You're thinking of the way things use to be. Arbiters are currently chosen by the corporation. You have no say in who hears your case. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the arbitration firms find in favor of the corporation against the consumer 98.4% of the time and the remaining 1.6% offer consumers laughably small compensation that does not even come close to making them whole.
Let me put it bluntly to be clear. No consumer has ever won in arbitration. Under the current regime, none of them ever will.
It's actually worse than that. The FBI has for the past several years been demanding librarians turn over records of who's reading what and trying to place the library staff under a gag regarding the whole thing. Some librarians have been able to make a fight of it. Some have not. The ones who lost this battle are precisely the ones we'll never hear from.
Tin foil hats aside, if you've been doing a term paper on Islam or the Haber process, the American Library Association reports the FBI wants to know about you.
Just because it's illegal to retaliate against employees doen't mean it doesn't happen, and several states do not require that employees get paid during that time. In fact, NO state requires that hourly workers get paid at all.
You have been lucky. That does not mean everyone, or even the majority, are lucky as well.
Every judge I've ever met would agree with you. No judge thinks any twelve random people can come to a better decision than they can.
The problem is that every single one of those judges is wrong, and juries were given power for exactly that reason. If juries can't be trusted to decide mere business issues, then they certainly shouldn't be trusted with matters of life and death. The awesome power of the jury was given to twelve random changing people because to do anything else would create a dangerous, inevitably corrupted ruling class. Judges aren't as wise as juries because the institutional arrogance that comes with the job inures them to the reality they're dealing with. Given enough time, every judge becomes Roy Bean. We counter that tendency by placing them in service to twelve random people. By placing the judge in their proper place as mere referee to the lawyers and advisor to the jury, we can keep the court grounded and properly humble before the awesome responsibility they carry.
Given their job, no judge should ever sleep well.
Unfortunately though, you're right. Our juries today are made up of people who can't hold gainful employment, people "not smart enough to get out of jury duty." Every place I've ever worked has made it very clear that if you get chosen for jury duty, you should spend your nights spreading resumes. The very people we most want serving on a jury are exactly the people who would lose their houses if they had to forgo their income for a six-month trial.
We can fix this problem with a few changes. Each juror should be paid the same hourly wage as the highest paid lawyer in the room. No juror can ever be found in contempt of court. No juror can be removed exept for clearly proven misconduct such as bribery. A jury will be declared "hung" when more than six jurors declare it to be.
To compensate for the inevitable bozos, each attorney will be given twice the number of peremptory challenges. Voir dire will get a little longer, but if you make these changes, you'll find juries of a quality worth arguing cases in front of.
You make an excellent point that juries won't care about the distinction between "preponderance" and "convincing," and you're right, they wouldn't.
Unfortunately, the power of the jury has been under attack for some time. Have you done jury duty lately? The juror's oath used to be that you would apply the law without prejudice and in good conscience. Today the oath has been changed to include "following the judge's instruction."
There are no boundary limits put on the judge's instruction.
We used to have hung juries all the time. Hanging the jury used to be an acknowledged right of any jury member. It was considered a safeguard of justice. "If twelve can't agree, then it stops." Today, judges simply remove "problem" jurors in the interest of expediency.
Juries today are well on their way to becoming very little more than rubber stamps for the judge's decision.
"The most developed nations?" You mean what we used to call the First World? OK, so in competition with all the countries that aren't walking in shambling horror like Rwanda, we're getting beat by more than half of them. Your sample includes Mexico, a nation that can't protect it's own mayors, police chiefs and judges. And you're proud of this?! With the exception of Germany, by your own numbers we're getting beaten by anyone who's anyone, including members recovering from historically recent wars and occupations, and you think we're doing OK? The UK is number four. We're ten spots down from that, despite the fact the we have orders of magnitude more resources to work with.
You're OK with this? Ask me how I know you don't have any kids.
And when you were young, per-capita education and health care spending in the US was a fraction of what it is today (in constant dollars), so lack of spending is not what killed those dreams.
Simply not true. When I was a boy, we were in the middle of the Space Race. Education was almost getting properly funded. Teachers weren't taking part-time jobs to get by. Textbooks were not considered a rare and precious resource. Field trips did not spur panicked begging for the parents to chip in. Schools didn't whore themselves out to McDonalds and Burger King hoping to get a few bucks.
This is how I know you haven't spent any time near a public classroom lately. You know what parents buy for schools these days? Toilet paper. Copy paper. Pencils. My school district just took up a collection to buy gas for the school buses, and I'm in a wealthier school district. The large amount of money getting collected is not reaching the classroom, and if you don't know that, then you just don't know what you're talking about. I live in a school district that includes literally million-dollar homes and our teachers dress in cast-offs from Goodwill and drive 20-year-old cars.
I'm not even going to worry about refuting this because anyone who's a parent these days knows. Every scientist I know or ever met is either livid or in despair about the state of science education in public school today -- and yeah, I'm very comfortable making that statement on Slashdot. Have you even heard about what's going on with the Texas State Board of Education? Any working scientists who wanna jump in with t2t10 and talk about what a great job we're doing teaching science in the US, by all means speak up.
What exactly about your field do you feel our public schools are doing a wonderful job of explaining?
My personal experience agrees with the statistics
The statistics? We've talked about this before. The statistics are that we're getting beaten by Cuba in healthcare and Ireland in education. We're getting our butts handed to us by small island nations with few natural resources. You're bragging that you can place middle of the pack in the Girl Scout softball league.
