"The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided."
This isn't SARS. The death toll is already 5x that of SARS.
Ebola has already gone from outbreaks in communities to outbreaks that threaten whole countries.
It's on the verge of repeating the process, but now at a global, not country or community level. So the question is, will it develop enough of a reservoir internationally to repeat its' performance, this time around? We simply don't know - and we won't know until we either beat it or lose to it.
To compound the problem, the right solution to this outbreak may not be the right solution to the next one, but we'll "go with what worked the last time" because that's both easy and politically correct.
No matter how you look at it, we're all in trouble.
In 1943, the United States Army authorized a secret project at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering to develop an electronic computer to compute artillery firing tables for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The project, which came to be known as ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was completed in 1946.
Previous to the development of the ENIAC, the U.S. Army had employed women trained in mathematics to calculate artillery trajectories, at first using mechanical desk calculators and later the differential analyzer developed by Vannevar Bush, at the Moore School. In 1945, one of these "computers", Kathleen McNulty (1921–2006), was selected to be one of the original programmers of the ENIAC, together with Frances Spence (1922– ), Betty Holberton (1917–2001), Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman (1924–1986), and Betty Jean Jennings (1924–2011). McNulty, Holberton, and Jennings would later work on the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer developed by the Remington Rand Corporation in the early 1950s.
My pancreas still functions - it's just that the part that produces insulin doesn't (type 1). Type 2 diabetics produce insulin, but their tissues, from repeated exposure to high levels of insulin (that's what eating all that sugar-laden crap for decades can do to you) no longer respond (insulin resistance). The best treatment is a change of diet combined with medication (in pill form) that restores the tissue's ability to respond to the body's natively produced insulin.
The pancreas in type 1 diabetics doesn't "react" negatively to the presence of insulin injected by the patient. But go without it for too long, you die. So the problem is, the same process that destroyed the insulin-producing cells in my body will probably destroy any implanted ones as well. And even if it doesn't, I have no wish to take immune-suppressing drugs - that would be a case of the cure being worse than the current treatment.
Comparing that to mice that had their ability to produce insulin artificially destroyed... it doesn't compute.
You know, why not conduct your own survey rather than saying silly things like:
does that number include 'i was not really feeling it but had sex anyway', 'it was a drunken sex therefore the consent was invalid', 'construction workers catcalled me the other day' and 'the guy confused about my feelings toward him attempted to kiss me'?
From the women I've talked to (with the gory details), the 25% number is quite low. Or as Whoopie Goldberg would have classified it, "rape-rape".
You're both right and wrong. Everyone should have the benefit of equal justice. The problem is that, at this time, there's a gender-specific problem, and if the targets themselves aren't willing to push back, why should they expect anyone else to?
I've been harassed bot online and in the real world. After almost a decade, one cyber-dummy lost their job when the police got involved. Works for me. Another, a real-world case, had to take out ads in the news section of the two largest newspapers a couple of months ago to apologize for trying to publicly humiliate me.
Everyone says "somebody ought to do something" but if nobody does, the problems will persist. When you're the one being attacked, you've just been nominated as that "somebody", even if you don't want to be.
There's no need for an "anti-troll squad", or an organized fight against these idiots. That will just give credence to those who cry "femi-nazi".
All that's needed is for good people to stand up for what's right when they're attacked.
Something that you take care of in less time than it takes to re-heat your coffee in the microwave must seem like such a huge burden to those who aren't used to it.
Testing now takes a miniscule amount of blood - not the huge blobs it took a couple of decades ago, and not the pee strips before that. The results take seconds, not a minute like the first meters. The meter is ridiculously small - any smaller and you'd lose it, not like the original bulky ones that wouldn't fit into a pocket.
And since there's a lot less blood needed, you don't have to prick your finger as hard or as deeply, so less pain.
Add to that that there is no need for syringes any more - just dial you dose. And the needle tips on the insulin pens are really sharp, so injection is pretty painless.
The only real problems nowadays are hypoglycemic reactions and co-morbid diseases such as proliferative diabetic retinopathy.
The problem is that Type 1 diabetes is from an auto-immune reaction.
Millions owe their lives to insulin. The genetically engineered human insulin is superior to both the bovine and pork insulins. Blood testing and self-injecting become habits that are easily integrated into your daily routine. The only real hassle is when you miscalculate how much insulin you need based on your food intake and ensuing energy output and your blood sugar goes too low.
So you wake up in an ambulance once in a blue moon because you passed out in public. It's a lot better than waking up missing toes, feet, legs etc from untreated or mismanaged diabetes.
First rule of business management: EVERYONE is replaceable.
