It was pretty bad in 1880. Then society stepped hard on businesses and showed them it wasn't going to accept that behavior. And companies mostly behaved until 1980.

In 1980 the new mantra of "a business's only duty is to it's share holders. it has no obligation or responsibility to benefit the rest of society. Indeed, if it would harm the shareholders to benefit society then it's wrong. And if harming society would benefit the shareholders, then it's right."

Like most things- there's a reasonable point in there. But it's been taken to an extreme I think it's just a matter of time til the governments get pissed off and do something about it (as they have for centuries).

That definition turns ugly repeatedly so often that the government has to get involved to stop the excesses (company stores, interlocking trusts, monopoly pricing, collusion, vertical market lock).

The bad thing here is that the government was subverted by business and is no longer acting as a check and balance.

A "free market" works for small businesses but not for large multi-national corporations and not even really for simply "large" corporations. It's sort of like how libertarianism can work under a strong government but fails badly when you have a weak government and very powerful people who use that power to abuse weaker people.

There's also a "moral" component which makes capitalism work and be beneficial and that's eroded a lot since 1980.

http://www.infoplease.com/worl...

For example:

"The school day in France typically runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a half day on Saturday, although students do not attend school on Wednesday or Sunday. Lunch is a two-hour break for public school students. Students usually attend school from ages 6 to 18. The average number of students per class is 23. Uniforms are not required, but religious dress of any kind is banned. The school year for this country in the northern hemisphere stretches from August to June, and is divided into four seven-week terms, with one to two weeks of vacation in between."

Part of a consideration for any school year is the parent's work schedule and child care.

It's about indoctrinating them to be one people to prevent a lot of civil strife later on and to make them cohesive in the face of national threats.

Public education unified the united states.

And it's about education. Producing a citizen base which is capable.

It seems to be a lot less about civics than it used to be.

It's layered too- a lot of ugly information is held back until you go to college.

I'm saying that indoctrination is not all bad. Lack of indoctrination results in some fairly bloody civil wars over fairly meaningless differences.

I wonder if a more dangerous vector would be a mutation that allowed it to have other carrier species. Something is carrying it now without dying. If some bird species got it without dying that could turn ugly.

I think it's more about the fatality rate. 50-90% vs 2-3% for really virulent flu like in 2009.

Even the spanish flu was about 15%.

Plus choking isn't nearly as dramatic as bleeding blood out of every orafice and even the skin.

The downside is this. Those geeks are portrayed as having happy lives- attracting beautiful women- making good money- and generally having a fun social life.

To the geek who doesn't have a happy life- this sets unrealistic expectations.

I like the show. It's funny. But my life is okay. I think the show talks at geeks, not down to them. But just as other TV shows portray a "middle class" family as having a $750,000 house, with cars for every kid-- this show is unrealistic.

In my mothers case, she basically said after three rounds of treatment she didn't want to suffer that way any more. She was essentially choosing to die even tho she could have suffered a month and had 3 more months and then suffered a month and had 2 more months.

We discussed it and I understood. The tradeoff of good days to bad days wasn't worth it for her any more.

Her choice didn't matter since she got blood poisoning from the transfusions (about 1% odds apparently) and that killed her before she made it to the next time she would have required time in the hospital again.

When I said not all pain is physical what I meant was that some people suffer terribly from mental conditions but are not "crazy" in the classic since. Just terribly dreadfully unhappy and nothing can be done to help them at this time. I can understand how a person who lives in constant misery or dread and is still really sane would decide they'd had enough for rational sane reasons.

Didn't take it as a dig. I agree that it is a difficult and nuanced subject.

Perhaps for the young and healthy.

For the unhealthy, suicide can be a logical exit.

Geeky, if you were going to be in severe pain for the rest of your life and drugs wouldn't help- you wouldn't be able to sleep more than 2 hours at a stretch without being woken up by the pain-- how long before suicide would seem like a rational way out.

Not everyone's pain is physical.

Well first.. those two numbers are very similar.

Second- as he points out, a lot of them were suicides. Suicides also occurred on the Portland.

These are exceptions which will be figured out- and once they are there (and they will be) will never be "rookie" drivers or "sad drivers because they had a death in the family" or "old drivers" or "sleepy drivers" again.

And if you are suicidal enough to jump in front of a train (a grisly way to die), then you are probably going to find another way to suicide (like jumping off a building).

I don't think your argument is very powerful. You have a point. But we allow a lot more deaths to occur for other reasons which don't save as much money.

I wish that were the case in the states.

Here, the police no longer ticket for even aggressive tailgating.

Drivers here get angry if they are within 10 feet behind you and you don't speed up (and you are already over the speed limit by 5mph). And what you really need to do is to slow down to account for the extra stopping distance you need to keep them from plowing into you.

There are a lot of basic rules of the road that the police used to enforce and which made everyone better drivers.

Now, the police seem to focus only on high revenue tickets-- even blatantly showing up regularly 3-4 days at the end of the month to meet their quotas on certain stretches of the highway.

I start on one of the islands. I prefer iceland since it usually picks up greenland easily.

The information for 99.9% of wiki pedia articles is useful.

Only politically charged articles and obscure articles are suspect.

I can see how something that might be true but which is very hard to verify as true or false on a non critical subject (like this book character hoax) would last a while. But I'd never encounter it in my use of the Wiki.

dude. he was being snarky because he is ignorant of the way expansion and contraction, dropping your phone, turning on and off your phone, etc. etc. damage the solid state components.

He's just ignorant and flipped off a sarcastic comment without thinking. I've done the same thing myself on other subjects.

It seems dumb and like solid state devices should be impervious to damage.

But run them hot, run them through a lot of on/off cycles or cool/hot cycles and they are damaged and have a lower MTBF.

My god, reading the entire thread, I can't believe anyone took him seriously.

What does he need to do, put it in green text?

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Look, for an easier way to find info on this subject google for router antenna's. They have the same problem (solid state but they degrade fairly quickly) and there are a lot more pages exploring why this is true.

My samsung has been hot to the touch many times (so over 100 degrees but probably less than 110- but probably over 110 inside) and heat is a leading cause for solid state parts of routers to go bad.

The others didn't pick up your snark.

Look- every time you turn on and off your phone, it suffers damage.

Every time you drop your phone, it suffers from damage.

Electronics which are operated outside of their heat range suffer damage.

Expansion and contraction of solid state electronic devices causes damage.

Now... how about you stop being a snarky troll.