What are the odds that propagation of S waves (okay, or P waves) is equivalent to the rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun? Quite unlikely (I'm too lazy to look it up for particular geological formations). But, time zones are discrete, propagation of S and/or P waves is most definitely continuous - what, they stop and wait for an hour at (politically determined) time zone boundaries and then propagate at infinite speed across the next time zone? Sorry, my IQ 80 scientific mind is baffled by how this could work -- too many transitions between infinite speed and zero speed once every hour.
Simple probability and statistics. According to some upstream quotes (sorry, I never made it past the first page of the New Testament when I was 8 years old -- it was just too absurd - I'm not into Sword and Sorcery), no one knows when The Rapture will happen. So, anyone claiming it will happen at a specific instant (in local time no less) seems to have a pretty long odds of being wrong. Therefore, the "it's not happening at 18:00:00.000 Local Time on May 21, 2011" is, IMHO, much less likely to be correct than those that take the opposite position -- sort of like betting that a specific sequence of numbers WILL hit the lottery vs. betting that the same sequence WON'T hit.
Fortunately however, we can likely even eliminate the need to consider morale with a simple bit of accounting that suggests that even a savings of 50 seconds per day may make financial sense.
If one assumes an 8 hour work day (well, it could happen), 50 seconds a day is 50/(8*60*60)*100 = 0.17% of the workday. If the fully burdened cost of a developer is $150K/year (including salary, benefits [insurance, 401(k) match, ESPP, bonuses, tuition reimbursement...], SS taxes, office space and related expenses, computer resources, HR costs, amortized recruiting costs, and the like), the 50 seconds a day of improved productivity is an annual savings of 0.0017*$150K = $260.42. If a monitor lasts about three years (seems reasonable -- most places I've worked they are not replaced that often), the savings over the life of the monitor is then $781.25. This is more than sufficient to pay for the monitor, electricity for three years, and some IT overhead of ordering/installing/maintaining the second monitor. One thing that I've not factored in is the need for dual headed graphics adapter -- that would change the equation a bit.
This seems a little hard to believe for a train or a cruise ship or even a bus. I'd buy this on planes though.
For example, a popular school bus line weighs up to 36,200 pounds (without fuel I believe) and transports up to 90 passengers. In my experience, school buses cram about as many people as possible into the available space and have the lowest level of amenities so I would expect them to have about the lightest weight "per passenger capacity" of any bus. Anyway, this works out to an empty bus weighing about 400 pounds per passenger -- then add the passengers. I would be surprised if adding another 50% (assuming each passenger is 200 pounds - probably high when discussing urban transport where there's no real luggage) weight would result in a "huge" difference in CO2 output between an empty and a full bus.
I would expect that municipal buses and train cars would have even less discrepancy between their weights when fully occupied vs. empty.
The lawsuit which eventually lead to Clinton's perjury was brought by a private citizen -- nothing to do with Congress (well, except that IIRC the private citizen was suing under a law passed by Congress -- actually, I think it was a session of Congress controlled by Democrats but don't recall for sure). There are a lot of laws I don't like, but I follow them and, if I didn't, I wouldn't perjure myself to avoid the consequences. If you don't like a law, get it changed via the Legislative or Judicial branches - don't lie about it when you're being sued under that law... esp. if you're the POTUS (esp. one which is a lawyer and a member of the bar).
Private citizens go to jail for simply lying to a Federal Agent -- that's not even perjury. Why should the POTUS get a pass?
Obviously you don't think perjury is a big deal. What about theft? What about murder? I assume that if you were seeking recourse for theft of your property or murder of a loved one, you would expect the other side to lie under oath and would have absolutely no problem with it? For every act of perjury, there is usually another party who risks being denied justice because of it. Witnesses telling the truth under oath is a critical component of our justice system -- I expect hoods and gangbangers to perjure themselves, not so much the President of the United States.
Generally, it seems, you have no problem then with a witness lying regarding a sexual harassment suit? Is that because you approve of sexual harassment in the workplace, or figure you will always be on the delivering side of it, or what?
And, no, the VP would have become President -- that's hardly civil war. There wasn't a civil war after Nixon resigned under almost certain threat of impeachment (and likely conviction and expulsion).
