The browser is not meant to (and cannot) know the difference between sites using a self-signed-certificate and those that should use a "real" certificate. That is what the user is supposed to do. What the original poster was suggesting was that sites using a self-signed-certificate display the site AS IF no security was present. Thus when you visited "Chris's House of Fly Fishing Forums" with a self-signed-certificate, you would not be presented with an obtrusive "watch out! this might be phony!" notification, but you would also not be presented with lots of flashing padlocks and icons indicating your high security. Such a system would not penalize websites which used self-signed-certificates IN COMPARISON TO sites which use NO certificate at all. Users however would have some actual benefit in that their fly fishing discussions would be more well secured from third parties. If people use the same or similar account names and passwords on lots of websites, identity theft would be a bit harder than just sniffing their unencrypted web traffic if all of it was secured with self-signed-certificates.
It does seem as though there would be some non-zero positive effects to more "regular" sites using encrypted sessions, and encouraging use of self-signed certificates in cases sign as these.
For a real-world example: a cheap-ass lock discourages the good-for-nothing-neighbourhood-punk-kids from rummaging through the garden shed. There is little benefit to also putting up a big sign in the drawer where we keep the key saying "the lock on the shed is a piece of shit and provides no real security".
That is essentially what the "carbon tax" type of thing does - it taxes the production of "non-green shit" for a certain value of "non-green". Face it, no matter how you structure the tax laws, they ALWAYS end up being paid by the consumer - they have to be.
What could be done would be to have some sort of credit or rebate system to redistribute the money raised to the consumer. Heck, if done correctly this might be able to replace the income tax and welfare system completely. Set a high carbon tax (and a pollution tax and a junk food tax and a whatever-is-bad tax), divide that amount by the population, and send everyone a cheque for that amount. The poor folk get more back than their increased costs, because the rich folk consume a bunch more than they do. Those with very little or no income do very well in this system compared to before. Of course the details are probably impossible to make it work out as desired - it might end up with more emissions if the "great unwashed" can finally afford to consume a whole bunch due to their "dividend cheque", without a matching decrease in emissions from the "well off" if the price increases are not high enough.
In any case, giving the whole system SOME sort of pricing information for undesired external costs seems like such a fundamentally good idea that I really cannot understand how anyone could be apposed to the overall idea of getting that information into the market. I certainly understand those who think any particular system is not optimal, but anyone who thinks the current system is better than any possible modification look to me like a real nutjob.
The trend seems to be towards improvement, but I can't find a recent graph in a few moments of searching - this one only goes through the end of the 1990s:
Sure, 136 people is more than 66% of the voters in this case, but it is less than 2/3 of the voters. In fact 137 people is less than 2/3 of the voters.
Generally speaking, it's a lot more difficult to monitor and control discretionary spending if every transaction is just the swipe of a little plastic card.
Control goes down with the plastic cards, but monitoring is a whole bunch easier since one can often download transactions details from the bank. With cash I often have no memory of what the money got spent on exactly.
At MacWorld 2010 I saw http://squareup.com/ that uses a little dongle to plug into your smartphone to convert the magnetic stripe to an audio-signal to get the card info which combines with their backend to do the processing. Their cut was something like 3% of the transaction, with no setup fees. Their target market seems to mostly be small business who could not get a better rate from the big fulfillment places, but also the craigslist junkies and personal transaction market.
I think they are in "release" only for the iPad just now.
I understand that "the man" is not allowed to go through my stuff without a warrant and stuff like that, and that I cannot invoke any "don't touch that!" type of rights when "the man" wants to go through my friends' and associates' stuff, in their attempts at finding out stuff about me. Are they now, however, required to jump through similar hoops to compel others to show them or give them stuff? If the police turn up at my mom's house and ask to see all the letters I wrote to her (email or snail-mail) does she not have the right to refuse them unless they have a search warrant? Are they not required to get a subpoena in order to compel her to turn stuff over?
I suppose even in that case, the level of review that a subpoena requires is less than that for a search warrant, and that one has less control over the actions of your mom that is desired (she might just give them the info without protest). In this case, the EFF, Yahoo and Google seem to be arguing that the third party should not even have the option of providing the material.
