Republicans will always oppose some Democrat ideas not because they want the country to fail, but because they have a different idea of what success is and how to achieve it.
Here's where you're either uninformed or a liar.
And here I was thinking that other people could think differently than me and still be correct was called being open-minded. When did that change?
Republicans will always oppose some Democrat ideas not because they want the country to fail, but because they have a different idea of what success is and how to achieve it.
Here's where you're either uninformed or a liar. The Republicans have opposed and blocked passage of *every* policy proposed by Democrats since 2008. Fuck, they blocked a bill to give health care to 9/11 first responders! Routine political appointments have been vacant for years because of the Republican blockade.
For you to claim that Republican opposition has been selective and based on ideology is disingenuous: the only ideology they have right now is "if Obama's fer it, we're agin' it."
--Jeremy
Interesting. Where did you get your information? Which policies are you referring to? Which appointments?
" But ya, it was the Republican party of "NO!" that prevented Obama from reviving the economy with his $800 billion dollar stimulus package that he promised would get unemployment below 8%. I thought it passed? Oh right, it did. Republican's fault somehow..."
Yeah the republicans let it through intact... Try again with some facts instead Mister Limbaugh...
The Republicans gutted the project and then stuck in their own pork belly crap to tie it to their special pet projects, But don't let reality get in the way of your fantasy.....
Ah, insults, yay, that should inspire some conversation.
I reply to specific points with specific examples, but all I get back are flamebait and troll mods, insults, and repeats of the same unsubstantiated claims. Slashdot is obviously not the place for political discussions through making points. So instead I'll just ask a question.
Ok, Republicans gutted it. How so? Which of Obama's demands were removed, which special pet projects did they add in, and how did they convince Obama to both approve it with his signature and claim it as one of his successes?
Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan all dealt with Congresses controlled by the Opposite party, yet are still *not* considered leadership failures.
They did not deal with a Congress that tried to stop every piece of legislation going through and tried to ruin the economy so that they could blame it on the President. That part is attributed to the rise in the Tea Party.
By "everything", would you be including the stimulus package that Obama promised would bring unemployment below 8%? The culture in Washington is largely the same as it was 30, 20, or even 10 years ago sans specific political party control. The Tea Party does not have the influence you attribute to them.
Obama has been President while the Republicans have been the party of "NO". They have blocked numerous attempts to revive the economy with the obvious goal being to leave the economy in the ditch which poor leadership got us into.
111th Congress was split 58 Democrat Senators, 41 Republican Senators. 2 short of a super majority. But ya, it was the Republican party of "NO!" that prevented Obama from reviving the economy with his $800 billion dollar stimulus package that he promised would get unemployment below 8%. I thought it passed? Oh right, it did. Republican's fault somehow...
111th Congress also happened to be split 257 Democrat representatives and 178 Republican. Tell me again how their NO votes stopped Obama from leading?
Oh, it was the 112th Congress that was more evenly split that prevented Obama from being a leader?
I don't even need to ask how you got modded insightful for parroting the Democrat party mantra of "Not my fault!".
Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan all dealt with Congresses controlled by the Opposite party, yet are still *not* considered leadership failures. They "got stuff done", in Clinton's case despite the "Party of No" purposefully trying to foil his every attempt to lead by voting No.
Obama is a failure as a LEADER. Congress passes or blocks laws, but Obama is the one that makes remarks about Officer Crowley being stupid. Obama is the one that helps divide the nation by claiming "my son would look like Trayvon", instead of saying "Hey, lets stand together, wait for the facts, and fix the bad laws". Leaders step up, take the high road, and get everybody to work together towards a common goal. They don't say things like "the party of No", point fingers, say "that side isn't towing their weight".
Republicans will always oppose some Democrat ideas not because they want the country to fail, but because they have a different idea of what success is and how to achieve it. Are some of them greedy asshats that don't care about the country beyond "what can I get from it?", well of course. But thinking the Democrats are any different is just... stupid.
So stop being so sheepishly bigoted. Political sound bytes are rarely accurate as-is.
