As someone who has recently been involved in transplant cases (doing psych evals of the potential recipients) here's a bit of what I learned (this might just be true at my particular hospital).
Preference is given to people who demonstrate that they will be able to maintain the new organ after transplant. People with good social networks (or a lot of money to hire full time nursing care) are far less likely to be rejected.
Age generally is not factored in (a lot of transplants fail within 10 years anyway) unless the patient is very young or very old. The thing about a transplant is that it generally won't let someone live a normal life, just a better and longer one.
The parent is correct about the "usefulness" of the organ. If the team of doctors don't think it will significantly improve quality of life, they won't do it.
Money is a factor. If someone like Steve Jobs can pay for a transplant out of pocket without dealing with insurance, he could move up the list just because there is no need to wait for insurance bureaucracy.
Most of the waiting comes from waiting for a good "match." If someone has a family member or friend who wants to donate, then they go ahead with the donation process (after extensive medical and psychological testing, at least that's the way it's done at major hospitals). With livers, people can donate a piece of their liver although it's much more common to have a standard transplant from a deceased donor.
Basically, much of what the parent said was correct. However, money can influence the process (I'm not talking about bribing, which is both unethical and illegal). Other than some serious psychological issues and/or a history of non-compliance with medical care, there is very little that disqualifies people from transplantation. A lot of it comes down to the "lottery" of finding an organ match. Steve probably would get some preferential treatment though.
I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. They already have the right to marry. What gays are fighting for is to change the meaning of marriage to include a relationship between same-sex individuals. That is a major change in the definition of marriage. Gays don't want the same right, they want a new right. Same-sex marriage has never been a right. This isn't just a semantic issue, this has to do with the foundation of civilized society (read the U.N.'s Declaration on Human Rights, for example).
"I think people who think that gays are a very small minority are being insular and naive."
Or, we accept the best research available that shows that at most, homosexual individuals make up about 2% of the U.S. population. That is a very small minority. Could the number be higher than that? Certainly. However, no well-designed study yet has shown higher percents than that. In the future, even if the percent increases, it doesn't mean past research was wrong - people change.
Please cite your source for this. Preferably something with a good stratified random sample of a few thousand people. That 10% number (and bumping it to 13% is really stretching it) came from old Kinsey reports. His estimates have been shown to be grossly overstated. The actual value (according to a 2005 CDC report) is between 1-2%. That is a small minority.
It's never been clear cut. It takes a very loose interpretation of the Constitution to come up with a right to privacy, which is the issue at the core of this type of wiretapping. I actually have pretty mixed feelings about the issue. Like you said, it's not clear cut.
If any evidence that led to the war was trumped up, it was not done by anyone in the administration. It is a lie that Pres. Bush lied to us to start the war in Iraq.
I'll admit that the authors of the op-ed pieces are biased (who isn't?), but they have their facts straight and have good sources, which is more than anyone who ever said that Pres. Bush lied to us to start the war in Iraq. I'm certainly no fan of war and I don't think we should have ever started the war in Iraq but I'm tired of people conveniently forgetting that all major intelligence agencies, including the UN believed that Hussein was a threat and that he had WMD and was planning on using them - either on his own country or on another country. It wasn't until the U.S. went in to Iraq that we discovered that there were no WMDs (but there was evidence Hussein was trying to make some).
Show me the reports of Cheney making any money from Haliburton's contracts. He had some monetary benefits (a few hundred thousand dollars, which is next to nothing to what he was previously making) come to him while VP as the result of deferred compensation, which is standard practice for any retiring business executive. I believe all that money has been donated to charity though - but I could be wrong.
He would have made a lot more cash just by remaining an executive instead of becoming VP.
5) is wrong. Where is Cheney profiting from Haliburton's contracts? He does not own any stock in the company. If you accept anti-Cheney arguments as true, the closest people to Cheney who are financially profiting are friends. So, does that make Cheney just a nice guy who wants his friends do well?
"maybe the president shouldn't order or condone illegal or unethical behavior"
I agree but what's legal and illegal is up to interpretation; that's what our legal system is based on - judges, lawyers, and courts all having a say in interpreting laws. Further, what's considered ethical and unethical is also widely variable. I'm not condoning illegal or unethical behavior but the issue many times is not black and white.