Yes, but he did unfortunately perjure himself while he was a sitting President. That's illegal for you or me (and him). Given that the Department of Justice is in the Executive branch and is responsible for enforcement of Federal Laws and administration of Justice in the US, that's a pretty huge deal - sort of like the Chief of Police getting caught hot-wiring and stealing a car.
I didn't like it when he spoke to all Americans and lied directly to our faces, but it wasn't a crime (and most of us didn't really believe it of course - we were well prepared not to after his "I didn't inhale" lie years earlier). I thought he showed poor judgement in his selection of a mistress (someone who was a bit more likely to be discrete would have been a much better choice for everyone - himself, his family, and his country), but it wasn't a crime. The least of my concerns is that he cheated on Ms. Clinton (all other things being equal, I'd trust the guy more who hadn't, but generally I consider that to be between him and Hillary).
Perhaps, but voters seem to have very short memories.
Recall that shortly after the initial "battle" of the Gulf War in January 1991, President George H. W. Bush had incredibly high popularity ratings (about 90% as I recall). Nevertheless, in November 1992, he was defeated by Bill Clinton (admittedly with the help of the spoiler Ross Perot).
Really, "it's the economy, stupid" (to quote Bill Clinton's campaign guru, James Carville).
Housing prices continue to decline in spite of Obama's efforts to "fix" them. Unemployment is still very high and not rebounding as many had hoped even a year ago. The Federal budget and the budgets of many large states are in serious trouble. Well, you get the idea...
Obama can't just run on "I got Osama",
The best thing Obama can hope for if the economy doesn't show strong signs of recovery by November 2012 is that the Republicans field a weak candidate (as they did in 2008 and as the Democrats did in 2004). BTW, Newt would likely be such a candidate.
At work there are several basins in each rest room. The faucets on all but one basin in each rest room detect (if you're lucky) your hands and turn the water on/off automatically. The remaining faucet has a conventional 'single lever' control (giving you the added benefit of being able to actually adjust the temperature) which you turn on/off manually (I assume this is for handicapped usage but don't know).
I usually use the automatic faucets, but if there are others using the basins I will end up using the "manual" faucet perhaps once a week or so...
...and about half the time I just walk away and forget to turn it off.
I never forget to turn the water off at home but in this situation at work it's just easy to forget because it's needed so rarely.
Actually what would most likely happen is that gasoline would become completely unavailable in the US except on the black market when world oil prices went above some threshold. When world oil prices exceeded the threshold for an extended period of time (a few weeks), most service stations would go bankrupt because they lacked income to pay their mortgage and other loans (of course, their employees and most employees in the supply chain would be laid off long before then).
Alternatively, when the world oil price was near or above the threshold, charges at gas stations would begin to look like airline ticket charges have begun to look. There would be a "Refining Fee" of $0.56/gallon, a "Pump Servicing Fee" of $0.27/gallon, an "Administrative Charge" of $2.00/transaction, a "Fuel Transportation Fee" of $0.66/gallon, a "Fuel Distribution Facilities Fee" of $.42/gallon, a "Vapor Recovery Recovery Fee" of $0.50/minute or fraction thereof that the pump is in use, a "Facilities Access Fee" of $1.50/vehicle, a "Spill Remediation Fee" of $0.15/gallon, a "Station Personnel Service Fee" of $0.65/gallon, an "Operations Energy Recovery Fee" of $0.43/gallon (okay, I'm bored, but I could come up with many more fees if I could actually charge them and owned a gas station). Eventually, the price of the actual product would only be $2.00/gallon, but that would only be if you purchased it in bulk at the refinery and you had purchased a "Facilities Access Contract" for a lot of money. The consumer would then be paying $6/gallon -- and when oil prices dropped, most of the charges would remain for a long time.
Usually we use taxes to create incentives and disincentives, nudging the public in a direction determined by government.
The purpose of taxes isn't to control behavior or restrict personal choice, it's to raise revenue. Of course, lobbying groups try to move taxation to where it least affects them OR to impose their social agenda on others -- but that's not the purpose of taxes, it's just a natural side effect that yields our ungainly tax code.
The damage done to the roads is largely a function of weight AND distance the vehicle travels on public roads - a truck that is only driven on public roads 5K miles per year does a lot less damage to the roads than the same truck driven 30K miles per year. Of course, there are other factors including speed and type of road they are driven on.