3.5 is saturated with too many rules and variants. WotC should focus on new sourcebooks and adventure modules. No new rules, classes, etc.
That is the nature of anything that is constantly under development. You start out with a product... and a question, "But, how do I x?", then an update comes out to answer that question. But of course that makes the product just a little bit more complicated. One more rule to read and apply. One more part with another set of instructions. Whatever.
d&d rules, computer program, car, tax code, constitution, family... life. They all get more complicated
Then one day, you have a major version change, a new model, civil war, or mid-life crisis. You throw everything away, write a new book, then sit down with a hot cup of joe and say "aaaah, this is the life...", which is immediately followed by "But, how do I x?" So you pull out your notebook, and figure out a way to make it better: How to bake the perfect cookie to go with your coffee, how to pick up chicks, which language to switch to, which minority to blame and oppress, or what new prestige class to add.
"No new rules" simply means stagnation and irrelevancy or extinction... The Bible.
Hook up a bunch of vegges with functional visuals to city-wide cameras (or whatever venue you want to watch). Stick a wanted poster next to the screen and wait for the spike.
he was just pointing out that the parent post is nothing but regurgitated corporate whoring from the republican platform. What you are doing is acting like a young child trying to deflect responsibility by claiming that the other kids did the same thing.
Thanks for reminding me we're on/. and not CEO Weekly by getting modded insightful with that junk. There is no deflecting of responsibility. The article claimed hiring would slow due to the Presidential election coming up, the poster explained why. That is absolutely true and has nothing to do with Republican vs. Democrat ideology. It is not a "republican meme". It is simply a matter of businesses being able to predict what the market & rules will allow them to do.
Businesses rely on predictability. Stock prices rely on predictability. If a company makes less money in a quarter than they predict, their stock slides down. If a company makes more money in a quarter than they predict, their stock also slides down. The only way to raise your stock price is to accurately predict your company will grow and by how much.
Since President changes also bring about major policy shifts that affect businesses significantly, businesses wait until after the election to make major hiring decisions. We're not talking about filling existing holes in known needed positions, the front desk needs a person there to answer the phones regardless of H1B approval rates or federal enforcement of immigration laws, we're talking about new projects or departments, new endeavors that can be completed destroyed by a single policy shift: Do you open your new call center in Nebraska or India; H1Bs, contractors, or full-time; will oil exploration be profitable under Obama or Romney?
Neither you, nor the person you're defending seem to have any clue about how this works or you wouldn't be claiming it is a "republican meme".
...they came up snake eyes. Or, perhaps a five. Either way, you didn't do your due diligence if you thought that Facebook, today, was worth 100:1 P/E ratio with a solid income track record established. Why is it that people want to sue when their bets went bad. Do you sue the track when that clean looking bay you bet to show comes in fourth because they didn't tell you he was off his feed that morning?
If they're required by the SEC to inform all betters of the feed change before the start of the race, but they only told the "regulars" at the track instead of everybody, yes.
Do you sue the casino and Nevada Gaming Commission when you don't ply well at the slots because the adjust the payouts since the last months payout percentages were posted?
Again, if they're required by the SEC to notify all players of the change before the players dropped in a quarter, but instead only told the high-rollers... yes, you do.
I would have appealed their decision. If that's the whole story you were smart, not an ass. I've always judged my planes against the baseline of a crumpled paper ball, and when I've run competitions, we always had an event specifically for crumpled balls. If your event organizers didn't want that design, they should have prohibited it before the event. If that design never occurred to them, then you taught them a valuable engineering lesson.
I'm slowly learning that is why us nerds don't get promoted.
In the corporate world: The best idea is not always the best idea. Sometimes you have to just shut up and play ball.
I did not say it works or is fair for both groups.
Sometimes equality is not fair, but it is still equality.
1+x=2 is not equal for all values of x. It is only equal for certain values of x, namely, 1.
Likewise, your logic is only equal for certain values of x: those that wish to get married for reasons other than love, and those heterosexuals who wish to get married for love.