Second rule of business management: If you find someone is irreplaceable, FIRE the person who was responsible for that happening, then replace the "irreplaceable" person.
Third rule of business management: Go to rule 1.
Seriously, everyone had darned well better be replaceable, or the fate of your business/project/whatever is at risk. Which is why we need a mandated 32-hour week - everyone is ultimately replaceable, including the so-called "irreplaceable" people.
If a two-person startup had to build a data center in Germany just to serve customers there, it would never get off the ground, he said.
That's a so-obvious false assumption. A two-person startup doesn't have to build a data center - most start-ups lease server space or do colocation.
As well, the "requirement" is one that Schmidt has made up - there is no actual "requirement". Google's servers are already not synched - if I do a google search in the US, I get a different set of results than I do in Canada. This is a bunch of hand-waving.
Absolutely. We've seen this over and over. VLSI was a lot better than discrete components. A one-piece forged hammer is a lot better (and safer) than a hammer with a handle held in place by a wedge. Single-piece wheels are a lot better than the old split-rim wheels (no inner tube, and no danger of the ring flying off when inflating and killing someone).
By using the plasma as the containment field, there's less energy needed overall. And fewer components to break. And maintain. So, lowered material and labor costs in day-by-day operation as well. At least that's what we're all hoping for.
One way to improve economic mobility when there are a surplus of unemployed and underemployed is to reduce the work week. We've been having annual gains in productivity of 2% per year for decades - there's no reason why we shouldn't go to a 32 hour work week.
different sets of data for users from different countries multiplying across the world.
So what? I don't care if my data is "out of sync" in Kabul or Beijing or Kuala Lampour or London or Sao Paulo. It's not a problem for me. However, companies attempting to monetize that data (Hello, Google, etc.) by selling it to advertisers across the globe... it makes that data harder to sell. Awww. That won't break the internet - if anything it's an improvement, since someone in Nigeria now has to hit servers in North America to get information for spearfishing - something that will be easier to track.
The real problem is reduced economic mobility, which has been going on for decades. Making everyone equally impoverished isn't empowering anyone except your new socialist overlords.
There are plenty of countries that are a mix of social and capitalist policies, and where unbridled capitalism is frowned upon. I *like* living in Kanukistan. It's not perfect, but it works. Those "anti-capitalist" banking regulations gave us the safest banking system in the world. No banks went bankrupt, no government bailouts of the banks during the global financial meltdown, no forced mergers or shotgun marriages.
I guess you could say we're social democrats with a strong capitalist bent.
Lasers and microwaves are among the beamed-energy propulsion concepts the Advanced Space Transportation Program is pursuing. If the energy to propel a spacecraft doesn’t have to be carried on board the vehicle, significant weight reductions and performance improvements can be achieved. Beamed-energy propulsion uses a remote energy source — such as the Sun, a ground- or space-based laser or a microwave transmitter — to send power to the vehicle via a "beam" of electromagnetic radiation. Presently, beamed energy is the most promising technology to lower the cost of space transportation to tens of dollars per pound. Research into this technology is a joint effort of the Marshall Center, the Air Force Research Laboratory Propulsion Directorate at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N.Y.
Earth-to-orbit for $30 to $100 a pound? Space tourism becomes a reality. Asteroid mining is next. Permanent outposts on the moon, with low-g "fall-safe" health care for the elderly. Space-based power generation. This will open up the whole solar system.
Some have wondered why President Obama is sending 3,000 American troops to Africa, when it would make more sense to send 3,000 medical workers instead.
Troops are being sent because unprotected aid workers are being butchered to death. Also, troops are really good at logistics, like setting up field hospitals - something desperately needed in the rush to try to contain the spread of the disease.
There's a lot of high-tech going on wrt ebola. Just look at the efforts to predict its spread using different models. These models could eventually bias the debate over whether extreme measures such as total border closures should be taken. Then there's the race to test different medications, and as was pointed out in an earlier article, the ethical questions surrounding control groups, with only a partial solution being the step wedge (giving different people the same treatment at different times).
Only 774 people died in the last SARS epidemic. We're already way, way beyond that, with no end in sight.
This is a human disaster unfolding as we watch, and at least a few of us here are still humans.
China disagrees with you. The pollution is going to continue to be a problem, but they don't care. As long as you can see more than a block, it's "good enough."
Globally, there are almost 1,000 coal generators being built, again because it's cheaper because the external costs are automatically shifted onto others. Heck, even Canada's tar sands have been labeled "not so dirty any more" because people want energy and it's easier to change a label than to actually fix a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided."
This isn't SARS. The death toll is already 5x that of SARS.
