MKULTRA (an umbrella term anyway) encompassed a whole lot more that the woo-woo stuff. There were experiments done with various mind-affecting chemicals on both witting and un-witting test subjects, for instance. The full (well, as full as they're likely to have been - I don't recall if there's still stuff in the pipeline awaiting future declass) disclosures, starting with the Church committee hearings, make for some fascinating reading. I think there've been a couple rounds of materials released since then as well.
Given the amount of time and money spent on real-world things in an earnest effort to find ways and means tends to preclude at least some of the efforts from being in the full-on scam category, I should think.
Yup. We don't know what consciousness is (although we putter with operational definitions) nor how it arises. For that matter we don't exactly have a great handle on un-consciousness, either - talk to an anesthesiologist sometime. The phenomenon of hypnosis is an odd one, too.
Don't know means don't know. That some phenomena exist or are said to exist outside of what we know, and know well enough to explain, can be an interesting grey area ripe for exploration. When over the course of millenia there is a significant weight of attestation, that might be a clue that something unknown may well be happening. But un-knowing also does not justify leaping to unfounded belief, either.
(That said, and I maybe shouldn't even mention it, but way back when I experienced - well, three mutally- experienced would be closer to it - a few things for which I can as yet find no scientific explanation. All three are mentioned by kind in some of the very old surviving writings, but I never learned Sanskrit.;-) In one instance their were third-party witnesses at both ends to something happening, nature indeterminate. In the other two cases, both I and the other person knew something happened and let it go at that, making no further claims on belief about any particular this and that.)
Meanwhile I tend to go with science, while trying to keep a mind open enough to avoid bigotry and reined in enough so it doesn't all leak away.
Sorry, no. Separate tasks, separate methods. You can look up all the basics of the history easily with a few searches.
Early on there was a divergence in engineering. The commonalities were more in ablatives, control circuitry (later ICs and chips, then CPUs., guidance, and even in these, the needs diverged enough that so did those techs after a while.
While the U.S. Mercury and Gemini programs used re-built man-rated (and the IRBM, Redstone, for sub-orbital) ICBMs (Atlas and the several Titan and Titan II configurations) - because that's all we had with the necessary boost - missile development went to solid fuel (more stable for storage, very little prep for launch beyond enabling some squibs and verifying target co-ords); all the later man-rated boosters were liquid-fueled - lots of prep time, but they could be defueled and re-spotted, aborted, throttled and, later on, restarted. That decision, IIRC, was made by Ike very early on.
Further the throw weights and flight profiles were quite different, requiring substantially different designs. The space race was what it was, and it wasn't anything to do with warhead delivery. (I'm not counting FOBS; that was mutually outlawed about as swiftly as the basic capability was demonstrated. Nor do I count the armed Soviet recon stations - even they admitted it was not one of their better ideas, however nifty they were.)
Given the tenor and kind of the discussion to this point, one of the things we need is to find a sufficient common point of agreement, firmly eschew any a priori ideology, then start doing questioning and analysis based on energy flow and cost. The permanently attached rider is the question that's been central to what's passed for debate so far: what, exactly, will we do with the current and future members of our species (expected to peak ~10billions) who have no current or realistically projected place.
There's been entirely too much hand-waving away of problems; I see a lot of self-imposed blinders, based, often as not, on pre-concieved notions and comfortable prejudice. History can be a guide but in the face of something new it does not and cannot provide much of a useful map.
The elite will always do well, of course. Some take the view that this is as it should be. Perhaps we are not the human race unless a significant portion of us live in misery* (owning a cell phone while starving makes it ok, right?). Maybe that is correct, a universal truth, a necessary condition. That's a good question, I think. So it then boils down to keeping a lid on such unrest as may develop so's not to overly disturb the ritz and glitz - nor the coupon-clippers who glance at it all with bemusement. As for algae depletion, all that other stuff, well, really, that's what servants and scientists are for.
*best I can figure, throughout our history the single best-surviving yardstick of success measures having against not having - and that those that have are better able to pass on their genes and care for their young. Doesn't fly in the face of reality, but that hasn't disturbed the ideology of it a whit.
There are easily a half-dozen or so contenders but when I was a lad likely the two most common lies were "The check is in the mail." and "I'll pull out in time."
Magnets work by selective attraction, not to be confused with beer goggles. Look for the "This sign up." side.
"Maybe the IRS needs a better PR department more than it needs anything else."
That's you, and you just did a better job of it.
(I've had only a few dealings directly with IRS; in the two doozies, someone there was able to slice through the crap, provide clear answers, and resolve the situations - in one I paid, in the other the Treasury did, no hard feelings. I do feel fortunate in that I know a few people who've had greater difficulties in getting things made right. (My own experience in dealing with almost every issue with almost any company or agency is that half the solution is to be found in finding the correct person to speak with.))
SciAM October '86? I looked at the table of contents, didn't see anything obvious. So, what happened?
I do recall an article circa '88 by the three engineers at Hanford that re-built an unused research reactor in their spare time to show that with the right design one could shut off the main coolant line and have no meltdown. Guy sat in the control room, watched the temp rise for a while, then cool down over a period of three days. No damage to rods, core, etc.
Their paper was shelved and they all were transferred within six months or so.
Maybe I read a different article, but the fun I found talked about was the challenge of trying new ideas in reactor design - core geometries, fuel composition and cycle, fun stuff like that. Heck, we had a working thorium reactor for a while, but that stuff got nixed because it didn't fit with the weapons program. From Wikipedia:
"The reactor, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated critical for roughly 15000 hours from 1965 to 1969."
The guys who built that were having fun, too, exploring alternate paths to power generation. Having fun does not equate to carelessness or caprice. Having fun does not imply goofing off or screwing around. Having fun does not mean being dangerous. If having fun meant a bunch of bad stuff happens, then none of us would have survived childhood. (Presuming, of course, that one has a childhood; I wonder about the kids these days - it looks to be mostly all thumbs.)
When one is allowed to apply play with hard work, good stuff happens. I've done it with house-building, renovation, and software, as part of a crew having fun building stuff. It's... fun. I recommend it.
I get some help from friends; a lady brought me a plate of Thanksgiving supper, and another let me do laundry a few weeks back (I've been washing small stuff out in my sink all year, otherwise.) There's an Interfaith Council in town that does stuff - rides and the like, but Jesus doesn't like felons, so that's a no-go.
I wouldn't mind so much, but I'm in worse shape now than when I came home from rehab on 13 December last year - although the pain is not so acute and I can get mostly full walking motion and full weight on the foot much of the time (providing I stretch real well; the Achilles tendon and such have tightened up considerably - I've lost about an inch, have to try to get that back.) Breathing is not so good half the time, the other half it's kinda bad. [grin] I asked the lung guy if he could put in a trap door so's I could use the space freed up by the lobectomy for a stash box, but he wasn't terribly amused.
