Ah. So you're assuming that there exists a well-defined force (I assume you mean the OPPOSING team, rather than the offensive team, because when you take the offense you're the offensive team) that is of finte size.
Well, yes, it's definatly finite. If nothing else, the population of the earth is finite, and the percentage of terrorists is a small fraction of that. As for the whole defensive/offensive terms, well, that's what you get when you slap together a slashdot post in 5-10 minutes rather than taking a week or a month to do an essay. Defending team is just that, they have something to defend. The offensive team, in my scenario, has nothing to defend.
I think that model is flawed.
Of course it's flawed. Paintball is a pale shadow of true combat. Whenever you simplify, especially this much, some 'flaws' develop.
Killing a couple terrorists (and oh by the way a double fistful of innocent bystanders) does not result in a net decrease in the number of terrorists.
reverse the designators. Double fistfuls of terrorists, couple innocent bystandars.
It's the terrorists that are outright targeting the civilians, causing most of their casualties. And yes, killing them by the hundred, as we're doing in Afganistan and Iraq, is thinning their number by quite a bit. Problem is, their network is in the thousands in the region(only the best, most dedicated, are sent to do missions in the USA). And it doesn't help that in order to make US numbers look worse, the terrorists attempt to make their casualties appear to be civilians. They're already dressed like civilians, all you need to do is remove the scarf or whatever that they were wearing to mark their allegiance, if they were even wearing one, and any weapons they were carrying, which is also good sense as they are military resources.
Taking the fight to the enemy is a good idea, when the enemy is unwise enough to let you know where he is.
He has. They're overwhelmingly from the Mideast. What military people call "the sandbox", "the desert", etc...
and I think assuming that there's one enemy is the key misunderstanding that you and the administration seem to share
Let's see... We have the terrorists in the middle-east*, North Korea, China(sorta), gangs at home, drug dealers. The terrorists, aside from the occasional oddball from Europe or the USA, are overwhelming coming from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Nevertheless, at my paygrade, the actions to be taken are the same: Either kill them or, if we manage to capture them, forward them to the higher brass to deal with. Identification of them as hostile is generally determined by their taking hostile actions against us. Shooting, working on bomb materials, holding a detonator, that sort of thing.
As for the higher brass, well, I'd like to see us taking a harder line with Saudi Arabia, our supposed ally. Of course, and I will knock Bush a bit for this, I'd be working harder to get the Saudi's fist off of our short and curlies because of our oil dependency. That's why I advocate nuclear power** and like the idea of PRT.
*Of the problems listed, the Middleast is currently the only one solvable with military force. **Besides the pollution from coal
So what? These vehicles aren't crash rated, lack lights, reflectors, air bags, etc. They probably block off lanes while they're moving through(if not the road).
If you're willing to pony up the money or political perks(like getting into the news for supporting a solar race), you can get government permission for many things.
Like what was said, the cops were probably told: Leave them alone.
No, what I'm saying is that for these types, they see the American presence in the Mideast area as an affront.
They can't let it stand. Their followers view it as a loss of land, of area. Thus we're not just seeing the ones that would attack the USA, we're also seeing some of the less reaching ones playing a role more directly instead of just lending support. Finances that could have gone towards another attack on the USA are being diverted to the war in Iraq.
To go back to the KKK analog, you have some militants that do go down to other areas to 'keep the blackies down'. You have a structure of support, or at least cultured ignorance, looking the other way, helping them in their acts. Once the black familiy moves into their area, you see a spike in violence and such, because not only do the militants come out, so don't many of these quiet supporters.
And they aren't just coming from Iraq, they're coming from the entire region.
Except maybe I won't actually attack the American military in Iraq 'cos that's quite hard so perhaps I'll attack the innocent Iraqi civilians instead because that will surely further my aim of bringing America to it's knees."
Believe it or not, it's happening. I saw it myself while I was over there. When I got there they were concentrating on Iraqi Police and military forces. Attacks on the new military petered off, attacks on the police have dropped substantially, and the last attack before I left targeted day workers! The one I heard about when I got back was on a school! There's still a core trying to carbomb coalition forces, but they're dropping.