You sabotage reasonable political debate
Are you even watching the news? I supported Reagan. The first time. In 1980, David Stockman wasn't a raging lunatic when he argued the Laffer Curve and that lower taxes would spur growth which would yield greater overall tax revenue. In 2010, even Stockman has recanted. We live in a world where Massey Energy can kill dozens of miners with impunity, where BP can destroy the Gulf of Mexico, hide it, and still post profits in the Billions in the same quarter. Reagan could almost be reasoned with. The same is not true of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. There is no more "reasonable political debate." The situation is not in doubt, not in 2011. All the tired old ideas, that we can reach Nirvana by cutting taxes for billionaires and bleeding the middle class dry while telling the poor to simply die and decrease the surplus population, that nonsense was empirically disproven decades ago.
Yo Adrian! Wolverines! We're number 14! We're number 14 out of a field of 27! We almost made the top half! We totally kicked Mexico's butt! Wooooo Hoooooo!
You, t2t10, are what I'm talking about. You're offering a cite that lists us as 14 out of 27 and referencing that as "quite high." You must be proud of that triple digit SAT score. Let me guess, home-schooled, right, or did every kid in your class get a ribbon after running the race?
You've got this conceit going that you're offering Vulcan-like reasoning in your posts, but your problem is that your cites don't say what you'd like them to, and you don't have any experience of your own to draw from yet. You think education is doing OK in this country because some book or website tells you it is. I think things are falling apart because I've watched it with my own eyes, from both sides of the lectern. Emotional diatribes? Absolutely. I've watched our kids go from aspiring to be number one to being proud of being number 14. I'm ready to start chugging hemlock at this point.
When I was young, we were thinking "Mars, then the stars." From your other posts, your hopes and dreams are apparently to be left alone with variations of "Mine! My Precious!"
The reason I hammer away at you is that you break my heart, and I'm terrified of the timid, miserly, meager, threadbare, hopeless possible future you represent.
"From late 1944 until early 1945, the Japanese launched over 9,300 of these fire balloons, of which 300 were found or observed in the U.S. Despite the high hopes of their designers, the balloons were ineffective as weapons, and caused only six deaths (from one single incident)—a kill rate of 0.067%—and a small amount of damage."
So, yes, it has happened. Once. In all of recorded history.
By this reasoning, my wife's family should have shunned me as a possible bomber pilot there to drop a nuclear bomb, since that had happened twice.
My mind boggles at the level of paranoia it takes to go from "Hey, look a balloon" to "Maybe it's from the terrorists! Run away, run away!"
Did you avoid bunnies after watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" too?
The world is a dangerous place. There are sharks in the water. They have eaten people. But if that fear keep your toes dry on the sand, then I feel sorry for you. I can't imagine living in that much fear all the time.
We live in a country where most people can't explain how the tides or fracking magnets work. (Shout out to Bill O'Reilly and other juggalos) We live in a country where the science content of "Mythbusters" is considered too difficult to understand for the average population. We live in a country where a sweet young woman who recently graduated from high school asked my wife if she drove back to the States from her visit home to Japan.
Anything -- ANYTHING -- that fans the dying embers of inquiry in this country should be encouraged. "Hey, how about that?! It's a real pain in the ass to fold even a piece of toilet paper as long as a few football fields more than 12 times. Hey, the higher you go, the colder it gets, and the more you can see. I wonder if..."
Things have gotten so bad in this country, I'm ready to fall back to toddler teaching techniques. "What, you mixed vinegar and baking soda and it got all fizzy? Hooray! Good for you! Do it again! Hey, have you seen what Diet Coke and Mentos do?"
EXT: WOODLAND MEADOW, HAPPY FLUFFY BABY JOKES AT PLAY
VOICEOVER Every year, thousands of baby jokes are clubbed to death by needless explanation and exposition.
Hordes of Explanations armed with cudgels descend on the meadow, splashing blood among the flowers. Comically high-pitched screams echo through the forest.
VOICEOVER With your help, we can help end this atrocity. With your support, even if we can save only one joke from senseless needless death...
PUSH IN ON THE WET QUIVERING EYES OF A BABY JOKE HIDING UNDER A LOG. AUDIO BEGINS OF "WE CAN SAVE THE LAUGHTER" BY PEABO BRYSON
With any luck, geeks a couple centuries from now will be arguing if "Highlander" and "the Matrix" had any sequels, or if they were made and just lost to history.:-)
OK, we started with "Screw you I got mine" and "It doesn't matter to my health how sick you get," and now we're arguing efficiency, so I'm wonderfully happy. You've moved away from "Ayn says let 'em die in the streets," to "We're wasting money," so we're making progress. You've still got some nonsense going about what we spend money on for healthcare in this country, but we're getting there.
A centimeter at a time, but we're getting there.:-)
they put limits on how selfish pricks like you can waste medical resources on unneeded procedures, ineffective end-of-life care, and the latest gimmicky drugs.
You mean like prophylactic c-sections, hospice and morphine?
My wife had a natural delivery in one of those "limited" countries. She luxuriated in the hospital for almost a week. They didn't discharge her until she could walk on her own. She carried our baby out of the hospital. She had a full complement of pain meds just in case she needed them. She was assigned a lactation nurse who spent several hours making sure our child began feeding without issue. We had a pediatrician assigned to us. The city even gave us a routine stipend to cover initial babcare expenses like diapers and cribs just in case we couldn't afford it. Frankly, we got firehosed with assistance. When I asked why, they told me it was cheap insurance, cheaper to pay these minor expenses up front than to worry about larger issues later.