One of the things I found most hurtful in all this is that from the time I called 911 to report a blood clot to the Fire Department getting me to the ER took an hour - and I'm eight blocks from the hospital, the FD five blocks away. But no way I could have walked it with the cane, let alone add to the risk of the clot busting loose and going to lungs or elsewhere. They weren't busy that night, either - I checked. If I had had the money in my pocket I would have taken a cab. They spent twenty minutes with me in the back of the ambulance in front of my house making me answer all their questions three and more times. Every time I raised my voice in pain they started over - said I wasn't cooperating. Had they gotten me to the hospital in timely fashion the heparin might have dissolved the clot, rather than the leg sealing off. We'll never know. But this is a city of rich folks, and they purely don't like los pobres.
In all honesty I think they were waiting for me to die. Towards the end, I heard one ask the other "Is he still back there?" "Yeah." "I guess we better go, then." DVT/VTE/lung embolism kills ~300,000 per year. (So if your doc says take warfarin, change your diet, and exercise - do it. I didn't have a forewarning, albeit the bypass to the same leg in '03 should maybe have been a clue.)
Thing is, if things work out reasonably well, a lot of this - except for the COPD - is temporary, apart from risk-management via on-going drugs regimen. I know a couple of people with worse stuff that they have to deal with full time. I hate having to compare myself to someone worse off to make me feel better, tho - it's not a practice I find acceptable or likable. On the other hand, as I told my Doc, "It's my body and I want it back." She just smiled, and shook her head a little. So, what the hell. You live long enough, things start crapping out.
The rehab place was also a hospice. Was a guy there, had to have every thing done for him. They'd park him in his wheelchair in the TV alcove by one of the nursing stations for the day. Every so often, he'd just enough control to push the wheels and he'd sort of aim himself down a hallway, saying "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go." until he ran into to something, then he'd start bawling or mewling. They'd fetch him back, soothe him down. Infrequently an aide would have some spare time to wheel him around the halls. He died while I was there.
The thought of ending up like that gave me the chills, ya know? To end up, trapped, with who knows what mind left - no, no way, man. I believe that everyone should have the simple right to decide for themselves about the whole quality of life thing - and be able to check out as and when they please, or have that stipulated in a living will if that control is not directly available to them (with confirmation, if that's possible, of course). My own druthers would be to pick a time, invite my friends, have a party, and say goodbye during the festivities. It'd be one helluva wake.
Thanks for your kind wishes; much appreciated.
One thing I think I've learned, long ago, is that even tho it might not be readily visible, most folks got stuff they got to deal with, one way or the other.
And you're entirely welcome; the pleasure was mine.
"However, to say my writing varies is like saying gravity isn't uniform." Got the first good laugh of the day, thank you. No worries, you manage fine.
There seem to be two possibly diverging paths - one to cyber (mind in constructs), one to nano-stuff in a physical organic body. I can see uses for both, and possibilities for mixed-mode as well. Sci-fi has done both, and I like the story-telling along with the mind-stretch.
I'm 66 and retired; was on SSI for a year and a half, was required therefore to retire at 64. Due to previous long-term health problems, had no recent work history (I did some odd jobs and computer work off the books as I was able to get and to do) so I get the lowest amount allowed by law. State so far pays Medicaid premium.
Rent is 500/mo. for 160sq.ft; as an apartment it kinda sucks but if I regard it as a tourist-class cabin on a liner it's "charming". Best deal based on needs and availability in this city. With a felony conviction, rules out subsidized/senior housing; county says I qualify for nothing they might offer.
So far this year doctor's appointments, blood draws to monitor stuff, a third op on leg (had a DVT with compartmentation and two ops to save the leg, what's left of it), another for lung cancer, consults with ortho, dentist, heart guy, and the two surgeons, X-rays, various CT, PET, and MRI scans, the ops themselves, picking up scripts (opioids can't be phoned in) and picking up meds, I'm out 1000. Add another 500 for getting groceries and whatnot. Plus co-pays, but who's counting. Luckily almost all those locations were in the cheap zone for my discount cab fare, 4 bucks one-way, some were 12, one 16.
This month, for instance, after paying for Internet access and cell, and minus what I've already shelled out, I have 59 left over for buying personal and household supplies and trips to supermarket for those supplies and groceries, (in cheap zone for cab or using a ride service, round trips anywhere I normally go come to 8 bucks), picking up scripts, taking them to pharmacy, picking up meds. So far I've had to cancel one doctor's appointment and put off three tests and three follow-up consults (the leg and lung cutters want to see me, as does the heart guy). Next month if things work out I should be able to schedule all the scans and blood draws for the same day at the hospital. Don't know about the rest yet. Merry Christmas.
But don't misunderstand, please. I'm indoors out of the rain, have heat and electricity and reasonably clean water, and nobody's shooting at me, so I am grateful for what I do have.
(And somewhere along the way I want to try to get a monitor to replace the one that died, so's I can use my '09 home-built tower instead of the old laptop I picked up that year.)
A year ago all the meds issued on the same date so if everything worked I could do the whole shebang in one trip (with a wait time of usually 4-6 hours at pharmacy). Now, with changes to meds, insurance and pharmacy problems with attendant delays, and delays owing to personal indisposition, it takes five trips. Since neither doctor, pharmacy, nor insurance pharmacy clearing office will work to rationalize things, I'm reducing or skipping meds so as to get everything back on the same date. Saving even 30/mo is critical just now.
I'm still on crutches, and although I can walk OK on a good day, cannot stand long enough (swelling->pain->loss of consciousness; it's only been the last few months I could sit with both feet on the floor for brief periods) to wait at a bus stop (I can get a half-fare senior/disabled card and would be able to get to a few places, taking better part a day back and forth).
Forget I brought up the whole assumptions thing, OK? It was meta-level stuff anyway. It's obvious there's a communications breakdown, and I can't think how to fix it, sorry. I never said or even meant to imply that it was about me.
I agree with your assessment. For me, the kicker, and greatest criterion, is the welfare and health of the patient above and before all else. Too much these days (again, from personal experience, in addition to what I've seen with others and have read) is influenced over-much by admin rules, liability risk assessment driving those policies, and Medicare restrictions (as a for instance, if I had the money I would be prescribed situational and likely sleep supplemental oxygen given that most of my SpO2 is below 95 and upon waking is often below 90. Medicare won't touch you until your readings are below 88 or 89 depending on one's case. All the literature (NIH, Mayo, NHS, etc.) all either suggest or outright state that there are systemic effects of debilitation that start below 93-95, as well as bad effects to vision and heart (I'm also high-risk for ischemic events.) In hospital, when they see 93 then you're put on oxygen stat, especially post-op. Welcome to the modern world of health care.)
If various well-researched and proven electrical stimulation works, it'd be a boon, if for no other reason than to be able to avoid the inescapable side effects of medicaments. Even if those side effects are mild they're still there and still put some kind of strain on the system. What we don't yet know, from what I've read, is what if any side effects are observed with the elec-stim.
