This says you are wrong, because it took a lot of violent uprising in India to get Britain to allow independence. Your implication that London just handed things over is incorrect.
I believe you, but here is the real issue. Do you think that money grubbers like the CEO of Comcast cares whether or not his plan to get even more big bonuses is based on truth, honesty, fairness, or common sense? Hell no! This is why they see no issues with buying up other providers to have a monopoly either.
Funny, but remember where this company is from. NSA installs their back doors after manufacturers make devices. This particular company _is_ the Chinese government as all large Chines companies are. No middle man needed, and the embedding of back doors because it's done in production is not as easy to spot.
Looking at routing circuits, chips, and logic it is easy to see that a device is a clone. Looking at a device as a whole package, it is also easy to detect access methods, non routed packets, etc... Small Telecom devices are about the size of 1/2 a normal rack.
In simpler terms, you are implying that a company can not make a clone of a graphics card and install it in a device running a back door. Or perhaps you are implying that the only way to do so is by cloning complete system which had a back door already installed.
As a third possible reason for your comment, it was intended as humorous or sarcastic without any indication that it was humor or sarcasm, and continued that in a follow up post.
Indeed! I don't care what speed marks they hit, I still would not use one of their back door infested devices even if you gave me one. They got their start by sending out a flood of "workers" who stole code from other high end manufacturers. I worked at one manufacturer of large telecom devices who lost a metric ass load of data to them in a breach (estimated 1/2tb of source code and schematics). Mostly the manufacturers fault for having extremely poor security, and happened before my contract stint with them. I didn't renew my contract because management didn't care about security for end users either.
Yes it was proven that the code was stolen because Huawei started selling knock off devices in Asia and Europe which were reverse engineered. That also happens to be how I know they had back doors built in.
Look, I'm as anti-pedophile as anyone you will ever find. That said, we have to use common sense methods for tracking them and managing them because rehabilitation does not work very often with that type of person. An Internet search company is not the police, they can't do anything to protect society from a pedophile (or any other type of criminal). You can't hold an Internet search company responsible for data that is flat out wrong. According to TFA 88% of the people requesting data be removed are NOT pedophiles and those are not all of the people with bad data at Google, but the people that care enough to request data be cleared.
I can't say how things are done in Europe, but we have the sex offender registry in the US which does hold legal information and is managed by law enforcement. It still does not fix issues like you address, but means that at least in the US we should not be relying on internet searches to see who is criminal. If the person requests removal from Google and the data is still on the sex offenders list, the result would not be clear for long because the original content won't change.
Apologies for ranting a bit, it was not against you. I get frustrated at obvious (perhaps not so obvious to some) appeals to emotion such as TFA used as an attempt to do the wrong thing. Issues like you present are not fixed by a search removal request, because as stated above the original content remains. A real problem is that people are using search engines to determine whether or not someone is a criminal (amongst other things). Instead of telling people that is a horrible idea, we see appeals to emotion to continue the behavior at the expense of innocent people.
I was thinking very similarly, but will phrase it a bit differently.
Google has a "user", that has been repeatedly "leaking" information, and allowed that user to get more content for bigger "leaks"? I'm sure many users will fall for this gag, but anyone working in the tech field that believes this is a "leak" should retire and go work in less mentally challenging career.
Interesting that you completely ignore the declared points I made about truth over manipulation. You are _still_ using faulty logic, in fact the same faulty logic I have pointed out 3 times now.
50% of a strain, not 50% of all. They don't make a vaccine for _all_ variants and strains of influenza. Your omission speaks volumes, as did your obvious appeals to emotion written previously.
Then comes the not so unexpected ad hominem, though I am surprised it took this long. When deception and faulty logic does not win the debate, attack your opponent with more deceptions and deceit.
Unfortunately for you, I have an extensive background in rhetoric. I pegged you a few posts ago, though I did so in a very polite way. I always hope for a worthy opponent in debate, but as with many others you leave me disappointed.
I have defended my position rationally and logically. I have pointed out your faulty reasoning, fabricated information, and fallacies. I have even provided methods for an audience or yourself to gain a different perspective. You on the other hand, can not defend your position without faulty logic. You have provided numerous fallacies, provided fabricated information, and moved on to personal attacks in desperation.
