The problem with universal healthcare is that it lacks incentive for actually curing people and adds pressure to cut corners in their treatment. I personally am for a hybrid system. I'm not sure what it'd look like, but I've learned so far in life that the best answer rarely lies in extremes and is usually a balance of those extremes.

In the public healthcare system, as you've said, "Doctors order test after test to cover their asses against malpractice suits", but there's another side effect of that: diseases/illnesses are more likely to be found. A higher screening rate generally leads to more lives saved, admittedly at greater cost. I agree there's way too much waste and lack of efficiency in the system, but in a system that is set up to save people's lives, how do we establish efficiency if, to be more efficient, we have to let more people slip through the cracks?

Admittedly, that's probably counter-acted by the number of people who don't get treatment when they should due to cost, but in a universal healthcare system, even if tax payers do foot the bill, there is a budget. So in that system, you take the incentive of more tests for CYA & profits and trade it for pressure to avoid more tests as it cuts into what budget you have. i.e. less screening means more people fall through the cracks due to budget concerns.

To me, that choice between private & public health care is a catch-22 as, either way, the system is set up in a way that an excessive amount of people fall through the cracks. Which is why I'd prefer a hybrid system.

I don't see where the validity to this "We can't control our sexual orientation" idea came from. According to the American Psychiatry Association, "to date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality".

I suppose it's more likely it's environmental, but what we get from our environment is dependent upon our perception of it which, as many religious people have shown, is something we can freely control if we choose to. Ranging from tuning out a noise in the background to "This is the Matrix and our choices are pointless in a false, digital, world", depending on how you think our body interacts with the world.

Full Disclosure: I'm a homophobe. That means I irrationally fear homosexuals the same way I irrationally fear heights or spiders. I despise the fact that people use that as a slur, ignoring what the word actually means (reminds me of what happened to mental retardation, being a completely legitimate medical term turned into a hateful word used against people).

I mean no hatred with this comment/question. I sincerely want to know where the certainty, which saturates this entire post, comes from that it's not a choice, when a governing body that actively studies this isn't certain at all. Admittedly, that page hasn't been updated in a while, but I'd figure it would be if something as important as that were discovered to be true, and it represents a key location people who know little about the subject would go to get more information.

>So the obvious question is why be willing to believe that God did not require creating, yet he universe did?

The universe has cause and effect and requires it for everything. I don't think it's a stretch of logic to say the universe requires that of itself as well.

Applying that to God doesn't make sense because then we are saying that God is subject to the same things that the universe is. Which is kind of opposite the whole concept of God. i.e. Supernatural (read: doesn't follow nature's laws).

It's logical to apply the universe's inner workings to itself as a whole, but it's not to apply them to something that is supposed to be beyond them by definition (at least as most religions look at it).

Some people get caught up in the difference between the mechanics of evolution and the theory regarding how life became so diverse over time.

I'm not opposed to believing one and disbelieving the other in regards to what is the truth (evidence notwithstanding). i.e. "Genes and exist and evolution works, but that's not necessarily how we got from monkeys to us, or from amoeba to monkeys."

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

If that's the definition, there's one issue with the Judge's decision. The definition of puffery requires that the customer doesn't take the claim seriously. It sounds like the investors (the customers in this case, in a sense) did indeed take them seriously.

Caveat emptor, yes, but regardless, by the FTC's definition, this isn't puffery. Not sure what it is, but it's not that.

Considering we've already gotten this far, in 1970, we shouldn't have much farther to go to figure out that mass propulsion problem.

I'm probably failing high school biology here, but don't some genes, individually, affect multiple things? i.e. If you focus on intelligence, what does that predispose other factors to? Are the intelligence based genes tied to anything else? And if so, what would focusing on those genes also bring out in the kids born from those embryos?

This is a negative financially, but the more expensive treatement tends to lead to better treatment.

Compare the opposite case in the EU. Because hospitals have a budget, and they aren't paid directly by the patients, they are less likely to screen for disease because screening is expensive, but screening saves lives (cancer, among other things are found early, for example).

So, imo, the best system is a combination of public and private. I have no idea how such a thing would work, but both public and private have drastic negative consequences (public means less people get diagnosed and dies while private means a larger financial burden and less people get diagnosed and die due to the financial burden of care), so I figure a combination is the right way to go.... somehow.

Ok, not really, but let's just say someone did this, then somehow, the egg stays frozen for *generations*. I'm not sure about how well the genetic material would hold up being frozen for that long, but I'm assuming it could last quite a while.

Then a descendant decides to use the egg to produce a child... who is effectively that person's great^n uncle/aunt.

I gotta say. That'd be weird to explain to the kid, keep up with medical records, and a slew of other things, I'm sure.

A weird idea, but something that might end up happening at some point or another in the near to far future. How would you handle diseases for that? It could be a potential pandora's box.

Unless I'm mistaken, what causes the atmosphere to "leak" so profusely is the lack of a strong magnetic field (which the Earth has due to it's molten iron core).

