The electorate does elect people, by voting for them. A republic can be a democracy, and a democracy can be a republic - they are not mutually exclusive. You seem to have some difficulty with words:)
So because you assume the locals "allowed" the mines to be laid, and even "cheered" when doing so, they should have their farmland kept unusable, or engage in a farming practice which can (to the tune of hundreds of people a year) prove lethal. Because many of the mines in North Africa, for example, are from WWII (and before the current crop of locals even existed, let alone allowed anyone to do anything and cheering over it), your comments seem either ridiculously ignorant, or insanely asshatish. Fences don't last as long as landmines, and farmland is not easy to create out of nothing. It's easy to talk about how you'd build fences and clear mines, knowing full-well that you'll never be in the position to do either. If you were faced with the situation of living near these things, with them depriving you of access and farmland, maybe even water, you'd sing a different tune. If your family's survival depended on you being able to farm, would you risk losing your health (or life) to disarm these things, when it's already hard enough farming enough to live? Naaah - of course all these people are wrong, and you are correct. What is this, asshole Tuesday?
That's fine for places in which a 23-ton vehicle can drive, and if your guess that rolling over a landmine won't destroy the vehicle enough to cause a 23-ton wreck. For other places, that is clearly not an option.
That's hubris for you - he doesn't know something, so it can't possibly exist. For it to exist he would have to be flawed, and as he's not flawed, it doesn't exist. Genius.
Bob's hangnail treatment in the ER should be important to you, as you are paying for ER visits from uninsured people. You're also benefiting from a fit workforce (unless you live in a cave and eat moss). Bob might not professionally do something directly for you, but he does something for someone who does something for you, somewhere along the line. Just because something doesn't physically interact with you doesn't mean you are not important to it or vice versa. It seems queer that you'd think that, which is the crux of your argument. Yes, those young people paying in to healthcare now might not take direct advantage of it (some definitely will, unfortunately), but they benefit from having an older workforce still able to work, with their knowledge retained in the professional pool. They will also benefit when they get old, that others are helping them to live the most fruitful lives possible, allowing them to work longer and give *their* accrued knowledge and experience back to the same workforce in which they worked. And the cycle goes on. The ACA is a joke, compared to the rest of the developed world, but it was the only thing that could get into law in the US. If we extend your logic to other industries, the US armed forces should be disbanded, and people should buy Invader Insurance from some insurance company, who will promise to help you should some invading force come to your hometown. Obviously they'll have to ensure you are eligible for help (as in the bad guys are sufficiently bad, or come from the right places, or have the correct type of tanks, etc.) before actually helping you. And they might turn around and say "no, sorry" and hang up. They won't, of course, do anything preventative, as where is the money in that? There will be a slew of private armies around the place, all competing against each other, with a much-reduced buying power, having inferior guns and weapons (unless you are rich and can afford the really good guys), leaving others (who you depend on for jobs worked you haven't even considered) to die in the gutter with tanks driving over them, happy in their freedom. It's weird that the exact same scenario, when applied to the healthcare industry, sounds perfectly fine to some people, but when applied to something else that has been socialised a long, long time ago, sounds frightfully preposterous. Ask yourself - on whom does that notion reflect poorly? It's certainly not the person who thinks it sounds preposterous when applied to any service essential to life and a well-functioning country. But meh - you seem happy, and that's all that matters, right?
The doctors aren't forced to work for a set wage. The government has plenty of positions for doctors, as do the private health industries in countries with nationalised health care. They can choose to work for either, at the rates specified by their employers, which they can negotiate. The health care itself, as seen from the perspective of the common person, is free. They pay their taxes steadily (or not if they can't afford to), and that means the difference in price between getting sick and not is 0. That, to many, is a fair deal, as it means the health care itself is cheap (as there is a whole lot of buying power), and they never even have to think about things like insurance and medical bills, foreclosures or bankruptcy, regardless of what happens to them.
Yes, we all know nothing is free. When people say "free healthcare" they are talking about a system where the cost difference between getting sick and not getting sick is 0. That's the thing. Of course they pay for it in taxes, but steadily paying tax is a lot easier than having to save a lot of money for in the event of illness, and woe betide they get sick twice. They don't have to fear repossession by the bank of their house/car/whatever, etc. etc. etc. That's the difference. It pains me you don't seem to understand it, or are willing to ignore it because of the admittedly-somewhat-ambiguous choice of words people frequently use to describe such a system.
