Did you miss the part about how the vaccine is needed at a young age to be effective?
Some random dude posts on./ that Gardasil needs to be administered young in order to be effective and you take it as gospel truth? Gardasil is most effective if administered before the patient has been exposed to HPV. Perhaps a pessimistic view on youth sexuality has lowered the recommended age for taking this vaccine (30% of youth have a sexual encounter before 16). However, it can lessen complications and provide protection against different HPVs.
In my post I never said I would vaccinate my children against HPV, but I never said I wouldn't either. All I said was that in my situation, the odds of me becoming infecting are next to zero (besides, both my wife and I are older than the recommended age of taking Gardasil). If you go to my original post, I was playing devil's advocate explaining why some parents might oppose mandatory HPV vaccination. Based on the nature of the disease and the primary way HPV is spread, I personally don't believe it should be mandatory. Parents and teens should be given enough information to make an informed decision.
And did you not get the part about how they can get it from a partner?
That's kind of a given for an STD.
What if they marry a guy who had sex *once* with a girl who was infected? Remember, there is NO test for this for men. You really want to roll the dice with your kids' lives?
There's a one in a million chance chance of death as a reaction to the vaccine. If you don't want to roll dice, do you want to run that risk? You can create a scenario to justify your position.
Any new vaccine should not be accepted as 100% effective with zero side effects until it is proven.
I don't know of anything - not just any vaccine, any thing that's ever existed in the universe - that is "accepted as 100% effective with zero side effects". That seems to be a high enough bar to be, er, perhaps obstructionist. To be honest, I wonder what your objection might be once this technique gets commercialized.
Perhaps I need to use some sort of mark-up to show hyperbole? I was making fun of those blindly accepting that vaccines are safe. Yet, I never said that I object to this (or any) vaccine being available. I even am in favor of some vaccines (such as MMR) to be mandatory to attend public school (with exception made for those allergic to the vaccine).
My wife and are teaching our children about how things work and what contraceptive options are available, emphasizing the effectiveness of each method, and the potential risks and benefits of sex, before and within marriage. And they either have received or will receive Gardasil, too. For much the same reason we have them wear seatbelts.
My children are not yet of an age to receive Gardasil. My wife and I are too old to have Gardasil recommended. Gardasil's list price is $525. As it will be years before my children can take Gardasil, I haven't checked what portion is covered by my insurance. I will have to weigh the pros and cons at that time.
But he and his wife are perfect Christians and would never stray like that, and their children are perfect too and will never have sex before marriage! And if the children do, then they deserve to die of an STD!!
I see the humor in your post, but believe it to be a cheap shot straw man. Please reread my post. Perhaps you failed to note that I actually deride parents who think their children are not sexually active; even the best parents can have children who stray. Shoot, Adam and Eve walked with God, yet one of their sons was the world's first murderer. My Bible says to raise children in the ways of the Lord then let them govern themselves. I would prefer my children not be sexually active before marriage. Yes, there is the whole issue of sin, but it goes beyond that. Every sexual partner increases the odds of contracting an STD. Every sexual encounter with a member of the opposite sex carries the possibility of a pregnancy, and I've already let my opinion on optional abortion known.
Well, the problem with this is that the idiots refusing vaccines aren't just putting themselves at risk.
We are talking about HPV. HPV is spread by having sex with someone who is infected. I know that I'm not infected and I know that my one and only partner is not infected, so I'm not putting anyone at risk by not taking this particular vaccine.
I do agree with your sentiment on other vaccines, though. Many vaccines are not available for the very young, the very old, or those with compromised immune systems. If you get measles because you weren't vaccinated and traveled out of country, you are putting others at risk.
Two things:
1) I like a good public discourse on many subjects, but vaccination is public health issue and treating these sides like equal positions has the potential to do more harm to the public health than good. The proven science of vaccinations is not of equal validity as the fear-based lies spun by anti-vaxxers, and our public discourse should reflect those truths. Sure there could be less insults and flamebaiting, but there's no need to give the anti-vaxxer position any more respect or fair treatment than we would give to any other patently false ideas, like flat-earth theory, cold fusion, phrenology, etc.
Vaccination is a public health issue. The efficiency and risk / benefit of any given vaccine is up for debate. Both sides need to highlight facts instead of sensationalism. Half-truths and logical fallacies (such as ad hominem) do a lot of harm. Any new vaccine should not be accepted as 100% effective with zero side effects until it is proven. We know the science behind vaccines (introduce a weakened virus so the person's body can create anti-bodies which will immediately attack the full blown virus), but this doesn't work for all viruses and it takes time and trials to get it right (do you want to try a first generation HIV vaccine?).
One of the main objectives against Gardasil is that HPV is transmitted sexually. Parents don't like to think that their preteens are sexually active. Additionally, many ill-informed parents may think it's just an issue for females (HPV has been linked to cervical cancer, and males don't have a cervix). Since my wife and I were both virgins when we got married, and neither of us had HPV at the time, and neither of us has had a different sexual partner, there is zero chance of my wife developing cervical cancer due to HPV.
My wife and I will teach our children that the Lord demands sexual abstinence outside the bonds of marriage. We will supplement this with knowledge of how things work and what contraceptive options are available, emphasizing the effectiveness of each method and the sinful nature of extra-marital sex.
