USB lacks video & audio out as well as other feature connectors. So its one custom connector, or several standard ones. Apple wants fewer connectors, so a custom one is used. Not a big deal really.
Apple apologists will mod me down but screw it. This is completely asinine. A very tiny minority of of the install base ever uses those features. Miniscule. Infinitesimal. The next thing to non-existent.
Call it for what it is: Apple making a stubborn, frustrating decision that you cannot argue with, cannot debate, can only decide whether you'll begrudgingly accept it or buy something else. That's the truth of it. Painting it as anything else is lying.
Apple's one of the signatories of the micro-usb for cell phones standard. How are they weasel-dicking their way out of it now?
It's a pretty thoughtful article written by someone who enjoys video games.
As for my personal preference, I don't have a lot of time for games so I don't find beating my head against a wall to get past a boss to be all that rewarding. This coming from someone who used to do just that on platformers.
I think it's just a process of changing tastes. I remember when I didn't like to read books without pictures. I remember when black and white movies didn't have enough going on to sustain my attention. Would any teenager appreciate a reflective story about the loss of youth the way someone in their 40's regretting past mistakes would?
I think there's room for games aimed at adults, it's just that the market isn't yet willing to go there. It's sort of like people thinking women don't like porn. Hello? Romance novels? They love porn. You're just doing it wrong.
There's only a handful of signature villains who are interesting.
The Joker, obviously, but he's ironically of limited use because you quickly run into "why doesn't Bats just kill him already?" territory.
Catwoman has the potential for an interesting dynamic because she's not evil and is mainly about being an incomplete Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and then not giving to the poor.:) So while she's technically a criminal, she's more of a foil. Batman uses his training to serve others, she uses her training to serve herself.
The Penguin is a really stupid concept from top to bottom. A fat FDR with lethal trick umbrellas?
The Riddler is even dumber. Doesn't have any powers, just an obsession with being an annoying prat. How is Batman even taking more than a half hour to defeat him?
Two-Face, he's just nutso. Insanity isn't a superpower.
After that you have to move into villains who have bad science superpowers. Freeze, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy. Then there's Jeff Dunham with a mobster dummy, I mean WTF? Some fucking idiot who does calendar crimes. It gets dumber and dumber from there on out.
In reality, nobody escapes from supermax. Bats puts someone away, he stays put away. But if Batman's reality is that any prison can be escaped, he'd better kill those villains dead or else more people will die. Do that and you don't have a story. Don't do that and you have a wallbanger plot hole.
Another problem is motorcycle helmet laws. By preventing lethal head injuries on otherwise young healthy individuals, we are removing a great source of organs. Maybe anyone who has volunteered to be a donor should be allowed to ride without a helmet.
(Incidentally if you're reading this as a KKK member with SSA, I hate to break it to you but there's only one way you could possibly carry the gene. Best get to burning crosses on your own lawn)
Even worse! I'm in the John Birch Society. There a hammer to go with that sickle? I knew there was a reason why those blood cells were red.
Yes, the writers avoided some soft science cliches like bumpy forehead aliens, space anomalies and time warps and stuff. There's still plenty of soft science to go around. What's even more damning, they were inconsistent with their own soft science in the show.
To put it another way, it would be like someone saying "I didn't like the simplistic morality of Lord of the Rings with dark lords and fairy tale thinking" so he comes up with a low fantasy conflict between human kingdoms with a smattering of dragons and magic but then goes and brings in an Arthurian predestined king that fits squarely with traditional high fantasy. I thought that's the sort of stuff you wanted to avoid to make it feel like a grounded fantasy.
Looks very promising. Interested to see what comes of it.
Short question: How will you keep this show from ending in suck?
Longer version of question: see here. The Lifespan of a TV Show.
Good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Wasted stories start out good but then get stretched out to the point that the writer simply loses interest and is phoning it in. Television suffers from this disproportionately because network execs are selling viewer eyeballs to advertisers and don't really give a damn what goes between the commercial breaks. They'll keep a show going until it's no longer profitable and cancel it. Hence you get what's depicted in the Cracked post above. I can think of a lot of shows that started out strong, ended terribly, and don't hold up for a rewatch.