This debate is now concluded, and you lose. Further comments or arguments using the same fallacies, fabricated information, and/or personal attacks will simply demonstrate that you a sore loser. I won't however be surprised to see a message from Slashdot telling me that you responded again to the post (fits with profile), but I won't read it.
Many of the Socratic principles have been grossly distorted over time as well, and this is evident in every "science" today (not to be confused by every person). You either agree with the Socratic definition of Philosophy or you don't. Therefor, you either believe that educating the public honestly is correct, or you believe in manipulating people to suite your goal. I'll warn you that the later historically has bad consequences for the public, including many people that didn't consider how they were being manipulated while manipulating others.
To your second point, if you take someone's "opinion" and copy that opinion you are not thinking for yourself. Many people are content with this, but I should have demonstrated that in my case it's not true.
The point of linking to that article was twofold. First, to show you that if you want differing opinions to strengthen and question your own then they are not difficult to find. That took a whopping 2 second Google search and scan of results to find, and it holds an interesting piece of information regarding the CDC reported numbers for effectiveness.
The second point is that the numbers we are given on the effectiveness of vaccines is being grossly distorted if it's given at all.
To claim that 50% is not a big deal is idiocy, especially when you are using appeal to emotion arguments trying to imply that the influenza vaccine is a magic bullet. It's not.
So as I started with in my very first post, we can not have a rational debate when people (you demonstrated your inclusion to this category thus far) distort facts in order to manipulate opinion and argue with appeals to emotion instead of facts and truth.
One of the most important things to consider is that historically very few violent or armed revolutions and coup d'etat have resulted in a better government than the one they were overthrowing.
The US was founded by armed revolt, as were many "democratic" countries we currently see in the world (like India). I see the point, but believe it distracts and distorts the issues at hand. It also happens to be false, because the only way to remove entrenched power when it becomes corrupt is by revolt. In fact you hint at the same thing in your closing sentence.
People with an army background seem to be very good at becoming dictators. The sort of flexible, politician types that have no backbone are exactly the sort of people you need when it comes to dealing with a free populace.
As a US Army Veteran who also has 30 years of education and study in Philosophy (as well as countless other subjects) I disagree, and see this as further distraction and distortion. It also happens to be patently false. Washington was a Military commander who did an exceptional job serving as the President after the war. He had no inclination towards dictatorship, and in fact reports not wanting to be the President but felt it was his duty. In fact many of our Presidents also had military careers without such dictatorial tendencies. Many seemed to have more concern for the democratic process in the Republic than those that did not serve in the Military. Compare for example Eisenhower with Obama, who has issued many more executive orders than all other Presidents combined.
In other words, "Military" has no bearing on whether or not someone would make a great dictator. The bearing in that regard is political and personal ambitions combined with a regard, or lack thereof for citizens under their Governmental umbrella. As a generalization, people trained in combat, especially those exposed to combat, are usually the first to denounce the use of violence as a means because they have seen what this really is.
To the second half of your statement, this is also historically incorrect. See the Presidents example I gave above if you are confused.
The best sort of change the US could undergo would be driven by a mass movement of a highly educated, non-violent population who realised they were being oppressed and refused to stand for it simply by not playing along with a bullshit system designed to keep them down.
I happen to agree with the first half of this, but don't believe Veterans and Soldiers are automatically excluded from the conversation as you indicate. Many "Army" people are highly educated, perhaps you should get to know some before making insinuations that they are all mindless thugs out beating people up that don't agree with them.
Of course, that is not likely to happen any time soon.
The reasons for this are hinted at in my rebuttal of your first paragraph. Entrenched power is not going to just walk away and give up all of their gains. That has never ever happened in history, not even once! Removing the entrenched power is going to be a messy process. You can't remove 1 Senator for example and magically fix the problem. We have corrupt judges, heads of agencies, heads of cabinets, and how many of their underlings are also corrupt? Sure, most of the low level people are good, but as we move up the chain the corruption will get extremely thick.
For example, do you believe that the head of the VA stepping down today will fix anything at all with the VA? The obvious answer is hell no! It was reported over 7 years ago that these problems existed, and the only thing that happened was further cover up. Removing a rotting branch from the tree won't fix the tree.
To that end, it's rational not to claim that the ground is spoiled and needs to be salted. In other words, the foundation of our Republic is very well done. We don't have to have a complete revolt and new constitution to "fix" the USA. We simply need to get all of the festering shit out of the pipes and clean up a whole lot.
