The fact is that there is a (relatively) sudden appearance of things we associate with modern thought.... That humans were making tools even before then is not "news".
The "news" i.e. the point of the article, is that recent evidence seems to indicate the "sudden" appearance was even less sudden than initially thought. And in fact it may not have been "sudden" at all, but a gradual evolution.
Semantics - "sudden" to a geologist might be 10 million years. Sudden to a typical modern human might be a second. Sudden to a Mountain-Dew hyped gamer might be 2 ms. It really is the key here and you have to watch for that linguistic trap. I don't think anybody is theorizing that the language, symbolics and and advanced tool use happened overnight after the monolith appears in the African savannah. Did it take 20 generations (500 years), 200 generations, 20000? When does sudden become gradual?
Fool! Smartphones and tablets are for CONSUMPTION only! No document creation or other complex intellectual tasks.
You kids. In my day, we didn't even TRY to write anything until we had stabilized the CRTs and blown out all of the insects from the CPU (they liked the warmth).
God, it all went downhill when Jobs allowed cut and paste on the iPhone. What was he thinking!
Nice start. You lost it at "50% of the private practices expenses go to malpractice insurance". A total overhead of 50% of gross receipts would be an excellent rate of return for a private practice. But that would include ALL overhead - salaries, equipment, real estate and malpractice. Most practices probably run around a 40% ROR - it will vary depending on the specialty and location but it's not all malpractice, not by a long shot.
Nobody really knows how much the American malpractice system costs everyone. Estimates are typically in the 10-20% of total expenditures range. Still a lot.
No, it's not. Look in the threads above. It's proscribed by statute. How the hell could that possibly work? If you saw a provider in California and kicked the bucket in New York, who's going to tell the clinic that your dead?
No, that's up to the medical provider to track. The patient isn't automatically given those records and much of the information in those records is written only for the doctor. That's gotten doctors in trouble over the years having to explain what the various abbreviations are.
Part of what you pay for when you go to the doctor's office is for them to keep records. Few patients are in the position to be able to store the documents, let alone understand what they mean. I'd never go to a doctor who was destroying records after only 7 years.
Then you should stay out of pretty much any clinic in the US. Medical data retention laws are in the book of most, if not all, states. Very, very few clinics keep records longer than necessary. This may change with EHRs since we are finally getting to the point of near universal formats and it's much easier to copy and store digital data as opposed to paper and film, but don't count on it.
Maybe in the U.K., but here in the sates, the healthcare industry is extremely wealthy. They also are extremely cheap. They pay crap wages for IT and will not invest in IT unless absolutely forced to (maybe this is the same in UK). But meanwhile, they are constantly expanding their billion dollar hospitals which all have much nicer furniture, flooring and trim then my house, and of course, they all have to have the absolute latest fad equipment to use on the patients for top dollar. But yeah, their backend software and behind the scenes hardware is usually ten year old equipment living on life support.
Nice overgeneralization there, chucko. Yes, some hospitals think they have to bling up because they're competing with the other blinged up facility down the street. Others are trying to just keep afloat. Depends on your location, payor mix and the kind of things you do.
The bigger systems actually pay pretty well for IT folks - at least that's what they tell me. I'm sure there are exceptions - it isn't a very flat playing field like the UK.
A couple of things that make me a little confused about the TFA: I can't imagine any ultrasound system that cannot print to a CD or at absolute worst, a VHS tape. It might be a SCSI CD burner (which should still be attached to the unit) but that is the technology that anything running the past THREE DECADES would be using. So duplicating a CD or VHS really shouldn't be beyond the NHS.
But the bigger issue is the apparent fact that this guy is a bozo.
He already has the 'result' - the interpretation on a piece of paper. The next level of information would be the static pictures. They are basically there for the convenience of the radiologist. A patient or referring physician would hardly ever use that data. That might be given out on a CD. The original full data scan is never given to a patient. They have no use for it. They are basically held until the statute of limitations expires as they are occasionally useful in malpractice actions, but it's not something a patient would ever need to see.
The only thing he really needs to compare different scans is the interpretation. Anything else is really being anal retentive and they likely should charge him a bunch.
Gee. Could it be that there already are those sorts of folks? That isn't the issue. The problem for the African American (and Latino and Native American) communities is that there is not the underlying ethos for delayed gratification. Hard to do when your on the edge of economic disaster (although there are lots of exceptional people who do exactly that).
Don't know how you kick start that (or if you indeed can). Probably takes generations. Much easier to look up to a basketball star who makes a 7 figure salary than some scientist who sits in a lab for weeks on end. And even in the minority communities that do historically foster education as a worthy goal (cf, the stereotypical Asian), there are lots of members of that ethnic group who have no plans or aspirations or inclinations to obtain more education.