You completely ignore the fact that homosexuals cannot marry for love.
A person with integrity and ethics who proposes a vitally needed, rationally grounded, but otherwise unpopular solution to current campaign related issues will never win against an unscrupulous liar who puffs smoke up voter's asses, and fills them with meaningless promises of a magical solution to all their problems (like obama's "change" platform....). This is because any realistic solution ot any controversial problem will have unavoidable consequences that will adversely impact at least one party to the issue, else it wouldn't be controversial. As such, any realistic solution will create very violent and outspoken resistance from at least some portion of the voter/supporter demographic, which the shister can still exploit in his/her election platform.
No, you need reputable scientific studies. Which have been performed. Which have been published. Which have been misquoted by bloggers and then repeated here as fact "disproving" the very same reputable scientific studies.
But, to argue that home birth is as safe or safer than hospital birth is you pushing a clearly false agenda.
First, the only things I'm promoting are science, logic, and the ability to read and think critically. If you think that is a bad agenda to push, well, our discussion is going to be really short. What I am saying is the GP quoting a blog that misquotes a scientific study leading to false conclusions and claiming it is an example of science destroying misinformation is just as dangerous and stupid as what the GP was complaining about. The specific topic is merely an irrelevant coincidence. What the GP/blogger stated about the dangers of homebirths is a lie as "Homebirths are more dangerous" (as claimed by the GP/blogger) is a vastly different statement than "homebirths attended by untrained personnel are more dangerous" (as claimed in the quoted study).
Who in their right mind would think car repairs performed by untrained technicians would match the quality of repairs done by trained technicians?
Pregnancy/birth is no different. Its not rocket science.
Unless you hire an untrained scientist/blogger out of his Mom's Hippie Hostel (tm)...
Many aspects of a home birth are beneficial. Many aspects of a hospital birth are beneficial. Many aspects of a home birth are detrimental. And many aspects of a hospital birth are detrimental. There are indeed hippies that think an unassisted "home" birth in the middle of a forest is the best way to go. There are also trained attendants that want to shove a living snake up those hippie's cooches until they and everybody that has ever heard of such a stupid idea dies from it. Likewise there are doctors that educate and inform, and there are doctors that lie to push their own beliefs.
Your post actually brings up another point... Doctors are not gods. They are human. They are susceptible to the same biases and mistakes as the rest of us. Your apparent blind faith in them, regardless of contradicting evidence presented, is both telling and disturbing.
The saddest example I see of pseudoscience is in the birth communities, medical technology has taken us out of the tragic "good old days" when 1 in 10 babies and 1 in 100 mothers didn't survive a birth. But suddenly everyone thinks it's a great idea to run away from hospitals and doctors and use untrained homebirth attendants, even for high risk pregnancy.
I suppose you have some science to back up this claim?
Oh a blog. Excellent. Hang on a second while I setup a blog to counter your claims.
On second thought, let me take a piece of the original study your blog is quoting and fix that sentence for you, shall I?
In Australia, death rates are four times higher for homebirths with untrained attendants.
In other news, cars repaired by your cousin the high school drop out with a 68 IQ break more. But I bet if I set up my own blog I could claim car repairs are dangerous and have people re-post it.
Having recently been pregnant and seen the "trust NATURE" mantras thrown at me again and again in online communities
Nature of course being notorious for failing to notify you of complications through electrical impulses flying down your nerves.
, I'm so afraid of who else is being mislead. But the consequences are unimaginable.
In all fairness, there are a lot of untrained attendants misleading people. Unfortunately there appear to still be trained doctors doing the exact same thing, as is evidenced by your post.
Now for just the facts that are backed up by reputable published scientific studies (not blogs:):
trained attendant home births have the same mortality rate as trained attendant hospital births
home births result in fewer post-natal complications
Imho, far worse than the anti-science crowd is the misquoting science crowd.
