It reminds me of racial discrimination: it's fine for you to keep people from entering your private home on the basis on their race or anything you want, but you can't have a Whites Only restaurant because you're violating people's rights.
The difference, of course, is that in a whites-only restaurant, non-whites would be forbidden from entering the space at all and partaking of the restaurant's services. Whereas, in a smoking-allowed place, non-smokers would be able to enter, just would be exposed to smoke. Same as a 'greasy spoon' - if you want to sit down at a restaurant, you usually have to order food - if you can't tolerate the food, you shouldn't be there.
And what about seperately-vented smoking sections?
Installing spam recognition software on the email server is sufficient. Google for spamasassin.
Yep, know about it and use it.
Client-based sotware might be better if only because if it's turned on by default, people would be likely to use it, even if they have an ISP who doesn't give a rat's a%% or is just incompetent.
To be fair, I haven't heard of people getting 'disappeared' from within this country. Held in jail or immigration custody without access to counsel on trumped-up charges - absolutely - but not sent to secret prisons. Not saying it couldn't happen, just that it hasn't so far to my knowledge.
They spread because of e-mail clients that are designed by people who shouldn't even be designing a Big Mac behind the counter of McDonald's. Attachments shouldn't be automatically decoded/downloaded/executed/read. Period. End of story.
And people who execute attachments from people whom they don't know or trust, or which are obviously automated get what they deserve, I guess. They'll probably learn the second time 'round, anyway.
Anyway, there are far more efficient mechanisms to spread viruses and worms, like for example using known, unrepaired vulnerabilities in services running on ports exposed to the Internet. (Cue story of unpatched SBS 2003 box getting Sassered within 2 min of being plugged in.)
For one, it's simple to set up, doesn't require a dongle/ID, and it works 99.999% of the time. What we need is better spam recognition software bundled with OS's and mail clients so that people use it by default. If spam can't get through to most people, the sending of spam will become unprofitable and the problem will resolve itself fairly quickly.
The solution to most phishing scams is to use a text-based e-mail client. No click-thru links means you can see the end URL and disbelieve it if it isn't the actual bank site. If it *is* the actual bank site, the bank has got bigger problems than you:(. Actually, HTML e-mail is generally annoying - e-mail should be restricted to straight ASCII or Unicode text whenever possible.
Large attachments would actually be better off being replaced with a Web-based system (i.e. paste this text into your browser and enter this password), since that would minimize transfer time of the e-mail itself.
Of course, log files can be manipulated and faked. ISPs will have the power to exonerate or destroy people (maybe a new revenue stream for the ISPs???).
Perhaps. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Remember that McCarthy exposed quite a few soviet spies.
McCarthy didn't. The NSA or its predecessor did, via the VENONA program, which cracked Soviet embassy codes and tapped embassy communications. McCarthy mostly threw out a bunch of false accusations, hurt a bunch of innocent of people, and actually made correctly accusing someone of being a Soviet sympathizer *less* credible for a while.
Crying "wolf" when a herd of deer comes onto your property is seldom the correct answer.
Encrypted anon. web proxy. No logs kept. If traffic volume was sufficient, it would be very difficult to correlate outgoing traffic with an incoming IP. And web proxies probably aren't considered ISPs, since they don't provide the "final inch" to a user's doorstep.
Only by that time you've been deemed an 'enemy combatant,' stripped of your rights and shipped out of the country. Maybe after 6 months of separation and torture they'll let you go, but then again, dealing with the publicity of a US citizen getting nabbed...
That's still a Bad Thing, just as a few people being kept in jail unnecessarily...
BTW- is it actually legal for them to send US citizens to as prisoners to Guantanamo? I thought 'enemy combatants' were strictly non-citizens from outside the US - anyone nabbed within the US got a trial like Moussaoui did.
They're asking this data be retained so that **IF A COURT ORDERED SUBPOENA IS ISSUED** the information will be available. Worried by that? It's quite simple, really. Don't prey on children and don't plan terrorist acts and you'll be fine.
