However, whether or not you get immunised doesn't just affect you; it affects all those whom you go on to infect when you get infected (or become a carrier), because you chose against immunisation. It's a network effect. If you are talking about highly contagious airborn viruses, that act in a matter of days and often reach critical epidemic levels, you might have a point.
But in this case, when the disease can only be spread through sexual contact, has a low rate of transmittion, and when infection with the disease only turns to cancer in a tiny percentage of cases... It just isn't a public health issue. With immunization, or without, this will have a negligable effect on the overall lifespan and general health of the population (unlike polio, or measels, or other immunizations).
So, given that the public as a whole are affected, isn't it reasonable for them to have some input to your decision? If your kid gets immunized, your kid is immune, so the public isn't really effected by the decision. Even in the case of highly contagious diseases, those who are immunized are immune. The only people at risk are the people who choose not to recieve the immunization, and the assumption is that most people will choose to recieve the immunizations.
If you are talking that when someone else is sick, that has social costs for society... well, in that case there is virtually nothing that the government couldn't regulate - as virtually all actions have some sort of social cost. It gives the government carte blanche for a totalitarian state.
I mean, the more sex partners a woman has, the more likely she is to get an infection that leads to cirvical cancer (the immunizations only work for some types of infections). There is a far greater risk from having lots of sex partners, than from not recieving the immunizations (I am not even including the risk of other STDs like HIV or Hepititus). Should we require woman to register with the government for each sex partner she has, and to implement a strict limit on sex partners a woman has? No, I believe not, because a person's body is their property, and they should be allowed to do whatever they want with it... I am using this situation as an extreme example of the whole nanny state thing being taken too far, but already there is a growing number of people who are suggesting just that (coming from the same ideological background as the people who support manditory immunizations). No doubt, in 5 or 10 years, many governments will institute sex-partner registration and rationing schemes, under the pretense of public health. Once we accept the logic of the nannie state (the government must force people to do things for their own good), then there is really no end to just how crazy the government policies will get.
This ad is no more a risk that Star Wars is a risk (kids fighting with "lightsabers" filled with gasoline"), Superman is a risk ("kids jumping out of windows")... In virtually anything fun, there is something that can be imitated by a child to ill effect.
The difference is that 20+ years ago people understood that kids do crazy stuff, and need to be watched... where as now, people have lost all sense of reality and are willing to go to any totalitarian extreme to avoid actually watching their own kids.
If someone demanded that all muslims submit a request for a conscientious objection to christianity affidavit form on the internet, and pending government approval, were put on a government muslim registration list in order to practice their religion, you wouldn't think that was meant to harrass or intimidate muslims?
How about to be allowed to participate in a public demonstration, a person must first register (through an easy to use online system), to get a public demonstration licence? Sound good?
Also, you can submit a quest via the internet... but that doesn't mean you will recieve an exemption. Only people who have specific pre-approved religious or philisophical objections will be given the exemption. Opting out is a privledge, not a right.
That's what the government thinks too. That's why they allow people to refuse to get vaccinated. I'm glad we're all on the same side of this story, it just puzzles me why you're so violent in your agreement with what the government is doing. That is NOT what the government is doing. People need to get special permission from the State in order to opt-out, and that permission will only be granted if the people can PROVE they have a specific religious or philisophical objection to the vaccinations. Even then, they will be put on a special government watchlist, and have to show government certification papers to prove the kid is exempt. The system is clearly designed to harrass and intimidate anyone who chooses not to get the vaccine. For all practical purposes, all female children are forced to get the vaccine!
You are missing the point... if the drug is so wonderful, why force people to take the drug? Why not give people the facts, and let them make the choice themselves?
