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Comment Re:300 Miles context (Score 2) 121

To put it into more context, the area we talking about is so sparsely population that is should be classified as frontier and not a state. The real, short term damage, is most going to be agricultural. However long term any eruption is going to beneficial as the climate changes and the area becomes even more important important for agriculture.

Comment Re:Up is down and hot is cold... (Score 1) 217

Prescription drugs are killing people and have been the gateway drug ever since I can remember. The overuse of perscription drugs lull people into a belief they never have to feel anything, and when they cannot afford the commercial stuff, they get stuff on the street. Common sense laws that could control the way that prescriptions drugs lead to drug abuse have been fought tooth and nail by the the Pharmcos. In places like Vermont, where easy access to drug and guns intersect, the prescription drug abuse problem has skyrocketed.

One big problem we have is of perception. When it became known Rush Limbaugh was a drug addict, because he abused prescription drugs it was like he was a victim, different from those urban people who abused street drugs. it was the same thing, and now we have all these people who think they are not drug addicts because they abuse prescriptions drugs, and then feel like victims of the insurance companies when they have to move to street drugs. We even have people smuggling drugs, like he smuggled Viagra from the Dominican Republic, and become they are prescription drugs they think they are different from those that smuggle cocaine.

Making plants illegal is just silly. Heavily regulating the refining of those plants into drugs makes sense. Tracking prescriptions so we identify those doctors and pharmacies that are providing drugs that are likely to be abused makes sense. But instead we gun people down on the streets, break into peoples home, just because they have ingested a chemical.

Comment Just Bussiness (Score 2) 113

Amazon is trying to squeeze out publishers. Publishers have trouble competing in the ebook market because they publish physical books, so it it not a matter of if but when they slim down or fail. Publishers appear to asking for larger cut to pay for these inefficiencies, while taking a larger slice from authors even though the authors job has not become that much easier.

Established authors depend on the publishers to limit the availability of books. In the Amazon world with no incentive to limit the number of published books, and to limit titles to those who will sell many copies, many authors are going to be working at a loss. That may explain why evidence that authors are bieng paid less matters less that the thought that Amazon may be in control.

So there are no good guys and no bad guys here. Just people trying to make money. When books are gone we the next generation is going to miss then no more than we miss leather bond, gold leafed books with each section having a faux-hand-drawn calligraphy character.

Comment may need to reprogram? (Score 2) 122

While he can keep the same hand, it’s possible that he’ll have to reprogram some specific settings on his new device, said a spokesman for the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where Eberle is a patient.

I don't see why that would be needed. The iPod should be backed up to something. Even if the setting are not backed up to a computer or icloud, it would seem for that amount of money the firm supplying the app would provide a cloud based service to make the service device independent. What if the iPod no longer had charged and you wanted to use your phone?

It still seems kind of fishy.

Comment Re:Seems good to me. (Score 1) 146

Honestly the only complaints my friends had who worked third shift was that bars were not open. Talk about sharia law.

The other complaint was that they were too often scheduled for third shift one day, then second shift the next day. I know that with scheduling software that ignores human needs and only factors in minimizing labor costs this has become more of an issue.

I completely agree that an 24 hour economy can be more efficient than one that is not. OTOH, we are seeing that places like McDonald's are externalizing a lot of costs to the taxpayer to make such a thing happen.

In my case if I put in an all nighter at work or worked extra shifts it was by choice. Most places I worked did not encourage such things because it was unhealthy. But when on it young and energetic, some things are more acceptable.

Comment How did they build the pyramids (Score 4, Insightful) 202

Nice Explaination: Lots of beer and bread

Not so Nice:Whips and violence

Some of the confusion seems to come from an unwillingness to accept that humans can be very self absorbed and mean. While some form of simple machinery must have been used, the basic resource for the pyramids was an expendable supply of labor. People tend to accept harder or more dangerous work if that is the life they know. We saw that recently in coal mining disaster where many people died because the owners did not have a practice of clearing the mine between shift changes. It increases profits and make coal cheaper, but is a huge risk to the workers. Raising the pyramids was probably not different.

Comment Re:"Paleolithic diets" now vs then (Score 1) 281

Here is what seems pretty well established. Pre-agrarian humans were probably no more or no less active that the agrarian people that followed. Hunter-gatherers in fact had to balance calories consumed by the group with calories available. This may have lead to situations where the entry of new infants were tightly control and old age became an issue. p> In every situation where agrarian humans competed with hunter-gatherers, the hunter-gatherers pretty much were wiped out. The agrarian humans created their stocks by domesticating the best food available into reliable crops. These crops provided a surplus that lead to classes of people, the rulers, the workers, the artisans, the warriors. However, these classes probably became the norm because of the superior source of nutrition, not just the reliable calories.

Also, the agrarian lifestyle was probably a choice. Hunter-gatherers probably had land on their migration plant that was proto-crop like. Initially it was probably just because they hung out in one spot, at some food, left the seeds, and the next year the seed sprouted. Over time they probably learned to intentionally raised stock that would be available as they migrated back. Eventually they made a decision to stay put.

Therefore it there is a diet that is most healthy for us, overall, it would be the diet of the agrarian society maybe 5,000 years ago. This is the diet that allowed one group of humans to dominate a probably less well feed other group of humans.