2) As for the political leanings of anti-vaxxers being liberal...that may be true in your area or experiences, but the ones I've encountered are usually conservative types (sometimes libertarian) who distrust the government, science, and anything that could be perceived as meddling in their lives.
Which vaccines should be mandatory? I agree that MMR should be mandatory for the public health. Chicken pox itched like crazy, but wasn't life threatening and its spread is easy to prevent. HPV? Let schools give out pamphlets showing the pros, cons, and risks, then let the parents decide.
Agnostic here. IMHO we really have no way to think or talk about the origin problem. We can insert some placeholder, that semantically answers the question (like God started it all, or time goes back infinitely, or time started at the big bang), but ontologically, we still got nothin'. How do we make sense of a beginning with no previous moment ? Or an infinitely backward extending line of time ? Go ahead and act like the problem is resolved, but it is still an open question. And this is a problem because I have a belief that something, rather than nothing, exists, which raises these nasty origin questions.
Glad to see that someone understands what agnostic really means (inability to know). It's also encouraging to see someone who is able to distinguish evolution (genetic change within a population), speciation (evolution to the point that the population is no longer part of the same species), and the origin of life.
Humans are imperfect and have a finite understanding. It is (nearly) impossible for us to come up with the absolute origin of time, so we choose arbitrary epochs (big bang theory, founding of a city, start of the reign of some monarch). When we learn more, we adjust theories to reflect the new evidence.
At issue is the true identity of travelers. The linked Wikipedia article has a section on federally mandated standards. When I got my license, I had to provide the same documentation proving my identity and status as when obtaining a US passport. They know my legal name, sex, birth date, and primary residency. I signed swearing this information to be correct (corroborated by submitted evidence). The license has a color photo. Other states do not verify all this information, even providing licenses for illegal immigrants with no indication of legal status.
On occasion I like to visit my wife's family in Brazil. Verizon operates on CDMA technology, so I couldn't pop in a pre-paid SIM and use the same phone in Brazil. You see, Brazil (like most of the developed world) uses GSM instead of CDMA.
I know my current LG has already limited upgrade support for older SmartTV functions, so it's possible (likely) that my current TV will not support this upgrade. Crap.
That's why I have a "dumb" TV and a smart bd player. It's cheaper to upgrade a smart bd player, then pass the decoded content to my tv.
Only when it is intended to be. Words have more than one meaning and Hawaii has what is probably the most sophisticated understanding of race and ethnicity of anywhere in the US. Don't be that guy who picks one meaning out of many in order to justify his own issues. That's the kind of behavior that tends to earn one the pejorative application of the word.
If you actually lived in Hawaii Nei, you would realize that haole is more charged there than the 'N' word on the mainland. Get back to me when you are scared to go to school the last day of the school year because of Kill Haole Day (admittedly, no haole have actually died in decades, but I had 5 friends hospitalized because of their skin color). I also had 3 friends who had to sneak off island back to the mainland because of death threats due to their skin color. Talk to me when you have to carry an aluminum baseball bat for protection when traveling between your home and work (my brother was jumped twice because of his skin color).
Hawaiian is a beautiful language, and all words have meanings. Ha`ole combines 'ha' (the breath of life / spirit) with 'aole' (no / without). If the native population believes that foreigners have no soul, how should we take that? And why is that term only applied to Whites? And that holds true even for Whites whose families have been in the Islands since the 1800s.
Even worse, consider the situation of the Hawaiian natives, pushed off of almost every island except a corner of the big one with the active volcano, pushed around regarding the original telescope placement, etc. etc. Granted, they only got there a few hundred years before Cook, but still, life took a serious turn for the worse for them ever since he landed.
Not as dire as you make it sound. Firstly, The island of Niihau is owned by natives. The island of Kahoolawe is owned by natives (once it's cleaned from decades of bombing). Moreover, this is just for those who wish to bring back the monarchy (read: those who are in line for the throne). Hawaii was first settled in the first century CE. The last wave of pre-European contact immigrants arrived from Tahiti in the 1200s. Each wave decimated the existing population, to the point that menehune are now thought as part of myth / legend instead of an actual previous civilization.
Captain Cook first arrived in Hawaii in 1778. At that time, Hawaii was not united. Each island had its own king. Taboos abounded. Women could not eat bananas, shark eyes, etc for fear of being beaten to death. No one could allow their head to be higher than any one who outranks them (again, death penalty). Only the kings owned land. It was a Stone Age civilization. Captain Cook gave guns to Kamehameha I, which allowed him to unite the islands (clubs against firearm? no contest). Granted that the natives were not used to European diseases.
It wasn't until the Great Mahele under Kamehameha III in the 1830s and 1840s when non-royals could own land. Foreigners forced the monarchs to give up absolute power, giving human rights to kamaaina and haole (side note: ha'ole literally means without the breath of life; in other words, without a soul). Foreigners did overthrow the monarchy in 1893. Foreigners petitioned for US annexation. When the petition was denied, they created the Republic of Hawaii. In 1898 the US accepted Hawaii as a Territory. Hawaii was made a state in 1959.
Now, the Haole want to just stick another telescope up on the mountain top - continuing to disregard the natives as they do for almost every issue - except, the natives actually have gotten some legal say in this matter - not surprising that they're getting up in the face of the astronomers, or anyone else who is doing something they don't particularly like.