Ebola has already gone from outbreaks in communities to outbreaks that threaten whole countries.
It's on the verge of repeating the process, but now at a global, not country or community level. So the question is, will it develop enough of a reservoir internationally to repeat its' performance, this time around? We simply don't know - and we won't know until we either beat it or lose to it.
To compound the problem, the right solution to this outbreak may not be the right solution to the next one, but we'll "go with what worked the last time" because that's both easy and politically correct.
No matter how you look at it, we're all in trouble.
Printed books are dying. Scrolls are dead. And the rate of change is accelerating.
I believe that the CSS code we write today will be readable by computers 500 years from now."
If we're still using CSS 500 years from now, we're screwed. Heck, we better have something a whole lot better than web pages 500 years from now.
500 years? Look at what's come and gone in the last 50, and get back to me.
cast it all the way back to the start of the industry
Here you go. Most computers were women.
In 1943, the United States Army authorized a secret project at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering to develop an electronic computer to compute artillery firing tables for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The project, which came to be known as ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was completed in 1946.
Previous to the development of the ENIAC, the U.S. Army had employed women trained in mathematics to calculate artillery trajectories, at first using mechanical desk calculators and later the differential analyzer developed by Vannevar Bush, at the Moore School. In 1945, one of these "computers", Kathleen McNulty (1921–2006), was selected to be one of the original programmers of the ENIAC, together with Frances Spence (1922– ), Betty Holberton (1917–2001), Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman (1924–1986), and Betty Jean Jennings (1924–2011). McNulty, Holberton, and Jennings would later work on the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer developed by the Remington Rand Corporation in the early 1950s.
Men originally saw computing as a "woman's job."
The pancreas in type 1 diabetics doesn't "react" negatively to the presence of insulin injected by the patient. But go without it for too long, you die. So the problem is, the same process that destroyed the insulin-producing cells in my body will probably destroy any implanted ones as well. And even if it doesn't, I have no wish to take immune-suppressing drugs - that would be a case of the cure being worse than the current treatment.
Comparing that to mice that had their ability to produce insulin artificially destroyed ... it doesn't compute.
does that number include 'i was not really feeling it but had sex anyway', 'it was a drunken sex therefore the consent was invalid', 'construction workers catcalled me the other day' and 'the guy confused about my feelings toward him attempted to kiss me'?
From the women I've talked to (with the gory details), the 25% number is quite low. Or as Whoopie Goldberg would have classified it, "rape-rape".
You're both right and wrong. Everyone should have the benefit of equal justice. The problem is that, at this time, there's a gender-specific problem, and if the targets themselves aren't willing to push back, why should they expect anyone else to?
I've been harassed bot online and in the real world. After almost a decade, one cyber-dummy lost their job when the police got involved. Works for me. Another, a real-world case, had to take out ads in the news section of the two largest newspapers a couple of months ago to apologize for trying to publicly humiliate me.
Everyone says "somebody ought to do something" but if nobody does, the problems will persist. When you're the one being attacked, you've just been nominated as that "somebody", even if you don't want to be.
There's no need for an "anti-troll squad", or an organized fight against these idiots. That will just give credence to those who cry "femi-nazi".
All that's needed is for good people to stand up for what's right when they're attacked.
The three rules:
1: What is the right and just thing to do?
2: Then why the heck aren't you doing it?
3: You should never get this far. Goto 1.
Actually, it will result in fewer jobs, period. Both low-skilled and high-skilled.
Because they're NOT space shuttles. They're spy vehicles. They can change orbit, eavesdrop and peak at places at unpredictable times, etc.
Something that you take care of in less time than it takes to re-heat your coffee in the microwave must seem like such a huge burden to those who aren't used to it.
Testing now takes a miniscule amount of blood - not the huge blobs it took a couple of decades ago, and not the pee strips before that. The results take seconds, not a minute like the first meters. The meter is ridiculously small - any smaller and you'd lose it, not like the original bulky ones that wouldn't fit into a pocket.
And since there's a lot less blood needed, you don't have to prick your finger as hard or as deeply, so less pain.
Add to that that there is no need for syringes any more - just dial you dose. And the needle tips on the insulin pens are really sharp, so injection is pretty painless.
The only real problems nowadays are hypoglycemic reactions and co-morbid diseases such as proliferative diabetic retinopathy.
The problem is that Type 1 diabetes is from an auto-immune reaction.
Millions owe their lives to insulin. The genetically engineered human insulin is superior to both the bovine and pork insulins. Blood testing and self-injecting become habits that are easily integrated into your daily routine. The only real hassle is when you miscalculate how much insulin you need based on your food intake and ensuing energy output and your blood sugar goes too low.
