Hyperbole? Sounds more like a platform, to me.

I agree with "I'd like to be in Congress because I think a well run government is essential for the common good." People can differ on what "well run" means, but I assert that only a dip shit elects someone to government because government is "the problem."

Insightful, but I wonder about causality. Seems like maybe small-government, go-it-alone conservatives are electing douchbags. I mean, when I give my vote to someone who assures me that government is the problem, so that person can become a member of said government, doesn't that make me an idiot?

Sorry no mod points! As I understand it, you are correct.

I'm just going to quote wikipedia, princess:

"The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung."

So, yes, 1918 flu did kill some people directly, which is unusual. Just not the majority. So, the majority would have been helped had penicillin been discovered yet. Um, just like I said.

For further reading, I suggest you review the widely available layman's review of what is know of the 1918 flu. You might further review the number of yearly flu related deaths in the US.

Perhaps what made the 1918 flu so deadly is that it arrived 26 years before penicillin.

How about a massively parallel, cheap, distributed jamming platform?

America pays more per capita that every country in the G8 -- by a wide margin -- for a shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality rate. No further context needed.

In 2000, the World Health Organization rated the US system as #37 overall and #72 in overall level of health. There was criticism of the way those ratings were compiled, tho, so WHO hasn't issued those ratings in some time. Sound like politics to you?

BTW, there's a ton of information available on US & world health care systems, so there's no need to guess or take the word of some insurance company sponsored shill.

The only proposal currently on the table is requiring that everyone have insurance. There's no discussion of what insurance you have to have, tho one might argue that there ought to be minimums, e.g., you can't get insurance that doesn't provide for catastrophic care, no matter how stupid you are.

The benefit of requiring everyone to have insurance is that doctors are legally required to render aid if withholding such aid would lead to death, permanent harm, etc. That costs doctors and hospitals, and those costs are passed right along to those who are insured.

Now, the other stupid thing about the US health system is that they (we?) pay more as a country than the rest of the world, for considerably worse care. Where is all that extra money going? Some can be explained by all of the uninsured people who get more or less no early or preventative care (since they can't pay for it), waiting until they might actually die before doctors & hospitals are obliged to intervene.

But the reality is that most of the useless money is going to insurance companies in the form of profits. And that's not likely to change any time soon, since all of the health care reform discussion is simply about requiring everyone to purchase insurange.

"Nearly two" is probably too young to teach about charity, but you're on the right track. I wouldn't suggest letting a nearly two year old play unsupervised on a OLPC G1G1. They are rugged, not impervious! My three year old pealed off a dozen of the keys. She's had the OLPC since last year without previously destroying it, so one would have thought she was OK with it. She had no idea the exploration she was doing was destructive.

Another issue, tho, is that OLPC doesn't really have much software for a two year old, and the browser doesn't come with a reasonably flash alternative. So, if you're going to be closely supervising and surfing to run applications, it seems like using your laptop or desktop is just the thing.

Really? No St George flags stuck on cars for World Cups? Maybe just not recently...