Just imagine the spew from the Republicans over a goverment run internet utiilty proposal:
1. "It's a government takover of the internets!" 2. "The government is already building secret internment camps for packets with 'bad' CRCs!" 3. "They're gonna pull the plug on IPv4!"
It would seem pragmatic for the "War on Drugs" to end, and for society to choose the same path it did with ending prohibition which removed a large revenue source for criminals.
Motive, means, opportunity... All are required for murder. Guns are one mechanism for providing the means. Even if you could take away all guns, there are still other means available for humans to kill.
What is the motivation for 40 attempted murders in one week in the city? Is anyone looking into that?
Pay your doctor when you're well, stop paying him when you're sick. - Ancient Chinese Proverb
Giving doctors a financial incentive for you to get ill and require treatment is a great way to create an expensive health care system.
Better approach: Pay your health care providers a flat annual fee for comprehensive wellness care. They get the same fee regardless of the number of procedures they perform, so their incentive is to keep you healthy (see "an ounce of prevention") and only do necessary procedures to restore your health.
The current rigmarole in the United States regarding healthcare is not about public / private, it's about the Federal Government moving into areas that it's does not have the authority to legislate. It's directly comparable to if (when) the European Union decides it's going to "take over" all of its member states discrete healthcare systems and run them from Brussels.
The US healthcare reform bill does the following: 1. Requires private health insurance companies to offer coverage to all Americans, 2. Requires them to offer the same rates to everyone, the only variation being for age, 3. Requires them to continue covering you even after you get sick (this is important as most people actually need the coverage not when they are well, but when they become ill) 4. Requires them to publish all their insurance plans and costs so you can compare them before making a decision as to which one to sign on to, 5. Requires everyone get coverage (either through their employer, the government, or privately) or pay a fine
It's not a government takeover of health care. It's primarily a bunch of regulations on the insurance industry. It seems completely reasonable that the government should be able to regulate the insurance industry.
And in the crisis that followed as all the doctors and nurses left the private industry, the government would offer to hire them all back at annual salaries (no more "fee for service" model) in the range of $100k-750k / year in a greatly expanded VA health care system that would then provide health care services to all Americans, while instituting a new consumption tax that would pay for it.
At the point where you get seriously ill and thus become a liability for your for-profit health insurance provider, they are hoping for the following: 1. They can find some excuse to not pay for your care, ideally a loophole like the "failed to disclose he had measles at age 3 in application form" to drop you entirely, or 2. You die quickly.
It's not personal or evil, it's just because they are driven to maximize profit using any/all legal methods available.
Do you want your health care to be guaranteeed by some entity that would prefer you to just die already?
In a democracy, the government is the people
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
For every retard elected POTUS or Governor of Alaska, there are millions of retards who cast ballots for them.
Don't blame the elected for the failures of the electorate. You get what you vote for.
When you point your finger at government, there are 3 fingers pointing back at you!
We are the retards we've been waiting for. Hope and retards. Retardation we can believe in! RetardNation.
Mod this post "retarded".
Ron Paul has been on 3 times in last month
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Don't even get me started on MSNBC. When was the last time you saw a conservative on Olbermann's show?
Ron Paul (a conservative) has been on MSNBC 3 times in the last month. He was on the Rachel Maddow show, Morning Joe, and the Dylan Ratigan show.
There are very few fiscal conservatives around these days. The Republican party mostly abandoned fiscal conservatism back in the 80's, if not earlier.
The real pork can be found in the $901 billion defense budget and the $696 billion social security program.
I've always thought that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme (redistrubuting wealth from younger workers to older people until the game is up), not pork. Can you elaborate on how SS is pork?
Yeah, Obama's record-high deficit spending has nothing at all to do with our budget problems.
This thread is about U.S. government spending, based upon budgets and laws passed by the Congress and signed into law by various U.S. Presidents. When you call the U.S. government deficit spending "Obama's deficit spending" as if he was a dictator, you lose credibility as a rational fiscal conservative (which I am).
For example, a large portion of the current deficit is due to greatly reduced tax receipts caused by the recession that began prior to Obama taking office. Other large portions of the deficit are based upon mandated federal spending on programs like Medicare that were vastly expanded by the U.S. government prior to Obama's inauguration and which have been rising quickly due to demographic changes and soaring medical costs charged by providers.
I would like to see the federal government seriously address these fiscal problems, and I don't believe that Obama nor the current congress have done so. But to call this problem "Obama's deficit", as if he were the sole cause, is so ridculous that it makes you look thoughtless.
I can't think of any contemporary country that would remotely consider an invasion and occupation of the U.S., with or without an ocean barrier. They've all seen "Red Dawn" by now.
The most effective barrier against attack known is a stockpile of ICBMs with nuclear warheads that render any attack a suicidial endeavor that only the insane would contemplate. You don't need an ocean.
It is clear what the founders meant in their papers and notes, as well.
But their papers and notes are not in the Constitution and thus superceded by the debatable wording of the Constitution itself.
For more tortured constitutional phrasing see: "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;" With the positioning of the commas in that sentence it says that you had to be alive at the time the Constutitution was adopted (circa 1787) in order to be eligible to be president.