Very often, you don't know what works until you fail a few times. In this case, nobody rational (in my opinion) is saying we have to dismantle the US and start over. The foundation of our Republic was extremely well thought out. What people are starting is that we must start cleaning house, and for that to happen it may take a bit of blood shed. Entrenched power does not normally like to lose their accumulated power.
Which citation would that be? Approximately 25% of my comments were regarding your citations. I'm not going to quote "The Apology" and several sections of "The Republic" for the Socratic definition of Philosophy, you can read those. If it's discussion on the ineffectiveness claims of the influenza vaccine this is not hard to search for, such as this. Before you dismiss that article because its not the "New England Journal of Medicine", the article links to and discusses CDC reports.
If you really want to educate yourself, it's not that difficult to the research. Good research may be time consuming, but absolutely possible.
FWIW with self-published books, Amazon lets the authors set their own price for the e-books. So figuring out who to blame for that one is difficult.
I don't have proof, but I don't believe Amazon does this for free and I would assume that they have a fixed price. I.E. "We charge a buck a book, so if you the author charges a buck the customer would pay 2 bucks plus sales tax/shipping fees". I don't know their contract and that is purely speculation, but should give the point needed even if Amazon charges less or more.
Having an apparent flexible rate for larger publishers that can be changed on a whim without notice and appear like extortion is a different issue. I seriously doubt any publishers would have signed up for this deal, at least not without other options, so Amazon is at least the most likely culprit for blame in all regards.
Oh, I should have added that I can read the New England Journal of Medicine. I don't agree that a person must read that particular source of information in order to discuss a topic. Knowledge should come from a variety of sources, this is how you learn who is bullshitting the most.
I never stated that there were no rare cases where we did not use anti-viral medications, I stated that as a general rule we don't (and provided the reasoning).
Medical Doctors receive a license to "Practice" Medicine, they do not receive a certificate claiming that they can fix everything.
Bringing up 112 cases, while surely tragic, still does not change any of my points and I'm pretty sure you are aware of that. Of those 112 cases you mention, exactly how many would have been prevented by an influenza vaccine? There is about a 50% chance that exactly 1 of those people may have been prevented from contracting, and 50% is a high estimate. Interestingly one of those cases is from 2006 and the others are from 2013.
It is a fact that influenza numbers for _everything_ are inflated. Some additional facts are that the success rate for the vaccine are inflated, the reported side effects for the vaccine are minimized (reports of stricken submissions), and there have been cases of influenza contracted _after_ receiving the vaccine are reported as "side effects" of the vaccine. Those are easy to verify, _if_ you are willing to do the work.
As I stated very clearly above (and mention to someone else) I am not against vaccines. I do however believe in the Socratic definition of Philosophy which requires "truth and honesty" above all other goals. When people or groups are proven to fabricate and falsify information as a method of manipulating behavior, I no longer trust what they claim. If you honestly trust a person or group known to fabricate or falsify data, shame on you.
If you want to debate _real_ numbers and start a public education forum, I'm all for that. Lets start an ad campaign and tell people the truth and let them decide if the risk is worth the potential reward. Medical doctors that are not pro-vaccine are generally ostracized, but I'm sure I can get some anonymous submissions.
I will have to investigate the reported CDC policies for accepting cases as influenza that your linked article mentioned, because I don't believe this at face value. While I agree that there is criteria, I have never read anything giving this strict of criteria. You should also be skeptical of this since you stated previously that it was expensive to prove influenza as a culprit in cases, implying that it was okay to give bad numbers due to complexity/expense.
Lastly, as I state above (or below) to someone else, my concern with vaccines for influenza is not just that they are not effective. Consider that everyone including HHS was demanding hand sanitizers be used all the time everywhere, and a decade later we find out how harmful this has been to our ability to fight foreign bodies. We don't have enough information yet to prove that the same thing is not happening with normal strains of flu. We don't understand the normal mutation process for the virus, let alone our additional impact (if any, I'm fair) from vaccination. We do however know that a vaccine seems to only be good for 1 year at a time, which means a life time of annual shots to avoid something that is "normally" not life threatening.