I'd have to agree. I'd rather see the 'state' fund interpretive basket weaving and make higher education open to as many people as can hack it. Yes, there will be waste - English PhD's waiting on tables and whatnot. That's OK, there is more to life than the paycheck.
If nearly universal post secondary education does absolutely nothing other than improve the general political discourse in this country, it will be absolutely worth it (and I think there are several other important advantages). You cannot help steer this society through the 21st Century with a 14th Century mindset.
Even if everyone switches majors after a year or two of STEM majors, that might not be such a bad thing. After all, they would be learning about science and technology during that time. For example, would it hurt to have MBA's that actually knew how to program? Or politicians that had some understanding of biology?
Except for the fact that you don't 'learn to program' in two years and at least in biology / chemistry the majors intro courses are not designed as an overview, they're designed as an introduction with the idea that you'll learn more in the next couple of years. If you're just trying to get a feel for how modern biology works you're better off taking an overview course (which is likely easier). If you're going to be a biologist, you might have to actually learn systematics and embryology and other tougher courses since you will need that detailed knowledge in order to deal with more advanced subjects.
There is a shortage of (some) doctors and some nurses (who increasingly need a 4 year BA to get into nursing school).
Lawyers and MBA's - not so much.
You could target these professions with preferential treatment except that in the 6-12 year time frame between high school and and MD / RN degree the job market can flip pretty hard.
The Nokia Lumia 920 is a very interesting phone. Many developers just got one last week at the Build event (2000+ attendees). The Lumia 900 sold pretty well also. I think it is a little early to declare that Nokia and Window's Phone are dead.
EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) isn't really the right metric. Let's say it takes 500 acres of switchgrass to make 5 gallons of biodiesel for your Hackendozer. But you use the dozer to build a compound that keeps the zombies aways - you're alive. They guys down the road who've been using their field for cannabis and were too stoned to take the stalks and convert them to fuel just got eaten.
In fact, in the post apocalyptic landscape liquid vehicle fuel will likely be MUCH more expensive than it is currently. It will reflect the actual cost of production rather than being artificially cheaper as it is now. If I were a betting kind of guy and was pretty sure that the world's going to hell in a handbasket fairly quickly I would buy the largest diesel tankage I could defend and fill it. But my point is you can make biodiesel out of stuff in a field. It may well be easier to trade weed with the guy who stole the tanker, or it may not... Would be an interesting world.
(Personally, I don't think this sort of thing will happen, we will just coast 'downhill' for a long while - but you never know.... Got them AK-47 blues....)
Making biodiesel on a small volume basis isn't hard. Stealing a tanker of diesel may be a bit more challenging but I imagine lots of people will think themselves up to the task after watching reruns of Mad Max on their iPads.
The big problem is population. It's not all that hard to feed small numbers of people on a large planet. Larger number of people make it really, really challenging. Presumably the apocalypse is going to deal with that problem in some fashion. You just have to survive for a couple of years without getting killed or eaten or both.
And there are probably more people in the world that ARE benefiting from rebuilding various bulldozers of whatever origin and parentage that are scattered over the entire frikkin planet. If The Shit Hits The Fan, there are going to be lots and lots of unemployed bulldozers / engines / radios / whatnot floating around. You're better off keeping your skills up by disassembling a Caterpillar D4 every other week than trying to make something new.
Same with Pharma - go steal some college's organic chemistry lab and supplies and a laptop full of organic chemistry and pharma books. Don't try to make bioreactors with logs and PVC pipe.
Really. While these folks are struggling re inventing technology, I'm gonna grab the D4 sitting in the rental store yard, trundle over to a diesel tank, steal that and drag the whole thing down the road to my house. All the while taking potshots at people who are similarly inclined with my semi automatic rifle and the 10,000 rounds of ammo I found in the neighbor's house.
Then I'm gonna head down to these guys and steal their chickens.
Come on. If the apocalypse happens there is going to be so much techno crap strewn over the landscape that you will want to bury it at some point. Once you have stabilized your situation with appropriate amounts of defensive gear, food, water and communications you will have a treasure trove of stuff to pick from once the buzzards pick the bodies clean.
In the mean while, I'm going to sleep on a nice bed and take regular showers. Easier to get laid that way.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is that there is a (relatively) sudden appearance of things we associate with modern thought....
That humans were making tools even before then is not "news".
The "news" i.e. the point of the article, is that recent evidence seems to indicate the "sudden" appearance was even less sudden than initially thought. And in fact it may not have been "sudden" at all, but a gradual evolution.
Semantics - "sudden" to a geologist might be 10 million years. Sudden to a typical modern human might be a second. Sudden to a Mountain-Dew hyped gamer might be 2 ms. It really is the key here and you have to watch for that linguistic trap. I don't think anybody is theorizing that the language, symbolics and and advanced tool use happened overnight after the monolith appears in the African savannah. Did it take 20 generations (500 years), 200 generations, 20000? When does sudden become gradual?
