Please note that I have never been outside of North America:
and Europe is a short flight away (wish it were a train ride, but being on an island with a small population prevents that from being built).
Chunnel?
The Chunnel starts in Dover (in Brittain), not in Ireland. Ireland is an island by itself and you need to get a boat or plane to get to England first, so you might as well tack on the extra miles and land an hour later at your chosen destination.
My son is actually 10 and carries an epipen. He's off the chart on the bloodtest for nut-allergies and he can't bear to eat even a milligram of peanuts before having to throw up. And choking. The choking part goes quite slow though - it takes about an hour before it becomes lethal. However, even that varies from time to time. At one time he just fell off the couch right after eating something that turned out to contain pistachios. That was scary.
But in every case we reinforced the message: ALWAYS check what you eat - even if your own parents give it to you, because we too can make a mistake. And ALWAYS make sure you have your medication with you, and go to the doctor quickly. Yes that sucks but the alternative sucks much more. And he's pretty good with that.
I've also been reading about this subject area extensively. While sitting next to someone eating peanuts can be hazardous, there is no list of children dying each year from walking into the same room as a peanut butter sandwich. I assure you that in that case, we'd hear about it a lot more. In fact, there is no such case and even when eating peanut butter sandwiches, dying from it is pretty rare. In 2005, just 11 persons died in the US. From all food allergies combined. And that is almost exclusively from eating the stuff and then either: 1) Failing to get treatment (the Australian kid) or 2) Getting the wrong treatment (American kid) - using an epipen and thinking you're safe if you do. An epipen is NOT treatment, it's a stopgap measure to keep you alive for about 15 minutes so you can get effective treatment - which usually includes pretty strong antihistamines and/or prednison.
So school zones are not a help, they're a hindrance. People feel safer when in actual life the kids are probably LESS safe. When they leave school, there are no more school zones but they still have the expectation that everything is like that. They're trained to be helpless. Get rid of the schoolzones - but do inform the teachers and parents - and educate the kids.
Anyway - I'm putting my money where my mouth is and training my kid instead of expecting society to change for him. We'll just have to see how that works out in the long run, but I'm pretty confident he'll do better in unexpected circumstances than if the world was adjusted to suit him.
Locally, the use of antibacterial soap is not prevalent outside hospital settings. And use in other products is regulated. So I don't see that as an easy explanation but I agree it's probably unhealthy by itself, with or without the allergies.
"Of course we don't hate you. We just sue you because you distracted all the drivers and caused two accidents with your evil good looks. And may I point out, Your honour, that she willfully went out into the street wearing nothing but a jeans and a t-shirt?"
I'm pretty sure the Burka will be implemented in NJ around 2015 as a mandatory dress for both sexes.
I have been wondering for some time now why peanut allergies are virtually unknown in China and were unknown in The Netherlands until say, 15 years ago. Now, it's every third kid that has a pretty dangerous allergy. And it's not a case of overdiagnosing either.
My hypothesis is that while crop growers are very good at hardening the fruits and vegetables against disease and insects, they forget (or rather: ignore) the fact that the reason fruit and vegetables are resistant is because they are using a frightful array of chemical defenses. And those defenses include proteins, most of them not being analyzed since we're talking "harmless and healthy vegetables". I think that if we'd analyze the chemical defenses in the current crops really carefully, we'd probably discover some nasty surprises.
And I agree that it sounds as if US schools are overreacting horribly. Noone will choke to death from touching a peanut butter sandwhich. They won't like it (blisters will likely occur), but that will just teach 'em not to touch places where peanut butter sandwiches have been. But don't blame the kids with allergies for the way your school "handles" this problem. Although this does depend on the age of the kids. At age 3-, you can't expect the kids to take care of this issue themselves. At age 10, I sure as hell expect kids to watch out what they put in their mouth.
That is, if you have an OS project that is located in the US, mostly.
Otherwise you potentially have to deal with several foreign tax services. Oh joy. I'm pretty sure that $5000 is not enough to cover the hassle and aggravation you would get from trying to divide it over several contributors in several different countries with different tax laws.
