Judges aren't stupid, but most of them are egotistical, narcissistic assholes with a touch of sociopath, just like most lawyers (see also: politicians, most drawn from the same source pool). Who else wants the job? The Clint Webb sketch really is one of WKUK's most insightful: the kind of person who wants a job that determines the fate of others isn't really the sort of person you want doing that job, but it seems the best we can do is go with it and do our best to remove the worst of the bunch, and control/satisfy/placate the remainder.
And before you ask, I've done all of the above, Mr. Ad Hominem.
Yeah, I've had drives in my research group fail and lose a bunch of data, and then have their SMART kick in hours/days later while we're trying to recover what's left. Thanks a lot.
The UL works because an individual device design can have plenty of problems, so individual certification works. You can't "individually certify" a drug. It's a chemical mixture. Any one can make it, and any test showing safety is valid for all productions. I assert that no one company is going to bother with expensive testing when they are also certifying any other maker of the same chemical mix, and there are no patent limits. They'll just make their money selling to the poor and desperate.
I claim someone else owns my body? What the fuck? I claim that without government-enforced regulations requiring safety tests, there will be no real, well-managed, reliable tests (and especially not long term tests). I want a government with the power to require such tests.
This is broken because no company is going to want to front the money for the FDA 'seal'. It's not like it will magically make only their pills containing e.g. Compound X safe and effective: as soon as any pill containing that compound is approved, you know that any other pill with the same stuff in it is also safe/effective.
Beyond that, we still frequently find long-term side effects of approved drugs after many people have been taking them for many, many years. That's -after- we remove a ton of them that cause effects in whatever the FDA test periods are (a few years?) By allowing sales as soon as stuff is invented you just turn the poor and desperate into a bunch of unmanaged, unregulated, and unreliable guinea pigs. A bunch of poor (read: not rich) people take the new "Vy4grah" from CheapoPharm. Their dicks get hard, and then they all get horrible liver failure and die in 2 to 3 years. Maybe this shows up and we know it's shit, or maybe they're found dead in their homes and are written off as ODs or whatever. Or maybe it causes some chemical imbalance and puts a bunch of people out on the street to die in the cold. Oh well, just a bum? Who's going to do the testing to figure out that their unregulated ED pills killed them? CheapoPharm makes a bunch of money no matter what.
Why would they want to do the FDA tests? All it could reveal is bad things. If it is safe, then after fronting a billion dollars for the tests, MediDeal next door can put out the same pill, same ingredient, now certified safe, without spending their own billion. Oops.
I'm really glad that I decided to try a toaster oven a few years ago. It's so much quicker and efficient for small cooking tasks, and does a lot of things much better than a microwave (leftover pizza is awesome). Plus it doesn't heat my whole apartment up in the summer. Between toaster oven and crockpot, about the only thing I ever use the normal oven for now is an occasional traditional roast (either a whole chicken or pot roast w/ a bunch of veg).
...damn, actually, I wish they would allow that. I stream like crazy (love that they've been adding lots of anime--clearly Japanese studios know what's what), but I do like having the option to get a DVD occasionally if something's missing from the instant catalog. I just finally watched a DVD I'd had sitting around for like 6 months.
Uh, only if you like (or at least tolerate) driving.
On the other hand, if you're like me, you hate it: hate the hours of endless be'treed interstates you have to go through to get anywhere from your home, hate other drivers who apparently went to the Abstract Expressionist school of driving (or possibly are gaping at the trees/scenery, i.e. are dangerous assholes), hate idiots going 80mph secure in their own immortality, hate the hours of doing jack except drawing in between the lines, AND you can't do it for more than a few hours without your eyes drying out and hurting. Not so much with the part of vacation.
Driving is just another boring chore. Too bad I can't afford a personal chauffeur, or we don't have auto-drive yet.
Chiropractors are not doctors. They are certified masseurs, at least here in Europe. If you only need a good poking or massage just ask your friend, spouse, whoever.
