Personally, I blame IV drug users for that particular misconception. They're almost the only people who establish venous access to deliver a single bolus, and with way more drug users than healthcare personnel using needles in media, people associate needles with IV.

In healthcare, or rather in modern, first world healthcare, when delivering a single drug, it will usually be IM, occasionally sub-cutaneous, and every once in a great while subdermal or intradermal.

If I'm giving a med that has to be delivered by IV, I won't just stick the needle in, push it and take the needle out, even if I don't anticipate pushing any other IV drugs. Basically, if I'm going to go through all the effort of, and cause the scarring by, establishing venous access, I'm going leave it in place just in case it's needed again, either by putting a lock on it (basically just a piece of tubing with a one way valve), or hanging a bag of fluid that's dripping just fast enough to prevent backflow.

Now, I don't do primary care, and in fact, I have very little knowledge of primary care, so it's possible that this isn't true in that setting, though what I do know of primary care says that they very rarely use IV drugs of any description.

I work in healthcare, as a result, I've had almost as many shots as people in the army get. I've started an IV on myself multiple times, and given myself shots. In short, I'm about as used to having needles in me as you can get.

And you know what? Tetanus shots hurt like a bastard.

Per the FBI (http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder):

Man, I have mod points, but sadly no matter how deserving I can't mod you to +11 insightful.

I'm 6'8 and weigh in at about 300lbs, of which probably about 40lbs of it is fat. I've never been asked to leave a bar, let alone been approached by a bouncer or five. In the times that I've been confronted with cops, I've never had one draw his handcuffs, nightstick or taser, let alone try to use one of them on me. If you have, perhaps the problem here isn't your size, it's your attitude.

This is speculation, but I'm betting this has less of an application for pacemaking than it does for correcting a conduction induced arrhythmia.

Under normal circumstances, an electrical impulse is generated in the SA node at the top of the heart, then spreads through a defined path, first inervating the atria, a quick stop in the AV node which slows the conduction down for half a beat (haha, I'm so funny.), then continues down to activate the ventricles.

Heart attacks kill muscle, and one of the big effects of that, aside from the loss of contractile force, is the fact that dead muscle doesn't conduct very well, so the electical impulse will start doing all sorts of interesting things to route around the problem, which can lead to the ventricles and atria firing in odd sequences.

This circuit could potentially provide a new route for the impulse which would more closely mimic the original path, and restore a normal(ish) rhythm.

Extending further out into speculation land, it's possible that with very precise control, and a reasonably powerful computer running the thing, you could correct atrial fibrillation, which would be all sorts of good.

Finally, as to the implantation, I know that people are starting to do endoscopic Coronary Artery Bypass Grafts, which means that it's possible to work inside the pericardial sac without cracking the chest, I see no real reason that applying this circuitry couldn't be performed in the same way. Yes it's still going to knock people down for longer than a pacemaker implant will, but then, it's doing way more than a pacemaker does.

I'm honestly not trying to make a mother's basement joke here, but seriously, how much of a shut in are you, that you've only seen three iPads in the wild?

I'm virtually a hermit, and I see three uniques a week, easy.

And before you ask, no, I don't live in Cupertino, I live in New Mexico (and not Los Alamos, either), which is 47th in the country by GDP per capita.

I don't own one, I don't want one, and I'm very much not in their target demographic, and it's blindingly obvious that all of that is true of you as well, but the things are popular, massively so, and refusing to acknowledge that by making snide, derogatory comments that just flat out deny reality makes you look like either a) a zealot who is frothing at his mouth, 2) a blithering idiot or III) someone who lives in a shack in the woods and hasn't been in the same room as another human being in 10 years.

My money's on 1), but for all I know it could be C), your written presentation aside, I genuinely don't believe it's II).

If you look a little closer:

Quite aside from the festive town, there's the postal code, but my favorite bit is Googling for "Xavier Jenks" The third result (the first two are Facebook) is: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2011/06/28/big-foot-real-or-imagined

Which includes this little nugget:

A foolish consistency is the hob-goblin of small minds.

