Come on, putting down an animal just hours after you get it? Not using their network of supporters to say "here, we have these animals that need homes?"
Given the fact that $35 million is completely insufficient to humanely care for that many animals what would you suggest they do instead?
They took in just under 30,000 animals. $35 million pays for a LOT of pet food (and pet food manufacturers are big donors to shelters, so even that expense can be mitigated). And shelters use volunteer staff, which, last time I volunteered, didn't cost them a penny.
Fostering animals out to temporary homes usually costs just the food, while the animal waits for a placement - and a lot of times those foster homes end up keeping the animal rather than let it go back to the pound.
$35 million a year, to place less than two thousand animals annually? Really? That's a pure for-profit business. Disgusting.
They remind me of a certain person I know who, rather than give away a pair of cats she could no longer keep, had them euthanized. Her logic was along the lines of: No one could love them, or give them a better home than me, so they're better off dead.
^ THIS.
We were discussing the killing of his two children by cardiologist Guy Turcotte yesterday (found not criminally responsible, now under appeal). I was arguing with my sister, saying that you'd pretty much *have* to have something wrong in the head to kill your own kids - even if it doesn't rise to the level of insanity. She was saying, No, she could see how some people just get really pissed off and kill.
I guess if people can think this way about defenseless pets, it might be the same for their children. But it still seems royally messed up to me. If I were a juror on that case, I would want to hear the experts before making a decision, because that whole way of thinking just doesn't compute.
I still miss my newfie, my st. bernard, and my other newfie. (I stole the second newfie from a city pound when an animal rescue group got hold of me and told me it was going to be put down first thing in the morning, just walk in and take it, the person working there would look the other way provided I got there within the next 15 minutes - the other two were also from pounds). Cancer got the two newfs, and a wasting disease of the hind legs was the indirect cause of the infection that got the st. bernard.
I've got my mutt (who's now also getting old), and a couple of dogs from two neighbors (one who thinks he lives here, and one who wants to live here:-) So sorry for your loss, because I know what it's like.
Women will do ANYTHING to 'get a man'. For most women, being single is the worst thing in the world. They will sleep with ANY scumbag, as long as they 'have a man'. Hence most women will sleep with jerks who can't keep it up with a condom on. Hence most women use the pill, rather than condoms, in spite of the fact that the pill offers no protection against VD whatsoever
Normally I would urge someone like you to use a condom to help prevent the spread of stupidity. However, with your personality, there's no worry about that.
That study refers to estrogen and estrogen mimickers found in the drinking water, from all sources. Stuff that's treated, filtered, etc. This study was done in a controlled lake environment maintained by the Canadian government for such studies, and the only variable was dosing the lake with a low level of estrogen (probably estradiol). So, if we assume that source of estrogen is a small amount in comparison to others in the water environment, it's impact is demonstrably huge. Not all pollutants have the same effect per unit dose.
There might be a synergistic effect, or fish may just be more sensitive to human estrogen, but concentrations of the pill in waterways has been known to have an effect on fish and amphibians for a couple of decades. The only question was, can we see an actual cause and effect relationship "in the wild", and now we can state that there is definitely one.
I was skeptical about the claim that PETA euthanizes so many animals, but studies say it's true, and may even understate the situation.
The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services report on their investigation found that 94% of the animals given to PETA for adoption were instead euthanized, 90% within one day.
This is not ethical treatment of animals. There's no "nuance" here. Putting the vast majority of healthy pets to death rather than trying to find homes for them is cruel and highly unusual.
Of course, with $35 million in annual revenue, who can afford to take care of the animals, what with paying all the salaries for the people working for PETA to exploit them? PETA's job is to raise funds to pay PETA salaries. The animals are just raw material to be exploited, then tossed in a dumpster
People did nothing about AIDS as long as they could call it "the gay plague." It was only when politicians found out they could get it from their hookers that things began to change.
As long as people have the "it's not my problem because it's 'those people' and not me", nothing short of a bit of panic is going to get them to change their attitude wrt the need to actually help the countries that are most affected. Liberia is broke, the hospital workers are going on strike Monday morning (tomorrow) because they are only getting $80 a month in hazard pay because the government hasn't got the money to fulfill the earlier promise of $700 a month (the disease spread way too far way too fast), and the 2,000 deaths they've had to date could quite easily be only just a start.
So, if we know so much about Ebola, how come we euthanized a dog because we couldn't quantify the risks? How come we don't know what species (one or more) serve as reservoirs for Ebola between outbreaks? There's a LOT we don't know.