One thing that might help - find a Windows program to your liking (one most compatible with your needs and usage) and run it in a Windows virtual machine. I suggest using Virtualbox as it's free and easy to set up and use. Playing sound from it or through to your Linux host should both work OK. Requires spare Windows OS and key.
Doing it this way would let you have the greater selection of programs.
Years back I used iTunes on my first XP install (upgrade from 98SE) and it worked, albeit the GUI interface was kinda clunky. Bought some music and a few movies. That was years back and several Windows and Linux installs ago - and I've no idea how to go about getting to my old stuff off of there. Ditto for the music I bought from MSN and Walmart - the keyfiles are long gone and the servers gone as well. I'm out a couple of hundred dollars. Doesn't help I was homeless and without a system during the time they allowed one to get their files. Live and learn: don't get locked in; download your stuff; make backups - lots of backups. Above all, don't buy anything that you're not allowed to own. (I run XP in a vm as a convenience, but I don't forget that one doesn't buy Windows, one leases the privilege of using it.)
As I understand it, fast-tracking changes some of that. It side-steps the formal treaty process by calling it a legislative-executive agreement. Fast-tracking has already been asked for the TPP, and the same approach is planned for the Atlantic version.
I am sorry to learn of your loss. Several friends of mine are in similar straits. I'm too far down the demographic ladder, living two steps up from homeless (first is living at a shelter, second is having "a place to call one's own". Rent is two-thirds my income; half the rest has gone for transportation - and two-thirds of that for medical appointments. At 80% of poverty level, it gets interesting. I worked hard, I tried to do what's right. Shit happened.)
The "we" is everyone involved in the social contract. Sorry it wasn't obvious. Anyway, the discussion will never happen, so it's moot. We were taught that generally one does not build upon sand (although there ways to do so, ditto permafrost and ice.) I was trying to suggest that we (yes, often more our masters) have built ourselves a set of systems upon un-examined assumptions - beyond the operative one of might making right. So, again, a moot point.
Hope against hope, I keep hoping people might somehow magically recognize sarcasm. That lack may stem from the simple fact that most people don't read books anymore and have so little perspective or even basic knowledge of the use of language. Good luck.
So now we have TPP and later the same for Atlantic-side. (TPP just finished up another round of secret talks recently, here in the U.S.) You thought ACTA or SOPA and the like were bad? TPP is akin to SOPA on steroids, and initially involves some twelve of the big players trans-Asia.
These days I'm left wondering how one would even go about trying to define "sane government".
If in some parts of the world people start making unlocked computers, what do you think the chances are that you'll be able to get one in the U.S. or any of the other signatories?
I'm no fan of plagiarism whether in code or elsewhere but when patents can be issued and asserted against the kinds of things any programmer will do naturally in the real world or the classroom it becomes just another grab for power and extortion. With no offense to those here or my friends who make a living writing code for their clients, this kind of patent crapola is but one more thing that increases my liking for open-source code.
I don't have the assays handy and I'm not an ores or metals guy anyway, but if the various metallic ores on the Moon are of a nature that they'd be easier to smelt and refine that'd be a plus. If mining and refining can be scaled up and use the freely-available solar energy, then the issue boils down to cost of return.
Using anything from hydrogen-oxygen to mass driver, return of bulk would only need an ablative shield against re-entry. Better might be doing other useful things as well - use the metals to build a tug for LEO, LEO to GEO, and trans-lunar chores, for starters. It really shouldn't take much - a wee bit of imagination (extrapolation, really), some cold hard energy and costs analysis....it's just rocket science with a bit of a twist on materials exploitation.
Yeah, the food thing. What got me was when a few years back when many retailers made their containers smaller to as to keep price rises less spectacular. The thought of all that re-tooling against turning a wheel on a sticker machine struck me as really messed up.
Don't need near as much energy to return as to get there. Has little to do with distance or load - it'a all about time and delta-v and relative sizes of gravity wells.
Quibble: I'm old enough such that the plural of conveyances on or under water, in air or space, is craft. I first saw the plural "aircraft" around age six, and in sixty years have never had difficulty discerning singular and plural from context. YMMV, of course. I find it as idiotic a practice as with a youth selling me binoculars describing them as being "ten-ex" instead of "ten-power."
Thirty years and hitting the sauce, not the best of odds, but hey, go for it. (I was lucky, back mid-Eighties after twenty years of hard drinking; about the only thing that hadn't been adversely affected was my liver. Go figure.)
"I don't think I'm smarter than the average person, just smart enough to observe our species' behaviour.. and despair." If you can provide for your physical needs, then it's just an uncomfortable state of mind. If your situation is worse, then it gets really annoying, trending to flat-out bad, going by personal experience.
Like many a tool, if what these guys have found gets used, some of the uses will be ungood. But for someone caught up in a situation that by most lights just needs for them to apply a little extra oomph, might be a good thing - with consent, of course.
The augmented remote brain - some interesting choices to be had. I wonder to what extent use of one or more expanded senses might have on psyche. One way to find out....
I've been thinking of the dis-embodied consciousness bit on and off for a while, having first met it in some sci-fi from maybe forty years ago. Lately there's been Dmitry Itskov and his 2045 Initiative. On one hand, I'm fascinated, on another, a bit chilled. Yet, the thought that as we get older and maybe, just maybe, a bit wiser, get a few things figured out, perhaps get a better idea of what one wants to do with his life, his body starts crapping out and it's time to die, seems wasteful, and the possibility to continue, with what one might hope integrity of personality, is very intriguing.
(I do believe that I've used up my commas for the year. Sorry 'bout that.)
In re-reading my last post I notice my tone got a bit testy among other things - I apologize, as I do for the tardiness of reply due to stuff getting in the way.
Aaargh, I hate those kinds of color-coded graphs; they're pretty, but with having a good bit of red-green color blindness... I mean, peanut butter is green. Well, isn't it? [grin] I found this, first result, which gives the same numbers in an easier to see and grasp way - I hope you'll find it OK: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 and there are others. A while back, Randall Munroe over at xkcd.com put together his money chart, which I found illuminating. http://xkcd.com/980/
I don't dispute these figures at all, but I thank you for pointing them out.
What I refer to, tho, is the stuff that doesn't so easily show up, often because it's obscure - weird labeling, inclusion as an innocuously-named line-item in some bill, what have you. I just did a search on "corporate welfare" - dive in anywhere, really. The Cato Institute, whence comes the fine graph you present on income distribution, seems to show up a lot, as does cbpp.org. Did I have the time to get into it now, I'd want to get at more of the source data, much of which comes from government. I don't advance any particular search result as proof, but maybe evidence, and certainly entry for further delving.
