It's there: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/lower-petition-count-taking-us-seriously-back-25000-signatures/cNjdpc3R

Plus, of course, the take your ball and go home petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/get-rid-petitionswhitehousegov/DLBvj7Vh

Did you read what you write? Or at least look at any numbers to back it up?

The number is easily millions overall (not annually), even if that was meant to be hyperbole. Almost a hundred thousand people are dying a year from hospital acquired infections. As you mention 'killing instead of healing', if we add in preventable medical errors, you can account for about another 50-100k a year.

How many deaths is enough before it's acceptable to think about the problem, and what's causing it?

Yes, the flu vaccine, in and of itself, isn't the panacea to all of these problems. But it's something that helps to prevent people from getting sick in hospitals. Wearing a mask, hand washing, and staying home if sick are also ways to help prevent people from getting sick in hospitals. And they're not mutually exclusive.

Smoking and drinking alcohol aren't contagious. But, by that note, if a nurse smoked in a patient's room in the hospital, I absolutely guarantee you he or she would be fired immediately. Same if they were caught coming in to work drunk.

It's not about what a person is doing to their body, it's about the health of the patients/customers. Infection in hospitals is a serious enough issue without the health care professionals adding to it.

And, from the article: 'There seems to be a persistent myth that you can get flu from a flu vaccine among nurses,' says Schaffner. Honestly... these are people who are expected to provide professional health care, who don't understand one of the most basic concepts of medicine. Maybe it's for the best, here.

The real issue is the health effects. While I'll agree that correlation does not necessarily prove causation, it's worth noting that there was an anomalous amount of cancer going on with TSA workers at BOS, an airport that piloted these scanners. The TSA refused to even let their employees where dosimeters when this was found.

From the TSA Blog: There is a really good reason for this. The emissions from our X-ray technology are well below the requirements that would require their routine usage. To help reassure passengers and employees that the technology is safe, however, health physicists with the U.S. Army have been conducting area dosimeter surveys at multiple airports nationwide.

So, the short of it? The emissions are below the requirements that would require the routine usage of something that would detect the amount of the emissions? Wait, what? How... do ... you ... know?

I really don't give a shit if some random TSA jockey gets a look at a digital version of my junk. I'm opting out every time because I really don't want to get cancer because they refused to accept the possibility that what they're doing could be hurting people.

There's no way for an insurance company to know what is or is not going on around when you're driving, but ...

If a random occurrence happens, where, like happened to me today, a goose were to wander into the road, and I had to slow down to not hit it, that's a small blip in the overall scheme of driving.

If I drive a road where midgets juggling flaming torches dive in front of cars every day, those stops are going to be more commonplace. And it's not going to be the fault of my driving. But I'm still more likely to get involved in an accident on this road.

People view insurance way too much as a "I'm a good driver, I should be rewarded", and "He's a bad driver, he should be punished". That's not what it's about. It's about "how much is it going to cost to insure someone like you". And that includes driving habits, and the situations around you.

Accurate, and, on top of that, USB is polling based, while PS/2 is interrupt based. USB will check the port every "n" milliseconds to see if there's data waiting, while with a PS/2 keyboard, when you press a key, an interrupt is generated. The delay is very short (depending on how often a given keyboard's driver polls, it might only be 10 milliseconds or so), but it's worth noting.

PS/2 is still significantly better than USB for keyboard technology. But USB is usually good enough if you're not a gamer.

It is worth noting too, that just because you have PS/2 doesn't mean you have NKRO automatically, as depending on the technology 'underneath the hood' of a keyboard, it might not allow certain combinations of simultaneous keypresses. But that's an issue that's resolved by getting a mechanical keyboard, since they have the individual switches.

Shameless plug: Steelseries 7G. It's a big investment for a keyboard, but it provides NKRO, is a native PS/2 keyboard, is well constructed, and has audio jacks and USB ports on the keyboard, as well as a removable plastic wrist rest.

For a vote for 'the third guy' to mean anything, you have to have millions of people agree with you. And the two major political parties spend a lot of money convincing millions of people to disagree with you.

If congress were allocated based on, say, percentage of votes obtained in the presidential election by each political party, then there could be a reason to vote for a third party candidate - even if they don't win, they get representation. This also solves the issue of two political parties getting nothing done in congress because of their opposing beliefs, assuming the third party gets enough representation and isn't so fundamentally close to one of the other parties to just push their agenda.

But, that's not the way things are set up in the United States. So in practice, voting for a third party for the presidency is, in fact, just giving up your right to choose.

Voting for them in elections other than the presidency can actually be viable, though.

Fortunately, the software will be able to detect future attempts to unlawfully hack it.

That's what Miss Cleo told me when I called her, anyway.