Do you have a plan? Something better than the Cylons because they said they had a plan and most certainly didn't.
I've always suspected that this is what we're dealing with but it's nice to have it in writing.
Recently a Game of Thrones director gave an interview talking about what working on the show was like and he said it was like the SNL skit -- there's a network executive in charge of tits.
It was pretty surreal. Iâ(TM)d not done anything like that in my films before. But the weirdest part was when you have one of the exec producers leaning over your shoulder, going, âoeYou can go full frontal, you know. This is television, you can do whatever you want! And do it! I urge you to do it.â So I was like, âoeOkay, well, if youâ" youâ(TM)re the boss.â
Marshall further elaborated:
This particular exec took me to one side and said, âoeLook, I represent the pervert side of the audience, okay? Everybody else is the serious drama sideâ"I represent the perv side of the audience, and Iâ(TM)m saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene.â So you go ahead and do it.
I mean, you kind of suspect it but never thought you'd hear it stated so baldly.
Since "GOP", "republican", "right-wing", or "conservative" wasn't prominently featured in the headline or first paragraph, it was obvious what his party afiliation was. Party affiliation is most often ommitted by the left, for the left. Although a comment listed him as an "independent conservative democrat", which covers most of the bases I suppose.
I looked him up expecting to see he was an R and was quite surprised. But you can rest assured if he was a proper GOP guy, his mug would show up on Fox with a big, fat D behind it. Whoops, no idea how that happened.
Put him right up there with William Jeffers, too stupid to do corruption properly. You know the D's and R's who remain are smart about their corruption. It's a selection pressure.
The inquistion Let's begin The inquistion Look out sin We have a mission To convert the Jews (Jew ja Jew ja Jew ja Jews) We're gonna teach Them wrong from right We're gonna help Them see the light And make an offer That they can't refuse (That the Jews just can't refuse)
Confess (confess, confess) Don't be boring Say yes (say yes, say yes) Don't be dull
"New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."
And lines like that make me see red. To put it another way: "Look, the only reason why we're breaking our contract is because we're greedy fucks but please, let's call him a pig for simply asking for what's contractually owed."
Thankfully the era of media conglomerates owning pop culture will soon be over. With fan efforts like Kickstarter, new IP can be made with a Creative Commons or Copyleft scheme that will preserve it from being captured and abused by corporations while allowing fans free creative reign.
Can you imagine what western culture would be like if Homer's descendants were the Greek Disneys?
public: Hey, he didn't even make up the original myths, he just retold them!
Greek lawyers: Doesn't matter. Copyright extents to the author's death plus 3,000 years.
public: But what about culture?
Greek lawyer: These temples don't pay for themselves, bitch. Now we've gotta take it up with the Hebrews on this Samson character. Clearly they're infringing on our Herakles IP.
Hebrew lawyers: Get in line. We're already filing a lawsuit against those Messianics for unauthorized derivative material. They lifted our entire Torah and just added new material at the end.
St. Paul Diddy: It's called sampling. This book wasn't nothing before I got here.
troll lawyers: Cease and desist all of you. We bought the IP rights to the Sumerian tablets. All of you are in violation.
I dislike tobacco. I don't like the smoke, I don't like the spitting, I don't like the spent butts littering the roadway.
All of that is personal opinion, no different from disliking the appearance of people chewing gum or getting it stuck on my shoe.
Neither is enough to permit me to get my dander up and start banning this and that. I could ask someone not to smoke upwind of me and that's just a question of common courtesy.
That's all anyone could say about tobacco for a number of years. Doctors suspected health effects but it took time to properly substantiate those suspicions.
Of course, the people making money from tobacco had a great interest in keeping the controversy alive. It's not good for business to admit that your product, when used as directed, will kill people. The only way a smoker won't die of smoking-related causes is if he dies of something else first.
As someone who tobacco to begin with, now science is on my side. How far can I push with regards to tobacco? If we consider that a person has a right to do what they want to their own body, up to and including suicide, then who are we to argue as to how they do it?
At the same time, we know that advertising works. Billions of dollars don't get spent on marketing if it doesn't influence decision-making in the human animal. So are these people really making a choice for themselves?