Corporate stuff comes in many flavors, going back to the no-tax wild-catting during WWII to things I see in my area such as "If you don't cut our taxes in half, we're moving to $some_place_else." (The latter is considered by most to be entirely proper business practice; I can say only that it often leaves a bad taste in my mind. We've seen examples of how some of this works externally and internally going back to United Fruit and others over a hundred years ago, to the Seven Sisters from the '50s to present day, and so on. As some big companies become multi-national, some of these are becoming, trans-national, and wielding power greater than many nations. It's just business. The ramifications for policy and taxation in any one country get more problematic at best.)
Re automation - no, don't mean it Luddite-way. I just think there are some real shifts in the making. Best I can reckon, the U.S. never fully recovered just from the automation stuff starting in the automotive industry. Yes, new jobs are created by new technologies. My contention is that increasingly there will be fewer of those new jobs than those displaced - and that this combines with the simple reality that an increasing number of people will be at their own limits of being able to be educated and trained to do the new jobs, let alone possess the basic blend of abilities needed for service jobs such as burger-flipping (robotic, soon) or janitor work. (Funny, that; in hospital I saw the cleaning ladies work hard and well, but they were trained by someone who doesn't know shit from Shinola - simple, easy, quick, and _effective_ areas are missed, because the training idiot is functionally blind to what cleaning is and why it's to be done. If the robots that eventually take over much basic cleaning aren't properly programmed, that situation will not change. I'd hazard to guess that both of us have seen plenty of examples of things designed and built or programmed that are obviously not used by their vendors, because they just don't work well or easily.)
"Such government programs tend to work in the short term; but they fail in the long term as people learn how to game the system." Absolutely. Concur. Agree. Right on.
Re Congress. Nope, not central planning. Their responsibility for levies, taxes, budgets does have a bit of effect in that direction, but that's not the point. The point is they've been avoiding some issues while fiddling the numbers here and there, gaming the system for the advantage of themselves, their party, and their funders, rather than for the good of
Yeah, that's why I suggest making it a button to click, to see what one might be missing from within one's own de facto silo (no matter how diligent one might be in seeking diverging views, it's also something we can easily not do well.) As for probs with source, good data, all that, we already have that problem. Gimme a button, lemme see what I might not, otherwise. In the end I'll choose what to read. Having more from which to choose seems a good thing, albeit requiring me to make more decisions - but that's already part of the normal day's load in skimming the news and tech sites.
Nope, dunno. Without swab and such, no way to find out. Personally I think it would be of service to do so, but the matter of expensive time and testing would likely be brought up as a bar to it.
Generally, as I understand it, if sterile extends to what contacts the patient, all else is sanitized (this means knocking down any critter population to a level that is inconsequential (based on averages, perhaps, although that's a more forgiving measure than I'm prepared to accept out of hand), the basic isolation and shielding done viz. clothing and such, and decent air filtration ought by rights, one might think, be sufficient.
That it's not should maybe be looked into, I suggest. In real life nosocomials are more than trivially pesky, but if one thinks about the hospital as a place where you go to get an infection, they're downright silly to put up with.
Little things - having a pair of shoes worn only in the OR, kept in segregated locker space, might be good. I think some places do that - I've never asked and most people are too damn busy to answer stuff like that. Taking a post-shower nude UV bath might be good before donning clean scrubs, but what of those who are in the OR for five or six procedures per day? I can think of a number of possibles but don't know how they'd work out in real life. I think that bit of ignorance on my part should preclude the discussion, tho.
I'm only guessing but suspect most hospitals work within a set of guidelines and do their own cost-risk-benefit analysis. How good that is, and how inclusive (debility, readmission, fatality one thread to examine; there are others) I don't know. I rather suspect that bean-counters and lawyers make the final determination as to what is or isn't done. It's science-based, doncha know. (Too bad, no sarcasm tag.)
Well, let's see. OASDI was fucked over by Congress in the '70s because it was easier for them to do that than to perform their fiscal responsibilities...responsibly. They needed to raise revenue and control spending and they did neither. Just for grins, in the last twenty years I don't recall a single congressman even acknowledging either of those things - and of course they've never paid back what amounted to a bond against the fund. What I regard it as is true, as is the fiscal irresponsibility.
Christ on a crutch, all you have to do is look at the budget. It's all there. Helps if you've watched some of this, because as is the norm, so much gets hidden, tucked away in clauses inside otherwise unrelated legislation. Lots of law gets hidden inside simple things such as pay raises for circuit court judges and the like. Go back to the original legislated bits and then follow (or try to, it can get snaky real quickly) the money - where it's apportioned and where the payments come from. It's a non-trivial task. A bit of search-fu (yours no doubt better than mine) leads to some people who've been keeping a bit of track on this.
(I apologize for not having lots of links and cites. It's my own fault - a couple of dead drives over the years not fully backed up; a currently inaccessible couple of drives in my tower - I don't have a spare sys, nor an adapter to let me read what I might have on them that would be pertinent. So I'm in the nasty position of making assertions based on my own observations and memories over the past forty years. Again, I apologize, and again, the info is all there - it's just that some of it is now hard to find. You'll note that people in Congress are not entirely forthcoming - I try to think of it as one of their charms, screwing up things while helping out corporate buddies who shower them with lucrative and undemanding board positions upon retirement, just as is done in the main corporate and financial sectors. From what I can gather, it's fun to be at the top despite the pesky rules and occasional awkward questions.)
Re farm subs - the original stuff worked, to an extent, and the incentives weren't bad. When it morphed from the individual family subsistence farmer to corporate and factory farming is went it went off the rails and became the monster we know and love. It needs to be shut down.
As for other individuals, offering things such as re-training and education have their place, I think, if it's done well. ("if it's done well" - aye, the rub) Frankly, we'd likely be far better off simply to do a negative income tax or guaranteed annual stipend - it'd be much simpler and also save a lot of money, including bureaucratic overhead. Those proposals, with hard numbers and good analysis are readily available.
"we're healthier, wealthier, and better educated than we have ever been before" for some reason reminds me of Galbraith's "Money: Whence it came and where it went." _Some_ are healthier, wealthier, and better educated (although I'll challenge that last - merely having more schooling does not equate to better knowledge of the world around). The trappings of a few consumer goods - TV, maybe a car, some shiny even for many of the poor does not equate to a better life either. Someone in another thread said because poor people can get a pre-paid cell for twenty bucks means they're better off now than then. Aaargh. If you look at income distribution alone, the fact of the shrinking middle class ought to be a sufficient sign.
We've continually put more of life in terms of money, somehow equating having more money with magically having a better life. What's lost is the examination of value, price, and real costs, not to mention true leisure and its attendant activities. I contend that the beetling focus on money alone is a blind and dead end. Along the way it distracts from and destroys our willingness and ability to see things in any other terms, to the detriment of us all. And meanwhile, of course, we have to deal with a skewed nation
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MKULTRA (an umbrella term anyway) encompassed a whole lot more that the woo-woo stuff. There were experiments done with various mind-affecting chemicals on both witting and un-witting test subjects, for instance. The full (well, as full as they're likely to have been - I don't recall if there's still stuff in the pipeline awaiting future declass) disclosures, starting with the Church committee hearings, make for some fascinating reading. I think there've been a couple rounds of materials released since then as well.