Gov't gets a tip that a terrorist attack might be planned in the Raleigh, NC area. All ISP records from that area are subpoenaed. An automated search is run. Everyone who searched on information about, say, chemistry, nuclear reactors, and uranium (as I have in the past) even out of innocent reasons gets a visit from the neighborhood Gestapo. Maybe even a few of them end up in jail until they can exonerate themselves - after all, a judge/grand jury will be hard-pressed not to charge people with *something* if it's a "national security" issue.
And the real terrorists will be laughing their heads off, since they have already had their training in their camp in Pakistan.
My standard for this, like all things, is that so long as everyone involved consents, then it's fine, but if even one person does not consent then a wrong has been committed.
So, out of curiosity, you'd be morally ok with a diner owned and operated by a smoker and his smoker wife, with no other employees, where patron smoking is allowed. (As long as there's a sign on the door: "WARNING: SMOKING ALLOWED. Enter at your own risk. No children under 18.)
No one is being "wronged" in that case by your standards. I'm just objecting to blanket anti-smoking laws that cover *all* cases, even if everyone involved consents, and more so to the proposed (and ultimately failed) interpretation of NJ's law that banned smoking 25 feet from public doorways (but not, say, the apartment window 25 feet away from the restaurant).
t's patently ridiculous that nuclear reactors should be built ANYWHERE near population centers.
First of all, I think that if someone proposed building a nuke reactor in the total middle of nowhere, the wackos will still come out of the woodwork and attempt to block construction. After all, it might turn pristine wilderness into a radioactive desert if it explodes.
The second thing that needs consideration is that skilled, reliable, intelligent, reliable workers are needed to run a reactor safely. In a more populated area, the utility has a larger pool of employees to choose from, and not everyone wants to move 100 miles from the nearest town of 10,000 people. And, no, a large power plant isn't something that can be operated remotely - physical things can and do break, need adjustment, inspection, etc.
The US's safety record for power and naval reactors (I'm excluding things like the military plutonium production reactors in Hanford and Oak Ridge) has actually been pretty damn good, largely due to the example of being absolutely obsessive about safety set by Adm. Rickover in the 50s and 60s. A culture of safety does exist, far more than in any other industry. What we need now is *even* safer and better reactors - right now, we're basically using 60s tech in the US, and we've learned a lot in 40 years.
Passing or voting for an unconstitutional law is not treason.
Quite right. It just violates 18 USC 241, which is a capital offense in itself in some cases, and the burden of proof is actually lower than a treason prosecution.
Owing to the difficulty of prosecution for treason, only around 10 people in the history of the US (and none since WW II IIRC) have been convicted of treason. Not even the Rosenbergs - they were tried under a WWI-era law making espionage a capital crime.
personaly i feel that we need a new law here in the US.. if you pass a law that is found to violate the bill of rights and/or the constitution - you should be found guilty of treason (and that would go for anyone that put there name on the bill) - that would make them thing twice.. well atleast mabey thing once ?
Actually, "Conspiracy Against Rights" (18 USC 241/242) already covers this. The penalty for conspiring to deprive people of their constitutional rights (passed during the civil rights era) is up to 10 years in prison. If kidnapping (would unlawful imprisonment qualify?) is involved, or someone dies as a result, the maximum penalty is death.
I'm not defending the right to smoke indoors unless it's a private home, though I personally think that, unless it's a place where you *have* to go like a courthouse or the DMV, it should really be up to the employees and owners.
Outdoors is a different story - smoke dissipates pretty quickly. (Whereas urine doesn't, and tends to make the shoes of whomever steps in it smell pissy.) I'm sorry, but walking through an occasional smoky area isn't going to kill you nor shorten your lifespan materially.
As to whether I'm a smoker - not really. Meaning that I'll smoke one or two ciggs when going out at night, but I don't make a regular habit of it. If I smoke a quarter of a pack per week, it's a lot for me. And living/working in NYC is probably around 10x worse for me than that amount of smoking.
If you're so concerned about second-hand smoke, I guess you support banning all public fireworks, outlawing barbecues and fireplaces down the shore, banning deep-fried foods (after all, some smoke might escape through the kitchen vent fan), and stopping all diesel trains. All of those things make smoke that's just as bad for you as cigg. smoke. Remember, though, it's the dose that makes the poison. If you don't sit in smokefilled rooms regularly or smoke a lot, it's unlikely to give you cancer.