My wife had an emergency c-section stateside, as in she was bleeding out and both mother and child would have died. Looking at my call record, our insurance company was on the phone with me to argue the charges before my wife was even out of surgery. My wife was discharged less than 48 hours after being cut open like a fish. She was still actively bleeding when they kicked her out the door, without pain meds.
Every single issue was a fight. We had to fight to get her the needed pain meds. We had to fight to get her back in when the bleeding wouldn't stop. We had to fight to get our child in to the pediatrician. When my wife showed up bleeding at the ER, we had to fight through an off-duty cop to get in to get triaged by the nurse. We fought the insurance company over every single dime for months afterwards as they denied every single claim as a matter of standard procedure.
And I have what is considered to be "Gold standard" health insurance.
It took a literal act of Congress to allow pregnant women to stay the night at the hospital after delivery. Every other father I talk to has similar horror stories. The fact that you're not familiar with these issues tells me... that you're not familiar with these issues.
Even Cuban-style health care would be sufficient for that,...
Even Cuban style of healthcare?! God Help Us, when did we fall so far that we look UP to anything, ANYTHING Cuba has to offer?
But, but, but, but SOCIALISM! Socialist Health Care? You mean exactly like the sort of health care system used by the United States House, Senate, Supreme Court and every branch of the Armed Forces, that kind of Communist health care? How come every other civilized nation on Earth seems to have these sorts of systems, but they haven't been smitten by the Capitalist Fist of an Angry God?
We rank 33rd, at the bottom of the list among civilized nations on infant mortality. We edge out Croatia by a tenth of a point, and it looks like they'll pass us in the next go around.
Croatia. We're about to get beat by a war-torn nation from the Eastern Bloc. We put as many babies in the ground as a shattered chunk of what we used to call Yugoslavia.
We put those babies in the ground because we can't come up with a coherent health plan, because we'd rather pay United Healthcare's CEO 1.1 Billion dollars -- that's Billion with a "B" -- than save the lives of infants. You know what grand accomplishment Bill McGuire can point to to justify that 1.1 Billion dollars? Well, so fa
That statement is objectively false: my health does, for the most part, not depend on your health. My health does not depend on whether you have ALS or Huntingtons or cancer. If we only needed to address private health concerns that affect other people, we'd get by with very little money per American per year.
OK, you're completely missing the idea that individual compromised immune systems offer communicable diseases a foothold into the community. Some guy across town comes down with Hodgkins lymphoma. You're safe. Cancer isn't contagious. Cancer shreds his immune system, leaving him wide open for the tuberculosis problem we're seeing recur in the American South and inner cities. Tuberculosis is contagious and is your problem.
He dies hacking and spewing, but you feel happy because none of your tax dollars are going to treat him. Sadly, the Fedex man spoke to your neighbor's caregiver before he dropped your package off, so that nagging cough that just broke out in your chest and the blood you're coughing into your kleenex isn't going to go away any time soon.
Have you never seriously traveled? Go spend some time in Europe and Canada, then go spend some time in places where access to a doctor isn't a given, like Papua New Guinea, Alabama and Mississippi (Huntsville doesn't count.) Have you never noticed you seem to have fewer health problems when everyone around you is healthier?
When "personal" medical problems get treated, "public" medical problems find fewer opportunities to breed in your community. You're hanging out on Slashdot, for goodness' sake. You should have an intuitive understanding of the concept. One vulnerable host on a network does not mean only that user has a problem...
You apparently think that defending your political and social views entitles you to insult and attack other people in whatever underhanded way you can come up with. I don't know what made you so bitter and arrogant, but whatever it was, it has turned you into a reprehensible human being.
Oh dear. Did I hit a nerve? Did I hurt your feelings? Do you need some comfort, reassurance and consolation?
Well, fortunately that's your problem, not mine.:-)
OK. Maybe a little too much snark. I apologize. Look, here's my problem. At the outside, I got maybe 30 years left. I could drop dead right now and go into the light with nothing left undone. I have been there, I have done that, and I have got the t-shirt. I got mine. I got more than mine.
I also got kids. Them and the grandkids will have to live in this world after my wife and I are gone. What terrifies me is that half this country's population, a country I gave years to, half this country's population thinks Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't loud-mouthed idiots. Sarah Palin shoots wolves out of helicopters and talks about how huntin' makes her a Real American. Funny, my grandpa threatened to tan my hide if I ever shot something I didn't intend to eat. I'm a hillbilly from a long line of hillbillies. I et 'coon, possum and deer as a child. I figure that makes me as real an American as Daniel Boone.
Half this country's population think they're right with God and following Christian tradition when ain't none of them ever sat on a bare wooden pew and cain't none of 'em remember the words to "the Old Wooden Cross." I've heard preachers -- Preachers, mind you -- who talk about the "Evils of Socialized Medicine" like not one of them ever read the tale of the Good Samaritan.
Sick people get doctors. Period. Whatever it takes, I don't care. I don't care if my taxes go up. I don't care if we have to pay the doctors in moonshine and chickens. I don't care if I get drafted to rip bedsheets into bandages. Civilized people do not leave the sick and the wounded to suffer, and I don't care if it's a drunk suffering from DTs. The whole outside world -- and I've been there mind you -- the whole outside world looks at us like we're savages for leaving the sick and injured to fend for themselves.
You sound young. I hope you're young, because then I would understand. I used to sound like that when I was 17 too. You're echoing the books you've read pretty well, but you're not understanding the reality behind them. This is not your fault because you've had no experience with them -- yet.
