Thanks. I have no idea what would possess anybody to make that a secondary function! I hit it all the time! Granted, for the test I'm taking it might not be quite as essential.
Thanks. I can obviously read Amazon reviews and such. However, I felt that the/. community probably had tastes more similar to my own, vs a bunch of kids taking algebra in high school/etc.
I've had both WD and Seagate drives fail after 1 year under warranty. I've probably returned ~4 drives under warranty so far, all from the same RAID which only contains 4 drives. Granted, this was over a period of years, but, really!
I don't think any manufacturer is better than the others - drives just wear out especially under heavy use. Every vendor I've used handled the warranty returns efficiently - generally only costing me ~$10 for return shipment. Some want me to run their own software to get a return code. Other times I print the output of smartctl -a and put it in the box.
...you've eliminated any and all chances that he'll magically fall into being a useful member of society after you've branded him for life.
Honestly, I think public criminal records are a big problem.
My feeling is that the justice system should be primarily rehabilitative. Criminal records are anything but.
People should be incarcerated if they're too dangerous to walk out on the street, or if they can't be rehabilitated while having access to the streets. If somebody has been rehabilitated, then they are no longer a criminal, and they should not be interfered with. If they can't be trusted out in public without warning everybody that they're potentially dangerous, then they shouldn't be out in public in the first place.
I think that rehabilitating criminals so that they can re-integrate into society without being treated like criminals for the rest of their lives is just the morally right thing to do. However, if I were a selfish bastard I'd still think that it was the smart thing to do. Locking up criminals repeatedly costs me taxes. Having them out on the street committing crimes costs me taxes. Then when they're out if they can't get a job then they're not making any significant income and that means they're not paying taxes, which means I'm paying their share of the taxes, and they're probably even collecting social benefits of some kind, which also costs me taxes. The current US justice system is probably the most expensive way of handling criminals I could come up with, and we're all paying the bill for it. About the only people who come out ahead are the companies that run the prisons.
I'll second that. I'm a heavy pirate, and the only stufff I get anymore is new movie releases and TV shows because for some incomprehensible reason, they are delayed reaching those services by weeks to over a year... or for things they don't carry in their catalog; For example, Babylon 5 is not available for instant viewing on Netflix.
Yeah, that makes no sense at all.
Why not charge $1 to enable a movie early on your streaming account. It will be there eventually for free anyway, and you still only can watch it for as long as you subscribe. So, make it available on release day for $1 more or something like that, and then would-be pirates have to decide whether it is worth futzing with torrents and having to wait an hour or two to start watching it to save $1. Don't make it like pay-per-view where you only get it for the day or whatever.
The default Android browser these days is Chrome. It is about as good as it gets.
I don't know. My comments are based on the GPs complaint about Chrome and the parents comment about not assuming it is chrome.
Well, as you pointed out not all Android phones run recent OSes. Individual phone vendors can also do just about anything they want to the core OS (there are limitations if they want to use the Google apps, but I don't know that shipping/defaulting Chrome is one of them). I've seen phone vendors do some really dumb things with Android...
However, Chrome has been out for over a year now on Android and is almost always the default. I hear with KitKat it is also becoming the default browser engine - previously if you stuck an html viewer in an app it used the AOSP browser which wasn't quite as capable (though still webkit-based, so not horrible).
Don't get me wrong, I'm as frustrated as anybody with the state of OS updates on Android and will certainly acknowledge that Apple does a FAR better job here. Even the Nexus line only gets updates for 18 months, while most iOS devices get them for 2-3 years. On the other hand, I can buy two Nexus phones for the price of one iPhone, and for less if you factor in NPV (since I won't buy the second phone at the same time). I ended up switching to a mobile plan that doesn't include phone subsidies so that I'm a bit more free to update hardware on my own schedule.
You think it's an advantage to be able to use different browsers. But it's no advantage if the one that's pre-installed is a piece of shit, and you have to seek out a good one for yourself.
The default Android browser these days is Chrome. It is about as good as it gets.
And funnily enough both the browsers you recommend for Android are based on Apple's Webkit.