They've been forced to their third or fourth priority targets. They can't force us out by killing our troops(quagmire, sir?) They can't stop the new government by killing it's troops/police, thus forcing us out(Shades of Vietnam?) They're reduced to trying to convince the Iraqi people that their government can't protect them, removing their support from it, resulting in it collapsing, etc...
To be honest, the Iraqi government can't do that yet. They don't have the forces or the experience. But they're learning fast.
Second, what does war overseas have to do with security and freedom at home? Why is it such a hard concept for people like you to grasp? Defense is the most efficient means of safety. Defense is financially more efficient than offense. Defensive measures last longer than offensive ones.
I'm reminded of a saying: "The best defense is a good offense".
In this case it's quite literally true. Defense is NOT financially more efficient.
Here's a hypothetical game. Could be tag, paintball, whatever.
Defending team has 100-200 players, 100 flags. The field is large, few flags are within sight of each other. Offensive team has 20 players, no flags, but has a map of all the flags.
Victory determined by the number of flags the offensive team manages to 'capture'. Play duration is at least a day, or when all of one team has been eliminated. If the defending team looses any flags, it's considered a loss.
Your strategy is go have a person sit on each flag, only to be eliminated because the terrorists are able to group up against one target at a time. Mine is to detail a force strong enough to eliminate the offensive team to track them down and eliminate them before they can strike.
Or would he have declared war earlier, preventing Pearl Harbor entirely, but ultimately costing more American lives by throwing them into combat before China had drained quite as much of Japan's manpower, before the rest of the Allies had drained Germany of some of it's power, but ultimately saving lives by ending WWII earlier, saving many people from the gas chambers of the camps.
I've said it before: Bush was already looking to 'take care of Iraq' when he entered office. 9/11 and Afganistan actually delayed our action in Iraq.
Here's the thinking: You have Arabic, Muslim regions that hate Americans, want to kill Americans, hate the American way of life, matter of fact, hate any way of life other than their own, but the American one is just particularly obvious.*
I'm reminded of America at the time of desegregation. Iraq is like what would of happened if a black family moved into a white neighborhood. All the KKK members in the area, faced with this affront, this intrusion into their domain, are forced to attack the intrusion, instead of driving down to the black side of town to light their crosses, etc... Except in this case, the black family is armed, and picking off KKK members. KKK membership(besides being more dangerous) is seen in a more and more negative light, because when they become more enthused, they accidentally(or deliberatly) set fire to white homes as well, thus eroding what support they might have.
Another term is a "honey-pot". It's a lure for the undesired element**, drawing it in to a place where it can be eliminated at lower expense, and not damage your important assets.
And that's how we're rendered safer.
*Note: Reasons for said hatred are varied and already fill whole books, and thus are beyond this discussion. If you bring it up, I'll quote Honore at you. ** bugs, internet attacks, spam mail, terrorists, etc...
Other than "Lack of funding", they probably paused to let materials technology catch up for a while.
Kinda like a certain amount of money has been invested into skyhook/space elevator technology. They figured out the tensile strength required to make one economic, then essentially shelved it while waiting for material tech to catch up.
Okay, we see no problems with XYZ tech other than we need a material that can do ABC. It looks like the material science boys are working on it, and we don't have the funding to help them along, so we'll shelve the project for 5-10 years, then check up on their progress.
You think about it, there are so many ideas from the 1900's that sat around for 30-50 years it's insane. Partially from patent issues, but more along the lines that they figured out how to do it, but only with x ubermaterial. That's no longer so uber today...
I knew there was another country. I was forgetting about France.
ICBM in this case generally means 'able to reach the USA from a different continent'. And IRBM's basically a ICBM's younger brother. Europe to India, etc... Iran and India mostly concentrate on SRBM's. But they are working on increasing range.
And yes, Iran has a missile program, though they're trying get the range to reach Israel more than the USA.
I think China has, known, 3-7 ICBM's capable of hitting the USA.
While a BM can carry payloads other than nuclear, the accepted payload is generally nuclear because everything else just isn't powerful enough given the cost of the missile.
Trust me, we can do far more than just shut those channels off.
We can also make them less accurate, spew wrong coordinates, wrong time, etc...
And we can do it by region. Accuracy unaffected in the US, Europe, totally fubar in Afganistan...