But you will.
Small number of communicable diseases? There are so many communicable diseases we don't even have proper names for them all, and even if we did, Nature is cranking out new ones every day. When I was a boy, no one had ever heard of AIDS, Mad Cow Disease, MRSA, Avian Flu, H1N1, Ebola, Marburg, Hanta, Legionnaires... -- and those are just the names I can pull off the top of my head.
Why should you care about some schmoe with diabetes? Because before he dies, opportunistic infections and diseases will use his body as a factory to crank out pathogens that will eventually enter your environment. One bad apple will eventually turn them all. One sick cow will eventually cost you the herd. It is in your own selfish best interest to ensure various bacteria and viruses do not have a foothold in your community.
But let's talk about something like ALS or Huntington's, which may be purely genetic and absolutely not communicable. Let's suppose those people are simply going to die in helpless agony. Do you think their families will simply sit by and wring their hands? We can either sit by and spend fortunes on security systems, cops and cleanup to handle the inevitable headline disasters... or we can skip the drama by writing some prescriptions. It is literally a selfish ounce of prevention vs. a pound of cure from your tax dollars.
I offer all those arguments in case you're young and ignorant of life, in the hopes that you've never even had the fairly routine experience of watching them slice your wife open to pull out your child, that you have yet to put a parent in the ground.
It makes no difference to my health whether you suffer or die from cancer, obesity, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, or heart disease,
If you've got some gray in your hair, and your heart and spirit are still this stunted, small and shriveled, then you have my pity. You're going to go to your grave feeling even more miserable, alone and afraid than you do right now.
Public health is simply the sum total of private health. You understand the principle with vaccinations, and that's a good start, but you need to consider this problem more deeply. A review of the events surrounding the Black Death wouldn't hurt either.
Why should you care if your someone in your town lives in rat-infested tenements? Because the Plague can travel across town. Why should you care if some poor illegal alien comes down with the flu? Because he's going to wipe down your lunch table tomorrow. Why should you care if some homeless bum breaks his leg? Because when he comes down ill from sleeping in the gutter, and you brush past him ignoring his request for spare change, you're going to inhale some of his saliva that aerosols out of his mouth when he speaks. Why should you care if some little old lady is suffering from heart disease down the street? Because she's offering pneumonia and tuberculosis a perfect foothold into your community health.
Like it or not, your health is inextricably tied into the health of everyone else. Unlike money and cookies, this isn't a situation where you can say "Screw you I got mine."
in the 1800s there was a major disaster in the southern US.
I think they usually refer to it as the Civil War, though some of my neighbors still call it the War Against Northern Aggression.
He refused on the basis that it wasn't the governments job and private parties should rise to the occasion.
They did. We called them carpet baggers. Most of us would have preferred another visit from Sherman than to endure that horde of locusts.
The point is that that wouldn't have happened if the government had stepped in.
I heartily agree. I remember the Dust Bowl and Katrina. Good times were had by all. Whoever said it was government's job to promote the general welfare? Let's disband the National Guard, Search and Rescue, the Coast Guard and all those socialist fire departments. Surely private citizens will voluntarily acquire the heavy equipment and years of specialized training necessary to handle all major disasters. Why, just a few years ago, I remember seeing a documentary about how some geek built himself a personal suit of armor and single-handedly put an end to the war in Afghanistan.:-)
When you're ready to quit reading Ayn Rand and other comic books, and you're ready to abandon the Sarah Palin School of Reasoning where you offer events you can't remember and the quotes of Presidents you can't name as proof that you're right, perhaps you could join us in the soft green fields of reality where it takes more than your favorite EDC pocketknife and a contempt for the sheeple to handle even a problem as small as a routine house fire.
You realize you're quoting the world's first murderer, right? And the quote you're using was his lie to God that he didn't know what had happened to his dead brother.
And you're using that quote to bolster your argument that you have no duties or obligations to anyone but yourself? Apparently that sentiment even extends to "relatives and good friends" such as your wife.
From your previous post about so much as sharing your television with your wife:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2052954&cid=35607736 I meant is she doesn't like it...tell her to go into the other fucking room and watch what she wants if she doesn't like what I'm watching. My house....my rules. If she doesn't like it...there's others out there...always...
Is it any wonder that we don't think you have the best perspective on how we as a society should cooperate to accomplish common goals?
So good to hear from you. It's been an eventful three years. Now, I mean, right exactly now, could you please tell Japan to shore up their nuclear reactors against the possibility of a 8.biggish tsunami? Also, that Hope and Change? Yeah, not so much...
How do you recommend we install a clean copy of Windows, short of buying your own copy for $189.00? PC manufacturers don't even include a "recovery disk" any more, let alone a copy of the OS you just bought and paid for. Not that I disagree with you at all, but the average consumer isn't going to buy their PC for $500-1200, and then cough up $200 for a clean copy of the OS, and then another couple hundred to find someone to wipe and install it for them.
Slashdot Mirror
You're thinking of the way things use to be. Arbiters are currently chosen by the corporation. You have no say in who hears your case. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the arbitration firms find in favor of the corporation against the consumer 98.4% of the time and the remaining 1.6% offer consumers laughably small compensation that does not even come close to making them whole.
Let me put it bluntly to be clear. No consumer has ever won in arbitration. Under the current regime, none of them ever will.
"Cannon throws first pitch at game; Catcher still in critical condition."
