So this is the most job-like game on the internet?? Awesome! Sign me up.

Less facetiously, I didn't think the answer to the common complaint of, "We're sick of killing 10 generic monsters to collect 5 generic trophies to advance a quest" was, "Here's more stuff to grind!"

If you're spending thousands of dollars for genetic testing for a $4 a month drug like warfarin, you're doing it way wrong. It's like the proverbial million dollar cure for the common cold. You could either use one of the newer warfarin alternatives with more consistent pharmacokinetic profiles at a higher price or use the old tried-and-true trial and error dosing.

Either way, you're still doing weekly to monthly lab testing for warfarin dosing. And your warfarin effectiveness (or bleeding risk) is still going to be thrown way off if you vary your diet significantly or start new medications.

A much better example of genomic medicine payoff would be targeting therapies to specific cancer types, like the EGFR receptor mutations in some varieties of lung cancer.

You realize the Scientific American article that you point to backs up the OP's point? Let me quote the article summary directly:

"whereas female brains are more connected between hemispheres to combine analytical and intuitive thinking"

So, women are supposedly more wired to perform analytical and intuitive thinking? And what is coding and software engineering, exactly? It's certainly not a showcase for men's supposedly superior motor skills!

I don't believe many parents (there are a few) who directly point their children away from STEM. But I know a lot of parents and family and friends who indulge all day in Disney Princesses and makeover parties and introduce their peers to the wonders of staying connected all day to social media.

It's not malignant, but there is a social bias present. It may not have been in your immediate family, but taken as an aggregate, social pressure does steer little girls' interests away from STEM. And interests often turn into exploration for careers.

Hey, guess what? Just because you get away with going 100 mph on the highway for the first few months doesn't mean you get to avoid the speeding ticket when the cop does pull you over later.

"Well, gee, officer, I've been doing this for months now, and no one's bothered to stop me before!! It must be OK then, right?"

As an object lesson in expected social etiquette, you should hold up your cell phone the next time you're in a movie theater (preferably on opening night), leave it pointed at the screen with the camera/camcorder app on without actually taking pictures, and see what happens.

Fine, how about this? I'm not the original poster, but I'll amend what he said. It boggles the mind that an idiot wore a wearable videocamera to a movie theater and pointed it at the screen, and some people are beyond themselves that the idiot got into trouble for it. There, no need for the word "apologist".

Is there anything more arbitrary than the line drawn between "animal" and "plant"?

See, I can do this too!

Drawing a line between humans and everything else is easy. Are you a member of homo sapiens, or not?

I rarely encounter an on-ramp slow-down that wasn't due to multiple lanes of busy traffic converging into a single lane, as opposed to panicky driver hitting the brakes too much. 2 flows merging into a single flow of the same size will result in a slowdown, no matter how perfect the computers are at scheduling.

Yes, because nothing else, like pedestrians, needs a traffic break to cross the street, ever.

I don't think "optimal" means what you think it means. If every car can read the traffic and select routes, there will be no "optimal" route, since traffic will be evenly congested everywhere. It may be faster than taking Highway 555 now at rush hour, but all your shortcuts of taking little traveled street X or trying to save on time by using a more roundabout route will disappear.

...I will Do No Evil(tm).

Laws and pledges will inevitably be broken inversely proportional to the enforcement and proportional to the benefits of breaking your word and how many people are involved. So Bitcoin is good, no one involved is trying to make money for nothing.

Which is a valid point, too. But the response to that is complicated. It may have been an incomplete story given to us - when I ask a social history on substance use, I usually ask a variation of, "Are you using any illegal or street drugs? Have you done so in the past?"

Most people who are steadfastly lying about current use will say no to both. People who have fallen off the wagon may lie about the first question in the beginning and tell the truth on the second, but if you come around again the patient will usually admit to it when directly asked and they know it's pertinent to treatment. If this patient had lied to the doctor about using before, I wouldn't blame them for thinking they're lying about both the past and now.

So, what then? Usually it comes down to conversations with the patient and his/her family or caretakers, and talking with adult protective services. If you aren't satisfied with the patient's safety at home, you tell them you're locking them in the hospital as a matter of patient safety until you're done investigating. The drug abusers will usually confess after this, because they want to get out of the hospital, after they're feeling better, to go back to using.

Further examples of HIPAA violations and nonviolations and why.

Doctor X discusses Patient Y's case with Doctor Z, also involved in the case, at the supermarket. This is a HIPAA violation, as long as there are bystanders and he used specific identifying information. The Doctor intended to have the conversation in a place where he could have reasonably assumed there were unrelated people overhearing.