Well now you're just insulting massage therapists.:) The fact that they're certified means they've had some amount of training, and unless you've got an awesome spouse, _they_ don't. Not to mention the fact that your friends or spouse may be the cause of your tension to begin with...
If it worked for real, it wouldn't be alternative, it would have been conventional.
You ARE contradicting yourself. You "don't imply that psychosomatic maladies aren't real", but "if it worked for real"? If the psychosomatic condition is a real problem, and someone can fix it (glorified masseur or not), then it is a _real_ treatment. Alternative medicine practitioners provide a service that can have tangible effects in a person's life, and it's up to the individual how much such a thing is worth.
Your statement also makes the assumption that conventional medicine always and perfectly knows every possible treatment. That's absurd. Research is ongoing in many directions within the 'conventional' realm. There are also plenty of possible reasons for 'alternative' treatments having been overlooked or discarded, starting with politics, religion, culture, and--especially nowadays--the simple fact that it may not be as profitable as current orthodox methods.
You contradict yourself. Whether or not his symptoms were psychosomatic, he went to someone who did, in fact, heal him. With hands.
I'm personally on the fence about some of this stuff. I've had some terrible, rough, unhelpful chiropractic work as part of an insurance settlement after a car accident. Their 'treatment' felt like they were trying to double up their work with their karate practice, jerk jerk jerk snap snap snap. Half the time I left feeling worse. Never again.
On the other hand, I've also had some amazing work by (oh noes!) applied kinesiologists. The good ones have more in common with massage therapists--very gently moving you around--which may be a clue to why it was effective (a massage by itself can be very relaxing and healthful). I have no idea if there's anything to the muscle-strength testing, nor the interlinking-body-systems stuff (which seems to connect to some eastern practices). I've read the controversies and really wish there would be some high-grade blind studies of the stuff.
But frankly, if I can pay someone $50 to poke me and tweak me for a half hour, and come out of it feeling miles better, then yes, they've healed me with their hands. And psychosomatic or not, it was well worth the money.
Ah, Amtrak. I personally would take many long Amtrak trips every year. I wish I could: I hate driving, especially the long (10+hour) distances that I have to go to visit family and get to certain research institutions. I would even pay the exorbitant prices for sleeper berths and do cross-country trips a couple of times a year, rather than trudge through the horror that is modern air travel. I can work on a train just fine and/or relax (read, game).
Problem? Amtrak has a blanket policy of not carrying pets. At all, ever. I've actually considered trying to fake up certification for my dog as a 'service animal', but I'm a terrible liar. I've tried to ask about/question/protest this policy, but never get anything beyond the standard "for the comfort and safety of all our passengers" line...yeah, because letting me buy a seat for my dog and keep her in a carrier the whole trip would just put out so many other passengers.
Apparently they stopped allowing pets even in baggage when standards changed and they would have had to improve temperature control in their baggage cars. Because making an investment towards improving the quality of your service is such a terrible business move--stagnation, that's the ticket! I still hold out hope that the people currently in charge of Amtrak will finally retire and some non-idiots will come to power, but then I do try to be an optimist...
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WREAK havoc. Wreak. w. r. e. a. k. Please.
The real winner? Cheddar and bacon waffles. Just the right amount of corn meal to make them extra crispy. Butter. A bit of syrup. And then you die.
Fuck yeah. Vermont grade-B maple syrup is like liquid sex. Just as sticky, too.
Judges aren't stupid, but most of them are egotistical, narcissistic assholes with a touch of sociopath, just like most lawyers (see also: politicians, most drawn from the same source pool). Who else wants the job? The Clint Webb sketch really is one of WKUK's most insightful: the kind of person who wants a job that determines the fate of others isn't really the sort of person you want doing that job, but it seems the best we can do is go with it and do our best to remove the worst of the bunch, and control/satisfy/placate the remainder.
And before you ask, I've done all of the above, Mr. Ad Hominem.