Maybe Alex is a seriously fierce dog and was dreaming about chomping on a perp's shin and hanging on and only discovered that he was actually biting on a board as he awoke in pain as his teeth broke. Not necessarily dumb, just taking his work home with him and working overtime w/o extra pay.
(If this is the case, I don't recommend that Alex's handler let him sleep in the same room as the handler!)
Of course, Alex's caregiver in old age will, fairly likely, eventually have Alex euthanized without Alex's informed consent.
I suppose children should get to do the same to Mom and Dad when they get old and "it's time" in the kids' sole judgement? That's likely to create some very interesting estate planning - especially in the area of conditions in wills.
Yep:) But does it plug into a MH-60K power system and is it Mil Spec? That 'Seal Mark XII UPS' designation is going to cost you some serious extra dough. Defense contractors need to make their money somewhere.
One would hope that if that if the computers were powered on (and connected to a UPS if the power was out), the Seals were prepared to, and did, extract the machines without powering them off. Surely they brought along their own small customized UPS that they could then plug into the helicopter power supply so the Seal Mark XII UPS didn't need to be heavy or large.
Come on, I'll bet OBL clicked on the 'cache passwords and key files in memory' option two or three years ago because he was sooo tired of typing 'USA_47_tH3_Satan__no_more_V474446s_for_TH3M, w3_get_them_255' every time he stuck in another USB drive.
Nothing wrong with pot (as opposed to snorting crystal drain cleaner).
However, used in "excess" (whatever that is - probably depends by person), it seems to reduce drive and motivation. If the reason you can't get a job is because you're stoned all day, I'm really not interested in paying for your food stamps. No different than alcohol in that respect. Likely large quantities of pot are safer than large quantities of alcohol in both the short and long term -- but we probably need more studies on this.
Absolutely. However, don't ask a public or private ER to treat you at their or taxpayer's expense when you snort crystal drain cleaner. Don't expect food stamps or welfare from taxpayers when you make stupid choices that make you un/underemployed. Don't expect even medicare to take care of ailments that are likely traceable to such stupid decisions.
I agree completely with you, but there are two sides to the coin. On one there is personal freedom, on the other is personal responsibility and accountability. Pick both or neither.
The comparison is invalid. Labor requirements at a 24 hour store are pretty predictable and, if the lines get too long due to an unpredictable event, people will decide not to wait and the cost is pretty small to all parties for deferring optional purchases.
However, in medicine, many emergencies and complications come up which greatly complicates scheduling if high OR and personnel utilization is necessary to keep costs down. Routine surgeries end up sometimes having significant unexpected, and time consuming, complications. And, a need for unexpected emergency surgeries crop up.
For example, a family member was quite ill in a hospital for an extended period of time. He had a well respected surgeon overseeing his care and had had one surgery which was expected to be the only one required. Around 7PM a few nights after the surgery, things went poorly and the surgeon felt it prudent to "go back in" to deal with the complication, which we approved and he did (successfully it turns out). The unplanned surgery was completed around 1AM in the morning and, had it not been required, the surgeon would have been at home, eaten a dinner with the family etc. and been completely rested for another patient's surgery scheduled for 7AM the next morning -- as it was, he probably only got four or five hours sleep before the 7AM surgery (and probably several others following it).
Sure, a more junior "staff" surgeon with no specific "hands on (in?)" background with the patient could have been assigned to the emergency surgery, but this would not have been ideal for my relative's outcome. Or, the 7AM surgery could have probably been canceled (at least if the patient requested it in response to the amount of sleep the surgeon had) -- but this would have left an OR empty (possibly for hours), an anesthesiologist idle, and possibly other surgeons scheduled to work on the case idle -- all resulting in costly under-utilization of staff and facilities. Of course the delayed surgery might not happen for days or weeks until a slot with the right surgeons could be scheduled.
I'm under the impression this happens regularly - and good surgeons are not fungible assets.
(I've seen people turn up in A&E (ER) depts for things as basic as a cold or a knee graze).
