Everyone uses the same damned excuse every time this topic comes up. OMG what if a doctor is at the movie and he gets an emergency phone call and has to jump right up and go perform BRAIN SURGERY right away . . . . and . . . and your jammer prevents him from getting the call and . . and . . someone DIES. . . .
Yeah. SHUT UP. Hospitals have f*cking SHIFTS and the GD hospital is FULL of more doctors at any given moment than all of us combined even know. Stupid fucking argument. The whole, omg the emergency folks can't do their job argument is really getting old.
Show me an establishment within a reasonable distance of the civilized world and I can guarantee you they have land line systems for emergencies. Likely several. Why ? Because cell phones are unreliable that's why. . . . .
I did not use that argument. That would make this a... let me think... oh yeah. Straw man.
Read Emergence, if you can find a copy. A genius eleven year old girl and her pet macaw travel a post-apocalyptic America. The writing style is hard to get used to -- a lot like Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" -- but after a few pages your brain starts filling in the missing words. (The in-story explanation is that it's her personal diary written in Pitman shorthand.)
Unfortunately, the sequel "Tracking" is only available as a bootleg right now, (check torrents). It was serialized in a now-unavailable sequence of Analog magazines. If you can find "Tracking", it's also worth reading.
Palmer seems to have done a lot of research for the books. He makes some mistakes regarding firearms that grated on me, but the rest seemed correct.
I've had two emergency texts from my daughter in the five years she's owned a cell phone, both involving a firearm on campus. (Two different schools.) Both times I found through local law enforcement that someone inside the school had called 911 just seconds before I did. On a cell phone.
If someone thinks its clever to jam cell phones because he finds them annoying, he will find himself in a heap of trouble the first time he blocks the transmission or reception of an emergency call. Then he can enjoy a different kind of cell while the people involved take away everything he owns in civil court. This is not civil disobedience, it's a criminal act.
I totally understand that people often misuse their cell phones, and I get just as pissed off as the next guy. But the first time a disgruntled geek jams an emergency call, his life will effectively be over. Is it worth it?
Again, do you *know* that TCM has not been tested or quantified in any scientifically meaningful way, or are you assuming that because it's dispensed by old guys who don't wear white coats or speak English?
...this (accusing DMCA, get someone's content temporarily removed, then oh sorry, mistake, reinstated with all links broken and comments gone) could be used as a weapon. Especially with an election coming up.
...is a regularly updated list of the music companies behind the worst of this legislation, prioritized by level of involvement or heinousness of the action, and the artists they represent. Then we can make a knowledgeable decision as consumers, whom to spend our money on. One could say "sucks to be those artists", but they don't get but a tiny fraction of music sales in a traditional contract anyway, and maybe the move will encourage more artists to go independent.
...When the component of the conventional music industry that makes money from penalties and lawsuits exceeds the component of the conventional music industry that makes music. Eventually, they will only exist as an IP troll.
And only little girls will ride horses, man will walk on the moon, oh wait. That's already happened. And so has this, apparently.
> The problem with traditional Chinese medicine is that it is not been proven with sample groups, double-blind tests, and quantitative measurements.
True, but I'd add that this is a problem that Western medicine has with Chinese medicine, not necessarily a problem with Chinese medicine per se. For one thing, it ignores what tests and quantitative measurements were done over the centuries, in China. In other words, the problem with traditional Chinese medicine is that it has not been Westernized.
Western medicine *has* gone through rigorous scientific study, but sometimes that study has been in error, or negative effects are noticed after release, or there is a profit motive to ignore or soft-pedal negative effects. (Examples abound.) Where ever there's huge amounts of money involved, or collective opinion, or even opinions held by a few in power, one can't expect rigorous, completely objective science. So one *could* say that some part of Western medicine (hopefully a small part) is nonsense, also.
Chinese medicines, perhaps, Greek medicines, certainly. But Homeopathy? I don't think so, but my subscription to The Lancet expired sometime in the eighties. Can you give me an example of homeopathy as practiced by modern conventional western medicine?
I share the aversion to homeopathy and am ambivalent about Acupuncture. But let's not throw out everything just because it didn't come from an American drug manufacturer. A lot of conventional medicines started as "herbs" -- the most well known Western example probably being salicin in willow bark, which was known for its pain relief since at least the first century AD, and later became acetylsalicylic acid or Aspirin. Does anyone think Aspirin is a placebo? It came from an old home remedy of ground up bark in Greece around 400 AD (at latest -- perhaps a lot earlier)... Surely it's not actually helping your hangover?
Chinese "herbs" may contain active ingredients either singly or in certain combinations that the established medical community either hasn't discovered or acknowledged yet, or may not have figured out how to make gobs of money from, yet. Or maybe not. But I don't think it does us good as a species to disregard out of hand treatments simply because they've been done for a long time in another country by old guys who don't speak English.
One problem I think Westerners have with Chinese medicine is that the terminology and explanations for the medicine's effectiveness is alien to us. Talk about "chi" and "energy flow" and "hot and cold system" doesn't follow our paradigms. And maybe the explanation is complete fantasy -- an attempt by someone with no medical background to explain their observations. That doesn't necessarily mean that the phenomenon being observed did not happen.