You mean KDE's KHTML? It is an open-source library - lots of people have contributed to it, certainly including Google.
That said, while I don't use other rendering engines these days I'm certainly happy to have a choice - it keeps Google/Apple/etc honest.
Indeed - much of Japan's huge success following WWII was the result of Demings work on statistical process control which was rejected by established US industry, but accepted by the occupying government. The result was that Japanese industry rapidly became far more capable of producing quality products at a low cost compared to the US industry of the day. Of course, everybody uses statistical process control these days.
The post-WWII occupation of Japan really is a good example of how to do occupation. However, it probably was only possible due to the local culture, and the surrender of the established authority in Japan. If the orders had been to fight to the death the occupation would have been a lot different.
I think the principle of isolation still applies. Not all devices on the ISS are equally critical. I'm sure the Astronauts watch TV and listen to music. The systems that handle that don't need to be able to talk to those that control the thrusters.
Defense in depth just makes sense when reliability is critical.
Wasn't there a privilege escalation bug in the usb filessystem code in the Linux kernel a few years ago? If it's in space now, it's probably running a 5-10 year old kernel at best, with that vulnerability still there.
I'm sure. And that is just passive attacks based on the filesystem data itself. Now imagine if the flash drive contained active circuitry that could send arbitrary data over the USB bus. That means you could target any driver available to the kernel which contained an exploit.
Honestly, I think that pensions in the current form mislead employees and put them at a real disadvantage. Traditional pension plans allocate most of their funds to an employee only after they've been employed for many years, so it makes it hard for employees to move around. At the same time, companies have no obligation to actually keep the employee around. So the employee is staying put for the promise of a future gain that the company may never deliver.
And that is all if the company actually makes good on the pension in the first place. Pension funds are considered the property of the company and employees become just like any other creditor if the company goes into bankruptcy.
I'm fine with creating incentives for people to save for retirement. However, ALL compensation really needs to be paid in full at the time the work is done. Every two weeks the employee and the company should be "even" - neither party owing the other anything aside from minor transactions like expenses/etc. Any kind of retirement savings should be in an account owned by the employee, like a 401k. Companies would not be permitted to advertise the future value of these plans - they could only declare what they contribute to them up-front. I wouldn't allow any kind of compensation based on years of service either (including vacation time and retirement contributions). Just pay people for the work they do.
But there's a hundred Chinese websites out there that will ship stuff to you free of charge. It usually takes a few weeks to get there, so if you don't need something right away, it's a great way to save money. Even paying for the courier rates aren't that bad if you're buying more expensive items.
If anybody tried to scale this up I'm sure that customs would step in. When I've bought 50-cent cables with $1 shipping on Amazon and such they often show up in little brown envelops with a stamp on them declaring the item as a gift. I'm sure customs can't stay on top of that when it is just little stores mailing 20 packages a week to the US, but try to do that from a warehouse and toss in a few Amazon complaints and you'll see shipments getting intercepted unless the paperwork is above-board.
I'm sure any large company could stay on-top of the legalities, but it would still mean not selling counterfeit goods, compliance with FCC/etc, and no doubt some duties. I doubt the prices would be quite as cheap as they are now.
I've thought the same thing. Medicare does need some work though:
1. It really needs to be comprehensive, without a patch-work of coverage for hospitalization vs preventative care vs drugs, supplemental insurance, etc. 2. The cost problem still needs work. Otherwise level of care will have to drop as all those people you plan to add to Medicare are already paying for it and just not getting benefits, so giving them benefits will cost a LOT of money. US healthcare costs are WAY higher than anywhere else.
But, sure, there is no reason it couldn't be expanded.
The US Government can simply take more money from taxpayers, then borrow 40 cents from China for every dollar, and they will make ACA succeed by brute-force.
Uh, isn't that basically just socialism, plus the fact that people want more than what they can afford? They could just spend less on healthcare and get the same result without the borrowing. However, the whole point of socialism is to take money from people who have money and to spend it on people who don't. If you don't like that then the solution is to just let people who can't afford insurance die, which most would not consider an acceptable solution.