I'm not a supporter of the way the temperance movement operated back in the day. I like having my wine and beer. Temperance crusaders can point to the dangers of alcohol consumption. I could argue that you can drink in moderation with no ill effects whereas there's no safe level of tobacco consumption but that could sound like rationalization.
I think as far as my own opinion goes, the tobacco companies deliberately prevented their customers from making an informed choice. They did their best to cloud the discussion with bad science, bad data, and deliberate lies and bullshit. They prevented a rational discussion from ever occurring because it would be bad for business.
Look at the current scientific "controversies" and you will see the same thing happening, parties interested in the status quo doing their best to create uncertainty where there is actually a great deal of scientific certainty.
âoeThere is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.â Isaac Asimov
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so." Will Rogers
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Upton Sinclair
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Stephen Colbert
I have a little something I call the parable of the investment opportunity. Dick has the option of investing in this exciting new product that promises to double his money in twelve months. Jane is skeptical. The two can jawbone back and forth all day long.
Jane explains that it looks like a bad idea, resembles many other bad ideas, the person presenting the opportunity has a history of failed schemes, and the whole thing looks too risky.
Dick feels she's being too negative. She's not embracing opportunity. He has a prospectus printed in full color on expensive paper and the pitchman has such a nice haircut, really looks like someone you could do business with.
It's impossible to know how the investment will turn out until it's made, even if anyone watching the two of them argue will more than likely have a strong opinion before long.
Dick makes the investment. Twelve months later, he's lost all his money. Not only that but he's lost it in exactly the way Jane predicted, for the reasons she listed.
Now for most people, this would be some pretty compelling evidence. Not so for Dick! Perhaps it wasn't a bad idea, he just didn't apply it with enough vigor. Perhaps there was an external factor that sabotaged what was otherwise a sound idea. Does he reevaluate? Does he reexamine? No, he'll double-down. And Jane is still an ignorant slut.
Way to go big boys! Extradite a harmless college kid who might be doing something moderately illegal but who's transgressions don't amount for a hill of beans, all things considered.
Leave those nice bankers and upstanding Wall Street financiers to ruin the economy with nothing more than an indignant letter and a small fine.
Yep, leaders of the free world we are.
You dirty, diseased hippie! Do you not understand the ineffable majesty of the free market? Behold! Mammon hath spoken and lo, the government has acceded to its demand. In my father's house there are many rooms but you have to pay your way if you want to stay. The bankstas have bought their way into heaven, as hath been shewn to be just in the Gospel of Wealth.
Blessed are the rich: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who own: for to those who hath much, more shall be given. Fuck the meek: for they shall inherit shit. Fuck those who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be mulch in the flowerbeds of the wealthy. Blessed are the powerful: for they shall gain more power. Blessed are the pure of avarice: for they shall take more than they are owed. Blessed are the warmakers: for they shall make bank on both sides of the conflict. Blessed are those who persecute: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I think you're missing a piece - the measurement of the health of a human is well within the realm of human perception and instrumentation. The goals of standard medicine and alternative medicine are the same: improve the health of a human. If standard medicine works and alternative medicine doesn't, well, you should be able to figure the rest out from there.
Seems reasonable. I'm completely open to testing the healing power of prayer. Double-blind study, various religions, an assortment of deities. We don't even have to propose a mechanism of action: you either get a result or you don't. If we can prove prayer helps patients, then we can ask whether it's a) some paranormal stuff humans can innately do and there's no god involved b) an intercession with a higher power and c) what sort of mechanism is actually interacting with the body to achieve healing.
But these studies have been done over and over and prayer doesn't work beyond a placebo effect. Certainly there is a mind-body connection that can be utilized in medicine, i.e. helping the patient help himself, but there's no evidence of prayer or faith-healing working.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, you can't mod a gay joke as flamebait. Not cool.
Just checking back in on this. Sure enough, downmodded by the apologists. Blaspheme against the Jobs and suffer the consequences, heathen!
USB lacks video & audio out as well as other feature connectors. So its one custom connector, or several standard ones. Apple wants fewer connectors, so a custom one is used. Not a big deal really.
Apple apologists will mod me down but screw it. This is completely asinine. A very tiny minority of of the install base ever uses those features. Miniscule. Infinitesimal. The next thing to non-existent.
