So they dropped triple-digit percentages? Did any of them drop more than 100%? I thought the whole point of shares was that you couldn't lose more than what your investment was?
So I can commit any atrocity I want as long as I give my victims the option of suicide to escape it?
How is not killing someone who doesn't express explicit desire to be dead an atrocity again?
Suicide is actually a terrible thing, even (especially?) for those who commit it.
So is killing someone without their explicit approval.
I don't think it's humane to say "Oh, you don't like the life we forced you to have or the world we forced you to live in? Kill yourself!". Actually, I think you're sick.
Uh huh. So it's more humane to say, "Well, we're pretty sure that you're not going to like your life, so we're going to take it away from you whether you like it or not."?
I wonder how many different three-letter-agencies are going to come and pay me a visit if I actually try to order one.
Then again, I'd much rather have one of those flying cars from the other article. They seem much more useful in everyday life, if you can pay for the gas.
Germany would have to agree to extradite him though but I doubt they'd have a problem with that.
The problem is article 16 of the German constitution. It states that German citizens may not be extradited, with the only possible exceptions being extraditions to other EU countries or international courts under certain circumstances.
Doesn't the EU force an exception there for the US?
Err... no. The EU doesn't trump a countrys constitution.
I think people can be extradited to the US provided it is guaranteed that their human rights will not be violated (that means no death sentence and no torture).
No. The only exceptions from the article of the constitution of Germany are extraditions to other EU members or to international courts, and they have to be allowed by additional legislation.
Given that pretty much ALL marine mammals regularly dive to that depth and well beyond, I think we can safely say it's NOT the pressure that's the problem.
Oooo... kay. Which part of an amplitude response diagram do you not understand? I would guess it's the axis that's labeled "frequency" that you have difficulty with, right? Systems can (and will) respond differently to signals with different frequencies. What you describe is pretty much static (about 0 Hz) pressure. Sonar works in the audible range, which isn't static (>> 0 Hz).
What you're saying is kind of like saying that humans can tolerate 990 mBar and 1020 mBar of atmospheric pressure, they can also tolerate 30 mBar of sound pressure (e.g. standing next to a rifle being fired).
How much pressure is that? Considering that 10m of water is approximately 1 atmosphere (~193 dB SPL, or ~219 dB ref 1 uPa), that would be equivalent to having a ~15cm wave go over you.
And yes, I was (for nearly 7 years) a real live SONAR engineer working in the marine and fisheries research SONAR world, and am still a practicing acoustician (20 years experience).
If that is true, then you should know the flaw in the comparison you make - a wave of ~15cm going over you will have a much lower frequency than getting blasted with 150dB of sound in the audible range. In fact, the pressure exerted by said wave is going to be pretty much static compared to any signal in the audible range.
You should probably also know about things like amplitude responses of systems, and maybe even about the effects of sound waves on tissue and larger-scale biological systems. If you "listen" to a 150 dB, 0.1 Hz signal, maybe your ears will pop a little, if the frequency is 1 kHz, it'll probably damage your hearing permanently within a very short time (150 dB is comparable to being 30m away from a running jet engine).
Yeah, and I can't wait to see what happens when all these 'lost' underwater nukes deteriorate like any metal on a sunken ship would, and begins leaking and releasing it's 'mild' radioactive substances into the oceans around Greenland and into the Mediterranean.
Since a km^3 of seawater already contains 3.3 tons of uranium (concentration of uranium in seawater is about 3.3 ug/l)... not much will happen. Even the Mediterranean contains several million km^3 of seawater.
I've never understood why they consider a fuel rod "spent" after it drops from 100% to something like 95%. Why aren't they used longer?
Because at that point, the chemical composition of the fuel rod had changes enough that it can no longer sustain a nuclear fission reaction. This isn't just because the concentration of fissile material has dropped, but also because of the buildup of neutron-absorbing nuclear poisons.
"For sale: One vintage 1960s nuclear bomb. Must have collectors item, great conversation piece. Slightly scratched and dented, some scorch marks. Low miles. Detonator not included. Private parties only, pickup only."
