"Turning away ambulances" is not how it really happens. Let me describe it for you:
The hospital determines it is nearing its capacity to handle emergent cases. The hospital contacts the regional EMS dispatch to let them know. In my area, this is the county Fire Control. When an ambulance calls in that they have arrived on scene, the dispatcher will say, in this case, "Methodist Hospital is the only closed facility." The crew will let the patient know that they can't take them to that hospital. Also, when the crew calls dispatch for a clearance to transport the patient, if the hospital they are going to is closed, dispatch will tell them so (in NY, a patient can demand to be transported to even a closed hospital, but we do our best to convince them to go somewhere else). A hospital ED cannot turn away patients at the door, even if they come by ambulance.
So what if its a truly life threatening situation that can't be stabilized in the field? Say, full cardiac arrest, or uncontrollable arterial bleed? The ambulance will go to the closest facility, even if that is the closed facility, and will not be turned away. The ambulance will contact the receiving hospital directly and give a report on route, giving the hospital time to clear an appropriate room and mobilize the necessary staff to receive the patient.
Hospitals can close for a lot of reasons. Sometimes, a few staff members call in sick and they can't find coverage, so the capacity of the system is reduced. Sometimes a lot of patients come in all at once. Sometimes the hospital's support systems like EMR fail, but it could even be their admissions and billing system that decides to fail and causes the hospital to divert patients. It happens, but the system is designed to handle it.
I don't always agree with how the laws are applied, but possession of "virtual" child porn is just as objectionable as a photograph to me.
Something being objectionable to you is not a basis to pass a law outlawing that thing. Show the real, tangible, objective harm that these drawings cause people that are forced to view them (since there was no possible harm caused by creating them as with real child porn), and you will have a case for a law. Otherwise, the legislature does not exist to protect you from things you don't personally like.
I understand why you analogize pollution with noise, but it is not what TFS is trying to convey. The analogy to pollution is a warning about the unintended consequences of information persistence, not the purity of the information.
What is wrong with the idea that the large tail and its patterns came first as a survival adaptation? The female preferences in fact likely evolved after that, accelerating the process that makes the peacock's tail so outlandish.
Both the patterns on the peacock's tail (eyes) and the size are common adaptations found in a number of unrelated prey species.
I'm not sure that the standard view of sexual selection is that the feathers are a disadvantage that just happen to impress females. As you said, if the tail was a disadvantage that would seem absurd.
The peacock has what look like eyes on its tail. These have a tendency to confuse predators. This is a common defensive adaptation on a number of species.
Similarly, the way the tail fans out to makes the peacock appear much larger than it really is. This also confuses predators. This is, also, a common defensive adaptation.
The peacock's tail is an evolutionary advantage. The "sexual selection" probably evolved in females as a response to the survival advantages of having a large, elaborately patterned tail, NOT the other way around.
Using your logic, everybody should be charged with public endangerment, destruction of property, evading an officer, resisting arrest, and a myriad of other offenses just because they like to watch COPS or America's Best Police chases: volume 5.
Analogy fail. People do not profit from their crimes by appearing on COPS. People DO profit from the crime of producing and distributing child porn. Giving the creeps who make that shit a market is criminal.
The jokes are not for the departed, they are for those of us who still remain and have to live on with the memories. If it is disrespectful to take care of one's self, then so be it. They are dead, they won't care. Trust me.
People absolutely do not realize the value of public education, even if it is "sub par" compared to other parts of the world. Literacy is used as an indicator for quality of life for a reason.
Nothing does more to raise the quality of life than public education. Just try, once, to imagine what life would be like if all those millions of people who can't afford to get educated never learn basic literacy and arithmetic? That wouldn't just effect the poor; that would drag down the quality of life for EVERYONE.
Truth be told, Bailout or no, we will be paying for the Big 3's failures for the next generation, at least. Its not so much the current workers and their contracts. They can always retrain and find new jobs (theoretically) or get rehired by whichever entities take over the old companies.
The huge problem we face with this is those who have retired and those who plan to retire in the near future. If their pensions are wiped out in bankruptcy court, and their health benefits taken away, the drain on federal and state programs to continue to support them will be immense.
Our culture used to feel that taking care of our elders is morally imperative. That ideal may not survive the realities of the next 25-40 years.