I know, I've been pondering a tablet, but it's hard to tell what even supports 5 GHz. Do any of the current 10"-class tablets?
Never happen. Who wants to label their device as lacking a feature?
Yeah, I'm a little annoyed that my Nook doesn't support 5 GHz. It's basically the only reason I still keep a 2.4 GHz network running at home.
Yeah, I've had drives in my research group fail and lose a bunch of data, and then have their SMART kick in hours/days later while we're trying to recover what's left. Thanks a lot.
Well, it's the same ones who gripe about having to take liberal-arts classes when they went to school for CS or ENG. They see no value in such things.
Fair wage, wtf are you talking about? If I pay you any more, I'd have to cut down on my private jet flights to Tahiti!
HOW IS THAT FAIR?!
I got where I am fair and square, through hard work and fucking everyone else over! What's mine is mine!
--1%
NoooooOOOOOooooooooOOOoooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You, good sir, win. Seriously, submit this to someone.
Magic mouse. Still a mouse for mousey things, but the top surface is a 'touchpad' that replaces scroll functions, but allows swiping in any direction.
And then the atomized LSD that was stored in a tiny little capsule inside the iPad kicks in, and you get one hell of a light show.
Nice job not even reading what I said.
The UL works because an individual device design can have plenty of problems, so individual certification works. You can't "individually certify" a drug. It's a chemical mixture. Any one can make it, and any test showing safety is valid for all productions. I assert that no one company is going to bother with expensive testing when they are also certifying any other maker of the same chemical mix, and there are no patent limits. They'll just make their money selling to the poor and desperate.
I claim someone else owns my body? What the fuck? I claim that without government-enforced regulations requiring safety tests, there will be no real, well-managed, reliable tests (and especially not long term tests). I want a government with the power to require such tests.
Um.
This is broken because no company is going to want to front the money for the FDA 'seal'. It's not like it will magically make only their pills containing e.g. Compound X safe and effective: as soon as any pill containing that compound is approved, you know that any other pill with the same stuff in it is also safe/effective.
Beyond that, we still frequently find long-term side effects of approved drugs after many people have been taking them for many, many years. That's -after- we remove a ton of them that cause effects in whatever the FDA test periods are (a few years?) By allowing sales as soon as stuff is invented you just turn the poor and desperate into a bunch of unmanaged, unregulated, and unreliable guinea pigs. A bunch of poor (read: not rich) people take the new "Vy4grah" from CheapoPharm. Their dicks get hard, and then they all get horrible liver failure and die in 2 to 3 years. Maybe this shows up and we know it's shit, or maybe they're found dead in their homes and are written off as ODs or whatever. Or maybe it causes some chemical imbalance and puts a bunch of people out on the street to die in the cold. Oh well, just a bum? Who's going to do the testing to figure out that their unregulated ED pills killed them? CheapoPharm makes a bunch of money no matter what.
Why would they want to do the FDA tests? All it could reveal is bad things. If it is safe, then after fronting a billion dollars for the tests, MediDeal next door can put out the same pill, same ingredient, now certified safe, without spending their own billion. Oops.
Uh, per-room A/C is much more efficient for empty rooms, as long as the housekeeping staff is told to turn them off or way down when they clean up.
I'm really glad that I decided to try a toaster oven a few years ago. It's so much quicker and efficient for small cooking tasks, and does a lot of things much better than a microwave (leftover pizza is awesome). Plus it doesn't heat my whole apartment up in the summer. Between toaster oven and crockpot, about the only thing I ever use the normal oven for now is an occasional traditional roast (either a whole chicken or pot roast w/ a bunch of veg).
+1 ...I'd buy stock in it.
Wait, people were RESPONSIBLE!? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Why does it feel like we're desperately climbing up a rope that's already been cut?
...damn, actually, I wish they would allow that. I stream like crazy (love that they've been adding lots of anime--clearly Japanese studios know what's what), but I do like having the option to get a DVD occasionally if something's missing from the instant catalog. I just finally watched a DVD I'd had sitting around for like 6 months.