That's why Europe was/is looking at putting their own constellation up, because we wouldn't be able to turn it off on them. Only they got upset when we mentioned that we'd jam their signals if we felt it necessary. Then if you consider the expense of putting them up, it doesn't seem like quite as good a deal.
The quicker you can catch it, the easier(and cheaper) it is to treat.
Early detection could substantially reduce the billions of dollars spent on cancer treatment each year. Not only does cancer screening save lives by detecting breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers early; it also is the first step in preventing many cases of colorectal and cervical cancers from ever developing:
True, but I don't feel that these things, given that they 'could' be abused by a hypochondriac, should be banned or restricted. They'll be a vast overall benefit.
Of course, it's not likely to be over the counter for a long time, given that they're going to be disposable 'chips' that are plugged into a multi-thousand dollar machine to interprit the results. Each chip will be cheap*, so it'll be part of your annual physical, and allow faster cancer diagnosis, as well as for other diseases.
Oh my. That's quite a price difference. As for sales tax in the USA, it's added at the register. There is no Federal sales tax, it's all state or lower(IE county or city). For my hometown, it was 6.5. If you went outside of city limits, it dropped to 5%(state).
So you're paying $202 of tax on the computer($499->$701). Plus 70% tax on the employee*. Still sounds like they're getting more out of you guys. Apple sounds stupid. Well, that's economics for you, I'd suggest buying an AMD or Intel.
*I know the country provides the health care, but sheesh, us americans are complaining and we're still paying less for our individual health care.
From what I remember of physics in highschool, the production and transport of electricity is much more efficient when it is done in high volume with high voltages. In a small grid, you'd lose the benefits of that efficiency. It would also require separate maintenance crews, hardware, etc.
We're not talking about new grids, new wires. Sure, the 'Highway' electrical distribution is the most efficient per mile, but it still has to get to your house. The 'last mile' is still there, we're just talking about making it so that your local neighborhood can power itself. No extra maintenance crews, not a lot of extra mile, and hopefully the extra hardware is bought by the small energy producer. IE I purchase and place solar cells on my roof. I put extra on, so that I produce more than I use during the day. I also go ahead a get the equipment needed to push it onto the grid, thus getting a rebate on my nighttime electricity use.
It would also raise concerns about standardization. Will the product I just purchased work on a grid down the street? Would you have to replace your appliances when you moved? The biggest benefit of consolitation is, imo, that you don't have to ask these questions. The systems are large enough to span areas well beyond the majority of general user's environments and thus there are few, if any compatability issues (i.e. Currently, if you leave the country, you might need to change your plug type / voltage, but anywhere in the country it should be the same).
As long as you're getting standard 110/220 power at 60 hertz, it won't matter.
Solar power is made feasible, at least partially, in this case. I've always wondered why we don't all just have solar panels on our houses and batteries in the basements. I suppose that living in Southern California gives me a bit of a bias in terms of estimating the feasibility of such a system, but it certainly seems more reasonable than burning copious amounts of fossil fuels.
Solar panels are expensive. The gear needed to push power(safely) onto the grid is expensive. Large capacity, deep cycle batteries are expensive(and toxic). Southern California receives alot of sunlight and has relativly expensive electricity, so you're talking about the best case scenario. Take me, living in (un)sunny North Dakota, land of cheap electricity(7.3 cents/kWh). I'd never break even on the cost of solar panels. Even in your area, you're talking about taking a decade or more to break even, assuming no unexpected maintenance/breakage of the panels or equipment, and a fairly steep increase in electricity rates.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was talking about Apple computers in my post. As for the price difference in gasoline, you only have to check out what Europe charges in the way of taxes. They don't really pay any more for foreign crude than the USA.
Most Europeans pay enough in taxes that would have americans revolting again.
While it still has a number of issues, I think that PRT shows promise.
While sheer capacity needs addressing, it's ability to get users to the closest station to their destination in a nonstop fashion would go a long way towards competing with cars. Especially if you're looking at having to park 1/2 mile away from the popular spot you want to head to.
And the figures I've seen doesn't include private donations. I don't think that it's the Government's position to be giving aid out. That should be the affair of private charities.
