I can still smell you 20 - 30 feet away when you're not smoking, and over 100 feet away when you are, even outdoors. And when I go into a smokers home, even for 15 minutes, my clothes reek of it after. Smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit - even most smokers will admit it. Just because you went outside for your smoking break doesn't mean the miasma didn't follow you back inside - it's in your lungs and your clothes.
And let's not get started on smokers littering, and letting their ashes fall on carpets and floors, and accidentally burning things, and setting a bad example for the next generation, and creating a cloud in front of building entrances.
Honestly, smokers stink. There's no getting around it.
The definition of the word has been constant for decades. The definition currently used by WHO is still the same: "A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease". Not fatal, just widespread. Same as last century.
The only thing that changed was someone looking to expand their empire. THAT is what this "pandemic" has been about. Everyone generating hoopla over it did so with ulterior motives. The media, so that they could make more $$$ with more viewers. The governments, so they could look like they're doing SOMETHING and also to take some of the attention away from the massive bail-out frauds, WHO and CDC so that they could justify their budgets, drug manufacturers for $$$$.
We've been cheated yet again. Why? Because the majority of people can't be bothered to do a little fact-checking. "We have met the enemy - and he is us." It's sad. What we really need is a tax on credulity.
The point is not to replace Windows, it's an OS for web surfing.
Not really. People will buy a crippleware smartphone for that before they'll spend money on a crippleware computer. don't have to buy a separate keyboard, mouse or screen, portable, always-on, can run local apps instead of downloading everything off the web every time, apps work offline, more local storage, can make phone calls, videos, etc., and just way more cool.
And the only people who will look at this are people too cheap to buy even a crappy $200 netbook or a smartphone. No advertiser is going to pay for clicks from them, so forget about subsidizing these boxes with revenue from search.
Business won't want it because there's some data you just don't share, not to mention desktop clutter and more time wasted synching.
This product is at least 3 years too late (and will be 4 years too late when it finally rolls out), and aims at a market nobody can make money with.
Ah, but you can dump your Excel for something cloud-based that will likely look nearly exactly like Excel, function nearly the same way, and read Excel files. Add that to the boot and app launch times, and you have a serious competitor for the specific segment of hardware that Google is aiming for.
Me: I'll take ChromeOS for $100, Alex.
Alex: For $100, "specific segment of hardware that Google is aiming for".
Me: Who are people too cheap to spend $200 on a netbook?.
Alex: Right!
Me: I'll take ChromeOS for $200, please.
Alex: The answer is "it obsoleted ChromeOS a year before ChromeOS was supposed to be delivered"
Me: What is Droid?
Alex: Right again!
Me: I'll take ChromeOS for $400, please.
Alex: The answer is "Business".
Me: Who won't be using ChromeOS?
Alex: Right again!
Me: ChromeOS for $800, please.
Alex: They both don't let you run your apps your way.
Me: How is a ChromeOS-based computer like a Tivo?
Alex: Right again!
Me: ChromeOS for $1600, please.
Alex: The answer is, "100 times as much."
Me: How much more profit will Apple make off each computer it sells compared to vendors of ChromeOS-based computers.
Alex: Right again!
ChromeOS bonus question, "We welcome our cloud-based data overlords", "In Soviet Russia, Chrome browses YOU" and "You can have my data when you pry it from my cold dead hands."
Me: What were the three most popular ChromeOS privacy FAIL slogans?
Alex: Right! How much did you wager?
Me: All of it, Alex. There was no risk - everyone knows ChromeOS is Google's most famous flop to date.
Chrome is obsoleted by Droid. For the same price point, Droid gives you more features and more convenience - plus you don't have to take 7 seconds to boot.
They've been hyping ChromeOS as a "second computer" for business users - it's far better to increase user productivity by spending $100 or so on a second monitor.
Also, there's always that "one app" that you want that won't (or preferably shouldn't) run off the web.
ChromeOS is a product with no natural market. Cheap users? Like any company is going to want to pay for clicks from someone too cheap to buy a "real computer", even a $250 netbook.
Apps that work off the web? Buy a Wii and use those smae apps from within the Opera Wii browser. Spend another $25 for Wii Speak and you've got video conferencing as well.
The simple fact is, that electric cars are by far the only efficient means of moving
If your job is to get a person from point A to point B, in many cases, you're wrong.
