Hi folks, I am a primary care doctor. I have tons (literally) of obese patients with all the attendant consequences like diabetes, arthritis, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, poor circulation, and more. I do not prescribe weight loss drugs, never have, doubt I ever will. Reasons are simple and obvious. 1) they don't work. They produce an insignificant amount of weight loss and do it only over the shortterm. 2) they have bad side effects. Along with the lack of benefit, they sure do harm people. Xenical causes such massive diarrhea as to cause fecal incontinence. Pooping your pants uncontrollably... do I need to explain any further why no one takes this med? 3) they have a LONG history of causing severe and unanticipated health damage. Heart valves with fenfluramine, addiction with amphetamines, etc. 4) they do nothing to change people's underlying weak efforts at diet, exercise, and fitness, which produce real health. When patients stop the drugs, they lose the (minimal) benefit, and they go back to being what they were before. --JSt

Hi folks, Nice to imagine that something about "orgo" is fruitful to the process of making doctors, but I disagree. Organic chemistry has NOTHING to do with day to day doctoring for probably 99.9% of us. I don't have to draw a molecule of penicillin or know anything about how it interacts with other molecules in order to use it for strep throat or syphilis. We need in this day and age doctors who know science, probability, the human psyche, communication, and teamwork. But they don't need to know organic chemistry. And there are other fruitful ways to weed out those who can't hack it in med school. I know because I am a physician and I teach medical students and resident physicians in New York. --JSt

"I haven't had a flu shot, or any other vaccination, in over 10 years. I have managed just fine." Yes. I love the "no vaccines and I've been fine" argument. I counter with, "so if you don't wear your seat belt for 10 years driving and are lucky enough not to crash, that means it's fine to keep on not wearing your seat belt, right?" Right. --JSt

Hi. Sorry that you are away from your son more than you prefer. Everyone here assumes it's divorce, but for all we know you work on a nuclear sub or a marine biology platform away from home for months at a time. Either way, you deserve our sympathies for having to be separated, and you deserve our support for wanting to stay close to your boy. For me it was divorce around when our son turned 3. We had (and still have) shared custody with him living with each of us on certain days. But for practical reasons, he's with his mom more, so the issue of how to stay connected was most important for me. In my experience, a child that young has a tough time staying focused and connected to a voice on a phone. A voice alone is somewhat of an abstraction. As you surely know already, kids are really concrete. My son at that age found it difficult to stay focused and pay attention on the phone. If he held the phone himself, he was as fascinated by the buttons and the neat sounds they made when pressed as he was to talk to me (or to talk to my ex when he was with me). And if an iPhone with shiny screen buttons, even more distracting. If my ex held the phone near him on speaker phone, usually as he took his evening bath, he'd stray in and out of paying attention. It's just hard at that age. I gave my ex my old MacBook so that we could do Skype and/or Facetime (when latter came along). That helped a good amount. Voice plus video is a lot better. Matters not whether it's an iPod Touch or iPad or laptop. Clear audio plus video equals better likelihood of paying attention and staying connected. My son is 8 now. We still do the same arrangement, wherever he is, he calls the other parent and tries to do video chat every night. Neither of us has gotten him his own phone, and I think it will stay that way at least another couple years. He uses my ex'es iPhone or laptop to call me or he uses my iPhone or laptop to call her. I think it's better that we parents maintain control of devices and not let him have a phone for his own, at least so far. He'd be overjoyed to have a smartphone, no doubt about it, but we know that less phones and screens and more friends and outdoors and diverse activities is better. I hope you find a way to make a good connection. Good luck, -- Josh

My developer info as an iOS developer includes my Apple ID and my password. The same ID and password for my iTunes account which is connected to my credit card. If my name and email was compromised, I'm not terribly worried. If my password was compromised, then my credit card was compromised, and that's a problem. --JSt

Awesome set of skills and experiences. But must note that it weakens the presentation of them to misspell HIPAA

"I'd most rather, of the following, search with..." 1) of the following is unnecessary 2) how about "I prefer"? And since I only use Google to search, I have no opportunity to answer this poll. -- Lemming

it's easy when you're the sole developer of simple little medical apps for iPhone You folks do all the real programming, development, and I.T. work. It's fun just to read about it here and enjoy your world vicariously. Best, --JSt

I have a mix of neatness and sloppiness which I hadn't really reflected upon until this question. For instance, I keep meticulous notes and do meticulous written work in the workplace. But my desk at work is sloppy with papers that I have failed to get around to filing or disposing. Why the conflict and contrast? I'm not sure. --JSt

Win8 may not be all that bad. But I only use it at work. And I'm not going to muck around with software add-ons and then screw something up and then call the I.T. help desk here at work begging for them to fix what I screwed up on their computer. I'm willing to try stuff out on the computer I own and maintain at home, my Mac laptop. But I'm not going to screw around with someone else's computer which I need to work for workplace productivity. --JSt

Correct. There will still be millions of users at work needing these applications. And Win7 runs them just fine. My medical organization still runs mostly XP (transitioning to Win7). If it ain't broke, no one will fix it for the sake of change itself. Change sucks. Only undertake it when necessary. What is essential or necessary for business on Win8? If you have no answer just like me, then I guess we know why Win8 is floundering. --JSt

My workplace (medical) is all Windows, transitioning from XP to Win7. All of our key applications will not run on Win8. I am replacing an old Motion Computing tablet. It is not easy to shop for a Win7 computer, but that's what I did. Alternatives were buy a Win8 machine and hope it's downgradable or buy a native Win7 machine, and I went with the latter. Home users have had a growing choice of platforms since iOS and Android arrived. But I figured workplace use would remain solidly Windows. Suspect it still will. But maybe companies will wait for Win9 --JSt

Bitcoin? Really? I thought news is information that someone cares about. 10 years from now people will chuckle or roll their eyes at the thought of Bitcoin. In 20 years, people will go "huh?" --JSt