First, there is no influenza magic bullet. Many people that don't get the vaccine never get the flu, even when exposed. Some people get flu like symptoms for several days after getting the vaccine, and get the flu anyway. Getting a new vaccine every year because the flu has mutated will never change, because we have not yet figured out the mutation principles of the virus. Even if we did, we currently have no way of stopping the mutation.
I gave more accurate numbers from the CDC, and the real answer from the source is "we don't know how many die, so we inflate the numbers as much as possible to scare people into getting a vaccine.". The combination of numbers from pneumonia and flu is one of many issues. Elderly people that were on their death beds already are counted as flu victims if they are showing symptoms, even if they had no influenza virus. Many immunologists and medical professionals complain about this, but of course pharmaceutical companies bury their concerns.
As I said to start.. You can get any vaccine you want. I'm not telling you not to take a flu vaccine, I'm telling you that the hype and hysteria trying to get people to vaccinate for influenza is largely hype and hysteria. If you think the numbers are worth the risk to you, go for it. I can read the numbers for myself and don't see the risk vs. reward worth the potential impact from a vaccine.
Consider this: We realized after people were using hand sanitizer for over a decade that it was really harmful to our health and breaks down our natural ability to fight off bacteria and viruses. This is not a "new" thing with science and medicine, just the most recent. When it comes to influenza vaccines, how do we know we are not doing similar? Currently, we don't. So again, if you see enough risk vs. reward I'm all for you doing it. Volunteer all you want.
At the same time, I'm a firm believer that Socrates had it right. The goal of knowledge is not manipulation, but the truth. In other words, if you explain the issues fairly on both sides people would be able to make their own decisions, instead of relying on deceit to get people to behave like someone want's them to behave. Further, a person or system caught manipulating and/or lying should be scrutinized on all future statements.
the 24/7 news vultures would shred any political who enacted such legislation to bits.
So you change the system without any Constitutional amendment process as defined by law to suite a few private individuals that wish to take profits over duty? I'm sorry, but I believe you are looking at this from a bad angle.
It's not entirely the media's fault – a lot of things that happen behind closed doors really shouldn't occur at all
That statement is a circular logic condition based on your first statement, which is not correct in my opinion.
Not that long ago there was this thing called integrity and duty which most journalists had. Many journalists today have the same sense of duty and integrity, but we have allowed the monopolization of "news" agencies and further allowed them to become anything but "news". Journalists don't tend to work there, actors and actresses that read teleprompters and look pretty work there.
Citizens can take some of the blame for this, but the Government allowed monopolization and allowed media to outright lie to citizens. Let's not forget that the media outlets started both fabricating "news" and omitting real "news" in order to manipulate the public. I put most of the blame on the Government actors that allowed this to occur.
I fully agree that the issue is complex but propose a different view of the problem. Citizens are being attacked from many sources, citizens need to learn to defend themselves from those various sources. If you want to give up and stay home, that is your right and I'm okay with that. However, it is not right to tell others that they should maintain a broken status quot because it's a complex problem to solve.
The real solution is that we have to fix a whole lot of things. Media, Corrupt politicians, Corrupt laws, Banking monopolization, etc. etc.. Nope, there is not one person that can fix them all so pick a target and get people motivated to make a fix.
If you don't start somewhere you will never get started, and things will never change without action. Wake people up, teach them what's happening, and point them to a solution. Any solution is better than no action, even if it may be the wrong one (almost).
But Ronald Reagan said trickle down really works!! He would not have lied, he's a great American hero according to Rush Limbaugh. **snark** in case you missed it, and yes problems started long before Reagan.
I doubt that he's played out his hand since he seems to know very well how to play the game. Even if he did though, the US Government has made a lot of US Soldiers and Veterans very very angry withe the newest leaks on the VA. Sure, there are a few scumbags in 3 letter agencies that would kill Snowden to turn a quick buck, but a whole lot of people with military training should be watching his back if he comes back to the US.
Very interesting times we are living in, because currently the US is a powder keg waiting for a spark. Everyone knows that the system is corrupt to the core, but few are sure what to do with the situation and many hope for a peaceful solution.
Slashdot Mirror
This says you are wrong, because it took a lot of violent uprising in India to get Britain to allow independence. Your implication that London just handed things over is incorrect.