I've always wondered why this is a problem (and it is in the USA also). Why don't all ERs just have a clinic that uses non ER docs to take care of stuff like that - maybe staffed so it's usually got long lines during off hours to encourage people to wait until morning or deal with it themselves. A quick triage by a trained nurse gets you routed over to the clinic for non-emergency stuff.
In the USA, the "non emergency" ER patients are often using the ER as their primary source of healthcare because they don't have coverage. Not sure why in the UK with the NHS they would be motivated to show up at an ER instead of a clinic or doctor's office -- why?
It's easier to find a bag of Doritos than a couple of tomotoes sometimes.
Of course, much of that has to do with the fact that Doritos can sit in vending machines, store shelves, trucks, or warehouses at almost any temperature for many weeks w/little ill effect; boxes of them can be stacked high or dropped without harm; and they are produced from substances with easy inexpensive storage requirements so they can be manufactured year around as needed.
Tomatoes on the other hand have a limited production season unless grown in expensive hot houses so to provide you with a tomato in California in February, it comes from somewhere far away. A tomato that has sat on the shelf of the retailer for two weeks has a negative value (it's turned into something that needs to be disposed of). Tomatoes that are bred to be picked and shipped green and ripened weeks later (this is required to offer a tomato at any reasonable price in California in February) are of course mostly just red spheres with a tasteless interior -- hence not very interesting to spend money on.
If you add up the subsidies sunk in nuclear (from the good ol' times started with the Manhattan Project)
It's not reasonable to count any weapons development costs as "subsidies" to the nuclear power generation industry. Even if a nuclear power plant had never been designed or built, these weapons expenditures would have still have been made.
Without advances made for the space program, today's iPhone would not exist - would you therefore claim the iPhone was subsidized by the government via the Apollo program?
It is probably, however, fair to claim that some costs of military intervention in the Middle East are subsidies to the petroleum industry because if that area didn't have oil (leaving mostly sand, rocks, and some horrific weather), we wouldn't care nearly as much about it and might just let Israel nuke much of it as a warning.
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What are the odds that propagation of S waves (okay, or P waves) is equivalent to the rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun? Quite unlikely (I'm too lazy to look it up for particular geological formations). But, time zones are discrete, propagation of S and/or P waves is most definitely continuous - what, they stop and wait for an hour at (politically determined) time zone boundaries and then propagate at infinite speed across the next time zone? Sorry, my IQ 80 scientific mind is baffled by how this could work -- too many transitions between infinite speed and zero speed once every hour.
Simple probability and statistics. According to some upstream quotes (sorry, I never made it past the first page of the New Testament when I was 8 years old -- it was just too absurd - I'm not into Sword and Sorcery), no one knows when The Rapture will happen. So, anyone claiming it will happen at a specific instant (in local time no less) seems to have a pretty long odds of being wrong. Therefore, the "it's not happening at 18:00:00.000 Local Time on May 21, 2011" is, IMHO, much less likely to be correct than those that take the opposite position -- sort of like betting that a specific sequence of numbers WILL hit the lottery vs. betting that the same sequence WON'T hit.
...if only I had two monitors -- /. was buried under Eclipse so I lost my chance :(
Me too, but computing resources tend to find their way to me.
So that's what happened to my monitor! I really found it hard to believe the cleaning crew stole it.
Agreed.
Fortunately however, we can likely even eliminate the need to consider morale with a simple bit of accounting that suggests that even a savings of 50 seconds per day may make financial sense.
If one assumes an 8 hour work day (well, it could happen), 50 seconds a day is 50/(8*60*60)*100 = 0.17% of the workday. If the fully burdened cost of a developer is $150K/year (including salary, benefits [insurance, 401(k) match, ESPP, bonuses, tuition reimbursement...], SS taxes, office space and related expenses, computer resources, HR costs, amortized recruiting costs, and the like), the 50 seconds a day of improved productivity is an annual savings of 0.0017*$150K = $260.42. If a monitor lasts about three years (seems reasonable -- most places I've worked they are not replaced that often), the savings over the life of the monitor is then $781.25. This is more than sufficient to pay for the monitor, electricity for three years, and some IT overhead of ordering/installing/maintaining the second monitor. One thing that I've not factored in is the need for dual headed graphics adapter -- that would change the equation a bit.
This seems a little hard to believe for a train or a cruise ship or even a bus. I'd buy this on planes though.