Given the amount of time and money spent on real-world things in an earnest effort to find ways and means tends to preclude at least some of the efforts from being in the full-on scam category, I should think.
Yup. We don't know what consciousness is (although we putter with operational definitions) nor how it arises. For that matter we don't exactly have a great handle on un-consciousness, either - talk to an anesthesiologist sometime. The phenomenon of hypnosis is an odd one, too.
Don't know means don't know. That some phenomena exist or are said to exist outside of what we know, and know well enough to explain, can be an interesting grey area ripe for exploration. When over the course of millenia there is a significant weight of attestation, that might be a clue that something unknown may well be happening. But un-knowing also does not justify leaping to unfounded belief, either.
(That said, and I maybe shouldn't even mention it, but way back when I experienced - well, three mutally- experienced would be closer to it - a few things for which I can as yet find no scientific explanation. All three are mentioned by kind in some of the very old surviving writings, but I never learned Sanskrit. ;-) In one instance their were third-party witnesses at both ends to something happening, nature indeterminate. In the other two cases, both I and the other person knew something happened and let it go at that, making no further claims on belief about any particular this and that.)
Meanwhile I tend to go with science, while trying to keep a mind open enough to avoid bigotry and reined in enough so it doesn't all leak away.
"Actually most of the interest was in ICBMs."
Sorry, no. Separate tasks, separate methods. You can look up all the basics of the history easily with a few searches.
Early on there was a divergence in engineering. The commonalities were more in ablatives, control circuitry (later ICs and chips, then CPUs., guidance, and even in these, the needs diverged enough that so did those techs after a while.
While the U.S. Mercury and Gemini programs used re-built man-rated (and the IRBM, Redstone, for sub-orbital) ICBMs (Atlas and the several Titan and Titan II configurations) - because that's all we had with the necessary boost - missile development went to solid fuel (more stable for storage, very little prep for launch beyond enabling some squibs and verifying target co-ords); all the later man-rated boosters were liquid-fueled - lots of prep time, but they could be defueled and re-spotted, aborted, throttled and, later on, restarted. That decision, IIRC, was made by Ike very early on.
Further the throw weights and flight profiles were quite different, requiring substantially different designs. The space race was what it was, and it wasn't anything to do with warhead delivery. (I'm not counting FOBS; that was mutually outlawed about as swiftly as the basic capability was demonstrated. Nor do I count the armed Soviet recon stations - even they admitted it was not one of their better ideas, however nifty they were.)
Given the tenor and kind of the discussion to this point, one of the things we need is to find a sufficient common point of agreement, firmly eschew any a priori ideology, then start doing questioning and analysis based on energy flow and cost. The permanently attached rider is the question that's been central to what's passed for debate so far: what, exactly, will we do with the current and future members of our species (expected to peak ~10billions) who have no current or realistically projected place.
There's been entirely too much hand-waving away of problems; I see a lot of self-imposed blinders, based, often as not, on pre-concieved notions and comfortable prejudice. History can be a guide but in the face of something new it does not and cannot provide much of a useful map.
The elite will always do well, of course. Some take the view that this is as it should be. Perhaps we are not the human race unless a significant portion of us live in misery* (owning a cell phone while starving makes it ok, right?). Maybe that is correct, a universal truth, a necessary condition. That's a good question, I think. So it then boils down to keeping a lid on such unrest as may develop so's not to overly disturb the ritz and glitz - nor the coupon-clippers who glance at it all with bemusement. As for algae depletion, all that other stuff, well, really, that's what servants and scientists are for.
*best I can figure, throughout our history the single best-surviving yardstick of success measures having against not having - and that those that have are better able to pass on their genes and care for their young. Doesn't fly in the face of reality, but that hasn't disturbed the ideology of it a whit.
There are easily a half-dozen or so contenders but when I was a lad likely the two most common lies were "The check is in the mail." and "I'll pull out in time."
Magnets work by selective attraction, not to be confused with beer goggles. Look for the "This sign up." side.
"Maybe the IRS needs a better PR department more than it needs anything else."
That's you, and you just did a better job of it.
(I've had only a few dealings directly with IRS; in the two doozies, someone there was able to slice through the crap, provide clear answers, and resolve the situations - in one I paid, in the other the Treasury did, no hard feelings. I do feel fortunate in that I know a few people who've had greater difficulties in getting things made right. (My own experience in dealing with almost every issue with almost any company or agency is that half the solution is to be found in finding the correct person to speak with.))
SciAM October '86? I looked at the table of contents, didn't see anything obvious. So, what happened?
I do recall an article circa '88 by the three engineers at Hanford that re-built an unused research reactor in their spare time to show that with the right design one could shut off the main coolant line and have no meltdown. Guy sat in the control room, watched the temp rise for a while, then cool down over a period of three days. No damage to rods, core, etc.
Their paper was shelved and they all were transferred within six months or so.
Maybe I read a different article, but the fun I found talked about was the challenge of trying new ideas in reactor design - core geometries, fuel composition and cycle, fun stuff like that. Heck, we had a working thorium reactor for a while, but that stuff got nixed because it didn't fit with the weapons program. From Wikipedia:
"The reactor, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated critical for roughly 15000 hours from 1965 to 1969."
Full article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power. Glenn Seaborg figured we'd be using thorium long ere now; even good ol' Eddie "H-Boom" Teller is in favor of using thorium.
The guys who built that were having fun, too, exploring alternate paths to power generation. Having fun does not equate to carelessness or caprice. Having fun does not imply goofing off or screwing around. Having fun does not mean being dangerous. If having fun meant a bunch of bad stuff happens, then none of us would have survived childhood. (Presuming, of course, that one has a childhood; I wonder about the kids these days - it looks to be mostly all thumbs.)
When one is allowed to apply play with hard work, good stuff happens. I've done it with house-building, renovation, and software, as part of a crew having fun building stuff. It's... fun. I recommend it.
I get some help from friends; a lady brought me a plate of Thanksgiving supper, and another let me do laundry a few weeks back (I've been washing small stuff out in my sink all year, otherwise.) There's an Interfaith Council in town that does stuff - rides and the like, but Jesus doesn't like felons, so that's a no-go.
I wouldn't mind so much, but I'm in worse shape now than when I came home from rehab on 13 December last year - although the pain is not so acute and I can get mostly full walking motion and full weight on the foot much of the time (providing I stretch real well; the Achilles tendon and such have tightened up considerably - I've lost about an inch, have to try to get that back.) Breathing is not so good half the time, the other half it's kinda bad. [grin] I asked the lung guy if he could put in a trap door so's I could use the space freed up by the lobectomy for a stash box, but he wasn't terribly amused.
