Think about what one psi of air pressure means -- that's a pound of stuff, per square inch, like a pint of water in a 1-square-inch by 2-foot column. That's a load of shielding. Denver's air pressure is 2.5 psi lower than sea level.
Maybe all the gas pipes and electrical conduits should be made of this stuff. That's what you want to bend and wiggle, maybe get deformed, but not break.
Nationwide cost and longevity statistics seem pretty compelling to me: Life expectancy, 2008, CIA Factbook Spending, percentage of GDP, 2004, World Bank
Spending per capita, 2004, World Bank
Give it a look. I came into this thinking roughly what you do about costs, viewing it as desirable only because of the moral issue (care for all, thought it would cost more but would be the right thing to do), was shocked to discover that we pay much more than any other country, and die 1-4 years sooner (on average) than about 20 "modern" countries of statistically interesting size, all with some form of universal health care. None of them are going so broke, that they would not be rolling in dough, if they spent as much as we do. And as far as taxes versus paying the insurance company, money is money, they spend less, and they get more. In particular, they get more years of life.
I notice that you seem to have some preconceived notions as well, and even made an inaccurate guess as to how I view this. That's a GREAT way to represent your point of view. And blustering about "no one cares" makes me think you either have no sources, or they are crap. Can you come up with a statistic that is more concrete than life expectancy? We're pretty good at measuring age and agreeing that someone is dead.
Their taxes pay for many things, not just health care. When you look at comparisons of per-capita spending or %-of-GDP spending for health care, (poke around at nationmaster.com), they all spend less. I named my source, can you please name yours? If they're endless, that's a number larger than one.
Majorities are only mandates when they are Republican majorities (ideally, elected from states representing an actual minority of the US population). Don't you know anything about USAian politics?
I thought that there was premiums regulation in there -- in terms of, you must spend X% of premium dollars on health care. I'm having a hard time finding a link to this, however (mostly because the keywords are too generic). Premiums are likely to go up somewhat, because insurance companies will no longer have access to the cost-saving trick of denying care to people who get sick.
My main gripe (repeated from above) is that they left the insurance companies in the picture; if you compare the US to all the companies with cheaper better health care, the big differences (other than how it is rationed/delivered) are:
We are fat and don't get enough exercise (however, at a national level obesity rates are not well-correlated with costs, at least time I checked with a simple regression; but that data is noisy)
Our business executives seem to be unusually well-compensated; I cannot tell if this is the cause or effect of "different incentives", but it's there.
Our conservative party is very conservative.
Our political system is slightly different; they tend parliamentary, and minor parties get more strength (it's common to see 3 parties of some size/influence)
You can have a good, cheaper system with insurance companies in the loop (Germany, Switzerland), but will our insurance companies behave like theirs? Is it possible that ours will find a more receptive ear in our (different, more conservative) political system? Will they end up looking like relatively fat and inefficient public utilities?
I thought David Frum's analysis was pretty interesting; he's conservative, and thinks that the Republicans blew it by digging in (see the Digg analysis not far from here in the comments -- I think he agrees with that). This is roughly a Republican bill, if your Republican is Richard Nixon, or pre-presidential-run Mitt Romney.
Note, especially, his dig at the "news" media and the yelling heads -- essentially, we are in 100% agreement on that point, that people like Limbaugh make money on conflict/controversy, not compromise/consensus, and they are in it for the money.
No more yanking health insurance when you get sic.
No more denying health insurance because you were sick once upon a time.
It's those two things that make the mandatory bit necessary. Note that all universal health care is mandatory; if you satisfy the rules for "must pay", then you pay. There are subsideis for the poor in this bill, probably not big enough (inadequate subsidies for the poor, a Republican idea to discourage poorness), but they are there.
It would have been better to get rid of the health insurance companies altogether (look at the countries that did that, no loss of quality, but it's cheaper), but the Republicans were not that interested in cutting costs (nor were many of the conservative Democrats).
I dunno, I've had a hood come unlatched at highway speeds, dealt with it, had a fuel line come undone (spraying fuel all over the engine compartment as the car decelerated from highway speeds), and encountered (twice) people changing their tire in a 55mph travel lane. My wife had her brakes fail years ago, considered her options (intersection full of cars was one of them) and intentionally drove it into the side of a building to stop. Had a couple of DOZEN cats dash out in front of me once, I (sadly) coped. Stuff happens, you are not supposed to freak. Brake before the curve, steer into the skid, tap your brakes a lot if you don't have ABS. And if you don't like what you see (or can't see), your first choice is the brake pedal; speed usually makes bad stuff worse.
And every year when it snows, I go skidding in a parking lot, and back when ABS was a novelty (still don't have it on my car), when I'd rent a car with ABS, I would go try it out to see what it was like.