Who offsets the carbon of the carbon offsetting companies?
Buying "carbon credits" is ridiculous. It's a bit like a company using all the water in one river in the U.S. then paying other companies to drill wells for villages in Africa (i.e., being "water neutral"). It's great for the Africans but doesn't solve the problem of destroying a whole river ecosystem in the U.S.
I'm all for reducing noxious emissions and conserving energy but buying carbon credits does not solve the problem.
"(if you drive a car...I'll tax the street;
(if you try to sit...I'll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold...I'll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk...I'll tax your feet."
The parent post didn't say he/she thought the whole Bible was just allegorical or poetic; just the creation story as found in Genesis. There are plenty of us Christians who believe that the creation story told in Genesis is simply a simplistic retelling of what happened. For example, the 6 days (+1 of rest) are not actually 24 hours or 1000 years are anything like that - they simply represent periods of time, which could have been millions or billions of years.
Further, a belief like creatio ex nihilo, for example, is not Biblical. It takes some serious stretching of scripture to argue that point. The clearest reference to it is in 2 Maccabees, which is not generally considered canonical scripture by most Christians.
In any case, you can accept parts of the Bible as allegorical or poetical (although I'd argue that those are very few) without accepting the whole Bible as allegorical or poetic. I do not believe the creation story is simply allegorical or poetic, I just believe that it is not a fully accurate description of what happened (however, it's no more simplistic than most textbook descriptions of evolution - the issue is much more complex than can be described in a few sentences).
"Without a working visual cortex, nothing from the eyes enters the brain. At all. Most likely, he is using sound or air pressure."
I'm sorry but that's completely incorrect. Light enters the eyes, hits the retina, is converted to an electrochemical signal, sent out the optic nerve, passes the optic chiasm, then heads back to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. Most of the "signal" goes back to V1 in the occipital lobe but some signal also goes to the hypothalamus, superior colliculus (on the brainstem), and the pretectal nucleus in the brainstem, although that last pathway is mainly for pupillary constriction.
This man likely had much of V1 damaged but not all of it. It would be enough to ruin his conscious experience of vision without destroying all of the neurons sending information dorsally to the parietal lobes.
Blindsight is a well-known condition and is fairly common in such cases of cortical blindness. Scientists have known about it for many years. This research isn't new, it's just more confirmation of what we already know. So yes, this man is still having a lot of information enter the brain; much of it just can't be synthesized into usable form by his primary visual cortex. This has nothing to do with incorporating other senses, although those certainly could affect his ability to walk through a real maze.
There are two types of creativity (innovation) - thinking up things no one has done before and taking what a bunch of people have done before and putting it all together. Apple does some of the first but mostly does the second type. They not only put it all together, they do so in an attractive package that usually works well.
Angband http://rephial.org/ is all the kids will ever need. Just kidding, but it is an awesome game if kids get past the fast that it is ASCII character-based.
The problem is that all statistics are created by people. Anything created by people is subject to bias. Also, statistics is a very fuzzy field. Just the other day I was running some factor analyses and could get quite different results by doing some minor tweaking. It's easy to show what you want to show in science. That's not supposed to be how it works (a "good" scientist assumes that his hypothesis is wrong and tries to disconfirm it but that's not what happens much in real life). Further, what gets published is usually positive (i.e., there were some significant findings). In other words, most journals are not going to publish null results. That doesn't mean that what numbers are out there are wrong, it just means that insisting to be shown numbers isn't necessarily going to be that helpful.
The U.S. Government was designed to be inefficient. That's why there are multiple branches with checks and balances. Some of the hierarchical bureaucratic inefficiencies should be fixed but in general, the U.S. government was designed to resist change (it certainly allows it, of course). Although, there is more autonomy in the U.S. government than in many other governments, which allows more efficiency (theoretically).
I agree. It's actually far more trollish than a lot of other posts that get modded troll (regardless of your beliefs on the matter - and I don't believe the earth was created 6000 years ago).