Haole is an offensive term.
Hopefully, the telescope is important enough to the scientific community for them to wrangle a good deal for the natives and still get the telescope they want built. Anything you do with land in Hawaii gets expensive quick, but you might be able to extend preservation zones around the peak on Maui, in exchange for continued development at the top of Mauna Kea? I don't really know what's in the elder's heads on this one, but surely something of greater value to them can be found to exchange - the question is: do we really want the telescope bad enough to pay the price?
Section 7. The State reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua’a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights. [Add Const Con 1978 and election Nov 7, 1978]”
It may be law, but it makes me uneasy when a religion becomes enshrined in law. I guess we're lucky they're not cannibals.
As I remember from fourth grade, an ahupuaa runs from the mountain peak (mauka) down to the ocean (makai) so that each one is self sustaining. I'm having a hard time figuring out the correct ahupuaa for the location on Mauna Kea for the telescopes to determine which group of native Hawaiians have the right to protest under section 7 of the state constitution.
Bummer, looks like/. doesn't support Unicode enough to write the okina
So my question is, did these supposedly "Grieving parents" only look for a cause for the suicide after the event, or did they express their crackpot theories before the suicide and help drive their daughter to it? Admittedly I have not read TFA (this is Slashdot after all and all important things are always summed up in the summary), bit I expect that they made these absurd claims before the event.
"School officials were firm in declining to remove the equipment without solid evidence supporting Fry's claims. A public health official said, "The overall scientific evidence does not support the suggestion that such exposure causes acute symptoms or that some people are able to detect radiofrequency fields. Nevertheless effective treatments need to be found for these symptoms."TFS
It would be irrational for Fry to blame the school for not remedying a situation they weren't aware of. Indeed, TFA clarifies.
I took lots of information into school to show the headteacher, Simon Duffy, but he said there was equally the same information available claiming Wi-Fi was safe.
AT&T can hold the customer to the terms of a contract, but the customer cannot hold AT&T to the terms of a contract.
What do you mean? The customers have been able to cancel this contract for years. AT&T would be very happy if the customers with unlimited contracts cancelled. Even if the customers did not have a pre-existing right to cancel, this rate rise would create a right to cancel.
These change come after I renewed my contract. If the terms have changed, we should be able to cancel without penalty.
I just bought a phone in September (son destroyed previous 4-year old phone), so I had to renew my 2-year contract. Since the terms of the contract have changed (notably the monthly charge for data), can I cancel the contract without having to pay an early cancellation fee?
I would run a XEON X5690 (6 core 3.46ghz) with 24GB of RAM and an SSD. You can find entire machines with Quadro video, audio, and a shitload of other components for about $200.00
Sorry to self-reply, but I should clarify that I believe most if not all Western countries have officially adopted the Gregorian calendar. But a number of countries with strong presence of Orthodox Christians have official churches which have instead adopted the Revised Julian. There have been some politicians in these countries which have claimed the official calendar is not Gregorian...
Obviously it's probably unlikely that anyone is going to care about this stuff 800 years from now. It's still an amusing bit of weird calendar discrepancies.
The new calendar has been adopted by the Orthodox churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria (the last in 1963), called the New calendarists. It has not been adopted by the Orthodox churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia (including the uncanonical Macedonian Orthodox Church), Georgia, Mount Athos and the Greek Old Calendarists. Although Milankovi stated that the Russian Orthodox Church adopted the new calendar in 1923, the present church continues to use the Julian calendar for both its fixed festivals and for Easter. A solution to this conundrum is to hypothesize that it was accepted only by the short-lived schismatic Renovationist Church, which had seized church buildings with the support of the Soviet government while Patriarch Tikhon was under house arrest. After his release, on 15 July 1923, he declared that all Renovationist decrees were without grace, presumably including its acceptance of the new calendar.
Leap days (which we call leap years, because consistency is hard) are predictable. Software written 40 years ago will have the extra days at exactly the same times and with exactly the same frequency that the designers thought that they would. You never have problems where some parts of a distributed system got the update and others didn't. Either the code is working, or it's broken. It's also really easy to test.
Actually, I wonder how much software written 40 years ago correctly calculates leap years. Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except for those divisible by 100, except those divisible by 400. How much software will consider the year 2100 a leap year because the algorithm was dumbed down to every four years?
If the speed limit is the "suggested maximum safe speed", then don't ticket people. It's ridiculous for some places to ticket you for going 5 over the "speed limit" and other places allow you to go over by 20 mph at certain times of the day without getting a ticket. If it's the actual speed limit, then set it at the limit and enforce it. A compromise as people are used to speeding might be set it 10 below what you want the limit is and start enforcing it after 10 over but it's anarchy to have some places enforce it as a hard limit and other places allowing you to go 20 over but not 25 over. It leaves too much discretion in the cop's hands where they can selectively pull over the people they want and ignore other people equally breaking the "law"
Speedometers in cars are not 100% accurate, therefore cops generally give some leeway (10mph) without giving a ticket for speeding.
I can't seem to makes sense of your analysis. How does a family of 2 own 2 smart phones and have a child?