It's actually worse than that. The FBI has for the past several years been demanding librarians turn over records of who's reading what and trying to place the library staff under a gag regarding the whole thing. Some librarians have been able to make a fight of it. Some have not. The ones who lost this battle are precisely the ones we'll never hear from.
Tin foil hats aside, if you've been doing a term paper on Islam or the Haber process, the American Library Association reports the FBI wants to know about you.
Also, google "jury duty job loss" and get ready for a long read like this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/us/02jury.html
Call to Jury Duty Strikes Fear of Financial Ruin
Just because it's illegal to retaliate against employees doen't mean it doesn't happen, and several states do not require that employees get paid during that time. In fact, NO state requires that hourly workers get paid at all.
You have been lucky. That does not mean everyone, or even the majority, are lucky as well.
Go back and read the thread from the top again to find out where the "not smart enough" line got started.
Every judge I've ever met would agree with you. No judge thinks any twelve random people can come to a better decision than they can.
The problem is that every single one of those judges is wrong, and juries were given power for exactly that reason. If juries can't be trusted to decide mere business issues, then they certainly shouldn't be trusted with matters of life and death. The awesome power of the jury was given to twelve random changing people because to do anything else would create a dangerous, inevitably corrupted ruling class. Judges aren't as wise as juries because the institutional arrogance that comes with the job inures them to the reality they're dealing with. Given enough time, every judge becomes Roy Bean. We counter that tendency by placing them in service to twelve random people. By placing the judge in their proper place as mere referee to the lawyers and advisor to the jury, we can keep the court grounded and properly humble before the awesome responsibility they carry.
Given their job, no judge should ever sleep well.
Unfortunately though, you're right. Our juries today are made up of people who can't hold gainful employment, people "not smart enough to get out of jury duty." Every place I've ever worked has made it very clear that if you get chosen for jury duty, you should spend your nights spreading resumes. The very people we most want serving on a jury are exactly the people who would lose their houses if they had to forgo their income for a six-month trial.
We can fix this problem with a few changes. Each juror should be paid the same hourly wage as the highest paid lawyer in the room. No juror can ever be found in contempt of court. No juror can be removed exept for clearly proven misconduct such as bribery. A jury will be declared "hung" when more than six jurors declare it to be.
To compensate for the inevitable bozos, each attorney will be given twice the number of peremptory challenges. Voir dire will get a little longer, but if you make these changes, you'll find juries of a quality worth arguing cases in front of.
You make an excellent point that juries won't care about the distinction between "preponderance" and "convincing," and you're right, they wouldn't.
Unfortunately, the power of the jury has been under attack for some time. Have you done jury duty lately? The juror's oath used to be that you would apply the law without prejudice and in good conscience. Today the oath has been changed to include "following the judge's instruction."
There are no boundary limits put on the judge's instruction.
We used to have hung juries all the time. Hanging the jury used to be an acknowledged right of any jury member. It was considered a safeguard of justice. "If twelve can't agree, then it stops." Today, judges simply remove "problem" jurors in the interest of expediency.
Juries today are well on their way to becoming very little more than rubber stamps for the judge's decision.
...then we know it's all good.
"The most developed nations?" You mean what we used to call the First World? OK, so in competition with all the countries that aren't walking in shambling horror like Rwanda, we're getting beat by more than half of them. Your sample includes Mexico, a nation that can't protect it's own mayors, police chiefs and judges. And you're proud of this?! With the exception of Germany, by your own numbers we're getting beaten by anyone who's anyone, including members recovering from historically recent wars and occupations, and you think we're doing OK? The UK is number four. We're ten spots down from that, despite the fact the we have orders of magnitude more resources to work with.
You're OK with this? Ask me how I know you don't have any kids.
And when you were young, per-capita education and health care spending in the US was a fraction of what it is today (in constant dollars), so lack of spending is not what killed those dreams.
Simply not true. When I was a boy, we were in the middle of the Space Race. Education was almost getting properly funded. Teachers weren't taking part-time jobs to get by. Textbooks were not considered a rare and precious resource. Field trips did not spur panicked begging for the parents to chip in. Schools didn't whore themselves out to McDonalds and Burger King hoping to get a few bucks.
This is how I know you haven't spent any time near a public classroom lately. You know what parents buy for schools these days? Toilet paper. Copy paper. Pencils. My school district just took up a collection to buy gas for the school buses, and I'm in a wealthier school district. The large amount of money getting collected is not reaching the classroom, and if you don't know that, then you just don't know what you're talking about. I live in a school district that includes literally million-dollar homes and our teachers dress in cast-offs from Goodwill and drive 20-year-old cars.
I'm not even going to worry about refuting this because anyone who's a parent these days knows. Every scientist I know or ever met is either livid or in despair about the state of science education in public school today -- and yeah, I'm very comfortable making that statement on Slashdot. Have you even heard about what's going on with the Texas State Board of Education? Any working scientists who wanna jump in with t2t10 and talk about what a great job we're doing teaching science in the US, by all means speak up.
What exactly about your field do you feel our public schools are doing a wonderful job of explaining?
My personal experience agrees with the statistics
The statistics? We've talked about this before. The statistics are that we're getting beaten by Cuba in healthcare and Ireland in education. We're getting our butts handed to us by small island nations with few natural resources. You're bragging that you can place middle of the pack in the Girl Scout softball league.