By mandating in Texas it allows low-income families to get the vaccine without insurance. And by mandating the vaccine it forces insurance companies to pay for it so your out of pocket cost is now lower. But that is not the reason they are mandating it. If they wanted to make sure poor people could get the vaccine, they could just make the vaccine available for free at the local health department, like they do with flu shots and other vaccines. They are mandating the vaccine because they want to FORCE people to get the vaccine, plain and simply. The government wants to establish that it owns your body, and the Merk wants to force everyone to purchase the vaccine so it makes profits. It has ABSOLUTLY NOTHING to do with helping poor people!
And if someone doesn't want to get vaccinated they can opt out. Bullshit. You know damn well that the system is set up to force people to take the vaccine.
What if they made a law requiring that all people must be heterosexual... unless they fill out special paperwork to give them permission to be homosexual. They would fill out the paperwork, talk to a government psychologist who would certify them gay, get their name added to a government list, and recieve a special heterosexuality exemption certificate that they could show to police. You know damn well that if someone set up a system like this, they are doing it to harras and persecute homosexuals.
What if they made a law requiring that all people must be Christians... unless they fill out special paperwork to give them permission to practice other religions or be athiest. They would go to a government office, offer "proof" to the government that they are of another religion, their name would be added to a special "non-christian" list made by the government, and they would get a special exemption certificate that would allow them to avoid manditory Christian activities. You know damn well that if someone suggested a system like this, that it is set up to harrass or persecute non-christians.
Well, now they have a system where parents can supposedly "opt-out" of giving the kid the vaccine... only they have to get special permission from the government, speak with social service caseworkers and government officials to explain their position, get added to a government watchlist, and be under suspicion from the government, etc. The system is set up to intimidate and harrass people into giving their kid the vaccine. If people truly have the choice, then they wouldn't need to "opt-out".
But imagine someone came up with a vaccine for tooth decay, and we'll assume it was expensive, too. Would you argue that it's cheaper to provide (assumed less effective) dentistry to 'underserved' kids and adults? (Oh, and you didn't advance the 'moral' argument, but this analogy makes plain how stupid it is. How many people would argue seriously against a 'dental caries' vaccine because you can avoid tooth decay by good behavior, and it might encourage kids to eat more sweets leading to more obesity?) No one is argueing against a vaccine against cancer or tooth decay. People are argueing against a MANDITORY vaccine! People are arguing against being forced to take a drug, against their own free will!
I would most certainly oppose any attempts by the government to FORCE ME to take a vaccine against tooth decay. I own my body, I am not a slave, and no amount of arguement on economics or cost overrides my right to choose what drugs I will take and what drugs I will not take!
If people don't want to take the vaccine, then no-one should be forcing them to take the vaccine. Period. End of story!
The moment any religeon appraoches anyone that didn't specifically ask, that religeon should be outlawed..or at least taxed. See, you are the perfect example of how facism is growing in America. You want to ban religions or philosophies that disagree with you, so long as you can make some convoluted case that "someone might die".
I am a hardcore athiest, I think that concenting adults should be free to have whatever kind of sex act they want, and I definitly don't believe in "sin". Yet I am totally against forcing anyone to take any sort of drug that they don't concent to take. And, I don't want to persecute religions just because I don't agree with them about something.
Our fore fathers would be disgusted at how religeon is running amok. What is going on today is exactly what they didn't want. The idea was you can practice religeon, but not interfere with government, the wall between Church and state is falling. Our forefathers would be disgusted by facists like you... people who want to force other people to take drugs against their free will... people who want to ban and persecute religions who hold different beliefs from themselves. Why don't you go to North Korea, or some place more in line with your totalitarian thinking, and certainly don't invoke the founding fathers to support your viciously intolerant worldview.
The ability to opt-out is already in Texas law, and reportedly applies to all vaccinations. When Perry announced his executive order, he added that the HPV vaccination was voluntary.
No, it is not totally voluntary... It requires special permission to not get the vaccination. You have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, provide documentation, etc.