I believe you, but here is the real issue. Do you think that money grubbers like the CEO of Comcast cares whether or not his plan to get even more big bonuses is based on truth, honesty, fairness, or common sense? Hell no! This is why they see no issues with buying up other providers to have a monopoly either.
Funny, but remember where this company is from. NSA installs their back doors after manufacturers make devices. This particular company _is_ the Chinese government as all large Chines companies are. No middle man needed, and the embedding of back doors because it's done in production is not as easy to spot.
The person said "she is not African-American", they did not say "she is not from Africa" or "not African".
Looking at routing circuits, chips, and logic it is easy to see that a device is a clone. Looking at a device as a whole package, it is also easy to detect access methods, non routed packets, etc... Small Telecom devices are about the size of 1/2 a normal rack.
In simpler terms, you are implying that a company can not make a clone of a graphics card and install it in a device running a back door. Or perhaps you are implying that the only way to do so is by cloning complete system which had a back door already installed.
As a third possible reason for your comment, it was intended as humorous or sarcastic without any indication that it was humor or sarcasm, and continued that in a follow up post.
I must have read that wrong somehow.
Either that or you don't understand how easy it is to add additional code and circuits (containing logic) to a big ass ISP router.
Indeed! I don't care what speed marks they hit, I still would not use one of their back door infested devices even if you gave me one. They got their start by sending out a flood of "workers" who stole code from other high end manufacturers. I worked at one manufacturer of large telecom devices who lost a metric ass load of data to them in a breach (estimated 1/2tb of source code and schematics). Mostly the manufacturers fault for having extremely poor security, and happened before my contract stint with them. I didn't renew my contract because management didn't care about security for end users either.
Yes it was proven that the code was stolen because Huawei started selling knock off devices in Asia and Europe which were reverse engineered. That also happens to be how I know they had back doors built in.
Look, I'm as anti-pedophile as anyone you will ever find. That said, we have to use common sense methods for tracking them and managing them because rehabilitation does not work very often with that type of person. An Internet search company is not the police, they can't do anything to protect society from a pedophile (or any other type of criminal). You can't hold an Internet search company responsible for data that is flat out wrong. According to TFA 88% of the people requesting data be removed are NOT pedophiles and those are not all of the people with bad data at Google, but the people that care enough to request data be cleared.
I can't say how things are done in Europe, but we have the sex offender registry in the US which does hold legal information and is managed by law enforcement. It still does not fix issues like you address, but means that at least in the US we should not be relying on internet searches to see who is criminal. If the person requests removal from Google and the data is still on the sex offenders list, the result would not be clear for long because the original content won't change.
Apologies for ranting a bit, it was not against you. I get frustrated at obvious (perhaps not so obvious to some) appeals to emotion such as TFA used as an attempt to do the wrong thing. Issues like you present are not fixed by a search removal request, because as stated above the original content remains. A real problem is that people are using search engines to determine whether or not someone is a criminal (amongst other things). Instead of telling people that is a horrible idea, we see appeals to emotion to continue the behavior at the expense of innocent people.
National ScrewYou Agency would be better because the acronym would remain the same.
I was thinking very similarly, but will phrase it a bit differently.
Google has a "user", that has been repeatedly "leaking" information, and allowed that user to get more content for bigger "leaks"? I'm sure many users will fall for this gag, but anyone working in the tech field that believes this is a "leak" should retire and go work in less mentally challenging career.
Interesting that you completely ignore the declared points I made about truth over manipulation. You are _still_ using faulty logic, in fact the same faulty logic I have pointed out 3 times now.
50% of a strain, not 50% of all. They don't make a vaccine for _all_ variants and strains of influenza. Your omission speaks volumes, as did your obvious appeals to emotion written previously.
Then comes the not so unexpected ad hominem, though I am surprised it took this long. When deception and faulty logic does not win the debate, attack your opponent with more deceptions and deceit.
Unfortunately for you, I have an extensive background in rhetoric. I pegged you a few posts ago, though I did so in a very polite way. I always hope for a worthy opponent in debate, but as with many others you leave me disappointed.
I have defended my position rationally and logically. I have pointed out your faulty reasoning, fabricated information, and fallacies. I have even provided methods for an audience or yourself to gain a different perspective. You on the other hand, can not defend your position without faulty logic. You have provided numerous fallacies, provided fabricated information, and moved on to personal attacks in desperation.