Roller blades
Bicycles
Roller skates
Skateboard
Skis equipped with wheels, + modified ski poles (freaky-looking, but actually quite efficient), and gives a full-body workout
Quadracycle
Less energy expended than walking, a quicker transit time, great health benefits, and much less inertia to overcome than person + electric vehicle + power storage source (batteries).
... they've graduated to solar power, harvesting dark matter energy, bio-reactors, zero energy, fusion, nuclear, microwave beams from orbit, helium 3, and even dilithium crystals, long before the real world.
Back in the days of space opera and pulps, sure, sci-fi was more about the hardware than about characters, society, psychology, or even plot. And a lot of the plots back then were "deus ex machina".
Today, we want to know more than just what great tech is in our future - we want to know how it will affect us. Why we should worry. Why we should ask "whatcanpossiblygowrong". Why we as a planet make one choice and not another, even though we know the first choice is the worse of the two.
Sci-fi is still in its infancy. It'll grow up only as the human race grows up, so it's got either a very long run ahead of it, or, if we don't heed the warnings from the dystopians, a very short one.
I think after 6 years of my dogs messing around with (drooling on, etc) my keyboard, it might be time to buy a new one.
It's bad enough one of them will use his nose to press a key in the middle of the night and turn the computer on; it's impossible to type (or edit) when he's constantly pushing my hands out of the way when he wants attention. And this last few weeks, he's gotten worse. Maybe it's the change of weather. Maybe I'll just give him his own keyboard. Maybe I'll hit preview more often. Maybe I need a "knew spill an grandma chucker".
I've seen computers completely gunked out by smokers in a lot less than 3 years. Look at a smokers' keyboard. Before membranes became common, many heavy smokers had to replace them every few MONTHS.
Apple doesn't put a "dropping your iPhone in the toilet will void the warranty" either, but you won't get far with that - abuse is abuse.
If your computer is so jammed up with foreign matter that it fails, whether it's from pet hair, smoking, or water, that's excluded. "Defects in workmanship or materials" means just that. It doesn't mean abuse, contamination, misuse, or not taking proper care of it.
Let the smokers chalk it up to the TCO of smoking... maybe they'll cut back or quit.
1. I was commenting on whether it was good business or not, not whether it was right or wrong. There's a difference.
2. Even ignoring the difference, it's not discriminating against them any more than it is refusing to repair a machine someone has pissed on. Both void the warranty. for the smoker, they should make a claim under their insurance policy for "smoke damage" - except that, since it was an INTENTIONAL act that caused it, the claim will rightly be denied.
3. I doubt very much they're doing this to someone who's a casual smoker - it's probably a machine that is so full of crap, crud, ash, tar, dead skin particles, human hairballs, and weevils that one or more fans aren't working properly, cooling surfaces are obstructed, optical drive heads gummed over, hard drives with lots of re-allocated sectors due to head crashes, and/or traces shorting out. For those machines... that's abuse, and as such, not covered under warranty.
At one place I worked, one of the sales guys computer went down. I was asked to fix it. The guy was a heavy smoker, weekend ecstasy user, picked his nose whenever he thought nobody noticed (or right in front of you if he was still zoned out)... I said "Give me 15 minutes - I have to go to the store to get some equipment" and came back with a 4-litre of bleach and 2 pairs of yellow rubber gloves.
Boss: "You're not going to insult the guy by working on his machine wearing rubber gloves!"
Me: "You want to do it? I'll stand there and tell you, step-by-step, what to do. I'll even give you the rubber gloves."
Boss: "I'm not touching it!"
So, was I wrong to "discriminate" against someone because they were a filthy disgusting pig? Even if he IS in the minority?
Times change. Smokers are now in the minority, and our culture has grown up a bit - we ask that smokers assume at least SOME personal responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. When they were in the majority, there wasn't either the political or the economic will for most people to do so, and those of us (like me) who kept cajoling people (parents, friends, relatives) to quit for their own good were fighting the good fight, in an uphill battle. The battle, unfortunately, still isn't over.
It's not breech of contract - abuse isn't covered by warranty, and a machine clogged up with tar and ash is an abused machine, same as if it were in a steel mill and coated in fly ash and fines.