How about this: The Governor of Texas signs a bill that says everyone must go to a Christian church on Sundays. They aren't forcing anyone though, all you need to do is go to the Secretary of States office, wait in line for a couple hours, then speak with an interviewer and provide documentation on why you religiously or philisophicly oppose Christianity, and then the State would give you a special certificate and put you on a special list that certifies you don't have to go to a Christian church on Sunday. Sound good to you?
So if the vaccine is so great, then why does the government need to force people to take the vaccine? If it is so amazing, wouldn't people voluntarily take the drug?
It is always funny to see when people who are against the "evil corporations" suddenly become freindly to the big corporations. Corporation selling life-saving vaccine for profit? EVIL! Corporation selling vaccine for profit, and using the government to force people to take it against their own free will... well, that is just too deliciously authoritarian that socialists can't resist falling in love with the corporation in those cases!
Establishing that the government owns people and their bodies and gets to force them to do things to their bodies against their own free will is such an important symbolic victory in the whole Nanny State Big Brother concept, that those people are willing to forgive a little capitalistic profit in those cases!
If what you are saying is true, and the public discourse in the EU is some byzintine code of double meanings and behind the scenes agendas... well then, it means that the EU isn't a very democratic institution. A democratic institution is transparent, open, and easily understood by the electoriate.
Fact of the matter is I *can* do more, much more, than I could with my PC from 20 years ago. And I can do it in an easier way (blame Vista/OS X all you want -- they're still better UIs than what we used in '87). That's called "progress", regardless if the memory footprint grows or not (and the fundamental tenants of computing stay largely the same).
That is true, when you are talking about 20 years.
With the exception of games and multimedia, everything on my XP machine is no faster, and takes 5-10 times more memory than it did back on my Windows 95 machine with contemporary software at that time. I have seen ZERO improvement in editing documents, ZERO improvement in web browsing (other than having 100 times the bandwidth)... my computing experience is in fact a bit slower and less useful.
I do understand that as time goes on, things improve, but there is absolutly no reason for the bloat and inefficency in modern PC software. Unless I am playing games, or doing video rendering, or some such stuff, my computing experience is now better now than 10 years ago.
I have more respect for an actors that insists on a "No-post editing" clause and can proudly let everyone know that is the case.
Why? Why are digital effects bad? Why is post editing bad?
And don't give me crap about artistic integrity... if it was about integrity, most of the actors in Hollywood today would have a hard time finding work. These people are saying "no-post editing" because they feel it devalues their labor, and hurts them economicly.
I think you are missing a very important point in your rant. In today's world, you eating that bacon while chugging a soda and smoking a Marlboro costs me money. When you have a heart attack, or have to take $1500 worth of meds each month to keep yourself functioning, that raises my health insurance rates. Once your actions effect the lives of others, you are no longer free to act. It is part of the social contract that we all agree to in this society. Except nearly every behavior effects society in some way. For example, homosexuals statisticly have a higher incidence of certain sexualy transmitted diseases (such as HIV, hepatitis). Should we ban homosexuality because it raises insurance rates? Sports with a high injury rates, such as football, hockey, skateboarding, etc. raise your insurance rates as well. Should we ban those physical activities? Computer use discourages physical activity and exercise, and therefore people who spend a lot of time in front of computers have health problems that raise your insurance rates. Should we set strict quotas on how much time people spend on computers?
Let me give you a situation where your very arguement was unfortunatly all too common in the past... What about when a black person moves to a white neighborhood, and the whites are worried about their property values going down from having a black family in the neighborhood? Since the actions of the black person are clearly negatively effecting the white people (lowering their property values), does the social contract say that they can ban the black person from their neighborhood?
Tell me any activity in the world to do, and I am sure I can use your arguement to make a pretty compelling case why that activity should be banned. Your interpretation of the "social contract" basicly gives government carte blanche to ban anything they don't like... and to eliminate all personal freedoms.
