"Our son prefers to sleep on his stomach or side; I know that some research indicates a slight correlation of SIDS with sleeping on the stomach, but there is no evidence of causation. It's the only way he would sleep; what's a parent to do?"
Well, from one parent to another, let me say this... it's not a "SLIGHT CORRELATION", it's a statistical fact that the rate of SIDS has dropped by 50% since the inception of the Back To Sleep campaign.
You can spin it however you want, but an awful lot of babies were smothering themselves on the bedding by sleeping on their stomachs that didn't have to be. The rate among African-American babies remains the highest in the US with SIDS, which coincides with the fact that sleeping on the stomach remains the highest for African-American babies. An interesting coincidence?
There are many reasons why my kids would not go to sleep. Gas in the gastrointestinal tract (simethicone drops), too hot (take the onesie off), too cold (put a warm sleeper on), feeling vulnerable (swaddle him to constrict him), etc. There are always more tricks to try before letting them sleep on their stomach.
According to wikipedia castrated young boys tend to keep their slight build. I don't really know much about castration, since you don't see it very often anymore.
Obesity is linked to increased risk of diabetes, diabetes is associated with lower testosterone levels. The article has it wrong - low testosterone does not cause diabetes, it's the other way around. Hypogonadism is a well-known effect of diabetes.
OR... you could simply shoot the guy with an old-fashioned, cheap 7.62x51mm bullet. I guarantee that if you can hit the dude with a hypodermic dart, you can hit the dude just as well with the high-velocity rifle round. It's not as nerdy, and the results are messier, but the aerodynamics will favor the bullet at any range. Also, I'm not aware of the armor-piercing qualities of a hypodermic dart, but I'm guessing it's a lot less capable of penetrating even a basic flak jacket than the supersonic rifle round.
>>I have never understood why the USA government is so against online gambling.
>Because they need to appeal to their brainless goober Christian fundamentalist redneck trailer trash constituency.
I have to say, there ARE more of them then the Microsoft-hating, copyright-infringing, slovenly geeks/internet tough guys with no social life and living in their parent's basement Slashdot constituency. So it just makes good sense for a politician to pander to them instead.
Plus, their womenfolk are prettier. Not to mention, they have womenfolk. If there was ever a tie, that would be a tiebreaker right there!
>>We CAN'T write and distribute Free Software for most of that stuff because of patents.
>We can't write free software - but we can get multimedia stuff to work, if we pay for the license to do so. You can get your DVDs to work 'out-of-the-box' on Linux - just use Linspire. People who believe in the ideals behind Free Software won't (including me), but for those that are worried about 'losing the desktop', options are available.
If this was the thing holding Linux back from being a massive success, Linspire would be selling millions of copies. That they aren't says something.
I thought Ubuntu gobbled up so much mindshare precisely because it works so well, right out of the box. (That, and the generally helpful boards for those new to Linux.) Ubuntu doesn't hesitate to use non-free (as in speech) code when there isn't a free alternative.
Some of us like to take our automobiles to the track on weekends and have fun with it. In that case, 2L engines don't really cut it.
You know all those BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and whatnot cruising around the Nurburgring at high speed in their car commercials? I can promise you they don't have 2L engines.
Hey, I have an idea - why don't we regulate computer power consumption to a certain low level? How much power do you really need to check you email and browse the Web?
When the Americans arrested child rapists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a child rapist. When they locked up the serial killers,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a serial killer. When they arrested the armed robbers,
I said nothing; after all, I was not an armed robber. When they arrested the spammers,
I celebrated, because I'm a hypocrite about computer crimes.
When they arrested me for breaking into a computer network, there was no longer anyone who could protest.
The problem is that legislators work for only the people that vote for them, not the other way around. Are you the Senator from California, home of Hollywood? Gee, I wonder how you stand on extending copyright terms. The representative from Iowa? Please, don't surprise me on your position on increasing farm subsidies. A Congressman from Texas? What, you voted for tax breaks for energy companies? Shocking.
You may find it absurd that anybody would support the oil companies (THEY MUST HAVE BEEN BRIBED!), but then have you lived in an oil-rich state? Some Representatives have the fortunes of large portions of their constituency revolve around those of the oil companies.