You're quite right. But trusting the banks never was a really good idea, despite their own propaganda. Spreading your savings over multiple banks is really the prudent thing to do.
Well, not completely. The $300.000 in savings would be partially protected, so you'd lose $200.000 in savings. This happened in the default of the Dutch DSB-bank to some people.
Ofcourse, you would get a claim on the bank in return for your $200.000 but good luck getting that money back. Although in case of the DSB bank it actually may come to pass, since after the owner no longer got to suck the bank dry and they fired all non-essential employees, it started making money at a rather nice rate:)
Note that most mortgages have a clause saying that you cannot compensate payments due by the bank to you by withholding payment from the bank for the mortgage. That is specifically for situations like this because otherwise a default would be impossible to sort out. Also, the mortgage holders could then get rid of their loans by defaulting en masse and also removing all their savings at the same time. To avoid those scenarios the savings and loans are separate financial items.
Usually, yes. In case of a default of either side this would normally void most contracts. This may depend on the laws in your country though. And another thing is that the executor of the bank has farreaching powers, including the power to override contracts in some cases.
Funny thing: as the age of the children goes up, so does the salary. And oh look, so does the percentage of male teachers. And if we want to look for causation, well, locally the government reduced the wages of new teachers by 25% in 1985. My guess would be that afterwards, the percentage of female teachers increased rapidly (or rather, male applicants went elsewhere).
And this has to do with sexism, since it presupposes the fact that the male is the provider and the female is provided for. If females were the ones expected to provide the main family income, they wouldn't be entering into jobs that were guaranteed to never reach that income.
This depends on your local laws. What happened over here last time a bank went under was:
1. Savings are gone if they're over the guaranteed limit - they're used to pay off the creditors in order of priority. Guess what your priority is? Right - somewhere at infinity. Taxes and prioritized creditors come first. 2. Your mortgage is an asset of the bank. They'll keep milking it for all it's worth or resell the mortgage to another bank. Or they can ask you to pay up, effective immediately. Good luck with that.
He's not schrewd enough to realize his tepid steps into the waters of business are just temporary, unless he can make a firm footing for those charging stations nation-wide.
Unlike everyone else who looks at the problem and sees that this is a big issue. But this guy must be stupid. After all, what did *he* ever do while you were making smart slashdot posts? We all know what effort goes into a good snide remark on slashdot!
Go ask an adult survivor of child abuse if they feel upset that their uncle/father/priest/etc may be subjected to rape in prison.
Wrong question. Go ask an adult survivor of child abuse if they feel upset that their uncle/father/priest was a victim of rape before he raped them.
You're assuming the order is always: go rape, get raped. In many cases the order is actually different. So what prison rape is doing, is brutalizing prisoners into rapists. Given the size of the prison population and the fact that prisons are the high school and universities of crime, this is actually making the USA less safe, rather than safer. To add insult to injury, it's also quite expensive.
Staying hungry by eating only about 70% of the calories you should normally eat, is currently the only method known that will increase your lifespan (apart from stopping behaviours like smoking or running naked across snakepits, or trainsurfing). Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to focus on your daily life if you are consistently hungry. But going slightly hungry is pretty good for your health.
On the other hand, I had a standard fat percentage of 12% and when I started working out it dropped a few points. I can tell you that at 10%, I really don't feel too good anymore. YMMV but at 13% I feel much better.
Old science? As in "not my personal theory I just invented"?
Einstein had a perfectly valid alternative to postulating an Ether, i.e. he used Special Relativity to explain the things that used to be explained (with more and more problems) by postulating an Ether. So, using Occam's Razor, the existence of an Ether is no longer a useful scientific theory - unless you can show there is a physical reality that is explained best by postulating an Ether. In which case, we'll need to take a long, hard look at SR again.
I know that XKCD, of course. And certainly you've a point. But research shows that the readers of papers are growing older. Here are some graphs (in Dutch):
The first graph depicts the average age of the reader (not necessarily the subscriber) of the papers, the last graph depicts the percentage of readers of free versus paid papers in each age group (red = free, blue = paid).