Call it for what it is: Apple making a stubborn, frustrating decision that you cannot argue with, cannot debate, can only decide whether you'll begrudgingly accept it or buy something else. That's the truth of it. Painting it as anything else is lying.
Apple's one of the signatories of the micro-usb for cell phones standard. How are they weasel-dicking their way out of it now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games/
It's a pretty thoughtful article written by someone who enjoys video games.
As for my personal preference, I don't have a lot of time for games so I don't find beating my head against a wall to get past a boss to be all that rewarding. This coming from someone who used to do just that on platformers.
I think it's just a process of changing tastes. I remember when I didn't like to read books without pictures. I remember when black and white movies didn't have enough going on to sustain my attention. Would any teenager appreciate a reflective story about the loss of youth the way someone in their 40's regretting past mistakes would?
I think there's room for games aimed at adults, it's just that the market isn't yet willing to go there. It's sort of like people thinking women don't like porn. Hello? Romance novels? They love porn. You're just doing it wrong.
I thought he was a punchline on the surveys. He's actually a real person?
There's only a handful of signature villains who are interesting.
The Joker, obviously, but he's ironically of limited use because you quickly run into "why doesn't Bats just kill him already?" territory.
Catwoman has the potential for an interesting dynamic because she's not evil and is mainly about being an incomplete Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and then not giving to the poor. :) So while she's technically a criminal, she's more of a foil. Batman uses his training to serve others, she uses her training to serve herself.
The Penguin is a really stupid concept from top to bottom. A fat FDR with lethal trick umbrellas?
The Riddler is even dumber. Doesn't have any powers, just an obsession with being an annoying prat. How is Batman even taking more than a half hour to defeat him?
Two-Face, he's just nutso. Insanity isn't a superpower.
After that you have to move into villains who have bad science superpowers. Freeze, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy. Then there's Jeff Dunham with a mobster dummy, I mean WTF? Some fucking idiot who does calendar crimes. It gets dumber and dumber from there on out.
In reality, nobody escapes from supermax. Bats puts someone away, he stays put away. But if Batman's reality is that any prison can be escaped, he'd better kill those villains dead or else more people will die. Do that and you don't have a story. Don't do that and you have a wallbanger plot hole.
Another problem is motorcycle helmet laws. By preventing lethal head injuries on otherwise young healthy individuals, we are removing a great source of organs. Maybe anyone who has volunteered to be a donor should be allowed to ride without a helmet.
I don't understand. Why was this modded funny?
Ron Paul 2012!
(Incidentally if you're reading this as a KKK member with SSA, I hate to break it to you but there's only one way you could possibly carry the gene. Best get to burning crosses on your own lawn)
Even worse! I'm in the John Birch Society. There a hammer to go with that sickle? I knew there was a reason why those blood cells were red.
BSG was by no means hard science fiction.
Yes, the writers avoided some soft science cliches like bumpy forehead aliens, space anomalies and time warps and stuff. There's still plenty of soft science to go around. What's even more damning, they were inconsistent with their own soft science in the show.
To put it another way, it would be like someone saying "I didn't like the simplistic morality of Lord of the Rings with dark lords and fairy tale thinking" so he comes up with a low fantasy conflict between human kingdoms with a smattering of dragons and magic but then goes and brings in an Arthurian predestined king that fits squarely with traditional high fantasy. I thought that's the sort of stuff you wanted to avoid to make it feel like a grounded fantasy.
Looks very promising. Interested to see what comes of it.
Short question: How will you keep this show from ending in suck?
Longer version of question: see here. The Lifespan of a TV Show.
Good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Wasted stories start out good but then get stretched out to the point that the writer simply loses interest and is phoning it in. Television suffers from this disproportionately because network execs are selling viewer eyeballs to advertisers and don't really give a damn what goes between the commercial breaks. They'll keep a show going until it's no longer profitable and cancel it. Hence you get what's depicted in the Cracked post above. I can think of a lot of shows that started out strong, ended terribly, and don't hold up for a rewatch.
Do you have a plan? Something better than the Cylons because they said they had a plan and most certainly didn't.
I've always suspected that this is what we're dealing with but it's nice to have it in writing.