The problem with healthcare is that everybody wants to paint it like some black-and-white simple problem with a simple solution, when in reality it is about 500 problems lumped into one big mess. There are lots of issues that drive up costs. There are lots of issues that discourage preventative care. There are lots of issues with who gets cared for. There are lots of administrative issues with paying a fair price for the work that gets done. There are lots of issues with trying to figure out what the best way to take care of a sick person actually is.
Everybody like to just pick one thing and point out a simple solution to it. Just let ERs turn away the indigent and now hospitals are solvent (just be sure to budget more money for the morgue, both for those who can't afford care and also for those who left their wallets at home when they keeled over). Just set the reimbursement rate for a particular treatment at $10 and now it doesn't cost much to pay for it (ignore the fact that nobody will provide the treatment any longer). Let the market freely set prices (and ignore the fact that consumers have little ability to shop around while unconscious). Every complicated problem has a simple solution that won't work...
Yup - pressurized 100% oxygen will burn virtually anything that isn't already oxidized. Oxygen just loves electrons.
Stick a piece of food in a bomb calorimeter, pressurize with 100% O2, and ignite, and when you open it up about the only thing you'll find inside is a hint of condensation and a tiny bit of rusted fuse wire. The astronauts themselves were highly flammable materials in that environment.
Sure, less flammable material was a good start, but operating the capsule at above atmospheric pressure in 100% oxygen was a mistake. In space it would have been below atmospheric pressure. They should have maintained the same partial pressure of O2 - probably would be better for the astronauts health as well.
The book and the movie are really completely different stories with completely different points. I think the book is well-worth reading, regardless of whether you ultimately buy the argument it makes.
Actually, I'll take back the bit about "completely different points." Perhaps a simple way of contrasting the motives of the two stories: 1. The movie basically questions the morality of society sending people off to war. 2. The book asks the question, "what kind of society could morally send people off to war?" Whether it answers it correctly would be a great topic for a debate club.
I like how you think that someone without the right to serve in law enforcement or federal government or the right to to vote is really close to some who does possess that right.
Well, the book certainly makes that argument. I'm not sure that I see any evidence that the person you replied to holds to that opinion
The society depicted in the book would make the argument that people without those rights are close to those with those rights in the same way that somebody who has put their life at risk in service to their countrymen is close to somebody who has not done so. The argument made by the book is that the moral authority to govern is derived from service, and not from birth.
Did you actually read the book? I'm sure many would read it and disagree with its premise, but if it doesn't at least make you think about the nature of moral authority, liberty, and personal responsibility then you probably missed the point.
Disclaimer - it has been quite a while since I read the book...
There's a good reason why the film diverged from the book - the book just isn't that good.
I thought the book was interesting. It depicts a form of government that is unheard of in modern society which seems to try to reconcile some of the libertarian vs communist conflicts. (For those who haven't read it the gist of it is that the world is governed by a democracy in which only those who have served in the military can vote. The argument is that voting rights are open to anybody, but only after demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice for the common good. Non-voters still obtain the same freedoms/rights/etc, but are not trusted with the operation of the government.) I think it uses a story as a way to explore interesting questions - ones that are certainly relevant today in a world where we ban behavior that doesn't hurt anybody, allow people to hurt themselves, pay to fix people who have hurt themselves, have lots of people who are unemployable, etc. How do you reconcile the libertarian ideal of personal responsibility and freedom with the reality that many don't seem to thrive under those conditions?
I'm not suggesting that creating the mobile infantry is the solution. Oh, and I find it amusing that they still use the term "mobile infantry" in the movie. The movie mostly has guys getting dropped off by spacecraft and running around on foot. In the book mobile infantry was more about guys running around in mechs - which really does sound like "mobile infantry."
His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother.
Can't say that I've read any of his other books. Honestly, this sort of stuff seems to be pretty common in Sci Fi and is part of why I don't read all that much of it. You can have conceptually interesting books like Ringworld and then 14 sequels which seem to be filled with bizarre sexual fantasies.
Should we not ban something that is directly linked to an increased risk in heart disease?