There's still more people running *from* Russia than *to* Russia. The reason Snowdon isn't dead yet, is because Russia likes to use him to annoy the USA. Which, I admit, is great - just for having the pleasure of seeing the entire US administration apoplexic.
The second Snowdon actually threatened Putin's interests, he'd be off to a labor camp in Siberia. In the USA he at least gets a somewhat fair trial. In Russia, there wouldn't even be the pretense of one.
I know this whole "choosing between Evil" is confusing, but consider it a case of choosing between plague and ebola. They're both nasty diseases, but you have a bit more chance with one than with the other.
Because the really good in-depth articles are not available online, unless you pay. And I prefer to read at leasure on a large tabloid format, instead of on my mobile or laptop.
That said, there is a whole generation growing up who thinks the generic news with 5 lines of information and 2000 lines of unwarranted conclusions are the standard for news. A fertile field for would-be demagogues.
I especially liked the weaponized "Ebolapox", the crossover between Ebola and smallpox.
How ever did they plan to limit the spread of that, once it had gotten out? Vaccination programs that you run in advance can be copied, and if you think you can do it during a war, well, a few bombs here and there would end your ability to protect yourself, leaving you in the same mess as everyone else. Nice as a doomsday weapon, "everybody dies! game over!" but not much for actually winning a war.
My wife uses Chinese characters on her phone. We bought her an iPhone specifically for the excellent character recognition. No stylus needed - use your finger to draw a character. It works very well. None of her friends use the very slow pinyin method.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect if you look closely you'll find the Stark Industries logo on there somewhere.
More likely the Fukushima logo :)
Please note that I have never been outside of North America:
Chunnel?
The Chunnel starts in Dover (in Brittain), not in Ireland. Ireland is an island by itself and you need to get a boat or plane to get to England first, so you might as well tack on the extra miles and land an hour later at your chosen destination.
My son is actually 10 and carries an epipen. He's off the chart on the bloodtest for nut-allergies and he can't bear to eat even a milligram of peanuts before having to throw up. And choking. The choking part goes quite slow though - it takes about an hour before it becomes lethal. However, even that varies from time to time. At one time he just fell off the couch right after eating something that turned out to contain pistachios. That was scary.
But in every case we reinforced the message: ALWAYS check what you eat - even if your own parents give it to you, because we too can make a mistake. And ALWAYS make sure you have your medication with you, and go to the doctor quickly. Yes that sucks but the alternative sucks much more. And he's pretty good with that.
I've also been reading about this subject area extensively. While sitting next to someone eating peanuts can be hazardous, there is no list of children dying each year from walking into the same room as a peanut butter sandwich. I assure you that in that case, we'd hear about it a lot more. In fact, there is no such case and even when eating peanut butter sandwiches, dying from it is pretty rare. In 2005, just 11 persons died in the US. From all food allergies combined. And that is almost exclusively from eating the stuff and then either:
1) Failing to get treatment (the Australian kid)
or
2) Getting the wrong treatment (American kid) - using an epipen and thinking you're safe if you do. An epipen is NOT treatment, it's a stopgap measure to keep you alive for about 15 minutes so you can get effective treatment - which usually includes pretty strong antihistamines and/or prednison.
So school zones are not a help, they're a hindrance. People feel safer when in actual life the kids are probably LESS safe. When they leave school, there are no more school zones but they still have the expectation that everything is like that. They're trained to be helpless. Get rid of the schoolzones - but do inform the teachers and parents - and educate the kids.
Anyway - I'm putting my money where my mouth is and training my kid instead of expecting society to change for him. We'll just have to see how that works out in the long run, but I'm pretty confident he'll do better in unexpected circumstances than if the world was adjusted to suit him.
Locally, the use of antibacterial soap is not prevalent outside hospital settings. And use in other products is regulated. So I don't see that as an easy explanation but I agree it's probably unhealthy by itself, with or without the allergies.