A family of two generally refers to a husband and wife, thus two smart phones makes sense. The baby section at the end was to serve as an eye opener if that family of two turns into a family of three. As to how they have a child, refer to your 9th grade biology book;)
A family of 2, assuming mom and baby (ignoring the 2 phone conundrum), with a home mortgage would have enough deductions to drop their taxable income near $50,000. By my very rough estimate that puts taxes at $10,000 instead of $21,000. Which leaves $1000/month as disposable income versus the $183 you estimated.
With no tax tables in front of me, I took a 30% tax rate. It is a bit exaggerated, but serves to remind people that when you earn 70k per year, you don't take home 70k per year. I wonder why you assumed mom and baby instead of husband and wife. Two totally different tax structures. A single parent could count child care as a tax write off, lowering the taxable income and put in a different tax bracket. If both parents worked and had child care for the express purpose of the mom being to work, they could also count this as a write off, but the OP was making a big deal as to how huge a $70k / year salary is, so I assumed a single earner in the family.
Second, anyone with cash flow problems that spends $433 a month on tv/internet/landline has serious need to reset their priorities. It would not be difficult to cut that in half.
That math problem has been addressed. Working with rough numbers before my caffeine, my fingers slipped. Triple Play by Comcast costs $100 / month for the first two years.
Baby expenses still won't eat up a large chunk of the remainder, but I do not think it is quite as bleak a picture as you paint it.
My son is just over a year old, so those figures are fairly accurate for last year. My insurance company has a max out of pocket of $2,500 / person ($5k / family) per year. Since delivery involves 2 people, we maxed out at $5,000. Due to previous financial situation, we financed it. My wife (who is a stay at home mom) is unable to produce milk, so formula was the only option. Maternity clothes are expensive. Diapers are expensive. Baby furniture is expensive. Baby clothes are expensive. Baby pajamas run $15 / pair. Baby coats are $25-50. Onesies are $8. Sometimes you can find $4 shirts at Walmart.
I'd be interested to see your estimate updated to include deductions before taxes.
I have my employer take out taxes based on 4 exceptions, and we get about $3k back from the feds and $100 from the state.
21k in taxes a year? my wife and I made 80k combined, filed jointly. We did not pay anywhere near 21k in taxes. We even live in California. How did you manage to get screwed for 21k a year? Buy a condo or something for the write off.
The figures were meant just as an illustration. I just took 30% of the 70k to include state and local taxes. As previously stated, that's not my actual budget (nor my actual salary).
Yes, it still seems high. Because, and this is going to be amazing, of course you have less money after you spend it.
In your bills, you spend $7,600 just for internet/phone/cable (including mobile). That's really high. Also TV and smartphones are a luxury (any phone and home broadband I'll give you as a necessity).
You are purchasing a 350k+ home, and that's above what you can afford on a salary of 70k (by the standard 1/3 of takehome pay rule).
You're planning for a child and child care, so... is your spouse not also working? Because we''re talking about a single salary of 70k. If your spouse is also working, you should include that as income. With a child, your medical insurance should get subsidized, lowering those costs. Maybe you cannot afford the formula, so have to breast feed (at least some of the time).
But even if I grant all your stuff, I'll say that 183/month isn't all that little for clothing and emergencies.
As previously mentioned, those figures don't come directly from my personal budget, but are representative of my city. I'll even throw out there that I make more than $70k / year. Also note that I did a math error on the triple play (internet + cable tv + home phone) which truly is $100 / month for the first two years. I don't have a home phone since both my wife and I have cell phones, and our son is too young to use any phone. So, $100 (triple play) + $200 (cell) = $300 / month = $3600 / year. You found where I made a math error.
My home is worth about $200k, so mortgage figures in my run down don't reflect my personal situation.
My son is just over a year old, so delivery costs are accurate as of last year. We maxed out at $5000 in medical expenses. My wife is unable to produce breast milk - something we only discovered after our son was born, so formula was the only answer. By now he's eating regular food most of the time, and getting cow's milk in addition to formula. Because of my salary, we do not qualify for our medical expenses to be subsidized.
My wife is a legal alien with limited English skills. Based on minimum wage and the cost of day care, she stays home and raises our son. We are better off financially that way than for her to earn minimum wage and pay day care. It costs $600 to renew her Green Card, and she won't be eligible to take the citizenship test ($800) for another 3 years.
There are other expenses, but my main point stands: $70k / year isn't all that much depending on where you live and your station in life.
I think everyone knows it costs money to have a child, but few realize just how much until they go through it themselves. I was planning on taking advantage of WIC and other programs, but my salary is high enough that I would only qualify on my 4th child. I also wasn't expecting all the prenatal visits + delivery to be so expensive after insurance. I figured if my parents managed to raise 7 kids on $25k / year, I should be able to raise one one my salary no sweat. It took creative budgeting, but at least I'm not drowning.
I posted this later, but these figures are not my specific numbers, but representative of common costs in my area. Individual costs will vary.
I'm a bit surprised your mortgage is still so high. My mortgage was for $110K when I bought (selling it currently for $170K, hooray market recovery!) and even with Florida's silly insurance prices my monthly payment is 60% less than yours for only a ~25% lower mortgage. And your prop taxes are only about $300/yr higher than mine. Do you have a really high interest rate? Or are you also in area with crazy insurance costs?