Over the last few decades, American states have tried one thing after another to "make voting easier" in an attempt to increase participation (and, usually, to sway elections by increasing the number of voters aligned with one major party or the other). Two of the most significant have been the passage of "motor voter" laws (you can register to vote when you get or renew your driver's license) and "vote by mail". However none of these have really worked. People (like me) who are inclined to vote will do so, whether by mail or by traveling to an assigned polling place. The majority of American voters, though, simply don't seem engaged in the process.
I'd be all for e-voting with the right technology (secure and economical), but it's just about convenience for me. But I'll vote in any case - I have no illusions it'd increase participation.
Ya, see, the problem is not participation in the actual voting process. Actually voting (absentee especially) involves checking a couple boxes and dropping it in the mail. Not difficult, not time consuming, not costly.
The problem is getting voters informed. And no matter how easy you make it for them to "raise their hand", they're still not going to take the time to research the candidates or issues. So, like you said, those who are inclined, not just to vote but participate, are going to do so. Those who aren't, won't.
Things like this (not the internet voting, but just difficulty in voting in general) have been discussed since shortly after voting was invented. I'm sure it is one of the many reasons cited by the founding fathers as a reason for our representative democracy. The mob is generally horrible, corruptible, easily swayed, lazy, and stupid. Representatives (of the people & states... though Senators have now been hijacked and turned into representatives too) provide a layer of reason between the mob and decision making that makes the complete participation of the mob in voting unnecessary and in fact, once you consider all the problems the mob has, undesired.
Slashdot Mirror
Republicans will always oppose some Democrat ideas not because they want the country to fail, but because they have a different idea of what success is and how to achieve it.
Here's where you're either uninformed or a liar.
And here I was thinking that other people could think differently than me and still be correct was called being open-minded. When did that change?
Republicans will always oppose some Democrat ideas not because they want the country to fail, but because they have a different idea of what success is and how to achieve it.
Here's where you're either uninformed or a liar. The Republicans have opposed and blocked passage of *every* policy proposed by Democrats since 2008. Fuck, they blocked a bill to give health care to 9/11 first responders! Routine political appointments have been vacant for years because of the Republican blockade.
For you to claim that Republican opposition has been selective and based on ideology is disingenuous: the only ideology they have right now is "if Obama's fer it, we're agin' it."
--Jeremy
Interesting. Where did you get your information? Which policies are you referring to? Which appointments?
" But ya, it was the Republican party of "NO!" that prevented Obama from reviving the economy with his $800 billion dollar stimulus package that he promised would get unemployment below 8%. I thought it passed? Oh right, it did. Republican's fault somehow..."
Yeah the republicans let it through intact... Try again with some facts instead Mister Limbaugh...
The Republicans gutted the project and then stuck in their own pork belly crap to tie it to their special pet projects, But don't let reality get in the way of your fantasy.....
Ah, insults, yay, that should inspire some conversation.
I reply to specific points with specific examples, but all I get back are flamebait and troll mods, insults, and repeats of the same unsubstantiated claims. Slashdot is obviously not the place for political discussions through making points. So instead I'll just ask a question.
Ok, Republicans gutted it. How so? Which of Obama's demands were removed, which special pet projects did they add in, and how did they convince Obama to both approve it with his signature and claim it as one of his successes?
Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan all dealt with Congresses controlled by the Opposite party, yet are still *not* considered leadership failures.
They did not deal with a Congress that tried to stop every piece of legislation going through and tried to ruin the economy so that they could blame it on the President. That part is attributed to the rise in the Tea Party.
By "everything", would you be including the stimulus package that Obama promised would bring unemployment below 8%? The culture in Washington is largely the same as it was 30, 20, or even 10 years ago sans specific political party control. The Tea Party does not have the influence you attribute to them.
Obama has been President while the Republicans have been the party of "NO". They have blocked numerous attempts to revive the economy with the obvious goal being to leave the economy in the ditch which poor leadership got us into.
111th Congress was split 58 Democrat Senators, 41 Republican Senators. 2 short of a super majority. But ya, it was the Republican party of "NO!" that prevented Obama from reviving the economy with his $800 billion dollar stimulus package that he promised would get unemployment below 8%. I thought it passed? Oh right, it did. Republican's fault somehow...