Heck, This site dismisses private aid as "Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never be a viable alternative to State obligations,"
As a libertarian, this rankles me. I'm especially irritated that we haven't seen much improvement from all this aid.
As for Israel, they're the largest single recipient. We give out enough foreign aid that total donations to other middle-eastern countries dwarfs what we give to Israel, much less the entire world. Heck, Iraq dwarfs them now.
It's easy for Denmark to be high in their donations. Just look at how much internal aid gets passed around in the USA.
Just like giving money to a bum, how often does money to a foreign country help that country come out of a third world status?
How about a PRT system? That'd help alleviate the problem of needing a bus/car to get you to the station to take you to the train to take you to another station, where, hopefully, your destination is within walking distance.
As for the towers, well, the lighter the track, the fewer/thinner they can be.
That's always been my problem with mass transit. It was just too far to get to it, and it wouldn't even take me close to my destination. That, and after a 12 hour shift, I want to get home, not mess around with a bus system that's take an hour to get me home where I could drive it in 20 minutes or less.
I believe that if we were wanting to produce the nasty stuff, for whatever reason, we'd be quite able to do it more quietly and secretly than this.
The strain used in the mail was weaponized only in the sense of being powdered at the right size, etc. Other than that it was a potentially lethal strain, but still not 'weapons grade'.
As for the intercept, well, not every base maintains planes in a 'scramble' mode. For example, good luck launching a fighter mission out of Minot, Grand Forks, Keesler, Schriever(doesn't even have a runway) Air Force Bases.
Even then, it can take quite some time to get a plane to a given area. Fuel concerns have to be carefully managed. Much is given on the sites I found to 'not flying at maximum speed'. However, a fighter's max speed is achieved using afterburners, which will require the plane to either refuel or land very quickly. And refueler planes are slow. Heck, Florida has a number of ACC Bases. Not so many on the East Coast.
I'll agree, we were caught with our pants down on 9/11.
The Mayhem comes from people panicing and running. Trying anything to get the medicine, even if they weren't exposed. It's like the 'dirty bomb' threat. Estimates show more people will die from trampling and heart attacks than from the radiation.
Treatment, without prior vaccination, still has a fair death rate. With prior vaccination, like for most fatal diseases, death drops to a fraction of the unvaccinated rate.
Weaponized anthrax is rated to have a 99% casualty* rate. Fatal in about the same percentage without treatment. Vaccination reverses these numbers(with the whole series). Unlike many vaccines, the one for anthrax isn't very effective if given after the exposure. It takes time for immunity to develop. That's why I'm always wondered why I heard about senators and such being given the antibiotics, but not the vaccine. Even one shot, years before, improves percentages by the double digits.
It's the old ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure.
*casualty doesn't mean death in this case. It means that you've been rendered unable to work/continue.
Actually, cowpox was an effective vaccine from day one. What all the research was for was to lower the side effects. Raw cowpox was still as bad as a nasty flue.
I think that they eventually switched to a different virus strain, a specially weakened one that didn't produce more than localized sores. They have vaccines that don't even do this, but there's the problem that the disease was elminated before then, and they weren't about to expose people for testing purposes, so the effeciency of the vaccines are untested.
Don't forget the part about actions needing to be taken in order to be considered a 'lawful combatant'. Which the terrorists/insurgents aren't doing. Matter of fact, early on I called them isurgents. I didn't start calling them terrorists until they started attacking the Iraqi civilians.
Even as a percentage of GDP, we're pretty generous. Thing is, if you look at disasters like hurricane Katrina, aid is pouring in from all over the states. But none of this aid counts. It's all considered internal. Many individual states in the union are bigger than most countries.
Besides, I(and many americans) feel that most foreign aid is wasted. Heck, much of it goes to propping up tin pot dictators and fueling more violations of human rights.
Thing is, we can't really see a solution in most of these cases other than outright invasion.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. So you're assuming that there exists a well-defined force (I assume you mean the OPPOSING team, rather than the offensive team, because when you take the offense you're the offensive team) that is of finte size.
Well, yes, it's definatly finite. If nothing else, the population of the earth is finite, and the percentage of terrorists is a small fraction of that.
