This illustrates why I wouldn't mind spam at all, if I only got ONE copy of each sales pitch.
I get a few spams that only arrive ONCE, usually from *legit* (often Chinese) manufacturing companies. Those are small, polite, and informative -- I thereby learn who actually makes some particular line of product. And a single copy of an unsolicited ad is nothing to get upset about, even if it's nothing of interest.
But what makes spam unpalatable is getting 50 copies of each and every ad, every bloody day. At day's end you've got a few thousand duplicates in your inbox. And pretty soon you've got your filters set to kill ALL ad-bearing email, legit or not.
Not necessarily. Frex, for a while WalMart was one of only two stores in this area (the other was Staples) where you could buy a genuine USR *HARDWARE* modem. Everyone else carried only those worthless software modems (in both USR and lesser brands).
However, my gripe with WalMart and computer parts is that while there is a posted 7-day return policy on "electronics", I asked the store manager specifically about PC components, and was told there was a zero-returns policy for computer parts.
Consequently, I opted to walk across the street and pay $5 more at Staples, who have a no-hassle return policy.
BTW, not all WalMarts are created equal. We have four in this immediate area, and they are nothing alike. Frex, the brand-new Super WalMart is a royal PITA and stuff is priced higher there; conversely the ancient scruffy WalMart has lower prices and is a pleasant place to shop. (Which is probably why it's the highest-grossing WalMart in the U.S. Unfortunately, it's slated to be replaced with a Super WalMart.)
On a third hand, the local Sam's Club is overall the best place in town for price, quality, and value, and is also one of the most pleasant stores I've ever been in.
There's another factor at work: people who don't understand computers AT ALL, who regard them as a Magic Box, tend to believe in a sort of sympathetic magic: "If I own this Fancy Software, I will magically become adept at using my computer."
And the LESS the user understands about their computer, the more strongly they hold to this belief that if only they have the right "spells" (programs) they'll be given magical abilities to use it.
I've seen this over and over. Most users don't get very far beyond this stage, thus never use their PC or their software in more than trivial ways. The computer isn't important to them for itself, it's just a TOOL of no more interest than a VCR or a toaster or any other appliance, and they just want it to work without an argument.
A very few buckle down and study using the PC like they would a college class, and those DO progress to being adept users (even if they don't really understand their PC, they can still USE it well). However, they are usually people who already had a geeky mindset, but had applied it in some other endeavour until this point. They are NOT the norm for computer users today, any more than we slashdotters are.
But our LEGAL immigration is already EASIER than anywhere else in the world. And the whole idea of limited immigration is to keep it at a manageable trickle, to avoid overwhelming our resources (particularly at the expense of our own people). If it were as easy as some folk would like (to the point where it's no more difficult than walking across the border -- and there are a lot of areas along the border where that's all you need to do) we'd have an unmanageable flood that would dwarf even the current illegal immigration numbers.
I recall once seeing an assertion (in some college class that covered epidemiology -- my major was biochem/microbiology) that smallpox killed many times more Native Americans than all other causes combined, said smallpox being unwittingly brought over by the early European settlers.
Smallpox had been endemic in Europe for centuries, and most Europeans had some immunity, either from having had it or by exposure to someone who had recovered from it. Conversely the North American population had NO immunological "experience" with smallpox, thus no ability to cope with this to-them new disease.
It can work the other way around, too -- just hie yourself to Mexico City, drink the water, and experience Montezuma's Revenge. The residents have immunity to the various pathogens in the water because they've lived with them all their lives. But your first exposure will be, um, memorable...
It's the new religion: if there's a proper scientific explanation, it must be wrong! After all, everything bad is caused by cell phone and UFOs. Otherwise there's no reason for having such a tightly-fitted tinfoil hat.:)
There's also some evidence that puppies should be allowed to have a few worms, at least in the short term, for the sake of intestinal health. Having a FEW worms (not enough to load the gut or deprive the puppy of nutrients) probably stimulates immune response; we've known for decades that the reason most normal mature dogs have very few worms is because the immune system kicks them out (unless the worms are "sheltered" by a diet low in meat or high in soy, leading to more moisture and mucus in the stool).