I guess at a minimum this points out that people might want to consider the policies in regards to searches that your online storage providers have.
Is there any implementation of IMAP that encrypts the email on the server with your public key, as it is read or received? Maybe some system such as that would provide the storage service provider some ability to say to any request for data - "sorry, I do not have the key to unlock that information - you'll have to get a warrant for the suspect for that". Of course in the UK, that would not give much protection since it is a crime not to give up your keys when requested (which could make for some interesting "pranks" where you plant encrypted files on a person and then get them investigated for some nefarious thing) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/10/uk-can-now-demand-data-decryption-on-penalty-of-jail-time.ars
'The europeans' didn't - even if they did, there's still the differences pointed out in that wiki page. They're not nearly as equivalent as one might think.
Sounds like the Israelis are waving a red herring. Either they're protecting an in-country product or license, or they're punishing Apple for something. Either way, this kind of pissy petulence makes them sound like a snotty child.
Or they're just enforcing the laws of their country as they have always done. Once Apple makes an iPad for the European market, I'm sure they'll just tweak the firmware to block the channels that can be used and the power with which it transmits. Problem solved. They're not punishing Apple in any way - just impatient users.. that's a risk you take with grey (or sometimes even black) market import.
It might not even be a firmware difference - for an Airport base station I think you just select the country you are operating it in during setup and it behaves as it should in terms of channels and broadcast power. It does seem a little over-zealous though - not to good for promoting visitors.
All I'm saying is that a system that encourages voters to not vote for who they think will be the best candidate, in a so called democracy, sickens me.
One of the preference-ranking voting schemes seems like it might encourage voting for the best candidate, but of course the devil is in the details. See http://www.fairvote.ca/ for some advocacy.
http://www.fairvote.ca/ might be worth checking out - they have been trying to get some sort of proportional system (BCSTV for example) in place anywhere.
Most surveys of workers seem to support a desire for "more time off" in comparison with "more money".
I would love for there to be some mechanism where increases in efficiency were equally shared between the "owners" and the "workers", so that a 10% gain in efficiency would translate to a 5% reduction in workload. If that were the case since the 1900's we probably would all be working 5 hour work-weeks.
Maybe we could do something like mandate an extra federally required holiday per year every decade or something like that. If that were done back in the day, we would at least have some guaranteed days off.
If the "elite" jumped the queue by paying to the point that the lines were sufficiently shortened to no longer be a political issue, there would be no issue to fix.
I was trying to say that if the "elite" jumped the queue, the "elite", who tend to have the most influence, might not see fixing the long queues as being a priority - at least that is how I have always heard this policy defended. Rich Canadians (and even the provincial health-care-systems themselves when it makes economic sense) have always made use of access to the US Medical system in any case, so mostly these prohibitions on private medical processes effect those who want to offer such services much more than they effect those desiring such services.
The solution to health care is affordable health insurance. Eliminate absurd punitive damages in malpractice suites, inefficiencies of different systems for a myriad of insurers, and price differentials between insured and uninsured[1], and you'd make it far more affordable.
I had once read that malpractice legal issues were a relatively small part of the overall costs, but I cannot find a good online reference one way or another.
I certainly agree with you that getting to a single-payer model which insures everyone across the board with an administration overhead closer to Medicare's 2-5% and Canada's 1.3% rather than the US's health care system as a whole which seems to spend almost 25%, at least according to this article, is the best way to cut costs.
There is some logic to the restriction. If the "elite" were able to jump the lines simply by paying, there might be less political pressure to fix the issues that lead to unreasonably long lines. It is not clear how well this works in practice, but the "two-tier" model has more chance to degrade into one where the "second tier" is pretty awful.
History of childhood candy cigarette use is associated with tobacco smoking by adults.
Klein JD, Thomas RK, Sutter EJ.