111th Congress also happened to be split 257 Democrat representatives and 178 Republican. Tell me again how their NO votes stopped Obama from leading?
Oh, it was the 112th Congress that was more evenly split that prevented Obama from being a leader?
I don't even need to ask how you got modded insightful for parroting the Democrat party mantra of "Not my fault!".
Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan all dealt with Congresses controlled by the Opposite party, yet are still *not* considered leadership failures. They "got stuff done", in Clinton's case despite the "Party of No" purposefully trying to foil his every attempt to lead by voting No.
Obama is a failure as a LEADER. Congress passes or blocks laws, but Obama is the one that makes remarks about Officer Crowley being stupid. Obama is the one that helps divide the nation by claiming "my son would look like Trayvon", instead of saying "Hey, lets stand together, wait for the facts, and fix the bad laws". Leaders step up, take the high road, and get everybody to work together towards a common goal. They don't say things like "the party of No", point fingers, say "that side isn't towing their weight".
Republicans will always oppose some Democrat ideas not because they want the country to fail, but because they have a different idea of what success is and how to achieve it. Are some of them greedy asshats that don't care about the country beyond "what can I get from it?", well of course. But thinking the Democrats are any different is just... stupid.
So stop being so sheepishly bigoted. Political sound bytes are rarely accurate as-is.
3.5 is saturated with too much new rules
and that's because the core 3.5 system is broken.
zzzzzzzzzz
3.5 is saturated with too many rules and variants. WotC should focus on new sourcebooks and adventure modules. No new rules, classes, etc.
That is the nature of anything that is constantly under development. You start out with a product... and a question, "But, how do I x?", then an update comes out to answer that question. But of course that makes the product just a little bit more complicated. One more rule to read and apply. One more part with another set of instructions. Whatever.
d&d rules, computer program, car, tax code, constitution, family... life. They all get more complicated
Then one day, you have a major version change, a new model, civil war, or mid-life crisis. You throw everything away, write a new book, then sit down with a hot cup of joe and say "aaaah, this is the life...", which is immediately followed by "But, how do I x?" So you pull out your notebook, and figure out a way to make it better: How to bake the perfect cookie to go with your coffee, how to pick up chicks, which language to switch to, which minority to blame and oppress, or what new prestige class to add.
"No new rules" simply means stagnation and irrelevancy or extinction... The Bible.
Hook up a bunch of vegges with functional visuals to city-wide cameras (or whatever venue you want to watch). Stick a wanted poster next to the screen and wait for the spike.
he was just pointing out that the parent post is nothing but regurgitated corporate whoring from the republican platform. What you are doing is acting like a young child trying to deflect responsibility by claiming that the other kids did the same thing.
Thanks for reminding me we're on /. and not CEO Weekly by getting modded insightful with that junk. There is no deflecting of responsibility. The article claimed hiring would slow due to the Presidential election coming up, the poster explained why. That is absolutely true and has nothing to do with Republican vs. Democrat ideology. It is not a "republican meme". It is simply a matter of businesses being able to predict what the market & rules will allow them to do.
Businesses rely on predictability. Stock prices rely on predictability. If a company makes less money in a quarter than they predict, their stock slides down. If a company makes more money in a quarter than they predict, their stock also slides down. The only way to raise your stock price is to accurately predict your company will grow and by how much.
Since President changes also bring about major policy shifts that affect businesses significantly, businesses wait until after the election to make major hiring decisions. We're not talking about filling existing holes in known needed positions, the front desk needs a person there to answer the phones regardless of H1B approval rates or federal enforcement of immigration laws, we're talking about new projects or departments, new endeavors that can be completed destroyed by a single policy shift: Do you open your new call center in Nebraska or India; H1Bs, contractors, or full-time; will oil exploration be profitable under Obama or Romney?
Neither you, nor the person you're defending seem to have any clue about how this works or you wouldn't be claiming it is a "republican meme".
I'd expect that over at Digg or reddit, but not here.
Ah. Well, since you're new, the bathrooms are down the hall on the left.