To me, this means that to terraform Mars, we'd have to have the technology to "restart" Mars' core, a la "The Core", as in the movie. Theoretically, that'd bring the magnetic field back and protect the atmosphere. Then the plant part can start.

That significantly raises the bar on the technology that is required to terraform the planet, so I don't expect it to happen in the foreseeable future. Whereas, before this was mentioned, I thought maybe we'd start some time in my lifetime (the next 50-90 years). It'd be kind of pointless if, by the time we had the technology to somehow spin up the core, the atmosphere would basically be gone.

True. They both affect the celebrity equally, but in one instance, I follow the rules and get the benefit of keeping my money. In the other, I do something illegal and and get to keep my money *and* I get the media.

I suppose the difference for me is that although both have the same effect on the celebrity, I have a right to one (my money, my choice), while the other, I don't.

Which leads me back to why I consider it acceptable to pirate in this situation. The laws that say it's illegal to do so are broken, barely enforced (by percentage), and generally asinine in a digital age, imo. So me breaking the law is irrelevant/negligible in my eyes, while the negative regarding the celebrity will happen either way because I'm not buying it with my money. So in that situation, in my eyes, pirating isn't different from not buying the song, except in that I don't get the media. ... So if there's no difference except that I don't get to experience what I enjoy, why wouldn't I pirate?

And I suppose regarding the "Is it evil/wrong?" discussion, if we are to assume (wrongly, but still) that the laws represent the people in the USA, then violating them is breaching our social contract that has been set up. In that instance, I would say it's wrong. However, since the laws don't represent the people accurately, I still consider it wrong in that it breaches our social contract (with the corporations, but still), but don't really care because every other choice is unreasonable or what I constitute as worse in terms of my moral compass.

Note: Evil was probably too strong a word. I just used that instead of "wrong" because I was saying "lesser of two evils" and wanted it to go together.

You are right. I suppose I value whether something is evil or not in if it negatively affects another person. That's why I mentioned the absolutist sense.

i.e. me pirating some album from some rich celebrity still negatively affects that celebrity (since me not buying it means they don't get more money), but they are already rich so a single $20 album purchase is negligible in my eyes, but that doesn't change the fact it affects them, just whether it affects them in a way I reasonably care about or not.

So yes, it's amoral generally, but for my personal moral compass it is a lesser evil. Because I'd rather their music be a reasonable price and available to me so I can buy it without breaking laws that are arbitrary in my view. Idealism, again.

Then there is an absolutist sense for me (that's why I mentioned it).

No. In a digital age, I find it absurd that people (particularly me) are kept from experiencing content that they enjoy, and more importantly, can learn from or grow as a person. I find that unreasonable to ask of me.

Basically, I'm acknowledging that the system is fubared and that I'm actively choosing an option that would normally be detrimental to the system, but because of it's state, is the only reasonable, acceptable option imo.

I live by Occam's Razor. Not sure how, but I learned to do that anyway before I knew it was a thing. My options being: 1. purchase the content. 2. Pirate the content. or 3. don't get the content.

1 is unreasonable because it feeds the problem, and is detrimental to me (content is overpriced, which is a symptom of the problem).
3 is unreasonable for the aforementioned reasons about availability.

So I'm left with 2 which is the most reasonable even if it's not the best possible choice (i.e. in a perfect world).

Indeed.

>personal rant

The issue of piracy is complex, and personally, I am a pirate. However, I acknowledge that it is evil, but I consider it the lesser of two evils. And I sincerely believe each action is relative.

To clarify, I'm not going to pirate a $1 song from some indie artist. However, the same may or may not be true from much larger artists with larger libraries. Simply because I realize they are probably going to be rich regardless due to large numbers of people actually buying there stuff. That's what I mean by relative.

And sure, in the absolutist sense both are still wrong. However, I consider it even more wrong to support an industry that is set up to screw over the consumer. And I consider every single digital media generating industry set up that way because they are based on copyright laws that are broken in some way or another.

Sure, piracy has been known to be pretty good advertisement, so it's still supporting if I enable that (I don't), but the sheep are gonna buy the stuff anyway, so I consider that irrelevant both to my situation and to the general issue to begin with.

Personally, I wish the world were perfect, where people created media as a hobby, and (thanks to the Internet) everything was crowd-sourced and thereby, free. The potential would be massive then. Oh well, idealism.

And honestly, I think the sheer number of pirates are a symptom and not the problem (the problem being copyright laws and how we handle media in general). And I alike it to those strange laws that if you did indeed break them, nobody would care because they realize they are stupid. I imagine the number of pirates that get jailed for piracy VS the number that exist & known about by authorities is around 1%. When the precedent says no one cares or even has the potential to do something about it (due to sheer numbers), I too fail to care.

People may disagree. They do that. /personal rant

Just an FYI, it states on his github page (which is something I'd figure a commentator would read, but hey, lets talk about things we didn't bother to read) the following:
"After talking with the frustrated non-technical people who owned/managed them, I wrote this program to help network users and owners." ... So you are completely off-base with your comments.