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Department of Pediatrics and Community, Rochester, NY 14642, USA. jonathan_klein@urmc.rochester.edu
OBJECTIVE: We examined whether childhood candy cigarette use was associated with adult tobacco smoking. METHODS: 25,887 U.S. adults from the Harris Poll Online (HPOL) were surveyed about current smoking status from November 2005 to May 2006. Respondents were randomly assigned to a yes/no item or a dose-response scale to assess candy cigarette use. Data were weighted to reflect the U.S. adult population. RESULTS: 26.4% of respondents reported current smoking and 29.4% reported former smoking. Candy cigarette use was reported by 88% of both current and former smokers and 78% of never smokers (por=0.001). Logistic regression showed that the odds of smoking for those who used candy cigarettes was 1.98 (95% CI: 1.77, 2.21) for ever (current plus former) smokers and 1.83 (1.59, 2.10) for current smokers, compared to those who had not used candy cigarettes. Odds for current and ever smoking increased with increasing candy cigarette use. CONCLUSION: History of candy cigarette use was associated with increased risk of ever and current smoking among this nationally representative online sample of adults. Odds of smoking increased as candy cigarette use increased; these relationships persisted when controlled for sociodemographics. Elimination of candy cigarettes may protect children from products that promote the social acceptability of smoking.
There is no difference between electricity made by coal and electricity made by gas or nuclear. It is just electricity.
I agree with you, but the same argument can be made for a hairdrier with and without a UL certification, or an EnergyStar certification, or a potato with a "organic society" certification - the only difference may be an inspection process.
If (and I don't know if they can or not) a state can impose a tax based one a product's certification, and someone has already stated that MN in particular has a supreme court decision allowing them to do something similar for food inspection, then taxing based on the "pollution society" certification might be legally possible assuming it is applied without prejudice against all of the products, both in-state and out of state (and with the WTO and NAFTA involved, out of country too).
In any case, I suspect that the final outcome is not something that anyone can know before the courts decide - if it was so obviously one side or the other, either MN would not have tried to put the legislation in place or ND would not be getting ready for a legal challenge - presumably they both have competent counsel on their side.
I'm sorry you do not feel I am worthy of being better informed. All of my research without your assistance seems to come up with information basically contradicting your statements. I guess the "socialists" have managed to hide the truth from my eyes?
Tax rates by country seem to put the US on the lower side of things for personal tax rates, but still comperable to Canada, and higher than Iceland, Ireland, and Australia, and the highest of the graphed countries for corporate tax rate.
As for "by what measure is the US at the top of the health care heap"? Well we have the shortest times for getting treatment, we have the highest number of hi-tech medical equipment per capita, we have the highest survival rate of premature births, the highest survival rate for cancer patients, we have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments, we have the highest number of doctors per capita - do you want me to continue?
Humm, LA seems to have 12+ hour wait times in the emergency room, which doesn't sound great:
I can't think of how to search for "hi-tech medical equipment per capita", so could you let me know where to find that?
Premature birth survival rates are also hard to find for me at least, and as you noted, the birth survival stats are a bit hard to compare across countries and regions due to different reporting methods - if you had some references I would be interested if it wasn't too much trouble.
The US is way down the list on doctors-per-capita, ranking 52nd on the list by nationmaster, and also mentioned in this piece on Forbes. Oh the Forbs article mentions "the amount of highly expensive medical equipment per capita" as being highest in the USA, but that the lead is shrinking.
Heck, that Forbes article (are they a socialist rag? I thought they were sort of right-leaning?) seems to indicate they at least do not think "it [the US medical system]'s a hell of a lot better than what the rest of the world has."
The overall point seems to be that American citizens, as a whole, do NOT "have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments", in that a significant fraction of them have little to no access to primary health care that they can afford.
In my opinion, much of your opposition to various levels of socialism is well founded. There are downsides and disincentives inherent in any system trying to promote the collective good, however I think you are being willfully ignorant to think that the current situation in the USA is somehow vastly superior to situations in other places where different decisions have been made. One of the biggest problems in policy formation in the US is the instinctive fear or socialism and big government so what seems to happen is that we end up with the worst of both worlds - governmental programs that artificially alter the market, but do not actually benefit anyone but a few special interests. In the US we already have a whole lot of socialism, it is just half-assed and poorly implemented.