The anti-smoking campaign has changed from a legitimate public health issue to a religious one at this point.
I recently looked into buying a dc-dc converter to run my laptop in a plane. These things are pretty expensive and my guess is that I could build one for $20 AUD or so.
All you need to do it to put the converter in a 'legitimate' looking box. Just take an old (broken?) laptop power adapter, gut the innards, and put the dc-dc converter inside the same case and mount a cig. lighter plug at the end of the old chord. The power chords have thick enough wired to be able to handle the extra current draw at 12VDC vs 120VAC.
Did you look at the list of chemicals these people are selling? It wasn't crap like acetic acid. It was things like perchlorates.
Explosives? No, just powerful oxidizers. But, then again, you can (or could?) buy SolidOx over the counter at many welding supply shops. As the name implied, SolidOx is a solid oxidizer for welding purposes that could be used to make explosives if you really wanted to.
Face it - some people will find a way to kill themselves! And the 0.0001% of the population that happen to be psychopaths will also find ways to kill/maim/manipulate others. The solution is to arrest and try those people if they do happen to do their worst, and either jail them for a long time or execute them.
If chemistry and science could be linked to NASCAR maybe Bubba would care. Until then, forget it.
Uhm, can't it be? Suspension/chassis design, fuel chemistry, engine optimization, etc? Bubba still doesn't care;-P
You've seen their site, right? Radioactive isotopes, burning lasers, uranium, heavy water.... is this what you expect high school science teachers are buying, and Mom and Dad put in little Timmy's chemistry set?
Burning lasers? If you want to kill/maim somebody, guns are easier to use and cheaper.
Uranium isn't really that toxic - no worse than any other heavy metal, really. It's radioactivity is actually pretty low-grade, and enriching to make an a-bomb is difficult and time consuming. The quantity to create a self-sustaining fission reaction in a reactor is also pretty large.
Heavy water? Not radioactive, BTW. It makes a good moderator for a CANDU reactor. More apropos to the home experimenter - it makes a good fuel for a Farnsworth Fusor (a type of fusion reactor).
Other radioisotopes? *My* physics teacher had a small source and a mil-surplus Geiger counter. Big deal - he's use it to demonstrate ionization (and scare the shit out of a certain student - he'd put the source near the student without anyone noticing and then proceed to "scan" the student - click, click, clickclickclick, clickrrrrrrrrrr)
I'm sorry, but you seem pretty uninformed, and your attitude is part of the *problem*.
... it's the 'nannies' in society that are responsible for this particular raid. The same slugs who want everyone to wear a bicycle helmet, not smoke within 25 feet of a doorway, sit through an 8 hr. class to be able to legally drive a boat, and ban Legos because they have small parts that kids might *choke* on.
Also the same people who have blocked construction of new nuclear power plants consistently over the past 25 years - so the US is still mostly using reactors designed in the 50s/60s that are considerably less safe than what we can make today.
Life in a free society entails some dangers. But let's think about this: let's say that 12 people a year are killed by amateur chemistry set explosions and make the headlines, causing people to clamor for the banning of chemistry sets. Does anyone think about the 120 people per year saved by a new antibiotic developed by someone who started out playing with a chemistry set as a child? The consequences of actions aren't always simple and obvious, and the sooner people realize that, the better.
The TSA apparently thought my computer (in an Antec SuperLANboy aluminum case) was a bomb -- they ripped off the heatsink and processor and pulled the video card out of its AGP slot (while it was still screwed in).
Or one of their employees knew exactly what it was, and was trying to steal it to sell it on EBay... and got caught. If that was the case, I hope that the culprit is sitting in a Federal pen now, getting introduced to his new roomie Bubba. Convicts generally hate prisoners that are ex-law-enforcement and will do anything to make them miserable.
When I was 10, I used to play with electronics a lot more, and I sometimes would take my bike over to Radio Shack. At that time, they had walls upon walls of electronic components, ICs, batteries, kits; basically anything that you'd need to build anything. Those things that you couldn't get could always be easily ordered.
They also had a whole section of books and booklets on simple circuit design (iirc, written by the Forrest Mims III mentioned in TFA). They'd even show you how to build stuff that would be considered dangerous and scary today - a 2kv photoflash power supply somehow sticks in my mind. Also, a book on how to build your own simple computer from scratch (I'm not kidding).