In a supposedly free country? No, of course we shouldn't ban it.
That would only make sense if I were free to not pay for the medical bills of those who eat this stuff. I don't particularly care to live in that world, and it certainly isn't the state of affairs in the US. Your health is CERTAINLY my business.
Yup. I just love those splenda packets that say 0g sugar in them. It contains 2 ingredients, and the first one is a sugar, which means that the contents of the packet are more than 50% sugar. The reason it says 0g sugar is that amounts less than 1g can be rounded down, and the serving size is 1g.
Vegans have diets that are so low in the LDL (bad) cholesterol that they can be too low. It turns out that you need some LDL cholesterol, or you bleed to death. It is only "bad" when you have too much of it.
The effects of very low LDL do not seem to be very well understood. First, I don't see any reputable sources supporting the claim that it causes bleeding to death (I'm more than happy to look at anything you cite - I'm not expert). Second, the main side-effects that seem to be of concern are things like depression.
Finally, the cause of the low LDL may matter. There are individuals with extremely low LDL (we're talking 20) due to genetic reasons and I don't think they've been demonstrated to have any problems. There are also experimental drugs being tested capable of lowering LDL to these levels and as far as I've heard there have not been issues, though companies testing them have been avoiding driving LDL super-low (20 or so).
I think that there are a lot of open questions around the relationship between HDL/LDL levels and health risks. On the one hand we have lots of studies that suggest that higher HDL is associated with lower disease risk. On the other hand we have studies that show no benefit from raising HDL via the use of Niacin. It seems likely to me that HDL/LDL levels are really just an indicator of some other activity in the body which is more directly associated with a health risk/benefit, and manipulation of these levels may or may not have benefit/risk depending on how the treatment affects the root cause (which we do not know).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I've already resigned myself to having to live without RPN on this one. For a test it really isn't the end of the world.
I really hope I never drop my HP48G on the floor. I hear they don't make them like they used to...
Well, if the government agency that defines the rules for this test wasn't stuck in the 50s, that might be an option...
Thanks. I have no idea what would possess anybody to make that a secondary function! I hit it all the time! Granted, for the test I'm taking it might not be quite as essential.
Thanks. I can obviously read Amazon reviews and such. However, I felt that the /. community probably had tastes more similar to my own, vs a bunch of kids taking algebra in high school/etc.
I've had both WD and Seagate drives fail after 1 year under warranty. I've probably returned ~4 drives under warranty so far, all from the same RAID which only contains 4 drives. Granted, this was over a period of years, but, really!
I don't think any manufacturer is better than the others - drives just wear out especially under heavy use. Every vendor I've used handled the warranty returns efficiently - generally only costing me ~$10 for return shipment. Some want me to run their own software to get a return code. Other times I print the output of smartctl -a and put it in the box.
...you've eliminated any and all chances that he'll magically fall into being a useful member of society after you've branded him for life.
Honestly, I think public criminal records are a big problem.
My feeling is that the justice system should be primarily rehabilitative. Criminal records are anything but.
People should be incarcerated if they're too dangerous to walk out on the street, or if they can't be rehabilitated while having access to the streets. If somebody has been rehabilitated, then they are no longer a criminal, and they should not be interfered with. If they can't be trusted out in public without warning everybody that they're potentially dangerous, then they shouldn't be out in public in the first place.
I think that rehabilitating criminals so that they can re-integrate into society without being treated like criminals for the rest of their lives is just the morally right thing to do. However, if I were a selfish bastard I'd still think that it was the smart thing to do. Locking up criminals repeatedly costs me taxes. Having them out on the street committing crimes costs me taxes. Then when they're out if they can't get a job then they're not making any significant income and that means they're not paying taxes, which means I'm paying their share of the taxes, and they're probably even collecting social benefits of some kind, which also costs me taxes. The current US justice system is probably the most expensive way of handling criminals I could come up with, and we're all paying the bill for it. About the only people who come out ahead are the companies that run the prisons.