[puts on pro dog breeder/trainer hat] I've noticed myself that pups who are born without roundworms (rare, but can happen) are more prone to neonatal diarrhea.
Chickenpox causes "shingles" in older adults. In a few kids it has serious complications. Both are a considerably higher risk than any "vaccine reaction" (which itself is probably more symtomatic of an immune system defect rather than a problem with the vaccine itself).
As to other diseases we used to vaccinate against and had nearly wiped out... POLIO is also making a comeback due to a whole generation that was never vaccinated, thanks to fears of "vaccine reactions". Anyone else here remember when iron lungs and leg braces were a major part of the pediatric medicine landscape, back before polio vaccine became commonplace??
As to whooping cough, it has a high fatality rate; would you rather your kid had a 0.000006% chance of a "vaccine reaction", or a ~10% chance of dying from this preventable disease? (the death rate was MUCH higher 50 years ago, but I'm allowing for Modern Hospitalization)
We see the same paranoia about "vaccine reactions" among the new generation of dog breeders, who don't remember when 50% of all puppies died of distemper, who haven't had a whole litter die of parvovirus, and who haven't seen lepto kill 1/3rd of a whole town's canine population. And thanks to clients with ill-fitted tinfoil hats, most vets have stopped vaccinating against lepto AT ALL; consequently lepto has returned from near-extinction, and there are now occasional epidemics.
[Side note: I am a professional dog breeder/trainer with 36 years experience. In my kennel I've given about 15,000 doses of vaccine, mostly 7-way combo. I have NEVER seen a "vaccine reaction". But I don't breed from dogs with immune-system disorders, either.]
As to TB, remember when schools tested every child every year? what with the huge influx of illegal immigrants from poor countries where TB is still an issue, why are we no longer testing kids -- if only to protect their schoolmates??
As to rickets, it isn't a disease, it's a deficiency disorder, generally due to lack of calcium and/or vitamin D (but can also be caused by a lack/imbalance of phosphorus and potassium, or by megadoses of vitamin C), and most commonly a result of not letting your kids drink enough milk. Those who try to blame it on "too much breast milk" or "too much sunscreen" should perhaps note that residents of low-sun countries and cultures where all kids are breast-fed don't seem to have this problem...
Ah, the wonders of our Modern Healthy Diets -- epidemics first of obesity and now of rickets!
I have a P90 (one of those that was remarked down to P75 for the market sweet spot, but because it's really a P90, it runs fine at 90MHz) that has some sort of FP bug... it passes the Calculator test, but locks up with certain math-intensive screen savers, like the old After Dark kaleidoscope. It never showed any other symptoms in its 6 years of useful life, so I didn't bother to RMA it.
I don't consider this as bad as the Sept.1998 batch of K6-2 450Mhz CPUs that could not run certain 32bit code AT ALL (neither Win32 Setup nor any species of Linux would run). AMD refused to replace those at all.
Verizon won't replace stuff unless it outright fails, and even then it may take a while for them to get around to it.
I've complained about noise on my line for years too, and they say nothing is wrong even when it's dropping out to where I can't talk to the repair rep.
Worst of all, Verizon inherited GTE's protected monopoly status from the MaBell era, so competition is not allowed in Verizon territories. Hardly an incentive to fix anything, especially when they now own most of the market. (I've seen figures as high as 90% for some states.)
Actually, the reason FAT32 partitions are limited to 32GB was because larger FAT32 partitions can experience wrapping and data corruption due to some bug in FAT32 itself, the details of which I forget.
I found info on this in M$'s knowledge base, after experiencing it myself on a 60GB FAT32 partition. It *looked* like HD failure, in fact it was so convincing that I RMA'd the drive before discovering the KB article on the subject.
There is also a patch on M$'s site, to let FDISK make FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. However, it appears that the original FDISK "limit" was deliberate, and that some later bunch of coders weren't aware of the FAT32 bug, so they "fixed" FDISK to remove the limit. Ooops...