I'll keep it short & simple:
lol missed the "not" ;)
...they came up snake eyes. Or, perhaps a five. Either way, you didn't do your due diligence if you thought that Facebook, today, was worth 100:1 P/E ratio with a solid income track record established. Why is it that people want to sue when their bets went bad. Do you sue the track when that clean looking bay you bet to show comes in fourth because they didn't tell you he was off his feed that morning?
If they're required by the SEC to inform all betters of the feed change before the start of the race, but they only told the "regulars" at the track instead of everybody, yes.
Do you sue the casino and Nevada Gaming Commission when you don't ply well at the slots because the adjust the payouts since the last months payout percentages were posted?
Again, if they're required by the SEC to notify all players of the change before the players dropped in a quarter, but instead only told the high-rollers... yes, you do.
Penny traders are expanding.
I'd like to see food not made with 'chemistry.' I don't know what it would look like but I suspect "food" isn't it.
It looks like cake. And pie. And cookies. And french fries.
Cooking is chemistry in action.
Watch some Alton Brown. In addition to awesome pancake recipes, he superficially explains the chemistry behind it.
The government can suck money directly from your paycheck, or bust down the door of your house, or drag you off to jail. A corporation can not.
The MPAA, RIAA, and every other major lobby scoffs at your silly attempt to separate corporate and government powers.
I would have appealed their decision. If that's the whole story you were smart, not an ass. I've always judged my planes against the baseline of a crumpled paper ball, and when I've run competitions, we always had an event specifically for crumpled balls. If your event organizers didn't want that design, they should have prohibited it before the event. If that design never occurred to them, then you taught them a valuable engineering lesson.
I'm slowly learning that is why us nerds don't get promoted.
In the corporate world: The best idea is not always the best idea. Sometimes you have to just shut up and play ball.
I did not say it works or is fair for both groups. Sometimes equality is not fair, but it is still equality.
1+x=2 is not equal for all values of x. It is only equal for certain values of x, namely, 1.
Likewise, your logic is only equal for certain values of x: those that wish to get married for reasons other than love, and those heterosexuals who wish to get married for love.
You completely ignore the fact that homosexuals cannot marry for love.
Rights afforded to homosexuals are not equal.
Which is exactly the problem. Anything worth voting into law must be able to stand on its own merit.
Stand in front of who? Congress?
THAT is the problem.
Why do you think campaign finance reform is such a joke?
A person with integrity and ethics who proposes a vitally needed, rationally grounded, but otherwise unpopular solution to current campaign related issues will never win against an unscrupulous liar who puffs smoke up voter's asses, and fills them with meaningless promises of a magical solution to all their problems (like obama's "change" platform....). This is because any realistic solution ot any controversial problem will have unavoidable consequences that will adversely impact at least one party to the issue, else it wouldn't be controversial. As such, any realistic solution will create very violent and outspoken resistance from at least some portion of the voter/supporter demographic, which the shister can still exploit in his/her election platform.
Yes I know Ron Paul won't get elected.
As such ... I have no interest in trying.
That is why the system will never change.
Just because that is inconvenient or expensive for them, does not justify false advertising.
I see you have no plans to run for public office.
You don't need a "blog" to prove that.
No, you need reputable scientific studies. Which have been performed. Which have been published. Which have been misquoted by bloggers and then repeated here as fact "disproving" the very same reputable scientific studies.
But, to argue that home birth is as safe or safer than hospital birth is you pushing a clearly false agenda.
First, the only things I'm promoting are science, logic, and the ability to read and think critically. If you think that is a bad agenda to push, well, our discussion is going to be really short. What I am saying is the GP quoting a blog that misquotes a scientific study leading to false conclusions and claiming it is an example of science destroying misinformation is just as dangerous and stupid as what the GP was complaining about. The specific topic is merely an irrelevant coincidence. What the GP/blogger stated about the dangers of homebirths is a lie as "Homebirths are more dangerous" (as claimed by the GP/blogger) is a vastly different statement than "homebirths attended by untrained personnel are more dangerous" (as claimed in the quoted study).