If you live in a freer country, then you can use an insurance company that offers lower premiums to those who take care of their health by not smoking, exercising, and eating properly. If you live in a country with socialized medicine, then subsidizing those who abuse their health is simply the price you pay for collectivization.
How much effort are you willing to put into finding black market light bulbs?
It won't be "black market", so much as "grey market". For example, at a local dollar store I purchased some funny cold medicine... normally cold medicine in the U.S. comes with a package with a bunch of warnings, a bunch of safety information, serial numbers, FDA approval info, etc. This, of course, had none of that information except for a small label that said "made in china".
Now, I am sure you wouldn't be able to find non-FDA approved cold medicine in your local chain drugstore, but there are plenty of dollar stores, corner stores, and little retail places that fly under the radar that it is still profitable to smuggle non-approved chinese cold medicine into the U.S..
Likewise, you probably will find incandescent bulbs in little independent stores that cater to lower income people.
Now, the only reason I even knew about this was because of someone I know that suffers from it... http://www.lupus.org/education/brochures/photosens itivity.html Skip down to the #3 in the "How can you protect yourself against ultraviolet light?" section and you'll see that this law could adversely affect those that have this condition.
The government screws people and destroys lives all the time. The core concept of social democracy is screwing minorities in order to serve the "social will" of the majority. Those people will just have to learn to suffer in silence.
It would have 12 buttons, and make phone calls... and would be waterproof, have a huge freakin battery, and survive a fall from a low flying airplane. Why are no companies making the kind of cell phone I want? No MP3 player, no alarm clock, no text messaging, but broadcast a signal strong enough to stop your grandpa's pace maker, and heavy enough to be used as a meelee weapon in a bar fight!
In the message you are replying to, the writer meant that the broadcasts are intelligently designed, in that they are created by an intelligent creature. In that case, a pizza is intelligently designed. Understand? Intelligent design is a 100% proven true concept, in that intelligent people design stuff all the time.
In the kind of "intelligent design" arguement given by Creationists, the entire universe is intelligently designed by an all-powerful omnipotent god. That type of ID is not testable, as anything that is all-powerful has the power to circumvent cause and effect.
If you want to argue that God is a technologically advanced alien, then "Intelligent Design" could be testable. But if you want to argue that God is supernatural, then by definition it is outside the realm of science.
A friend of my is an engineer, and test drives automobiles at high speeds (as well as testing vehicle handling on ice, etc.). He has extensive training, probably more so than your average cop. How far do you think he would get if when he speeds he said "Oh, I have training!".
Or they'd just beat the crap out of you and steal your camera...
Fortunatly my camera is a cell phone, and the images would be stored on servers in several countries (you aren't going to track them down and seize the pictures before they are made public). Stealing the camera is no longer an option.
What I know is that they devote a substantial amount to health and education (health standards are comparable to those of rich, developped countries, embargo and all)
How do you know this? Where are you getting your information? Since the Cuban government doesn't allow any foreigners to collect health statistics, and there isn't any sort of multi-party democracy where government statistics would be under scrutiny by opposing political parties, you have to accept that they spend a substantial amount on health and education purely on faith. Those with a soft spot in their heart for Communist dictatorship usually take the Cuban government's word on the issue, while others tend to be skeptical.
Much like that supermodel Helena Houdova who was arrested for taking pictures of homeless kids in Cuba, which is considered counter-revolutionary terrorism because "Cuba doesn't have homeless children", there is a certain suspention of disbelief that socialists are willing to have when it comes to the desperate poverty in Cuba. ( http://www.radio.cz/en/article/75411 )
Although, given that Cuba openly admits to flying in top doctors and high tech equipment to treat Castro, I don't dispute that the Cuban upper-class have access to advanced western-style medical treatment... but I don't think they are flying in top surgeons from Spain and Swizterland to treat the average guy on the street.