"I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it."
There are also terms for incidents in which nuclear weapons are stolen, and for nuclear weapons being launched at a nuclear-armed country without authorization (by accident... or worse).
That's a somewhat dated bit of statistics, the graph shows only burglaries, and they consider (England+Wales) and Scotland separately. How about we look at something that's a bit more comprehensive and current?
And that means... the continent? Comparing a country to a continent is comparing apples to oranges. Even the EU isn't a country, but the comparison is a little more valid.
If you're going to proclaim the superiority of Europe to the US then you shouldn't exclude those less-developed European countries to make your side look better.
If we're comparing continents, then it's Europe vs. North America. I'm sure that throwing, say, the statistics of Mexico into the mix might make things interesting.
Your comments regarding crime are also strange, considering the crime rate in the United States is lower than that in Europe.
[citation needed]
And possibly also clarification of which countries belong to "Europe", since that depends on whether "Europe" means the continent, or the EU including its newest member, or what's usually considered "Western Europe".
Sure, decease can still strike suddenly, but it's not like I live hand-to-mouth, if necessary I'll pay in cash or take out a loan.
(Err, if "decease" strikes suddenly, you're dead and would have found life insurance more useful than health insurance. But I think you meant to type "disease" instead. And it's not just disease that can strike suddenly, but accidents, too.)
You can pay a six-figure bill in cash, or expect to be able to take out a loan when you might not be able to work for week, months, or worse?
If you didn't answer yes to one of the questions, you're just looking to stick the doctor or hospital with the bill for your treatment (which will, in turn, stick all of their other patients with parts of your bill).
Yeah, right. Very catchy, very silly -- a non-argument...
Only to those who chose to ignore history.
Whatever bad things you can say about insurance companies, the government is/will be only worse.
The government doesn't have a mandate to be as profitable as possible to its owners. And once you have to sue your insurance company, you have essentially become an undesirable.
If only because the insurance companies have competition (each other).
If you're already an undesirable, then other insurance companies won't rush in to offer you insurance.
Well, Barack Obama proposes a miracle plan, that will be both affordable and allow anyone to join regardless of pre-existing condition. Thanks for confirming, that no such plan can exist, and that The One is lying to us all.
As I already asked: Does he promise massive profits for whoever runs the plan?
Maybe, the candidates also need to have the racial break-downs "somewhat in the same ball park" too? If you exclude the Latinos from the US statistics, and lower the ratio of Blacks (both groups tend to be poorer than average) to match that of the UK or Switzerland, you may get different statistics?
Well, and if you exclude all the poor people in Russia, China and Venezuela, I'm sure you'll get better statistics too. That's cherry-picking if anything.
It is not supposed to be more expensive to provide health care to the country's seniors, than to defend the entire country and be able to fight two separate wars overseas.
Most of the cost for the two wars, by the way, is funded through extra-budgetary supplements, which didn't appear in the link to the US budget that you used. That's another $170Bn, see here:
And why is it "not supposed" to be more expensive? The size of the US military forces is tiny compared to the number of senior citizens in the country. Apples and oranges, again.
I listed three. The current one, Obama's, and McCain's. Don't know, why you think, there are four. Perhaps, you think, "single-payer" is the fourth, when it really is, what Obama's plan will turn into...
You listet Obamas, McCains, and "the two other alternatives", if I remember correctly. That looked like four to me.
And "That One" is lying to us all -- when he says, he'll make the insurance both affordable and allow anyone to join regardless of pre-existing conditions.
Does he also promise for the insurance to be profitable for whoever runs it? That's the big point.
Obama, being who he is, can not possibly not understand this.
Maybe he just doesn't suffer from a massive case of not-invented-here syndrome. There's plenty of first world countries with socialized health insurance systems, and pretty much each of them uses a different approach. They also work quite well for most patients, without bankrupting them, unless you pay more attention to scary anecdotes than actual statistics (and the current system in the US offers the same amount of scary anecdotes as any other).