Who in their right mind would think car repairs performed by untrained technicians would match the quality of repairs done by trained technicians?
Pregnancy/birth is no different. Its not rocket science.
Unless you hire an untrained scientist/blogger out of his Mom's Hippie Hostel (tm)...
Many aspects of a home birth are beneficial. Many aspects of a hospital birth are beneficial. Many aspects of a home birth are detrimental. And many aspects of a hospital birth are detrimental. There are indeed hippies that think an unassisted "home" birth in the middle of a forest is the best way to go. There are also trained attendants that want to shove a living snake up those hippie's cooches until they and everybody that has ever heard of such a stupid idea dies from it. Likewise there are doctors that educate and inform, and there are doctors that lie to push their own beliefs.
Your post actually brings up another point... Doctors are not gods. They are human. They are susceptible to the same biases and mistakes as the rest of us. Your apparent blind faith in them, regardless of contradicting evidence presented, is both telling and disturbing.
trained attendant home births have the same mortality rate as trained attendant hospital births
For low-risk births.
I just know the pedantic crowd will come out in force if I don't fix that first.
The saddest example I see of pseudoscience is in the birth communities, medical technology has taken us out of the tragic "good old days" when 1 in 10 babies and 1 in 100 mothers didn't survive a birth. But suddenly everyone thinks it's a great idea to run away from hospitals and doctors and use untrained homebirth attendants, even for high risk pregnancy.
I suppose you have some science to back up this claim?
In Australia death rates are four times higher for homebirth babies.
Oh a blog. Excellent. Hang on a second while I setup a blog to counter your claims.
On second thought, let me take a piece of the original study your blog is quoting and fix that sentence for you, shall I?
In Australia, death rates are four times higher for homebirths with untrained attendants.
In other news, cars repaired by your cousin the high school drop out with a 68 IQ break more. But I bet if I set up my own blog I could claim car repairs are dangerous and have people re-post it.
Having recently been pregnant and seen the "trust NATURE" mantras thrown at me again and again in online communities
Nature of course being notorious for failing to notify you of complications through electrical impulses flying down your nerves.
, I'm so afraid of who else is being mislead. But the consequences are unimaginable.
In all fairness, there are a lot of untrained attendants misleading people. Unfortunately there appear to still be trained doctors doing the exact same thing, as is evidenced by your post.
Now for just the facts that are backed up by reputable published scientific studies (not blogs :):
Imho, far worse than the anti-science crowd is the misquoting science crowd.
Over the last few decades, American states have tried one thing after another to "make voting easier" in an attempt to increase participation (and, usually, to sway elections by increasing the number of voters aligned with one major party or the other). Two of the most significant have been the passage of "motor voter" laws (you can register to vote when you get or renew your driver's license) and "vote by mail". However none of these have really worked. People (like me) who are inclined to vote will do so, whether by mail or by traveling to an assigned polling place. The majority of American voters, though, simply don't seem engaged in the process.
I'd be all for e-voting with the right technology (secure and economical), but it's just about convenience for me. But I'll vote in any case - I have no illusions it'd increase participation.
Ya, see, the problem is not participation in the actual voting process. Actually voting (absentee especially) involves checking a couple boxes and dropping it in the mail. Not difficult, not time consuming, not costly.
The problem is getting voters informed. And no matter how easy you make it for them to "raise their hand", they're still not going to take the time to research the candidates or issues. So, like you said, those who are inclined, not just to vote but participate, are going to do so. Those who aren't, won't.
Things like this (not the internet voting, but just difficulty in voting in general) have been discussed since shortly after voting was invented. I'm sure it is one of the many reasons cited by the founding fathers as a reason for our representative democracy. The mob is generally horrible, corruptible, easily swayed, lazy, and stupid. Representatives (of the people & states... though Senators have now been hijacked and turned into representatives too) provide a layer of reason between the mob and decision making that makes the complete participation of the mob in voting unnecessary and in fact, once you consider all the problems the mob has, undesired.