Which probably explains the rash of "failed HDs" once HDs got into the 40GB range, prior to WinXP making NTFS the consumer-PC standard -- NFTS is not affected by this bug.
Hell, Verizon won't even bring its customers into the PRESENT. As I mention in another post, the reason I'm stuck with *26k* dialup, half the industry standard for dialup speeds, is because Verizon won't fix their local DMS station that's been broken for over 20 years (according to the hapless tech dude in charge of it, it was defective from day one).
Thanks for the link... I still use a Wildcat BBS every day, and I contend that someday we'll see a return to the dialup BBS, when needed for email that's more secure from gov't snooping.
Which is why I was disturbed by this statement from the developer (I didn't see any link to this person on the site, maybe you can direct me):
"[will not be implemented]: OLR: include private email area in download packets. See also global wish for private mail areas."
Erm... without that, it lacks one of the most =fundamental= features of *any* messaging BBS -- private email [both local and internet] AND its inclusion in QWK packets. Even FIDO has private messaging echoes.
Otherwise, it looks like a good usable BBS interface (high praise from this Wildcat bigot:)
As to the nominal topic, if Verizon (and by extension, any provider of local phone service) can get away with what amounts to a "modem tax" -- that also removes their incentive to replace outdated and/or defective equipment that won't even do the industry-standard 50k connection, because the more time you're stuck online, the more money they make.
I've been arguing with Verizon for almost 5 years about their broken DMS that keeps my connection at 26.4k on a good day, and often much less -- meaning I spend 2 to 4 times as much time connected as I should have to, just to get my basic online stuff done. Why should I be penalised for Verizon's broken equipment??
Reminds a person of when AOL charged by the minute.....
Exactly what TFA was suggesting, with some value-added for the higher-priced models (much akin to the diff between flying standby, and flying first-class).
I find the whole concept very reasonable for DVDs: Basic DVD in a plain package for a buck; DVD with some extras, in a plain package, for a couple bucks; DVD with extras, director's cut, and nice printed booklet in a spiffy package, for regular retail price. IOW price discrimination with some incentives for the consumer to be "more discriminated".
They'll soon learn which model hits the consumer sweet spots, and how much of each type to produce for max profits across the entire market spectrum.
Or maybe not. Low pricing may well translate to much greater market-penetration, and ultimately a higher net profit, for indy films that might otherwise be entirely invisible to the mass consumer market.
I'm willing to throw a buck at an iffy-maybe or never-heard-of-it, if it looks tolerably interesting. But it won't get me for more, as a DVD or in the theatre. So... at a buck for a DVD, that indy film *might* get my money, while at a higher price it won't get anything from me at all.
And if I didn't know it existed before tripping over it in the discount aisle at Walmart, I won't be pirating it either (cuz I don't know it exists in the first place)... so I'll never see it at all. That's NO chance of a sale via ANY route.
The problem is, when you "cure" a genetic problem without getting rid of the genetic cause, you have actually selected FOR the problem, so you can expect its rate to INCREASE in future generations.
Which isn't good for the species.
As someone once put it, because you CAN doesn't necessarily mean you SHOULD.
"People complain endlessly about the lack of things for teenagers to do, and a gigging culture would benefit that endlessly."
When I read this what came to mind was a different sort of "gig" entirely:
1.An arrangement of barbless hooks that is dragged through a school of fish to hook them in their bodies. 2.A pronged spear for fishing or catching frogs.
Would give a whole new meaning to concert gigs, eh?;)
Another factor is that in the large metro markets, the price to rent a concert venue has skyrocketed. Venue rental rates have gone way up even in smaller markets. So concerts have to raise ticket prices just to remain at their previous level of profit.
And this affects not only concerts, but also all other events that rely on renting a venue for a day or a week. Hence ticket prices for almost everything (not just concerts) have gone up by a factor of 10 in just the past few years, and free events have gone away entirely.
And since the yuppie market is now large enough, and has the disposable income to support such prices, they're merely charging what the market will bear (over and above the costs to maintain a rental venue, which have also gone way up).