Now, Doctor X discussing Patient Y as a generic stroke case in public that could be one of a million just like it, with no identifying information, and debating the best ways to treat it? Not a HIPAA violation. Happens all the time during teaching rounds and medical conferences.

Doctor X leaving Patient Y's information up on a public console in a hospital? HIPAA violation. Doctor X could reasonably know that other people are going to walk by and either incidentally or purposefully look at the information he left up.

Doctor X looking up Patient Y's information on a public console in the hospital, and then taking it down before leaving. If an investigator or spy comes by with a USB drive of cracking tools and reconstructs Patient Y's information? Not a HIPAA violation. Doctor X took reasonable precautions with intent to protect Patient Y's privacy.

Doctor X opening Patient Y's chart to write a note and orders, and unrelated person sneaking behind him and sneaking a quick peek over the shoulder at Patient Y's information without anyone seeing? Not a HIPAA violation on the Doctor's part. No intent to share. Reasonable protection. Doctors shouldn't have to hire armed security guards to watch their back while they're focusing on treating patients.

I am a doctor.

No.

Violating HIPAA takes intent. And you're taking the doctor's responsibility to protect patient information way too far.

For example, Doctor X discusses Patient Y's case with Friend Z, with specific identifying information. HIPAA violation.

Doctor X discusses Patient Y's case with consulting Doctor A in a suitably private conversation over the telephone. Unknown to the parties, the NSA / and/or the phone company is wiretapping the line, and just learned all about Patient Y. Not a HIPAA violation on either Doctor's part. Doctors have to take reasonable precautions to protect their patient's privacy. Guarding against every possible outlet that snooping intelligence agencies and snooping internet companies could use is too much, and we'd never get anything productive done.

This would be an incredibly bad idea on Google's part to try to gather accurate information this way on patients. Because I assure you, doctors are neither linear nor subject related in their internet searching. Just because I google "gstoddart" and then a few minutes later "UpToDate: complications of inserting foreign objects in anus" does not mean the two are anywhere related, despite what you're thinking. I may have 20 different patients on my service at any given time, and I frequently have to be thinking about multiple cases at any given time during a workday. Hell, just to make things more confusing for google, maybe I googled "best place to order roses nearby" in between those two google searches, because I'm taking my girlfriend out to dinner after work.

Sorry, while I hate it, no one, not me, not you, has privacy anymore online or electronically. While we can fight against it, get used to it.

I replied about this above this thread, too.

The doctor responded the way that they did, because the rest of the medical picture falls into place once it becomes known that the patient is still abusing cocaine. The doctor didn't dismiss the possibility, treating cocaine addicts for their health issues is commonplace.

The question that was nagging the doctor was, how did the drugs get into the patient's system in the first place? Elder abuse takes many different forms.

Let me give you some insight as a doctor.

Patient comes in, lies, is actually abusing cocaine. Cocaine is a stimulant, and can cause overexertion of the heart through either chronic use or acute overdose, leading to shortness of breath and weakness, which the patient came in with. Additionally, smoking cocaine and all its impurities can damage the lungs.

It had everything to do with the "current stuff", as the patient lying and abusing cocaine as an elderly person ties everything together logically. Medical mystery solved, the doctor goes about his day. Seeing gramps come into the hospital after shooting up or smoking some dope is uncommon, but not unheard of.

Now, elderly person comes in, unknown care situation at home or what passes for home. Tests positive for drugs in their system. This explains why they came in with their symptoms, but not how it got there. That possibility requires further investigation, and may be cause for a call to adult protective services.

TL,DR: Not a red herring. The doctor reacting as they did was because they got the answers they needed, not because it wasn't relevant.

Not exactly the right analogy.

What the Americans are doing with state and local government and sports franchises comes down to scarcity of supply. There are only a finite number sports franchises within any given professional sports league, and beyond a certain point the talent level is diluted and the overall entertainment value and ticket sales goes down. There are any number of American cities and states that would love to host X sports franchise. A successful pro sports team can bring millions of dollars tax revenue or more to a locale directly, and provide a much bigger indirect boost to the city in business growth and prestige. (See: Oklahoma City after they wooed the NBA SuperSonics / now the Thunder away from Seattle.)

The sports teams realize the benefits they provide just by being there. And they trade those benefits for sports arenas, tax breaks, and other concessions from the locale. If a city gets bitter or bored of supporting the team, they can and will pack up and move elsewhere.

Thank you, Ra's al Ghul!

Data can be made anonymous without losing its usefulness; however, data cannot be made anonymous without losing the ability to check its veracity.

If there is no real person connected to data in aggregate in a scientific study, then there is no way to prevent a scientist from making up data wholesale and padding the results to favor one outcome or another. Conversely, if a skeptical competitor levels charges of this against you, being unable to point to the real people that you derived the results from looks bad.