If you're a business and you've spent 100 hours installing a piece of software across a network only to find updates and support drops a week later, that can work out to be very expensive.
You're also a very stupid business. It would be the exact same thing if you're a business and purchase proprietary software without a support contract in place. When that developer goes bust next week or decides to end of life that product, there isn't a single thing you can do about it.
Likewise if you're a student and a paper is due but you can't complete it due to a bug/error and the support section for the program you've used no longer exists, it's a big issue.
That is rather far-fetched. There are so many varieties of word processing and typesetting programs out there, many of them using open formats, that you will still have choices. What if Word starts crashing? You might find a workaround, you might be able to open the proprietary file in another word processor, but MS is under no obligation to provide you with support unless you pay for it.
Simply, F/OSS is not a business model, it is a development model. It is used to create a software product, a product which is provided as-is (source included), and is no different from proprietary software products provided as-is. Support is secondary in both cases, and paid for separately. Lack of support is not inherent or unique to OSS products.
Cant we just grow up now and realise we have to be moderate in our consumption of the planets resources instead of trying to trick our way out ?
I don't think you understand human nature. Your solution requires changing a significant percentage of the population's behavior - I don't give it much chance of success.
What kind of defeatist bullcrap is that? Large populations can and do change their behavior. It may take multiple generations to achieve, but throwing your hands up in the air and saying it can't be done in my lifetime, therefore it can't be done is exactly the kind of short sighted thinking that puts humanity into this kind of mess in the first place. We aren't dealing with this for our own selfish interests, but for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren whose behaviors we have a very good chance to set right if we try.
Until such time as the private entity attempts to use the power of the government to censor you by, for example, filing a restraining order.
I'm personally pretty tired of people spouting off that we have no free speech rights when it comes to corporations and private persons, because quite frankly that is bullshit. Free Speech is a recognized human right and no other human, government representative or otherwise, has the right to take it away from you. The only ways they can try are 1) make you agree contractually to limit your rights, 2) use the force of government via the courts, in which case you are protected by relevant law, or 3) use force directly against you, in which case you are protected by relevant law.
Ceding your free speech rights to private entities is just as bad as ceding them to the government. You, me, everyone, has the right to stand up to these bullies and claim our human right to speak freely. Just because it is NOT enumerated in the bill of rights does NOT mean the right does not exist.
None of those things are considered Arts. I don't know if roasting and brewing coffee can be accurately qualified as an art, but can't be far from the idea that we prefer actual chefs preparing our meals over microwaving a Hungry Man dinner.
The main difference is when a certified first responder or EMT engages a patient, whether "on duty" or not, they are at that point acting their professional capacity and must act within the scope of their training and certification. If an EMT screws up due to negligence or incompetence, or acts beyond their capacity, the EMT can and probably will be sued. Good Samaritans have some reasonable protection from lawsuit if their attempts to help are inappropriate or cause further injury. Certified professionals are expected to know better.
What many people probably don't know or understand is that "precautions" (aka mask, gown, gloves, eye protection; so-called universal protection or BSI) are for the wearer's benefit first and foremost. Training in the use of these protective tools is focused on protecting the wearer from infectious substances. Any effect of reducing transmission rates of infectious disease between patients is a secondary effect. In fact, other than wearing gloves and hand washing, these protections offer very little protection to the patients themselves.
In emergency medicine I can't think of any situation where a stethoscope would be useful
Assessment of any patient in an emergency setting starts with the ABCs, and you can't assess breathing without listening. Auscultation of breath sounds can reveal a lot about a patient's airway and breathing status, and it takes less than 10 seconds to do. Also, you cannot always get and don't always want to rely on an automatic BP, but then nurses do that. You don't seem to have a very deep understanding of how emergency medicine works.
All of this talk of replacing gasoline or making it carbon neutral is really beside the point.
Thats a pretty silly thing to say. How long do you think society could continue to function without energy for transportation? Our entire economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels. Transporting goods requires portable energy. Transporting people to and from their place of employment requires portable energy. Its very irresponsible to claim that one issue is greater than the other. They are basically the same issue - we need not just energy but portable energy. Even if it is more expensive and is a net loss, without it we are even more screwed.
You claim the real question is what is the net return on energy. I claim that that is only one question among many. How about, how does production scale? Can this method, on its own or in combination with other methods, produce enough fuel for our needs? Because if not, the cost or net energy of the process is irrelevant.
