Maybe I'm nit-picking, but gp said "people in their 40's" and you are redefining that to people in their 50's. Maybe you just identified with the statement, I dunno, but people in their 40's were born in the decade after the one to which you refer.
Nor do I. The iPhone settings has a search feature. Doing this finds it, which is under settings/general -- but it is still not there. I'm not sure if it is hidden due to a snafu or malicious intent...
You took the quote out of context. As you have demonstrated substantial ability in reading and writing I suspect that you simply keyed in on some particular phrasing and skimmed/did not really read the rest. In other words, it got under your skin. Relax. While you may or may not agree with each other, you are arguing with a point that wasn't being made.
Conventional wisdom used as an excuse for the practice. Citation needed for actual proof. And don't even try to use statistics like default rates -- especially when talking about credit cards where a default on $3000 line of credit after paying $4000 against it is a *profit* and only a "loss" because they had hoped to extract another $4000 in payments against the original $3000 expense.
Actually, having everyone with maxed credit lines is pretty much the optimal situation. Its hard to come up with as good of an investment as an 18% APR.
so with a credit limit of $5000 how exactly am I supposed to spend $7000 on a single purchase? It isn't very hard to spend that much money, you don't have to get exactly creative. Planning a vacation that costs $10,000 becomes a lot more difficult.
I actually got an offer for one of those early Amex cards. I don't know this for a fact, but I believe they stopped their "revolving credit" business because it was illegal. How so?
They claimed to not be a credit card so they felt that usury laws did not apply. Specifically, their terms did not specify an APR -- they claimed to not be making a loan. Instead, they charged 4% of the balance as a "fee". 4% monthly is a 48% APR -- well beyond usury (when I was in Georgia, usury was around 30% -- I knew someone who bought a car where the overzealous salesman miscalculated and accidentally set the purchase price too low for the payments so that it was usurious and post-sale the payment had to be reduced).
IANAL, but if it looks like duck... no citation, but I believe there was either legal action or someone at Amex got nervous and they stopped the pretense of not being a lender -- and their "fees" or APR had to be reduced to non-usurious levels.
Well said. I covered the difference in value between a "deadbeat" customer and an "optimized" customer without considering this which increases the disparity even further (though the effect isn't as great, if you include opportunity cost the "deadbeat" customer would represent a net loss).
Wrong. Merchants pay the issuer for the privilege of taking the transaction. Merchants take full liability for fraud. And the courts have sided with the banks against Target so that merchants must now pay the banks *on top of* eating the fraud.
The only risk for the issuer is someone maxing out a brand new line of credit and never paying a penny against it. But doing so will prevent the person from getting an unsecured line of credit (and it will have usurious interest despite being secured and probably an annual fee). Once you've paid on a card (without paying it off) for a year or so you become pure profit -- even if you renege on the debt they have already made more than your credit limit exposes them to risk of loss.
The "deadbeats" who pay the balance in full each month are only a "loss" against the *potential* profit they would have made if you were less fiscally responsible. It takes at least ten deadbeats to reach the profit level of an "optimized" customer: if they could optimize all of their customers they would have ten times the profits. That is *not* the same as causing them a *real* loss.
A point of clarification: the credit card *never* loses money on a cardholder. Merchants have to pay the issuer for every transaction. This more than covers the issuers fixed costs.
However, consider two customers who buy exactly the same amount each month. Customer A earns the card issuer $5 in merchant processing fees, but because he pays off the amount at the end of the month there is no interest. Over the course of a year the issuer will only make $60.
Customer B also earns the issuer $5 in merchant processing fees, but only makes the minimum payment of $300 so there is an interest gain of $45. With the same credit limit and both maxing it out, customer B only manages an additional $1/month in merchant processing fees for the rest of the year, but the total take is over $556.
If customer A only earns you $60 and customer B earns you $556 -- which customer do you prefer?
Now comes the fun part. If you raise customer A's limit you will get only a marginal profit increase if they fully utilize it. If you double it from a $3000 limit to $6000 you have increased volume you only get another $60. But if you double customer B's limit then you get another $556.