One of the things I found most hurtful in all this is that from the time I called 911 to report a blood clot to the Fire Department getting me to the ER took an hour - and I'm eight blocks from the hospital, the FD five blocks away. But no way I could have walked it with the cane, let alone add to the risk of the clot busting loose and going to lungs or elsewhere. They weren't busy that night, either - I checked. If I had had the money in my pocket I would have taken a cab. They spent twenty minutes with me in the back of the ambulance in front of my house making me answer all their questions three and more times. Every time I raised my voice in pain they started over - said I wasn't cooperating. Had they gotten me to the hospital in timely fashion the heparin might have dissolved the clot, rather than the leg sealing off. We'll never know. But this is a city of rich folks, and they purely don't like los pobres.
In all honesty I think they were waiting for me to die. Towards the end, I heard one ask the other "Is he still back there?" "Yeah." "I guess we better go, then." DVT/VTE/lung embolism kills ~300,000 per year. (So if your doc says take warfarin, change your diet, and exercise - do it. I didn't have a forewarning, albeit the bypass to the same leg in '03 should maybe have been a clue.)
Thing is, if things work out reasonably well, a lot of this - except for the COPD - is temporary, apart from risk-management via on-going drugs regimen. I know a couple of people with worse stuff that they have to deal with full time. I hate having to compare myself to someone worse off to make me feel better, tho - it's not a practice I find acceptable or likable. On the other hand, as I told my Doc, "It's my body and I want it back." She just smiled, and shook her head a little. So, what the hell. You live long enough, things start crapping out.
The rehab place was also a hospice. Was a guy there, had to have every thing done for him. They'd park him in his wheelchair in the TV alcove by one of the nursing stations for the day. Every so often, he'd just enough control to push the wheels and he'd sort of aim himself down a hallway, saying "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go." until he ran into to something, then he'd start bawling or mewling. They'd fetch him back, soothe him down. Infrequently an aide would have some spare time to wheel him around the halls. He died while I was there.
The thought of ending up like that gave me the chills, ya know? To end up, trapped, with who knows what mind left - no, no way, man. I believe that everyone should have the simple right to decide for themselves about the whole quality of life thing - and be able to check out as and when they please, or have that stipulated in a living will if that control is not directly available to them (with confirmation, if that's possible, of course). My own druthers would be to pick a time, invite my friends, have a party, and say goodbye during the festivities. It'd be one helluva wake.
Thanks for your kind wishes; much appreciated.
One thing I think I've learned, long ago, is that even tho it might not be readily visible, most folks got stuff they got to deal with, one way or the other.
And you're entirely welcome; the pleasure was mine.
"However, to say my writing varies is like saying gravity isn't uniform." Got the first good laugh of the day, thank you. No worries, you manage fine.
There seem to be two possibly diverging paths - one to cyber (mind in constructs), one to nano-stuff in a physical organic body. I can see uses for both, and possibilities for mixed-mode as well. Sci-fi has done both, and I like the story-telling along with the mind-stretch.
Yeah, aina?
At least those are homonyms; one that boggles me is where for were - how the Holy hell do they get that?
I'm 66 and retired; was on SSI for a year and a half, was required therefore to retire at 64. Due to previous long-term health problems, had no recent work history (I did some odd jobs and computer work off the books as I was able to get and to do) so I get the lowest amount allowed by law. State so far pays Medicaid premium.
Rent is 500/mo. for 160sq.ft; as an apartment it kinda sucks but if I regard it as a tourist-class cabin on a liner it's "charming". Best deal based on needs and availability in this city. With a felony conviction, rules out subsidized/senior housing; county says I qualify for nothing they might offer.
So far this year doctor's appointments, blood draws to monitor stuff, a third op on leg (had a DVT with compartmentation and two ops to save the leg, what's left of it), another for lung cancer, consults with ortho, dentist, heart guy, and the two surgeons, X-rays, various CT, PET, and MRI scans, the ops themselves, picking up scripts (opioids can't be phoned in) and picking up meds, I'm out 1000. Add another 500 for getting groceries and whatnot. Plus co-pays, but who's counting. Luckily almost all those locations were in the cheap zone for my discount cab fare, 4 bucks one-way, some were 12, one 16.
This month, for instance, after paying for Internet access and cell, and minus what I've already shelled out, I have 59 left over for buying personal and household supplies and trips to supermarket for those supplies and groceries, (in cheap zone for cab or using a ride service, round trips anywhere I normally go come to 8 bucks), picking up scripts, taking them to pharmacy, picking up meds. So far I've had to cancel one doctor's appointment and put off three tests and three follow-up consults (the leg and lung cutters want to see me, as does the heart guy). Next month if things work out I should be able to schedule all the scans and blood draws for the same day at the hospital. Don't know about the rest yet. Merry Christmas.
But don't misunderstand, please. I'm indoors out of the rain, have heat and electricity and reasonably clean water, and nobody's shooting at me, so I am grateful for what I do have.
(And somewhere along the way I want to try to get a monitor to replace the one that died, so's I can use my '09 home-built tower instead of the old laptop I picked up that year.)
A year ago all the meds issued on the same date so if everything worked I could do the whole shebang in one trip (with a wait time of usually 4-6 hours at pharmacy). Now, with changes to meds, insurance and pharmacy problems with attendant delays, and delays owing to personal indisposition, it takes five trips. Since neither doctor, pharmacy, nor insurance pharmacy clearing office will work to rationalize things, I'm reducing or skipping meds so as to get everything back on the same date. Saving even 30/mo is critical just now.
I'm still on crutches, and although I can walk OK on a good day, cannot stand long enough (swelling->pain->loss of consciousness; it's only been the last few months I could sit with both feet on the floor for brief periods) to wait at a bus stop (I can get a half-fare senior/disabled card and would be able to get to a few places, taking better part a day back and forth).
Forget I brought up the whole assumptions thing, OK? It was meta-level stuff anyway. It's obvious there's a communications breakdown, and I can't think how to fix it, sorry. I never said or even meant to imply that it was about me.
I agree with your assessment. For me, the kicker, and greatest criterion, is the welfare and health of the patient above and before all else. Too much these days (again, from personal experience, in addition to what I've seen with others and have read) is influenced over-much by admin rules, liability risk assessment driving those policies, and Medicare restrictions (as a for instance, if I had the money I would be prescribed situational and likely sleep supplemental oxygen given that most of my SpO2 is below 95 and upon waking is often below 90. Medicare won't touch you until your readings are below 88 or 89 depending on one's case. All the literature (NIH, Mayo, NHS, etc.) all either suggest or outright state that there are systemic effects of debilitation that start below 93-95, as well as bad effects to vision and heart (I'm also high-risk for ischemic events.) In hospital, when they see 93 then you're put on oxygen stat, especially post-op. Welcome to the modern world of health care.)