Fast forward to 2006, where I have a computer business. I went to R.S. to get parts to build a simple network polarity tester the other day. All of the electronic parts were in one cabinet safely out of the way. "Wrapping wire"? What's that? I had to explain, and someone finally came out from a back room with a roll in 80s packaging about 1/2 hour later.
Prominently displayed now are toys and gadgets - the cell phones, laptops, clocks and trinkets. But what good will those be to a country of consumers that only buys them from China and doesn't know what actually makes them work?!
Incidently, the same thing is happening at auto parts stores. I fix my own car and motorcycle. Recently, the actual parts sections at Straus' have been halved in size to make room for more rice-boy-toys (flashy seat covers, cheap neon crap, &c)
As for lyme disease specifically, it's very, very well known that the tests for it are horribly inaccurate. Even worse, if you do get a positive result, the doctor probably doesn't have a clue about antibiotic treatment of a neurological condition and making sure that the abx can get past the blood-brain barrier.
Agreed about the inaccurate tests. Been there, wasn't able to get treatment for a long time, until I saw a doctor that had a clue.
As far as antibiotics, the standard drugs used - either doxycycline or rocephin have good to fair blood-brain barrier penetration. The key, I think, is (a) using them for long enough - these bugs are hard to kill and the 21-28 days suggested in some medical literature was totally inadequate in my case and (b) treating co-infections like babesia and ehrlichia that are often seen with Lyme, weaken the body, and prevent a full recovery - for those, additional testing and different types of antibiotics may be needed.
And, of course, if you're unfortunate enough to get Lyme, once treatment starts working, don't feel sorry for yourself and sit in bed. Get up, do stuff, and stay on your feet as much as you can. Exercise increases blood oxygenation and increased blood oxygenation is harmful to the Lyme spirochaetes. And having fun and being in a good mood increases immune activity and the body's ability to fight this disease and keep the remaining germs down.
This has all the makings of a crazy disease-conspiracy theory to me.
Nah, just a conspiracy of stupidity. The tests for Lyme are currently pretty inadequate, due to the fact that they look for antibodies with certain specific protein markers that not everyone with Lyme produces. Of course, the test makers *market* their tests as near-100% accurate for sales and political reasons, and many doctors believe that story.
I was bitten by a ticks several times in 2002-3, developed all of the symptoms of Lyme (swollen knees, muscle/joint pains, fatigue, periodic fevers, twitching, facial numbness, etc), but kept testing negative or equivocal. Finally went to a doctor that was willing to treat me with antibiotics on the basis that one of my tests had come back 'borderline.' After several months of antibiotics (that initially caused the a Herxheimer-type worsening of symptoms for a few days that's very characteristic of Lyme), I'm feeling almost as good as I did before this horror story. Not perfect, but about 90% improved - remains to be seen if the lingering symptoms are due to damage or lingering infection that would benefit from more antibiotics.
Nah, be pro-active. An automated Phalanx-type automatic radar-seeking gun loaded with paintballs would work *much* better (and save other people money as well, since the camera will be KO'ed until someone decides to clean it). Me, whenever I'm driving in DC, I carry a piece of signboard. If I pass a mobile speed camera, I turn around at the next intersection, go back 1000 feet or so, and tape the signboard ("PIG CAMERA 1000FT AHEAD") to a lamppost.
Fortunately, NJ (where I live) has banned photo speed enforcement completely in the early 1990s.
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The difference, of course, is that in a whites-only restaurant, non-whites would be forbidden from entering the space at all and partaking of the restaurant's services. Whereas, in a smoking-allowed place, non-smokers would be able to enter, just would be exposed to smoke. Same as a 'greasy spoon' - if you want to sit down at a restaurant, you usually have to order food - if you can't tolerate the food, you shouldn't be there.
And what about seperately-vented smoking sections?
-b.
Yep, know about it and use it.
Client-based sotware might be better if only because if it's turned on by default, people would be likely to use it, even if they have an ISP who doesn't give a rat's a%% or is just incompetent.
-b.