And the funny thing is, people who max their card will max it out again soon after a limit increase. *And* they will usually keep making the (new, higher) monthly payments. Of course, there *is* a limit. Which is why an issuer won't double the limit, they use smaller increases instead. But getting near that limit is really good for the issuer. Not just from maximizing the minimum payment, but from fees.
Eventually, customer B will have a bad month and not make the minimum payment. Maybe they'll forget the payment, maybe a medical expense, maybe their car broke down. Whatever it was, it will be an unavoidable expense. So instead of only making $45 from accrued interest, they get another $50 from a late payment. Oh, but that bumped the card over the limit, which is another $50 fee.
For the issuer, this is a wonderful situation because they get all of the benefits of a higher monthly payment without any of the risk associated with a higher balance. If customer B gets caught up at some point then its time to increase their limit (if you haven't already speculatively done so) in order to make it easier for them to miss a payment.
Yes, numbers provided are not exact. But they are in the ball park. I used 18% APR, but I've seen cards with over 24%. I've seen low interest cards though I've never had one myself: I pay the balance off each month so I'm "high risk" for them ever seeing a profit and consequently only get offers for high interest/annual fee cards. But things will change if ever have trouble making payments....
An apologist for the banks. Well, we get all types here on slashdot.
It is well known that banks do not like loaning to people without debt. As alluded to by above, their formulas for debt load are carefully calculated. They don't want you to get so far into debt that you will go bankrupt, but they *do* want you farther in debt than you can ever pay off.
I was surprised when I took out a signature loan many years ago. They wanted to know income, expenses, etc., and -- not being a slouch with math and consequences -- I realized that their proposed debt load was literally more than I could possibly pay. Not by a *lot*, no, but enough to never catch up on.
Credit cards are notorious for this as well. If your card is maxed and you only make minimum payments what do they do? Increase the limit. Pay off the balance in full each month? Don't expect to ever see a credit line increase (though they might give you a small one if you ask). This is so well known that, unless you are young and naive, there's no excuse for not knowing it.
When my wife bought a house the loan manager approved it despite the mortgage payment + expenses (food, insurance, gas, etc.) being at least 10% greater than her income. Of course the paperwork didn't show it that way, but it was easy enough to demonstrate it. With a house, essentially all money paid in for the first few years is against interest, not principal. If you end up defaulting because you can't keep up with the payments the bank wins because they get the property *and* made a legally defensible profit (because of the way mortgage payments are scheduled this is disproportionate to the apparent interest -- a quick check showed a 4% interest mortgage producing 7.2% payments in the first year). There is a lot of incentive to oversell people when you have collateral worth more than the value of the loan.
Yeah... but we use language in a cultural context. And the *connotations* of saying something is "addictive" are more than that. Would you actually call someone who habitually used Afrin an addict?
(If you answer "yes" be sure it isn't from pedantism, but what your actual usage would be. Further note that this is out of joint with the vast majority of speakers of English and would result in misunderstandings, some of them at your expense.)
Nasonex is not the answer -- its long term use is harmful. And, speaking anecdotally, it is about as useful as regular use of saline solution. Or not.
Regrettably I have quite a bit of experience with congestion. At one time or another I have been on a wide variety of medications. Nasonex, flonase, patonase, etc. In my experience none of them (with the exception of Afrin) have any meaningful effect. Allegra D was the one oral medication that provided *some* relief, but I eventually fell victim to one of its side effects and can no longer take it. I had some for quite a while after I switched to another and even tried switching back. It takes a few days and the reaction starts in.
Now, if the pharmaceuticals could make a drug as good as Afrin without the consequences? That would be something. Heck, I'd settle for half or a quarter of Afrin's effectiveness.
to be clear, I'm not saying it should be banned. I *am* saying that it is ridiculous for Afrin to be unregulated given how harmful it is compared to drugs that *are* regulated.