It's called Bringing Home The Bacon. And that's exactly what most of those legislators were elected to do, and they are very, very good at it. Bring money to your district; keep money in your district; punish competitors in other districts/states/nations.
The quid pro quo game, which allows everybody to Bring Home The Bacon, is why you get stupid crap like the broadcast flag inserted everywhere. If Senator Stevens can promise an appropriate number of other Senators that he'll vote for their own Bacon, eventually it'll get passed.
"From TFA: "However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source." This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high."
They're pointing out the obvious elephant in the room, that they're spending $10 billion to scale up a reactor design that is guaranteed NOT to be commercially viable. Maybe they should invest in basic research trying to solve the "energy input > output" for controlled fusion instead?
"If these companies paid a fair wage and provided good working conditions, you would see very few people complaining."
Of course, you never see any of the workers or potential workers in those countries complaining, and there's a reason for that: Nike and other "sweatshop" owners provided far better jobs than were normally available to people in those countries. People FOUGHT to get a spot in one of those factories.
Privileged, overfed and sheltered children of developed nations may forget this, but at one time in their not-to-distant past, their nation used to be filled with jobs just like the ones in the sweatshop. And eventually, wealth grew and working conditions got better. God forbid you should ASK the sweatshop workers whether or not they want the sweatshops there or not. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn of the New York Times went to Asia to do just that. Not only do the people overwhelmingly approve of the sweatshops, but in a longer timeframe, the sweatshops contribute to a general increase in the living standards in the areas they are placed. Which is more than anybody can say for those stupid anti-globalization protests or Bono concerts.
There is no easy shortcut between being a developing nation with a subsistence agricultural economy and an information age economy. If the rise of the Asian economies in the 1980s-1990s proved one thing, it's that each and every one has to go through the same growing pains that the United States and Europe once went through. And sweatshops are a step along the way.
Sure it fights scalping at the gates; now it's just Ticketmaster doing the scalping.
Obviously, Ticketmaster was jealous of some of the profit margins of the professional scalpers. This is like the government fighting the War on Drugs by taking over the dealers' businesses...
Actually, it's apparent you know the proverbial "little bit that can do a lot of harm".
The Lancet article you mention, among others in the 80s, are what changed vaccination guidelines from a single dose of the MMR to adding recommended booster shot later in life. NOTE: Medical professionals, who know what the fuck they're talking about, rather than some random assclownery from an "internet independent medical thinker" made the sane judgement that the immune response to the measles vaccine needed boosting later in life. Not, Hey, let's scrap vaccinations!
By the way, complications from the measles virus include seizures, pneumonia, permanent brain damage, and death. The last complication, just in case you didn't know, is untreatable. The other ones are "merely" unpleasant. Remember that when your own kids get measles because you refused to vaccinate them. (If you ever have kids.)
"Could be 1) diets and living conditions improved. 2) The disease ran its course and declined on its own. 3) People developed natural immunity over time. But given the facts, someone with an open mind could conclude that *maybe* we are giving too much credit to vaccines."
Yes, yes, and FUCK NO. People do not "develop natural immunity over time". They develop immunity through natural exposure to microorganisms and a successful immune response, or through genetic accidents they can be born with varying levels of resistance to certain diseases (cystic fibrosis heterozygotes and cholera/tuberculosis, CCR5 mutations and HIV). You can get lucky through herd immunity and not be exposed because others were smarter and got vaccinated. You don't suddenly wake up one day with a magical resistance to influenza H5N1. It's idiots like you that refuse to shut up that depresses the general level of medical knowledge in the public.
"A lot of these childhood diseases actually help strengthen the immune system. Here is an article from The Lancet, which explains that, while the measles vaccine does stop you from getting a rash...the rash is actually the body killing the virus. By stopping the rash, many vaccinated people get MUCH MORE SERIOUS diseases later on in life because they still have the virus, but because of the vaccine, the body can't get rid of it. The biggest majority of these diseases are a pain, but rarely life threatening. I would much rather have measles than lupus erythematosus, Scheurmann's diseases and chondromalacia, which are all chronic degenerative diseases...which means the doctor says, "it sucks to be you." -- Usurper_ii"
ORRRR... you can get your MMR titers checked, and get a booster if needed and avoid measles and its potentially nasty complications. But that would be too easy.