I am not paying $1800 / month for mortgage, but that is a common (maybe even low) figure for the region. My actual mortgage is $1100 / month (excluding property tax). Because of the tech boom, my house is worth almost 50k more now than when I purchased it, but interest rates are somewhat lower. My state has ridiculous property tax rates to fund public schools. Much of our land is owned by the federal government so we don't get tax revenue.
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Did you miss the part about how the vaccine is needed at a young age to be effective?
Some random dude posts on ./ that Gardasil needs to be administered young in order to be effective and you take it as gospel truth? Gardasil is most effective if administered before the patient has been exposed to HPV. Perhaps a pessimistic view on youth sexuality has lowered the recommended age for taking this vaccine (30% of youth have a sexual encounter before 16). However, it can lessen complications and provide protection against different HPVs.
In my post I never said I would vaccinate my children against HPV, but I never said I wouldn't either. All I said was that in my situation, the odds of me becoming infecting are next to zero (besides, both my wife and I are older than the recommended age of taking Gardasil). If you go to my original post, I was playing devil's advocate explaining why some parents might oppose mandatory HPV vaccination. Based on the nature of the disease and the primary way HPV is spread, I personally don't believe it should be mandatory. Parents and teens should be given enough information to make an informed decision.
And did you not get the part about how they can get it from a partner?
That's kind of a given for an STD.
What if they marry a guy who had sex *once* with a girl who was infected? Remember, there is NO test for this for men. You really want to roll the dice with your kids' lives?
There's a one in a million chance chance of death as a reaction to the vaccine. If you don't want to roll dice, do you want to run that risk? You can create a scenario to justify your position.
I don't know of anything - not just any vaccine, any thing that's ever existed in the universe - that is "accepted as 100% effective with zero side effects". That seems to be a high enough bar to be, er, perhaps obstructionist. To be honest, I wonder what your objection might be once this technique gets commercialized.
Perhaps I need to use some sort of mark-up to show hyperbole? I was making fun of those blindly accepting that vaccines are safe. Yet, I never said that I object to this (or any) vaccine being available. I even am in favor of some vaccines (such as MMR) to be mandatory to attend public school (with exception made for those allergic to the vaccine).
My wife and are teaching our children about how things work and what contraceptive options are available, emphasizing the effectiveness of each method, and the potential risks and benefits of sex, before and within marriage. And they either have received or will receive Gardasil, too. For much the same reason we have them wear seatbelts.
My children are not yet of an age to receive Gardasil. My wife and I are too old to have Gardasil recommended. Gardasil's list price is $525. As it will be years before my children can take Gardasil, I haven't checked what portion is covered by my insurance. I will have to weigh the pros and cons at that time.
But he and his wife are perfect Christians and would never stray like that, and their children are perfect too and will never have sex before marriage! And if the children do, then they deserve to die of an STD!!
I see the humor in your post, but believe it to be a cheap shot straw man. Please reread my post. Perhaps you failed to note that I actually deride parents who think their children are not sexually active; even the best parents can have children who stray. Shoot, Adam and Eve walked with God, yet one of their sons was the world's first murderer. My Bible says to raise children in the ways of the Lord then let them govern themselves. I would prefer my children not be sexually active before marriage. Yes, there is the whole issue of sin, but it goes beyond that. Every sexual partner increases the odds of contracting an STD. Every sexual encounter with a member of the opposite sex carries the possibility of a pregnancy, and I've already let my opinion on optional abortion known.
Well, the problem with this is that the idiots refusing vaccines aren't just putting themselves at risk.
We are talking about HPV. HPV is spread by having sex with someone who is infected. I know that I'm not infected and I know that my one and only partner is not infected, so I'm not putting anyone at risk by not taking this particular vaccine.
I do agree with your sentiment on other vaccines, though. Many vaccines are not available for the very young, the very old, or those with compromised immune systems. If you get measles because you weren't vaccinated and traveled out of country, you are putting others at risk.
Two things: 1) I like a good public discourse on many subjects, but vaccination is public health issue and treating these sides like equal positions has the potential to do more harm to the public health than good. The proven science of vaccinations is not of equal validity as the fear-based lies spun by anti-vaxxers, and our public discourse should reflect those truths. Sure there could be less insults and flamebaiting, but there's no need to give the anti-vaxxer position any more respect or fair treatment than we would give to any other patently false ideas, like flat-earth theory, cold fusion, phrenology, etc.
Vaccination is a public health issue. The efficiency and risk / benefit of any given vaccine is up for debate. Both sides need to highlight facts instead of sensationalism. Half-truths and logical fallacies (such as ad hominem) do a lot of harm. Any new vaccine should not be accepted as 100% effective with zero side effects until it is proven. We know the science behind vaccines (introduce a weakened virus so the person's body can create anti-bodies which will immediately attack the full blown virus), but this doesn't work for all viruses and it takes time and trials to get it right (do you want to try a first generation HIV vaccine?).
One of the main objectives against Gardasil is that HPV is transmitted sexually. Parents don't like to think that their preteens are sexually active. Additionally, many ill-informed parents may think it's just an issue for females (HPV has been linked to cervical cancer, and males don't have a cervix). Since my wife and I were both virgins when we got married, and neither of us had HPV at the time, and neither of us has had a different sexual partner, there is zero chance of my wife developing cervical cancer due to HPV.