But I am getting off topic: If you greatly help a repressive regime, for no profit, that is good? But make a profit and that same act is suddently, magicly transformed into an evil act? Even when it helps the repressive regime LESS than the no-profit act? Geez, no wonder socialism is such a messed up ideology! You evaluate the morality of acts based on their motive, as opposed to the outcome.
And all that aside, I think that the U.S. should drop the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. has been Castro's greatest ally (even more so now than when Castro was being funded by the CIA before he switched sides to the Soviets)... Castro can blame all the poverty caused by incompetent mismanagement and flawed central planning, and blame it on the "evil capitalists". It gives the Cuban government a perfect scapegoat. It also gets Cubans to rally around Castro (as the people of any soveriegn nation resent interference by foriegn governments)... Had the U.S. ended the embargo 30 years ago, Castro would have probably gone the way of Pol Pot, or Nicolae Ceausescu. Castro, from his beginings as an apolitical revolutionary for hire, to nowadays being idolized by reactionaries as a sort of proxy act of token anti-Americanism, is 100% the creation of idiotic American foreign policy.
Genetic modification is the artificial changing of DNA... you can say that a specific DNA change is harmful, so that a specific type of engineered potato is bad... but that doesn't say anything about GM foods. The safety or danger of the foods would have to be evaluated on the specific genetic changes made. Even then, the GM products don't carry any more risk than plants created by mutation breeding (in fact, GM was concieved as a less risky version of mutation breeding).
That, of course, is totally ignoring the fact that the guy conducting the research was a hardcore anti-GM activist before the research. It is like asking activist creationists to do an impartial study on evolution.
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But in this case, when the disease can only be spread through sexual contact, has a low rate of transmittion, and when infection with the disease only turns to cancer in a tiny percentage of cases... It just isn't a public health issue. With immunization, or without, this will have a negligable effect on the overall lifespan and general health of the population (unlike polio, or measels, or other immunizations). So, given that the public as a whole are affected, isn't it reasonable for them to have some input to your decision? If your kid gets immunized, your kid is immune, so the public isn't really effected by the decision. Even in the case of highly contagious diseases, those who are immunized are immune. The only people at risk are the people who choose not to recieve the immunization, and the assumption is that most people will choose to recieve the immunizations.
If you are talking that when someone else is sick, that has social costs for society... well, in that case there is virtually nothing that the government couldn't regulate - as virtually all actions have some sort of social cost. It gives the government carte blanche for a totalitarian state.
I mean, the more sex partners a woman has, the more likely she is to get an infection that leads to cirvical cancer (the immunizations only work for some types of infections). There is a far greater risk from having lots of sex partners, than from not recieving the immunizations (I am not even including the risk of other STDs like HIV or Hepititus). Should we require woman to register with the government for each sex partner she has, and to implement a strict limit on sex partners a woman has? No, I believe not, because a person's body is their property, and they should be allowed to do whatever they want with it... I am using this situation as an extreme example of the whole nanny state thing being taken too far, but already there is a growing number of people who are suggesting just that (coming from the same ideological background as the people who support manditory immunizations). No doubt, in 5 or 10 years, many governments will institute sex-partner registration and rationing schemes, under the pretense of public health. Once we accept the logic of the nannie state (the government must force people to do things for their own good), then there is really no end to just how crazy the government policies will get.
This ad is no more a risk that Star Wars is a risk (kids fighting with "lightsabers" filled with gasoline"), Superman is a risk ("kids jumping out of windows")... In virtually anything fun, there is something that can be imitated by a child to ill effect.
The difference is that 20+ years ago people understood that kids do crazy stuff, and need to be watched... where as now, people have lost all sense of reality and are willing to go to any totalitarian extreme to avoid actually watching their own kids.
If someone demanded that all muslims submit a request for a conscientious objection to christianity affidavit form on the internet, and pending government approval, were put on a government muslim registration list in order to practice their religion, you wouldn't think that was meant to harrass or intimidate muslims?