As for the whole defensive/offensive terms, well, that's what you get when you slap together a slashdot post in 5-10 minutes rather than taking a week or a month to do an essay. Defending team is just that, they have something to defend. The offensive team, in my scenario, has nothing to defend.
I think that model is flawed.
Of course it's flawed. Paintball is a pale shadow of true combat. Whenever you simplify, especially this much, some 'flaws' develop.
Killing a couple terrorists (and oh by the way a double fistful of innocent bystanders) does not result in a net decrease in the number of terrorists.
reverse the designators. Double fistfuls of terrorists, couple innocent bystandars.
It's the terrorists that are outright targeting the civilians, causing most of their casualties.
And yes, killing them by the hundred, as we're doing in Afganistan and Iraq, is thinning their number by quite a bit. Problem is, their network is in the thousands in the region(only the best, most dedicated, are sent to do missions in the USA). And it doesn't help that in order to make US numbers look worse, the terrorists attempt to make their casualties appear to be civilians. They're already dressed like civilians, all you need to do is remove the scarf or whatever that they were wearing to mark their allegiance, if they were even wearing one, and any weapons they were carrying, which is also good sense as they are military resources.
Taking the fight to the enemy is a good idea, when the enemy is unwise enough to let you know where he is.
He has. They're overwhelmingly from the Mideast. What military people call "the sandbox", "the desert", etc...
and I think assuming that there's one enemy is the key misunderstanding that you and the administration seem to share
Let's see... We have the terrorists in the middle-east*, North Korea, China(sorta), gangs at home, drug dealers. The terrorists, aside from the occasional oddball from Europe or the USA, are overwhelming coming from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Nevertheless, at my paygrade, the actions to be taken are the same: Either kill them or, if we manage to capture them, forward them to the higher brass to deal with. Identification of them as hostile is generally determined by their taking hostile actions against us. Shooting, working on bomb materials, holding a detonator, that sort of thing.
As for the higher brass, well, I'd like to see us taking a harder line with Saudi Arabia, our supposed ally. Of course, and I will knock Bush a bit for this, I'd be working harder to get the Saudi's fist off of our short and curlies because of our oil dependency. That's why I advocate nuclear power** and like the idea of PRT.
*Of the problems listed, the Middleast is currently the only one solvable with military force.
**Besides the pollution from coal
So what? These vehicles aren't crash rated, lack lights, reflectors, air bags, etc. They probably block off lanes while they're moving through(if not the road).
If you're willing to pony up the money or political perks(like getting into the news for supporting a solar race), you can get government permission for many things.
Like what was said, the cops were probably told: Leave them alone.
Oh, and your link doesn't work.
No, what I'm saying is that for these types, they see the American presence in the Mideast area as an affront.
They can't let it stand. Their followers view it as a loss of land, of area. Thus we're not just seeing the ones that would attack the USA, we're also seeing some of the less reaching ones playing a role more directly instead of just lending support. Finances that could have gone towards another attack on the USA are being diverted to the war in Iraq.
To go back to the KKK analog, you have some militants that do go down to other areas to 'keep the blackies down'. You have a structure of support, or at least cultured ignorance, looking the other way, helping them in their acts. Once the black familiy moves into their area, you see a spike in violence and such, because not only do the militants come out, so don't many of these quiet supporters.
And they aren't just coming from Iraq, they're coming from the entire region.
Except maybe I won't actually attack the American military in Iraq 'cos that's quite hard so perhaps I'll attack the innocent Iraqi civilians instead because that will surely further my aim of bringing America to it's knees."
Believe it or not, it's happening. I saw it myself while I was over there. When I got there they were concentrating on Iraqi Police and military forces. Attacks on the new military petered off, attacks on the police have dropped substantially, and the last attack before I left targeted day workers! The one I heard about when I got back was on a school! There's still a core trying to carbomb coalition forces, but they're dropping.
They've been forced to their third or fourth priority targets.
They can't force us out by killing our troops(quagmire, sir?)
They can't stop the new government by killing it's troops/police, thus forcing us out(Shades of Vietnam?)
They're reduced to trying to convince the Iraqi people that their government can't protect them, removing their support from it, resulting in it collapsing, etc...
To be honest, the Iraqi government can't do that yet. They don't have the forces or the experience. But they're learning fast.