This debate is now concluded, and you lose. Further comments or arguments using the same fallacies, fabricated information, and/or personal attacks will simply demonstrate that you a sore loser. I won't however be surprised to see a message from Slashdot telling me that you responded again to the post (fits with profile), but I won't read it.
Good day.
Many of the Socratic principles have been grossly distorted over time as well, and this is evident in every "science" today (not to be confused by every person). You either agree with the Socratic definition of Philosophy or you don't. Therefor, you either believe that educating the public honestly is correct, or you believe in manipulating people to suite your goal. I'll warn you that the later historically has bad consequences for the public, including many people that didn't consider how they were being manipulated while manipulating others.
To your second point, if you take someone's "opinion" and copy that opinion you are not thinking for yourself. Many people are content with this, but I should have demonstrated that in my case it's not true.
The point of linking to that article was twofold. First, to show you that if you want differing opinions to strengthen and question your own then they are not difficult to find. That took a whopping 2 second Google search and scan of results to find, and it holds an interesting piece of information regarding the CDC reported numbers for effectiveness.
The second point is that the numbers we are given on the effectiveness of vaccines is being grossly distorted if it's given at all.
To claim that 50% is not a big deal is idiocy, especially when you are using appeal to emotion arguments trying to imply that the influenza vaccine is a magic bullet. It's not.
So as I started with in my very first post, we can not have a rational debate when people (you demonstrated your inclusion to this category thus far) distort facts in order to manipulate opinion and argue with appeals to emotion instead of facts and truth.
One of the most important things to consider is that historically very few violent or armed revolutions and coup d'etat have resulted in a better government than the one they were overthrowing.
The US was founded by armed revolt, as were many "democratic" countries we currently see in the world (like India). I see the point, but believe it distracts and distorts the issues at hand. It also happens to be false, because the only way to remove entrenched power when it becomes corrupt is by revolt. In fact you hint at the same thing in your closing sentence.
People with an army background seem to be very good at becoming dictators. The sort of flexible, politician types that have no backbone are exactly the sort of people you need when it comes to dealing with a free populace.
As a US Army Veteran who also has 30 years of education and study in Philosophy (as well as countless other subjects) I disagree, and see this as further distraction and distortion. It also happens to be patently false. Washington was a Military commander who did an exceptional job serving as the President after the war. He had no inclination towards dictatorship, and in fact reports not wanting to be the President but felt it was his duty. In fact many of our Presidents also had military careers without such dictatorial tendencies. Many seemed to have more concern for the democratic process in the Republic than those that did not serve in the Military. Compare for example Eisenhower with Obama, who has issued many more executive orders than all other Presidents combined.
In other words, "Military" has no bearing on whether or not someone would make a great dictator. The bearing in that regard is political and personal ambitions combined with a regard, or lack thereof for citizens under their Governmental umbrella. As a generalization, people trained in combat, especially those exposed to combat, are usually the first to denounce the use of violence as a means because they have seen what this really is.
To the second half of your statement, this is also historically incorrect. See the Presidents example I gave above if you are confused.
The best sort of change the US could undergo would be driven by a mass movement of a highly educated, non-violent population who realised they were being oppressed and refused to stand for it simply by not playing along with a bullshit system designed to keep them down.
I happen to agree with the first half of this, but don't believe Veterans and Soldiers are automatically excluded from the conversation as you indicate. Many "Army" people are highly educated, perhaps you should get to know some before making insinuations that they are all mindless thugs out beating people up that don't agree with them.
Of course, that is not likely to happen any time soon.
The reasons for this are hinted at in my rebuttal of your first paragraph. Entrenched power is not going to just walk away and give up all of their gains. That has never ever happened in history, not even once! Removing the entrenched power is going to be a messy process. You can't remove 1 Senator for example and magically fix the problem. We have corrupt judges, heads of agencies, heads of cabinets, and how many of their underlings are also corrupt? Sure, most of the low level people are good, but as we move up the chain the corruption will get extremely thick.
For example, do you believe that the head of the VA stepping down today will fix anything at all with the VA? The obvious answer is hell no! It was reported over 7 years ago that these problems existed, and the only thing that happened was further cover up. Removing a rotting branch from the tree won't fix the tree.