I agree that the gameplay of the best standalone games is far superior to that of MMOs, as the latter tends to be relatively simple and immensely repetitive.
The complexity and most interesting dynamics of MMOs are in the social interaction and organization. How do you organize a group of people to perform some task? How do you deal with angry/obnoxious jerks? How do you resolve a conflict between two of your ingame friends who aren't getting along?
You can learn a lot about humanity and the skills needed to deal with it from MMOs. God knows I won't learn them otherwise while living in my mom's basement...:)
I'm guessing that Flight Data Recorders are mandated by law for commercial aircraft. I would say that the information that they have provided over the years has been very helpful in improving the safety of air travel.
How many people were killed last year in aircraft accidents? Hundreds would be my guesstimate. How many in car accidents? Tens of thousands would be my guess. If there are a lot of people being injured in car accidents then it would seem very useful (from an economic retrun on investment perspective) to start making data recorders both mandatory and have them record specific information in a published standard format, with the goal being to better understand accident causes and improve auto safety.
Any nuclear armed country that wants to blow stuff up in space (whether to test satellite killing weapons, or just to grief the rest of humanity) is going to be able to do so.
The SR520 bridge over Lake Washington is the longest floating bridge in the world.
The second longest is one span of the I-90 bridge a few miles south over the same lake.
When first built (decades ago) there were many concerns over the viability of these floating bridges, but they've worked well in practice. Well, one span of the original I-90 bridge sunk, but that was a silly mistake. (Insert Monty Python joke here about bridges sinking into the swamp...)
The bridges are built as floating bridges because Lake Washington is really deep and has a muddy bottom.
The luge course has walls along its length to keep the lugers within the confines of the track. The height of the walls is higher at some points of the track. I would guess that the baseline wall height is 4-5 feet. At the point where the Georgian luger went over the wall there was 2-3 foot high extension. The Georgian luger cleared this extension just barely, allowing him to exit the relative safety of the track. [Once a luger traveling at high speed leaves the confines of the track the result is uncontrollable and quite likely catastrophic for both the luger and anyone he hits.]
The next day the walls along that portion were raised substantially higher.
My question is: How does a luge course designer determine how high the walls should be in order to ensure that lugers are kept contained to the track? Is it based on "gut feel" or some mathematical analysis?
Slashdot Mirror
Just imagine the spew from the Republicans over a goverment run internet utiilty proposal:
1. "It's a government takover of the internets!"
2. "The government is already building secret internment camps for packets with 'bad' CRCs!"
3. "They're gonna pull the plug on IPv4!"
It would seem pragmatic for the "War on Drugs" to end, and for society to choose the same path it did with ending prohibition which removed a large revenue source for criminals.
Motive, means, opportunity... All are required for murder. Guns are one mechanism for providing the means. Even if you could take away all guns, there are still other means available for humans to kill.
What is the motivation for 40 attempted murders in one week in the city? Is anyone looking into that?
"Stop the humanoid! Kill the intruder!"
Pay your doctor when you're well, stop paying him when you're sick. - Ancient Chinese Proverb
Giving doctors a financial incentive for you to get ill and require treatment is a great way to create an expensive health care system.
Better approach: Pay your health care providers a flat annual fee for comprehensive wellness care. They get the same fee regardless of the number of procedures they perform, so their incentive is to keep you healthy (see "an ounce of prevention") and only do necessary procedures to restore your health.
The current rigmarole in the United States regarding healthcare is not about public / private, it's about the Federal Government moving into areas that it's does not have the authority to legislate. It's directly comparable to if (when) the European Union decides it's going to "take over" all of its member states discrete healthcare systems and run them from Brussels.
The US healthcare reform bill does the following:
1. Requires private health insurance companies to offer coverage to all Americans,
2. Requires them to offer the same rates to everyone, the only variation being for age,
3. Requires them to continue covering you even after you get sick (this is important as most people actually need the coverage not when they are well, but when they become ill)
4. Requires them to publish all their insurance plans and costs so you can compare them before making a decision as to which one to sign on to,
5. Requires everyone get coverage (either through their employer, the government, or privately) or pay a fine
It's not a government takeover of health care. It's primarily a bunch of regulations on the insurance industry. It seems completely reasonable that the government should be able to regulate the insurance industry.
And in the crisis that followed as all the doctors and nurses left the private industry, the government would offer to hire them all back at annual salaries (no more "fee for service" model) in the range of $100k-750k / year in a greatly expanded VA health care system that would then provide health care services to all Americans, while instituting a new consumption tax that would pay for it.
I can dream...
At the point where you get seriously ill and thus become a liability for your for-profit health insurance provider, they are hoping for the following:
1. They can find some excuse to not pay for your care, ideally a loophole like the "failed to disclose he had measles at age 3 in application form" to drop you entirely, or
2. You die quickly.
It's not personal or evil, it's just because they are driven to maximize profit using any/all legal methods available.
Do you want your health care to be guaranteeed by some entity that would prefer you to just die already?
For every retard elected POTUS or Governor of Alaska, there are millions of retards who cast ballots for them.