Second, what does war overseas have to do with security and freedom at home? Why is it such a hard concept for people like you to grasp? Defense is the most efficient means of safety. Defense is financially more efficient than offense. Defensive measures last longer than offensive ones.
I'm reminded of a saying: "The best defense is a good offense".
In this case it's quite literally true. Defense is NOT financially more efficient.
Here's a hypothetical game. Could be tag, paintball, whatever.
Defending team has 100-200 players, 100 flags. The field is large, few flags are within sight of each other.
Offensive team has 20 players, no flags, but has a map of all the flags.
Victory determined by the number of flags the offensive team manages to 'capture'. Play duration is at least a day, or when all of one team has been eliminated.
If the defending team looses any flags, it's considered a loss.
Your strategy is go have a person sit on each flag, only to be eliminated because the terrorists are able to group up against one target at a time. Mine is to detail a force strong enough to eliminate the offensive team to track them down and eliminate them before they can strike.
Which one will lose more flags, on average?
Or would he have declared war earlier, preventing Pearl Harbor entirely, but ultimately costing more American lives by throwing them into combat before China had drained quite as much of Japan's manpower, before the rest of the Allies had drained Germany of some of it's power, but ultimately saving lives by ending WWII earlier, saving many people from the gas chambers of the camps.
I've said it before: Bush was already looking to 'take care of Iraq' when he entered office. 9/11 and Afganistan actually delayed our action in Iraq.
Here's the thinking:
You have Arabic, Muslim regions that hate Americans, want to kill Americans, hate the American way of life, matter of fact, hate any way of life other than their own, but the American one is just particularly obvious.*
I'm reminded of America at the time of desegregation. Iraq is like what would of happened if a black family moved into a white neighborhood. All the KKK members in the area, faced with this affront, this intrusion into their domain, are forced to attack the intrusion, instead of driving down to the black side of town to light their crosses, etc... Except in this case, the black family is armed, and picking off KKK members. KKK membership(besides being more dangerous) is seen in a more and more negative light, because when they become more enthused, they accidentally(or deliberatly) set fire to white homes as well, thus eroding what support they might have.
Another term is a "honey-pot". It's a lure for the undesired element**, drawing it in to a place where it can be eliminated at lower expense, and not damage your important assets.
And that's how we're rendered safer.
*Note: Reasons for said hatred are varied and already fill whole books, and thus are beyond this discussion. If you bring it up, I'll quote Honore at you.
** bugs, internet attacks, spam mail, terrorists, etc...
Other than "Lack of funding", they probably paused to let materials technology catch up for a while.
Kinda like a certain amount of money has been invested into skyhook/space elevator technology. They figured out the tensile strength required to make one economic, then essentially shelved it while waiting for material tech to catch up.
Okay, we see no problems with XYZ tech other than we need a material that can do ABC. It looks like the material science boys are working on it, and we don't have the funding to help them along, so we'll shelve the project for 5-10 years, then check up on their progress.
You think about it, there are so many ideas from the 1900's that sat around for 30-50 years it's insane. Partially from patent issues, but more along the lines that they figured out how to do it, but only with x ubermaterial. That's no longer so uber today...
And this was after they had literally hundreds to thousands of nuclear ICBMs.
Once you have hundreds of nuclear ones, then you can start with alternates.
I knew there was another country. I was forgetting about France.
ICBM in this case generally means 'able to reach the USA from a different continent'. And IRBM's basically a ICBM's younger brother. Europe to India, etc... Iran and India mostly concentrate on SRBM's. But they are working on increasing range.
And yes, Iran has a missile program, though they're trying get the range to reach Israel more than the USA.
I think China has, known, 3-7 ICBM's capable of hitting the USA.
While a BM can carry payloads other than nuclear, the accepted payload is generally nuclear because everything else just isn't powerful enough given the cost of the missile.
I was oversimplifying.
A more correct response would be 'Make your receive give the wrong coordinates'.
A few other countries have ICBMs. China, England, Iran's on the edge.
They just down have enough to effectivly carpet bomb the USA like the USSR did.
Trust me, we can do far more than just shut those channels off.
We can also make them less accurate, spew wrong coordinates, wrong time, etc...
