Comment Re:collection = collection plus action (Score 1) 126
The recursive expansion will keep it tied up in court forever.
...It's authoritarians all the way down.
Strat
The recursive expansion will keep it tied up in court forever.
...It's authoritarians all the way down.
Strat
They will gladly tell you that insurance rates have been going up for decades, and having to choose new doctors is something all grownups have to do on a regular basis.
And in addition, if they've paid any attention, they will also tell him that the rates have increased both before and after the passage of the ACA because of government.
I dunno about *your* parents, but mine saw the same doctor for decades, until he retired. Because government made it more attractive for him to retire rather than to keep his practice open.
But hey, let's give government even more of people's hard-earned money and even more control over everything!
"Thank you Sir, may I have another?"
"Idiocracy" was a documentary. Slashdot posters prove it every day.
Strat
Unfortunately people on this planet have used the excuse of a "lack of resources" to justify some of the most amoral and unspeakable actions. We shouldn't be motivated to leave this rock simply because we need more "resources" but because we would like to participate in a meaningful way with the universe.
"...because we would like to participate in a meaningful way with the universe"
The universe does not care and is not capable of judging our intentions or how "meaningful" (what's the measurement criteria? who decides what's meaningful?) our actions are
Stop anthropomorphizing.
You are correct that many conflicts result from competition for resources. The universe has almost infinite resources, so having cheap & plentiful resources available would tend to greatly mitigate resource-driven human conflicts.
At the very least, it will drive the conflicts away from the planet.
Strat
{Wake me when chimpanzees invent smelting}
Hard to tell what point(s) you're attempting to make here.
So, is killing efficiency your yardstick?
I don't see how efficiency relates. Heck, there are species of marine life who eat the egg-clusters and hatchlings of their competitors, and that's upwards of tens of thousands or more.
Or is it the use of tools to kill?
Chimps and other apes will often pick up a branch to swing at another when they are angry/aggressive. Other examples of tool-use by apes is abundant. Google will supply you with examples.
Seems in that regard the only difference is the level of sophistication of the tools/weapons related to the differing complex intellectual levels of the two species.
No doubt if apes had a similar size brain and intellectual capability as humans, the technical level of their weapons would rise as well.
Many people like to attribute some sort of "perfect moral innocence" to animals while humans are somehow forever separate from animals and that all human effects upon animals are "unnatural" and inherently bad and wrong. They also tend to decry human behaviors that have roots in our animal nature as somehow evil and unnatural.
It's an emotional response motivated by compassion and I appreciate that. However, humans are just as natural on Earth as deer or whales. Everything will always effect everything else, and species will go extinct and new species arise as long as life exists.
Since our self-awareness and intelligence and ability to control our environment allows us to avoid natural systems of regulation, we must consciously choose to find a balance between not causing undue harm to animals and nature while not placing undue limitations on the advancement of humanity towards moving outwards into space.
Earth is not a perpetual-motion machine, and we need to leave the cradle. Humanity cannot afford to hunker down, slow progress, and ration out ever-dwindling resources. That's a recipe for extinction.
Balance is the key.
Balance will not be found at the extremes.
Strat
In Australia aren't the people allowed to know what their police force's "operational capability" is?
Nobody expects the "operational capabilities" of the Australian Inquisition!
Strat
...Who is John Galt?
Along with many other US companies and businesses as the US becomes an ever-more hostile and expensive place to base your business in.
Maybe MS will join the "inversion"-stampede of businesses fleeing the US for friendlier locales.
Once again the US government loads up the trusty foot-gun with its' hubris.
Strat
My Tektronix 453 is still going strong after being retired from use in avionics testing/troubleshooting/repair. As is the old black-Bakelite Simpson analog-meter VOM.
Another "old" technology I use regularly are vacuum-tube guitar amplifiers like the ones I play through, repair, and design & build. Nearly all the major guitar amplifier makers' current lines of flagship pro- and semi-pro-level guitar amps are tube-based designs.
Many of the most sought-after and expensive studio microphones are also vacuum-tube based (integral pre/buffer amp).
There are actually more vacuum tubes being produced currently than were being produced 30 years ago.
Audiophiles also tend to prefer tube-based amplifiers.
I hope relations between the US and Russia don't deteriorate too badly. Russia is a major manufacturer and exporter of vacuum tubes, as is China. Chinese tubes in general are not as high a quality generally speaking though, in my personal experience.
Oh, and the PC I posted this with is circa 2000 with a CRT monitor.