They didn't call rickets an "infectious disease", they called it an old disease that is making a resurgence.
From the article:
"As if they didn't have their hands full with mumps and whooping cough, doctors are also starting to worry about other blasts from the past. National statistics haven't been collected, but many papers in the medical literature argue that rickets--a vitamin deficiency long thought to be a relic of the 19th century--is increasing among African-American and Hispanic kids, particularly in the North. Doctors blame it on everything from an increase in breast-feeding (breast milk doesn't contain much vitamin D) to the overuse of sunscreen (the body needs ultraviolet light to produce the vitamin).
Here are the equations relevant to immunizing a large populace from a disease.
Re:JW article on Bloodless Surgery
on
Bloodless Surgery
·
· Score: 1
"So regardless of religious views, it seems to me that if you request a bloodless surgery, you get better medical care. Rather than trying to chop you up and sew you back together as quickly as possible to free up the operating room for the next job, everyone involved seems to slow down and take things easy. You become that pain in the ass exception that they need to take extra special care of. Rather than run you through the mill, they have to take you off the assembly line, look at your special needs. I still doubt that I personally would opt for a bloodless surgery, but it really gave me pause to think about the whole idea."
OR... your mother-in-law could have easily hemorrhaged while removing her necrotized spleen no matter how careful the surgeon was and bled out on the table. That your mother-in-law survived is both a testament to the surgeon's skill and a remarkable confluence of the specific circumstances regarding her injury. (You might even take it as a, well, miracle.) What happens if there's no time to get the head of general surgery, and instead the only available surgeon is an surgical resident with little to no experience in bloodless surgery?
Porn aficionados will have to buy BOTH types of players in order to ensure they can enjoy the 31 different angles in HD for the money shot. Or wait a while to let the loser die out in the marketplace.
>Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should be there in the first place (IMHO, what little real benefit either the US or Iraq could ever hope to gain is nowhere near worth the lives of all those that have died), but if some bastard swipes my laptop, and I find out where it is, the last damn thing I'm going to do is buy it back. I don't care if the guy holding it is the one who stole it or not, he's not getting a nickle for something that's mine.
Of course, we're talking about Afghanistan, not Iraq, here. Unlike what the Bush administration would like you to believe, Afghanistan and Iraq are actually separate wars, with separate reasons to fight them.
We're also going to buy it back, instead of just take it, on the off chance that the person fencing the laptop might come into possession of any other sensitive US material that we would like to have the option of buying back. Instead of it ending up in the hands of someone we'd rather not it be in.
Not only that, but many cancers are now curable if caught early enough. Especially cancers that are most common in children and young adults, because typically the tissues and cells that are in overdrive in the developing stages (and most susceptible to becoming cancerous) are less active in adulthood.
"Hitler lost the war by micromanaging his army into the ground."
Hitler actually lost the war because he decided to split his attentions and attack the Soviet Union, who were perfectly willing to sit out the war on the sidelines till then.
If Germany had smashed Fortress Britain instead of being greedy and turning east, the US would not have had a launching point for D-Day (unless you count the idiotic idea of attacking up through Italy from North Africa), and the US would not have had the millions of Soviet cannon fodder to grind down the Wehrmacht.
Western Europe would have been fascist German lackeys for the last half-century, and the European Jews would have vanished without a trace.
Slashdot Mirror
>Censorship is an ethical cancer. There can be no legitimate justification for it.
Yes, because you still have the unlimited right to yell, "FIRE!" in a crowded theater not on fire. Or incite a riot.
Face it, there is NO such thing as unlimited freedoms, and for good reason.
"Our son prefers to sleep on his stomach or side; I know that some research indicates a slight correlation of SIDS with sleeping on the stomach, but there is no evidence of causation. It's the only way he would sleep; what's a parent to do?"