I'm sorry, I forgot to address the weight issue. Per the Apple store, the weight ranges from 308-312g depending on model, and per their environmental report (http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/iPadmini_PER_oct2012.pdf), the packaging weighs in at 333g, I couldn't easily find any numbers for the charger and cord etc, but I'm just going to go hog wild and round the whole thing up from 645g to 750g to cover them. So 1520*750 = 1,140,000g or 1,140kg or 2,513 lbs.

Toyota's bottom of the line forklift (http://www.toyotaforklift.com/product/InternalCombustionCushionTireLiftTrucks/8seriesic.aspx) has a rated capacity of 3,000 lbs.)

Well, I had to take some WAGs, but based on this image: http://assets.ilounge.com/images/uploads/ipadminifr2.jpg and the stated technical dimensions of the ipad mini of 7.8 x 5.3 x .28 inches, I'm guesstimating a packaging dimension of 8 x 5.5 x 1.25 inches. Assuming an ISO 40 x 48 inch pallet, and a stack height of 48 inches (and without running the math for an optimal stacking solution), I make it as each layer being 5 (40/8) x 8 (48/5.5) = 40 units, with 38 layers, for a total of 1520 units per pallet.

Assuming that every one of them was the base model at $329, that would be just over a million dollars (1,000,160) for the two pallets, for the top of the line at $659, that's just over two million dollars (2,003,360).

It's probably a mix of models, and obviously my WAGs are going to be off some, but really, 1.5 million for 2 pallets isn't a wholly unreasonable number.

Actually, the point I was trying to make is that my driving is conscious, and yours should be, too.

I know that this really isn't your point, but you touched off a hobby horse of mine.

That's exactly how I drive, if you want to be really safe, it's the only way you can drive.

I'm a paramedic, I routinely drive a 12,000lb (~5,500kg, for those that prefer) vehicle at high rates of speed through maneuvers that are wholly unexpected by a majority of the other drivers on the road, that's the only way I can drive.

I assess every other vehicle on the road, every pedestrian walking along side, and every cardboard box sitting on the curb. I know where they are, how fast they're going, how well they're driving (well, I usually skip that for the boxes.), how likely they are to interfere with my lane space, and as an added bonus, how they're likely to respond to the sight of me in their rear view mirror. From the moment they come into my vision until the moment they leave it, I look at everything no less than once every 5 seconds.

At the same time, I'm also keeping a running evaluation of the degree of urgency I have as it relates to how fast I'm willing to go, how hard I'm willing to accelerate (in any of the three axises available to me), and when and where I have to do what in order to meet those constraints.

That being said, I also drive like that in my personal car (Though I do skip the whole running red lights thing). It's not easy by any means, it requires a great deal of focus, good observation skills and keen geospatial awareness, but it's doable, and it works.

I've driven over half a million miles in ambulances, and probably another half million in my personal car. I've been in two accidents, both of which occurred within a year of getting my license, and both of which I know (as much as you can know such things) that if I could go back and do it again with the skills I have now, I could avoid them. (Oh, and for the record, neither of them were ruled as being my fault at the time.).

Right, sorry.

</soapbox>

Hey! I liked the cube.

It had a feature that I've yet to see on another computer, that's how advanced it was.

Surely I'm not the only one who wants to fry an egg for breakfast while checking my morning e-mail and feeds.

I dunno, I really liked TACA, when I was living in Honduras, mostly though, I was flying in and out of the US.

The flights were usually pretty comparable in price to continental and delta, (plus or minus 10% or so), the planes were relatively comfortable (If you fly on their newer planes, the older ones were so-so), and you gotta love the open bar :)

The biggest advantage was the customer service though, multiple times I wound up missing a connection for one reason or another, and they always got me on the next flight, if it was the next day they would put me up in a hotel and pay for my meals (including one time that I was actually flying on separate tickets, the system wouldn't let me combine them because it was supposed to be impossible to make the connection, but the ticket agent assured me the second flight was always late, which it was, it's just the first flight was later.). There's no way in hell any of the US carriers would do the same.