"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!"
"Of course we don't hate you. We just sue you because you distracted all the drivers and caused two accidents with your evil good looks. And may I point out, Your honour, that she willfully went out into the street wearing nothing but a jeans and a t-shirt?"
I'm pretty sure the Burka will be implemented in NJ around 2015 as a mandatory dress for both sexes.
I have been wondering for some time now why peanut allergies are virtually unknown in China and were unknown in The Netherlands until say, 15 years ago. Now, it's every third kid that has a pretty dangerous allergy. And it's not a case of overdiagnosing either.
My hypothesis is that while crop growers are very good at hardening the fruits and vegetables against disease and insects, they forget (or rather: ignore) the fact that the reason fruit and vegetables are resistant is because they are using a frightful array of chemical defenses. And those defenses include proteins, most of them not being analyzed since we're talking "harmless and healthy vegetables". I think that if we'd analyze the chemical defenses in the current crops really carefully, we'd probably discover some nasty surprises.
And I agree that it sounds as if US schools are overreacting horribly. Noone will choke to death from touching a peanut butter sandwhich. They won't like it (blisters will likely occur), but that will just teach 'em not to touch places where peanut butter sandwiches have been. But don't blame the kids with allergies for the way your school "handles" this problem. Although this does depend on the age of the kids. At age 3-, you can't expect the kids to take care of this issue themselves. At age 10, I sure as hell expect kids to watch out what they put in their mouth.
That is, if you have an OS project that is located in the US, mostly.
Otherwise you potentially have to deal with several foreign tax services. Oh joy. I'm pretty sure that $5000 is not enough to cover the hassle and aggravation you would get from trying to divide it over several contributors in several different countries with different tax laws.
You're quite right. But trusting the banks never was a really good idea, despite their own propaganda. Spreading your savings over multiple banks is really the prudent thing to do.
Well, not completely. The $300.000 in savings would be partially protected, so you'd lose $200.000 in savings. This happened in the default of the Dutch DSB-bank to some people.
Ofcourse, you would get a claim on the bank in return for your $200.000 but good luck getting that money back. Although in case of the DSB bank it actually may come to pass, since after the owner no longer got to suck the bank dry and they fired all non-essential employees, it started making money at a rather nice rate :)
Note that most mortgages have a clause saying that you cannot compensate payments due by the bank to you by withholding payment from the bank for the mortgage. That is specifically for situations like this because otherwise a default would be impossible to sort out. Also, the mortgage holders could then get rid of their loans by defaulting en masse and also removing all their savings at the same time. To avoid those scenarios the savings and loans are separate financial items.
Usually, yes. In case of a default of either side this would normally void most contracts. This may depend on the laws in your country though. And another thing is that the executor of the bank has farreaching powers, including the power to override contracts in some cases.
Funny thing: as the age of the children goes up, so does the salary. And oh look, so does the percentage of male teachers. And if we want to look for causation, well, locally the government reduced the wages of new teachers by 25% in 1985. My guess would be that afterwards, the percentage of female teachers increased rapidly (or rather, male applicants went elsewhere).
And this has to do with sexism, since it presupposes the fact that the male is the provider and the female is provided for. If females were the ones expected to provide the main family income, they wouldn't be entering into jobs that were guaranteed to never reach that income.
For some data, see:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.TCHR.FE.ZS
This depends on your local laws. What happened over here last time a bank went under was:
1. Savings are gone if they're over the guaranteed limit - they're used to pay off the creditors in order of priority. Guess what your priority is? Right - somewhere at infinity. Taxes and prioritized creditors come first.
2. Your mortgage is an asset of the bank. They'll keep milking it for all it's worth or resell the mortgage to another bank. Or they can ask you to pay up, effective immediately. Good luck with that.
He's not schrewd enough to realize his tepid steps into the waters of business are just temporary, unless he can make a firm footing for those charging stations nation-wide.