And it is not efficient. For example, despite the oft-cited expenses of conducting two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and the defense spending has still not exceeded Medicate expenses alone, not including Medicaid...
And that absolute sum relates to an "efficiency" figure how? I'm not following your argument here.
My own preference -- having experienced both of the two other alternatives
If you think that there are only four approaches to chose from, you haven't really looked hard.
The point was, the government can not even be sued...
As I said, if you can't sue the government, get the heck out of the country while you still have a passport.
Suing the government is far harder than suing a business.
That's a case of crappy government (bordering on dictatorship) then. But any lawsuit is hard enough when you're seriously ill and in debt. The insurance company can just wait you out, and they know it.
With the government's Medicaire being the 800lb gorilla in that market, no insurance company will think of going into that business. That's the point...
That's no point at all. A 91 year-old is an unacceptable risk to any for-profit company. The average number of years that the insured will be paying is minimal (sorry, with 91 years you're _way_ beyond the average life expectancy), the expected costs are astronomical.
And if Medicare is so crappy, as you state, then private insurers should have no problem beating them. It's just not profitable to try.
That such businesses are perfectly viable is evidenced by the life insurance industry...
Err, no, it's not. Not at all. Life insurance has a predetermined payout (health insurance occasionally does, too, but the lifetime maximum is usually much higher than the payout of usual life insurance contracts), which makes it much more calculable than health insurance for the insurer. They can just feed some basic data to their insurance mathematician and come up with a monthly rate that will still allow them to make a profit on average. Or they'll sell a contract that is a total ripoff, hey, if the applicant is a senior citizen then he or she might not even realize. I doubt that insurers will have any decent offers for 91 year-old though - maybe for someone who's in his late 60s or early 70s.
Another case in point: Due to a preexisting condition (sorry, from birth. I'm just SOL there), no insurer would give me health or occupational disability insurance. I've had zero problems getting life insurance, though.
Slashdot Mirror
So they dropped triple-digit percentages? Did any of them drop more than 100%? I thought the whole point of shares was that you couldn't lose more than what your investment was?
I write firmware for medical devices. You want some easter eggs in your ECG?
So I can commit any atrocity I want as long as I give my victims the option of suicide to escape it?
How is not killing someone who doesn't express explicit desire to be dead an atrocity again?
Suicide is actually a terrible thing, even (especially?) for those who commit it.
So is killing someone without their explicit approval.
I don't think it's humane to say "Oh, you don't like the life we forced you to have or the world we forced you to live in? Kill yourself!". Actually, I think you're sick.
Uh huh. So it's more humane to say, "Well, we're pretty sure that you're not going to like your life, so we're going to take it away from you whether you like it or not."?
Especially true for tools floating away while in orbit.
Thief 2 - The Metal Age, I think.
Then again, I'd much rather have one of those flying cars from the other article. They seem much more useful in everyday life, if you can pay for the gas.
Germany would have to agree to extradite him though but I doubt they'd have a problem with that.
The problem is article 16 of the German constitution. It states that German citizens may not be extradited, with the only possible exceptions being extraditions to other EU countries or international courts under certain circumstances.
Doesn't the EU force an exception there for the US?
Err ... no. The EU doesn't trump a countrys constitution.
I think people can be extradited to the US provided it is guaranteed that their human rights will not be violated (that means no death sentence and no torture).
No. The only exceptions from the article of the constitution of Germany are extraditions to other EU members or to international courts, and they have to be allowed by additional legislation.
Oooo ... kay. Which part of an amplitude response diagram do you not understand? I would guess it's the axis that's labeled "frequency" that you have difficulty with, right? Systems can (and will) respond differently to signals with different frequencies. What you describe is pretty much static (about 0 Hz) pressure. Sonar works in the audible range, which isn't static (>> 0 Hz).
What you're saying is kind of like saying that humans can tolerate 990 mBar and 1020 mBar of atmospheric pressure, they can also tolerate 30 mBar of sound pressure (e.g. standing next to a rifle being fired).