Cat and dog hair don't cause cancer. Smoking does,
Cats and dogs have proven beneficial effects on their owners. Smokers? Cigarettes, when used as directed, kill you.
Yeah, yeah, you'll say you're not dead YET.
The problem of pet hair is easily solved - don't put the box on the floor, and it won't collect hair (unless you let your cat sleep on it:-). The problem of tar from tobacco isn't solved except by banishing the smoker outdoors.
Plus, smokers smell worse than a wet dog - and you can always dry a dog off.
Smokers literally don't know how badly they stink. I guess it's like farts - people tend not to mind their own so much. But really, you smell. The Viet Kong used to track American soldiers by smell, and I believe it. It's in your clothes, your furniture, your rugs, your skin and hair. Opening a window or spraying air freshener doesn't fix it.
We're not accusing you of being evil, eating babies, or anything else. All we're saying is that your habit is filthy, disgusting, and nobody deserves to have to put up with it - including you. Do you think I like seeing some of my sisters who are hooked, every year coming up with another excuse why "it's not a good time to quit - next year!" They're going to die before their time, and it's not going to be pretty. "I told you so!" is going to be ZERO consolation. Do you think I like seeing my nephews getting hooked because they grew up in that environment, and the cycle's been perpetuated in yet another generation?
Do you think ANY parent anywhere in the world who isn't a totally fucked-up monster ever got joy out of finding out their kid smoked? You've got 8-year-olds puffing away! That's not "smokers rights" or "informed choice." It's criminal. It's a darned shame. Don't do me a favour and quit - do yourself a favour. It'll certainly save you money... and it could save your life.
Three points to consider, which may sound harsh (and they are), but reality bites:
1. "Pandemic" - you keep using that word, but I think you don't know what it means. It means it's spreading. It does not mean that it's deadly. A new strain of rhinovirus can become pandemic, and yet nobody has to die from it, or even get more than the sniffles.
2. The morbidly obese are going to die anyway. Look up the term "morbid" - when you're that fat, maybe the idea that the flu can kill you might motivate you to lose some weight instead of whining about how fat people are discriminated against. Diseases don't care - they have always discriminated against the weakest, and morbid obesity is a lifestyle disease. Don't want a lifestyle disease and all the problems that go with it? Change your lifestyle. Can't be arsed to change your lifestyle? Then I support your right to decide to die. If your life isn't worth it to you, it certainly isn't to me.
3. We already have too many people, and fat people consume 18% more resources than normal-weight people, and as a result, make a larger contribution to global warming. (note who submitted it:-) They also help to keep food prices higher, etc. So the flu is actually going to reduce these peoples' carbon footprint. Having all the fat people develop healthy lifestyles would do more for global warming than diddling with changes to daylight savings time, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and ethanol combined.
They can choose to lose weight, and reduce their risk profile. It's entirely up to them. As one doctor put it, of the 10 that died in his hospital, 9 were morbidly obese, the other one also very fat. In another hospital, all the infant deaths were probably better off - really marginal cases, delaying the inevitable, etc.
Besides, maybe this will help motivate people to start telecommuting. We have the technology, it would save energy AND reduce people who are such schmucks that they go to work sick and cough all over the place because they want to save their "sick days" for doing something fun.
If you encounter that, leave, call your boss, tell him the workplace is a bio-hazard, and you'll come back when it's safe. Work is not something worth getting sick over - especially when you'll end up losing more time and $$$ in the long run.
Long-term, partial resistance is worse than no resistance, since your body will try to use antibodies that show a partial effect rather than try to generate a proper immune response. This is why the latest study shows that people who get vaccinated for flu end up getting it twice as often.
If you have the flu, big deal. It's not going to kill you if you're healthy (statistically, if you're healthy, you're more likely to die getting hit by lightning than from this flu). And it's pretty hard to catch the flu if you take all the right precautions, like washing your hands, not hanging around carriers, not sharing keyboards, phones, etc., keeping common areas well ventilated, getting lots of sleep, eating right, not picking your nose (78% of the population picks their nose).
Getting the flu is no big deal. I've had it - once. All the other people who I've spoken to who don't bother with vaccines can only recall a maximum of 1 time that they've had it. Flu vaccines are a waste of money - they're for pussies like Kurt Greenbaum.
Simple - if it mutates, the vaccine us useless. If you're healthy, the vaccine is useless. If you take normal precautions, the vaccine is useless.
