I feel like a broken record but its an US thing. In Canada they just fix you up no matter what you have, they never cheap on the treatment because there's no bullshit like a max number of hearth surgeries of type X a year per hospital. If the hospital has to run a deficit to treat everyone they just will. Seriously, even for medicines we have free gov coverage and if you're employed, the employer has to provide a plan with no limit. The best part? Our economy STILL hasn't collapsed or is not in danger because of that. I never IN MY LIFE had to worry about being sick and not being able to get treatment. The only worry you have when you have to see a doc is: "Damn I'm going to have to wait 3-4 hours in a waiting room to see a doc, am I sick enough to want to wait that long.".

Ok, consider that the province of Quebec market in Canada is tiny compared to the US but I had a friend developping software for ultra-sound devices. They were a small tech startup and they were working on real-time 3d viz of ultra sound when it was still an idea. The thing is they managed to sell their software to 15 hospital that's a LOT of hospital for most province in canada so they had good market coverage. Now it's not rocket science to calculate that the cost of 15 employees with a lot of math guy for signal processing, software engineer, etc means that 100 000 is actually CHEAP if they want to turn in any kind of profit. The amount of customer is so tiny and the dev costs are huge in comparison.

Could we at least do that with an illness where vaccines are actually reliable? Yearly flu vaccine preparation is an educated guess each time as I understand it and some years are better than others because they guessed more correctly what the seasonal flu would look like.

Considering the population of the USA the percentage of the population killed each year by this is 0.00022300095%. On the other hand deaths for the flu have been as low as 3000 yearly so that's 23.3% of deaths. Still, the number of deaths compared to the population makes it comparable to winning the lottery in any case.

I prefer Canada long term plan :) Sorry, being Canadian I find all the hand wringing about government run health care in the states hilarious. Just do the switch like we did back then, no half measure, no bullshit, you just pull the plug on the whole private insurance thing and send them a thank you note for all their effort.

Well, in minority report, you had an hologram in mid air. It's pretty neat because now a 3d projection would have tactile feedback, which I suppose is really the point of such a system.

Err crap all my formatting disapeared and I have to go, sorry :P

Well it's almost worth it. Note that I NEVER rented but here's how it works if you buy: If you fly in, there's a few problem with bringing your own bike, which I faced. I was in Reno, mind you: -Bikes disapear crazy fast in Reno, even walmart for those sub-130$. -You're renting a car, you need to buy a frigging bike rack now. You then have the added stress of scratching the rental car with the bikes hanging from a super cheap bike rack. Note that the bikes won't fit inside with 2.5 gallons per person per day with 3 people in the car plus food, tent etc. Note that we flew in with all our equipment except the food, if you're efficient you can pack everything in a your luggage and still be withing you weight allowance. -The bike is destroyed at the end of the week and it's probably full of spray paint anyway and you can't bring it on a plane. The big money saver here is to buy a Burning Man bike from the Reno Bike Project. They take trashed BM each year and make them playa worthy again and sell them back to you for very cheap. They will even take them back afterward. PS: Walmart bikes have a reputation for dying on day 2 on the playa, I witnessed that myself several times. I must say the guy who wrote his experience is much more wealthy than me, I usually DO NOT HAVE A bike because I can't afford to bring one. I actually walk, which is pretty crazy if you've been there. I just scrape together the money for 1) Plane tickets 700$, 2) BM tickets 300$ 3) Car rental split with others 500$-1000$ depending on rental outlet 4)Food: whatever is left :). I mean fuck, two years ago between us we had 50$ left for 2 days in Reno for food and everything after the burn. We agreed to bet everything on the red in roulette, yes we won :).

I'm not sure where the whole "Burning Man is for hipsters" thing comes from but it's so far from the truth it's hilarious. Yes, some people could be considered hipsters, I guess, but really you have so many subcultures there or just plain ordinary people like me who go there for a week to have a blast, build some great art, meet interesting people etc.

I don't know if it was on purpose but "Burning Man fucking sucks, don't come" is like the oldest joke on the playa. The more people there are, the harder it is for veterans to get tickets, good spot etc so yeah since I want my tickets too: Burning man sucks, stay the fuck away.

I guess it's a question of perspective. I'm not saying I would do it but I can understand why someone would volunteer. It's like this: Everyone who had some kind of modern education knows the name of the first man who walked on the moon. It's a chance to be something like that again, to make history. Heck people might remember you as that crazy dude who had the most expensive suicide in the history of humanity but they still would remember your name and you would be a footnote in history for a while. I'm pretty sure some people would go for that.

Am I the only one who think it odd that the TSA is looking for terrorists that.. use Valet parking?