Well, from one parent to another, let me say this... it's not a "SLIGHT CORRELATION", it's a statistical fact that the rate of SIDS has dropped by 50% since the inception of the Back To Sleep campaign.
You can spin it however you want, but an awful lot of babies were smothering themselves on the bedding by sleeping on their stomachs that didn't have to be. The rate among African-American babies remains the highest in the US with SIDS, which coincides with the fact that sleeping on the stomach remains the highest for African-American babies. An interesting coincidence?
There are many reasons why my kids would not go to sleep. Gas in the gastrointestinal tract (simethicone drops), too hot (take the onesie off), too cold (put a warm sleeper on), feeling vulnerable (swaddle him to constrict him), etc. There are always more tricks to try before letting them sleep on their stomach.
According to wikipedia castrated young boys tend to keep their slight build. I don't really know much about castration, since you don't see it very often anymore.
Obesity is linked to increased risk of diabetes, diabetes is associated with lower testosterone levels. The article has it wrong - low testosterone does not cause diabetes, it's the other way around. Hypogonadism is a well-known effect of diabetes.
There's your link.
Is it like the swirl?
Any channel spammer from the Starcraft/Diablo II days could have told you about the potential to reach millions of customers...
OR... you could simply shoot the guy with an old-fashioned, cheap 7.62x51mm bullet. I guarantee that if you can hit the dude with a hypodermic dart, you can hit the dude just as well with the high-velocity rifle round. It's not as nerdy, and the results are messier, but the aerodynamics will favor the bullet at any range. Also, I'm not aware of the armor-piercing qualities of a hypodermic dart, but I'm guessing it's a lot less capable of penetrating even a basic flak jacket than the supersonic rifle round.
>>I have never understood why the USA government is so against online gambling.
>Because they need to appeal to their brainless goober Christian fundamentalist redneck trailer trash constituency.
I have to say, there ARE more of them then the Microsoft-hating, copyright-infringing, slovenly geeks/internet tough guys with no social life and living in their parent's basement Slashdot constituency. So it just makes good sense for a politician to pander to them instead.
Plus, their womenfolk are prettier. Not to mention, they have womenfolk. If there was ever a tie, that would be a tiebreaker right there!
>>We CAN'T write and distribute Free Software for most of that stuff because of patents.
>We can't write free software - but we can get multimedia stuff to work, if we pay for the license to do so. You can get your DVDs to work 'out-of-the-box' on Linux - just use Linspire. People who believe in the ideals behind Free Software won't (including me), but for those that are worried about 'losing the desktop', options are available.
If this was the thing holding Linux back from being a massive success, Linspire would be selling millions of copies. That they aren't says something.
I thought Ubuntu gobbled up so much mindshare precisely because it works so well, right out of the box. (That, and the generally helpful boards for those new to Linux.) Ubuntu doesn't hesitate to use non-free (as in speech) code when there isn't a free alternative.
Some of us like to take our automobiles to the track on weekends and have fun with it. In that case, 2L engines don't really cut it.
You know all those BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and whatnot cruising around the Nurburgring at high speed in their car commercials? I can promise you they don't have 2L engines.
Hey, I have an idea - why don't we regulate computer power consumption to a certain low level? How much power do you really need to check you email and browse the Web?
When the Americans arrested child rapists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a child rapist.
When they locked up the serial killers,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a serial killer.
When they arrested the armed robbers,
I said nothing; after all, I was not an armed robber.
When they arrested the spammers,
I celebrated, because I'm a hypocrite about computer crimes.
When they arrested me for breaking into a computer network, there was no longer anyone who could protest.
- Stickerboy
The problem is that legislators work for only the people that vote for them, not the other way around. Are you the Senator from California, home of Hollywood? Gee, I wonder how you stand on extending copyright terms. The representative from Iowa? Please, don't surprise me on your position on increasing farm subsidies. A Congressman from Texas? What, you voted for tax breaks for energy companies? Shocking.
You may find it absurd that anybody would support the oil companies (THEY MUST HAVE BEEN BRIBED!), but then have you lived in an oil-rich state? Some Representatives have the fortunes of large portions of their constituency revolve around those of the oil companies.