I (unfortunately) have to use Afrin from time to time. I would be very upset if it was banned. Requiring a prescription would be annoying, but not that much of an issue (I already have to see the doctor regularly to renew other prescriptions for substances that are far less harmful).
ah, this is the post I should've replied to rather than the insightful one above... Before you dig yourself into too deep of a hole you might want to contemplate the basis for your views.
Just one example: I know the review the GP was asking about, and your reply was "I'm not going to bother citing it again" -- when all of us know the real reason you won't post a citation is because one doesn't exist. Instead you'll rely on innuendo and hope that some passing reader will be fooled into thinking it *does* exist, not bother digging further and take up your cause. Your are slowly but surely driving yourself into extremist isolation.
When I first saw Sarkeesian's name I wondered what all the sound and fury was about. So I started digging. Now, while there are (or at least were, I haven't checked in a while) some well meaning types in the anti-Sarkeesian, anti-Quinn crowd there were a lot of dubious claims that in the end were lies and misrepresentation.
Chronologically speaking, when those lies failed to convince the world of the evils of Quinn, Sarkeesian, and what they represented to these people they started doing ad hominem -- particularly against Sarkeesian (it seems that mostly the extremists want people to view Quinn as a slut and the attacks seem to stop there).
It is never too late. All you have to do is stop posting drivel and examine the basis for your beliefs. Such critical examination can be difficult, true. But the sooner you move away from the extremists towards society as a whole the easier it will be.
The comments here amply demonstrate why there is a problem. There is reasoned discourse, but plenty of name calling (yours falls into the former, of course).
The discerning reader will note that the reasoned discourse types are not calling gamers "basement dwellers", nor are they saying they agree with Sarkeesian's message. What they *do* insist on is accuracy. So citing one of the lies about Quinn or Sarkeesian does nothing to convince them of the evil feminist conspiracy.
The trolls justify their own existence by driving those in the middle ground to identifying with the so-called social justice warriors. Making it divisive, insisting on there being no middle ground, doesn't help you when your cause is largely off kilter compared to society as a whole.
What I'm trying to say is that any group is comprised of a spectrum of people. When extremists rant, rave and generally take over the perception of a group they drive the non-extremists away. Which generally encourages their extremism, which drives even more away. In the end you are left with foaming-at-the-mouth types who are too far removed from society to interact in useful ways.
My recommendation for people is this: take a good look at your views and the basis for them. Distance yourself from them and cool your passions. See if there is some middle ground you can find in common with others. By doing so you keep yourself relevant and can use an opinion that carries weight to try and sway things. There's a reason extremists resort to violence, they're refusal to cooperate has removed all other alternatives. Read the unibomber's manifesto for a clear statement of this. Do not become the unibomber.
Factually misrepresented, you mean. Showing the blip of footage from the drone's *return* trip is deceitful. It is done to misrepresent that it was the first and only trip made by the drone.
Let me help you out here:
Drone flies in low and hovers getting some nice pictures of the sun bathing teenage girl. Drone departs, but the irritated father goes into the house to get his shotgun in case the drone returns. When it does, he shoots it without waiting for it to get low and slow. Drone boy posts the footage excerpt from the final trip and says, "oh no, this red neck is super fast -- in the seconds of this video he retrieved and loaded a shotgun, then used it to shoot down my innocent drone hundreds of feet into the air".
And idiots like you believe him that that is all there is to the story...
c'mon. He clearly and in a very upfront manner restricted his post to a discussion as to the relationship between the two clauses and how the amendment should be understood. And, to his credit, did so in a very effective manner.
He did not say that he thought the second amendment, as written, was good or should be abided by. In fact, he said he supported regulation, "perhaps even beyond what the 2nd amendment implies."
to add to that, in your case you *could* "just deal with it". Say someone is going to die from a hyperactive thyroid and so it is removed. After that they *must* take some sort of thyroid medication (say, thyroxin) in order to live. But they still have to go see a doctor (at least once a year, if not twice) in order to keep their prescription filled.