For example, a popular school bus line weighs up to 36,200 pounds (without fuel I believe) and transports up to 90 passengers. In my experience, school buses cram about as many people as possible into the available space and have the lowest level of amenities so I would expect them to have about the lightest weight "per passenger capacity" of any bus. Anyway, this works out to an empty bus weighing about 400 pounds per passenger -- then add the passengers. I would be surprised if adding another 50% (assuming each passenger is 200 pounds - probably high when discussing urban transport where there's no real luggage) weight would result in a "huge" difference in CO2 output between an empty and a full bus.
I would expect that municipal buses and train cars would have even less discrepancy between their weights when fully occupied vs. empty.
The lawsuit which eventually lead to Clinton's perjury was brought by a private citizen -- nothing to do with Congress (well, except that IIRC the private citizen was suing under a law passed by Congress -- actually, I think it was a session of Congress controlled by Democrats but don't recall for sure). There are a lot of laws I don't like, but I follow them and, if I didn't, I wouldn't perjure myself to avoid the consequences. If you don't like a law, get it changed via the Legislative or Judicial branches - don't lie about it when you're being sued under that law ... esp. if you're the POTUS (esp. one which is a lawyer and a member of the bar).
Private citizens go to jail for simply lying to a Federal Agent -- that's not even perjury. Why should the POTUS get a pass?
Obviously you don't think perjury is a big deal. What about theft? What about murder? I assume that if you were seeking recourse for theft of your property or murder of a loved one, you would expect the other side to lie under oath and would have absolutely no problem with it? For every act of perjury, there is usually another party who risks being denied justice because of it. Witnesses telling the truth under oath is a critical component of our justice system -- I expect hoods and gangbangers to perjure themselves, not so much the President of the United States.
Generally, it seems, you have no problem then with a witness lying regarding a sexual harassment suit? Is that because you approve of sexual harassment in the workplace, or figure you will always be on the delivering side of it, or what?
And, no, the VP would have become President -- that's hardly civil war. There wasn't a civil war after Nixon resigned under almost certain threat of impeachment (and likely conviction and expulsion).
Yes, but he did unfortunately perjure himself while he was a sitting President. That's illegal for you or me (and him). Given that the Department of Justice is in the Executive branch and is responsible for enforcement of Federal Laws and administration of Justice in the US, that's a pretty huge deal - sort of like the Chief of Police getting caught hot-wiring and stealing a car.
I didn't like it when he spoke to all Americans and lied directly to our faces, but it wasn't a crime (and most of us didn't really believe it of course - we were well prepared not to after his "I didn't inhale" lie years earlier). I thought he showed poor judgement in his selection of a mistress (someone who was a bit more likely to be discrete would have been a much better choice for everyone - himself, his family, and his country), but it wasn't a crime. The least of my concerns is that he cheated on Ms. Clinton (all other things being equal, I'd trust the guy more who hadn't, but generally I consider that to be between him and Hillary).
But if he decides he wants to screw Hillary Clinton on the side? I don't care
Well, I wouldn't "care" either in some sense, but I would have to question his judgement on multiple levels.
Perhaps, but voters seem to have very short memories.
Recall that shortly after the initial "battle" of the Gulf War in January 1991, President George H. W. Bush had incredibly high popularity ratings (about 90% as I recall). Nevertheless, in November 1992, he was defeated by Bill Clinton (admittedly with the help of the spoiler Ross Perot).
Really, "it's the economy, stupid" (to quote Bill Clinton's campaign guru, James Carville).
Housing prices continue to decline in spite of Obama's efforts to "fix" them. Unemployment is still very high and not rebounding as many had hoped even a year ago. The Federal budget and the budgets of many large states are in serious trouble. Well, you get the idea...
Obama can't just run on "I got Osama",
The best thing Obama can hope for if the economy doesn't show strong signs of recovery by November 2012 is that the Republicans field a weak candidate (as they did in 2008 and as the Democrats did in 2004). BTW, Newt would likely be such a candidate.
How true.
...and about half the time I just walk away and forget to turn it off.
At work there are several basins in each rest room. The faucets on all but one basin in each rest room detect (if you're lucky) your hands and turn the water on/off automatically. The remaining faucet has a conventional 'single lever' control (giving you the added benefit of being able to actually adjust the temperature) which you turn on/off manually (I assume this is for handicapped usage but don't know).