If, on the other hand you're an obese tub of lard with other pre-existing conditions from lifestyle diseases, you'll just die a bit younger. And in the 1918 "flu pandemic", most deaths were from pneumonia and tuberculosis - not flu. Even then, the flu was just being opportunistic.
And we knew before the "onset" of the current "pandemic" that it wasn't going to be one - the original "death toll" of 152 in Mexico was reallyonly 7.
What a fuck-up. 7. Not 152. 7. Not "highly contagious". 7. Billions of dollars wasted on a flu that's not even as bad as the regular flu, because people are fucktards who are easily panicked because they don't use their heads. up to 500,000 people die of the flu every year - this one hasn't even hit 7,000. It's nothing. Spending half the money on better nutrition and cutting back on smoking (obesity and smoking kill 10 million people a year) makes more sense.
(Swine Flu) A virus that was super-contagious and infected nearly everyone,
... except that H1N1 isn't "super contagious" - it's not even as contagious as regular flu. The hype from Mexico was wrong - of the 152 people who supposedly died from it (which is what made people thinkit was highly contagious), revised figures showed only 7 actually did.
The big lesson here is don't listen to Fox News and CNN, and don't let Fox News and CNN dictate government policy. (And I'd blame WHO and CDC for part of this as well - they have a financial and institutional interest in keeping the hype going well after it was obvious it was mostly bullshit).
Considering that the majority of deaths in the so-called flu pandemic of 1918 were actually from tuberculosis (which would have made it a tuberculosis pandemic) and pneumonia...
Just like today, it was mostly killing off people who had weakened immune systems and chronic diseases.
Slashdot Mirror
I can still smell you 20 - 30 feet away when you're not smoking, and over 100 feet away when you are, even outdoors. And when I go into a smokers home, even for 15 minutes, my clothes reek of it after. Smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit - even most smokers will admit it. Just because you went outside for your smoking break doesn't mean the miasma didn't follow you back inside - it's in your lungs and your clothes.
And let's not get started on smokers littering, and letting their ashes fall on carpets and floors, and accidentally burning things, and setting a bad example for the next generation, and creating a cloud in front of building entrances.
Honestly, smokers stink. There's no getting around it.
The definition of the word has been constant for decades. The definition currently used by WHO is still the same: "A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease". Not fatal, just widespread. Same as last century.
The only thing that changed was someone looking to expand their empire. THAT is what this "pandemic" has been about. Everyone generating hoopla over it did so with ulterior motives. The media, so that they could make more $$$ with more viewers. The governments, so they could look like they're doing SOMETHING and also to take some of the attention away from the massive bail-out frauds, WHO and CDC so that they could justify their budgets, drug manufacturers for $$$$.
We've been cheated yet again. Why? Because the majority of people can't be bothered to do a little fact-checking. "We have met the enemy - and he is us." It's sad. What we really need is a tax on credulity.
Tivoisation? Cripple(hard)ware? No thanks. I can get better value with a locked-in smartphone.
Not really. People will buy a crippleware smartphone for that before they'll spend money on a crippleware computer. don't have to buy a separate keyboard, mouse or screen, portable, always-on, can run local apps instead of downloading everything off the web every time, apps work offline, more local storage, can make phone calls, videos, etc., and just way more cool.
And the only people who will look at this are people too cheap to buy even a crappy $200 netbook or a smartphone. No advertiser is going to pay for clicks from them, so forget about subsidizing these boxes with revenue from search.
Business won't want it because there's some data you just don't share, not to mention desktop clutter and more time wasted synching.
This product is at least 3 years too late (and will be 4 years too late when it finally rolls out), and aims at a market nobody can make money with.
Me: I'll take ChromeOS for $100, Alex.
Alex: For $100, "specific segment of hardware that Google is aiming for".
Me: Who are people too cheap to spend $200 on a netbook?.
Alex: Right!
Me: I'll take ChromeOS for $200, please.
Alex: The answer is "it obsoleted ChromeOS a year before ChromeOS was supposed to be delivered"
Me: What is Droid?
Alex: Right again!
Me: I'll take ChromeOS for $400, please.
Alex: The answer is "Business".
Me: Who won't be using ChromeOS?
Alex: Right again!
Me: ChromeOS for $800, please.