Is there any chance that they've magically grown a new thyroid? Of course not. But the government is afraid of what you might do with a prescription medication. I suspect the answer has nothing to do with health, but with control and politics (see my post above about Afrin being over the counter).
and to be clear, the reason "she isn't keen to give prescriptions without checkups" is because, as the source for the prescription, she is under at least as much scrutiny as the purchasers. The reason for this is obvious on reflection: the doctor (and the pharmacist) are gatekeepers who grant access to the drug. A good way for a doctor to get in serious trouble is to hand out too many narcotic prescriptions. In an effort to protect themselves, some doctors will "turn in" patients they think might be buying too much of a drug. Not that they think the patient is a dealer or supplying, but because they are far better off if *they* turn the patient in before an investigation starts. And it doesn't matter if the drug purchasing is warranted and approved, too much will get some unfriendly attention.
Afrin is pure, unadulterated evil. It is, far and away, the best decongestant on the market, bar none. It is also over the counter.
It is wrong, IMO, to describe it as addictive due to the connotations of that word. There are no cravings that result from Afrin use. No one is going to feel a compulsion that they "just gotta have it". No junkie related crime. What *does* happen is that your body starts to rely on Afrin to keep the airways clear. Without it, you are stopped up and cannot breath. Even worse, after prolonged use the efficacy of Afrin is decreased. So eventually you will be using it three shots each nostril several times a day and still not be able to breathe.
Thankfully, you *can* wean yourself off of Afrin. It is miserable, however, and not likely something you want to go through. The sooner you start the better. Although I've never had the misfortune to abuse Afrin like that I've known multiple people who have. At the beginning they talk about how wonderful it is (and it doesn't hurt that it is "just over the counter" so "it must be safe"), then they have to recover from it. I have significant long term breathing issues and at least twice a year I have to use Afrin for a few days in a row. Even at that I eventually noticed a diminishment of effect.
The fact that something so debilitating, so damaging to the user's health, is sold over the counter while other less harmful drugs are strictly regulated says a lot about the true functioning of the FDA.
there is no "mouse protection rule". There is an often cited "rule" that anything after steamboat willie is in eternal copyright protection, thanks to Disney. The reality is much more nuanced and the one thing that can be said about the various copyright reforms is that the system was very complex and simplifying it was a good thing. Simplifying it by return to the original rules for terms would have been nice, but the public wasn't the one paying for the reforms.
One (of the many) complexities is that you used to have to file extensions. Since doing so cost money, many unprofitable properties were allowed to lapse into the public domain. Consequently, even when dealing with simple copyright (non-serialized written work appearing in novels whose printing dates are well documented) you can run into oddities like a novel by an author written in the fifties being in the public domain while another written in the twenties is still copyright protected.
And it gets worse. The movie Heavy Metal was a compilation and as such required permission from a wide variety of copyright holders, both graphic and sound artists. This resulted in the inability to legally sell the movie for some time.
As another example, serialized works can be problematic in tracking down their dates of publication. Documentation of assignment of copyright is often problematic. Different media has different rules. Until the DMCA "statements of fact" (such as the plans for a ship) could not be copyrighted so a work might be copyrighted (for the "arrangement of facts"), but the material contained therein be in the public domain (recipe books fall into this category). Where something was "set into tangible form" made a difference as well -- one of the reforms was aligning this so that (for example) an author's work that is copyrighted in the United States will also be copyrighted in Australia.
This particular twist makes things difficult for Project Gutenberg where something written in 1935 might be legal to distribute in New Zealand, but not in the United States. Such balkanization was somewhat tolerable in the 20's and 30's when it required significant resources to achieve global distribution. Obviously these "loopholes" are more problematic today.
okay, you've convinced me to not watch the Martian. If the defense of a movie that is supposed to be scientifically accurate, and isn't, has to resort to comparisons involving Plan 9 then it just isn't worth watching.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm nit-picking, but gp said "people in their 40's" and you are redefining that to people in their 50's. Maybe you just identified with the statement, I dunno, but people in their 40's were born in the decade after the one to which you refer.