Fool! Smartphones and tablets are for CONSUMPTION only! No document creation or other complex intellectual tasks.
You kids. In my day, we didn't even TRY to write anything until we had stabilized the CRTs and blown out all of the insects from the CPU (they liked the warmth).
God, it all went downhill when Jobs allowed cut and paste on the iPhone. What was he thinking!
Nice start. You lost it at "50% of the private practices expenses go to malpractice insurance". A total overhead of 50% of gross receipts would be an excellent rate of return for a private practice. But that would include ALL overhead - salaries, equipment, real estate and malpractice. Most practices probably run around a 40% ROR - it will vary depending on the specialty and location but it's not all malpractice, not by a long shot.
Nobody really knows how much the American malpractice system costs everyone. Estimates are typically in the 10-20% of total expenditures range. Still a lot.
No, it's not. Look in the threads above. It's proscribed by statute. How the hell could that possibly work? If you saw a provider in California and kicked the bucket in New York, who's going to tell the clinic that your dead?
No, that's up to the medical provider to track. The patient isn't automatically given those records and much of the information in those records is written only for the doctor. That's gotten doctors in trouble over the years having to explain what the various abbreviations are.
Part of what you pay for when you go to the doctor's office is for them to keep records. Few patients are in the position to be able to store the documents, let alone understand what they mean. I'd never go to a doctor who was destroying records after only 7 years.
Then you should stay out of pretty much any clinic in the US. Medical data retention laws are in the book of most, if not all, states. Very, very few clinics keep records longer than necessary. This may change with EHRs since we are finally getting to the point of near universal formats and it's much easier to copy and store digital data as opposed to paper and film, but don't count on it.
Healthcare is always strapped for cash
Maybe in the U.K., but here in the sates, the healthcare industry is extremely wealthy. They also are extremely cheap. They pay crap wages for IT and will not invest in IT unless absolutely forced to (maybe this is the same in UK). But meanwhile, they are constantly expanding their billion dollar hospitals which all have much nicer furniture, flooring and trim then my house, and of course, they all have to have the absolute latest fad equipment to use on the patients for top dollar. But yeah, their backend software and behind the scenes hardware is usually ten year old equipment living on life support.
Nice overgeneralization there, chucko. Yes, some hospitals think they have to bling up because they're competing with the other blinged up facility down the street. Others are trying to just keep afloat. Depends on your location, payor mix and the kind of things you do.
The bigger systems actually pay pretty well for IT folks - at least that's what they tell me. I'm sure there are exceptions - it isn't a very flat playing field like the UK.
A couple of things that make me a little confused about the TFA: I can't imagine any ultrasound system that cannot print to a CD or at absolute worst, a VHS tape. It might be a SCSI CD burner (which should still be attached to the unit) but that is the technology that anything running the past THREE DECADES would be using. So duplicating a CD or VHS really shouldn't be beyond the NHS.
But the bigger issue is the apparent fact that this guy is a bozo.
He already has the 'result' - the interpretation on a piece of paper. The next level of information would be the static pictures. They are basically there for the convenience of the radiologist. A patient or referring physician would hardly ever use that data. That might be given out on a CD. The original full data scan is never given to a patient. They have no use for it. They are basically held until the statute of limitations expires as they are occasionally useful in malpractice actions, but it's not something a patient would ever need to see.
The only thing he really needs to compare different scans is the interpretation. Anything else is really being anal retentive and they likely should charge him a bunch.
Gee. Could it be that there already are those sorts of folks? That isn't the issue. The problem for the African American (and Latino and Native American) communities is that there is not the underlying ethos for delayed gratification. Hard to do when your on the edge of economic disaster (although there are lots of exceptional people who do exactly that).
Don't know how you kick start that (or if you indeed can). Probably takes generations. Much easier to look up to a basketball star who makes a 7 figure salary than some scientist who sits in a lab for weeks on end. And even in the minority communities that do historically foster education as a worthy goal (cf, the stereotypical Asian), there are lots of members of that ethnic group who have no plans or aspirations or inclinations to obtain more education.
I'd have to agree. I'd rather see the 'state' fund interpretive basket weaving and make higher education open to as many people as can hack it. Yes, there will be waste - English PhD's waiting on tables and whatnot. That's OK, there is more to life than the paycheck.
If nearly universal post secondary education does absolutely nothing other than improve the general political discourse in this country, it will be absolutely worth it (and I think there are several other important advantages). You cannot help steer this society through the 21st Century with a 14th Century mindset.
Even if everyone switches majors after a year or two of STEM majors, that might not be such a bad thing. After all, they would be learning about science and technology during that time. For example, would it hurt to have MBA's that actually knew how to program? Or politicians that had some understanding of biology?