Uh, only if you like (or at least tolerate) driving.
On the other hand, if you're like me, you hate it: hate the hours of endless be'treed interstates you have to go through to get anywhere from your home, hate other drivers who apparently went to the Abstract Expressionist school of driving (or possibly are gaping at the trees/scenery, i.e. are dangerous assholes), hate idiots going 80mph secure in their own immortality, hate the hours of doing jack except drawing in between the lines, AND you can't do it for more than a few hours without your eyes drying out and hurting. Not so much with the part of vacation.
Driving is just another boring chore. Too bad I can't afford a personal chauffeur, or we don't have auto-drive yet.
Chiropractors are not doctors. They are certified masseurs, at least here in Europe. If you only need a good poking or massage just ask your friend, spouse, whoever.
Well now you're just insulting massage therapists. :) The fact that they're certified means they've had some amount of training, and unless you've got an awesome spouse, _they_ don't. Not to mention the fact that your friends or spouse may be the cause of your tension to begin with...
If it worked for real, it wouldn't be alternative, it would have been conventional.
You ARE contradicting yourself. You "don't imply that psychosomatic maladies aren't real", but "if it worked for real"? If the psychosomatic condition is a real problem, and someone can fix it (glorified masseur or not), then it is a _real_ treatment. Alternative medicine practitioners provide a service that can have tangible effects in a person's life, and it's up to the individual how much such a thing is worth.
Your statement also makes the assumption that conventional medicine always and perfectly knows every possible treatment. That's absurd. Research is ongoing in many directions within the 'conventional' realm. There are also plenty of possible reasons for 'alternative' treatments having been overlooked or discarded, starting with politics, religion, culture, and--especially nowadays--the simple fact that it may not be as profitable as current orthodox methods.
You contradict yourself. Whether or not his symptoms were psychosomatic, he went to someone who did, in fact, heal him. With hands.
I'm personally on the fence about some of this stuff. I've had some terrible, rough, unhelpful chiropractic work as part of an insurance settlement after a car accident. Their 'treatment' felt like they were trying to double up their work with their karate practice, jerk jerk jerk snap snap snap. Half the time I left feeling worse. Never again.
On the other hand, I've also had some amazing work by (oh noes!) applied kinesiologists. The good ones have more in common with massage therapists--very gently moving you around--which may be a clue to why it was effective (a massage by itself can be very relaxing and healthful). I have no idea if there's anything to the muscle-strength testing, nor the interlinking-body-systems stuff (which seems to connect to some eastern practices). I've read the controversies and really wish there would be some high-grade blind studies of the stuff.
But frankly, if I can pay someone $50 to poke me and tweak me for a half hour, and come out of it feeling miles better, then yes, they've healed me with their hands. And psychosomatic or not, it was well worth the money.
Ah, Amtrak. I personally would take many long Amtrak trips every year. I wish I could: I hate driving, especially the long (10+hour) distances that I have to go to visit family and get to certain research institutions. I would even pay the exorbitant prices for sleeper berths and do cross-country trips a couple of times a year, rather than trudge through the horror that is modern air travel. I can work on a train just fine and/or relax (read, game).
Problem? Amtrak has a blanket policy of not carrying pets. At all, ever. I've actually considered trying to fake up certification for my dog as a 'service animal', but I'm a terrible liar. I've tried to ask about/question/protest this policy, but never get anything beyond the standard "for the comfort and safety of all our passengers" line...yeah, because letting me buy a seat for my dog and keep her in a carrier the whole trip would just put out so many other passengers.
Apparently they stopped allowing pets even in baggage when standards changed and they would have had to improve temperature control in their baggage cars. Because making an investment towards improving the quality of your service is such a terrible business move--stagnation, that's the ticket! I still hold out hope that the people currently in charge of Amtrak will finally retire and some non-idiots will come to power, but then I do try to be an optimist...