And no - working for a set rate is not slavery. Go ask some real slaves and see if they think things like minimum wage are slavery. I don't know who the "we" is you speak of, but they seem out of touch with reality.
The questions have been answered, though - that's my whole point. You don't think they have been answered, as clearly you can never be wrong, so you assume they haven't, and then continue tilting at the windmills of human discovery, showing everyone how full of yourself you are, and simultaneously limiting your knowledge in the process. I feel sorry for your kid, by the way. Really, really sorry. Do you describe yourself as a Senior System Engineer/Architect/Father to him? I bet he'd be really impressed!
For such a scientifically-literate person as yourself, you appear to be rather confused. When any new condition is identified, there will undoubtedly be a spike in the number of cases diagnosed, as people who would have been incorrectly diagnosed before receive their correct diagnosis. As diagnosis becomes easier for newly-discovered conditions, again, an increase in diagnoses will also happen, as testing becomes more widely available. Again - what I said about AIDS is directly applicable to this discussion. When AIDS was first discovered the spike in diagnoses was massive, as expected. As AIDS testing became cheaper and easier, more people were diagnosed.
It is incumbent on you to show how those two don't account for the apparent increase in rates of diagnosis you are claiming. If you can't, everyone else should (rightly) be screaming "bullshit and lies" at you, as you are the one who is calling medical science nonsense, who thinks that new conditions become perfectly diagnosable the second they are first identified (and then all historical misdiagnoses are instantly retrospectively corrected).
Your ego is blinding you, but then that's to be expected, as you're the sort of person who thinks it's interesting or important to point out your job position on Slashdot, as if anyone cares enough about who you are as a person - you even include the "Senior" as if that means anything specific. I only give a hoot because it shows your hubris-drenched posts for what they are - the vain, self-satisfied rants of someone so far up their ass they need surgical help to blow their nose. Go on - scream "ad hominem" and ignore the rest of my post. That seems to be how you "win" when discussing.
His name is "Lawrence M. Krauss", apparently. His hypothesis is interesting, but just that. When enough work has been put in to demonstrating its veracity (or lack thereof) we can talk further. What you call the "expanding vacuum theory" simply doesn't exist by that name - I'm having a hard time taking you seriously (and not just some pretentious Senior System/Architect/Muppet) if you can't even spell his name right or give the correct name for this supposedly-wonderful "theory".
I never once said I am right and everyone else is wrong. You seem to be doing that when you claim that all cosmologists who support the big bang theory are wrong, however, so it's not surprising you'd continue your hubris-fuelled attack on logic by ignoring what I've said and instead making something far more fun up and attacking that instead.
No - it's not basically incorrect. I'm not an intellectual. Being a nerd or geek or whatever doesn't instantly mean one is an intellectual. Your post speaks more about your own self-image than mine, dear fellow.
Birth control is subsidized. Abortions, the pill, hysterectomies and vasectomies are free. Oh, you mean in the US? Well, that's a different matter.
(Tragically) joking aside, the real way to decrease the world's population is to improve living conditions. The longer children live the fewer are needed to guarantee the next generation. As health & wealth increases, birth rates decrease. Medical and economic aid to developing countries is the key factor being reducing birth rates. In the developed world birth rates are already under control, and as we see developing countries becoming more developed, their birth rates mirror that.
You are Glen Beck-ing again. Asking questions is fine, but when you don't listen to the answers, you are a muppet. Sorry - senior system engineer/architect/muppet.
There is a metric shit-tonne of evidence for AGW. Every single question you have has already been asked, and already been answered. You suck at science, but your ego thinks you don't, hence you being on slashdot looking like a muppet to everyone. If it's as easy to disprove, spend a lazy afternoon doing so, and collect your Nobel prize. Go on! Surely if it's so easy to do, you've already written your paper, and are waiting for a good time to publish.