I can't cite a source other than that it was printed in some medical journal of mumblety-mumble years ago.... but:
I was talking about fetuses that spontaneously abort (NOT that are medically aborted), and that this happens BEFORE the woman has any idea that she was pregnant. In fact, in most cases the woman experiences nothing but at most a menstrual cycle that is delayed by a few days. The nonviable fetus isn't yet big enough to see, and just goes out with the rest of the menstrual flow.
According to a study from 20-odd years ago, this happens with about 75% of all conceptions, and is due to the very high number of lethal genes in the human gene pool -- acto other studies of the same era, the average person carries between 25 and 75 lethal genes. (This is much higher than in other species -- frex, on average dogs carry about 3 lethal genes, and cattle carry none. But we've actively selected against lethal-gene carriers in livestock, which has radically reduced their incidence.)
As to medically-induced abortions, I don't doubt that the incidence went up after Chernobyl, both from fear and from amniocentesis uncovering ugly defects in the partly-baked fetus.
However, there may be another factor that peaked coincidental to Chernobyl: Back shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I saw a news special on the "new life" for Russians, and one thing they focused on was health care, or the lack of it. They said that in much of Russia, the standard method of birth control was now -- abortion. Why? because other methods were just flat unavailable at any price, and people WILL have sex, regardless -- but most people could not afford to raise another child. No condoms or birth control pills available, even IF you could pay for them. Abortion was the only option available.
Slashdot Mirror
This illustrates why I wouldn't mind spam at all, if I only got ONE copy of each sales pitch.
I get a few spams that only arrive ONCE, usually from *legit* (often Chinese) manufacturing companies. Those are small, polite, and informative -- I thereby learn who actually makes some particular line of product. And a single copy of an unsolicited ad is nothing to get upset about, even if it's nothing of interest.
But what makes spam unpalatable is getting 50 copies of each and every ad, every bloody day. At day's end you've got a few thousand duplicates in your inbox. And pretty soon you've got your filters set to kill ALL ad-bearing email, legit or not.
Not necessarily. Frex, for a while WalMart was one of only two stores in this area (the other was Staples) where you could buy a genuine USR *HARDWARE* modem. Everyone else carried only those worthless software modems (in both USR and lesser brands).
However, my gripe with WalMart and computer parts is that while there is a posted 7-day return policy on "electronics", I asked the store manager specifically about PC components, and was told there was a zero-returns policy for computer parts.
Consequently, I opted to walk across the street and pay $5 more at Staples, who have a no-hassle return policy.
BTW, not all WalMarts are created equal. We have four in this immediate area, and they are nothing alike. Frex, the brand-new Super WalMart is a royal PITA and stuff is priced higher there; conversely the ancient scruffy WalMart has lower prices and is a pleasant place to shop. (Which is probably why it's the highest-grossing WalMart in the U.S. Unfortunately, it's slated to be replaced with a Super WalMart.)
On a third hand, the local Sam's Club is overall the best place in town for price, quality, and value, and is also one of the most pleasant stores I've ever been in.
The RIAA loves your analog hole too. Bend over!!
There's another factor at work: people who don't understand computers AT ALL, who regard them as a Magic Box, tend to believe in a sort of sympathetic magic: "If I own this Fancy Software, I will magically become adept at using my computer."
And the LESS the user understands about their computer, the more strongly they hold to this belief that if only they have the right "spells" (programs) they'll be given magical abilities to use it.
I've seen this over and over. Most users don't get very far beyond this stage, thus never use their PC or their software in more than trivial ways. The computer isn't important to them for itself, it's just a TOOL of no more interest than a VCR or a toaster or any other appliance, and they just want it to work without an argument.
A very few buckle down and study using the PC like they would a college class, and those DO progress to being adept users (even if they don't really understand their PC, they can still USE it well). However, they are usually people who already had a geeky mindset, but had applied it in some other endeavour until this point. They are NOT the norm for computer users today, any more than we slashdotters are.