How about to be allowed to participate in a public demonstration, a person must first register (through an easy to use online system), to get a public demonstration licence? Sound good?
Also, you can submit a quest via the internet... but that doesn't mean you will recieve an exemption. Only people who have specific pre-approved religious or philisophical objections will be given the exemption. Opting out is a privledge, not a right.
You are missing the point... if the drug is so wonderful, why force people to take the drug? Why not give people the facts, and let them make the choice themselves?
What if they made a law requiring that all people must be heterosexual... unless they fill out special paperwork to give them permission to be homosexual. They would fill out the paperwork, talk to a government psychologist who would certify them gay, get their name added to a government list, and recieve a special heterosexuality exemption certificate that they could show to police. You know damn well that if someone set up a system like this, they are doing it to harras and persecute homosexuals.
What if they made a law requiring that all people must be Christians... unless they fill out special paperwork to give them permission to practice other religions or be athiest. They would go to a government office, offer "proof" to the government that they are of another religion, their name would be added to a special "non-christian" list made by the government, and they would get a special exemption certificate that would allow them to avoid manditory Christian activities. You know damn well that if someone suggested a system like this, that it is set up to harrass or persecute non-christians.
Well, now they have a system where parents can supposedly "opt-out" of giving the kid the vaccine... only they have to get special permission from the government, speak with social service caseworkers and government officials to explain their position, get added to a government watchlist, and be under suspicion from the government, etc. The system is set up to intimidate and harrass people into giving their kid the vaccine. If people truly have the choice, then they wouldn't need to "opt-out".
I would most certainly oppose any attempts by the government to FORCE ME to take a vaccine against tooth decay. I own my body, I am not a slave, and no amount of arguement on economics or cost overrides my right to choose what drugs I will take and what drugs I will not take!
If people don't want to take the vaccine, then no-one should be forcing them to take the vaccine. Period. End of story!
I am a hardcore athiest, I think that concenting adults should be free to have whatever kind of sex act they want, and I definitly don't believe in "sin". Yet I am totally against forcing anyone to take any sort of drug that they don't concent to take. And, I don't want to persecute religions just because I don't agree with them about something. Our fore fathers would be disgusted at how religeon is running amok. What is going on today is exactly what they didn't want. The idea was you can practice religeon, but not interfere with government, the wall between Church and state is falling. Our forefathers would be disgusted by facists like you... people who want to force other people to take drugs against their free will... people who want to ban and persecute religions who hold different beliefs from themselves. Why don't you go to North Korea, or some place more in line with your totalitarian thinking, and certainly don't invoke the founding fathers to support your viciously intolerant worldview.
The ability to opt-out is already in Texas law, and reportedly applies to all vaccinations. When Perry announced his executive order, he added that the HPV vaccination was voluntary.
No, it is not totally voluntary... It requires special permission to not get the vaccination. You have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, provide documentation, etc.
How about this: The Governor of Texas signs a bill that says everyone must go to a Christian church on Sundays. They aren't forcing anyone though, all you need to do is go to the Secretary of States office, wait in line for a couple hours, then speak with an interviewer and provide documentation on why you religiously or philisophicly oppose Christianity, and then the State would give you a special certificate and put you on a special list that certifies you don't have to go to a Christian church on Sunday. Sound good to you?
So if the vaccine is so great, then why does the government need to force people to take the vaccine? If it is so amazing, wouldn't people voluntarily take the drug?
It is always funny to see when people who are against the "evil corporations" suddenly become freindly to the big corporations. Corporation selling life-saving vaccine for profit? EVIL! Corporation selling vaccine for profit, and using the government to force people to take it against their own free will... well, that is just too deliciously authoritarian that socialists can't resist falling in love with the corporation in those cases!
Establishing that the government owns people and their bodies and gets to force them to do things to their bodies against their own free will is such an important symbolic victory in the whole Nanny State Big Brother concept, that those people are willing to forgive a little capitalistic profit in those cases!