My wife and I will teach our children that the Lord demands sexual abstinence outside the bonds of marriage. We will supplement this with knowledge of how things work and what contraceptive options are available, emphasizing the effectiveness of each method and the sinful nature of extra-marital sex.
2) As for the political leanings of anti-vaxxers being liberal...that may be true in your area or experiences, but the ones I've encountered are usually conservative types (sometimes libertarian) who distrust the government, science, and anything that could be perceived as meddling in their lives.
Which vaccines should be mandatory? I agree that MMR should be mandatory for the public health. Chicken pox itched like crazy, but wasn't life threatening and its spread is easy to prevent. HPV? Let schools give out pamphlets showing the pros, cons, and risks, then let the parents decide.
Agnostic here. IMHO we really have no way to think or talk about the origin problem. We can insert some placeholder, that semantically answers the question (like God started it all, or time goes back infinitely, or time started at the big bang), but ontologically, we still got nothin'. How do we make sense of a beginning with no previous moment ? Or an infinitely backward extending line of time ? Go ahead and act like the problem is resolved, but it is still an open question. And this is a problem because I have a belief that something, rather than nothing, exists, which raises these nasty origin questions.
Glad to see that someone understands what agnostic really means (inability to know). It's also encouraging to see someone who is able to distinguish evolution (genetic change within a population), speciation (evolution to the point that the population is no longer part of the same species), and the origin of life.
Humans are imperfect and have a finite understanding. It is (nearly) impossible for us to come up with the absolute origin of time, so we choose arbitrary epochs (big bang theory, founding of a city, start of the reign of some monarch). When we learn more, we adjust theories to reflect the new evidence.
You should maybe ask the Texans and Floridians. They may have a different point of view. Southern Brazil is cooler than those said US states.
Southern Brazil (like Rio Grande do Sul) actually gets snow in July! Even parts of Sao Paulo state get down to the 30s and 20s.
At issue is the true identity of travelers. The linked Wikipedia article has a section on federally mandated standards. When I got my license, I had to provide the same documentation proving my identity and status as when obtaining a US passport. They know my legal name, sex, birth date, and primary residency. I signed swearing this information to be correct (corroborated by submitted evidence). The license has a color photo. Other states do not verify all this information, even providing licenses for illegal immigrants with no indication of legal status.
On occasion I like to visit my wife's family in Brazil. Verizon operates on CDMA technology, so I couldn't pop in a pre-paid SIM and use the same phone in Brazil. You see, Brazil (like most of the developed world) uses GSM instead of CDMA.
I know my current LG has already limited upgrade support for older SmartTV functions, so it's possible (likely) that my current TV will not support this upgrade. Crap.
That's why I have a "dumb" TV and a smart bd player. It's cheaper to upgrade a smart bd player, then pass the decoded content to my tv.
> Haole is an offensive term.
Only when it is intended to be. Words have more than one meaning and Hawaii has what is probably the most sophisticated understanding of race and ethnicity of anywhere in the US. Don't be that guy who picks one meaning out of many in order to justify his own issues. That's the kind of behavior that tends to earn one the pejorative application of the word.
If you actually lived in Hawaii Nei, you would realize that haole is more charged there than the 'N' word on the mainland. Get back to me when you are scared to go to school the last day of the school year because of Kill Haole Day (admittedly, no haole have actually died in decades, but I had 5 friends hospitalized because of their skin color). I also had 3 friends who had to sneak off island back to the mainland because of death threats due to their skin color. Talk to me when you have to carry an aluminum baseball bat for protection when traveling between your home and work (my brother was jumped twice because of his skin color).
Hawaiian is a beautiful language, and all words have meanings. Ha`ole combines 'ha' (the breath of life / spirit) with 'aole' (no / without). If the native population believes that foreigners have no soul, how should we take that? And why is that term only applied to Whites? And that holds true even for Whites whose families have been in the Islands since the 1800s.
Even worse, consider the situation of the Hawaiian natives, pushed off of almost every island except a corner of the big one with the active volcano, pushed around regarding the original telescope placement, etc. etc. Granted, they only got there a few hundred years before Cook, but still, life took a serious turn for the worse for them ever since he landed.
Not as dire as you make it sound. Firstly, The island of Niihau is owned by natives. The island of Kahoolawe is owned by natives (once it's cleaned from decades of bombing). Moreover, this is just for those who wish to bring back the monarchy (read: those who are in line for the throne). Hawaii was first settled in the first century CE. The last wave of pre-European contact immigrants arrived from Tahiti in the 1200s. Each wave decimated the existing population, to the point that menehune are now thought as part of myth / legend instead of an actual previous civilization.
Captain Cook first arrived in Hawaii in 1778. At that time, Hawaii was not united. Each island had its own king. Taboos abounded. Women could not eat bananas, shark eyes, etc for fear of being beaten to death. No one could allow their head to be higher than any one who outranks them (again, death penalty). Only the kings owned land. It was a Stone Age civilization. Captain Cook gave guns to Kamehameha I, which allowed him to unite the islands (clubs against firearm? no contest). Granted that the natives were not used to European diseases.
It wasn't until the Great Mahele under Kamehameha III in the 1830s and 1840s when non-royals could own land. Foreigners forced the monarchs to give up absolute power, giving human rights to kamaaina and haole (side note: ha'ole literally means without the breath of life; in other words, without a soul). Foreigners did overthrow the monarchy in 1893. Foreigners petitioned for US annexation. When the petition was denied, they created the Republic of Hawaii. In 1898 the US accepted Hawaii as a Territory. Hawaii was made a state in 1959.
