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Comment Re:Goodhart's Law (Score 0) 185

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

So, yeah, as soon as people figure out what it is that is being measured, expect them to alter their behavior to make that measure useless.

Tell that to Obamacare.
MDs and institutions now get less money when they take care of sicker patients whose socioeconomic status causes them to be less compliant and have more adverse outcomes. Congratulations, now no one wants those patients doubly. Oh, and they still can't pay for health insurance.

Comment Re:How about... (Score 1) 349

It is a FACT that ebola is ONLY CONTAGIOUS when symptoms are present.

Only if you ignore the last fifteen years of established science. Many people get Ebola and never show symptoms at all. We know this because they test positive for the antibodies to Ebola. Those people are believed to have had the virus in their blood at some point during the course of the disease. Therefore, under the right circumstances, it is possible for someone not showing symptoms of Ebola to spread the disease. It is highly unlikely, and has not been documented to occur in the wild so far (that we know of), but claiming that it is impossible based solely on limited anecdotal evidence is downright terrifyingly bad science.

I'd be happy to dig up the citations again if you really want me to, or you can just Google it yourself.

That's just patently wrong. Having antibodies to Ebola doesn't mean you had the disease, it means you were exposed to the virus. There was a study in 2000 Lancet which looked at seroconversion in close contacts of individuals ill with ebola, which showed that 11/24 people seroconverted in the absence of symptoms. However, the scientists were unable to isolate virus from these patients. This suggests that there are people who have either a defect in the ability of Ebola to infect them, or their innate immune response is able to deal with Ebola. There is no evidence from the last 30 years that there any asymptomatic individual acts as a carrier.

Comment Re: This is related (Score 1) 294

That's not insightful.

If you cannot isolate infectious virus or amplify its genetic material from someone's bodily fluids, they are not infectious.

Making assertions based on panic is not reasonable. Maybe if the nurse wasn't treated like a criminal leper on coming home, she wouldn't be lashing out and would stay home.

Comment Re: US Citizenship (Score 1) 190

Are you kidding be. Would be stupid to do that. The whole point is that many of not most H1B ers are working for less because they'd much rather be in this country. The threat of losing the visa it's what keeps them indentured servants. Just look at the biomedical research industry. No one will ever give them citizenship ebb masse... it would destroy the system by which having a PhD became about as profitable as being on welfare.

Comment Re:But, but, teh STEM talents!!! (Score 1, Insightful) 284

These poor 3rd-worlders have unique talents that could never be found locally, don'tcha know!?!?

You mean someone who spent 7 years getting a PhD being abused and working 6-7 day 80+ hour weeks, then working as a post-doc with no hope of ever being faculty, at 60+ hour weeks and being paid $40k or less until their retirement without any benefits?

It's a talent all right.

Comment Re:The metaphysics of evolution are a different st (Score 1) 669

I'm not sure that really gets to the heart of the matter, which is a metaphysical argument about origins.

But the question is "does it matter"?

This is obviously not news to Christians outside of the US. But this statement making the news in the US is a step in the right direction.

Comment Re:NSA probably already has this technology (Score 1) 120

You are making a fundamentally flawed assumption that the government cares about false positives. I think our no-fly lists, jails, and police militarization are a pretty good indicator that a low false positive rate does not figure into calculations as far as the NSA, TSA, DHS or other TLAs are concerned. A cynical man (or woman) may also wonder about whether true positive rate figures into their calculations at all as well, or whether a power grab is the sole purpose of these agenices.

Comment Re:Open Many Doors (Score 5, Insightful) 35

It is impossible to enforce the laws when you can catch all the violations

You're asking the wrong question - the correct question is this - how have we wound up in a situation where he have so many offenders, of so many laws, that there's not enough resources to lock them all up even if we knew every last one of them.
The answer is simple - if you create a job which comes with money and power, and where the job description is writing laws - you are going to have more laws. It's inevitable. And in a society where as a lawmaker you are rewarded for being "tough on crime", each subsequent law will be nitpickier and more punishing than the last.
That's it - our own system is going to bury us all in petty crime.
Freedom is the ability to break little rules. Rule of law is when you get caught when you break the big rules. A police state is when everyone is guilty, and it's up the police to decide who gets caught at what time.

As someone who was born behind the Iron Curtain, I promise you that the latter is very very scary.

Comment Re:You can't sell what you don't have! (Score 3, Insightful) 274

This has nothing to do with their network infrastructure, and everything to do with the fact that they would like you to pay out of pocket to stream media on their network. With a 10gb monthly limit on my 4 user plan, if I go away on a trip and watch 3-4 netflix movies in HD, I've used up my entire monthly allowance, and then streaming becomes pay-per-view at $10+ per movie.

They are annoyed that they have customers who still have an "unlimited" plan, and they are effectively converting those users to having a usable 5gb plan.

Comment Re:Meanwhile In Humans... (Score 3, Insightful) 157

I'll feed this troll.

...we're lead to believe with enough money for education everyone can be intelligent!

Appropriate general education ensures that we all have a chance to get to a certain level. Surely some people are more intelligent than others at baseline, but like most characteristics it needs to be exercised and developed... in the absence of education, it's easy to waste what you were born with, and that's what general education tries to prevent - the waste of intelligence. The other important role of education is to ensure that no matter what your level of education, you receive instruction sufficient to let you integrate into society.

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