OK, that seems to clear up the automobile example, but what about the "certification" example? Can MN tax non-Energy-Star certified appliances at a different rate than ES-certified ones? If they can do that (and it seems reasonable that they could) then implementing a different tax rate for power generation depending on what level of "non-pollution" certification a producer has would seem to be equivalent. Or you could just tax the bejesus out of all electrical rates, and give rebates to those who can document specific levels of non-pollution.
California seems to have enacted energy consumption legislation for TV's, even those manufactured outside of the state which might be viewed as messing with inter-state commerce.
Keeping the background out of focus is telling your viewer, "this is not 3D because you can only look at what I want you to look at"
I suspect that using a large depth of field, where everything is in focus, could also ruin the #D feeling since wen you are in "the real world", everything is NOT in focus at the same time. When the depth of field for a photograph is not similar to that experienced by your eye, the scene tends to look weird or fake - that is one of the ways you can make aerial architectural photos look like they are photos of miniature models I believe.
Having not seen the film I have no idea if they were working with depth of field that was smaller than it should have been, but going with one that was too large would not be the ideal choice. Focus in film-making is a pretty difficult job - and is usually subtle enough that it can mess up a film without being obviously apparent what the problem was.
Well, you claim they are biased, and maybe they are, but you have yet to support your contentions in any way, so my "biased" sources seem significantly better than your non-existent ones.
By what measure is the US at the top of the health care heap?
What are the odds in the US of starting out poor and ending up upper-middle-class? How do they compare to other nations? I certainly do not know, but I would bet that those "socialist" countries like Canada or western Europe have better odds than the USA. There are plenty of rags-to-comfortable stories coming out of socialis nations, and there seem to be fewer "rags" stories to start off with - is that such a bad thing?
Slashdot Mirror
How's the browser meant to know the difference?
The browser is not meant to (and cannot) know the difference between sites using a self-signed-certificate and those that should use a "real" certificate. That is what the user is supposed to do. What the original poster was suggesting was that sites using a self-signed-certificate display the site AS IF no security was present. Thus when you visited "Chris's House of Fly Fishing Forums" with a self-signed-certificate, you would not be presented with an obtrusive "watch out! this might be phony!" notification, but you would also not be presented with lots of flashing padlocks and icons indicating your high security. Such a system would not penalize websites which used self-signed-certificates IN COMPARISON TO sites which use NO certificate at all. Users however would have some actual benefit in that their fly fishing discussions would be more well secured from third parties. If people use the same or similar account names and passwords on lots of websites, identity theft would be a bit harder than just sniffing their unencrypted web traffic if all of it was secured with self-signed-certificates.
It does seem as though there would be some non-zero positive effects to more "regular" sites using encrypted sessions, and encouraging use of self-signed certificates in cases sign as these.
For a real-world example: a cheap-ass lock discourages the good-for-nothing-neighbourhood-punk-kids from rummaging through the garden shed. There is little benefit to also putting up a big sign in the drawer where we keep the key saying "the lock on the shed is a piece of shit and provides no real security".
That is essentially what the "carbon tax" type of thing does - it taxes the production of "non-green shit" for a certain value of "non-green". Face it, no matter how you structure the tax laws, they ALWAYS end up being paid by the consumer - they have to be.
What could be done would be to have some sort of credit or rebate system to redistribute the money raised to the consumer. Heck, if done correctly this might be able to replace the income tax and welfare system completely. Set a high carbon tax (and a pollution tax and a junk food tax and a whatever-is-bad tax), divide that amount by the population, and send everyone a cheque for that amount. The poor folk get more back than their increased costs, because the rich folk consume a bunch more than they do. Those with very little or no income do very well in this system compared to before. Of course the details are probably impossible to make it work out as desired - it might end up with more emissions if the "great unwashed" can finally afford to consume a whole bunch due to their "dividend cheque", without a matching decrease in emissions from the "well off" if the price increases are not high enough.
In any case, giving the whole system SOME sort of pricing information for undesired external costs seems like such a fundamentally good idea that I really cannot understand how anyone could be apposed to the overall idea of getting that information into the market. I certainly understand those who think any particular system is not optimal, but anyone who thinks the current system is better than any possible modification look to me like a real nutjob.
Doesn't food become much easier to grow in a high-CO2 environment?
No, the limiting factor for most plant production is nitrogen/fertilizer.
