I like my Nexus 10. I could never see myself owning a 7" tablet. What would I use it for? It would only be 1.5" larger than my phone anyway.

I can see why iPhone owners like the 7" tablet - it definitely fills a niche of still being portable but being much more functional than a phone. However, I think the solution to that is to just make the phone bigger since I carry it in a belt case anyway, and it doesn't hurt that I have long fingers.

I think the 10" tablet is also a potential replacement for a laptop if you add a bluetooth keyboard.

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Also, what law of physics dictates that we can only extend life and not vigor? For all we know there will be breakthroughs that make us as lucide at the age of 300 as we are at the age of 30. It may not happen for us, but the complexity of the human body and mind are finite, so I think is just a matter of time.

Well, relative to each other everything seems to be accelerating apart. Of course, that is a recent result - until recently the universe seemed to be nearly flat - that is the expansion of the earth was asymptotically slowing towards a static universe (which it would never actually reach).

I'm not an expert in such things, but there are a bunch of factors involved with relativistic motion. The relative passage of time slows, light becomes red-shifted (to the extent that an event that was incomprehensibly hot is redshifted to the temperature of something at 4K or so), and so on. We can actually "see" all the way to the beginning of the universe, simply because it was an incredibly brilliant flash of energy, but we can't see anything immediately afterwards because those objects are all red-shifted into undetectability (and there are also period of time where the universe was not transparent to light).

Well, you can only extrapolate from what you have, so it is a useful exercise, but there is no reason that the rules apply the same everywhere. Nobody really understands what kinds of fields might exist on a large scale across the cosmos so it may very well be that there are things that behave differently elsewhere.

It isn't about our galaxy being "special" per se, so much as the anthropic principle. There may very well be many galaxies in the exact same situation as ours, but that doesn't mean that all galaxies are, or even most.

But, again, you can only work with the data you have, so it does make sense to at least ask what the universe is like assuming that it is uniform in behavior.

Electing one person certainly won't do anything, but to the extent that any trend actually gets going the wheels of democracy turn one office at a time. Certainly I can't put people who advocate electing people into the same category as the nutjobs who advocate killing people.

That isn't such a bad thing. I know somebody who had stents placed and the doctor didn't wait long enough when removing the sheath (or whatever they call the thing they insert catheter through). She was lying in bed and felt damp and looked down and there was blood all over the place. Good thing she hadn't taken a nap - she was bleeding from her femoral artery - not exactly a minor vessel. When she finally managed to get the attention of a nurse there was quite the stir.

No argument there - I suspect that once they figure out the brain the whole DSM is going to need a MAJOR refactor...

I'm talking about actual costs, not accounting games. It costs thousands of dollars to produce a record album, and I don't think anybody would really dispute this (maybe you can get people to work for free, but if you add up the hours and reasonable compensation it works out to something on that scale). If you factor in failed bands that were funded whose costs have to be recouped I'm sure the figure will be 10x higher.

With drugs the costs are in the tens to hundred of millions of dollars. Much of that goes to pay doctors to participate in clinical trials, but there are a lot of other costs as well. Hundreds of scientists are involved in the development and testing of a drug, and they are expensive to hire.

Now, some will argue if the cost is $100M, or $1B, or $10B. Few are going to argue that drugs are the sort of thing that a few people can develop in their kitchen (complete with supporting double-blind clinical trial data, and a robust manufacturing process that consistently turns out pills that work and are safe). If you don't want IP laws for drugs, then somebody has to spend that $100M+, and I think the real cost is closer to the $1B figure (factoring in the costs of drugs that are tested but turn out to not work - it isn't like somebody doing R&D can choose in advance to only research the stuff that works out).

Coverage of pre-existing conditions without universal coverage certainly can't work, because that isn't insurance. People have the incentive to not sign up until they're sick, and then drop coverage once they're healthy again, which bankrupts the insurance system.

However, with universal coverage there is no such thing as a "pre-existing condition" other than during a transition period. If somebody is insured from the moment they are conceived, then no condition can pre-exist conception.

Of course, universal coverage isn't really "insurance" as much as a socialized benefit. And I'll certainly agree that the ACA as it currently stands doesn't achieve universal coverage.

No argument with any of that. However, EVERY insurance system puts control over coverage in the hands of somebody. For most in the US it basically resides with your employer, without a great deal of visibility into how decisions get made. One of the advantages of a government-run plan is that the decision logic can be subject to the democratic process. As you point out, that can also be a disadvantage. I have no illusions that the well-connected will get the same care as the average person under any system.