To that end, it's rational not to claim that the ground is spoiled and needs to be salted. In other words, the foundation of our Republic is very well done. We don't have to have a complete revolt and new constitution to "fix" the USA. We simply need to get all of the festering shit out of the pipes and clean up a whole lot.
Very often, you don't know what works until you fail a few times. In this case, nobody rational (in my opinion) is saying we have to dismantle the US and start over. The foundation of our Republic was extremely well thought out. What people are starting is that we must start cleaning house, and for that to happen it may take a bit of blood shed. Entrenched power does not normally like to lose their accumulated power.
My apologies for copying the wrong 2nd link, the CDC report is here.
Which citation would that be? Approximately 25% of my comments were regarding your citations. I'm not going to quote "The Apology" and several sections of "The Republic" for the Socratic definition of Philosophy, you can read those. If it's discussion on the ineffectiveness claims of the influenza vaccine this is not hard to search for, such as this. Before you dismiss that article because its not the "New England Journal of Medicine", the article links to and discusses CDC reports.
If you really want to educate yourself, it's not that difficult to the research. Good research may be time consuming, but absolutely possible.
Here is one link, and should get you started.
Thanks for the clarification! One day I'll finish one of the couple books I dabble with and have to deal with this (I hope).
FWIW with self-published books, Amazon lets the authors set their own price for the e-books. So figuring out who to blame for that one is difficult.
I don't have proof, but I don't believe Amazon does this for free and I would assume that they have a fixed price. I.E. "We charge a buck a book, so if you the author charges a buck the customer would pay 2 bucks plus sales tax/shipping fees". I don't know their contract and that is purely speculation, but should give the point needed even if Amazon charges less or more.
Having an apparent flexible rate for larger publishers that can be changed on a whim without notice and appear like extortion is a different issue. I seriously doubt any publishers would have signed up for this deal, at least not without other options, so Amazon is at least the most likely culprit for blame in all regards.
Oh, I should have added that I can read the New England Journal of Medicine. I don't agree that a person must read that particular source of information in order to discuss a topic. Knowledge should come from a variety of sources, this is how you learn who is bullshitting the most.
I never stated that there were no rare cases where we did not use anti-viral medications, I stated that as a general rule we don't (and provided the reasoning).
Medical Doctors receive a license to "Practice" Medicine, they do not receive a certificate claiming that they can fix everything.
Bringing up 112 cases, while surely tragic, still does not change any of my points and I'm pretty sure you are aware of that. Of those 112 cases you mention, exactly how many would have been prevented by an influenza vaccine? There is about a 50% chance that exactly 1 of those people may have been prevented from contracting, and 50% is a high estimate. Interestingly one of those cases is from 2006 and the others are from 2013.
It is a fact that influenza numbers for _everything_ are inflated. Some additional facts are that the success rate for the vaccine are inflated, the reported side effects for the vaccine are minimized (reports of stricken submissions), and there have been cases of influenza contracted _after_ receiving the vaccine are reported as "side effects" of the vaccine. Those are easy to verify, _if_ you are willing to do the work.
As I stated very clearly above (and mention to someone else) I am not against vaccines. I do however believe in the Socratic definition of Philosophy which requires "truth and honesty" above all other goals. When people or groups are proven to fabricate and falsify information as a method of manipulating behavior, I no longer trust what they claim. If you honestly trust a person or group known to fabricate or falsify data, shame on you.
If you want to debate _real_ numbers and start a public education forum, I'm all for that. Lets start an ad campaign and tell people the truth and let them decide if the risk is worth the potential reward. Medical doctors that are not pro-vaccine are generally ostracized, but I'm sure I can get some anonymous submissions.
I will have to investigate the reported CDC policies for accepting cases as influenza that your linked article mentioned, because I don't believe this at face value. While I agree that there is criteria, I have never read anything giving this strict of criteria. You should also be skeptical of this since you stated previously that it was expensive to prove influenza as a culprit in cases, implying that it was okay to give bad numbers due to complexity/expense.
Lastly, as I state above (or below) to someone else, my concern with vaccines for influenza is not just that they are not effective. Consider that everyone including HHS was demanding hand sanitizers be used all the time everywhere, and a decade later we find out how harmful this has been to our ability to fight foreign bodies. We don't have enough information yet to prove that the same thing is not happening with normal strains of flu. We don't understand the normal mutation process for the virus, let alone our additional impact (if any, I'm fair) from vaccination. We do however know that a vaccine seems to only be good for 1 year at a time, which means a life time of annual shots to avoid something that is "normally" not life threatening.