It's called Bringing Home The Bacon. And that's exactly what most of those legislators were elected to do, and they are very, very good at it. Bring money to your district; keep money in your district; punish competitors in other districts/states/nations.
The quid pro quo game, which allows everybody to Bring Home The Bacon, is why you get stupid crap like the broadcast flag inserted everywhere. If Senator Stevens can promise an appropriate number of other Senators that he'll vote for their own Bacon, eventually it'll get passed.
"From TFA:
"However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source."
This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high."
They're pointing out the obvious elephant in the room, that they're spending $10 billion to scale up a reactor design that is guaranteed NOT to be commercially viable. Maybe they should invest in basic research trying to solve the "energy input > output" for controlled fusion instead?
"Instead of $300B spent in Iraq we should have spent it here on fusion reactor research!!!
Thats what happens when politicians are un-educated rubes."
That's really funny coming from a poster that thinks progress in fusion research is directly proportional to how much money is thrown at it.
I bet you also subscribe to the "if only we spent the space program money on solving poverty/homelessness/starving people in Africa!" line of thought.
"If these companies paid a fair wage and provided good working conditions, you would see very few people complaining."
Of course, you never see any of the workers or potential workers in those countries complaining, and there's a reason for that: Nike and other "sweatshop" owners provided far better jobs than were normally available to people in those countries. People FOUGHT to get a spot in one of those factories.
Privileged, overfed and sheltered children of developed nations may forget this, but at one time in their not-to-distant past, their nation used to be filled with jobs just like the ones in the sweatshop. And eventually, wealth grew and working conditions got better. God forbid you should ASK the sweatshop workers whether or not they want the sweatshops there or not. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn of the New York Times went to Asia to do just that. Not only do the people overwhelmingly approve of the sweatshops, but in a longer timeframe, the sweatshops contribute to a general increase in the living standards in the areas they are placed. Which is more than anybody can say for those stupid anti-globalization protests or Bono concerts.
There is no easy shortcut between being a developing nation with a subsistence agricultural economy and an information age economy. If the rise of the Asian economies in the 1980s-1990s proved one thing, it's that each and every one has to go through the same growing pains that the United States and Europe once went through. And sweatshops are a step along the way.
Sure it fights scalping at the gates; now it's just Ticketmaster doing the scalping.
Obviously, Ticketmaster was jealous of some of the profit margins of the professional scalpers. This is like the government fighting the War on Drugs by taking over the dealers' businesses...
The Lancet article you mention, among others in the 80s, are what changed vaccination guidelines from a single dose of the MMR to adding recommended booster shot later in life. NOTE: Medical professionals, who know what the fuck they're talking about, rather than some random assclownery from an "internet independent medical thinker" made the sane judgement that the immune response to the measles vaccine needed boosting later in life. Not, Hey, let's scrap vaccinations!
By the way, complications from the measles virus include seizures, pneumonia, permanent brain damage, and death. The last complication, just in case you didn't know, is untreatable. The other ones are "merely" unpleasant. Remember that when your own kids get measles because you refused to vaccinate them. (If you ever have kids.)
"Could be 1) diets and living conditions improved. 2) The disease ran its course and declined on its own. 3) People developed natural immunity over time. But given the facts, someone with an open mind could conclude that *maybe* we are giving too much credit to vaccines."
Yes, yes, and FUCK NO. People do not "develop natural immunity over time". They develop immunity through natural exposure to microorganisms and a successful immune response, or through genetic accidents they can be born with varying levels of resistance to certain diseases (cystic fibrosis heterozygotes and cholera/tuberculosis, CCR5 mutations and HIV). You can get lucky through herd immunity and not be exposed because others were smarter and got vaccinated. You don't suddenly wake up one day with a magical resistance to influenza H5N1. It's idiots like you that refuse to shut up that depresses the general level of medical knowledge in the public.