Disclosure: I don't "believe in" Chinese medicine any more than I "believe in" Western medicine. I observe that the Dit Da Jow I rub on bruises has analgesic properties, and that's a good enough reason to use it, even if it doesn't have healing and restorative properties as advertised. I observe that every cholesterol lowering drug my Western doctor has tried has resulted in crippling muscle pain at the dosage she wants me to use, which prevents me from working out and reducing this gut that is probably the main cause of my high cholesterol. So I do not take it, preferring to exercise more and change my diet. (Which would be a very "Chinese medicine" approach.) (I've lost a significant amount of weight from exercise since stopping the statins, which I don't think I could have done otherwise.)
Try to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.
I have re-imaged my laptop issued by the company, granted myself admin rights and stripped off some of the cruft with which company laptops come equipped and installed non-standard software, but I work in IT, and I have access to all the tools and images and am in a better policy position than it sounds like you are. Were I not deep in IT and secure in my position, I would not try it. You are issued a laptop to do a particular job, and that's what it's for. If you just can't make yourself not surf naughty teens websites, get yourself a tablet of your very own and use that.
One possible geeky solution would be to create a virtual instance on your laptop and use that to watch naughty nurses. But even that might not be safe depending on whether there's traffic analysis software on the laptop or just hooks into the browser.
What it comes down to is this: There's a recession on, buddy. Be happy you're employed. Don't screw around with company property.
On the one hand, catwalk models tend towards ridiculously skinny; deaths from malnutrition are not unknown. There are one or two TV series that we've stopped watching because the obvious anorexia of some of the actresses kept drawing us out of the story. (cough-90210-cough) Moreover, in a completely perverse move, we've seen advertising groups take deathly skinny models and photoshop them to be *more* skinny. I don't like this any more than the "heroin chic" of a few years ago. It's gone beyond trendy and gotten vulgar.
On the other hand, I can't help imagining that after the government steps in, fashion shows will start looking more like this.
Is there possibly a solution that restores sanity, without having the government replace the current insanity with a different kind of insanity?
...a book published in 1965 called "the mad scientist's club". The main difference as I see it is that the kids did technical pranks and hardhacks outside in the sun and fresh air, a concept that would probably be considered abnormal now.
Wow, my girlfriend owned a Rabbit diesel in sunny California, and that car was harder than hell to start at any temperature below 60 degrees f. I know that the glow plugs don't actually ignite the diesel, but it never occurred to me that you could start the engine without them.
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In four words . . .
Yes, it's worth it.
Everyone uses the same damned excuse every time this topic comes up. OMG what if a doctor is at the movie and he gets an emergency phone call and has to jump right up and go perform BRAIN SURGERY right away . . . . and . . . and your jammer prevents him from getting the call and . . and . . someone DIES. . . .
Yeah. SHUT UP. Hospitals have f*cking SHIFTS and the GD hospital is FULL of more doctors at any given moment than all of us combined even know. Stupid fucking argument. The whole, omg the emergency folks can't do their job argument is really getting old.
Show me an establishment within a reasonable distance of the civilized world and I can guarantee you they have land line systems for emergencies. Likely several. Why ? Because cell phones are unreliable that's why. . . . .
I did not use that argument. That would make this a... let me think... oh yeah. Straw man.
Read Emergence, if you can find a copy. A genius eleven year old girl and her pet macaw travel a post-apocalyptic America. The writing style is hard to get used to -- a lot like Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" -- but after a few pages your brain starts filling in the missing words. (The in-story explanation is that it's her personal diary written in Pitman shorthand.)
Unfortunately, the sequel "Tracking" is only available as a bootleg right now, (check torrents). It was serialized in a now-unavailable sequence of Analog magazines. If you can find "Tracking", it's also worth reading.
Palmer seems to have done a lot of research for the books. He makes some mistakes regarding firearms that grated on me, but the rest seemed correct.
Third and longest of a trilogy. They're all worth reading.
I've had two emergency texts from my daughter in the five years she's owned a cell phone
So, in other words, the whole "emergency thing" doesn't come up very much, does it?
Not for me. Others' mileage may vary. But when it does, it's, like, an emergency.
I've had two emergency texts from my daughter in the five years she's owned a cell phone, both involving a firearm on campus. (Two different schools.) Both times I found through local law enforcement that someone inside the school had called 911 just seconds before I did. On a cell phone.
If someone thinks its clever to jam cell phones because he finds them annoying, he will find himself in a heap of trouble the first time he blocks the transmission or reception of an emergency call. Then he can enjoy a different kind of cell while the people involved take away everything he owns in civil court. This is not civil disobedience, it's a criminal act.
I totally understand that people often misuse their cell phones, and I get just as pissed off as the next guy. But the first time a disgruntled geek jams an emergency call, his life will effectively be over. Is it worth it?
Again, do you *know* that TCM has not been tested or quantified in any scientifically meaningful way, or are you assuming that because it's dispensed by old guys who don't wear white coats or speak English?