Rationale: If a work earns no royalties in ten years, it's never, ever going to. Quit flogging a dead horse already.
Now thats not true. There are a lot of examples where artists, authors etc., do not become popular until after their death. Its not uncommon for creative persons to be "ahead of their time" when it comes to art. Its certainly not a given that the artist's estate has a right to continue to profit when this happens, but dismissing the possibility of a work being profitable after a mere 10 years is demonstrably short-sighted.
As an EMT, I routinely trust flimsy latex to protect me from many more nasty diseases than just HIV.
Sex is a risk. Protected sex, however, is much more safe than driving your car down to the mini mart. Likewise, my taking care of a HIV+ patient is a risk, but I'm more likely to die in an accident on the way to or from the scene.
Asking people to be abstinent is all fine and dandy, but not everyone is going to do that. You cannot force them to. No amount of "education" or religious indoctrination will change human nature. Neglecting to educate people on the proper way to engage in safe sex is what is immoral. If that person has or is going to have sex, they are ALREADY at risk. It is not just immoral to give them the tools to reduce their risk, it is criminal. It would be criminal for me as an EMT, it would be for a doctor in the ER. It should be just as criminal for a politician on capitol hill.
Yeah, except, you really have no idea what trauma does to a person psychologically and physiologically. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a big deal for a reason. For these people, they have no choice but to remember, and remember chronically. Its not just a painful memory, but it includes the ENTIRE fight or flight response from the body when these memories are triggered (and triggers are everywhere). It does absolutely no good for a PTSD sufferer to retain these memories.
In any case, I do not believe the drug actually "deletes" memories as per the headline. The summary itself mentions that the rape victims still recalled their trauma, and were able to relate it to others, but showed fewer symptoms of stress while doing so. You might say the drug decouples the traumatic memory from the stress response mechanisms.
Slashdot Mirror
"Turning away ambulances" is not how it really happens. Let me describe it for you:
The hospital determines it is nearing its capacity to handle emergent cases. The hospital contacts the regional EMS dispatch to let them know. In my area, this is the county Fire Control. When an ambulance calls in that they have arrived on scene, the dispatcher will say, in this case, "Methodist Hospital is the only closed facility." The crew will let the patient know that they can't take them to that hospital. Also, when the crew calls dispatch for a clearance to transport the patient, if the hospital they are going to is closed, dispatch will tell them so (in NY, a patient can demand to be transported to even a closed hospital, but we do our best to convince them to go somewhere else). A hospital ED cannot turn away patients at the door, even if they come by ambulance.
So what if its a truly life threatening situation that can't be stabilized in the field? Say, full cardiac arrest, or uncontrollable arterial bleed? The ambulance will go to the closest facility, even if that is the closed facility, and will not be turned away. The ambulance will contact the receiving hospital directly and give a report on route, giving the hospital time to clear an appropriate room and mobilize the necessary staff to receive the patient.
Hospitals can close for a lot of reasons. Sometimes, a few staff members call in sick and they can't find coverage, so the capacity of the system is reduced. Sometimes a lot of patients come in all at once. Sometimes the hospital's support systems like EMR fail, but it could even be their admissions and billing system that decides to fail and causes the hospital to divert patients. It happens, but the system is designed to handle it.
I don't always agree with how the laws are applied, but possession of "virtual" child porn is just as objectionable as a photograph to me.
Something being objectionable to you is not a basis to pass a law outlawing that thing. Show the real, tangible, objective harm that these drawings cause people that are forced to view them (since there was no possible harm caused by creating them as with real child porn), and you will have a case for a law. Otherwise, the legislature does not exist to protect you from things you don't personally like.
like taking the batteries out of things, then losing them in the toilet, the cat, the microwave...
I suddenly have an urge to put batteries in a cat...
Completely unsupported anti-government rant = instant karma, I guess. Why is this modded up?
I understand why you analogize pollution with noise, but it is not what TFS is trying to convey. The analogy to pollution is a warning about the unintended consequences of information persistence, not the purity of the information.
What is wrong with the idea that the large tail and its patterns came first as a survival adaptation? The female preferences in fact likely evolved after that, accelerating the process that makes the peacock's tail so outlandish.