Nor do I. The iPhone settings has a search feature. Doing this finds it, which is under settings/general -- but it is still not there. I'm not sure if it is hidden due to a snafu or malicious intent...
You took the quote out of context. As you have demonstrated substantial ability in reading and writing I suspect that you simply keyed in on some particular phrasing and skimmed/did not really read the rest. In other words, it got under your skin. Relax. While you may or may not agree with each other, you are arguing with a point that wasn't being made.
The credit system "seems to work" for the lenders. Not so much for the borrowers. But don't take my word for it, look at their profits.
Conventional wisdom used as an excuse for the practice. Citation needed for actual proof. And don't even try to use statistics like default rates -- especially when talking about credit cards where a default on $3000 line of credit after paying $4000 against it is a *profit* and only a "loss" because they had hoped to extract another $4000 in payments against the original $3000 expense.
Actually, having everyone with maxed credit lines is pretty much the optimal situation. Its hard to come up with as good of an investment as an 18% APR.
so with a credit limit of $5000 how exactly am I supposed to spend $7000 on a single purchase? It isn't very hard to spend that much money, you don't have to get exactly creative. Planning a vacation that costs $10,000 becomes a lot more difficult.
I actually got an offer for one of those early Amex cards. I don't know this for a fact, but I believe they stopped their "revolving credit" business because it was illegal. How so?
They claimed to not be a credit card so they felt that usury laws did not apply. Specifically, their terms did not specify an APR -- they claimed to not be making a loan. Instead, they charged 4% of the balance as a "fee". 4% monthly is a 48% APR -- well beyond usury (when I was in Georgia, usury was around 30% -- I knew someone who bought a car where the overzealous salesman miscalculated and accidentally set the purchase price too low for the payments so that it was usurious and post-sale the payment had to be reduced).
IANAL, but if it looks like duck... no citation, but I believe there was either legal action or someone at Amex got nervous and they stopped the pretense of not being a lender -- and their "fees" or APR had to be reduced to non-usurious levels.
Well said. I covered the difference in value between a "deadbeat" customer and an "optimized" customer without considering this which increases the disparity even further (though the effect isn't as great, if you include opportunity cost the "deadbeat" customer would represent a net loss).
Wrong. Merchants pay the issuer for the privilege of taking the transaction. Merchants take full liability for fraud. And the courts have sided with the banks against Target so that merchants must now pay the banks *on top of* eating the fraud.
The only risk for the issuer is someone maxing out a brand new line of credit and never paying a penny against it. But doing so will prevent the person from getting an unsecured line of credit (and it will have usurious interest despite being secured and probably an annual fee). Once you've paid on a card (without paying it off) for a year or so you become pure profit -- even if you renege on the debt they have already made more than your credit limit exposes them to risk of loss.
The "deadbeats" who pay the balance in full each month are only a "loss" against the *potential* profit they would have made if you were less fiscally responsible. It takes at least ten deadbeats to reach the profit level of an "optimized" customer: if they could optimize all of their customers they would have ten times the profits. That is *not* the same as causing them a *real* loss.
A point of clarification: the credit card *never* loses money on a cardholder. Merchants have to pay the issuer for every transaction. This more than covers the issuers fixed costs.
However, consider two customers who buy exactly the same amount each month. Customer A earns the card issuer $5 in merchant processing fees, but because he pays off the amount at the end of the month there is no interest. Over the course of a year the issuer will only make $60.
Customer B also earns the issuer $5 in merchant processing fees, but only makes the minimum payment of $300 so there is an interest gain of $45. With the same credit limit and both maxing it out, customer B only manages an additional $1/month in merchant processing fees for the rest of the year, but the total take is over $556.
If customer A only earns you $60 and customer B earns you $556 -- which customer do you prefer?
Now comes the fun part. If you raise customer A's limit you will get only a marginal profit increase if they fully utilize it. If you double it from a $3000 limit to $6000 you have increased volume you only get another $60. But if you double customer B's limit then you get another $556.