I attended public schools up through high school. The education I received was far above average (my high school was the top - most academic and best - in the state). I attended a private university for a BS and MS but am now at a public university working on a PhD. My public school education rivals any private education you can receive in this country. As one of the other children posters stated, there are a lot of good public schools just like there are a lot of poor private schools.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, much of what the parent said was correct. However, money can influence the process (I'm not talking about bribing, which is both unethical and illegal). Other than some serious psychological issues and/or a history of non-compliance with medical care, there is very little that disqualifies people from transplantation. A lot of it comes down to the "lottery" of finding an organ match. Steve probably would get some preferential treatment though.
In order to survive, many of these sites and companies will just have to do the unthinkable and evolve to keep up with web trends.
For a good discussion of where the trends could be going, read this article: http://tech.lds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=371&Itemid=5
"Medieval theocracy"
I'm sorry if your country is a little backward. I live in the U.S. and live in a secular representative democracy (or democratic republic).
"all they want is the same right"
I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. They already have the right to marry. What gays are fighting for is to change the meaning of marriage to include a relationship between same-sex individuals. That is a major change in the definition of marriage. Gays don't want the same right, they want a new right. Same-sex marriage has never been a right. This isn't just a semantic issue, this has to do with the foundation of civilized society (read the U.N.'s Declaration on Human Rights, for example).
"I think people who think that gays are a very small minority are being insular and naive."
Or, we accept the best research available that shows that at most, homosexual individuals make up about 2% of the U.S. population. That is a very small minority. Could the number be higher than that? Certainly. However, no well-designed study yet has shown higher percents than that. In the future, even if the percent increases, it doesn't mean past research was wrong - people change.
"At 10-13% of US society"
Please cite your source for this. Preferably something with a good stratified random sample of a few thousand people. That 10% number (and bumping it to 13% is really stretching it) came from old Kinsey reports. His estimates have been shown to be grossly overstated. The actual value (according to a 2005 CDC report) is between 1-2%. That is a small minority.
You can't bring too much logic into /. discussions; it causes some people's heads to implode. :)
"the issue has not always been so clear cut."
It's never been clear cut. It takes a very loose interpretation of the Constitution to come up with a right to privacy, which is the issue at the core of this type of wiretapping. I actually have pretty mixed feelings about the issue. Like you said, it's not clear cut.
If any evidence that led to the war was trumped up, it was not done by anyone in the administration. It is a lie that Pres. Bush lied to us to start the war in Iraq.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,4808346.story
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007540
I'll admit that the authors of the op-ed pieces are biased (who isn't?), but they have their facts straight and have good sources, which is more than anyone who ever said that Pres. Bush lied to us to start the war in Iraq. I'm certainly no fan of war and I don't think we should have ever started the war in Iraq but I'm tired of people conveniently forgetting that all major intelligence agencies, including the UN believed that Hussein was a threat and that he had WMD and was planning on using them - either on his own country or on another country. It wasn't until the U.S. went in to Iraq that we discovered that there were no WMDs (but there was evidence Hussein was trying to make some).
Show me the reports of Cheney making any money from Haliburton's contracts. He had some monetary benefits (a few hundred thousand dollars, which is next to nothing to what he was previously making) come to him while VP as the result of deferred compensation, which is standard practice for any retiring business executive. I believe all that money has been donated to charity though - but I could be wrong.
He would have made a lot more cash just by remaining an executive instead of becoming VP.
5) is wrong. Where is Cheney profiting from Haliburton's contracts? He does not own any stock in the company. If you accept anti-Cheney arguments as true, the closest people to Cheney who are financially profiting are friends. So, does that make Cheney just a nice guy who wants his friends do well?
PET scans "measure" metabolism, which is what the parent poster must have been confused with.
"maybe the president shouldn't order or condone illegal or unethical behavior"
I agree but what's legal and illegal is up to interpretation; that's what our legal system is based on - judges, lawyers, and courts all having a say in interpreting laws. Further, what's considered ethical and unethical is also widely variable. I'm not condoning illegal or unethical behavior but the issue many times is not black and white.
Who offsets the carbon of the carbon offsetting companies?
Buying "carbon credits" is ridiculous. It's a bit like a company using all the water in one river in the U.S. then paying other companies to drill wells for villages in Africa (i.e., being "water neutral"). It's great for the Africans but doesn't solve the problem of destroying a whole river ecosystem in the U.S.