Both the patterns on the peacock's tail (eyes) and the size are common adaptations found in a number of unrelated prey species.
I'm not sure that the standard view of sexual selection is that the feathers are a disadvantage that just happen to impress females. As you said, if the tail was a disadvantage that would seem absurd.
The peacock has what look like eyes on its tail. These have a tendency to confuse predators. This is a common defensive adaptation on a number of species.
Similarly, the way the tail fans out to makes the peacock appear much larger than it really is. This also confuses predators. This is, also, a common defensive adaptation.
The peacock's tail is an evolutionary advantage. The "sexual selection" probably evolved in females as a response to the survival advantages of having a large, elaborately patterned tail, NOT the other way around.
Its not an either/or question. An airbag without a seat belt is an ejection mechanism.
Using your logic, everybody should be charged with public endangerment, destruction of property, evading an officer, resisting arrest, and a myriad of other offenses just because they like to watch COPS or America's Best Police chases: volume 5.
Analogy fail. People do not profit from their crimes by appearing on COPS. People DO profit from the crime of producing and distributing child porn. Giving the creeps who make that shit a market is criminal.
Boy, you'd never make it in EMS...
The jokes are not for the departed, they are for those of us who still remain and have to live on with the memories. If it is disrespectful to take care of one's self, then so be it. They are dead, they won't care. Trust me.
People absolutely do not realize the value of public education, even if it is "sub par" compared to other parts of the world. Literacy is used as an indicator for quality of life for a reason.
Nothing does more to raise the quality of life than public education. Just try, once, to imagine what life would be like if all those millions of people who can't afford to get educated never learn basic literacy and arithmetic? That wouldn't just effect the poor; that would drag down the quality of life for EVERYONE.
Truth be told, Bailout or no, we will be paying for the Big 3's failures for the next generation, at least. Its not so much the current workers and their contracts. They can always retrain and find new jobs (theoretically) or get rehired by whichever entities take over the old companies.
The huge problem we face with this is those who have retired and those who plan to retire in the near future. If their pensions are wiped out in bankruptcy court, and their health benefits taken away, the drain on federal and state programs to continue to support them will be immense.
Our culture used to feel that taking care of our elders is morally imperative. That ideal may not survive the realities of the next 25-40 years.
If you're a business and you've spent 100 hours installing a piece of software across a network only to find updates and support drops a week later, that can work out to be very expensive.
You're also a very stupid business. It would be the exact same thing if you're a business and purchase proprietary software without a support contract in place. When that developer goes bust next week or decides to end of life that product, there isn't a single thing you can do about it.
Likewise if you're a student and a paper is due but you can't complete it due to a bug/error and the support section for the program you've used no longer exists, it's a big issue.
That is rather far-fetched. There are so many varieties of word processing and typesetting programs out there, many of them using open formats, that you will still have choices. What if Word starts crashing? You might find a workaround, you might be able to open the proprietary file in another word processor, but MS is under no obligation to provide you with support unless you pay for it.
Simply, F/OSS is not a business model, it is a development model. It is used to create a software product, a product which is provided as-is (source included), and is no different from proprietary software products provided as-is. Support is secondary in both cases, and paid for separately. Lack of support is not inherent or unique to OSS products.
Cant we just grow up now and realise we have to
be moderate in our consumption of the planets resources instead of trying to trick our way out ?
I don't think you understand human nature. Your solution requires changing a significant percentage of the population's behavior - I don't give it much chance of success.
What kind of defeatist bullcrap is that? Large populations can and do change their behavior. It may take multiple generations to achieve, but throwing your hands up in the air and saying it can't be done in my lifetime, therefore it can't be done is exactly the kind of short sighted thinking that puts humanity into this kind of mess in the first place. We aren't dealing with this for our own selfish interests, but for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren whose behaviors we have a very good chance to set right if we try.
Until such time as the private entity attempts to use the power of the government to censor you by, for example, filing a restraining order.
I'm personally pretty tired of people spouting off that we have no free speech rights when it comes to corporations and private persons, because quite frankly that is bullshit. Free Speech is a recognized human right and no other human, government representative or otherwise, has the right to take it away from you. The only ways they can try are 1) make you agree contractually to limit your rights, 2) use the force of government via the courts, in which case you are protected by relevant law, or 3) use force directly against you, in which case you are protected by relevant law.