I'll second that. I'm a heavy pirate, and the only stufff I get anymore is new movie releases and TV shows because for some incomprehensible reason, they are delayed reaching those services by weeks to over a year... or for things they don't carry in their catalog; For example, Babylon 5 is not available for instant viewing on Netflix.
Yeah, that makes no sense at all.
Why not charge $1 to enable a movie early on your streaming account. It will be there eventually for free anyway, and you still only can watch it for as long as you subscribe. So, make it available on release day for $1 more or something like that, and then would-be pirates have to decide whether it is worth futzing with torrents and having to wait an hour or two to start watching it to save $1. Don't make it like pay-per-view where you only get it for the day or whatever.
And it had what I think was the best Stan Lee cameo of any Marvel movie so far.
That's a tough one - the cameo in the first Thor movie was right up there...
The default Android browser these days is Chrome. It is about as good as it gets.
I don't know. My comments are based on the GPs complaint about Chrome and the parents comment about not assuming it is chrome.
Well, as you pointed out not all Android phones run recent OSes. Individual phone vendors can also do just about anything they want to the core OS (there are limitations if they want to use the Google apps, but I don't know that shipping/defaulting Chrome is one of them). I've seen phone vendors do some really dumb things with Android...
However, Chrome has been out for over a year now on Android and is almost always the default. I hear with KitKat it is also becoming the default browser engine - previously if you stuck an html viewer in an app it used the AOSP browser which wasn't quite as capable (though still webkit-based, so not horrible).
Don't get me wrong, I'm as frustrated as anybody with the state of OS updates on Android and will certainly acknowledge that Apple does a FAR better job here. Even the Nexus line only gets updates for 18 months, while most iOS devices get them for 2-3 years. On the other hand, I can buy two Nexus phones for the price of one iPhone, and for less if you factor in NPV (since I won't buy the second phone at the same time). I ended up switching to a mobile plan that doesn't include phone subsidies so that I'm a bit more free to update hardware on my own schedule.
You think it's an advantage to be able to use different browsers. But it's no advantage if the one that's pre-installed is a piece of shit, and you have to seek out a good one for yourself.
The default Android browser these days is Chrome. It is about as good as it gets.
And funnily enough both the browsers you recommend for Android are based on Apple's Webkit.
You mean KDE's KHTML? It is an open-source library - lots of people have contributed to it, certainly including Google.
That said, while I don't use other rendering engines these days I'm certainly happy to have a choice - it keeps Google/Apple/etc honest.
Indeed - much of Japan's huge success following WWII was the result of Demings work on statistical process control which was rejected by established US industry, but accepted by the occupying government. The result was that Japanese industry rapidly became far more capable of producing quality products at a low cost compared to the US industry of the day. Of course, everybody uses statistical process control these days.
The post-WWII occupation of Japan really is a good example of how to do occupation. However, it probably was only possible due to the local culture, and the surrender of the established authority in Japan. If the orders had been to fight to the death the occupation would have been a lot different.
I think the principle of isolation still applies. Not all devices on the ISS are equally critical. I'm sure the Astronauts watch TV and listen to music. The systems that handle that don't need to be able to talk to those that control the thrusters.
Defense in depth just makes sense when reliability is critical.
Wasn't there a privilege escalation bug in the usb filessystem code in the Linux kernel a few years ago? If it's in space now, it's probably running a 5-10 year old kernel at best, with that vulnerability still there.
I'm sure. And that is just passive attacks based on the filesystem data itself. Now imagine if the flash drive contained active circuitry that could send arbitrary data over the USB bus. That means you could target any driver available to the kernel which contained an exploit.
Agree - there needs to be a balance.
Honestly, I think that pensions in the current form mislead employees and put them at a real disadvantage. Traditional pension plans allocate most of their funds to an employee only after they've been employed for many years, so it makes it hard for employees to move around. At the same time, companies have no obligation to actually keep the employee around. So the employee is staying put for the promise of a future gain that the company may never deliver.
And that is all if the company actually makes good on the pension in the first place. Pension funds are considered the property of the company and employees become just like any other creditor if the company goes into bankruptcy.