You sabotage reasonable political debate
Are you even watching the news? I supported Reagan. The first time. In 1980, David Stockman wasn't a raging lunatic when he argued the Laffer Curve and that lower taxes would spur growth which would yield greater overall tax revenue. In 2010, even Stockman has recanted. We live in a world where Massey Energy can kill dozens of miners with impunity, where BP can destroy the Gulf of Mexico, hide it, and still post profits in the Billions in the same quarter. Reagan could almost be reasoned with. The same is not true of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. There is no more "reasonable political debate." The situation is not in doubt, not in 2011. All the tired old ideas, that we can reach Nirvana by cutting taxes for billionaires and bleeding the middle class dry while telling the poor to simply die and decrease the surplus population, that nonsense was empirically disproven decades ago.
education and health care both are quite
(Looking at your cites)
Yo Adrian! Wolverines! We're number 14! We're number 14 out of a field of 27! We almost made the top half! We totally kicked Mexico's butt! Wooooo Hoooooo!
You, t2t10, are what I'm talking about. You're offering a cite that lists us as 14 out of 27 and referencing that as "quite high." You must be proud of that triple digit SAT score. Let me guess, home-schooled, right, or did every kid in your class get a ribbon after running the race?
You've got this conceit going that you're offering Vulcan-like reasoning in your posts, but your problem is that your cites don't say what you'd like them to, and you don't have any experience of your own to draw from yet. You think education is doing OK in this country because some book or website tells you it is. I think things are falling apart because I've watched it with my own eyes, from both sides of the lectern. Emotional diatribes? Absolutely. I've watched our kids go from aspiring to be number one to being proud of being number 14. I'm ready to start chugging hemlock at this point.
When I was young, we were thinking "Mars, then the stars." From your other posts, your hopes and dreams are apparently to be left alone with variations of "Mine! My Precious!"
The reason I hammer away at you is that you break my heart, and I'm terrified of the timid, miserly, meager, threadbare, hopeless possible future you represent.
From Wikipedia:
"From late 1944 until early 1945, the Japanese launched over 9,300 of these fire balloons, of which 300 were found or observed in the U.S. Despite the high hopes of their designers, the balloons were ineffective as weapons, and caused only six deaths (from one single incident)—a kill rate of 0.067%—and a small amount of damage."
So, yes, it has happened. Once. In all of recorded history.
By this reasoning, my wife's family should have shunned me as a possible bomber pilot there to drop a nuclear bomb, since that had happened twice.
My mind boggles at the level of paranoia it takes to go from "Hey, look a balloon" to "Maybe it's from the terrorists! Run away, run away!"
Did you avoid bunnies after watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" too?
The world is a dangerous place. There are sharks in the water. They have eaten people. But if that fear keep your toes dry on the sand, then I feel sorry for you. I can't imagine living in that much fear all the time.
Hmm, Virtucon has a low user id, probably old enough to remember that it takes 99 ballons to scramble the jets. :-)
We live in a country where most people can't explain how the tides or fracking magnets work. (Shout out to Bill O'Reilly and other juggalos) We live in a country where the science content of "Mythbusters" is considered too difficult to understand for the average population. We live in a country where a sweet young woman who recently graduated from high school asked my wife if she drove back to the States from her visit home to Japan.
Anything -- ANYTHING -- that fans the dying embers of inquiry in this country should be encouraged. "Hey, how about that?! It's a real pain in the ass to fold even a piece of toilet paper as long as a few football fields more than 12 times. Hey, the higher you go, the colder it gets, and the more you can see. I wonder if..."
Things have gotten so bad in this country, I'm ready to fall back to toddler teaching techniques. "What, you mixed vinegar and baking soda and it got all fizzy? Hooray! Good for you! Do it again! Hey, have you seen what Diet Coke and Mentos do?"
There once was a time when the police wouldn't want anyone to know they'd been beating prisoners, hence the non-marking rubber hose.
Today they use wrenches to advertise they can do what they want without fear of consequences.
EXT: WOODLAND MEADOW, HAPPY FLUFFY BABY JOKES AT PLAY
VOICEOVER
Every year, thousands of baby jokes are clubbed to death by needless explanation
and exposition.
Hordes of Explanations armed with cudgels descend on the meadow, splashing blood
among the flowers. Comically high-pitched screams echo through the forest.
VOICEOVER
With your help, we can help end this atrocity. With your support, even if we can save only
one joke from senseless needless death...
PUSH IN ON THE WET QUIVERING EYES OF A BABY JOKE HIDING UNDER A LOG.
AUDIO BEGINS OF "WE CAN SAVE THE LAUGHTER" BY PEABO BRYSON
VOICEOVER
Won't you please help?
With any luck, geeks a couple centuries from now will be arguing if "Highlander" and "the Matrix" had any sequels, or if they were made and just lost to history. :-)
You know, if I'm driving a Ford-F150, a 750cc sportbike or a Lamborghini, it's still me dri... :-)
OK, we started with "Screw you I got mine" and "It doesn't matter to my health how sick you get," and now we're arguing efficiency, so I'm wonderfully happy. You've moved away from "Ayn says let 'em die in the streets," to "We're wasting money," so we're making progress. You've still got some nonsense going about what we spend money on for healthcare in this country, but we're getting there.
A centimeter at a time, but we're getting there. :-)
they put limits on how selfish pricks like you can waste medical resources on unneeded procedures, ineffective end-of-life care, and the latest gimmicky drugs.
You mean like prophylactic c-sections, hospice and morphine?