Ceding your free speech rights to private entities is just as bad as ceding them to the government. You, me, everyone, has the right to stand up to these bullies and claim our human right to speak freely. Just because it is NOT enumerated in the bill of rights does NOT mean the right does not exist.
None of those things are considered Arts. I don't know if roasting and brewing coffee can be accurately qualified as an art, but can't be far from the idea that we prefer actual chefs preparing our meals over microwaving a Hungry Man dinner.
Most accidents occur in the home. Highly private or suspicious people like this are more unlikely to call for an ambulance to begin with, however.
The main difference is when a certified first responder or EMT engages a patient, whether "on duty" or not, they are at that point acting their professional capacity and must act within the scope of their training and certification. If an EMT screws up due to negligence or incompetence, or acts beyond their capacity, the EMT can and probably will be sued. Good Samaritans have some reasonable protection from lawsuit if their attempts to help are inappropriate or cause further injury. Certified professionals are expected to know better.
What many people probably don't know or understand is that "precautions" (aka mask, gown, gloves, eye protection; so-called universal protection or BSI) are for the wearer's benefit first and foremost. Training in the use of these protective tools is focused on protecting the wearer from infectious substances. Any effect of reducing transmission rates of infectious disease between patients is a secondary effect. In fact, other than wearing gloves and hand washing, these protections offer very little protection to the patients themselves.
Assessment of any patient in an emergency setting starts with the ABCs, and you can't assess breathing without listening. Auscultation of breath sounds can reveal a lot about a patient's airway and breathing status, and it takes less than 10 seconds to do. Also, you cannot always get and don't always want to rely on an automatic BP, but then nurses do that. You don't seem to have a very deep understanding of how emergency medicine works.
All of this talk of replacing gasoline or making it carbon neutral is really beside the point.
Thats a pretty silly thing to say. How long do you think society could continue to function without energy for transportation? Our entire economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels. Transporting goods requires portable energy. Transporting people to and from their place of employment requires portable energy. Its very irresponsible to claim that one issue is greater than the other. They are basically the same issue - we need not just energy but portable energy. Even if it is more expensive and is a net loss, without it we are even more screwed.
You claim the real question is what is the net return on energy. I claim that that is only one question among many. How about, how does production scale? Can this method, on its own or in combination with other methods, produce enough fuel for our needs? Because if not, the cost or net energy of the process is irrelevant.
Rationale: If a work earns no royalties in ten years, it's never, ever going to. Quit flogging a dead horse already.
Now thats not true. There are a lot of examples where artists, authors etc., do not become popular until after their death. Its not uncommon for creative persons to be "ahead of their time" when it comes to art. Its certainly not a given that the artist's estate has a right to continue to profit when this happens, but dismissing the possibility of a work being profitable after a mere 10 years is demonstrably short-sighted.
As an EMT, I routinely trust flimsy latex to protect me from many more nasty diseases than just HIV.
Sex is a risk. Protected sex, however, is much more safe than driving your car down to the mini mart. Likewise, my taking care of a HIV+ patient is a risk, but I'm more likely to die in an accident on the way to or from the scene.
Asking people to be abstinent is all fine and dandy, but not everyone is going to do that. You cannot force them to. No amount of "education" or religious indoctrination will change human nature. Neglecting to educate people on the proper way to engage in safe sex is what is immoral. If that person has or is going to have sex, they are ALREADY at risk. It is not just immoral to give them the tools to reduce their risk, it is criminal. It would be criminal for me as an EMT, it would be for a doctor in the ER. It should be just as criminal for a politician on capitol hill.
Yeah, except, you really have no idea what trauma does to a person psychologically and physiologically. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a big deal for a reason. For these people, they have no choice but to remember, and remember chronically. Its not just a painful memory, but it includes the ENTIRE fight or flight response from the body when these memories are triggered (and triggers are everywhere). It does absolutely no good for a PTSD sufferer to retain these memories.
In any case, I do not believe the drug actually "deletes" memories as per the headline. The summary itself mentions that the rape victims still recalled their trauma, and were able to relate it to others, but showed fewer symptoms of stress while doing so. You might say the drug decouples the traumatic memory from the stress response mechanisms.
Complete rubbish.
Sewage promotes growth of algal blooms, which deplete the water of its oxygen supply, which kills marine life.