Now, the Haole want to just stick another telescope up on the mountain top - continuing to disregard the natives as they do for almost every issue - except, the natives actually have gotten some legal say in this matter - not surprising that they're getting up in the face of the astronomers, or anyone else who is doing something they don't particularly like.
Haole is an offensive term.
Hopefully, the telescope is important enough to the scientific community for them to wrangle a good deal for the natives and still get the telescope they want built. Anything you do with land in Hawaii gets expensive quick, but you might be able to extend preservation zones around the peak on Maui, in exchange for continued development at the top of Mauna Kea? I don't really know what's in the elder's heads on this one, but surely something of greater value to them can be found to exchange - the question is: do we really want the telescope bad enough to pay the price?
Section 7. The State reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua’a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights. [Add Const Con 1978 and election Nov 7, 1978]”
It may be law, but it makes me uneasy when a religion becomes enshrined in law. I guess we're lucky they're not cannibals.
As I remember from fourth grade, an ahupuaa runs from the mountain peak (mauka) down to the ocean (makai) so that each one is self sustaining. I'm having a hard time figuring out the correct ahupuaa for the location on Mauna Kea for the telescopes to determine which group of native Hawaiians have the right to protest under section 7 of the state constitution.
Bummer, looks like /. doesn't support Unicode enough to write the okina
So my question is, did these supposedly "Grieving parents" only look for a cause for the suicide after the event, or did they express their crackpot theories before the suicide and help drive their daughter to it? Admittedly I have not read TFA (this is Slashdot after all and all important things are always summed up in the summary), bit I expect that they made these absurd claims before the event.
"School officials were firm in declining to remove the equipment without solid evidence supporting Fry's claims. A public health official said, "The overall scientific evidence does not support the suggestion that such exposure causes acute symptoms or that some people are able to detect radiofrequency fields. Nevertheless effective treatments need to be found for these symptoms."TFS
It would be irrational for Fry to blame the school for not remedying a situation they weren't aware of. Indeed, TFA clarifies.
I took lots of information into school to show the headteacher, Simon Duffy, but he said there was equally the same information available claiming Wi-Fi was safe.
What do you mean? The customers have been able to cancel this contract for years. AT&T would be very happy if the customers with unlimited contracts cancelled. Even if the customers did not have a pre-existing right to cancel, this rate rise would create a right to cancel.
These change come after I renewed my contract. If the terms have changed, we should be able to cancel without penalty.
I just bought a phone in September (son destroyed previous 4-year old phone), so I had to renew my 2-year contract. Since the terms of the contract have changed (notably the monthly charge for data), can I cancel the contract without having to pay an early cancellation fee?
I would run a XEON X5690 (6 core 3.46ghz) with 24GB of RAM and an SSD. You can find entire machines with Quadro video, audio, and a shitload of other components for about $200.00
Where would you find all that for about $200? A XEON X5690 costs $647.95 on newegg.
Sorry to self-reply, but I should clarify that I believe most if not all Western countries have officially adopted the Gregorian calendar. But a number of countries with strong presence of Orthodox Christians have official churches which have instead adopted the Revised Julian. There have been some politicians in these countries which have claimed the official calendar is not Gregorian...
Obviously it's probably unlikely that anyone is going to care about this stuff 800 years from now. It's still an amusing bit of weird calendar discrepancies.
As you can see, it's been adopted by some Orthodox churches, but not any countries.
Leap days (which we call leap years, because consistency is hard) are predictable. Software written 40 years ago will have the extra days at exactly the same times and with exactly the same frequency that the designers thought that they would. You never have problems where some parts of a distributed system got the update and others didn't. Either the code is working, or it's broken. It's also really easy to test.
Actually, I wonder how much software written 40 years ago correctly calculates leap years. Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except for those divisible by 100, except those divisible by 400. How much software will consider the year 2100 a leap year because the algorithm was dumbed down to every four years?
If the speed limit is the "suggested maximum safe speed", then don't ticket people. It's ridiculous for some places to ticket you for going 5 over the "speed limit" and other places allow you to go over by 20 mph at certain times of the day without getting a ticket. If it's the actual speed limit, then set it at the limit and enforce it. A compromise as people are used to speeding might be set it 10 below what you want the limit is and start enforcing it after 10 over but it's anarchy to have some places enforce it as a hard limit and other places allowing you to go 20 over but not 25 over. It leaves too much discretion in the cop's hands where they can selectively pull over the people they want and ignore other people equally breaking the "law"
Speedometers in cars are not 100% accurate, therefore cops generally give some leeway (10mph) without giving a ticket for speeding.
I can't seem to makes sense of your analysis. How does a family of 2 own 2 smart phones and have a child?
A family of two generally refers to a husband and wife, thus two smart phones makes sense. The baby section at the end was to serve as an eye opener if that family of two turns into a family of three. As to how they have a child, refer to your 9th grade biology book ;)
A family of 2, assuming mom and baby (ignoring the 2 phone conundrum), with a home mortgage would have enough deductions to drop their taxable income near $50,000. By my very rough estimate that puts taxes at $10,000 instead of $21,000. Which leaves $1000/month as disposable income versus the $183 you estimated.