And taking useless measures such as temperature screening at airports, instead of checking each person's passport to see if they've been through a "hot" country, and then not allowing them to board an airplane or other mode of international transport, with a mandatory 23-day quarantine period... and the same for returning aid workers... would be a lot more effective.
I guess you chose to ignore the rest of my post - that we don't know enough about Ebola to make reliable predictions.
We know that Ebola continues to exist between outbreaks, but we don't know what serves as the reservoir. Or if there are multiple possible hosts between outbreaks. Or the true risk of dogs as possible carriers and agents of transmission.
Most people won't take any action unless they're panicked into it. Common-sense stuff like aid to help get it under control at the source - "What's the hurry - it doesn't affect US." If that's what it takes to mobilize people, that's the reality of the situation. If they won't act out of altruism or enlightened self-interest, do you have a better idea? And please don't say "better information and education." That takes at least a generation.
Plenty of early machines used the audio cassette interface to load and save programs. The IBM PC had to include a cassette interface because pretty much *everyone* included one. BASIC is BASIC. Porting from one machine to another wasn't a big deal, and taking a couple of minutes to load or save a program was a lot more acceptable than having to re-enter it every time. Also, those old floppy drives weren't all that much faster.
Which would imply that large virtualisation providers (e.g. Amazon or Akamai) will have to set up local operations in each country (or region, such as.EU) that they want to operate in, and they'll have to satisfy local laws about prevention of unauthorised external access from the likes of NSA.
It implies nothing of the sort. What it means is that anyone can just make a deal with a local service provider to lease a server or a slice of a server. The world isn't all Amazon or Akamai.
Schmidt was trolling, and you fell for it. And as I pointed out, this was not the first time.
You're doing it wrong:-) A really good book will keep you up until the sun rises and you wonder where the heck all the time has gone. One more chapter, one more chapter... oh what the heck, the sky is clearing, might as well finish it and hope coffee gets me through the work day:-)
Books that have done that to me include "The Pillars of the Earth", about half of all Tom Clancy stories, and a lot of Stephen King books (do you really want to go to sleep after reading Stephen King?!? Can you???)
A lot of programs never made it from, say 5-1/4" media to another media. They had their heyday, and were then withdrawn from circulation. They are GONE. Even the original publisher no longer has them - if the publisher still exists. And any backups out there are unreadable after 40 years.
Same applies for the 3-1/2" floppies from 30 years ago. Especially with multi-floppy disk sets. It only takes one disk to crap out. So even the pack-rats no longer have a readable copy. The publisher is dead, the author quite possibly as well, and since stuff that was so much better has come along, the old stuff got thrown in the trash because you couldn't even give it away - same as an old-style color TV today.
What is the amount of trade and other commerce from Africa VS Asia? Do we do 40 billion worth of business with the 3 west African countries in a year? 10 years? 100 years?
Just because they've got no money doesn't mean they don't deserve to live.
Given that the disease HASN'T spread outside of West Africa to any extent yet, that information that we all already know is worse than useless, it just spreads fear.
Why not forget your personal safety for a moment? The fact that this is spreading in a here-to-unforseen manner should be cause for alarm. Even if it remains confined to Africa this time, it's still a HUGE disaster in the making, and we don't know how bad it will get there. We just know that at this point in time it will get worse.
A LOT of things have gone. 12" floppies. 8" floppies. 5-1/4" floppies. 3-1/2" floppies. The programs with copy-protection built into those floppies won't run, even with an emulator. All those custom program backups stored on burnable optical disks that are now suffering chemical degradation?
How many computers still have the original cassette tape interface? Or a parallel port. Or a game port? Or can use a serial or ps2 mouse? Or a slot for a hercules card? So the software that uses them? Dead.
500 years from now web browsers will also be dead. They're far from the ideal way of delivering information.
It might seem so, but it happens. People will automatically try to rub an itchy nose or eye; the "OMG better not do that!" realization doesn't always kick in fast enough.
So what? The percentage of ebook sales is continuing to rise, and is set to surpass print before the end of the decade. The problem now is that publishers are trying to price ebooks close enough to their print books so as not to cannibalize their print sales. However, that's a practice that requires all the major publishers to "keep the faith" and hold the line on pricing. And that, of course, leaves them as prey for other publishers who will take advantage of the economies of ebooks to continue to take sales from the traditional publishers.
It'll be the same as what is happening right now with newspapers. One local paper has gone exclusively digital. Others have closed. Still others are trying to hang in, but more and more their print editions are out of date compared to what's on-line the same morning. Eventually they will have no choice but to go digital.
Hey, I love my printed book collection. However, I can see the writing on the wall... and with an aging population, the ability to re-flow ebooks as you change font sizes, or have your smartphone or tablet read them out to you, is something that no printed book can compete with.