So you wake up in an ambulance once in a blue moon because you passed out in public. It's a lot better than waking up missing toes, feet, legs etc from untreated or mismanaged diabetes.
Second rule of business management: If you find someone is irreplaceable, FIRE the person who was responsible for that happening, then replace the "irreplaceable" person.
Third rule of business management: Go to rule 1.
Seriously, everyone had darned well better be replaceable, or the fate of your business/project/whatever is at risk. Which is why we need a mandated 32-hour week - everyone is ultimately replaceable, including the so-called "irreplaceable" people.
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
That's ridiculous, the same sort of mentality that says "you shouldn't mind our searching your home if you have nothing to hide."
If a two-person startup had to build a data center in Germany just to serve customers there, it would never get off the ground, he said.
That's a so-obvious false assumption. A two-person startup doesn't have to build a data center - most start-ups lease server space or do colocation.
As well, the "requirement" is one that Schmidt has made up - there is no actual "requirement". Google's servers are already not synched - if I do a google search in the US, I get a different set of results than I do in Canada. This is a bunch of hand-waving.
How is Google shipping their own custom JRE on phones they control 70% of the market for that different?
Android phones don't run Java, and don't come with a JRE.
By using the plasma as the containment field, there's less energy needed overall. And fewer components to break. And maintain. So, lowered material and labor costs in day-by-day operation as well. At least that's what we're all hoping for.
One way to improve economic mobility when there are a surplus of unemployed and underemployed is to reduce the work week. We've been having annual gains in productivity of 2% per year for decades - there's no reason why we shouldn't go to a 32 hour work week.
different sets of data for users from different countries multiplying across the world.
So what? I don't care if my data is "out of sync" in Kabul or Beijing or Kuala Lampour or London or Sao Paulo. It's not a problem for me. However, companies attempting to monetize that data (Hello, Google, etc.) by selling it to advertisers across the globe ... it makes that data harder to sell. Awww. That won't break the internet - if anything it's an improvement, since someone in Nigeria now has to hit servers in North America to get information for spearfishing - something that will be easier to track.
There are plenty of countries that are a mix of social and capitalist policies, and where unbridled capitalism is frowned upon. I *like* living in Kanukistan. It's not perfect, but it works. Those "anti-capitalist" banking regulations gave us the safest banking system in the world. No banks went bankrupt, no government bailouts of the banks during the global financial meltdown, no forced mergers or shotgun marriages.
I guess you could say we're social democrats with a strong capitalist bent.
Beamed-energy Propulsion
Lasers and microwaves are among the beamed-energy propulsion concepts the Advanced Space Transportation Program is pursuing. If the energy to propel a spacecraft doesn’t have to be carried on board the vehicle, significant weight reductions and performance improvements can be achieved. Beamed-energy propulsion uses a remote energy source — such as the Sun, a ground- or space-based laser or a microwave transmitter — to send power to the vehicle via a "beam" of electromagnetic radiation. Presently, beamed energy is the most promising technology to lower the cost of space transportation to tens of dollars per pound. Research into this technology is a joint effort of the Marshall Center, the Air Force Research Laboratory Propulsion Directorate at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N.Y.
Earth-to-orbit for $30 to $100 a pound? Space tourism becomes a reality. Asteroid mining is next. Permanent outposts on the moon, with low-g "fall-safe" health care for the elderly. Space-based power generation. This will open up the whole solar system.
Ah yes ... Perri-Air.
Some have wondered why President Obama is sending 3,000 American troops to Africa, when it would make more sense to send 3,000 medical workers instead.
Troops are being sent because unprotected aid workers are being butchered to death. Also, troops are really good at logistics, like setting up field hospitals - something desperately needed in the rush to try to contain the spread of the disease.
There's a lot of high-tech going on wrt ebola. Just look at the efforts to predict its spread using different models. These models could eventually bias the debate over whether extreme measures such as total border closures should be taken. Then there's the race to test different medications, and as was pointed out in an earlier article, the ethical questions surrounding control groups, with only a partial solution being the step wedge (giving different people the same treatment at different times).
Only 774 people died in the last SARS epidemic. We're already way, way beyond that, with no end in sight.
This is a human disaster unfolding as we watch, and at least a few of us here are still humans.
China disagrees with you. The pollution is going to continue to be a problem, but they don't care. As long as you can see more than a block, it's "good enough."
Globally, there are almost 1,000 coal generators being built, again because it's cheaper because the external costs are automatically shifted onto others. Heck, even Canada's tar sands have been labeled "not so dirty any more" because people want energy and it's easier to change a label than to actually fix a problem.