Alex: They both don't let you run your apps your way.
Me: How is a ChromeOS-based computer like a Tivo?
Alex: Right again!
Me: ChromeOS for $1600, please.
Alex: The answer is, "100 times as much."
Me: How much more profit will Apple make off each computer it sells compared to vendors of ChromeOS-based computers.
Alex: Right again!
ChromeOS bonus question, "We welcome our cloud-based data overlords", "In Soviet Russia, Chrome browses YOU" and "You can have my data when you pry it from my cold dead hands."
Me: What were the three most popular ChromeOS privacy FAIL slogans?
Alex: Right! How much did you wager?
Me: All of it, Alex. There was no risk - everyone knows ChromeOS is Google's most famous flop to date.
Chrome is obsoleted by Droid. For the same price point, Droid gives you more features and more convenience - plus you don't have to take 7 seconds to boot.
They've been hyping ChromeOS as a "second computer" for business users - it's far better to increase user productivity by spending $100 or so on a second monitor.
Also, there's always that "one app" that you want that won't (or preferably shouldn't) run off the web.
ChromeOS is a product with no natural market. Cheap users? Like any company is going to want to pay for clicks from someone too cheap to buy a "real computer", even a $250 netbook.
Apps that work off the web? Buy a Wii and use those smae apps from within the Opera Wii browser. Spend another $25 for Wii Speak and you've got video conferencing as well.
If your job is to get a person from point A to point B, in many cases, you're wrong.
Roller blades
Bicycles
Roller skates
Skateboard
Skis equipped with wheels, + modified ski poles (freaky-looking, but actually quite efficient), and gives a full-body workout
Quadracycle
Less energy expended than walking, a quicker transit time, great health benefits, and much less inertia to overcome than person + electric vehicle + power storage source (batteries).
more than a century ago.
http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z11210/Stanley-Steamer-Rocket.aspxPowered by a steam engine, and did 150 mph back in 1907.
I'm going to patent extracting lithium from manic-depressives. I think Soylent International Foods Corp. might buy me out.
Or you could have an exercise bike that's connected to a small compressor. This way, you can indirectly pedal your ass around town.
Or just cut out the middleman and get a quadracycle.
Cheap to build, no licensing required for either the driver or the vehicle, great health benefits.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/stateface/ca/05ca010.html Compressed air tank goes BOOM, kills worker.
Steam? Next, you'll be wanting a tricorder interface from stone knives and bearskins!
And yes, you could spend a lifetime just on sci-stories about time travel. Science ain't there yet.
Back in the days of space opera and pulps, sure, sci-fi was more about the hardware than about characters, society, psychology, or even plot. And a lot of the plots back then were "deus ex machina".
Today, we want to know more than just what great tech is in our future - we want to know how it will affect us. Why we should worry. Why we should ask "whatcanpossiblygowrong". Why we as a planet make one choice and not another, even though we know the first choice is the worse of the two.
Sci-fi is still in its infancy. It'll grow up only as the human race grows up, so it's got either a very long run ahead of it, or, if we don't heed the warnings from the dystopians, a very short one.
I think after 6 years of my dogs messing around with (drooling on, etc) my keyboard, it might be time to buy a new one.
It's bad enough one of them will use his nose to press a key in the middle of the night and turn the computer on; it's impossible to type (or edit) when he's constantly pushing my hands out of the way when he wants attention. And this last few weeks, he's gotten worse. Maybe it's the change of weather. Maybe I'll just give him his own keyboard. Maybe I'll hit preview more often. Maybe I need a "knew spill an grandma chucker".
I've seen computers completely gunked out by smokers in a lot less than 3 years. Look at a smokers' keyboard. Before membranes became common, many heavy smokers had to replace them every few MONTHS.
Apple doesn't put a "dropping your iPhone in the toilet will void the warranty" either, but you won't get far with that - abuse is abuse.
If your computer is so jammed up with foreign matter that it fails, whether it's from pet hair, smoking, or water, that's excluded. "Defects in workmanship or materials" means just that. It doesn't mean abuse, contamination, misuse, or not taking proper care of it.
Let the smokers chalk it up to the TCO of smoking ... maybe they'll cut back or quit.