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Come on, putting down an animal just hours after you get it? Not using their network of supporters to say "here, we have these animals that need homes?"
Given the fact that $35 million is completely insufficient to humanely care for that many animals what would you suggest they do instead?
They took in just under 30,000 animals. $35 million pays for a LOT of pet food (and pet food manufacturers are big donors to shelters, so even that expense can be mitigated). And shelters use volunteer staff, which, last time I volunteered, didn't cost them a penny.
Fostering animals out to temporary homes usually costs just the food, while the animal waits for a placement - and a lot of times those foster homes end up keeping the animal rather than let it go back to the pound.
$35 million a year, to place less than two thousand animals annually? Really? That's a pure for-profit business. Disgusting.
They remind me of a certain person I know who, rather than give away a pair of cats she could no longer keep, had them euthanized. Her logic was along the lines of: No one could love them, or give them a better home than me, so they're better off dead.
^ THIS.
We were discussing the killing of his two children by cardiologist Guy Turcotte yesterday (found not criminally responsible, now under appeal). I was arguing with my sister, saying that you'd pretty much *have* to have something wrong in the head to kill your own kids - even if it doesn't rise to the level of insanity. She was saying, No, she could see how some people just get really pissed off and kill.
I guess if people can think this way about defenseless pets, it might be the same for their children. But it still seems royally messed up to me. If I were a juror on that case, I would want to hear the experts before making a decision, because that whole way of thinking just doesn't compute.
I've got my mutt (who's now also getting old), and a couple of dogs from two neighbors (one who thinks he lives here, and one who wants to live here :-) So sorry for your loss, because I know what it's like.
Anyway, gotta go walk the dogs ...
A lot of people are noticing the similarities between the two. Crazy over-the-top behavior and a holier-than-everyone-else attitude.
Women will do ANYTHING to 'get a man'. For most women, being single is the worst thing in the world. They will sleep with ANY scumbag, as long as they 'have a man'. Hence most women will sleep with jerks who can't keep it up with a condom on. Hence most women use the pill, rather than condoms, in spite of the fact that the pill offers no protection against VD whatsoever
Normally I would urge someone like you to use a condom to help prevent the spread of stupidity. However, with your personality, there's no worry about that.
As for the rest ... sheesh!
That study refers to estrogen and estrogen mimickers found in the drinking water, from all sources. Stuff that's treated, filtered, etc. This study was done in a controlled lake environment maintained by the Canadian government for such studies, and the only variable was dosing the lake with a low level of estrogen (probably estradiol). So, if we assume that source of estrogen is a small amount in comparison to others in the water environment, it's impact is demonstrably huge. Not all pollutants have the same effect per unit dose.
There might be a synergistic effect, or fish may just be more sensitive to human estrogen, but concentrations of the pill in waterways has been known to have an effect on fish and amphibians for a couple of decades. The only question was, can we see an actual cause and effect relationship "in the wild", and now we can state that there is definitely one.
I was skeptical about the claim that PETA euthanizes so many animals, but studies say it's true, and may even understate the situation.
The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services report on their investigation found that 94% of the animals given to PETA for adoption were instead euthanized, 90% within one day.
This is not ethical treatment of animals. There's no "nuance" here. Putting the vast majority of healthy pets to death rather than trying to find homes for them is cruel and highly unusual.
Of course, with $35 million in annual revenue, who can afford to take care of the animals, what with paying all the salaries for the people working for PETA to exploit them? PETA's job is to raise funds to pay PETA salaries. The animals are just raw material to be exploited, then tossed in a dumpster
I listed a bunch of storage media. Those storage media suffer from degradation. If you can't read it any more, it's lost forever.
Umm... what again does panicking accomplish?
People did nothing about AIDS as long as they could call it "the gay plague." It was only when politicians found out they could get it from their hookers that things began to change.
As long as people have the "it's not my problem because it's 'those people' and not me", nothing short of a bit of panic is going to get them to change their attitude wrt the need to actually help the countries that are most affected. Liberia is broke, the hospital workers are going on strike Monday morning (tomorrow) because they are only getting $80 a month in hazard pay because the government hasn't got the money to fulfill the earlier promise of $700 a month (the disease spread way too far way too fast), and the 2,000 deaths they've had to date could quite easily be only just a start.
When neither a sense of moral duty nor enlightened self-interest will make people get off their butts, a bit of panic can be a good thing.
And taking useless measures such as temperature screening at airports, instead of checking each person's passport to see if they've been through a "hot" country, and then not allowing them to board an airplane or other mode of international transport, with a mandatory 23-day quarantine period ... and the same for returning aid workers ... would be a lot more effective.