The trend seems to be towards improvement, but I can't find a recent graph in a few moments of searching - this one only goes through the end of the 1990s:
http://www.aqmd.gov/smog/histsmog.html
Oh here is one, through 2008 which seems to show the same slow improvement:
http://admission-unpeeled.blogspot.com/2009/08/smog-blog.html
That must be in one of the early drafts of the bible, it doesn't seem to be in the released version.
"Thousands of other nerds are wondering why haven't you asked this girl to marry you yet?"
Well, the fact that she's planning on leaving him for an older man seems to indicate the relationship might not be completely stable....
Sure, 136 people is more than 66% of the voters in this case, but it is less than 2/3 of the voters. In fact 137 people is less than 2/3 of the voters.
Generally speaking, it's a lot more difficult to monitor and control discretionary spending if every transaction is just the swipe of a little plastic card.
Control goes down with the plastic cards, but monitoring is a whole bunch easier since one can often download transactions details from the bank. With cash I often have no memory of what the money got spent on exactly.
At MacWorld 2010 I saw http://squareup.com/ that uses a little dongle to plug into your smartphone to convert the magnetic stripe to an audio-signal to get the card info which combines with their backend to do the processing. Their cut was something like 3% of the transaction, with no setup fees. Their target market seems to mostly be small business who could not get a better rate from the big fulfillment places, but also the craigslist junkies and personal transaction market.
I think they are in "release" only for the iPad just now.
While at the bank, pick up some $2 bills - they are lots of fun too!
They take up half as much space in the wallet as an equal value of $1 bills.
You could even track them via the http://wheresgeorge.com/ website - there seem to be a bunch of people who specialize in $2 bills, called "Top Toms" at http://www.primereloading.com/z/toptoms.htm
I understand that "the man" is not allowed to go through my stuff without a warrant and stuff like that, and that I cannot invoke any "don't touch that!" type of rights when "the man" wants to go through my friends' and associates' stuff, in their attempts at finding out stuff about me. Are they now, however, required to jump through similar hoops to compel others to show them or give them stuff? If the police turn up at my mom's house and ask to see all the letters I wrote to her (email or snail-mail) does she not have the right to refuse them unless they have a search warrant? Are they not required to get a subpoena in order to compel her to turn stuff over?
I suppose even in that case, the level of review that a subpoena requires is less than that for a search warrant, and that one has less control over the actions of your mom that is desired (she might just give them the info without protest). In this case, the EFF, Yahoo and Google seem to be arguing that the third party should not even have the option of providing the material.
I guess at a minimum this points out that people might want to consider the policies in regards to searches that your online storage providers have.
Is there any implementation of IMAP that encrypts the email on the server with your public key, as it is read or received? Maybe some system such as that would provide the storage service provider some ability to say to any request for data - "sorry, I do not have the key to unlock that information - you'll have to get a warrant for the suspect for that". Of course in the UK, that would not give much protection since it is a crime not to give up your keys when requested (which could make for some interesting "pranks" where you plant encrypted files on a person and then get them investigated for some nefarious thing)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/10/uk-can-now-demand-data-decryption-on-penalty-of-jail-time.ars
'The europeans' didn't - even if they did, there's still the differences pointed out in that wiki page. They're not nearly as equivalent as one might think.
Or they're just enforcing the laws of their country as they have always done. Once Apple makes an iPad for the European market, I'm sure they'll just tweak the firmware to block the channels that can be used and the power with which it transmits. Problem solved. They're not punishing Apple in any way - just impatient users.. that's a risk you take with grey (or sometimes even black) market import.
It might not even be a firmware difference - for an Airport base station I think you just select the country you are operating it in during setup and it behaves as it should in terms of channels and broadcast power. It does seem a little over-zealous though - not to good for promoting visitors.
All I'm saying is that a system that encourages voters to not vote for who they think will be the best candidate, in a so called democracy, sickens me.
One of the preference-ranking voting schemes seems like it might encourage voting for the best candidate, but of course the devil is in the details. See http://www.fairvote.ca/ for some advocacy.
http://www.fairvote.ca/ might be worth checking out - they have been trying to get some sort of proportional system (BCSTV for example) in place anywhere.