I usually use the automatic faucets, but if there are others using the basins I will end up using the "manual" faucet perhaps once a week or so...
I never forget to turn the water off at home but in this situation at work it's just easy to forget because it's needed so rarely.
Actually what would most likely happen is that gasoline would become completely unavailable in the US except on the black market when world oil prices went above some threshold. When world oil prices exceeded the threshold for an extended period of time (a few weeks), most service stations would go bankrupt because they lacked income to pay their mortgage and other loans (of course, their employees and most employees in the supply chain would be laid off long before then).
Alternatively, when the world oil price was near or above the threshold, charges at gas stations would begin to look like airline ticket charges have begun to look. There would be a "Refining Fee" of $0.56/gallon, a "Pump Servicing Fee" of $0.27/gallon, an "Administrative Charge" of $2.00/transaction, a "Fuel Transportation Fee" of $0.66/gallon, a "Fuel Distribution Facilities Fee" of $.42/gallon, a "Vapor Recovery Recovery Fee" of $0.50/minute or fraction thereof that the pump is in use, a "Facilities Access Fee" of $1.50/vehicle, a "Spill Remediation Fee" of $0.15/gallon, a "Station Personnel Service Fee" of $0.65/gallon, an "Operations Energy Recovery Fee" of $0.43/gallon (okay, I'm bored, but I could come up with many more fees if I could actually charge them and owned a gas station). Eventually, the price of the actual product would only be $2.00/gallon, but that would only be if you purchased it in bulk at the refinery and you had purchased a "Facilities Access Contract" for a lot of money. The consumer would then be paying $6/gallon -- and when oil prices dropped, most of the charges would remain for a long time.
Usually we use taxes to create incentives and disincentives, nudging the public in a direction determined by government.
The purpose of taxes isn't to control behavior or restrict personal choice, it's to raise revenue. Of course, lobbying groups try to move taxation to where it least affects them OR to impose their social agenda on others -- but that's not the purpose of taxes, it's just a natural side effect that yields our ungainly tax code.
The damage done to the roads is largely a function of weight AND distance the vehicle travels on public roads - a truck that is only driven on public roads 5K miles per year does a lot less damage to the roads than the same truck driven 30K miles per year. Of course, there are other factors including speed and type of road they are driven on.
Maybe Alex is a seriously fierce dog and was dreaming about chomping on a perp's shin and hanging on and only discovered that he was actually biting on a board as he awoke in pain as his teeth broke. Not necessarily dumb, just taking his work home with him and working overtime w/o extra pay.
(If this is the case, I don't recommend that Alex's handler let him sleep in the same room as the handler!)
Of course, Alex's caregiver in old age will, fairly likely, eventually have Alex euthanized without Alex's informed consent.
I suppose children should get to do the same to Mom and Dad when they get old and "it's time" in the kids' sole judgement? That's likely to create some very interesting estate planning - especially in the area of conditions in wills.
Yep :) But does it plug into a MH-60K power system and is it Mil Spec? That 'Seal Mark XII UPS' designation is going to cost you some serious extra dough. Defense contractors need to make their money somewhere.
One would hope that if that if the computers were powered on (and connected to a UPS if the power was out), the Seals were prepared to, and did, extract the machines without powering them off. Surely they brought along their own small customized UPS that they could then plug into the helicopter power supply so the Seal Mark XII UPS didn't need to be heavy or large.
Come on, I'll bet OBL clicked on the 'cache passwords and key files in memory' option two or three years ago because he was sooo tired of typing 'USA_47_tH3_Satan__no_more_V474446s_for_TH3M, w3_get_them_255' every time he stuck in another USB drive.
Nothing wrong with pot (as opposed to snorting crystal drain cleaner).
However, used in "excess" (whatever that is - probably depends by person), it seems to reduce drive and motivation. If the reason you can't get a job is because you're stoned all day, I'm really not interested in paying for your food stamps. No different than alcohol in that respect. Likely large quantities of pot are safer than large quantities of alcohol in both the short and long term -- but we probably need more studies on this.