And here we go again. We know precicely why the rate of diagnosed cases of autism have increased - improved diagnosis. You might as well claim Hair Metal was responsible for AIDS, as you both recall them starting around the same time, and if you think they are connected they must be, as you don't make mistakes. We could reduce polio vaccination, but as polio still exists in other parts of the world, that will cause more cases of polio in the US, as people travel. I'll state it again - you are the Glen Beck of science. It's pathetic. There is no correlation between the number of vaccines, the contents therein, their schedule, and cases of autism. Real scientists look to see what autism is, and then discover the methods by which it happens, and go from there. They don't look for two disjointed things and try to connect them - that is a waste of time and definitely not scientific. But you are a mighty senior system engineer/architect, so you already know that, surely.
I did attack the person in order to highlight the problem with your reasoning - the ego of the person doing the reasoning, which is the whole point of this discussion - why otherwise-intelligent people eschew science. My post did contain some gems of information, however - your point-blank refusal to listen to evidence, and instead replacing evidence with your own musings, and treat them as equals. That is a sure-fire sign of an egomaniac who thinks their thoughts are more valuable than the entire field of science they don't agree with (because of nothing in particular except their own feelings).
I've never even heard of the "Expanding Vacuum theory". Google hasn't, either (apart from your own post). Weird. It's almost as if you don't know what you're talking about, or are seriously confused. But I'm sure you've got a perfectly good explanation as to why you are beyond reproach in your stance, and everyone else is wrong in the head.
I don't claim to be an intellectual. I've never claimed that. You claimed that, not I. Again - a great demonstration of your wonderful ability to confuse your opinion and reality, mix them up, then use your own mess to start attacking people and things you have a visceral, negative reaction to.
People are not ignorant or stupid because they question evolution - they are irrational. All the evidence points to it being real, and the current explanation of it seems to describe its workings wonderfully. Evolution doesn't have "lots of problems to solve for itself" - you should probably learn a bit more about the subject before attacking it, lest you look foolish.
No, he will be modded down for claiming something practically all the evidence says is false. And quite rightly so. Ignoring evidence because you can't understand it or because you don't like the consequences is not "questioning theories" - it's being lazy and/or dishonest.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean Caesium or Cesium.
Or, far more likely, you are a misogynist.
The electorate does elect people, by voting for them. A republic can be a democracy, and a democracy can be a republic - they are not mutually exclusive. You seem to have some difficulty with words :)
So yeah - weird.
IIS is remarkably secure.
Losing is "getting out"? I guess so...
So because you assume the locals "allowed" the mines to be laid, and even "cheered" when doing so, they should have their farmland kept unusable, or engage in a farming practice which can (to the tune of hundreds of people a year) prove lethal. Because many of the mines in North Africa, for example, are from WWII (and before the current crop of locals even existed, let alone allowed anyone to do anything and cheering over it), your comments seem either ridiculously ignorant, or insanely asshatish. Fences don't last as long as landmines, and farmland is not easy to create out of nothing. It's easy to talk about how you'd build fences and clear mines, knowing full-well that you'll never be in the position to do either. If you were faced with the situation of living near these things, with them depriving you of access and farmland, maybe even water, you'd sing a different tune. If your family's survival depended on you being able to farm, would you risk losing your health (or life) to disarm these things, when it's already hard enough farming enough to live? Naaah - of course all these people are wrong, and you are correct. What is this, asshole Tuesday?
That's fine for places in which a 23-ton vehicle can drive, and if your guess that rolling over a landmine won't destroy the vehicle enough to cause a 23-ton wreck. For other places, that is clearly not an option.
No, you fool! A teaspoon of sea water will make everyone invulnerable to plane accidents. Every homeopath worth his/her salt knows that.
So Colorado politics is more important than the world. Gotcha. Good to know.
That's hubris for you - he doesn't know something, so it can't possibly exist. For it to exist he would have to be flawed, and as he's not flawed, it doesn't exist. Genius.
Ha! "With au jus"? Really? Is saying that a common thing in the US?
... so they're not real people? I don't get the point of your post.
