Is that because of the distoration insurance causes, though? We don't have to buy cars through intermediaries and they aren't ridiculously jacked up. We don't buy groceries through intermediaries and they aren't ridiculously jacked up. I think part of the reason medical costs have gone nuts, and to a degree education costs, too, is because people are separated from actually paying them. Most people don't pay for their medical costs, they pay for their medical insurance, or rather just a part of it. People don't care what things cost, they care if it's covered by insurance or not. Your premise seems to be that without insurance you'd be paying 3x as much. Maybe competition would drive the price down to what the insurance companies pay.

Woz gets way more hero worship than I understand, but he left Apple WAY before they made flashy smartphones. Like 20 years before in the Apple II/Macintosh days.

Vaccines, sure. I think you may misunderstand how insurance works. It's a risk pool. It exists so if you have a heart attack, you don't have to shell out $500,000 for treatment. That $500,000 is spread over all the people who MIGHT have a heart attack. Basically, you trade the low probability of a high expense for the certainty of a low expense. The insurance co. doesn't collect $500,000, they collect more to cover their own costs and profit. Everybody's happy.

Now, how does that work for things like vaccines, where there's a 100% chance of you getting them? Yup. No risk pooling. You pay the cost, plus the insurance company's costs, plus their profit, minus whatever discount they can negotiate as a big company, if they care to because you're ultimately paying for it anyway. Blood transfusions, not so much. I've never needed one, so I infer the risk is low. I'd rather pool that risk and pay a couple bucks a year because hey, maybe I'll need one someday. The years I don't, that money can pay for someone else's.

Birth control isn't much different. You have a high likelihood of needing an inexpensive thing. The cost is just tucked away in your premium where you won't notice it, you'll just be ticked off (again) that your premiums are so high, and wonder why they can't control costs better.

Not tornado strong. We build 1000' tall buildings already. Building 1000' tall things that normal winds don't knock down is a solved problem.

What is all this autonomous car crap spreading around like tumors and gout?

4 out of 5 days of the week, my commute is slowed down by an accident on a more or less straight highway. I can't figure out how people are having accidents on this road unless they're texting. Something like the car in front of them slows down, they don't notice because they're not looking at the road, and rear end someone. I had some idiot teenager total my car with 2 kids in it because he was fishing around for CDs on his floor. 40mph straight into the back of the car behind mine, which still hit mine with enough energy to total it.

WHAT is the reason for having this technology?

See above. I only have to look out the window of my car to see why I'd rather not share the roads with some drivers. I also feel like driving is a waste of my time the second a computer is better at it than I am. I'd rather read, make calls, or any number of other things.

Humans will never agree with this as an alternative to driving themselves.

I want one.

You have a situation where you either need to get every driver everywhere to actually be good at it, or produce a car where it won't matter if you're good at it. You think the former solution is better. I really couldn't possibly disagree more.

I think you're always going to have drivers who are inexperienced, or distracted, or intoxicated, or bored, or in some other way not driving very well. To ask people never to fail in those ways amounts to asking them not to be human.

Hey, wait a minute. That's exactly what those of us who think autonomous cars are a good idea are asking. Let the drivers not be human.

I think the point of the wall is to change the weather (short term, hours/days), not the climate (long term prevailing conditions). I think we agree that it's not likely to work that way. This will change both, if it works at all, that is. 1000' is a pretty short mountain. Then again, I'm not a meteorologist.

I sure hope so. I'd love to short it. I like B&N, but Nook has been a disaster.

I actually like going there. I do read more on my phone than on dead tree books, mostly because when I find time to read, I usually want to do it now, not whenver I next get to the book store.

GP also raises a very good point. Electronic books used to be cheap enough that it was hard to justify paying for the paper copy just to support a store I kind of like. Now, the paper copies are only a little more, and what the heck, I can grab a coffee while I'm there, browse around, etc. If ebooks stay(ed) cheap, brick and mortar stores would inevitably die. I'd say it's iffy now.

I didn't see anything about the climate effect, if there would be one. Mucking around with wind flow in the area that makes a lot of our food may turn out to be a bad idea, in which case we'd get to see the biggest demolition project ever, and hope it's reversable.

That's a good point. Before I RTFA, I thought it was meant to withstand a tornado. It's not. It's just meant to withstand normal winds, and by blocking them, prevent formation of tornadoes.

That's true. What should be a consideration is how much the affected parties were harmed. Did wage suppression really only cost them $5000 each? Not even per year, but each, over the entire time it was happening. That's where damages should start. Then you should multiply it, because you want getting caught doing the bad thing not to simply result in having to pay for it, because then hey, why not do the bad thing? We only have to pay for it if we get caught, and we might not.

Basically, make a rational analysis of the "should I do evil" calculus come out "No."

We're not talking companies, we're talking the federal government where there are records retention laws, and we're talking about an IRS director's emails, some of which almost certainly met the definition of "records" under the law. Some things which are merely good practice for "companies" are mandatory for federal agencies.

No, the sensible version of this would be that the drive failed, so they recycled it. That's completely reasonable. Happens all the time. The UNreasonable and unbelievable part is that those emails existed ONLY on that hard drive. If that really happened, there should be lots of documentation including who got fired for it.

Good point, though, in anything I've been involved in that got reported in the news (nothing work related, I'm thinking of a climbing accident that happened while I was in the park) the first details reported in the news were astoundingly wrong.

Which, given that you're playing apologetics for it, presumably you do.

I don't think it's that, it's that in some people's minds, the pendulum has swung too far. I read that some beauty contestant is getting lambasted for saying women should learn self defense. Claims are being made that that promotes "rape culture". It doesn't, it's just the commonsense realization that while in the ideal world there wouldn't be bad people, in the actual world, there are. It's fine to work towards the ideal world, but we also need to live in the real one.

To put another spin on it, there's a trail around here that used to be a great place to run. It's become a great place to get a beating and your phone/ipod/wallet stolen. I could go run there with my expensive earbuds and $600 phone, secure in the knowledge that I have every moral right to do so unmolested, but I don't. I run with my cheaper earbuds and an iPod shuffle in places muggings don't happen.