I'm fine with creating incentives for people to save for retirement. However, ALL compensation really needs to be paid in full at the time the work is done. Every two weeks the employee and the company should be "even" - neither party owing the other anything aside from minor transactions like expenses/etc. Any kind of retirement savings should be in an account owned by the employee, like a 401k. Companies would not be permitted to advertise the future value of these plans - they could only declare what they contribute to them up-front. I wouldn't allow any kind of compensation based on years of service either (including vacation time and retirement contributions). Just pay people for the work they do.
But there's a hundred Chinese websites out there that will ship stuff to you free of charge. It usually takes a few weeks to get there, so if you don't need something right away, it's a great way to save money. Even paying for the courier rates aren't that bad if you're buying more expensive items.
If anybody tried to scale this up I'm sure that customs would step in. When I've bought 50-cent cables with $1 shipping on Amazon and such they often show up in little brown envelops with a stamp on them declaring the item as a gift. I'm sure customs can't stay on top of that when it is just little stores mailing 20 packages a week to the US, but try to do that from a warehouse and toss in a few Amazon complaints and you'll see shipments getting intercepted unless the paperwork is above-board.
I'm sure any large company could stay on-top of the legalities, but it would still mean not selling counterfeit goods, compliance with FCC/etc, and no doubt some duties. I doubt the prices would be quite as cheap as they are now.
I've thought the same thing. Medicare does need some work though:
1. It really needs to be comprehensive, without a patch-work of coverage for hospitalization vs preventative care vs drugs, supplemental insurance, etc.
2. The cost problem still needs work. Otherwise level of care will have to drop as all those people you plan to add to Medicare are already paying for it and just not getting benefits, so giving them benefits will cost a LOT of money. US healthcare costs are WAY higher than anywhere else.
But, sure, there is no reason it couldn't be expanded.
Seriously, I'm dyne-ing here. Joule have to come up with a better joke next time.
The US Government can simply take more money from taxpayers, then borrow 40 cents from China for every dollar, and they will make ACA succeed by brute-force.
Uh, isn't that basically just socialism, plus the fact that people want more than what they can afford? They could just spend less on healthcare and get the same result without the borrowing. However, the whole point of socialism is to take money from people who have money and to spend it on people who don't. If you don't like that then the solution is to just let people who can't afford insurance die, which most would not consider an acceptable solution.
The problem with healthcare is that everybody wants to paint it like some black-and-white simple problem with a simple solution, when in reality it is about 500 problems lumped into one big mess. There are lots of issues that drive up costs. There are lots of issues that discourage preventative care. There are lots of issues with who gets cared for. There are lots of administrative issues with paying a fair price for the work that gets done. There are lots of issues with trying to figure out what the best way to take care of a sick person actually is.
Everybody like to just pick one thing and point out a simple solution to it. Just let ERs turn away the indigent and now hospitals are solvent (just be sure to budget more money for the morgue, both for those who can't afford care and also for those who left their wallets at home when they keeled over). Just set the reimbursement rate for a particular treatment at $10 and now it doesn't cost much to pay for it (ignore the fact that nobody will provide the treatment any longer). Let the market freely set prices (and ignore the fact that consumers have little ability to shop around while unconscious). Every complicated problem has a simple solution that won't work...
Yup - pressurized 100% oxygen will burn virtually anything that isn't already oxidized. Oxygen just loves electrons.
Stick a piece of food in a bomb calorimeter, pressurize with 100% O2, and ignite, and when you open it up about the only thing you'll find inside is a hint of condensation and a tiny bit of rusted fuse wire. The astronauts themselves were highly flammable materials in that environment.
Sure, less flammable material was a good start, but operating the capsule at above atmospheric pressure in 100% oxygen was a mistake. In space it would have been below atmospheric pressure. They should have maintained the same partial pressure of O2 - probably would be better for the astronauts health as well.
The book and the movie are really completely different stories with completely different points. I think the book is well-worth reading, regardless of whether you ultimately buy the argument it makes.