To be fair, I haven't heard of people getting 'disappeared' from within this country. Held in jail or immigration custody without access to counsel on trumped-up charges - absolutely - but not sent to secret prisons. Not saying it couldn't happen, just that it hasn't so far to my knowledge.
-b.
They spread because of e-mail clients that are designed by people who shouldn't even be designing a Big Mac behind the counter of McDonald's. Attachments shouldn't be automatically decoded/downloaded/executed/read. Period. End of story.
And people who execute attachments from people whom they don't know or trust, or which are obviously automated get what they deserve, I guess. They'll probably learn the second time 'round, anyway.
Anyway, there are far more efficient mechanisms to spread viruses and worms, like for example using known, unrepaired vulnerabilities in services running on ports exposed to the Internet. (Cue story of unpatched SBS 2003 box getting Sassered within 2 min of being plugged in.)
-b.
The solution to most phishing scams is to use a text-based e-mail client. No click-thru links means you can see the end URL and disbelieve it if it isn't the actual bank site. If it *is* the actual bank site, the bank has got bigger problems than you :(. Actually, HTML e-mail is generally annoying - e-mail should be restricted to straight ASCII or Unicode text whenever possible.
Large attachments would actually be better off being replaced with a Web-based system (i.e. paste this text into your browser and enter this password), since that would minimize transfer time of the e-mail itself.
-b.
Maybe I should go to work for an ISP?
user time web site
santorum 10:45am http://www.hotandyoung.com/
dubya 10:48am http://www.cutextianteens.net/
agonzale 10:52am http://www.underagelatina.com/
hayden 10:58am http://www.amateurexplosives.com/
feinstei 11:20am http://www.unitednuclear.com/
And so on,
-b.
McCarthy didn't. The NSA or its predecessor did, via the VENONA program, which cracked Soviet embassy codes and tapped embassy communications. McCarthy mostly threw out a bunch of false accusations, hurt a bunch of innocent of people, and actually made correctly accusing someone of being a Soviet sympathizer *less* credible for a while.
Crying "wolf" when a herd of deer comes onto your property is seldom the correct answer.
-b.
-b.
That's still a Bad Thing, just as a few people being kept in jail unnecessarily...
BTW- is it actually legal for them to send US citizens to as prisoners to Guantanamo? I thought 'enemy combatants' were strictly non-citizens from outside the US - anyone nabbed within the US got a trial like Moussaoui did.
-b.
Gov't gets a tip that a terrorist attack might be planned in the Raleigh, NC area. All ISP records from that area are subpoenaed. An automated search is run. Everyone who searched on information about, say, chemistry, nuclear reactors, and uranium (as I have in the past) even out of innocent reasons gets a visit from the neighborhood Gestapo. Maybe even a few of them end up in jail until they can exonerate themselves - after all, a judge/grand jury will be hard-pressed not to charge people with *something* if it's a "national security" issue.
And the real terrorists will be laughing their heads off, since they have already had their training in their camp in Pakistan.
-b.
So, out of curiosity, you'd be morally ok with a diner owned and operated by a smoker and his smoker wife, with no other employees, where patron smoking is allowed. (As long as there's a sign on the door: "WARNING: SMOKING ALLOWED. Enter at your own risk. No children under 18.)
No one is being "wronged" in that case by your standards. I'm just objecting to blanket anti-smoking laws that cover *all* cases, even if everyone involved consents, and more so to the proposed (and ultimately failed) interpretation of NJ's law that banned smoking 25 feet from public doorways (but not, say, the apartment window 25 feet away from the restaurant).
-b.
First of all, I think that if someone proposed building a nuke reactor in the total middle of nowhere, the wackos will still come out of the woodwork and attempt to block construction. After all, it might turn pristine wilderness into a radioactive desert if it explodes.
The second thing that needs consideration is that skilled, reliable, intelligent, reliable workers are needed to run a reactor safely. In a more populated area, the utility has a larger pool of employees to choose from, and not everyone wants to move 100 miles from the nearest town of 10,000 people. And, no, a large power plant isn't something that can be operated remotely - physical things can and do break, need adjustment, inspection, etc.