I don't have an objection to people with money paying for their own services. However, the way the US system really doesn't make this a real option for all but the most wealthy for any problem of any significance. From hospital bills I've seen the list prices for serious procedures often work out to upwards of $100k, with insurance companies paying 8-9% of that, and individuals paying 1-2% of that, and the hospital discounting the other 90%. If you pay cash they'll offer you a "nice" deal of maybe 50-70% off and then bankrupt you, and most people think they were getting a good deal when this happens.

There is no "right" or "wrong" answer here. Typically employers pay these costs, but not all do at all times. My own employer has paid for me to attend conferences, but has also had dry times where it has been very difficult for anybody to travel to anything that isn't local.

You have to look the whole package. If you're skilled you could probably find another employer who would pay for you to attend the conference. On the other hand, maybe there is some other benefit that you currently receive which you would not in another job, or maybe you would have to relocate to an area you might not prefer to live in.

I think employers should pay for development if they want to succeed, but there are lots of short-sighted companies out there.

You need to look at the big picture and decide what makes sense for you. If another employer will pay $2k for you to travel to a conference but will pay you $10k less per year, etc, you have to decide if that tradeoff makes sense vs just paying your own $2k and pocketing the other $8k, and then getting to pick any conference you want. And so on...

Movies and pharmaceuticals are similar in that regard - they have huge up-front costs (sure, those costs are often debated, but nobody disputes that what gets spend is huge no matter whose estimates you use), and low marginal production costs.

Music does have higher up-front than marginal costs, but the main "cost" is the creative serendipity that led to the work in the first place. You don't necessary need a lot of infrastructure for that to happen, even if it is something that should be rewarded in some way. Otherwise, producing a song does cost money, but not a very great deal of it (a few band members for a few days, a few engineers/etc for a few days, etc). The costs are real, but the fact is that a garage band could produce their own song that is competitive with a major label song if they had the talent, while a garage movie production simply couldn't compete with a first-line movie production on talent alone.

Now, one element of music that also involves large up-front costs is the concept of taking any song that appears half-decent, signing the artist, and then trying to market an album after the fact. I imagine most of the artists that get money up-front turn out to be bad investments. So, when an album sells, it is in part supporting unsuccessful artists as well as successful ones. Of course, it is supporting a lot of middle-managers and executives as well.

Yup. I recently bought a game on a steam sale. For as little as I paid for it, the hassle of pirating it would not have been worth it.

On the other hand, apparently many parts of the game aren't actually working now due to a bad update. Of course, the advantage of Steam is that I'll probably get that update automatically within a few days. On the other hand, if I had obtained it from TPB I probably would be playing it now instead of waiting, since the pirated version would be an older known-good one (though obviously missing whatever was in that update).

I also saw a "# activations remaining" message when registering my CD key with the game, which wasn't terribly comforting. I suspect that Valve would take care of any actual issues down the road, but who knows, maybe in 10 years I'll end up stopping by TPB to get a crack for the game that I just bought.

Stuff like this is why there is piracy.

I have to agree with you in general.

Something else I've wondered about is why do we have so many people on antidepressants. If anything I suspect that depression might actually be underdiagnosed, but we really have no idea what it actually is.

When you have substantial percentages of the population requiring a medical treatment you have to start asking why. Have so many people always been depressed, or is this something new? If it is new, what is the cause?

Sometimes I wonder if the brain has a natural feedback loop that leads to depression. I tend to find myself feeling down when I should probably feel the most comfortable. If something bad happens or something good happens I tend to snap out of it. However, if everything is going just fine and I'm in some kind of routine, I start to feel less and less satisfied with it. Perhaps there is some survival instinct that just makes us feel continuously uncomfortable if we aren't improving our living conditions/etc.

Interesting. A neurologist recommended that somebody I know take a low-dose SSRI for a period of time following a stroke as there was apparently some evidence that suggested that it might help with recovery.

Obviously that is anecdotal. That is why double-blind clinical trials are how things like this are typically studied. It is of course especially difficult to test psychological conditions since even measuring the presence of the condition is so difficult.

That is certainly false. One of its goals was to require coverage for pre-existing conditions. That goal was met.

Another goal was to provide an affordable insurance option to everybody, and I'd say that was met even if many didn't sign up. The reason for that was that the penalty for not signing up was lower than the cost of signing up, which is one of the reasons I think the law will have to be amended before nobody wants to participate in the exchanges any longer. You can't require coverage for pre-existing conditions without providing coverage to everybody - it just isn't sustainable. If they charged a penalty of $5k/yr for anybody without insurance then that problem would go away, since it is cheaper than that to just buy insurance. Of course, it would be far less regressive to just give everybody insurance for free, and then recover the costs in income taxes.