We know that Ebola continues to exist between outbreaks, but we don't know what serves as the reservoir. Or if there are multiple possible hosts between outbreaks. Or the true risk of dogs as possible carriers and agents of transmission.
Most people won't take any action unless they're panicked into it. Common-sense stuff like aid to help get it under control at the source - "What's the hurry - it doesn't affect US." If that's what it takes to mobilize people, that's the reality of the situation. If they won't act out of altruism or enlightened self-interest, do you have a better idea? And please don't say "better information and education." That takes at least a generation.
One thing these outbreaks in Europe and the US show - we don't know enough about Ebola.
Plenty of early machines used the audio cassette interface to load and save programs. The IBM PC had to include a cassette interface because pretty much *everyone* included one. BASIC is BASIC. Porting from one machine to another wasn't a big deal, and taking a couple of minutes to load or save a program was a lot more acceptable than having to re-enter it every time. Also, those old floppy drives weren't all that much faster.
Which would imply that large virtualisation providers (e.g. Amazon or Akamai) will have to set up local operations in each country (or region, such as .EU) that they want to operate in, and they'll have to satisfy local laws about prevention of unauthorised external access from the likes of NSA.
It implies nothing of the sort. What it means is that anyone can just make a deal with a local service provider to lease a server or a slice of a server. The world isn't all Amazon or Akamai.
Schmidt was trolling, and you fell for it. And as I pointed out, this was not the first time.
Point taken.
Books that have done that to me include "The Pillars of the Earth", about half of all Tom Clancy stories, and a lot of Stephen King books (do you really want to go to sleep after reading Stephen King?!? Can you???)
A lot of programs never made it from, say 5-1/4" media to another media. They had their heyday, and were then withdrawn from circulation. They are GONE. Even the original publisher no longer has them - if the publisher still exists. And any backups out there are unreadable after 40 years.
Same applies for the 3-1/2" floppies from 30 years ago. Especially with multi-floppy disk sets. It only takes one disk to crap out. So even the pack-rats no longer have a readable copy. The publisher is dead, the author quite possibly as well, and since stuff that was so much better has come along, the old stuff got thrown in the trash because you couldn't even give it away - same as an old-style color TV today.
What is the amount of trade and other commerce from Africa VS Asia? Do we do 40 billion worth of business with the 3 west African countries in a year? 10 years? 100 years?
Just because they've got no money doesn't mean they don't deserve to live.
Given that the disease HASN'T spread outside of West Africa to any extent yet, that information that we all already know is worse than useless, it just spreads fear.
Why not forget your personal safety for a moment? The fact that this is spreading in a here-to-unforseen manner should be cause for alarm. Even if it remains confined to Africa this time, it's still a HUGE disaster in the making, and we don't know how bad it will get there. We just know that at this point in time it will get worse.
If I could go help, I would. Unfortunately, I don't have the required skills.
A LOT of things have gone. 12" floppies. 8" floppies. 5-1/4" floppies. 3-1/2" floppies. The programs with copy-protection built into those floppies won't run, even with an emulator. All those custom program backups stored on burnable optical disks that are now suffering chemical degradation?
How many computers still have the original cassette tape interface? Or a parallel port. Or a game port? Or can use a serial or ps2 mouse? Or a slot for a hercules card? So the software that uses them? Dead.
500 years from now web browsers will also be dead. They're far from the ideal way of delivering information.
How about "In the Singularity, computer becomes YOU!"
It might seem so, but it happens. People will automatically try to rub an itchy nose or eye; the "OMG better not do that!" realization doesn't always kick in fast enough.
The aid workers who picked it up despite taking precautions will sure be comforted by your sentiment.
Even in modern hospitals, disease outbreaks happen despite precautions.
So what? The percentage of ebook sales is continuing to rise, and is set to surpass print before the end of the decade. The problem now is that publishers are trying to price ebooks close enough to their print books so as not to cannibalize their print sales. However, that's a practice that requires all the major publishers to "keep the faith" and hold the line on pricing. And that, of course, leaves them as prey for other publishers who will take advantage of the economies of ebooks to continue to take sales from the traditional publishers.
It'll be the same as what is happening right now with newspapers. One local paper has gone exclusively digital. Others have closed. Still others are trying to hang in, but more and more their print editions are out of date compared to what's on-line the same morning. Eventually they will have no choice but to go digital.
Hey, I love my printed book collection. However, I can see the writing on the wall ... and with an aging population, the ability to re-flow ebooks as you change font sizes, or have your smartphone or tablet read them out to you, is something that no printed book can compete with.