Most surveys of workers seem to support a desire for "more time off" in comparison with "more money".
I would love for there to be some mechanism where increases in efficiency were equally shared between the "owners" and the "workers", so that a 10% gain in efficiency would translate to a 5% reduction in workload. If that were the case since the 1900's we probably would all be working 5 hour work-weeks.
Maybe we could do something like mandate an extra federally required holiday per year every decade or something like that. If that were done back in the day, we would at least have some guaranteed days off.
And I want a pony.
I for one, already make it a point to marry only unrelated persons.
I try to just marry one person. Are you from Utah?
You try? Is that something you can really fail at?
Failing at marriage is surprisingly simple... but that's probably not what you meant.
And I suppose that Zenaku could well be a minister (or similar) who makes it a point to *perform* marriages only between two unrelated persons.
I for one, already make it a point to marry only unrelated persons.
I try to just marry one person. Are you from Utah?
I was trying to say that if the "elite" jumped the queue, the "elite", who tend to have the most influence, might not see fixing the long queues as being a priority - at least that is how I have always heard this policy defended. Rich Canadians (and even the provincial health-care-systems themselves when it makes economic sense) have always made use of access to the US Medical system in any case, so mostly these prohibitions on private medical processes effect those who want to offer such services much more than they effect those desiring such services.
I had once read that malpractice legal issues were a relatively small part of the overall costs, but I cannot find a good online reference one way or another.
I certainly agree with you that getting to a single-payer model which insures everyone across the board with an administration overhead closer to Medicare's 2-5% and Canada's 1.3% rather than the US's health care system as a whole which seems to spend almost 25%, at least according to this article, is the best way to cut costs.
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2006/01/us-health-care-system-administrative.html
Anyway, as you noted, this doesn't have much to say about the Kindle issue. Having not even RTFA, I don't have much to say on that....
There is some logic to the restriction. If the "elite" were able to jump the lines simply by paying, there might be less political pressure to fix the issues that lead to unreasonably long lines. It is not clear how well this works in practice, but the "two-tier" model has more chance to degrade into one where the "second tier" is pretty awful.
Well, according to this, they do seem to correlate with adult smoking:
http://medjournalwatch.blogspot.com/2007/05/candy-cigarettes-make-young-smokers.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17532370?dopt=Abstract
History of childhood candy cigarette use is associated with tobacco smoking by adults.
Klein JD, Thomas RK, Sutter EJ.
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Department of Pediatrics and Community, Rochester, NY 14642, USA. jonathan_klein@urmc.rochester.edu
OBJECTIVE: We examined whether childhood candy cigarette use was associated with adult tobacco smoking. METHODS: 25,887 U.S. adults from the Harris Poll Online (HPOL) were surveyed about current smoking status from November 2005 to May 2006. Respondents were randomly assigned to a yes/no item or a dose-response scale to assess candy cigarette use. Data were weighted to reflect the U.S. adult population. RESULTS: 26.4% of respondents reported current smoking and 29.4% reported former smoking. Candy cigarette use was reported by 88% of both current and former smokers and 78% of never smokers (por=0.001). Logistic regression showed that the odds of smoking for those who used candy cigarettes was 1.98 (95% CI: 1.77, 2.21) for ever (current plus former) smokers and 1.83 (1.59, 2.10) for current smokers, compared to those who had not used candy cigarettes. Odds for current and ever smoking increased with increasing candy cigarette use. CONCLUSION: History of candy cigarette use was associated with increased risk of ever and current smoking among this nationally representative online sample of adults. Odds of smoking increased as candy cigarette use increased; these relationships persisted when controlled for sociodemographics. Elimination of candy cigarettes may protect children from products that promote the social acceptability of smoking.
I agree with you, but the same argument can be made for a hairdrier with and without a UL certification, or an EnergyStar certification, or a potato with a "organic society" certification - the only difference may be an inspection process.
If (and I don't know if they can or not) a state can impose a tax based one a product's certification, and someone has already stated that MN in particular has a supreme court decision allowing them to do something similar for food inspection, then taxing based on the "pollution society" certification might be legally possible assuming it is applied without prejudice against all of the products, both in-state and out of state (and with the WTO and NAFTA involved, out of country too).
