. Even if he never drives a particular vehicle off his property, he still relies on the road infrastructure and needed it to get that vehicle to his property. He can suck it up and pay his share.
How? This seems like it would be very easy to evade,
I should think the answer is obvious. If you live in a building there is already a meter attached to your house. There also is one attached to nearly every business in the country. Virtually all electricity used in the US is generated by the grid and is ALREADY metered and taxed. The electric company does a good job of collecting and shuts you off if don't pay. No DRM system is necessary and it is very difficult to dodge.
If you want to tax off grid generation there is an easy solution for that too - sales tax. The infrastructure already exists, the enforcement mechanisms are in place and it's difficult to dodge.
Yes, but the problem is that as more and more bybrid and pure alternative fuel cars use the roads, less and less tax money will be available for road upkeep.
Only if the tax structure never changes. How likely do you think that is?
Imagine in 20 years if _every_ car were 100% electric (won't happen, I know). That would be a _huge_ drop in taxes earned through gasoline sales.
So tax electricity. The meters already exist and there are no invasion of privacy issues. Furthermore it provides an incentive to reduce electricity the same as gas which is a good thing. A mileage tax provides no incentive to be especially efficient.
Basically this is an early change over to a system that will work regardless of fuel source.
The feasible options are gas and electricity. It's far easier to tax electricity than to create a whole new tax infrastructure for mileage measurement.
My family owns a couple miles of private dirt roads. You're going to tax me for driving on my own road?
If you consume gasoline you already are being taxed for that very thing. Same with electricity for an electric powered vehicle.
What happens when gasoline isn't the primary fuel source for vehicles using Federally funded roads?
You tax electricity. MUCH easier and the metering infrastructure already exists. The car has to get power from somewhere, so tax the energy consumption wherever it originates. Taxing mileage is stupid and provides incentives for the wrong behavior.
We also have some of the best wind power resources in the world and some of the best nuclear fule resources in the world.
The US has 2.5% of the worlds supply of uranium and plutonium is mostly synthesized. The US does NOT have even close to the best supplies of nuclear fuel. Canada and Australia actually have the largest supplies of uranium.
As for wind, yes the US does have the potential for excellent wind power generation and in fact already leads the world in total (not per-capita) wind power production.
Per Capita China probably doesn't have as much (even if they produce way more than the USA).
China mines more coal but only has about half the proven reserves of the US. So per-capita it's not even close since the US has a quarter of the population of China and twice the amount of coal. At their current rate of consumption China will run out of domestic coal in 50 years or so. The coal China has unfortunately is a rather dirty kind with lots of sulphur. Australia is the biggest exporter but only has a quarter of the coal reserves of the US.
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined.
True but when you have a quarter of the worlds supply of coal, it's going to be an economic factor whether it hurts the climate or not. Global warming is a huge issue but there is NO economically feasible scenario whereby coal will not be a major part of the US energy supply for the next 30+ years. I don't like it, and I suspect you don't either but coal is here and we'll have to deal with it. There simply is nothing available, not even nuclear, that can scale large enough to take coal's place in the US economy in the next few decades.
Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Not with present or near-term technology, I agree. Good area for research.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
The answer is a diversified energy supply (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and yes even fossil-fuels) with careful emissions controls on the dirtier technologies. Nuclear and solar are not magic cure-alls but they should have an important part to play in the mix and definitely should be a bigger part of our energy policy. I absolutely agree with you on that.
I've recently driven myself insane trying to explain to climate change "skeptics" that searching for a scientific consensus isn't the way to approach scientific topics because science isn't democratic. It's about evidence.
Absolutely correct but not really what I was getting at. Science is based on facts and does not require a consensus in the short run. However policy based on science IS democratic an does depend on a consensus, at least in the US where I live. Policy makers will (except for George Bush and similar religious nut-jobs) listen to the scientists but the scientists have to speak with a relatively unified voice. Scientific consensus matters because it's the only way that non-scientists have to determine what might be the facts as we understand them. If scientists disagree, it can be nearly impossible for non-scientists determine the correctness of a given theory.
I've had the same frustrations as you with fools (usually religious nut-jobs) who can't fathom science. Climate change, stem cells, etc. They dislike something they don't even remotely understand and are unwilling to actually become educated on the known facts.
If nukes are not economically feasible, why does France get ~80% of their power from them?
Because they made a policy decision to do so based on their particular economic situation and resources. I give them kudos for doing it but like any policy decision it has it's upside and downside. France has been trying to privatize their energy sector recently but the primary energy company EDF is still 70% owned by the French government. Were it private to the degree the US energy sector is, the liability costs would be more difficult to justify.
Countries have to use what they have. The US, Russia and China are INCREDIBLY rich in coal deposits. The US is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. The US has about 27% of the known deposits. This makes energy derived from coal cheap in the US compared to France which has virtually no coal of its own. Hence US policy is going to favor coal more than French policy and nuclear in the US becomes less attractive thanks to the economies of scale coal has achieved in the US.