Bob's hangnail treatment in the ER should be important to you, as you are paying for ER visits from uninsured people. You're also benefiting from a fit workforce (unless you live in a cave and eat moss). Bob might not professionally do something directly for you, but he does something for someone who does something for you, somewhere along the line. Just because something doesn't physically interact with you doesn't mean you are not important to it or vice versa. It seems queer that you'd think that, which is the crux of your argument. Yes, those young people paying in to healthcare now might not take direct advantage of it (some definitely will, unfortunately), but they benefit from having an older workforce still able to work, with their knowledge retained in the professional pool. They will also benefit when they get old, that others are helping them to live the most fruitful lives possible, allowing them to work longer and give *their* accrued knowledge and experience back to the same workforce in which they worked. And the cycle goes on. The ACA is a joke, compared to the rest of the developed world, but it was the only thing that could get into law in the US. If we extend your logic to other industries, the US armed forces should be disbanded, and people should buy Invader Insurance from some insurance company, who will promise to help you should some invading force come to your hometown. Obviously they'll have to ensure you are eligible for help (as in the bad guys are sufficiently bad, or come from the right places, or have the correct type of tanks, etc.) before actually helping you. And they might turn around and say "no, sorry" and hang up. They won't, of course, do anything preventative, as where is the money in that? There will be a slew of private armies around the place, all competing against each other, with a much-reduced buying power, having inferior guns and weapons (unless you are rich and can afford the really good guys), leaving others (who you depend on for jobs worked you haven't even considered) to die in the gutter with tanks driving over them, happy in their freedom. It's weird that the exact same scenario, when applied to the healthcare industry, sounds perfectly fine to some people, but when applied to something else that has been socialised a long, long time ago, sounds frightfully preposterous. Ask yourself - on whom does that notion reflect poorly? It's certainly not the person who thinks it sounds preposterous when applied to any service essential to life and a well-functioning country. But meh - you seem happy, and that's all that matters, right?
The doctors aren't forced to work for a set wage. The government has plenty of positions for doctors, as do the private health industries in countries with nationalised health care. They can choose to work for either, at the rates specified by their employers, which they can negotiate. The health care itself, as seen from the perspective of the common person, is free. They pay their taxes steadily (or not if they can't afford to), and that means the difference in price between getting sick and not is 0. That, to many, is a fair deal, as it means the health care itself is cheap (as there is a whole lot of buying power), and they never even have to think about things like insurance and medical bills, foreclosures or bankruptcy, regardless of what happens to them.
Yes, we all know nothing is free. When people say "free healthcare" they are talking about a system where the cost difference between getting sick and not getting sick is 0. That's the thing. Of course they pay for it in taxes, but steadily paying tax is a lot easier than having to save a lot of money for in the event of illness, and woe betide they get sick twice. They don't have to fear repossession by the bank of their house/car/whatever, etc. etc. etc. That's the difference. It pains me you don't seem to understand it, or are willing to ignore it because of the admittedly-somewhat-ambiguous choice of words people frequently use to describe such a system.
And no - working for a set rate is not slavery. Go ask some real slaves and see if they think things like minimum wage are slavery. I don't know who the "we" is you speak of, but they seem out of touch with reality.
The questions have been answered, though - that's my whole point. You don't think they have been answered, as clearly you can never be wrong, so you assume they haven't, and then continue tilting at the windmills of human discovery, showing everyone how full of yourself you are, and simultaneously limiting your knowledge in the process. I feel sorry for your kid, by the way. Really, really sorry. Do you describe yourself as a Senior System Engineer/Architect/Father to him? I bet he'd be really impressed!
For such a scientifically-literate person as yourself, you appear to be rather confused. When any new condition is identified, there will undoubtedly be a spike in the number of cases diagnosed, as people who would have been incorrectly diagnosed before receive their correct diagnosis. As diagnosis becomes easier for newly-discovered conditions, again, an increase in diagnoses will also happen, as testing becomes more widely available. Again - what I said about AIDS is directly applicable to this discussion. When AIDS was first discovered the spike in diagnoses was massive, as expected. As AIDS testing became cheaper and easier, more people were diagnosed.
It is incumbent on you to show how those two don't account for the apparent increase in rates of diagnosis you are claiming. If you can't, everyone else should (rightly) be screaming "bullshit and lies" at you, as you are the one who is calling medical science nonsense, who thinks that new conditions become perfectly diagnosable the second they are first identified (and then all historical misdiagnoses are instantly retrospectively corrected).
Your ego is blinding you, but then that's to be expected, as you're the sort of person who thinks it's interesting or important to point out your job position on Slashdot, as if anyone cares enough about who you are as a person - you even include the "Senior" as if that means anything specific. I only give a hoot because it shows your hubris-drenched posts for what they are - the vain, self-satisfied rants of someone so far up their ass they need surgical help to blow their nose. Go on - scream "ad hominem" and ignore the rest of my post. That seems to be how you "win" when discussing.