But our LEGAL immigration is already EASIER than anywhere else in the world. And the whole idea of limited immigration is to keep it at a manageable trickle, to avoid overwhelming our resources (particularly at the expense of our own people). If it were as easy as some folk would like (to the point where it's no more difficult than walking across the border -- and there are a lot of areas along the border where that's all you need to do) we'd have an unmanageable flood that would dwarf even the current illegal immigration numbers.
r ticle.asp?articleID=7272
BTW check this article for an interesting viewpoint from an American Indian: http://www.vdare.com/misc/yeagley_indian_view.htm
Another with some interesting points:
http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/viewA
Good point :)
I recall once seeing an assertion (in some college class that covered epidemiology -- my major was biochem/microbiology) that smallpox killed many times more Native Americans than all other causes combined, said smallpox being unwittingly brought over by the early European settlers.
Smallpox had been endemic in Europe for centuries, and most Europeans had some immunity, either from having had it or by exposure to someone who had recovered from it. Conversely the North American population had NO immunological "experience" with smallpox, thus no ability to cope with this to-them new disease.
It can work the other way around, too -- just hie yourself to Mexico City, drink the water, and experience Montezuma's Revenge. The residents have immunity to the various pathogens in the water because they've lived with them all their lives. But your first exposure will be, um, memorable...
We had an amnesty back in the 1980s. Far as I can tell, the only result was an increased flood of new illegals. (Pretty obvious here in SoCal.)
Personally I've become all for gun turrets at the border.
It's the new religion: if there's a proper scientific explanation, it must be wrong! After all, everything bad is caused by cell phone and UFOs. Otherwise there's no reason for having such a tightly-fitted tinfoil hat. :)
[BTW you're absolutely right on all counts.]
There's also some evidence that puppies should be allowed to have a few worms, at least in the short term, for the sake of intestinal health. Having a FEW worms (not enough to load the gut or deprive the puppy of nutrients) probably stimulates immune response; we've known for decades that the reason most normal mature dogs have very few worms is because the immune system kicks them out (unless the worms are "sheltered" by a diet low in meat or high in soy, leading to more moisture and mucus in the stool).
[puts on pro dog breeder/trainer hat] I've noticed myself that pups who are born without roundworms (rare, but can happen) are more prone to neonatal diarrhea.
"People said the same thing about smallpox: once you get it, you don't ever have to worry again, so why immunize?"
Or to be more accurate: "Once you SURVIVE it, you don't ever have to worry again, so why immunize?"
Also, see above where I rant about the fallacy of "vaccine reactions", and why polio is also making a comeback.
Chickenpox causes "shingles" in older adults. In a few kids it has serious complications. Both are a considerably higher risk than any "vaccine reaction" (which itself is probably more symtomatic of an immune system defect rather than a problem with the vaccine itself).
As to other diseases we used to vaccinate against and had nearly wiped out... POLIO is also making a comeback due to a whole generation that was never vaccinated, thanks to fears of "vaccine reactions". Anyone else here remember when iron lungs and leg braces were a major part of the pediatric medicine landscape, back before polio vaccine became commonplace??
As to whooping cough, it has a high fatality rate; would you rather your kid had a 0.000006% chance of a "vaccine reaction", or a ~10% chance of dying from this preventable disease? (the death rate was MUCH higher 50 years ago, but I'm allowing for Modern Hospitalization)
We see the same paranoia about "vaccine reactions" among the new generation of dog breeders, who don't remember when 50% of all puppies died of distemper, who haven't had a whole litter die of parvovirus, and who haven't seen lepto kill 1/3rd of a whole town's canine population. And thanks to clients with ill-fitted tinfoil hats, most vets have stopped vaccinating against lepto AT ALL; consequently lepto has returned from near-extinction, and there are now occasional epidemics.
[Side note: I am a professional dog breeder/trainer with 36 years experience. In my kennel I've given about 15,000 doses of vaccine, mostly 7-way combo. I have NEVER seen a "vaccine reaction". But I don't breed from dogs with immune-system disorders, either.]