And we can do it by region. Accuracy unaffected in the US, Europe, totally fubar in Afganistan...
That's why Europe was/is looking at putting their own constellation up, because we wouldn't be able to turn it off on them. Only they got upset when we mentioned that we'd jam their signals if we felt it necessary. Then if you consider the expense of putting them up, it doesn't seem like quite as good a deal.
Quite a few of them, if This is any judge.
The quicker you can catch it, the easier(and cheaper) it is to treat.
Early detection could substantially reduce the billions of dollars spent on cancer treatment each year. Not only does cancer screening save lives by detecting breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers early; it also is the first step in preventing many cases of colorectal and cervical cancers from ever developing:
True, but I don't feel that these things, given that they 'could' be abused by a hypochondriac, should be banned or restricted. They'll be a vast overall benefit.
Of course, it's not likely to be over the counter for a long time, given that they're going to be disposable 'chips' that are plugged into a multi-thousand dollar machine to interprit the results. Each chip will be cheap*, so it'll be part of your annual physical, and allow faster cancer diagnosis, as well as for other diseases.
*In medical terms < $100 is cheap
Oh my. That's quite a price difference. As for sales tax in the USA, it's added at the register. There is no Federal sales tax, it's all state or lower(IE county or city). For my hometown, it was 6.5. If you went outside of city limits, it dropped to 5%(state).
So you're paying $202 of tax on the computer($499->$701). Plus 70% tax on the employee*. Still sounds like they're getting more out of you guys. Apple sounds stupid. Well, that's economics for you, I'd suggest buying an AMD or Intel.
*I know the country provides the health care, but sheesh, us americans are complaining and we're still paying less for our individual health care.
From what I remember of physics in highschool, the production and transport of electricity is much more efficient when it is done in high volume with high voltages. In a small grid, you'd lose the benefits of that efficiency. It would also require separate maintenance crews, hardware, etc.
We're not talking about new grids, new wires. Sure, the 'Highway' electrical distribution is the most efficient per mile, but it still has to get to your house. The 'last mile' is still there, we're just talking about making it so that your local neighborhood can power itself. No extra maintenance crews, not a lot of extra mile, and hopefully the extra hardware is bought by the small energy producer. IE I purchase and place solar cells on my roof. I put extra on, so that I produce more than I use during the day. I also go ahead a get the equipment needed to push it onto the grid, thus getting a rebate on my nighttime electricity use.
It would also raise concerns about standardization. Will the product I just purchased work on a grid down the street? Would you have to replace your appliances when you moved? The biggest benefit of consolitation is, imo, that you don't have to ask these questions. The systems are large enough to span areas well beyond the majority of general user's environments and thus there are few, if any compatability issues (i.e. Currently, if you leave the country, you might need to change your plug type / voltage, but anywhere in the country it should be the same).
As long as you're getting standard 110/220 power at 60 hertz, it won't matter.
Solar power is made feasible, at least partially, in this case. I've always wondered why we don't all just have solar panels on our houses and batteries in the basements. I suppose that living in Southern California gives me a bit of a bias in terms of estimating the feasibility of such a system, but it certainly seems more reasonable than burning copious amounts of fossil fuels.
Solar panels are expensive. The gear needed to push power(safely) onto the grid is expensive. Large capacity, deep cycle batteries are expensive(and toxic). Southern California receives alot of sunlight and has relativly expensive electricity, so you're talking about the best case scenario. Take me, living in (un)sunny North Dakota, land of cheap electricity(7.3 cents/kWh). I'd never break even on the cost of solar panels. Even in your area, you're talking about taking a decade or more to break even, assuming no unexpected maintenance/breakage of the panels or equipment, and a fairly steep increase in electricity rates.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was talking about Apple computers in my post. As for the price difference in gasoline, you only have to check out what Europe charges in the way of taxes. They don't really pay any more for foreign crude than the USA.
Most Europeans pay enough in taxes that would have americans revolting again.
While it still has a number of issues, I think that PRT shows promise.
While sheer capacity needs addressing, it's ability to get users to the closest station to their destination in a nonstop fashion would go a long way towards competing with cars. Especially if you're looking at having to park 1/2 mile away from the popular spot you want to head to.