They take people's word for it.
If what you are saying is true, and the public discourse in the EU is some byzintine code of double meanings and behind the scenes agendas... well then, it means that the EU isn't a very democratic institution. A democratic institution is transparent, open, and easily understood by the electoriate.
Fact of the matter is I *can* do more, much more, than I could with my PC from 20 years ago. And I can do it in an easier way (blame Vista/OS X all you want -- they're still better UIs than what we used in '87). That's called "progress", regardless if the memory footprint grows or not (and the fundamental tenants of computing stay largely the same).
That is true, when you are talking about 20 years.
With the exception of games and multimedia, everything on my XP machine is no faster, and takes 5-10 times more memory than it did back on my Windows 95 machine with contemporary software at that time. I have seen ZERO improvement in editing documents, ZERO improvement in web browsing (other than having 100 times the bandwidth)... my computing experience is in fact a bit slower and less useful.
I do understand that as time goes on, things improve, but there is absolutly no reason for the bloat and inefficency in modern PC software. Unless I am playing games, or doing video rendering, or some such stuff, my computing experience is now better now than 10 years ago.
My god... you weren't joking... it actually said that!!! That totally pushed my wig back!
I have more respect for an actors that insists on a "No-post editing" clause and can proudly let everyone know that is the case.
Why? Why are digital effects bad? Why is post editing bad?
And don't give me crap about artistic integrity... if it was about integrity, most of the actors in Hollywood today would have a hard time finding work. These people are saying "no-post editing" because they feel it devalues their labor, and hurts them economicly.
Let me give you a situation where your very arguement was unfortunatly all too common in the past... What about when a black person moves to a white neighborhood, and the whites are worried about their property values going down from having a black family in the neighborhood? Since the actions of the black person are clearly negatively effecting the white people (lowering their property values), does the social contract say that they can ban the black person from their neighborhood?
Tell me any activity in the world to do, and I am sure I can use your arguement to make a pretty compelling case why that activity should be banned. Your interpretation of the "social contract" basicly gives government carte blanche to ban anything they don't like... and to eliminate all personal freedoms.
If you live in a freer country, then you can use an insurance company that offers lower premiums to those who take care of their health by not smoking, exercising, and eating properly. If you live in a country with socialized medicine, then subsidizing those who abuse their health is simply the price you pay for collectivization.
How much effort are you willing to put into finding black market light bulbs?
It won't be "black market", so much as "grey market". For example, at a local dollar store I purchased some funny cold medicine... normally cold medicine in the U.S. comes with a package with a bunch of warnings, a bunch of safety information, serial numbers, FDA approval info, etc. This, of course, had none of that information except for a small label that said "made in china".
Now, I am sure you wouldn't be able to find non-FDA approved cold medicine in your local chain drugstore, but there are plenty of dollar stores, corner stores, and little retail places that fly under the radar that it is still profitable to smuggle non-approved chinese cold medicine into the U.S..
Likewise, you probably will find incandescent bulbs in little independent stores that cater to lower income people.
Now, the only reason I even knew about this was because of someone I know that suffers from it... http://www.lupus.org/education/brochures/photosens itivity.html Skip down to the #3 in the "How can you protect yourself against ultraviolet light?" section and you'll see that this law could adversely affect those that have this condition.
The government screws people and destroys lives all the time. The core concept of social democracy is screwing minorities in order to serve the "social will" of the majority. Those people will just have to learn to suffer in silence.
It would have 12 buttons, and make phone calls... and would be waterproof, have a huge freakin battery, and survive a fall from a low flying airplane. Why are no companies making the kind of cell phone I want? No MP3 player, no alarm clock, no text messaging, but broadcast a signal strong enough to stop your grandpa's pace maker, and heavy enough to be used as a meelee weapon in a bar fight!
I want the civilian version of this:
http://home.att.net/~wd0giv/Phones/ta838.jpg
You are mistaking words for concepts.