1. I was commenting on whether it was good business or not, not whether it was right or wrong. There's a difference.
2. Even ignoring the difference, it's not discriminating against them any more than it is refusing to repair a machine someone has pissed on. Both void the warranty. for the smoker, they should make a claim under their insurance policy for "smoke damage" - except that, since it was an INTENTIONAL act that caused it, the claim will rightly be denied.
3. I doubt very much they're doing this to someone who's a casual smoker - it's probably a machine that is so full of crap, crud, ash, tar, dead skin particles, human hairballs, and weevils that one or more fans aren't working properly, cooling surfaces are obstructed, optical drive heads gummed over, hard drives with lots of re-allocated sectors due to head crashes, and/or traces shorting out. For those machines ... that's abuse, and as such, not covered under warranty.
At one place I worked, one of the sales guys computer went down. I was asked to fix it. The guy was a heavy smoker, weekend ecstasy user, picked his nose whenever he thought nobody noticed (or right in front of you if he was still zoned out) ... I said "Give me 15 minutes - I have to go to the store to get some equipment" and came back with a 4-litre of bleach and 2 pairs of yellow rubber gloves.
Boss: "You're not going to insult the guy by working on his machine wearing rubber gloves!"
Me: "You want to do it? I'll stand there and tell you, step-by-step, what to do. I'll even give you the rubber gloves."
Boss: "I'm not touching it!"
So, was I wrong to "discriminate" against someone because they were a filthy disgusting pig? Even if he IS in the minority?
Times change. Smokers are now in the minority, and our culture has grown up a bit - we ask that smokers assume at least SOME personal responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. When they were in the majority, there wasn't either the political or the economic will for most people to do so, and those of us (like me) who kept cajoling people (parents, friends, relatives) to quit for their own good were fighting the good fight, in an uphill battle. The battle, unfortunately, still isn't over.
It's not breech of contract - abuse isn't covered by warranty, and a machine clogged up with tar and ash is an abused machine, same as if it were in a steel mill and coated in fly ash and fines.
Cat and dog hair don't cause cancer. Smoking does,
Cats and dogs have proven beneficial effects on their owners. Smokers? Cigarettes, when used as directed, kill you.
Yeah, yeah, you'll say you're not dead YET.
The problem of pet hair is easily solved - don't put the box on the floor, and it won't collect hair (unless you let your cat sleep on it :-). The problem of tar from tobacco isn't solved except by banishing the smoker outdoors.
Plus, smokers smell worse than a wet dog - and you can always dry a dog off.
Smokers literally don't know how badly they stink. I guess it's like farts - people tend not to mind their own so much. But really, you smell. The Viet Kong used to track American soldiers by smell, and I believe it. It's in your clothes, your furniture, your rugs, your skin and hair. Opening a window or spraying air freshener doesn't fix it.
We're not accusing you of being evil, eating babies, or anything else. All we're saying is that your habit is filthy, disgusting, and nobody deserves to have to put up with it - including you. Do you think I like seeing some of my sisters who are hooked, every year coming up with another excuse why "it's not a good time to quit - next year!" They're going to die before their time, and it's not going to be pretty. "I told you so!" is going to be ZERO consolation. Do you think I like seeing my nephews getting hooked because they grew up in that environment, and the cycle's been perpetuated in yet another generation?
Do you think ANY parent anywhere in the world who isn't a totally fucked-up monster ever got joy out of finding out their kid smoked? You've got 8-year-olds puffing away! That's not "smokers rights" or "informed choice." It's criminal. It's a darned shame. Don't do me a favour and quit - do yourself a favour. It'll certainly save you money ... and it could save your life.
Three points to consider, which may sound harsh (and they are), but reality bites:
1. "Pandemic" - you keep using that word, but I think you don't know what it means. It means it's spreading. It does not mean that it's deadly. A new strain of rhinovirus can become pandemic, and yet nobody has to die from it, or even get more than the sniffles.
2. The morbidly obese are going to die anyway. Look up the term "morbid" - when you're that fat, maybe the idea that the flu can kill you might motivate you to lose some weight instead of whining about how fat people are discriminated against. Diseases don't care - they have always discriminated against the weakest, and morbid obesity is a lifestyle disease. Don't want a lifestyle disease and all the problems that go with it? Change your lifestyle. Can't be arsed to change your lifestyle? Then I support your right to decide to die. If your life isn't worth it to you, it certainly isn't to me.