Except for the fact that you don't 'learn to program' in two years and at least in biology / chemistry the majors intro courses are not designed as an overview, they're designed as an introduction with the idea that you'll learn more in the next couple of years. If you're just trying to get a feel for how modern biology works you're better off taking an overview course (which is likely easier). If you're going to be a biologist, you might have to actually learn systematics and embryology and other tougher courses since you will need that detailed knowledge in order to deal with more advanced subjects.
At least that's how it worked in Ye Olden Days.
There is a shortage of (some) doctors and some nurses (who increasingly need a 4 year BA to get into nursing school).
Lawyers and MBA's - not so much.
You could target these professions with preferential treatment except that in the 6-12 year time frame between high school and and MD / RN degree the job market can flip pretty hard.
Nobody said it would be easy or fair.
And if they're looking for commercial support, I might humbly suggest the makers of Dramamine(Tm) motion sickness pills.
I mean, wow....
Tadpoles?
Goldfish, of course.
You guys, keep up.
Whoa gramps! Don't grouse at everyone just because you missed your meds.
Nurse!
All right, all right. We get it Mr. Ballmer.
Login next time, will you?
The Nokia Lumia 920 is a very interesting phone. Many developers just got one last week at the Build event (2000+ attendees). The Lumia 900 sold pretty well also. I think it is a little early to declare that Nokia and Window's Phone are dead.
What? 20 minutes? An hour?
EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) isn't really the right metric. Let's say it takes 500 acres of switchgrass to make 5 gallons of biodiesel for your Hackendozer. But you use the dozer to build a compound that keeps the zombies aways - you're alive. They guys down the road who've been using their field for cannabis and were too stoned to take the stalks and convert them to fuel just got eaten.
In fact, in the post apocalyptic landscape liquid vehicle fuel will likely be MUCH more expensive than it is currently. It will reflect the actual cost of production rather than being artificially cheaper as it is now. If I were a betting kind of guy and was pretty sure that the world's going to hell in a handbasket fairly quickly I would buy the largest diesel tankage I could defend and fill it. But my point is you can make biodiesel out of stuff in a field. It may well be easier to trade weed with the guy who stole the tanker, or it may not... Would be an interesting world.
(Personally, I don't think this sort of thing will happen, we will just coast 'downhill' for a long while - but you never know.... Got them AK-47 blues....)
"We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we are aware of..."
Making biodiesel on a small volume basis isn't hard. Stealing a tanker of diesel may be a bit more challenging but I imagine lots of people will think themselves up to the task after watching reruns of Mad Max on their iPads.
The big problem is population. It's not all that hard to feed small numbers of people on a large planet. Larger number of people make it really, really challenging. Presumably the apocalypse is going to deal with that problem in some fashion. You just have to survive for a couple of years without getting killed or eaten or both.
And there are probably more people in the world that ARE benefiting from rebuilding various bulldozers of whatever origin and parentage that are scattered over the entire frikkin planet. If The Shit Hits The Fan, there are going to be lots and lots of unemployed bulldozers / engines / radios / whatnot floating around. You're better off keeping your skills up by disassembling a Caterpillar D4 every other week than trying to make something new.
Same with Pharma - go steal some college's organic chemistry lab and supplies and a laptop full of organic chemistry and pharma books. Don't try to make bioreactors with logs and PVC pipe.
Really. While these folks are struggling re inventing technology, I'm gonna grab the D4 sitting in the rental store yard, trundle over to a diesel tank, steal that and drag the whole thing down the road to my house. All the while taking potshots at people who are similarly inclined with my semi automatic rifle and the 10,000 rounds of ammo I found in the neighbor's house.
Then I'm gonna head down to these guys and steal their chickens.
Come on. If the apocalypse happens there is going to be so much techno crap strewn over the landscape that you will want to bury it at some point. Once you have stabilized your situation with appropriate amounts of defensive gear, food, water and communications you will have a treasure trove of stuff to pick from once the buzzards pick the bodies clean.
In the mean while, I'm going to sleep on a nice bed and take regular showers. Easier to get laid that way.
While I can't disagree with your thoughts, if you had replaced Romney with Obama you also would have a perfectly reasonable post. Goes both ways.
Fingers crossed.
Leather straps tightened.
Whips wetted.
Tumbscrews lubricated.
Yep, ready for more fun!
Not funny enough to be sarcasm. Not insightful enough to be irony. Logically inconsistent.
87.83% chance this represents somebody's reality.
If the US were Europe, the world will be a far worse place.
Certainly. Then you'd have Texas instead of Spain. Then YOU ALL would have had to deal with George Bush.
You know, you folks really owe us a debt of gratitude.....
Obama or Romney, doesn't matter. Drones and indefinite detentions for all suspects.. and the banks get all your money.
In other news - aluminum foil manufacturers see bright future.