Yes. I think they're talking about an *additional* ipod tax.
And only little girls will ride horses, man will walk on the moon, oh wait. That's already happened. And so has this, apparently.
> The problem with traditional Chinese medicine is that it is not been proven with sample groups, double-blind tests, and quantitative measurements.
True, but I'd add that this is a problem that Western medicine has with Chinese medicine, not necessarily a problem with Chinese medicine per se. For one thing, it ignores what tests and quantitative measurements were done over the centuries, in China. In other words, the problem with traditional Chinese medicine is that it has not been Westernized.
Western medicine *has* gone through rigorous scientific study, but sometimes that study has been in error, or negative effects are noticed after release, or there is a profit motive to ignore or soft-pedal negative effects. (Examples abound.) Where ever there's huge amounts of money involved, or collective opinion, or even opinions held by a few in power, one can't expect rigorous, completely objective science. So one *could* say that some part of Western medicine (hopefully a small part) is nonsense, also.
Chinese medicines, perhaps, Greek medicines, certainly. But Homeopathy? I don't think so, but my subscription to The Lancet expired sometime in the eighties. Can you give me an example of homeopathy as practiced by modern conventional western medicine?
I share the aversion to homeopathy and am ambivalent about Acupuncture. But let's not throw out everything just because it didn't come from an American drug manufacturer. A lot of conventional medicines started as "herbs" -- the most well known Western example probably being salicin in willow bark, which was known for its pain relief since at least the first century AD, and later became acetylsalicylic acid or Aspirin. Does anyone think Aspirin is a placebo? It came from an old home remedy of ground up bark in Greece around 400 AD (at latest -- perhaps a lot earlier)... Surely it's not actually helping your hangover?
Chinese "herbs" may contain active ingredients either singly or in certain combinations that the established medical community either hasn't discovered or acknowledged yet, or may not have figured out how to make gobs of money from, yet. Or maybe not. But I don't think it does us good as a species to disregard out of hand treatments simply because they've been done for a long time in another country by old guys who don't speak English.
One problem I think Westerners have with Chinese medicine is that the terminology and explanations for the medicine's effectiveness is alien to us. Talk about "chi" and "energy flow" and "hot and cold system" doesn't follow our paradigms. And maybe the explanation is complete fantasy -- an attempt by someone with no medical background to explain their observations. That doesn't necessarily mean that the phenomenon being observed did not happen.
Disclosure: I don't "believe in" Chinese medicine any more than I "believe in" Western medicine. I observe that the Dit Da Jow I rub on bruises has analgesic properties, and that's a good enough reason to use it, even if it doesn't have healing and restorative properties as advertised. I observe that every cholesterol lowering drug my Western doctor has tried has resulted in crippling muscle pain at the dosage she wants me to use, which prevents me from working out and reducing this gut that is probably the main cause of my high cholesterol. So I do not take it, preferring to exercise more and change my diet. (Which would be a very "Chinese medicine" approach.) (I've lost a significant amount of weight from exercise since stopping the statins, which I don't think I could have done otherwise.)
Try to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.
I have re-imaged my laptop issued by the company, granted myself admin rights and stripped off some of the cruft with which company laptops come equipped and installed non-standard software, but I work in IT, and I have access to all the tools and images and am in a better policy position than it sounds like you are. Were I not deep in IT and secure in my position, I would not try it. You are issued a laptop to do a particular job, and that's what it's for. If you just can't make yourself not surf naughty teens websites, get yourself a tablet of your very own and use that.
One possible geeky solution would be to create a virtual instance on your laptop and use that to watch naughty nurses. But even that might not be safe depending on whether there's traffic analysis software on the laptop or just hooks into the browser.
What it comes down to is this: There's a recession on, buddy. Be happy you're employed. Don't screw around with company property.
I always thought the kids were more likely to grow up to be NSA or CIA analysts.
You can buy vitamin-D supplements in bulk at Costco, I hear...
Well, like that, except funny.
On the one hand, catwalk models tend towards ridiculously skinny; deaths from malnutrition are not unknown. There are one or two TV series that we've stopped watching because the obvious anorexia of some of the actresses kept drawing us out of the story. (cough-90210-cough) Moreover, in a completely perverse move, we've seen advertising groups take deathly skinny models and photoshop them to be *more* skinny. I don't like this any more than the "heroin chic" of a few years ago. It's gone beyond trendy and gotten vulgar.
On the other hand, I can't help imagining that after the government steps in, fashion shows will start looking more like this.
Is there possibly a solution that restores sanity, without having the government replace the current insanity with a different kind of insanity?
I think the problem was, it was a 1979 Rabbit Diesel.
Thank you. That was the point I was trying to make.
Wow, my girlfriend owned a Rabbit diesel in sunny California, and that car was harder than hell to start at any temperature below 60 degrees f. I know that the glow plugs don't actually ignite the diesel, but it never occurred to me that you could start the engine without them.
You were playing the wrong game. It was a Megabucks number.
> If you don't understand exponential math, you can't become wealthy.
I know a guy who married into wealth. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a test...