Absolutely. However, don't ask a public or private ER to treat you at their or taxpayer's expense when you snort crystal drain cleaner. Don't expect food stamps or welfare from taxpayers when you make stupid choices that make you un/underemployed. Don't expect even medicare to take care of ailments that are likely traceable to such stupid decisions.
I agree completely with you, but there are two sides to the coin. On one there is personal freedom, on the other is personal responsibility and accountability. Pick both or neither.
The comparison is invalid. Labor requirements at a 24 hour store are pretty predictable and, if the lines get too long due to an unpredictable event, people will decide not to wait and the cost is pretty small to all parties for deferring optional purchases.
However, in medicine, many emergencies and complications come up which greatly complicates scheduling if high OR and personnel utilization is necessary to keep costs down. Routine surgeries end up sometimes having significant unexpected, and time consuming, complications. And, a need for unexpected emergency surgeries crop up.
For example, a family member was quite ill in a hospital for an extended period of time. He had a well respected surgeon overseeing his care and had had one surgery which was expected to be the only one required. Around 7PM a few nights after the surgery, things went poorly and the surgeon felt it prudent to "go back in" to deal with the complication, which we approved and he did (successfully it turns out). The unplanned surgery was completed around 1AM in the morning and, had it not been required, the surgeon would have been at home, eaten a dinner with the family etc. and been completely rested for another patient's surgery scheduled for 7AM the next morning -- as it was, he probably only got four or five hours sleep before the 7AM surgery (and probably several others following it).
Sure, a more junior "staff" surgeon with no specific "hands on (in?)" background with the patient could have been assigned to the emergency surgery, but this would not have been ideal for my relative's outcome. Or, the 7AM surgery could have probably been canceled (at least if the patient requested it in response to the amount of sleep the surgeon had) -- but this would have left an OR empty (possibly for hours), an anesthesiologist idle, and possibly other surgeons scheduled to work on the case idle -- all resulting in costly under-utilization of staff and facilities. Of course the delayed surgery might not happen for days or weeks until a slot with the right surgeons could be scheduled.
I'm under the impression this happens regularly - and good surgeons are not fungible assets.
(I've seen people turn up in A&E (ER) depts for things as basic as a cold or a knee graze).
I've always wondered why this is a problem (and it is in the USA also). Why don't all ERs just have a clinic that uses non ER docs to take care of stuff like that - maybe staffed so it's usually got long lines during off hours to encourage people to wait until morning or deal with it themselves. A quick triage by a trained nurse gets you routed over to the clinic for non-emergency stuff.
In the USA, the "non emergency" ER patients are often using the ER as their primary source of healthcare because they don't have coverage. Not sure why in the UK with the NHS they would be motivated to show up at an ER instead of a clinic or doctor's office -- why?
It's easier to find a bag of Doritos than a couple of tomotoes sometimes.
Of course, much of that has to do with the fact that Doritos can sit in vending machines, store shelves, trucks, or warehouses at almost any temperature for many weeks w/little ill effect; boxes of them can be stacked high or dropped without harm; and they are produced from substances with easy inexpensive storage requirements so they can be manufactured year around as needed.
Tomatoes on the other hand have a limited production season unless grown in expensive hot houses so to provide you with a tomato in California in February, it comes from somewhere far away. A tomato that has sat on the shelf of the retailer for two weeks has a negative value (it's turned into something that needs to be disposed of). Tomatoes that are bred to be picked and shipped green and ripened weeks later (this is required to offer a tomato at any reasonable price in California in February) are of course mostly just red spheres with a tasteless interior -- hence not very interesting to spend money on.
Damn, I need to go buy some Doritos now...
If you add up the subsidies sunk in nuclear (from the good ol' times started with the Manhattan Project)
It's not reasonable to count any weapons development costs as "subsidies" to the nuclear power generation industry. Even if a nuclear power plant had never been designed or built, these weapons expenditures would have still have been made.
Without advances made for the space program, today's iPhone would not exist - would you therefore claim the iPhone was subsidized by the government via the Apollo program?
It is probably, however, fair to claim that some costs of military intervention in the Middle East are subsidies to the petroleum industry because if that area didn't have oil (leaving mostly sand, rocks, and some horrific weather), we wouldn't care nearly as much about it and might just let Israel nuke much of it as a warning.
Move. Doh!