His name is "Lawrence M. Krauss", apparently. His hypothesis is interesting, but just that. When enough work has been put in to demonstrating its veracity (or lack thereof) we can talk further. What you call the "expanding vacuum theory" simply doesn't exist by that name - I'm having a hard time taking you seriously (and not just some pretentious Senior System/Architect/Muppet) if you can't even spell his name right or give the correct name for this supposedly-wonderful "theory".
I never once said I am right and everyone else is wrong. You seem to be doing that when you claim that all cosmologists who support the big bang theory are wrong, however, so it's not surprising you'd continue your hubris-fuelled attack on logic by ignoring what I've said and instead making something far more fun up and attacking that instead.
No - it's not basically incorrect. I'm not an intellectual. Being a nerd or geek or whatever doesn't instantly mean one is an intellectual. Your post speaks more about your own self-image than mine, dear fellow.
Birth control is subsidized. Abortions, the pill, hysterectomies and vasectomies are free. Oh, you mean in the US? Well, that's a different matter.
(Tragically) joking aside, the real way to decrease the world's population is to improve living conditions. The longer children live the fewer are needed to guarantee the next generation. As health & wealth increases, birth rates decrease. Medical and economic aid to developing countries is the key factor being reducing birth rates. In the developed world birth rates are already under control, and as we see developing countries becoming more developed, their birth rates mirror that.
You are Glen Beck-ing again. Asking questions is fine, but when you don't listen to the answers, you are a muppet. Sorry - senior system engineer/architect/muppet.
There is a metric shit-tonne of evidence for AGW. Every single question you have has already been asked, and already been answered. You suck at science, but your ego thinks you don't, hence you being on slashdot looking like a muppet to everyone. If it's as easy to disprove, spend a lazy afternoon doing so, and collect your Nobel prize. Go on! Surely if it's so easy to do, you've already written your paper, and are waiting for a good time to publish.
And here we go again. We know precicely why the rate of diagnosed cases of autism have increased - improved diagnosis. You might as well claim Hair Metal was responsible for AIDS, as you both recall them starting around the same time, and if you think they are connected they must be, as you don't make mistakes. We could reduce polio vaccination, but as polio still exists in other parts of the world, that will cause more cases of polio in the US, as people travel. I'll state it again - you are the Glen Beck of science. It's pathetic. There is no correlation between the number of vaccines, the contents therein, their schedule, and cases of autism. Real scientists look to see what autism is, and then discover the methods by which it happens, and go from there. They don't look for two disjointed things and try to connect them - that is a waste of time and definitely not scientific. But you are a mighty senior system engineer/architect, so you already know that, surely.
I did attack the person in order to highlight the problem with your reasoning - the ego of the person doing the reasoning, which is the whole point of this discussion - why otherwise-intelligent people eschew science. My post did contain some gems of information, however - your point-blank refusal to listen to evidence, and instead replacing evidence with your own musings, and treat them as equals. That is a sure-fire sign of an egomaniac who thinks their thoughts are more valuable than the entire field of science they don't agree with (because of nothing in particular except their own feelings).
I've never even heard of the "Expanding Vacuum theory". Google hasn't, either (apart from your own post). Weird. It's almost as if you don't know what you're talking about, or are seriously confused. But I'm sure you've got a perfectly good explanation as to why you are beyond reproach in your stance, and everyone else is wrong in the head.
I don't claim to be an intellectual. I've never claimed that. You claimed that, not I. Again - a great demonstration of your wonderful ability to confuse your opinion and reality, mix them up, then use your own mess to start attacking people and things you have a visceral, negative reaction to.
Bravo.
People are not ignorant or stupid because they question evolution - they are irrational. All the evidence points to it being real, and the current explanation of it seems to describe its workings wonderfully. Evolution doesn't have "lots of problems to solve for itself" - you should probably learn a bit more about the subject before attacking it, lest you look foolish.
No, he will be modded down for claiming something practically all the evidence says is false. And quite rightly so. Ignoring evidence because you can't understand it or because you don't like the consequences is not "questioning theories" - it's being lazy and/or dishonest.