And the funny thing is, people who max their card will max it out again soon after a limit increase. *And* they will usually keep making the (new, higher) monthly payments. Of course, there *is* a limit. Which is why an issuer won't double the limit, they use smaller increases instead. But getting near that limit is really good for the issuer. Not just from maximizing the minimum payment, but from fees.
Eventually, customer B will have a bad month and not make the minimum payment. Maybe they'll forget the payment, maybe a medical expense, maybe their car broke down. Whatever it was, it will be an unavoidable expense. So instead of only making $45 from accrued interest, they get another $50 from a late payment. Oh, but that bumped the card over the limit, which is another $50 fee.
For the issuer, this is a wonderful situation because they get all of the benefits of a higher monthly payment without any of the risk associated with a higher balance. If customer B gets caught up at some point then its time to increase their limit (if you haven't already speculatively done so) in order to make it easier for them to miss a payment.
Yes, numbers provided are not exact. But they are in the ball park. I used 18% APR, but I've seen cards with over 24%. I've seen low interest cards though I've never had one myself: I pay the balance off each month so I'm "high risk" for them ever seeing a profit and consequently only get offers for high interest/annual fee cards. But things will change if ever have trouble making payments....
An apologist for the banks. Well, we get all types here on slashdot.
It is well known that banks do not like loaning to people without debt. As alluded to by above, their formulas for debt load are carefully calculated. They don't want you to get so far into debt that you will go bankrupt, but they *do* want you farther in debt than you can ever pay off.
I was surprised when I took out a signature loan many years ago. They wanted to know income, expenses, etc., and -- not being a slouch with math and consequences -- I realized that their proposed debt load was literally more than I could possibly pay. Not by a *lot*, no, but enough to never catch up on.
Credit cards are notorious for this as well. If your card is maxed and you only make minimum payments what do they do? Increase the limit. Pay off the balance in full each month? Don't expect to ever see a credit line increase (though they might give you a small one if you ask). This is so well known that, unless you are young and naive, there's no excuse for not knowing it.
When my wife bought a house the loan manager approved it despite the mortgage payment + expenses (food, insurance, gas, etc.) being at least 10% greater than her income. Of course the paperwork didn't show it that way, but it was easy enough to demonstrate it. With a house, essentially all money paid in for the first few years is against interest, not principal. If you end up defaulting because you can't keep up with the payments the bank wins because they get the property *and* made a legally defensible profit (because of the way mortgage payments are scheduled this is disproportionate to the apparent interest -- a quick check showed a 4% interest mortgage producing 7.2% payments in the first year). There is a lot of incentive to oversell people when you have collateral worth more than the value of the loan.
Yeah... but we use language in a cultural context. And the *connotations* of saying something is "addictive" are more than that. Would you actually call someone who habitually used Afrin an addict?
(If you answer "yes" be sure it isn't from pedantism, but what your actual usage would be. Further note that this is out of joint with the vast majority of speakers of English and would result in misunderstandings, some of them at your expense.)
Nasonex is not the answer -- its long term use is harmful. And, speaking anecdotally, it is about as useful as regular use of saline solution. Or not.
Regrettably I have quite a bit of experience with congestion. At one time or another I have been on a wide variety of medications. Nasonex, flonase, patonase, etc. In my experience none of them (with the exception of Afrin) have any meaningful effect. Allegra D was the one oral medication that provided *some* relief, but I eventually fell victim to one of its side effects and can no longer take it. I had some for quite a while after I switched to another and even tried switching back. It takes a few days and the reaction starts in.
Now, if the pharmaceuticals could make a drug as good as Afrin without the consequences? That would be something. Heck, I'd settle for half or a quarter of Afrin's effectiveness.
to be clear, I'm not saying it should be banned. I *am* saying that it is ridiculous for Afrin to be unregulated given how harmful it is compared to drugs that *are* regulated.