Recently a Game of Thrones director gave an interview talking about what working on the show was like and he said it was like the SNL skit -- there's a network executive in charge of tits.
It was pretty surreal. Iâ(TM)d not done anything like that in my films before. But the weirdest part was when you have one of the exec producers leaning over your shoulder, going, âoeYou can go full frontal, you know. This is television, you can do whatever you want! And do it! I urge you to do it.â So I was like, âoeOkay, well, if youâ" youâ(TM)re the boss.â
Marshall further elaborated:
This particular exec took me to one side and said, âoeLook, I represent the pervert side of the audience, okay? Everybody else is the serious drama sideâ"I represent the perv side of the audience, and Iâ(TM)m saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene.â So you go ahead and do it.
I mean, you kind of suspect it but never thought you'd hear it stated so baldly.
Since "GOP", "republican", "right-wing", or "conservative" wasn't prominently featured in the headline or first paragraph, it was obvious what his party afiliation was. Party affiliation is most often ommitted by the left, for the left. Although a comment listed him as an "independent conservative democrat", which covers most of the bases I suppose.
I looked him up expecting to see he was an R and was quite surprised. But you can rest assured if he was a proper GOP guy, his mug would show up on Fox with a big, fat D behind it. Whoops, no idea how that happened.
Put him right up there with William Jeffers, too stupid to do corruption properly. You know the D's and R's who remain are smart about their corruption. It's a selection pressure.
Your party is not always right. The other party is not always wrong. Politics should not be a "my team's better than yours" shouting match.
The Dems are usually wrong; the Republicans are always wrong.
Nearly 90 posts, and no Flowers for Algernon reference yet? Illiterate bastards.
I was thinking about the rats from the National Institute of Mental Health. What they got up to beneath that rosebush...
In Soviet Russia...
The inquistion
Let's begin
The inquistion
Look out sin
We have a mission
To convert the Jews
(Jew ja Jew ja Jew ja Jews)
We're gonna teach
Them wrong from right
We're gonna help
Them see the light
And make an offer
That they can't refuse
(That the Jews just can't refuse)
Confess (confess, confess)
Don't be boring
Say yes (say yes, say yes)
Don't be dull
"New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."
And lines like that make me see red. To put it another way: "Look, the only reason why we're breaking our contract is because we're greedy fucks but please, let's call him a pig for simply asking for what's contractually owed."
Thankfully the era of media conglomerates owning pop culture will soon be over. With fan efforts like Kickstarter, new IP can be made with a Creative Commons or Copyleft scheme that will preserve it from being captured and abused by corporations while allowing fans free creative reign.
Can you imagine what western culture would be like if Homer's descendants were the Greek Disneys?
public: Hey, he didn't even make up the original myths, he just retold them!
Greek lawyers: Doesn't matter. Copyright extents to the author's death plus 3,000 years.
public: But what about culture?
Greek lawyer: These temples don't pay for themselves, bitch. Now we've gotta take it up with the Hebrews on this Samson character. Clearly they're infringing on our Herakles IP.
Hebrew lawyers: Get in line. We're already filing a lawsuit against those Messianics for unauthorized derivative material. They lifted our entire Torah and just added new material at the end.
St. Paul Diddy: It's called sampling. This book wasn't nothing before I got here.
troll lawyers: Cease and desist all of you. We bought the IP rights to the Sumerian tablets. All of you are in violation.
I dislike tobacco. I don't like the smoke, I don't like the spitting, I don't like the spent butts littering the roadway.
All of that is personal opinion, no different from disliking the appearance of people chewing gum or getting it stuck on my shoe.
Neither is enough to permit me to get my dander up and start banning this and that. I could ask someone not to smoke upwind of me and that's just a question of common courtesy.
That's all anyone could say about tobacco for a number of years. Doctors suspected health effects but it took time to properly substantiate those suspicions.
Of course, the people making money from tobacco had a great interest in keeping the controversy alive. It's not good for business to admit that your product, when used as directed, will kill people. The only way a smoker won't die of smoking-related causes is if he dies of something else first.
As someone who tobacco to begin with, now science is on my side. How far can I push with regards to tobacco? If we consider that a person has a right to do what they want to their own body, up to and including suicide, then who are we to argue as to how they do it?