With no tax tables in front of me, I took a 30% tax rate. It is a bit exaggerated, but serves to remind people that when you earn 70k per year, you don't take home 70k per year. I wonder why you assumed mom and baby instead of husband and wife. Two totally different tax structures. A single parent could count child care as a tax write off, lowering the taxable income and put in a different tax bracket. If both parents worked and had child care for the express purpose of the mom being to work, they could also count this as a write off, but the OP was making a big deal as to how huge a $70k / year salary is, so I assumed a single earner in the family.
Second, anyone with cash flow problems that spends $433 a month on tv/internet/landline has serious need to reset their priorities. It would not be difficult to cut that in half.
That math problem has been addressed. Working with rough numbers before my caffeine, my fingers slipped. Triple Play by Comcast costs $100 / month for the first two years.
Baby expenses still won't eat up a large chunk of the remainder, but I do not think it is quite as bleak a picture as you paint it.
My son is just over a year old, so those figures are fairly accurate for last year. My insurance company has a max out of pocket of $2,500 / person ($5k / family) per year. Since delivery involves 2 people, we maxed out at $5,000. Due to previous financial situation, we financed it. My wife (who is a stay at home mom) is unable to produce milk, so formula was the only option. Maternity clothes are expensive. Diapers are expensive. Baby furniture is expensive. Baby clothes are expensive. Baby pajamas run $15 / pair. Baby coats are $25-50. Onesies are $8. Sometimes you can find $4 shirts at Walmart.
I'd be interested to see your estimate updated to include deductions before taxes.
I have my employer take out taxes based on 4 exceptions, and we get about $3k back from the feds and $100 from the state.
21k in taxes a year? my wife and I made 80k combined, filed jointly. We did not pay anywhere near 21k in taxes. We even live in California. How did you manage to get screwed for 21k a year? Buy a condo or something for the write off.
The figures were meant just as an illustration. I just took 30% of the 70k to include state and local taxes. As previously stated, that's not my actual budget (nor my actual salary).
Yes, it still seems high. Because, and this is going to be amazing, of course you have less money after you spend it.
In your bills, you spend $7,600 just for internet/phone/cable (including mobile). That's really high. Also TV and smartphones are a luxury (any phone and home broadband I'll give you as a necessity).
You are purchasing a 350k+ home, and that's above what you can afford on a salary of 70k (by the standard 1/3 of takehome pay rule).
You're planning for a child and child care, so... is your spouse not also working? Because we''re talking about a single salary of 70k. If your spouse is also working, you should include that as income. With a child, your medical insurance should get subsidized, lowering those costs. Maybe you cannot afford the formula, so have to breast feed (at least some of the time).
But even if I grant all your stuff, I'll say that 183/month isn't all that little for clothing and emergencies.
As previously mentioned, those figures don't come directly from my personal budget, but are representative of my city. I'll even throw out there that I make more than $70k / year. Also note that I did a math error on the triple play (internet + cable tv + home phone) which truly is $100 / month for the first two years. I don't have a home phone since both my wife and I have cell phones, and our son is too young to use any phone. So, $100 (triple play) + $200 (cell) = $300 / month = $3600 / year. You found where I made a math error.
My home is worth about $200k, so mortgage figures in my run down don't reflect my personal situation.
My son is just over a year old, so delivery costs are accurate as of last year. We maxed out at $5000 in medical expenses. My wife is unable to produce breast milk - something we only discovered after our son was born, so formula was the only answer. By now he's eating regular food most of the time, and getting cow's milk in addition to formula. Because of my salary, we do not qualify for our medical expenses to be subsidized.
My wife is a legal alien with limited English skills. Based on minimum wage and the cost of day care, she stays home and raises our son. We are better off financially that way than for her to earn minimum wage and pay day care. It costs $600 to renew her Green Card, and she won't be eligible to take the citizenship test ($800) for another 3 years.
There are other expenses, but my main point stands: $70k / year isn't all that much depending on where you live and your station in life.
It costs money to have a child??
I think everyone knows it costs money to have a child, but few realize just how much until they go through it themselves. I was planning on taking advantage of WIC and other programs, but my salary is high enough that I would only qualify on my 4th child. I also wasn't expecting all the prenatal visits + delivery to be so expensive after insurance. I figured if my parents managed to raise 7 kids on $25k / year, I should be able to raise one one my salary no sweat. It took creative budgeting, but at least I'm not drowning.
I posted this later, but these figures are not my specific numbers, but representative of common costs in my area. Individual costs will vary.
I'm a bit surprised your mortgage is still so high. My mortgage was for $110K when I bought (selling it currently for $170K, hooray market recovery!) and even with Florida's silly insurance prices my monthly payment is 60% less than yours for only a ~25% lower mortgage. And your prop taxes are only about $300/yr higher than mine. Do you have a really high interest rate? Or are you also in area with crazy insurance costs?
I am not paying $1800 / month for mortgage, but that is a common (maybe even low) figure for the region. My actual mortgage is $1100 / month (excluding property tax). Because of the tech boom, my house is worth almost 50k more now than when I purchased it, but interest rates are somewhat lower. My state has ridiculous property tax rates to fund public schools. Much of our land is owned by the federal government so we don't get tax revenue.