3. We already have too many people, and fat people consume 18% more resources than normal-weight people, and as a result, make a larger contribution to global warming. (note who submitted it :-) They also help to keep food prices higher, etc. So the flu is actually going to reduce these peoples' carbon footprint. Having all the fat people develop healthy lifestyles would do more for global warming than diddling with changes to daylight savings time, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and ethanol combined.
They can choose to lose weight, and reduce their risk profile. It's entirely up to them. As one doctor put it, of the 10 that died in his hospital, 9 were morbidly obese, the other one also very fat. In another hospital, all the infant deaths were probably better off - really marginal cases, delaying the inevitable, etc.
Besides, maybe this will help motivate people to start telecommuting. We have the technology, it would save energy AND reduce people who are such schmucks that they go to work sick and cough all over the place because they want to save their "sick days" for doing something fun.
If you encounter that, leave, call your boss, tell him the workplace is a bio-hazard, and you'll come back when it's safe. Work is not something worth getting sick over - especially when you'll end up losing more time and $$$ in the long run.
Long-term, partial resistance is worse than no resistance, since your body will try to use antibodies that show a partial effect rather than try to generate a proper immune response. This is why the latest study shows that people who get vaccinated for flu end up getting it twice as often.
If you have the flu, big deal. It's not going to kill you if you're healthy (statistically, if you're healthy, you're more likely to die getting hit by lightning than from this flu). And it's pretty hard to catch the flu if you take all the right precautions, like washing your hands, not hanging around carriers, not sharing keyboards, phones, etc., keeping common areas well ventilated, getting lots of sleep, eating right, not picking your nose (78% of the population picks their nose).
Getting the flu is no big deal. I've had it - once. All the other people who I've spoken to who don't bother with vaccines can only recall a maximum of 1 time that they've had it. Flu vaccines are a waste of money - they're for pussies like Kurt Greenbaum.
Simple - if it mutates, the vaccine us useless. If you're healthy, the vaccine is useless. If you take normal precautions, the vaccine is useless.
If, on the other hand you're an obese tub of lard with other pre-existing conditions from lifestyle diseases, you'll just die a bit younger. And in the 1918 "flu pandemic", most deaths were from pneumonia and tuberculosis - not flu. Even then, the flu was just being opportunistic.
And we knew before the "onset" of the current "pandemic" that it wasn't going to be one - the original "death toll" of 152 in Mexico was really only 7.
What a fuck-up. 7. Not 152. 7. Not "highly contagious". 7. Billions of dollars wasted on a flu that's not even as bad as the regular flu, because people are fucktards who are easily panicked because they don't use their heads. up to 500,000 people die of the flu every year - this one hasn't even hit 7,000. It's nothing. Spending half the money on better nutrition and cutting back on smoking (obesity and smoking kill 10 million people a year) makes more sense.
The big lesson here is don't listen to Fox News and CNN, and don't let Fox News and CNN dictate government policy. (And I'd blame WHO and CDC for part of this as well - they have a financial and institutional interest in keeping the hype going well after it was obvious it was mostly bullshit).
Considering that the majority of deaths in the so-called flu pandemic of 1918 were actually from tuberculosis (which would have made it a tuberculosis pandemic) and pneumonia ...
Just like today, it was mostly killing off people who had weakened immune systems and chronic diseases.
Easier way - write "Thank a student of CSU that you have this money." on each bill you spend.
Or a political slogan - "Vote for Ravenstahl in 2010" (Ravenstahl is the mayor). THAT will hurt.
Like the story of the republicans and the democrats having large dinners with their friends.
The republicans go out, wine and dine and booze it up, and tell the staff, when they tip big, "Remember - vote republican."
The democrats go out, wine and dine and booze it up, and tell the staff, when they leave a $2 tip, "Remember - vote republican."
You know, you're talking Pittsburgh here - if the universities were to close tomorrow, property values would drop like a rock. Pittsburgh is second only after the places hit by hurricane Katrina in terms of population decline - and it's continued since that article was written in 2007. Pittsburgh - it IS the pits - armpits that is.
The worst part? It's not salvageable. Puts it right at the top, along with Detroit, as one of the 50 cities most likely to disappear over the next 2 decades.
In other news, student visa applications to Canada continue to threaten to crash servers ...