Do I win an internets?
Strat
i wonder if there is a "tin foil hat" for too much methane
That would be the refried-bean beret.
Strat
when they're giving something away at zero, presumably that's a at a loss. but I'm not a MBA, so who's to say?
Who's to say??
Why, that would obviously be Billy Preston, of course!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'. Ya gotta have somethin', if ya wanna be with me!"
Strat
In the age of the internet, if you have to pay someone to sit you in a room and teach you like a trained monkey you have serious problems that go way beyond education.
I went to college to meet chicks.
"If you want to to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library." - Frank Zappa
"Where's the college library?"
Strat
You are continuing to conflate Medicaid with the ACA
And you seem to be denying that Medicaid is part and parcel of ACA and where those who can't afford the higher costs of ACA insurers end up.
The issues you pretend to understand around Medicaid do not have any relevance to how the VA hospitals are run
They are both ran by government bureaucracies. Government bureaucracies are infamous for waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. They are no exception and neither is the ACA.
Trying to suggest that the VA hospitals are a model for how the ACA will work suggests you are not honest.
Trying to suggest I am not honest because I see and recognize universal patterns of bad behaviors and poor results from government programs suggests you are defending a political partisan ideology rather than trying to solve real problems.
Strat
> since no doctors take medicaid now (Many are no longer accepting obamacare at all),
That makes no sense whatsoever. Medicare is not Obamacare (or the Affordable Care Act to name it properly). Medicare predates the ACA by many years. No one goes to the doctor with an obamacare. They go to the doctor with an insurance plan. The doctor has no way to differentiate that plan obtained through an ACA exchange from any other plan obtained through an employer sponsored plan. They look the same to the doctor. You don't get a card that says Obamacare on it. Mine says Bluecross/Blueshield.
That's for people like you who can afford to purchase insurance. Guess what card poor people and the working-poor whose employer has dropped providing health insurance and opts to pay the penalty instead carry under ACA/Obamacare?
That's right, Medicare/Medicaid.
I'll give you three guesses on what type of new patients GP doctors (the ones that haven't yet joined the increasing numbers of doctors who are retiring early to avoid this train wreck) are increasingly refusing to take on.
If you want to see how well health care is going to be run in the US under the ACA, just look at the VA and the recent news stories concerning it.
Strat
And how easy it is to make the ignorant fearful.
And therefore, how easy it is to make the ignorant violent.
And how easy it is to simply label anyone who disagrees with you as ignorant so that they and their point of view can be marginalized and summarily dismissed without further consideration.
Just ignore the history of government screw-ups regarding dangerous things like radioactive materials, nerve agents, or even nuclear warheads that were all in the hands of "experts".
Geez! Just the thought of bringing an infected and still-living Ebola victim to a large US city is enough to make blood shoot out of your eyes!...Oh, wait...
Strat
So the REAL question is what WILL stop it. Saying that "This one is a bad person and did nothing to change it" doesn't work. Saying "The previous one did nothing to change it" doesn't work.
Voting for "The other party" doesn't work.
No, I do not have the answer, because if I did I would be giving it.
What must be done to change the status-quo with minimal violence or bloodshed is to unite people under common values, such as the massive & ongoing civil rights violations/infringements that most people agree are wrong, regardless of what political stripe they self-identify as.
Likewise, the militarization of domestic police forces and their gradual shift from a community law enforcement role to more resemble a national occupation force complete with armored vehicles and heavy crew-served weapons.
Start focusing on what we have in common, not what divides us. Despite what those with power would like you to believe, we have much more in common than we have differences. Those commonalities are also those of a much more fundamental and essential nature than our differences.
Extremely few on any side of the political spectrum in the US (barring government & MIC) wants an Orwellian surveillance//security/police state.
I'd have no problem at all standing side by side in public protests and demonstrations with almost anyone from TEA Party member to PETA and/or LGBT activist and beyond who also was willing to postpone our arguments for our common interests in a free and open society without mass domestic surveillance & data analysis and a militarized police force performing military-occupation and wealth-confiscation roles more than any sort of community-based & controlled "officer of the peace" roles.
Look, people, yes we have beefs over stuff *BUT*, unless we unite and curb government power and size, it won't matter because very soon none of us will have any choices about anything nor any meaningful rights at all.
Strat
The fiction that our second amendment rights are "under assault" is a kind of strange delusion bordering on mass hysteria that has no relationship to reality. Across the country gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.
Michael Bloomberg, is that you?
Strat
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.