How much pressure is that? Considering that 10m of water is approximately 1 atmosphere (~193 dB SPL, or ~219 dB ref 1 uPa), that would be equivalent to having a ~15cm wave go over you.
And yes, I was (for nearly 7 years) a real live SONAR engineer working in the marine and fisheries research SONAR world, and am still a practicing acoustician (20 years experience).
If that is true, then you should know the flaw in the comparison you make - a wave of ~15cm going over you will have a much lower frequency than getting blasted with 150dB of sound in the audible range. In fact, the pressure exerted by said wave is going to be pretty much static compared to any signal in the audible range.
You should probably also know about things like amplitude responses of systems, and maybe even about the effects of sound waves on tissue and larger-scale biological systems. If you "listen" to a 150 dB, 0.1 Hz signal, maybe your ears will pop a little, if the frequency is 1 kHz, it'll probably damage your hearing permanently within a very short time (150 dB is comparable to being 30m away from a running jet engine).
Over 3 TONS of uranium per cubic Kilometer !??
Yes. A cubic kilometer is a lot of seawater, though. About a billion tons.
Since a km^3 of seawater already contains 3.3 tons of uranium (concentration of uranium in seawater is about 3.3 ug/l) ... not much will happen. Even the Mediterranean contains several million km^3 of seawater.
Because at that point, the chemical composition of the fuel rod had changes enough that it can no longer sustain a nuclear fission reaction. This isn't just because the concentration of fissile material has dropped, but also because of the buildup of neutron-absorbing nuclear poisons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_poison
"For sale: One vintage 1960s nuclear bomb. Must have collectors item, great conversation piece. Slightly scratched and dented, some scorch marks. Low miles. Detonator not included. Private parties only, pickup only."
There are also terms for incidents in which nuclear weapons are stolen, and for nuclear weapons being launched at a nuclear-armed country without authorization (by accident ... or worse).
There's also the Palomares incident,
Well, they eventually accounted for all of the bombs. The guy who claimed salvage rights ... well, that's pretty fscking brilliant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Bomb
And it's far more conveniently located (somewhere off the coast of Georgia). No need to go diving somewhere in the Arctic!
That's a somewhat dated bit of statistics, the graph shows only burglaries, and they consider (England+Wales) and Scotland separately. How about we look at something that's a bit more comprehensive and current?
Burglaries:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita
Car thefts:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_car_the_percap-crime-car-thefts-per-capita
Robberies:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rob_percap-crime-robberies-per-capita
Assaults:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita
Rapes:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
Murders:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
And Europe is Europe.
And that means ... the continent? Comparing a country to a continent is comparing apples to oranges. Even the EU isn't a country, but the comparison is a little more valid.
If you're going to proclaim the superiority of Europe to the US then you shouldn't exclude those less-developed European countries to make your side look better.
If we're comparing continents, then it's Europe vs. North America. I'm sure that throwing, say, the statistics of Mexico into the mix might make things interesting.
Your comments regarding crime are also strange, considering the crime rate in the United States is lower than that in Europe.
[citation needed]
And possibly also clarification of which countries belong to "Europe", since that depends on whether "Europe" means the continent, or the EU including its newest member, or what's usually considered "Western Europe".
Or, even worse, where an accountant can decide not cover a treatment after it has taken place (leaving the patient with five- to six-figure bills).
(Err, if "decease" strikes suddenly, you're dead and would have found life insurance more useful than health insurance. But I think you meant to type "disease" instead. And it's not just disease that can strike suddenly, but accidents, too.) You can pay a six-figure bill in cash, or expect to be able to take out a loan when you might not be able to work for week, months, or worse?
If you didn't answer yes to one of the questions, you're just looking to stick the doctor or hospital with the bill for your treatment (which will, in turn, stick all of their other patients with parts of your bill).
Only to those who chose to ignore history.
Whatever bad things you can say about insurance companies, the government is/will be only worse.