Comment Re:Please, don't tell them ... (Score 1) 421

An arrest is clearly overkill. Many urban districts are trying to go against the insanity of the past 20 years of zero tolerance and return the classroom management to the classroom teacher, along with more leeway. That said, like your post, such things are usually a call for help. I have see in kids that I personally have known for many years. I have seen it in kids that I hardly know. Such things almost always a request for a response by the child. It might be dropping everything and having a one on one conversation, or therapy. Some educators think that just ignoring the kid is the proper thing to do, and honestly sometimes it is, and if the behavior is repetitive then it simply a training thing, like the baby repeatedly dropping the spoon. But it is a new things, or an escalating things, while it may not be a plan to actually cause harm to someone or themselves, it could be a cry for abuse or some other such thing. Which, again, is not best handled by calling the cops. So we have had the conversation, and attention has been given, and I hope you feel better.

Comment Re:Fleeing abusive companies? (Score 1) 257

When I got my second iPad a few years ago, I got a Verizon model. That way I had an ATT phone and a Verizon iPad so there was some redundancy. What I did not realize it that the Verizon iPad had no SIM card so that traveling was a hassle. Sure a Verizon product is supposed to provide a higher level of customer experience, as long as you are always in a home region.

I probably will buy an unlocked phone when I upgrade so I can immediately use it to travel instead of having to keep an older unlocked phone around. But for home use, it really makes no difference. Everyone has the same crappy $50 plan. No one is really that helpful. Honestly I find ATT to be a little more helpful than others, and the coverage is good where I am.

I think the reality is that we are all expecting top level personalized service at bare bones rates. It is like those who fly Southwest and complain that there is no food. Or those that recieve a free service such as facebook and then are surprised that people, who are the product, are being monetized.

Comment Re:Not smart (Score 1) 465

Clearly he is engaged in unlawful behavior, and is does not seem to make rational decisions, but there are other ways to handle this that would not incur a great cost on society. For instance,ban him from seeing movies. Ban him from logging onto the internet. Put him under house arrest. Yes, he would fight against this, because clearly he wants to escalate. But then he would be put in jail for being a bad citizen, not because some corporation feel they have an entitlement to profit.

In the US we are increasingly paying to incarcirate poor people who make one or two poor choices and don't have the money to buy their way out like others. The assumption is increasingly that one can make poor choices, such as drugs, as long as you are wealthy enough to pay for it. OTOH, if you don't have the cash, you go to jail, and incur an average of $30,000 cost to they taxpayer. It is not that there should be no consequences for violating laws, but maybe we should look at other things, like ankle bracelets that only let you go to work and home.

One big example of this is school truancy. In some states one can be skip as much school as one wants, and long as you have a few hundred dollars to pay for it. Of course if you don't have the cash you are looking at jail time. I am not sure how this helps as kids who skip school probably see no difference between school and jail. I suppose that when they actually go to jail, they may see there is a difference, but some have already been to jail as can make the comparison.

Comment Re:That's not quick? (Score 1) 190

It is 500 miles from Galveston to Oklahoma City. That is 10 sites if placed every 50 miles along the major highway. That means they could have a major traffic area of Texas wired for the Tesla with six port charging stations in less than four months

There a seven Buc cees flag ship stores, where everyone in Texas stops for at least a half an hour to get gas and a Dr. Pepper Icee. That is three months to wire one of the most popular tourist traps. The other locations may not be big enough to hold a charging station, but lets say another six months more months to wire those that can.

So what we are talking about is in six months with enough crews the major populated parts of texas could be wired for Tesla. The parts of Texas that can afford a Tesla, given the three out four cars at many intersections are mercedes or high end volve, that seeing a Maserati, a Lotus, especially a Rolls Royce is not uncommon. Where every city has at least one highly regarded dealership that sells these 100K+ autos. And yet instead of building infrastructure that would encourage the population to buy a Tesla, a population that has the money to buy a second electric car, they whine like babies because the laws don't conform with their expectations. Rather than creating a demand, they blame regulation for their problems.

Before they started trying to extort states taxpayers o pay for their construction costs I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Now it is clear that they are failing to the old regulation card, instead of profiting with innovation.

Comment Re: Yeah, so? (Score 1) 143

Elements are defined solely by the number of protons, which is also know as the atomic number. There can be no more elements than we know unless they are created by adding more electrons and adding to the end of the periodic table. Writers often make stuff up, like the 10% brain thing, and people are not educated to know it is just made up.

Isotopes are not considered chemically different from each other as they only differ in neutrons . As understood, the neutrons seem to help hold the atom together. It also appears that the number of neutrons increases non linearly in relation to the number of protons, to the point where elements with large number of protons are unstable.

Comment Re:The question should be, what is causing delays? (Score 1) 142

So the solution to this is to build nuclear plants where we can get minimum regulations and avoid lawsuits. These location should be where no one really wants to live, so that people are not going to effected and need to file lawsuits to protect themselves. I have often thought that the states from Washington to Minnesota, which taken together from a significant net drain on the national budget, should be asked to secede and form a country that exemplify conservative values such as an aggressive free market, very limited regulations, and the like. In such a place nuclear power plants could be built in, say, North Dakota, without any of the pesky useless safety issues that now make nuclear power an unreasonable solution.

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