I'm all for reducing noxious emissions and conserving energy but buying carbon credits does not solve the problem.
"(if you drive a car...I'll tax the street; (if you try to sit...I'll tax your seat; (if you get too cold...I'll tax the heat; (if you take a walk...I'll tax your feet."
The Beatles nailed it 40 years ago.
The parent post didn't say he/she thought the whole Bible was just allegorical or poetic; just the creation story as found in Genesis. There are plenty of us Christians who believe that the creation story told in Genesis is simply a simplistic retelling of what happened. For example, the 6 days (+1 of rest) are not actually 24 hours or 1000 years are anything like that - they simply represent periods of time, which could have been millions or billions of years.
Further, a belief like creatio ex nihilo, for example, is not Biblical. It takes some serious stretching of scripture to argue that point. The clearest reference to it is in 2 Maccabees, which is not generally considered canonical scripture by most Christians.
In any case, you can accept parts of the Bible as allegorical or poetical (although I'd argue that those are very few) without accepting the whole Bible as allegorical or poetic. I do not believe the creation story is simply allegorical or poetic, I just believe that it is not a fully accurate description of what happened (however, it's no more simplistic than most textbook descriptions of evolution - the issue is much more complex than can be described in a few sentences).
"Without a working visual cortex, nothing from the eyes enters the brain. At all. Most likely, he is using sound or air pressure."
I'm sorry but that's completely incorrect. Light enters the eyes, hits the retina, is converted to an electrochemical signal, sent out the optic nerve, passes the optic chiasm, then heads back to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. Most of the "signal" goes back to V1 in the occipital lobe but some signal also goes to the hypothalamus, superior colliculus (on the brainstem), and the pretectal nucleus in the brainstem, although that last pathway is mainly for pupillary constriction.
This man likely had much of V1 damaged but not all of it. It would be enough to ruin his conscious experience of vision without destroying all of the neurons sending information dorsally to the parietal lobes.
Blindsight is a well-known condition and is fairly common in such cases of cortical blindness. Scientists have known about it for many years. This research isn't new, it's just more confirmation of what we already know. So yes, this man is still having a lot of information enter the brain; much of it just can't be synthesized into usable form by his primary visual cortex. This has nothing to do with incorporating other senses, although those certainly could affect his ability to walk through a real maze.
There are two types of creativity (innovation) - thinking up things no one has done before and taking what a bunch of people have done before and putting it all together. Apple does some of the first but mostly does the second type. They not only put it all together, they do so in an attractive package that usually works well.
Oops, fact, not fast.
Angband http://rephial.org/ is all the kids will ever need. Just kidding, but it is an awesome game if kids get past the fast that it is ASCII character-based.
None of those options are legal. Whether or not they should be is a different question.
The problem is that all statistics are created by people. Anything created by people is subject to bias. Also, statistics is a very fuzzy field. Just the other day I was running some factor analyses and could get quite different results by doing some minor tweaking. It's easy to show what you want to show in science. That's not supposed to be how it works (a "good" scientist assumes that his hypothesis is wrong and tries to disconfirm it but that's not what happens much in real life). Further, what gets published is usually positive (i.e., there were some significant findings). In other words, most journals are not going to publish null results. That doesn't mean that what numbers are out there are wrong, it just means that insisting to be shown numbers isn't necessarily going to be that helpful.
The U.S. Government was designed to be inefficient. That's why there are multiple branches with checks and balances. Some of the hierarchical bureaucratic inefficiencies should be fixed but in general, the U.S. government was designed to resist change (it certainly allows it, of course). Although, there is more autonomy in the U.S. government than in many other governments, which allows more efficiency (theoretically).
I agree. It's actually far more trollish than a lot of other posts that get modded troll (regardless of your beliefs on the matter - and I don't believe the earth was created 6000 years ago).
I attended public schools up through high school. The education I received was far above average (my high school was the top - most academic and best - in the state). I attended a private university for a BS and MS but am now at a public university working on a PhD. My public school education rivals any private education you can receive in this country. As one of the other children posters stated, there are a lot of good public schools just like there are a lot of poor private schools.