I (unfortunately) have to use Afrin from time to time. I would be very upset if it was banned. Requiring a prescription would be annoying, but not that much of an issue (I already have to see the doctor regularly to renew other prescriptions for substances that are far less harmful).
but have you stopped beating your wife yet?
ah, this is the post I should've replied to rather than the insightful one above... Before you dig yourself into too deep of a hole you might want to contemplate the basis for your views.
Just one example: I know the review the GP was asking about, and your reply was "I'm not going to bother citing it again" -- when all of us know the real reason you won't post a citation is because one doesn't exist. Instead you'll rely on innuendo and hope that some passing reader will be fooled into thinking it *does* exist, not bother digging further and take up your cause. Your are slowly but surely driving yourself into extremist isolation.
When I first saw Sarkeesian's name I wondered what all the sound and fury was about. So I started digging. Now, while there are (or at least were, I haven't checked in a while) some well meaning types in the anti-Sarkeesian, anti-Quinn crowd there were a lot of dubious claims that in the end were lies and misrepresentation.
Chronologically speaking, when those lies failed to convince the world of the evils of Quinn, Sarkeesian, and what they represented to these people they started doing ad hominem -- particularly against Sarkeesian (it seems that mostly the extremists want people to view Quinn as a slut and the attacks seem to stop there).
It is never too late. All you have to do is stop posting drivel and examine the basis for your beliefs. Such critical examination can be difficult, true. But the sooner you move away from the extremists towards society as a whole the easier it will be.
The comments here amply demonstrate why there is a problem. There is reasoned discourse, but plenty of name calling (yours falls into the former, of course).
The discerning reader will note that the reasoned discourse types are not calling gamers "basement dwellers", nor are they saying they agree with Sarkeesian's message. What they *do* insist on is accuracy. So citing one of the lies about Quinn or Sarkeesian does nothing to convince them of the evil feminist conspiracy.
The trolls justify their own existence by driving those in the middle ground to identifying with the so-called social justice warriors. Making it divisive, insisting on there being no middle ground, doesn't help you when your cause is largely off kilter compared to society as a whole.
What I'm trying to say is that any group is comprised of a spectrum of people. When extremists rant, rave and generally take over the perception of a group they drive the non-extremists away. Which generally encourages their extremism, which drives even more away. In the end you are left with foaming-at-the-mouth types who are too far removed from society to interact in useful ways.
My recommendation for people is this: take a good look at your views and the basis for them. Distance yourself from them and cool your passions. See if there is some middle ground you can find in common with others. By doing so you keep yourself relevant and can use an opinion that carries weight to try and sway things. There's a reason extremists resort to violence, they're refusal to cooperate has removed all other alternatives. Read the unibomber's manifesto for a clear statement of this. Do not become the unibomber.
Factually misrepresented, you mean. Showing the blip of footage from the drone's *return* trip is deceitful. It is done to misrepresent that it was the first and only trip made by the drone.
Let me help you out here:
Drone flies in low and hovers getting some nice pictures of the sun bathing teenage girl. Drone departs, but the irritated father goes into the house to get his shotgun in case the drone returns. When it does, he shoots it without waiting for it to get low and slow. Drone boy posts the footage excerpt from the final trip and says, "oh no, this red neck is super fast -- in the seconds of this video he retrieved and loaded a shotgun, then used it to shoot down my innocent drone hundreds of feet into the air".
And idiots like you believe him that that is all there is to the story...
c'mon. He clearly and in a very upfront manner restricted his post to a discussion as to the relationship between the two clauses and how the amendment should be understood. And, to his credit, did so in a very effective manner.
He did not say that he thought the second amendment, as written, was good or should be abided by. In fact, he said he supported regulation, "perhaps even beyond what the 2nd amendment implies."
Then you ask him a leading question? Ridiculous.
to add to that, in your case you *could* "just deal with it". Say someone is going to die from a hyperactive thyroid and so it is removed. After that they *must* take some sort of thyroid medication (say, thyroxin) in order to live. But they still have to go see a doctor (at least once a year, if not twice) in order to keep their prescription filled.