At the same time, we know that advertising works. Billions of dollars don't get spent on marketing if it doesn't influence decision-making in the human animal. So are these people really making a choice for themselves?
I'm not a supporter of the way the temperance movement operated back in the day. I like having my wine and beer. Temperance crusaders can point to the dangers of alcohol consumption. I could argue that you can drink in moderation with no ill effects whereas there's no safe level of tobacco consumption but that could sound like rationalization.
I think as far as my own opinion goes, the tobacco companies deliberately prevented their customers from making an informed choice. They did their best to cloud the discussion with bad science, bad data, and deliberate lies and bullshit. They prevented a rational discussion from ever occurring because it would be bad for business.
Look at the current scientific "controversies" and you will see the same thing happening, parties interested in the status quo doing their best to create uncertainty where there is actually a great deal of scientific certainty.
âoeThere is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.â
Isaac Asimov
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."
Will Rogers
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Stephen Colbert
I have a little something I call the parable of the investment opportunity. Dick has the option of investing in this exciting new product that promises to double his money in twelve months. Jane is skeptical. The two can jawbone back and forth all day long.
Jane explains that it looks like a bad idea, resembles many other bad ideas, the person presenting the opportunity has a history of failed schemes, and the whole thing looks too risky.
Dick feels she's being too negative. She's not embracing opportunity. He has a prospectus printed in full color on expensive paper and the pitchman has such a nice haircut, really looks like someone you could do business with.
It's impossible to know how the investment will turn out until it's made, even if anyone watching the two of them argue will more than likely have a strong opinion before long.
Dick makes the investment. Twelve months later, he's lost all his money. Not only that but he's lost it in exactly the way Jane predicted, for the reasons she listed.
Now for most people, this would be some pretty compelling evidence. Not so for Dick! Perhaps it wasn't a bad idea, he just didn't apply it with enough vigor. Perhaps there was an external factor that sabotaged what was otherwise a sound idea. Does he reevaluate? Does he reexamine? No, he'll double-down. And Jane is still an ignorant slut.
Wot? I'd just gotten used to the ginger one already!
Way to go big boys! Extradite a harmless college kid who might be doing something moderately illegal but who's transgressions don't amount for a hill of beans, all things considered.
Leave those nice bankers and upstanding Wall Street financiers to ruin the economy with nothing more than an indignant letter and a small fine.
Yep, leaders of the free world we are.
You dirty, diseased hippie! Do you not understand the ineffable majesty of the free market? Behold! Mammon hath spoken and lo, the government has acceded to its demand. In my father's house there are many rooms but you have to pay your way if you want to stay. The bankstas have bought their way into heaven, as hath been shewn to be just in the Gospel of Wealth.
Blessed are the rich: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who own: for to those who hath much, more shall be given.
Fuck the meek: for they shall inherit shit.
Fuck those who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be mulch in the flowerbeds of the wealthy.
Blessed are the powerful: for they shall gain more power.
Blessed are the pure of avarice: for they shall take more than they are owed.
Blessed are the warmakers: for they shall make bank on both sides of the conflict.
Blessed are those who persecute: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I think you're missing a piece - the measurement of the health of a human is well within the realm of human perception and instrumentation. The goals of standard medicine and alternative medicine are the same: improve the health of a human. If standard medicine works and alternative medicine doesn't, well, you should be able to figure the rest out from there.
Seems reasonable. I'm completely open to testing the healing power of prayer. Double-blind study, various religions, an assortment of deities. We don't even have to propose a mechanism of action: you either get a result or you don't. If we can prove prayer helps patients, then we can ask whether it's a) some paranormal stuff humans can innately do and there's no god involved b) an intercession with a higher power and c) what sort of mechanism is actually interacting with the body to achieve healing.
But these studies have been done over and over and prayer doesn't work beyond a placebo effect. Certainly there is a mind-body connection that can be utilized in medicine, i.e. helping the patient help himself, but there's no evidence of prayer or faith-healing working.
Cool! Checking it out now.
I feel like such a bum compared to this guy, actually I am a bum compared to this guy.
Or to put it another way, at least you're still alive and capable of feeling inadequate. That's more than he can say.