In the message you are replying to, the writer meant that the broadcasts are intelligently designed, in that they are created by an intelligent creature. In that case, a pizza is intelligently designed. Understand? Intelligent design is a 100% proven true concept, in that intelligent people design stuff all the time.
In the kind of "intelligent design" arguement given by Creationists, the entire universe is intelligently designed by an all-powerful omnipotent god. That type of ID is not testable, as anything that is all-powerful has the power to circumvent cause and effect.
If you want to argue that God is a technologically advanced alien, then "Intelligent Design" could be testable. But if you want to argue that God is supernatural, then by definition it is outside the realm of science.
A friend of my is an engineer, and test drives automobiles at high speeds (as well as testing vehicle handling on ice, etc.). He has extensive training, probably more so than your average cop. How far do you think he would get if when he speeds he said "Oh, I have training!".
A few strategicly placed "potholes" do wonders to stop speeders!
Or they'd just beat the crap out of you and steal your camera...
Fortunatly my camera is a cell phone, and the images would be stored on servers in several countries (you aren't going to track them down and seize the pictures before they are made public). Stealing the camera is no longer an option.
What I know is that they devote a substantial amount to health and education (health standards are comparable to those of rich, developped countries, embargo and all)
How do you know this? Where are you getting your information? Since the Cuban government doesn't allow any foreigners to collect health statistics, and there isn't any sort of multi-party democracy where government statistics would be under scrutiny by opposing political parties, you have to accept that they spend a substantial amount on health and education purely on faith. Those with a soft spot in their heart for Communist dictatorship usually take the Cuban government's word on the issue, while others tend to be skeptical.
Much like that supermodel Helena Houdova who was arrested for taking pictures of homeless kids in Cuba, which is considered counter-revolutionary terrorism because "Cuba doesn't have homeless children", there is a certain suspention of disbelief that socialists are willing to have when it comes to the desperate poverty in Cuba. ( http://www.radio.cz/en/article/75411 )
Although, given that Cuba openly admits to flying in top doctors and high tech equipment to treat Castro, I don't dispute that the Cuban upper-class have access to advanced western-style medical treatment... but I don't think they are flying in top surgeons from Spain and Swizterland to treat the average guy on the street.
But I am getting off topic: If you greatly help a repressive regime, for no profit, that is good? But make a profit and that same act is suddently, magicly transformed into an evil act? Even when it helps the repressive regime LESS than the no-profit act? Geez, no wonder socialism is such a messed up ideology! You evaluate the morality of acts based on their motive, as opposed to the outcome.
And all that aside, I think that the U.S. should drop the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. has been Castro's greatest ally (even more so now than when Castro was being funded by the CIA before he switched sides to the Soviets)... Castro can blame all the poverty caused by incompetent mismanagement and flawed central planning, and blame it on the "evil capitalists". It gives the Cuban government a perfect scapegoat. It also gets Cubans to rally around Castro (as the people of any soveriegn nation resent interference by foriegn governments)... Had the U.S. ended the embargo 30 years ago, Castro would have probably gone the way of Pol Pot, or Nicolae Ceausescu. Castro, from his beginings as an apolitical revolutionary for hire, to nowadays being idolized by reactionaries as a sort of proxy act of token anti-Americanism, is 100% the creation of idiotic American foreign policy.
Genetic modification is the artificial changing of DNA... you can say that a specific DNA change is harmful, so that a specific type of engineered potato is bad... but that doesn't say anything about GM foods. The safety or danger of the foods would have to be evaluated on the specific genetic changes made. Even then, the GM products don't carry any more risk than plants created by mutation breeding (in fact, GM was concieved as a less risky version of mutation breeding).
That, of course, is totally ignoring the fact that the guy conducting the research was a hardcore anti-GM activist before the research. It is like asking activist creationists to do an impartial study on evolution.