If various well-researched and proven electrical stimulation works, it'd be a boon, if for no other reason than to be able to avoid the inescapable side effects of medicaments. Even if those side effects are mild they're still there and still put some kind of strain on the system. What we don't yet know, from what I've read, is what if any side effects are observed with the elec-stim.
One thing that might help - find a Windows program to your liking (one most compatible with your needs and usage) and run it in a Windows virtual machine. I suggest using Virtualbox as it's free and easy to set up and use. Playing sound from it or through to your Linux host should both work OK. Requires spare Windows OS and key.
Doing it this way would let you have the greater selection of programs.
Years back I used iTunes on my first XP install (upgrade from 98SE) and it worked, albeit the GUI interface was kinda clunky. Bought some music and a few movies. That was years back and several Windows and Linux installs ago - and I've no idea how to go about getting to my old stuff off of there. Ditto for the music I bought from MSN and Walmart - the keyfiles are long gone and the servers gone as well. I'm out a couple of hundred dollars. Doesn't help I was homeless and without a system during the time they allowed one to get their files. Live and learn: don't get locked in; download your stuff; make backups - lots of backups. Above all, don't buy anything that you're not allowed to own. (I run XP in a vm as a convenience, but I don't forget that one doesn't buy Windows, one leases the privilege of using it.)
As I understand it, fast-tracking changes some of that. It side-steps the formal treaty process by calling it a legislative-executive agreement. Fast-tracking has already been asked for the TPP, and the same approach is planned for the Atlantic version.
I am sorry to learn of your loss. Several friends of mine are in similar straits. I'm too far down the demographic ladder, living two steps up from homeless (first is living at a shelter, second is having "a place to call one's own". Rent is two-thirds my income; half the rest has gone for transportation - and two-thirds of that for medical appointments. At 80% of poverty level, it gets interesting. I worked hard, I tried to do what's right. Shit happened.)
The "we" is everyone involved in the social contract. Sorry it wasn't obvious. Anyway, the discussion will never happen, so it's moot. We were taught that generally one does not build upon sand (although there ways to do so, ditto permafrost and ice.) I was trying to suggest that we (yes, often more our masters) have built ourselves a set of systems upon un-examined assumptions - beyond the operative one of might making right. So, again, a moot point.
Good luck to you.
Hope against hope, I keep hoping people might somehow magically recognize sarcasm. That lack may stem from the simple fact that most people don't read books anymore and have so little perspective or even basic knowledge of the use of language. Good luck.
So now we have TPP and later the same for Atlantic-side. (TPP just finished up another round of secret talks recently, here in the U.S.) You thought ACTA or SOPA and the like were bad? TPP is akin to SOPA on steroids, and initially involves some twelve of the big players trans-Asia.
These days I'm left wondering how one would even go about trying to define "sane government".
If in some parts of the world people start making unlocked computers, what do you think the chances are that you'll be able to get one in the U.S. or any of the other signatories?
I'm no fan of plagiarism whether in code or elsewhere but when patents can be issued and asserted against the kinds of things any programmer will do naturally in the real world or the classroom it becomes just another grab for power and extortion. With no offense to those here or my friends who make a living writing code for their clients, this kind of patent crapola is but one more thing that increases my liking for open-source code.
I don't have the assays handy and I'm not an ores or metals guy anyway, but if the various metallic ores on the Moon are of a nature that they'd be easier to smelt and refine that'd be a plus. If mining and refining can be scaled up and use the freely-available solar energy, then the issue boils down to cost of return.
Using anything from hydrogen-oxygen to mass driver, return of bulk would only need an ablative shield against re-entry. Better might be doing other useful things as well - use the metals to build a tug for LEO, LEO to GEO, and trans-lunar chores, for starters. It really shouldn't take much - a wee bit of imagination (extrapolation, really), some cold hard energy and costs analysis....it's just rocket science with a bit of a twist on materials exploitation.
Yeah, the food thing. What got me was when a few years back when many retailers made their containers smaller to as to keep price rises less spectacular. The thought of all that re-tooling against turning a wheel on a sticker machine struck me as really messed up.
Don't need near as much energy to return as to get there. Has little to do with distance or load - it'a all about time and delta-v and relative sizes of gravity wells.
Quibble: I'm old enough such that the plural of conveyances on or under water, in air or space, is craft. I first saw the plural "aircraft" around age six, and in sixty years have never had difficulty discerning singular and plural from context. YMMV, of course. I find it as idiotic a practice as with a youth selling me binoculars describing them as being "ten-ex" instead of "ten-power."
Thirty years and hitting the sauce, not the best of odds, but hey, go for it. (I was lucky, back mid-Eighties after twenty years of hard drinking; about the only thing that hadn't been adversely affected was my liver. Go figure.)
"I don't think I'm smarter than the average person, just smart enough to observe our species' behaviour.. and despair." If you can provide for your physical needs, then it's just an uncomfortable state of mind. If your situation is worse, then it gets really annoying, trending to flat-out bad, going by personal experience.
Like many a tool, if what these guys have found gets used, some of the uses will be ungood. But for someone caught up in a situation that by most lights just needs for them to apply a little extra oomph, might be a good thing - with consent, of course.
jd, you rascal. Some neat engineering there.
The augmented remote brain - some interesting choices to be had. I wonder to what extent use of one or more expanded senses might have on psyche. One way to find out....
I've been thinking of the dis-embodied consciousness bit on and off for a while, having first met it in some sci-fi from maybe forty years ago. Lately there's been Dmitry Itskov and his 2045 Initiative. On one hand, I'm fascinated, on another, a bit chilled. Yet, the thought that as we get older and maybe, just maybe, a bit wiser, get a few things figured out, perhaps get a better idea of what one wants to do with his life, his body starts crapping out and it's time to die, seems wasteful, and the possibility to continue, with what one might hope integrity of personality, is very intriguing.
(I do believe that I've used up my commas for the year. Sorry 'bout that.)
In re-reading my last post I notice my tone got a bit testy among other things - I apologize, as I do for the tardiness of reply due to stuff getting in the way.
Aaargh, I hate those kinds of color-coded graphs; they're pretty, but with having a good bit of red-green color blindness... I mean, peanut butter is green. Well, isn't it? [grin] I found this, first result, which gives the same numbers in an easier to see and grasp way - I hope you'll find it OK: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 and there are others. A while back, Randall Munroe over at xkcd.com put together his money chart, which I found illuminating. http://xkcd.com/980/
I don't dispute these figures at all, but I thank you for pointing them out.
What I refer to, tho, is the stuff that doesn't so easily show up, often because it's obscure - weird labeling, inclusion as an innocuously-named line-item in some bill, what have you. I just did a search on "corporate welfare" - dive in anywhere, really. The Cato Institute, whence comes the fine graph you present on income distribution, seems to show up a lot, as does cbpp.org. Did I have the time to get into it now, I'd want to get at more of the source data, much of which comes from government. I don't advance any particular search result as proof, but maybe evidence, and certainly entry for further delving.