As to TB, remember when schools tested every child every year? what with the huge influx of illegal immigrants from poor countries where TB is still an issue, why are we no longer testing kids -- if only to protect their schoolmates??
As to rickets, it isn't a disease, it's a deficiency disorder, generally due to lack of calcium and/or vitamin D (but can also be caused by a lack/imbalance of phosphorus and potassium, or by megadoses of vitamin C), and most commonly a result of not letting your kids drink enough milk. Those who try to blame it on "too much breast milk" or "too much sunscreen" should perhaps note that residents of low-sun countries and cultures where all kids are breast-fed don't seem to have this problem...
Ah, the wonders of our Modern Healthy Diets -- epidemics first of obesity and now of rickets!
I have a P90 (one of those that was remarked down to P75 for the market sweet spot, but because it's really a P90, it runs fine at 90MHz) that has some sort of FP bug... it passes the Calculator test, but locks up with certain math-intensive screen savers, like the old After Dark kaleidoscope. It never showed any other symptoms in its 6 years of useful life, so I didn't bother to RMA it.
I don't consider this as bad as the Sept.1998 batch of K6-2 450Mhz CPUs that could not run certain 32bit code AT ALL (neither Win32 Setup nor any species of Linux would run). AMD refused to replace those at all.
Verizon won't replace stuff unless it outright fails, and even then it may take a while for them to get around to it.
I've complained about noise on my line for years too, and they say nothing is wrong even when it's dropping out to where I can't talk to the repair rep.
Worst of all, Verizon inherited GTE's protected monopoly status from the MaBell era, so competition is not allowed in Verizon territories. Hardly an incentive to fix anything, especially when they now own most of the market. (I've seen figures as high as 90% for some states.)
Actually, the reason FAT32 partitions are limited to 32GB was because larger FAT32 partitions can experience wrapping and data corruption due to some bug in FAT32 itself, the details of which I forget.
I found info on this in M$'s knowledge base, after experiencing it myself on a 60GB FAT32 partition. It *looked* like HD failure, in fact it was so convincing that I RMA'd the drive before discovering the KB article on the subject.
There is also a patch on M$'s site, to let FDISK make FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. However, it appears that the original FDISK "limit" was deliberate, and that some later bunch of coders weren't aware of the FAT32 bug, so they "fixed" FDISK to remove the limit. Ooops...
Which probably explains the rash of "failed HDs" once HDs got into the 40GB range, prior to WinXP making NTFS the consumer-PC standard -- NFTS is not affected by this bug.
Hell, Verizon won't even bring its customers into the PRESENT. As I mention in another post, the reason I'm stuck with *26k* dialup, half the industry standard for dialup speeds, is because Verizon won't fix their local DMS station that's been broken for over 20 years (according to the hapless tech dude in charge of it, it was defective from day one).
Thanks for the link... I still use a Wildcat BBS every day, and I contend that someday we'll see a return to the dialup BBS, when needed for email that's more secure from gov't snooping.
:)
Which is why I was disturbed by this statement from the developer (I didn't see any link to this person on the site, maybe you can direct me):
"[will not be implemented]: OLR: include private email area in download packets. See also global wish for private mail areas."
Erm... without that, it lacks one of the most =fundamental= features of *any* messaging BBS -- private email [both local and internet] AND its inclusion in QWK packets. Even FIDO has private messaging echoes.
Otherwise, it looks like a good usable BBS interface (high praise from this Wildcat bigot
As to the nominal topic, if Verizon (and by extension, any provider of local phone service) can get away with what amounts to a "modem tax" -- that also removes their incentive to replace outdated and/or defective equipment that won't even do the industry-standard 50k connection, because the more time you're stuck online, the more money they make.
I've been arguing with Verizon for almost 5 years about their broken DMS that keeps my connection at 26.4k on a good day, and often much less -- meaning I spend 2 to 4 times as much time connected as I should have to, just to get my basic online stuff done. Why should I be penalised for Verizon's broken equipment??
Reminds a person of when AOL charged by the minute.....
Exactly what TFA was suggesting, with some value-added for the higher-priced models (much akin to the diff between flying standby, and flying first-class).