How much does it raise the overall automobile accident rate? I care about that much. When I see people chatting on their phones, eating, shaving, and knitting while they drive, car-caused unintended acceleration (as opposed to fallible-human-caused unintended acceleration) is not high on the list of stuff I worry about.
According to Bicycling Science, 3rd edition, page 237, paragraph 2, you are incorrect. The coefficient of friction falls when two surfaces are sliding. This also agrees with my non-scientific experience on bicycles.
Do you have any references that support your emphatic claims?
Me personally? Probably not, but given that tricky targeted attacks have started, I assume a little paranoia never hurt. How about, assuming that the attackers are getting really clever now, one should always strive not to be the weakest link in the (security) chain.
And you also never know what the link might be. Work, no big deal (probably). There's also friends and family. If they're trying to get to someone you know, subverting your machine and sending a targeted email -- but with your credentials -- might be just the ticket.
The initial route of infection for all of the known attacks has been through exploiting flaws in Internet Explorer or Adobe Acrobat using content hosted on external servers.
My box has no IE, no Acrobat. I even use Skim instead of Preview. Flash is turned off by default in the browsers that I do use. Back when I worked for someone who needed to use Windows, we would delete IIS from the system, just to be careful.
On the other hand, if it's an skilled, targeted attack, I would expect a custom exploration of my particular software vulnerabilities.
Theory and practice. The theory of what is "public" has not changed much, but technology changes the practice in huge ways. And what most people care about, is practice, not theory.
There's two "howevers" for this story, however. First, automobiles are large, powerful, pieces of equipment, and carelessly driven, they hurt hundreds of people every day (and kill about a hundred). Not all of those people are their drivers, and not all the drivers, hang around to accept responsibility when they are involved in a crash (spent a little while in the hospital myself because of a H&R decades ago. We have mandatory liability insurance for automobiles (in most, maybe all states) for a reason. So arguably, we need those licenses, out where we can see them.
Second, it doesn't sound to me like the repo men have much need of public records. If I loan you money so you can buy a car, damn-sure, I am going to know the license, VIN, etc, of that car. I don't a government database.
This does not sound like a compelling case (as "poster child") for privacy rights.
Big picture, it's not costing that many lives. Bad drivers are much deadlier, and simply sitting on your butt in the car and not getting enough exercise is deadlier yet.
Don't forget that the guy he beat, turned out to be a sneaky weasel. You take your communication where you find it -- written, audio, video, it's all prepared for, tweaked, filtered, selected, and edited.
No help there; I'm a known malcontent, clearly impedance-mismatched with reality. People already spend too much time in front of the various tubes, it's not like high definition will make that time less wasted.
Slashdot Mirror
In Germany, and other nearby European countries, they also design streets to discourage speed. See Woonerf.
The autobahn, and interstates, are one thing. Urban, semi-urban, and residential streets are something else entirely.
Better double-check your suspicions. http://www.filibeto.org/~aduritz/ecache-sram-data-parity-err.html (Google found it for me.)
Think about what one psi of air pressure means -- that's a pound of stuff, per square inch, like a pint of water in a 1-square-inch by 2-foot column. That's a load of shielding. Denver's air pressure is 2.5 psi lower than sea level.
Right, but then more of them would appear at higher altitudes.
Maybe all the gas pipes and electrical conduits should be made of this stuff. That's what you want to bend and wiggle, maybe get deformed, but not break.
Do note, it was the fire that did it, not the impact of the airplanes.
And come to think of it, how does this nifty new metal behave when it is hot? How does it hold up as far as corrosion goes?
Nationwide cost and longevity statistics seem pretty compelling to me:
Life expectancy, 2008, CIA Factbook
Spending, percentage of GDP, 2004, World Bank
Spending per capita, 2004, World Bank
Give it a look. I came into this thinking roughly what you do about costs, viewing it as desirable only because of the moral issue (care for all, thought it would cost more but would be the right thing to do), was shocked to discover that we pay much more than any other country, and die 1-4 years sooner (on average) than about 20 "modern" countries of statistically interesting size, all with some form of universal health care. None of them are going so broke, that they would not be rolling in dough, if they spent as much as we do. And as far as taxes versus paying the insurance company, money is money, they spend less, and they get more. In particular, they get more years of life.
I notice that you seem to have some preconceived notions as well, and even made an inaccurate guess as to how I view this. That's a GREAT way to represent your point of view. And blustering about "no one cares" makes me think you either have no sources, or they are crap. Can you come up with a statistic that is more concrete than life expectancy? We're pretty good at measuring age and agreeing that someone is dead.
Their taxes pay for many things, not just health care. When you look at comparisons of per-capita spending or %-of-GDP spending for health care, (poke around at nationmaster.com), they all spend less. I named my source, can you please name yours? If they're endless, that's a number larger than one.
But it's not in my backyard, or yours. Even so, I still find it necessary to use radiation shielding in the summer.
Majorities are only mandates when they are Republican majorities (ideally, elected from states representing an actual minority of the US population). Don't you know anything about USAian politics?