Corporate stuff comes in many flavors, going back to the no-tax wild-catting during WWII to things I see in my area such as "If you don't cut our taxes in half, we're moving to $some_place_else." (The latter is considered by most to be entirely proper business practice; I can say only that it often leaves a bad taste in my mind. We've seen examples of how some of this works externally and internally going back to United Fruit and others over a hundred years ago, to the Seven Sisters from the '50s to present day, and so on. As some big companies become multi-national, some of these are becoming, trans-national, and wielding power greater than many nations. It's just business. The ramifications for policy and taxation in any one country get more problematic at best.)
Re automation - no, don't mean it Luddite-way. I just think there are some real shifts in the making. Best I can reckon, the U.S. never fully recovered just from the automation stuff starting in the automotive industry. Yes, new jobs are created by new technologies. My contention is that increasingly there will be fewer of those new jobs than those displaced - and that this combines with the simple reality that an increasing number of people will be at their own limits of being able to be educated and trained to do the new jobs, let alone possess the basic blend of abilities needed for service jobs such as burger-flipping (robotic, soon) or janitor work. (Funny, that; in hospital I saw the cleaning ladies work hard and well, but they were trained by someone who doesn't know shit from Shinola - simple, easy, quick, and _effective_ areas are missed, because the training idiot is functionally blind to what cleaning is and why it's to be done. If the robots that eventually take over much basic cleaning aren't properly programmed, that situation will not change. I'd hazard to guess that both of us have seen plenty of examples of things designed and built or programmed that are obviously not used by their vendors, because they just don't work well or easily.)
"Such government programs tend to work in the short term; but they fail in the long term as people learn how to game the system." Absolutely. Concur. Agree. Right on.
Re Congress. Nope, not central planning. Their responsibility for levies, taxes, budgets does have a bit of effect in that direction, but that's not the point. The point is they've been avoiding some issues while fiddling the numbers here and there, gaming the system for the advantage of themselves, their party, and their funders, rather than for the good of
Yeah, that's why I suggest making it a button to click, to see what one might be missing from within one's own de facto silo (no matter how diligent one might be in seeking diverging views, it's also something we can easily not do well.) As for probs with source, good data, all that, we already have that problem. Gimme a button, lemme see what I might not, otherwise. In the end I'll choose what to read. Having more from which to choose seems a good thing, albeit requiring me to make more decisions - but that's already part of the normal day's load in skimming the news and tech sites.
Nope, dunno. Without swab and such, no way to find out. Personally I think it would be of service to do so, but the matter of expensive time and testing would likely be brought up as a bar to it.
Generally, as I understand it, if sterile extends to what contacts the patient, all else is sanitized (this means knocking down any critter population to a level that is inconsequential (based on averages, perhaps, although that's a more forgiving measure than I'm prepared to accept out of hand), the basic isolation and shielding done viz. clothing and such, and decent air filtration ought by rights, one might think, be sufficient.
That it's not should maybe be looked into, I suggest. In real life nosocomials are more than trivially pesky, but if one thinks about the hospital as a place where you go to get an infection, they're downright silly to put up with.
Little things - having a pair of shoes worn only in the OR, kept in segregated locker space, might be good. I think some places do that - I've never asked and most people are too damn busy to answer stuff like that. Taking a post-shower nude UV bath might be good before donning clean scrubs, but what of those who are in the OR for five or six procedures per day? I can think of a number of possibles but don't know how they'd work out in real life. I think that bit of ignorance on my part should preclude the discussion, tho.
I'm only guessing but suspect most hospitals work within a set of guidelines and do their own cost-risk-benefit analysis. How good that is, and how inclusive (debility, readmission, fatality one thread to examine; there are others) I don't know. I rather suspect that bean-counters and lawyers make the final determination as to what is or isn't done. It's science-based, doncha know. (Too bad, no sarcasm tag.)
Well, let's see. OASDI was fucked over by Congress in the '70s because it was easier for them to do that than to perform their fiscal responsibilities...responsibly. They needed to raise revenue and control spending and they did neither. Just for grins, in the last twenty years I don't recall a single congressman even acknowledging either of those things - and of course they've never paid back what amounted to a bond against the fund. What I regard it as is true, as is the fiscal irresponsibility.
Christ on a crutch, all you have to do is look at the budget. It's all there. Helps if you've watched some of this, because as is the norm, so much gets hidden, tucked away in clauses inside otherwise unrelated legislation. Lots of law gets hidden inside simple things such as pay raises for circuit court judges and the like. Go back to the original legislated bits and then follow (or try to, it can get snaky real quickly) the money - where it's apportioned and where the payments come from. It's a non-trivial task. A bit of search-fu (yours no doubt better than mine) leads to some people who've been keeping a bit of track on this.
(I apologize for not having lots of links and cites. It's my own fault - a couple of dead drives over the years not fully backed up; a currently inaccessible couple of drives in my tower - I don't have a spare sys, nor an adapter to let me read what I might have on them that would be pertinent. So I'm in the nasty position of making assertions based on my own observations and memories over the past forty years. Again, I apologize, and again, the info is all there - it's just that some of it is now hard to find. You'll note that people in Congress are not entirely forthcoming - I try to think of it as one of their charms, screwing up things while helping out corporate buddies who shower them with lucrative and undemanding board positions upon retirement, just as is done in the main corporate and financial sectors. From what I can gather, it's fun to be at the top despite the pesky rules and occasional awkward questions.)
Re farm subs - the original stuff worked, to an extent, and the incentives weren't bad. When it morphed from the individual family subsistence farmer to corporate and factory farming is went it went off the rails and became the monster we know and love. It needs to be shut down.
As for other individuals, offering things such as re-training and education have their place, I think, if it's done well. ("if it's done well" - aye, the rub) Frankly, we'd likely be far better off simply to do a negative income tax or guaranteed annual stipend - it'd be much simpler and also save a lot of money, including bureaucratic overhead. Those proposals, with hard numbers and good analysis are readily available.
"we're healthier, wealthier, and better educated than we have ever been before" for some reason reminds me of Galbraith's "Money: Whence it came and where it went." _Some_ are healthier, wealthier, and better educated (although I'll challenge that last - merely having more schooling does not equate to better knowledge of the world around). The trappings of a few consumer goods - TV, maybe a car, some shiny even for many of the poor does not equate to a better life either. Someone in another thread said because poor people can get a pre-paid cell for twenty bucks means they're better off now than then. Aaargh. If you look at income distribution alone, the fact of the shrinking middle class ought to be a sufficient sign.
We've continually put more of life in terms of money, somehow equating having more money with magically having a better life. What's lost is the examination of value, price, and real costs, not to mention true leisure and its attendant activities. I contend that the beetling focus on money alone is a blind and dead end. Along the way it distracts from and destroys our willingness and ability to see things in any other terms, to the detriment of us all. And meanwhile, of course, we have to deal with a skewed nation