The US's safety record for power and naval reactors (I'm excluding things like the military plutonium production reactors in Hanford and Oak Ridge) has actually been pretty damn good, largely due to the example of being absolutely obsessive about safety set by Adm. Rickover in the 50s and 60s. A culture of safety does exist, far more than in any other industry. What we need now is *even* safer and better reactors - right now, we're basically using 60s tech in the US, and we've learned a lot in 40 years.
-b.
Quite right. It just violates 18 USC 241, which is a capital offense in itself in some cases, and the burden of proof is actually lower than a treason prosecution.
Owing to the difficulty of prosecution for treason, only around 10 people in the history of the US (and none since WW II IIRC) have been convicted of treason. Not even the Rosenbergs - they were tried under a WWI-era law making espionage a capital crime.
-b.
Actually, "Conspiracy Against Rights" (18 USC 241/242) already covers this. The penalty for conspiring to deprive people of their constitutional rights (passed during the civil rights era) is up to 10 years in prison. If kidnapping (would unlawful imprisonment qualify?) is involved, or someone dies as a result, the maximum penalty is death.
See for yourself:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/241fin.htm
-b.
Outdoors is a different story - smoke dissipates pretty quickly. (Whereas urine doesn't, and tends to make the shoes of whomever steps in it smell pissy.) I'm sorry, but walking through an occasional smoky area isn't going to kill you nor shorten your lifespan materially.
As to whether I'm a smoker - not really. Meaning that I'll smoke one or two ciggs when going out at night, but I don't make a regular habit of it. If I smoke a quarter of a pack per week, it's a lot for me. And living/working in NYC is probably around 10x worse for me than that amount of smoking.
If you're so concerned about second-hand smoke, I guess you support banning all public fireworks, outlawing barbecues and fireplaces down the shore, banning deep-fried foods (after all, some smoke might escape through the kitchen vent fan), and stopping all diesel trains. All of those things make smoke that's just as bad for you as cigg. smoke. Remember, though, it's the dose that makes the poison. If you don't sit in smokefilled rooms regularly or smoke a lot, it's unlikely to give you cancer.
The anti-smoking campaign has changed from a legitimate public health issue to a religious one at this point.
All you need to do it to put the converter in a 'legitimate' looking box. Just take an old (broken?) laptop power adapter, gut the innards, and put the dc-dc converter inside the same case and mount a cig. lighter plug at the end of the old chord. The power chords have thick enough wired to be able to handle the extra current draw at 12VDC vs 120VAC.
-b.
Explosives? No, just powerful oxidizers. But, then again, you can (or could?) buy SolidOx over the counter at many welding supply shops. As the name implied, SolidOx is a solid oxidizer for welding purposes that could be used to make explosives if you really wanted to.
Face it - some people will find a way to kill themselves! And the 0.0001% of the population that happen to be psychopaths will also find ways to kill/maim/manipulate others. The solution is to arrest and try those people if they do happen to do their worst, and either jail them for a long time or execute them.
-b.
Uhm, can't it be? Suspension/chassis design, fuel chemistry, engine optimization, etc? Bubba still doesn't care
-b.
Burning lasers? If you want to kill/maim somebody, guns are easier to use and cheaper.
Uranium isn't really that toxic - no worse than any other heavy metal, really. It's radioactivity is actually pretty low-grade, and enriching to make an a-bomb is difficult and time consuming. The quantity to create a self-sustaining fission reaction in a reactor is also pretty large.
Heavy water? Not radioactive, BTW. It makes a good moderator for a CANDU reactor. More apropos to the home experimenter - it makes a good fuel for a Farnsworth Fusor (a type of fusion reactor).
Other radioisotopes? *My* physics teacher had a small source and a mil-surplus Geiger counter. Big deal - he's use it to demonstrate ionization (and scare the shit out of a certain student - he'd put the source near the student without anyone noticing and then proceed to "scan" the student - click, click, clickclickclick, clickrrrrrrrrrr)
I'm sorry, but you seem pretty uninformed, and your attitude is part of the *problem*.
-b.
Also the same people who have blocked construction of new nuclear power plants consistently over the past 25 years - so the US is still mostly using reactors designed in the 50s/60s that are considerably less safe than what we can make today.
