Don't get too snarky here. You are incorrect. Pneumonia - a state in the lungs with certain types of tissue damage and characteristic clinical findings - can be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, chemicals and the 'ol immune system all by its haywire self.

Hemophilus is a genus of bacteria that loves to infect the lungs AFTER a viral infection. Fortunately, there is a good vaccine for this and most Slashdot posters probably haven't even heard of a case of Hemophilus sepsis or encephalitis (truly awful diseases). Further, I think the poster you are replying to is referring to an 'allergy shot' (likely a strong dose of a general steroid to stomp on the immune system) caused his (?) immune system to weaken to the point where he got another infection. Possible, not terribly likely but possible.

You might be smart, but that doesn't stop you from being ignorant.

Use your supposed smarts to look up the details of how influenza vaccines work and don't work.

TL;DR - It's complicated.

Those are implants.

I'm surprised they didn't put you on a special 'call this guy - he's kinda fun' list.

I would have....

Great. Just what some PTSD-addled Vietnam vet needs to hear.....

Tachometers are useful diagnostic devices on an automatic, especially a truck under load. So I'm glad I have one, but I hardly ever glance at it unless something seems wrong.

Right. And if you miss the scheduled maintenance tick, the radio stays on and only plays episodes of 'Car Talk' until you take it to the dealer to reset it.

You think there is a functional difference? How cute.

Stand on local hill.

Turn slowly in a 360 degree circle.

That should do it. If not, at least the compass in you phone will be calibrated.

Aren't we being stupid today.

Which is why, if you have high personal valuation, say you make 200K / year, have a trust fund or other assets, you often want much higher limits on your policies. If you own two houses and a boat and a bunch of securities, it makes sense for the aggrieved party to go after you. If you flip burgers, not so much. My insurance policy states that they will defend me for losses above the policy limits, but it doesn't say how aggressively they will go about it. And, if they lose, so do I.

Wow. You've managed to out-cube Time-cube.

Be careful here. Real careful. There is some truth to that statement but the implication is overbroad. It is the military structure that puts it's command away from local government. What you want is local civilian governmental control of the police, not federal control. Weapons and tactics are of little import and have been more than a little hyped.

It's the feds coopting local police by offering money, equipment, communications and help that is very concerning. Of course, it can work both ways - we have seen where local control of police causes real harm to members of the community and those harms don't get addressed locally. The entire civil rights movement would have been dead in the water if the US Federal government hadn't been there to 'overwhelm' the entrenched southern interests. No clear winner either way and checks and balances are crucial.

But guns and trucks are only a small part of this.

Remember that in the early days of penicillin, when manufacturing meant making a couple of grams of the stuff, it was 'recycled' from patient's urine, purified and used again. Many drugs are passed unchanged through the kidney. Many more have only modest changes that might still be biologically active. Standard sewage treatment plants have a relatively haphazard approach to breaking down complex organic molecules of all sorts. If the primary bacteria and flocculation (precipitation) don't get the compound it goes into the drink (so to speak).

UV radiation is pretty good at breaking down things, and even atmospheric radiation (without adding additional UV lights) works to some extent but it is slow and the UV does not penetrate any great deal into the water column. So you either need active UV filtering (something the EPA is pushing) or some other active means of removing organochemicals. Add industrial level effluents and you've got a problem. All of this requires money, time, rule of law and civil commitment. Which means it doesn't always happen - either in China or India or anywhere.

Yeah, Kim's Killer Kids could conceivably make the elevator ascend in bumpy six inch steps for an hour while playing 'You Light Up My Life", but that's about as scary as it gets.