Actually, I'll take back the bit about "completely different points." Perhaps a simple way of contrasting the motives of the two stories:
1. The movie basically questions the morality of society sending people off to war.
2. The book asks the question, "what kind of society could morally send people off to war?" Whether it answers it correctly would be a great topic for a debate club.
I like how you think that someone without the right to serve in law enforcement or federal government or the right to to vote is really close to some who does possess that right.
Well, the book certainly makes that argument. I'm not sure that I see any evidence that the person you replied to holds to that opinion
The society depicted in the book would make the argument that people without those rights are close to those with those rights in the same way that somebody who has put their life at risk in service to their countrymen is close to somebody who has not done so. The argument made by the book is that the moral authority to govern is derived from service, and not from birth.
Did you actually read the book? I'm sure many would read it and disagree with its premise, but if it doesn't at least make you think about the nature of moral authority, liberty, and personal responsibility then you probably missed the point.
Disclaimer - it has been quite a while since I read the book...
There's a good reason why the film diverged from the book - the book just isn't that good.
I thought the book was interesting. It depicts a form of government that is unheard of in modern society which seems to try to reconcile some of the libertarian vs communist conflicts. (For those who haven't read it the gist of it is that the world is governed by a democracy in which only those who have served in the military can vote. The argument is that voting rights are open to anybody, but only after demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice for the common good. Non-voters still obtain the same freedoms/rights/etc, but are not trusted with the operation of the government.) I think it uses a story as a way to explore interesting questions - ones that are certainly relevant today in a world where we ban behavior that doesn't hurt anybody, allow people to hurt themselves, pay to fix people who have hurt themselves, have lots of people who are unemployable, etc. How do you reconcile the libertarian ideal of personal responsibility and freedom with the reality that many don't seem to thrive under those conditions?
I'm not suggesting that creating the mobile infantry is the solution. Oh, and I find it amusing that they still use the term "mobile infantry" in the movie. The movie mostly has guys getting dropped off by spacecraft and running around on foot. In the book mobile infantry was more about guys running around in mechs - which really does sound like "mobile infantry."
His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother.
Can't say that I've read any of his other books. Honestly, this sort of stuff seems to be pretty common in Sci Fi and is part of why I don't read all that much of it. You can have conceptually interesting books like Ringworld and then 14 sequels which seem to be filled with bizarre sexual fantasies.
Should we not ban something that is directly linked to an increased risk in heart disease?
In a supposedly free country? No, of course we shouldn't ban it.
That would only make sense if I were free to not pay for the medical bills of those who eat this stuff. I don't particularly care to live in that world, and it certainly isn't the state of affairs in the US. Your health is CERTAINLY my business.
Yup. I just love those splenda packets that say 0g sugar in them. It contains 2 ingredients, and the first one is a sugar, which means that the contents of the packet are more than 50% sugar. The reason it says 0g sugar is that amounts less than 1g can be rounded down, and the serving size is 1g.
Vegans have diets that are so low in the LDL (bad) cholesterol that they can be too low. It turns out that you need some LDL cholesterol, or you bleed to death. It is only "bad" when you have too much of it.
The effects of very low LDL do not seem to be very well understood. First, I don't see any reputable sources supporting the claim that it causes bleeding to death (I'm more than happy to look at anything you cite - I'm not expert). Second, the main side-effects that seem to be of concern are things like depression.
Finally, the cause of the low LDL may matter. There are individuals with extremely low LDL (we're talking 20) due to genetic reasons and I don't think they've been demonstrated to have any problems. There are also experimental drugs being tested capable of lowering LDL to these levels and as far as I've heard there have not been issues, though companies testing them have been avoiding driving LDL super-low (20 or so).
I think that there are a lot of open questions around the relationship between HDL/LDL levels and health risks. On the one hand we have lots of studies that suggest that higher HDL is associated with lower disease risk. On the other hand we have studies that show no benefit from raising HDL via the use of Niacin. It seems likely to me that HDL/LDL levels are really just an indicator of some other activity in the body which is more directly associated with a health risk/benefit, and manipulation of these levels may or may not have benefit/risk depending on how the treatment affects the root cause (which we do not know).