My wife had a natural delivery in one of those "limited" countries. She luxuriated in the hospital for almost a week. They didn't discharge her until she could walk on her own. She carried our baby out of the hospital. She had a full complement of pain meds just in case she needed them. She was assigned a lactation nurse who spent several hours making sure our child began feeding without issue. We had a pediatrician assigned to us. The city even gave us a routine stipend to cover initial babcare expenses like diapers and cribs just in case we couldn't afford it. Frankly, we got firehosed with assistance. When I asked why, they told me it was cheap insurance, cheaper to pay these minor expenses up front than to worry about larger issues later.
My wife had an emergency c-section stateside, as in she was bleeding out and both mother and child would have died. Looking at my call record, our insurance company was on the phone with me to argue the charges before my wife was even out of surgery. My wife was discharged less than 48 hours after being cut open like a fish. She was still actively bleeding when they kicked her out the door, without pain meds.
Every single issue was a fight. We had to fight to get her the needed pain meds. We had to fight to get her back in when the bleeding wouldn't stop. We had to fight to get our child in to the pediatrician. When my wife showed up bleeding at the ER, we had to fight through an off-duty cop to get in to get triaged by the nurse. We fought the insurance company over every single dime for months afterwards as they denied every single claim as a matter of standard procedure.
And I have what is considered to be "Gold standard" health insurance.
It took a literal act of Congress to allow pregnant women to stay the night at the hospital after delivery. Every other father I talk to has similar horror stories. The fact that you're not familiar with these issues tells me ... that you're not familiar with these issues.
Even Cuban-style health care would be sufficient for that,...
Even Cuban style of healthcare?! God Help Us, when did we fall so far that we look UP to anything, ANYTHING Cuba has to offer?
But, but, but, but SOCIALISM! Socialist Health Care? You mean exactly like the sort of health care system used by the United States House, Senate, Supreme Court and every branch of the Armed Forces, that kind of Communist health care? How come every other civilized nation on Earth seems to have these sorts of systems, but they haven't been smitten by the Capitalist Fist of an Angry God?
We rank 33rd, at the bottom of the list among civilized nations on infant mortality. We edge out Croatia by a tenth of a point, and it looks like they'll pass us in the next go around.
Croatia. We're about to get beat by a war-torn nation from the Eastern Bloc. We put as many babies in the ground as a shattered chunk of what we used to call Yugoslavia.
We put those babies in the ground because we can't come up with a coherent health plan, because we'd rather pay United Healthcare's CEO 1.1 Billion dollars -- that's Billion with a "B" -- than save the lives of infants. You know what grand accomplishment Bill McGuire can point to to justify that 1.1 Billion dollars? Well, so fa
That statement is objectively false: my health does, for the most part, not depend on your health. My health does not depend on whether you have ALS or Huntingtons or cancer. If we only needed to address private health concerns that affect other people, we'd get by with very little money per American per year.
OK, you're completely missing the idea that individual compromised immune systems offer communicable diseases a foothold into the community. Some guy across town comes down with Hodgkins lymphoma. You're safe. Cancer isn't contagious. Cancer shreds his immune system, leaving him wide open for the tuberculosis problem we're seeing recur in the American South and inner cities. Tuberculosis is contagious and is your problem.
He dies hacking and spewing, but you feel happy because none of your tax dollars are going to treat him. Sadly, the Fedex man spoke to your neighbor's caregiver before he dropped your package off, so that nagging cough that just broke out in your chest and the blood you're coughing into your kleenex isn't going to go away any time soon.
Have you never seriously traveled? Go spend some time in Europe and Canada, then go spend some time in places where access to a doctor isn't a given, like Papua New Guinea, Alabama and Mississippi (Huntsville doesn't count.) Have you never noticed you seem to have fewer health problems when everyone around you is healthier?
When "personal" medical problems get treated, "public" medical problems find fewer opportunities to breed in your community. You're hanging out on Slashdot, for goodness' sake. You should have an intuitive understanding of the concept. One vulnerable host on a network does not mean only that user has a problem...
You apparently think that defending your political and social views entitles you to insult and attack other people in whatever underhanded way you can come up with. I don't know what made you so bitter and arrogant, but whatever it was, it has turned you into a reprehensible human being.
Oh dear. Did I hit a nerve? Did I hurt your feelings? Do you need some comfort, reassurance and consolation?
Well, fortunately that's your problem, not mine. :-)
OK. Maybe a little too much snark. I apologize. Look, here's my problem. At the outside, I got maybe 30 years left. I could drop dead right now and go into the light with nothing left undone. I have been there, I have done that, and I have got the t-shirt. I got mine. I got more than mine.
I also got kids. Them and the grandkids will have to live in this world after my wife and I are gone. What terrifies me is that half this country's population, a country I gave years to, half this country's population thinks Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't loud-mouthed idiots. Sarah Palin shoots wolves out of helicopters and talks about how huntin' makes her a Real American. Funny, my grandpa threatened to tan my hide if I ever shot something I didn't intend to eat. I'm a hillbilly from a long line of hillbillies. I et 'coon, possum and deer as a child. I figure that makes me as real an American as Daniel Boone.
Half this country's population think they're right with God and following Christian tradition when ain't none of them ever sat on a bare wooden pew and cain't none of 'em remember the words to "the Old Wooden Cross." I've heard preachers -- Preachers, mind you -- who talk about the "Evils of Socialized Medicine" like not one of them ever read the tale of the Good Samaritan.
Sick people get doctors. Period. Whatever it takes, I don't care. I don't care if my taxes go up. I don't care if we have to pay the doctors in moonshine and chickens. I don't care if I get drafted to rip bedsheets into bandages. Civilized people do not leave the sick and the wounded to suffer, and I don't care if it's a drunk suffering from DTs. The whole outside world -- and I've been there mind you -- the whole outside world looks at us like we're savages for leaving the sick and injured to fend for themselves.
