1/20th of one percent of their annual budget.

How man of us have either seen commercials or heard about lawyers colluding with doctors to get people to claim "disability" with the SSA even when they have nothing wrong with them?

This is definitely one of those programs which needs heavy monitoring to weed out waste and fraud, along with military procurement.

True story along the same lines. My dad had to appear in court regarding a disability (non SSA) claim one of the company employees claimed they had and why they couldn't come back to work.

During testimony, a video was shown of this person, who claimed they injured their back, lifting bags of cement over his shoulder and climbing up a ladder to do work. Obviously his claims were rejected and he was fired, but I'm sure we can find thousands of people on SSA "disability" who are doing the same thing.

If we attach penalties for violation of the UN bill of rights governments would be forced to hold a much higher standard of behavior.

I suggest you take a quick look at the UN Veto Powers. Then ask yourself: "how likely are ANY of these countries to want real penalties attached to the UN Bill of Rights?"

If your answer to the question above was "why, all five of them would give the UN Bill of Rights some teeth in a heartbeat, if only someone would suggest it to them", then go right ahead and do so.

Then report to your psychiatrist and tell him you need stronger meds....

was known to be effective by '97

From your link, it was known to have "great potential" by '97.

Which is NOT the same as "known to be effective".

See what I did there?

Go read The Fine Article before spouting your nonsense.

Success in life in not measured by how well you know coding.

Agree completely.

Alas, talking in public about things you know nothing about tends to make you look like an idiot.

Not that Biden needed "One More Thing" to help him look like an idiot - he's had that down for years.

Assuming life favors a single-star system when in reality it favors a twin-star system.

I'm assuming you are a native of a twin-star system who happens to be doing anthropology work among the savages in this system.

Because otherwise, I can't figure out how you'd know that life favors a twin-star system, given that we know of zero twin-star systems that support life.

Joe Biden knows less about coding than my daughter.

Hell, he probably knows less about coding than he knows about guns...

Hint, Joe: firing a shotgun THROUGH your front door violates pretty much every rule about target identification that there is.

Windows 7 is notorious for always preparing to do something.

Preparing to download updates.

Preparing to install updates.

Preparing to restart machine.

Preparing to remove device.

Preparing to install device.

JFC! Just do it already. Stop preparing.

This is one of the most stark contrasts between XP and 7. XP didn't waste time preparing to do something, it just did it. In 7 you might as well go get lunch because it takes so long to do anything (or find anything for that matter because things are deliberately hidden.)

In theory, you can always learn more by continuing to study something. In practice, though, modern medicine has a pretty complete knowledge of smallpox. Humans have been studying the disease since before anyone even knew what a virus was. There's evidence that the Chinese were inoculating people for smallpox over a thousand years ago. And the first practical, widespread form of that vaccine dates back to the late 1700s. This was literally the very first virus ever treated with a vaccine. It's well-trodden ground, research-wise.

The problem is, this virus is highly contagious and relatively dangerous compared with other viruses. For variola major, the case fatality rate is typically 30–60%, which puts it among the worst communicable diseases out there, approaching the fatality rate of ebola, and far more contagious. With nearly a two-week average incubation period (and up to 17 days in the worst case), one minor screw-up could easily cause a very serious pandemic before enough vaccines could be produced and distributed.

So basically, you have to weigh the odds of an accidental release (which, with recent revelations about this stuff getting lost for decades, then turning up by accident, seems not so improbable) against the relatively small chance of learning anything new from it that can't also be learned from cowpox or other similar viruses. On the risk-reward curve, this seems to be so far towards the "pure risk" end that any reward would border on undeniable proof of divine intervention, which means the speculated rewards would have to be pretty darn amazing for it to be worth the risk.

What could possibly be gained from further experimentation at this point? We already know how to isolate it and how to produce vaccines for it. And for gene therapy, there are lots of other, less dangerous viruses that can be used as vectors for delivering genetic material. It seems that keeping anything more than the bare minimum amount of material needed to produce vaccines would fall pretty far towards the risk end of the risk-reward curve.

The SyFy version involves a pro wrestler playing the technician. Oh, and the plucky daughter just found out she's pregnant.