In any case, I suspect that the final outcome is not something that anyone can know before the courts decide - if it was so obviously one side or the other, either MN would not have tried to put the legislation in place or ND would not be getting ready for a legal challenge - presumably they both have competent counsel on their side.
I'm sorry you do not feel I am worthy of being better informed. All of my research without your assistance seems to come up with information basically contradicting your statements. I guess the "socialists" have managed to hide the truth from my eyes?
Tax rates by country seem to put the US on the lower side of things for personal tax rates, but still comperable to Canada, and higher than Iceland, Ireland, and Australia, and the highest of the graphed countries for corporate tax rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world
Humm, LA seems to have 12+ hour wait times in the emergency room, which doesn't sound great:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-er-wait-times-socal21-2009dec21,0,2238664.story
I can't think of how to search for "hi-tech medical equipment per capita", so could you let me know where to find that?
Premature birth survival rates are also hard to find for me at least, and as you noted, the birth survival stats are a bit hard to compare across countries and regions due to different reporting methods - if you had some references I would be interested if it wasn't too much trouble.
The US cancer survival rate seems among the highest, but clearly not THE highest, particularly if you are not white it would seem:
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country
The US is way down the list on doctors-per-capita, ranking 52nd on the list by nationmaster, and also mentioned in this piece on Forbes. Oh the Forbs article mentions "the amount of highly expensive medical equipment per capita" as being highest in the USA, but that the lead is shrinking.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_phy_per_1000_peo-physicians-per-1-000-people
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/02/health-care-costs-opinions-columnists-reform.html
Heck, that Forbes article (are they a socialist rag? I thought they were sort of right-leaning?) seems to indicate they at least do not think "it [the US medical system]'s a hell of a lot better than what the rest of the world has."
The overall point seems to be that American citizens, as a whole, do NOT "have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments", in that a significant fraction of them have little to no access to primary health care that they can afford.
In my opinion, much of your opposition to various levels of socialism is well founded. There are downsides and disincentives inherent in any system trying to promote the collective good, however I think you are being willfully ignorant to think that the current situation in the USA is somehow vastly superior to situations in other places where different decisions have been made. One of the biggest problems in policy formation in the US is the instinctive fear or socialism and big government so what seems to happen is that we end up with the worst of both worlds - governmental programs that artificially alter the market, but do not actually benefit anyone but a few special interests. In the US we already have a whole lot of socialism, it is just half-assed and poorly implemented.
OK, that seems to clear up the automobile example, but what about the "certification" example? Can MN tax non-Energy-Star certified appliances at a different rate than ES-certified ones? If they can do that (and it seems reasonable that they could) then implementing a different tax rate for power generation depending on what level of "non-pollution" certification a producer has would seem to be equivalent. Or you could just tax the bejesus out of all electrical rates, and give rebates to those who can document specific levels of non-pollution.
California seems to have enacted energy consumption legislation for TV's, even those manufactured outside of the state which might be viewed as messing with inter-state commerce.
I suspect that using a large depth of field, where everything is in focus, could also ruin the #D feeling since wen you are in "the real world", everything is NOT in focus at the same time. When the depth of field for a photograph is not similar to that experienced by your eye, the scene tends to look weird or fake - that is one of the ways you can make aerial architectural photos look like they are photos of miniature models I believe.
Having not seen the film I have no idea if they were working with depth of field that was smaller than it should have been, but going with one that was too large would not be the ideal choice. Focus in film-making is a pretty difficult job - and is usually subtle enough that it can mess up a film without being obviously apparent what the problem was.
Well, you claim they are biased, and maybe they are, but you have yet to support your contentions in any way, so my "biased" sources seem significantly better than your non-existent ones.
By what measure is the US at the top of the health care heap?
What are the odds in the US of starting out poor and ending up upper-middle-class? How do they compare to other nations? I certainly do not know, but I would bet that those "socialist" countries like Canada or western Europe have better odds than the USA. There are plenty of rags-to-comfortable stories coming out of socialis nations, and there seem to be fewer "rags" stories to start off with - is that such a bad thing?