And they're right.
You sound young. I hope you're young, because then I would understand. I used to sound like that when I was 17 too. You're echoing the books you've read pretty well, but you're not understanding the reality behind them. This is not your fault because you've had no experience with them -- yet.
But you will.
Small number of communicable diseases? There are so many communicable diseases we don't even have proper names for them all, and even if we did, Nature is cranking out new ones every day. When I was a boy, no one had ever heard of AIDS, Mad Cow Disease, MRSA, Avian Flu, H1N1, Ebola, Marburg, Hanta, Legionnaires... -- and those are just the names I can pull off the top of my head.
Why should you care about some schmoe with diabetes? Because before he dies, opportunistic infections and diseases will use his body as a factory to crank out pathogens that will eventually enter your environment. One bad apple will eventually turn them all. One sick cow will eventually cost you the herd. It is in your own selfish best interest to ensure various bacteria and viruses do not have a foothold in your community.
But let's talk about something like ALS or Huntington's, which may be purely genetic and absolutely not communicable. Let's suppose those people are simply going to die in helpless agony. Do you think their families will simply sit by and wring their hands? We can either sit by and spend fortunes on security systems, cops and cleanup to handle the inevitable headline disasters ... or we can skip the drama by writing some prescriptions. It is literally a selfish ounce of prevention vs. a pound of cure from your tax dollars.
I offer all those arguments in case you're young and ignorant of life, in the hopes that you've never even had the fairly routine experience of watching them slice your wife open to pull out your child, that you have yet to put a parent in the ground.
It makes no difference to my health whether you suffer or die from cancer, obesity, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, or heart disease,
If you've got some gray in your hair, and your heart and spirit are still this stunted, small and shriveled, then you have my pity. You're going to go to your grave feeling even more miserable, alone and afraid than you do right now.
*Sigh* OK, once again for the slow learners.
Public health is simply the sum total of private health. You understand the principle with vaccinations, and that's a good start, but you need to consider this problem more deeply. A review of the events surrounding the Black Death wouldn't hurt either.
Why should you care if your someone in your town lives in rat-infested tenements? Because the Plague can travel across town. Why should you care if some poor illegal alien comes down with the flu? Because he's going to wipe down your lunch table tomorrow. Why should you care if some homeless bum breaks his leg? Because when he comes down ill from sleeping in the gutter, and you brush past him ignoring his request for spare change, you're going to inhale some of his saliva that aerosols out of his mouth when he speaks. Why should you care if some little old lady is suffering from heart disease down the street? Because she's offering pneumonia and tuberculosis a perfect foothold into your community health.
Like it or not, your health is inextricably tied into the health of everyone else. Unlike money and cookies, this isn't a situation where you can say "Screw you I got mine."
in the 1800s there was a major disaster in the southern US.
I think they usually refer to it as the Civil War, though some of my neighbors still call it the War Against Northern Aggression.
He refused on the basis that it wasn't the governments job and private parties should rise to the occasion.
They did. We called them carpet baggers. Most of us would have preferred another visit from Sherman than to endure that horde of locusts.
The point is that that wouldn't have happened if the government had stepped in.
I heartily agree. I remember the Dust Bowl and Katrina. Good times were had by all. Whoever said it was government's job to promote the general welfare? Let's disband the National Guard, Search and Rescue, the Coast Guard and all those socialist fire departments. Surely private citizens will voluntarily acquire the heavy equipment and years of specialized training necessary to handle all major disasters. Why, just a few years ago, I remember seeing a documentary about how some geek built himself a personal suit of armor and single-handedly put an end to the war in Afghanistan. :-)
When you're ready to quit reading Ayn Rand and other comic books, and you're ready to abandon the Sarah Palin School of Reasoning where you offer events you can't remember and the quotes of Presidents you can't name as proof that you're right, perhaps you could join us in the soft green fields of reality where it takes more than your favorite EDC pocketknife and a contempt for the sheeple to handle even a problem as small as a routine house fire.
You realize you're quoting the world's first murderer, right? And the quote you're using was his lie to God that he didn't know what had happened to his dead brother.
And you're using that quote to bolster your argument that you have no duties or obligations to anyone but yourself? Apparently that sentiment even extends to "relatives and good friends" such as your wife.
From your previous post about so much as sharing your television with your wife:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2052954&cid=35607736
I meant is she doesn't like it...tell her to go into the other fucking room and watch what she wants if she doesn't like what I'm watching.
My house....my rules. If she doesn't like it...there's others out there...always...
Is it any wonder that we don't think you have the best perspective on how we as a society should cooperate to accomplish common goals?
Hello 2008! Greetings from 2011!
So good to hear from you. It's been an eventful three years. Now, I mean, right exactly now, could you please tell Japan to shore up their nuclear reactors against the possibility of a 8.biggish tsunami? Also, that Hope and Change? Yeah, not so much...
(thanks and credit to XKCD)
How do you recommend we install a clean copy of Windows, short of buying your own copy for $189.00? PC manufacturers don't even include a "recovery disk" any more, let alone a copy of the OS you just bought and paid for. Not that I disagree with you at all, but the average consumer isn't going to buy their PC for $500-1200, and then cough up $200 for a clean copy of the OS, and then another couple hundred to find someone to wipe and install it for them.
...we'll have to grab twelve random schmoes off the street to decide cases for us.