The government doesn't have a mandate to be as profitable as possible to its owners. And once you have to sue your insurance company, you have essentially become an undesirable.
If only because the insurance companies have competition (each other).
If you're already an undesirable, then other insurance companies won't rush in to offer you insurance.
Well, Barack Obama proposes a miracle plan, that will be both affordable and allow anyone to join regardless of pre-existing condition. Thanks for confirming, that no such plan can exist, and that The One is lying to us all.
As I already asked: Does he promise massive profits for whoever runs the plan?
Well, and if you exclude all the poor people in Russia, China and Venezuela, I'm sure you'll get better statistics too. That's cherry-picking if anything.
It is not supposed to be more expensive to provide health care to the country's seniors, than to defend the entire country and be able to fight two separate wars overseas.
Most of the cost for the two wars, by the way, is funded through extra-budgetary supplements, which didn't appear in the link to the US budget that you used. That's another $170Bn, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_military_budget
And why is it "not supposed" to be more expensive? The size of the US military forces is tiny compared to the number of senior citizens in the country. Apples and oranges, again.
I listed three. The current one, Obama's, and McCain's. Don't know, why you think, there are four. Perhaps, you think, "single-payer" is the fourth, when it really is, what Obama's plan will turn into...
You listet Obamas, McCains, and "the two other alternatives", if I remember correctly. That looked like four to me.
And "That One" is lying to us all -- when he says, he'll make the insurance both affordable and allow anyone to join regardless of pre-existing conditions.
Does he also promise for the insurance to be profitable for whoever runs it? That's the big point.
Obama, being who he is, can not possibly not understand this.
Maybe he just doesn't suffer from a massive case of not-invented-here syndrome. There's plenty of first world countries with socialized health insurance systems, and pretty much each of them uses a different approach. They also work quite well for most patients, without bankrupting them, unless you pay more attention to scary anecdotes than actual statistics (and the current system in the US offers the same amount of scary anecdotes as any other).
Because you need to look at countries that are at least somewhat in the same ball park as far as per capita GDP goes. Duh.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_ppp_percap-economy-gdp-ppp-per-capita
And it is not efficient. For example, despite the oft-cited expenses of conducting two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and the defense spending has still not exceeded Medicate expenses alone, not including Medicaid...
And that absolute sum relates to an "efficiency" figure how? I'm not following your argument here.
My own preference -- having experienced both of the two other alternatives
If you think that there are only four approaches to chose from, you haven't really looked hard.
As I said, if you can't sue the government, get the heck out of the country while you still have a passport.
Suing the government is far harder than suing a business.
That's a case of crappy government (bordering on dictatorship) then. But any lawsuit is hard enough when you're seriously ill and in debt. The insurance company can just wait you out, and they know it.
With the government's Medicaire being the 800lb gorilla in that market, no insurance company will think of going into that business. That's the point...
That's no point at all. A 91 year-old is an unacceptable risk to any for-profit company. The average number of years that the insured will be paying is minimal (sorry, with 91 years you're _way_ beyond the average life expectancy), the expected costs are astronomical.
And if Medicare is so crappy, as you state, then private insurers should have no problem beating them. It's just not profitable to try.
That such businesses are perfectly viable is evidenced by the life insurance industry...
Err, no, it's not. Not at all. Life insurance has a predetermined payout (health insurance occasionally does, too, but the lifetime maximum is usually much higher than the payout of usual life insurance contracts), which makes it much more calculable than health insurance for the insurer. They can just feed some basic data to their insurance mathematician and come up with a monthly rate that will still allow them to make a profit on average. Or they'll sell a contract that is a total ripoff, hey, if the applicant is a senior citizen then he or she might not even realize. I doubt that insurers will have any decent offers for 91 year-old though - maybe for someone who's in his late 60s or early 70s.
Another case in point: Due to a preexisting condition (sorry, from birth. I'm just SOL there), no insurer would give me health or occupational disability insurance. I've had zero problems getting life insurance, though.