"A lot of these childhood diseases actually help strengthen the immune system. Here is an article from The Lancet, which explains that, while the measles vaccine does stop you from getting a rash...the rash is actually the body killing the virus. By stopping the rash, many vaccinated people get MUCH MORE SERIOUS diseases later on in life because they still have the virus, but because of the vaccine, the body can't get rid of it. The biggest majority of these diseases are a pain, but rarely life threatening. I would much rather have measles than lupus erythematosus, Scheurmann's diseases and chondromalacia, which are all chronic degenerative diseases...which means the doctor says, "it sucks to be you." -- Usurper_ii"
ORRRR... you can get your MMR titers checked, and get a booster if needed and avoid measles and its potentially nasty complications. But that would be too easy.
They didn't call rickets an "infectious disease", they called it an old disease that is making a resurgence.
From the article:
"As if they didn't have their hands full with mumps and whooping cough, doctors are also starting to worry about other blasts from the past. National statistics haven't been collected, but many papers in the medical literature argue that rickets--a vitamin deficiency long thought to be a relic of the 19th century--is increasing among African-American and Hispanic kids, particularly in the North. Doctors blame it on everything from an increase in breast-feeding (breast milk doesn't contain much vitamin D) to the overuse of sunscreen (the body needs ultraviolet light to produce the vitamin).
It's called herd immunity.
Here are the equations relevant to immunizing a large populace from a disease.
"So regardless of religious views, it seems to me that if you request a bloodless surgery, you get better medical care. Rather than trying to chop you up and sew you back together as quickly as possible to free up the operating room for the next job, everyone involved seems to slow down and take things easy. You become that pain in the ass exception that they need to take extra special care of. Rather than run you through the mill, they have to take you off the assembly line, look at your special needs. I still doubt that I personally would opt for a bloodless surgery, but it really gave me pause to think about the whole idea."
OR... your mother-in-law could have easily hemorrhaged while removing her necrotized spleen no matter how careful the surgeon was and bled out on the table. That your mother-in-law survived is both a testament to the surgeon's skill and a remarkable confluence of the specific circumstances regarding her injury. (You might even take it as a, well, miracle.) What happens if there's no time to get the head of general surgery, and instead the only available surgeon is an surgical resident with little to no experience in bloodless surgery?
Porn aficionados will have to buy BOTH types of players in order to ensure they can enjoy the 31 different angles in HD for the money shot. Or wait a while to let the loser die out in the marketplace.
>Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should be there in the first place (IMHO, what little real benefit either the US or Iraq could ever hope to gain is nowhere near worth the lives of all those that have died), but if some bastard swipes my laptop, and I find out where it is, the last damn thing I'm going to do is buy it back. I don't care if the guy holding it is the one who stole it or not, he's not getting a nickle for something that's mine.
Of course, we're talking about Afghanistan, not Iraq, here. Unlike what the Bush administration would like you to believe, Afghanistan and Iraq are actually separate wars, with separate reasons to fight them.
We're also going to buy it back, instead of just take it, on the off chance that the person fencing the laptop might come into possession of any other sensitive US material that we would like to have the option of buying back. Instead of it ending up in the hands of someone we'd rather not it be in.
Not only that, but many cancers are now curable if caught early enough. Especially cancers that are most common in children and young adults, because typically the tissues and cells that are in overdrive in the developing stages (and most susceptible to becoming cancerous) are less active in adulthood.
Good examples of cancers with excellent cure rates are Wilm's tumor, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), neuroblastoma,retinoblastoma, and Hodgkin's lymphoma.
And this is just breaking the tip of the iceberg. Most of that NIH money actually goes to good use, unlike a lot of government spending.
Wow. Great way to come back and post the research papers you're pulling the "hurricanes have 10 times more energy due to global warming" from...
"Hitler lost the war by micromanaging his army into the ground."
Hitler actually lost the war because he decided to split his attentions and attack the Soviet Union, who were perfectly willing to sit out the war on the sidelines till then.
If Germany had smashed Fortress Britain instead of being greedy and turning east, the US would not have had a launching point for D-Day (unless you count the idiotic idea of attacking up through Italy from North Africa), and the US would not have had the millions of Soviet cannon fodder to grind down the Wehrmacht.
Western Europe would have been fascist German lackeys for the last half-century, and the European Jews would have vanished without a trace.