First, there is no influenza magic bullet. Many people that don't get the vaccine never get the flu, even when exposed. Some people get flu like symptoms for several days after getting the vaccine, and get the flu anyway. Getting a new vaccine every year because the flu has mutated will never change, because we have not yet figured out the mutation principles of the virus. Even if we did, we currently have no way of stopping the mutation.
I gave more accurate numbers from the CDC, and the real answer from the source is "we don't know how many die, so we inflate the numbers as much as possible to scare people into getting a vaccine.". The combination of numbers from pneumonia and flu is one of many issues. Elderly people that were on their death beds already are counted as flu victims if they are showing symptoms, even if they had no influenza virus. Many immunologists and medical professionals complain about this, but of course pharmaceutical companies bury their concerns.
As I said to start.. You can get any vaccine you want. I'm not telling you not to take a flu vaccine, I'm telling you that the hype and hysteria trying to get people to vaccinate for influenza is largely hype and hysteria. If you think the numbers are worth the risk to you, go for it. I can read the numbers for myself and don't see the risk vs. reward worth the potential impact from a vaccine.
Consider this: We realized after people were using hand sanitizer for over a decade that it was really harmful to our health and breaks down our natural ability to fight off bacteria and viruses. This is not a "new" thing with science and medicine, just the most recent. When it comes to influenza vaccines, how do we know we are not doing similar? Currently, we don't. So again, if you see enough risk vs. reward I'm all for you doing it. Volunteer all you want.
At the same time, I'm a firm believer that Socrates had it right. The goal of knowledge is not manipulation, but the truth. In other words, if you explain the issues fairly on both sides people would be able to make their own decisions, instead of relying on deceit to get people to behave like someone want's them to behave. Further, a person or system caught manipulating and/or lying should be scrutinized on all future statements.
the 24/7 news vultures would shred any political who enacted such legislation to bits.
So you change the system without any Constitutional amendment process as defined by law to suite a few private individuals that wish to take profits over duty? I'm sorry, but I believe you are looking at this from a bad angle.
It's not entirely the media's fault – a lot of things that happen behind closed doors really shouldn't occur at all
That statement is a circular logic condition based on your first statement, which is not correct in my opinion.
Not that long ago there was this thing called integrity and duty which most journalists had. Many journalists today have the same sense of duty and integrity, but we have allowed the monopolization of "news" agencies and further allowed them to become anything but "news". Journalists don't tend to work there, actors and actresses that read teleprompters and look pretty work there.
Citizens can take some of the blame for this, but the Government allowed monopolization and allowed media to outright lie to citizens. Let's not forget that the media outlets started both fabricating "news" and omitting real "news" in order to manipulate the public. I put most of the blame on the Government actors that allowed this to occur.
I fully agree that the issue is complex but propose a different view of the problem. Citizens are being attacked from many sources, citizens need to learn to defend themselves from those various sources. If you want to give up and stay home, that is your right and I'm okay with that. However, it is not right to tell others that they should maintain a broken status quot because it's a complex problem to solve.
The real solution is that we have to fix a whole lot of things. Media, Corrupt politicians, Corrupt laws, Banking monopolization, etc. etc.. Nope, there is not one person that can fix them all so pick a target and get people motivated to make a fix.
If you don't start somewhere you will never get started, and things will never change without action. Wake people up, teach them what's happening, and point them to a solution. Any solution is better than no action, even if it may be the wrong one (almost).
**I'll get off my soap box now**
But Ronald Reagan said trickle down really works!! He would not have lied, he's a great American hero according to Rush Limbaugh. **snark** in case you missed it, and yes problems started long before Reagan.
I doubt that he's played out his hand since he seems to know very well how to play the game. Even if he did though, the US Government has made a lot of US Soldiers and Veterans very very angry withe the newest leaks on the VA. Sure, there are a few scumbags in 3 letter agencies that would kill Snowden to turn a quick buck, but a whole lot of people with military training should be watching his back if he comes back to the US.
Very interesting times we are living in, because currently the US is a powder keg waiting for a spark. Everyone knows that the system is corrupt to the core, but few are sure what to do with the situation and many hope for a peaceful solution.