Is there any chance that they've magically grown a new thyroid? Of course not. But the government is afraid of what you might do with a prescription medication. I suspect the answer has nothing to do with health, but with control and politics (see my post above about Afrin being over the counter).
and to be clear, the reason "she isn't keen to give prescriptions without checkups" is because, as the source for the prescription, she is under at least as much scrutiny as the purchasers. The reason for this is obvious on reflection: the doctor (and the pharmacist) are gatekeepers who grant access to the drug. A good way for a doctor to get in serious trouble is to hand out too many narcotic prescriptions. In an effort to protect themselves, some doctors will "turn in" patients they think might be buying too much of a drug. Not that they think the patient is a dealer or supplying, but because they are far better off if *they* turn the patient in before an investigation starts. And it doesn't matter if the drug purchasing is warranted and approved, too much will get some unfriendly attention.
Afrin is pure, unadulterated evil. It is, far and away, the best decongestant on the market, bar none. It is also over the counter.
It is wrong, IMO, to describe it as addictive due to the connotations of that word. There are no cravings that result from Afrin use. No one is going to feel a compulsion that they "just gotta have it". No junkie related crime. What *does* happen is that your body starts to rely on Afrin to keep the airways clear. Without it, you are stopped up and cannot breath. Even worse, after prolonged use the efficacy of Afrin is decreased. So eventually you will be using it three shots each nostril several times a day and still not be able to breathe.
Thankfully, you *can* wean yourself off of Afrin. It is miserable, however, and not likely something you want to go through. The sooner you start the better. Although I've never had the misfortune to abuse Afrin like that I've known multiple people who have. At the beginning they talk about how wonderful it is (and it doesn't hurt that it is "just over the counter" so "it must be safe"), then they have to recover from it. I have significant long term breathing issues and at least twice a year I have to use Afrin for a few days in a row. Even at that I eventually noticed a diminishment of effect.
The fact that something so debilitating, so damaging to the user's health, is sold over the counter while other less harmful drugs are strictly regulated says a lot about the true functioning of the FDA.
there is no "mouse protection rule". There is an often cited "rule" that anything after steamboat willie is in eternal copyright protection, thanks to Disney. The reality is much more nuanced and the one thing that can be said about the various copyright reforms is that the system was very complex and simplifying it was a good thing. Simplifying it by return to the original rules for terms would have been nice, but the public wasn't the one paying for the reforms.
One (of the many) complexities is that you used to have to file extensions. Since doing so cost money, many unprofitable properties were allowed to lapse into the public domain. Consequently, even when dealing with simple copyright (non-serialized written work appearing in novels whose printing dates are well documented) you can run into oddities like a novel by an author written in the fifties being in the public domain while another written in the twenties is still copyright protected.
And it gets worse. The movie Heavy Metal was a compilation and as such required permission from a wide variety of copyright holders, both graphic and sound artists. This resulted in the inability to legally sell the movie for some time.
As another example, serialized works can be problematic in tracking down their dates of publication. Documentation of assignment of copyright is often problematic. Different media has different rules. Until the DMCA "statements of fact" (such as the plans for a ship) could not be copyrighted so a work might be copyrighted (for the "arrangement of facts"), but the material contained therein be in the public domain (recipe books fall into this category). Where something was "set into tangible form" made a difference as well -- one of the reforms was aligning this so that (for example) an author's work that is copyrighted in the United States will also be copyrighted in Australia.
This particular twist makes things difficult for Project Gutenberg where something written in 1935 might be legal to distribute in New Zealand, but not in the United States. Such balkanization was somewhat tolerable in the 20's and 30's when it required significant resources to achieve global distribution. Obviously these "loopholes" are more problematic today.
okay, you've convinced me to not watch the Martian. If the defense of a movie that is supposed to be scientifically accurate, and isn't, has to resort to comparisons involving Plan 9 then it just isn't worth watching.