My main gripe (repeated from above) is that they left the insurance companies in the picture; if you compare the US to all the companies with cheaper better health care, the big differences (other than how it is rationed/delivered) are:
You can have a good, cheaper system with insurance companies in the loop (Germany, Switzerland), but will our insurance companies behave like theirs? Is it possible that ours will find a more receptive ear in our (different, more conservative) political system? Will they end up looking like relatively fat and inefficient public utilities?
Note, especially, his dig at the "news" media and the yelling heads -- essentially, we are in 100% agreement on that point, that people like Limbaugh make money on conflict/controversy, not compromise/consensus, and they are in it for the money.
It's those two things that make the mandatory bit necessary. Note that all universal health care is mandatory; if you satisfy the rules for "must pay", then you pay. There are subsideis for the poor in this bill, probably not big enough (inadequate subsidies for the poor, a Republican idea to discourage poorness), but they are there. It would have been better to get rid of the health insurance companies altogether (look at the countries that did that, no loss of quality, but it's cheaper), but the Republicans were not that interested in cutting costs (nor were many of the conservative Democrats).
and you have a reference for that, right? Care to share it with the rest of us, or is this just supposed to be self-evident?
I dunno, I've had a hood come unlatched at highway speeds, dealt with it, had a fuel line come undone (spraying fuel all over the engine compartment as the car decelerated from highway speeds), and encountered (twice) people changing their tire in a 55mph travel lane. My wife had her brakes fail years ago, considered her options (intersection full of cars was one of them) and intentionally drove it into the side of a building to stop. Had a couple of DOZEN cats dash out in front of me once, I (sadly) coped. Stuff happens, you are not supposed to freak. Brake before the curve, steer into the skid, tap your brakes a lot if you don't have ABS. And if you don't like what you see (or can't see), your first choice is the brake pedal; speed usually makes bad stuff worse.
And every year when it snows, I go skidding in a parking lot, and back when ABS was a novelty (still don't have it on my car), when I'd rent a car with ABS, I would go try it out to see what it was like.
How much does it raise the overall automobile accident rate? I care about that much. When I see people chatting on their phones, eating, shaving, and knitting while they drive, car-caused unintended acceleration (as opposed to fallible-human-caused unintended acceleration) is not high on the list of stuff I worry about.
But that's not answering the question. How many, and how did it compare? State Farm could have other reasons.
According to Bicycling Science, 3rd edition, page 237, paragraph 2, you are incorrect. The coefficient of friction falls when two surfaces are sliding. This also agrees with my non-scientific experience on bicycles.
Do you have any references that support your emphatic claims?
Me personally? Probably not, but given that tricky targeted attacks have started, I assume a little paranoia never hurt. How about, assuming that the attackers are getting really clever now, one should always strive not to be the weakest link in the (security) chain.
And you also never know what the link might be. Work, no big deal (probably). There's also friends and family. If they're trying to get to someone you know, subverting your machine and sending a targeted email -- but with your credentials -- might be just the ticket.
The initial route of infection for all of the known attacks has been through exploiting flaws in Internet Explorer or Adobe Acrobat using content hosted on external servers.
My box has no IE, no Acrobat. I even use Skim instead of Preview. Flash is turned off by default in the browsers that I do use. Back when I worked for someone who needed to use Windows, we would delete IIS from the system, just to be careful.
On the other hand, if it's an skilled, targeted attack, I would expect a custom exploration of my particular software vulnerabilities.
Theory and practice. The theory of what is "public" has not changed much, but technology changes the practice in huge ways. And what most people care about, is practice, not theory.
There's two "howevers" for this story, however. First, automobiles are large, powerful, pieces of equipment, and carelessly driven, they hurt hundreds of people every day (and kill about a hundred). Not all of those people are their drivers, and not all the drivers, hang around to accept responsibility when they are involved in a crash (spent a little while in the hospital myself because of a H&R decades ago. We have mandatory liability insurance for automobiles (in most, maybe all states) for a reason. So arguably, we need those licenses, out where we can see them.
Second, it doesn't sound to me like the repo men have much need of public records. If I loan you money so you can buy a car, damn-sure, I am going to know the license, VIN, etc, of that car. I don't a government database.
This does not sound like a compelling case (as "poster child") for privacy rights.
The D's are not reliable opponents of **AA craziness.
Big picture, it's not costing that many lives. Bad drivers are much deadlier, and simply sitting on your butt in the car and not getting enough exercise is deadlier yet.
Don't forget that the guy he beat, turned out to be a sneaky weasel. You take your communication where you find it -- written, audio, video, it's all prepared for, tweaked, filtered, selected, and edited.
No help there; I'm a known malcontent, clearly impedance-mismatched with reality. People already spend too much time in front of the various tubes, it's not like high definition will make that time less wasted.
because one way or another, you'll get screwed?