Unlike everyone else who looks at the problem and sees that this is a big issue. But this guy must be stupid. After all, what did *he* ever do while you were making smart slashdot posts? We all know what effort goes into a good snide remark on slashdot!
Go ask an adult survivor of child abuse if they feel upset that their uncle/father/priest/etc may be subjected to rape in prison.
Wrong question. Go ask an adult survivor of child abuse if they feel upset that their uncle/father/priest was a victim of rape before he raped them.
You're assuming the order is always: go rape, get raped. In many cases the order is actually different. So what prison rape is doing, is brutalizing prisoners into rapists. Given the size of the prison population and the fact that prisons are the high school and universities of crime, this is actually making the USA less safe, rather than safer. To add insult to injury, it's also quite expensive.
Staying hungry by eating only about 70% of the calories you should normally eat, is currently the only method known that will increase your lifespan (apart from stopping behaviours like smoking or running naked across snakepits, or trainsurfing). Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to focus on your daily life if you are consistently hungry. But going slightly hungry is pretty good for your health.
On the other hand, I had a standard fat percentage of 12% and when I started working out it dropped a few points. I can tell you that at 10%, I really don't feel too good anymore. YMMV but at 13% I feel much better.
I wanted a TPM too and I ended up with the HP8560w laptop. A bit pricey for a hardware encryption chip, but not as expensive as a few years ago.
Old science? As in "not my personal theory I just invented"?
Einstein had a perfectly valid alternative to postulating an Ether, i.e. he used Special Relativity to explain the things that used to be explained (with more and more problems) by postulating an Ether. So, using Occam's Razor, the existence of an Ether is no longer a useful scientific theory - unless you can show there is a physical reality that is explained best by postulating an Ether. In which case, we'll need to take a long, hard look at SR again.
I know that XKCD, of course. And certainly you've a point. But research shows that the readers of papers are growing older. Here are some graphs (in Dutch):
http://www.journalismlab.nl/2013/02/hoe-oud-is-de-krantenlezer/
The first graph depicts the average age of the reader (not necessarily the subscriber) of the papers, the last graph depicts the percentage of readers of free versus paid papers in each age group (red = free, blue = paid).
There's still more people running *from* Russia than *to* Russia. The reason Snowdon isn't dead yet, is because Russia likes to use him to annoy the USA. Which, I admit, is great - just for having the pleasure of seeing the entire US administration apoplexic.
The second Snowdon actually threatened Putin's interests, he'd be off to a labor camp in Siberia. In the USA he at least gets a somewhat fair trial. In Russia, there wouldn't even be the pretense of one.
I know this whole "choosing between Evil" is confusing, but consider it a case of choosing between plague and ebola. They're both nasty diseases, but you have a bit more chance with one than with the other.
Because the really good in-depth articles are not available online, unless you pay. And I prefer to read at leasure on a large tabloid format, instead of on my mobile or laptop.
That said, there is a whole generation growing up who thinks the generic news with 5 lines of information and 2000 lines of unwarranted conclusions are the standard for news. A fertile field for would-be demagogues.
Hmm.. okay. Good points.
In any case: in no way does anyone absolutely need a stylus for any form of input. I guess that argument is now officially moot :)
What moronic moderator modded this "off topic"?? Hand in your geek card and don't let the door hit you on the way out. Shame on you.
And yes, that was my first thought too: "they're going to have a kickstarter for Replicants??" :)
I especially liked the weaponized "Ebolapox", the crossover between Ebola and smallpox.
How ever did they plan to limit the spread of that, once it had gotten out? Vaccination programs that you run in advance can be copied, and if you think you can do it during a war, well, a few bombs here and there would end your ability to protect yourself, leaving you in the same mess as everyone else. Nice as a doomsday weapon, "everybody dies! game over!" but not much for actually winning a war.
No, it's a bit like saying the dead parrot is pining for the fjords :)
My wife uses Chinese characters on her phone. We bought her an iPhone specifically for the excellent character recognition. No stylus needed - use your finger to draw a character. It works very well. None of her friends use the very slow pinyin method.