And the figures I've seen doesn't include private donations. I don't think that it's the Government's position to be giving aid out. That should be the affair of private charities.
Heck, This site dismisses private aid as "Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never be a viable alternative to State obligations,"
As a libertarian, this rankles me. I'm especially irritated that we haven't seen much improvement from all this aid.
As for Israel, they're the largest single recipient. We give out enough foreign aid that total donations to other middle-eastern countries dwarfs what we give to Israel, much less the entire world. Heck, Iraq dwarfs them now.
It's easy for Denmark to be high in their donations. Just look at how much internal aid gets passed around in the USA.
Just like giving money to a bum, how often does money to a foreign country help that country come out of a third world status?
How about a PRT system? That'd help alleviate the problem of needing a bus/car to get you to the station to take you to the train to take you to another station, where, hopefully, your destination is within walking distance.
As for the towers, well, the lighter the track, the fewer/thinner they can be.
That's always been my problem with mass transit. It was just too far to get to it, and it wouldn't even take me close to my destination. That, and after a 12 hour shift, I want to get home, not mess around with a bus system that's take an hour to get me home where I could drive it in 20 minutes or less.
I believe that if we were wanting to produce the nasty stuff, for whatever reason, we'd be quite able to do it more quietly and secretly than this.
The strain used in the mail was weaponized only in the sense of being powdered at the right size, etc. Other than that it was a potentially lethal strain, but still not 'weapons grade'.
As for the intercept, well, not every base maintains planes in a 'scramble' mode. For example, good luck launching a fighter mission out of Minot, Grand Forks, Keesler, Schriever(doesn't even have a runway) Air Force Bases.
Even then, it can take quite some time to get a plane to a given area. Fuel concerns have to be carefully managed. Much is given on the sites I found to 'not flying at maximum speed'. However, a fighter's max speed is achieved using afterburners, which will require the plane to either refuel or land very quickly. And refueler planes are slow. Heck, Florida has a number of ACC Bases. Not so many on the East Coast.
I'll agree, we were caught with our pants down on 9/11.
The Mayhem comes from people panicing and running. Trying anything to get the medicine, even if they weren't exposed. It's like the 'dirty bomb' threat. Estimates show more people will die from trampling and heart attacks than from the radiation.
Treatment, without prior vaccination, still has a fair death rate. With prior vaccination, like for most fatal diseases, death drops to a fraction of the unvaccinated rate.
Weaponized anthrax is rated to have a 99% casualty* rate. Fatal in about the same percentage without treatment. Vaccination reverses these numbers(with the whole series). Unlike many vaccines, the one for anthrax isn't very effective if given after the exposure. It takes time for immunity to develop. That's why I'm always wondered why I heard about senators and such being given the antibiotics, but not the vaccine. Even one shot, years before, improves percentages by the double digits.
It's the old ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure.
*casualty doesn't mean death in this case. It means that you've been rendered unable to work/continue.
Actually, cowpox was an effective vaccine from day one.
What all the research was for was to lower the side effects. Raw cowpox was still as bad as a nasty flue.
I think that they eventually switched to a different virus strain, a specially weakened one that didn't produce more than localized sores. They have vaccines that don't even do this, but there's the problem that the disease was elminated before then, and they weren't about to expose people for testing purposes, so the effeciency of the vaccines are untested.
Yes, I have been vaccinated against smallpox.
Don't forget the part about actions needing to be taken in order to be considered a 'lawful combatant'. Which the terrorists/insurgents aren't doing. Matter of fact, early on I called them isurgents. I didn't start calling them terrorists until they started attacking the Iraqi civilians.
Military/Police forces, sure, fine.
Foreign contractors: definitly iffy.
Iraqi Daylaborers: nope, nada.
Even as a percentage of GDP, we're pretty generous. Thing is, if you look at disasters like hurricane Katrina, aid is pouring in from all over the states. But none of this aid counts. It's all considered internal. Many individual states in the union are bigger than most countries.
Besides, I(and many americans) feel that most foreign aid is wasted. Heck, much of it goes to propping up tin pot dictators and fueling more violations of human rights.
Thing is, we can't really see a solution in most of these cases other than outright invasion.