Life in a free society entails some dangers. But let's think about this: let's say that 12 people a year are killed by amateur chemistry set explosions and make the headlines, causing people to clamor for the banning of chemistry sets. Does anyone think about the 120 people per year saved by a new antibiotic developed by someone who started out playing with a chemistry set as a child? The consequences of actions aren't always simple and obvious, and the sooner people realize that, the better.
Cheers, -b.
Or one of their employees knew exactly what it was, and was trying to steal it to sell it on EBay ... and got caught. If that was the case, I hope that the culprit is sitting in a Federal pen now, getting introduced to his new roomie Bubba. Convicts generally hate prisoners that are ex-law-enforcement and will do anything to make them miserable.
-b.
When I was 10, I used to play with electronics a lot more, and I sometimes would take my bike over to Radio Shack. At that time, they had walls upon walls of electronic components, ICs, batteries, kits; basically anything that you'd need to build anything. Those things that you couldn't get could always be easily ordered.
They also had a whole section of books and booklets on simple circuit design (iirc, written by the Forrest Mims III mentioned in TFA). They'd even show you how to build stuff that would be considered dangerous and scary today - a 2kv photoflash power supply somehow sticks in my mind. Also, a book on how to build your own simple computer from scratch (I'm not kidding).
Fast forward to 2006, where I have a computer business. I went to R.S. to get parts to build a simple network polarity tester the other day. All of the electronic parts were in one cabinet safely out of the way. "Wrapping wire"? What's that? I had to explain, and someone finally came out from a back room with a roll in 80s packaging about 1/2 hour later.
Prominently displayed now are toys and gadgets - the cell phones, laptops, clocks and trinkets. But what good will those be to a country of consumers that only buys them from China and doesn't know what actually makes them work?!
Incidently, the same thing is happening at auto parts stores. I fix my own car and motorcycle. Recently, the actual parts sections at Straus' have been halved in size to make room for more rice-boy-toys (flashy seat covers, cheap neon crap, &c)
-b.
Agreed about the inaccurate tests. Been there, wasn't able to get treatment for a long time, until I saw a doctor that had a clue.
As far as antibiotics, the standard drugs used - either doxycycline or rocephin have good to fair blood-brain barrier penetration. The key, I think, is (a) using them for long enough - these bugs are hard to kill and the 21-28 days suggested in some medical literature was totally inadequate in my case and (b) treating co-infections like babesia and ehrlichia that are often seen with Lyme, weaken the body, and prevent a full recovery - for those, additional testing and different types of antibiotics may be needed.
And, of course, if you're unfortunate enough to get Lyme, once treatment starts working, don't feel sorry for yourself and sit in bed. Get up, do stuff, and stay on your feet as much as you can. Exercise increases blood oxygenation and increased blood oxygenation is harmful to the Lyme spirochaetes. And having fun and being in a good mood increases immune activity and the body's ability to fight this disease and keep the remaining germs down.
-b.
Nah, just a conspiracy of stupidity. The tests for Lyme are currently pretty inadequate, due to the fact that they look for antibodies with certain specific protein markers that not everyone with Lyme produces. Of course, the test makers *market* their tests as near-100% accurate for sales and political reasons, and many doctors believe that story.
I was bitten by a ticks several times in 2002-3, developed all of the symptoms of Lyme (swollen knees, muscle/joint pains, fatigue, periodic fevers, twitching, facial numbness, etc), but kept testing negative or equivocal. Finally went to a doctor that was willing to treat me with antibiotics on the basis that one of my tests had come back 'borderline.' After several months of antibiotics (that initially caused the a Herxheimer-type worsening of symptoms for a few days that's very characteristic of Lyme), I'm feeling almost as good as I did before this horror story. Not perfect, but about 90% improved - remains to be seen if the lingering symptoms are due to damage or lingering infection that would benefit from more antibiotics.
-b.
Nah, be pro-active. An automated Phalanx-type automatic radar-seeking gun loaded with paintballs would work *much* better (and save other people money as well, since the camera will be KO'ed until someone decides to clean it). Me, whenever I'm driving in DC, I carry a piece of signboard. If I pass a mobile speed camera, I turn around at the next intersection, go back 1000 feet or so, and tape the signboard ("PIG CAMERA 1000FT AHEAD") to a lamppost.
Fortunately, NJ (where I live) has banned photo speed enforcement completely in the early 1990s.
-b.