I find the whole concept very reasonable for DVDs: Basic DVD in a plain package for a buck; DVD with some extras, in a plain package, for a couple bucks; DVD with extras, director's cut, and nice printed booklet in a spiffy package, for regular retail price. IOW price discrimination with some incentives for the consumer to be "more discriminated".
They'll soon learn which model hits the consumer sweet spots, and how much of each type to produce for max profits across the entire market spectrum.
Or maybe not. Low pricing may well translate to much greater market-penetration, and ultimately a higher net profit, for indy films that might otherwise be entirely invisible to the mass consumer market.
... at a buck for a DVD, that indy film *might* get my money, while at a higher price it won't get anything from me at all.
... so I'll never see it at all. That's NO chance of a sale via ANY route.
I'm willing to throw a buck at an iffy-maybe or never-heard-of-it, if it looks tolerably interesting. But it won't get me for more, as a DVD or in the theatre. So
And if I didn't know it existed before tripping over it in the discount aisle at Walmart, I won't be pirating it either (cuz I don't know it exists in the first place)
The problem is, when you "cure" a genetic problem without getting rid of the genetic cause, you have actually selected FOR the problem, so you can expect its rate to INCREASE in future generations.
Which isn't good for the species.
As someone once put it, because you CAN doesn't necessarily mean you SHOULD.
Yep, 20% best-case conception rate is about what it is in humans -- and right in line with a ~75% spontaneous abortion rate in the first month.
Conversely, the conception rate in dogs is about 85% (89% with surgical AI), and in cattle is about the same or a bit better.
Parent is probably referring to this:
h tml
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
See also http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.
and http://www.janisian.com/article-fallout.html
"People complain endlessly about the lack of things for teenagers to do, and a gigging culture would benefit that endlessly."
;)
When I read this what came to mind was a different sort of "gig" entirely:
1.An arrangement of barbless hooks that is dragged through a school of fish to hook them in their bodies.
2.A pronged spear for fishing or catching frogs.
Would give a whole new meaning to concert gigs, eh?
Another factor is that in the large metro markets, the price to rent a concert venue has skyrocketed. Venue rental rates have gone way up even in smaller markets. So concerts have to raise ticket prices just to remain at their previous level of profit.
And this affects not only concerts, but also all other events that rely on renting a venue for a day or a week. Hence ticket prices for almost everything (not just concerts) have gone up by a factor of 10 in just the past few years, and free events have gone away entirely.
And since the yuppie market is now large enough, and has the disposable income to support such prices, they're merely charging what the market will bear (over and above the costs to maintain a rental venue, which have also gone way up).
I can't cite a source other than that it was printed in some medical journal of mumblety-mumble years ago.... but:
I was talking about fetuses that spontaneously abort (NOT that are medically aborted), and that this happens BEFORE the woman has any idea that she was pregnant. In fact, in most cases the woman experiences nothing but at most a menstrual cycle that is delayed by a few days. The nonviable fetus isn't yet big enough to see, and just goes out with the rest of the menstrual flow.
According to a study from 20-odd years ago, this happens with about 75% of all conceptions, and is due to the very high number of lethal genes in the human gene pool -- acto other studies of the same era, the average person carries between 25 and 75 lethal genes. (This is much higher than in other species -- frex, on average dogs carry about 3 lethal genes, and cattle carry none. But we've actively selected against lethal-gene carriers in livestock, which has radically reduced their incidence.)
As to medically-induced abortions, I don't doubt that the incidence went up after Chernobyl, both from fear and from amniocentesis uncovering ugly defects in the partly-baked fetus.
However, there may be another factor that peaked coincidental to Chernobyl: Back shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I saw a news special on the "new life" for Russians, and one thing they focused on was health care, or the lack of it. They said that in much of Russia, the standard method of birth control was now -- abortion. Why? because other methods were just flat unavailable at any price, and people WILL have sex, regardless -- but most people could not afford to raise another child. No condoms or birth control pills available, even IF you could pay for them. Abortion was the only option available.