Don't blame the elected for the failures of the electorate. You get what you vote for.
When you point your finger at government, there are 3 fingers pointing back at you!
We are the retards we've been waiting for. Hope and retards. Retardation we can believe in! RetardNation.
Mod this post "retarded".
Don't even get me started on MSNBC. When was the last time you saw a conservative on Olbermann's show?
Ron Paul (a conservative) has been on MSNBC 3 times in the last month. He was on the Rachel Maddow show, Morning Joe, and the Dylan Ratigan show.
There are very few fiscal conservatives around these days. The Republican party mostly abandoned fiscal conservatism back in the 80's, if not earlier.
I agree. From what I've read, the 85% cap provides an incentive for the health care industry to become even more expensive and less efficient.
The real pork can be found in the $901 billion defense budget and the $696 billion social security program.
I've always thought that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme (redistrubuting wealth from younger workers to older people until the game is up), not pork. Can you elaborate on how SS is pork?
Yeah, Obama's record-high deficit spending has nothing at all to do with our budget problems.
This thread is about U.S. government spending, based upon budgets and laws passed by the Congress and signed into law by various U.S. Presidents. When you call the U.S. government deficit spending "Obama's deficit spending" as if he was a dictator, you lose credibility as a rational fiscal conservative (which I am).
For example, a large portion of the current deficit is due to greatly reduced tax receipts caused by the recession that began prior to Obama taking office. Other large portions of the deficit are based upon mandated federal spending on programs like Medicare that were vastly expanded by the U.S. government prior to Obama's inauguration and which have been rising quickly due to demographic changes and soaring medical costs charged by providers.
I would like to see the federal government seriously address these fiscal problems, and I don't believe that Obama nor the current congress have done so. But to call this problem "Obama's deficit", as if he were the sole cause, is so ridculous that it makes you look thoughtless.
I can't think of any contemporary country that would remotely consider an invasion and occupation of the U.S., with or without an ocean barrier. They've all seen "Red Dawn" by now.
The most effective barrier against attack known is a stockpile of ICBMs with nuclear warheads that render any attack a suicidial endeavor that only the insane would contemplate. You don't need an ocean.
It is clear what the founders meant in their papers and notes, as well.
But their papers and notes are not in the Constitution and thus superceded by the debatable wording of the Constitution itself.
For more tortured constitutional phrasing see:
"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;"
With the positioning of the commas in that sentence it says that you had to be alive at the time the Constutitution was adopted (circa 1787) in order to be eligible to be president.
I agree that the gameplay of the best standalone games is far superior to that of MMOs, as the latter tends to be relatively simple and immensely repetitive.
The complexity and most interesting dynamics of MMOs are in the social interaction and organization. How do you organize a group of people to perform some task? How do you deal with angry/obnoxious jerks? How do you resolve a conflict between two of your ingame friends who aren't getting along?
You can learn a lot about humanity and the skills needed to deal with it from MMOs. God knows I won't learn them otherwise while living in my mom's basement... :)
"Mom, bathroom!" [Cartman, during a days long WoW leveling grind]
You need, to boldly add, more commas [where no commas, have been placed, before!]
Claim your nationality=Tibetan. See what happens...
I'm guessing that Flight Data Recorders are mandated by law for commercial aircraft. I would say that the information that they have provided over the years has been very helpful in improving the safety of air travel.
How many people were killed last year in aircraft accidents? Hundreds would be my guesstimate. How many in car accidents? Tens of thousands would be my guess. If there are a lot of people being injured in car accidents then it would seem very useful (from an economic retrun on investment perspective) to start making data recorders both mandatory and have them record specific information in a published standard format, with the goal being to better understand accident causes and improve auto safety.
World of Warcraft Addons get updated at an insane rate, almost as insane as the rate at which a new WoW update patch breaks many of them.
You can escape the oppressive overland governments by moving to the city under the sea! Then you can be truly free.
Any nuclear armed country that wants to blow stuff up in space (whether to test satellite killing weapons, or just to grief the rest of humanity) is going to be able to do so.
The SR520 bridge over Lake Washington is the longest floating bridge in the world.
The second longest is one span of the I-90 bridge a few miles south over the same lake.
When first built (decades ago) there were many concerns over the viability of these floating bridges, but they've worked well in practice. Well, one span of the original I-90 bridge sunk, but that was a silly mistake. (Insert Monty Python joke here about bridges sinking into the swamp...)
The bridges are built as floating bridges because Lake Washington is really deep and has a muddy bottom.
The luge course has walls along its length to keep the lugers within the confines of the track. The height of the walls is higher at some points of the track. I would guess that the baseline wall height is 4-5 feet. At the point where the Georgian luger went over the wall there was 2-3 foot high extension. The Georgian luger cleared this extension just barely, allowing him to exit the relative safety of the track. [Once a luger traveling at high speed leaves the confines of the track the result is uncontrollable and quite likely catastrophic for both the luger and anyone he hits.]
The next day the walls along that portion were raised substantially higher.
My question is: How does a luge course designer determine how high the walls should be in order to ensure that lugers are kept contained to the track? Is it based on "gut feel" or some mathematical analysis?