In case people don't know what you're referring to, The Star Trek OPs room Gen. Alexander had contractors make while he was in Army Intelligence

If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater where there is no fire, you have taken a safe situation and turned it into an immensely dangerous one.

If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater where there is a fire, you are attempting -- as best you can -- to mitigate the risk of an immensely dangerous situation.

The law prohibits shouting "fire" in a crowded theater where there is no fire present. There is no law against alerting your fellow patrons to the fact the building is on fire.

I agree with you. I get quite irritated when people in the UK tell me we should emulate them in gun control laws, healthcare laws, or their habit of dropping random 'u's in words where they clearly don't belong. Courtesy requires I refrain from telling the UK how they ought pattern their free speech laws on our First Amendment.

It is enough to say that I am pleased to live where I do, and that I believe the evils of generally-unregulated free speech are far far outweighed by the good.

Thank you for being a physician. Seriously. It's appreciated.

(-- would've been dead in the '90s except for someone like you)

The reason why progress has been so slow is because there is no one single disease, "cancer." Instead we have a few thousand different diseases which we collectively call cancer. Many of them look extremely similar, even to professional oncologists. First we have to identify all of these different cancers, and then we have to discover effective treatments against them. Some cancers will have common weaknesses; many (most?) do not.

There's a reason why cancer is called "the Emperor of Maladies". Cancer is probably the hardest scientific problem the human race has ever wrestled with. It makes the moon shot and the internet look like pikers by comparison.

Cancer is hard, and every day we don't have a cure more people are going to die in horrible ways. The first part makes us want to give up on cancer research, or to say that it's too hard, or to say that we haven't made any progress... but the second part will always keep us coming back to do more research and make another attempt.

My dream is that cancer might be cured in 100 years. I think it's a dream worth working for.

I'm reminded that when President Truman had his heart attack in 1956, the official prescription from his physician was bed rest accompanied by Mrs. Truman to keep him warm.

That was the whole, complete prescription.

Anyone who says medicine hasn't improved since 1952 simply isn't paying attention.

You want old jokes?

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these....

Their executive's stocks don't get scrutinized for insider trading, as happened to a certain Qwest executive...

Look, I was in my teens when I saw it in the theater, and I was not a fan or defender of Heinlein's (still have not read any of his books).

I still thought the movie sucked.

I got that it was satire, in fact I thought it was trying too hard to be satire. There was no subtlety and none of it was clever or funny. Nor did it lampoon the military in ways that actually challenged militarism or war on an intellectual level, it just made fun of the surface aspects of it (hurrr grunts are dumb, look at this parody of propaganda, etc). It felt like the director was just trying to bash his views onto the viewer without any introspection or intellect. Basically my reaction.

You know your movie sucks when a teenage boy thinks it lacks subtlety and intellect.

Not only am I from the United States (born in Iowa, currently live in Virginia), but I've spent enough time in emergency rooms (pursuant to EMT work) to know this is the law. Sorry, kid. :)

Check the bankruptcy declarations. The City of Detroit made various statements under penalty of perjury, and one of the most shocking was their admission that emergency response times averaged 58 minutes.

I can't explain the discrepancy between what Detroit says on a web site and what Detroit says in a courtroom. What I can do, though, is point you to my reference. :)

Mostly Detroit having been in a state of slow-motion collapse for 30+ years. Even the bankruptcy is caused by that -- it's not as if it suddenly came out of the blue.

30 years ago Detroit had 1.8 million people. Today it has about 700,000. A lot of businesses have also left, too. The city has spent 30 years acting as if nothing has really changed while the entire tax base has fled. Now the city is in a financial emergency of unthinkable proportions. Something like two-thirds of the ambulances have over 200,000 miles (320,000km) on them; there are 40% fewer police patrolling the streets than there were a decade ago; to save money, the city has shut off streetlights in something like half the city.

To make matters worse, half the city is functionally illiterate and thus can't find work in a modern economy. Unemployment in Detroit hovers around 50%.

Detroit's problems are the result of the city itself collapsing. The bankruptcy is just a symptom of the much bigger problems. Even if the federal government were to cut a $20 billion check to bail Detroit out of bankruptcy, these deeper problems would still exist.

Detroit is infamously bad, yeah. 58 minutes is the *official* Detroit response time. A few years ago I had to call the ambulance in Detroit for a neighbor who was having a stroke. We never found out what the response time was. We called the ER, who told us to bring her down ourselves. By the time we took her to the ER, sat with her through her diagnosis and admission and returned home, the ambulance *still* hadn't arrived. So I called 911 and canceled the ambulance call.

Where I come from, that's called "gross negligence" and "endangering lives".

I don't know where you are so I can't comment on your local laws. In the United States, it would likely be considered neither. Acts necessary to save human lives are neither criminally prosecutable nor subject to civil litigation.

The important word in that phrase, of course, being "necessary." Here's how a judge would evaluate your affirmative defense of, "Your honor, I had to drive like a madman: I had a man in obvious cardiac distress in the back of my car."

• First, did you have a reasonable belief the person was in extreme cardiac distress? "He was clutching his chest, short of breath, complaining of chest pains and having trouble remaining conscious. Okay, yes: the driver had a reasonable belief this individual was experiencing a life-threatening medical event and timely treatment was necessary."
• Second, was your action reasonable in light of the other options which were immediately available to you? "The defendant didn't bother to call an ambulance... then again, we *are* living in Detroit, where the response time to an emergency call hovers around one hour. His options were to either bring the guy to the hospital in his own vehicle, or attempt to provide cardiac care right there in the apartment. Transportation seems like a reasonable choice."
• Third, were unnecessary risks taken? "Sure, the guy was barrelling down Jefferson Avenue at 80 miles an hour. That was necessary. If he'd taken a detour and gone 80mph down a side street to hit a 7-11 along the way to buy a Slurpee, that would've been unnecessary... but he didn't do that, or anything like that."
• Fourth: if there was a reasonable belief someone's life is in jeopardy, if your action is reasonable in light of the options available to you, and if you avoided unnecessary risks, then brother, you are protected.

I am generally not a fan of urban driving. I own a Mustang GT and I go to the speedway whenever I can to race at high speeds in a controlled environment, but once I'm on public roads I obey the speed limit and I live in mortal fear of Suzy Homemaker in an SUV who's jawing on her cell phone instead of paying attention to her lane merge. I welcome the development of automated driving: for 99% of people it will be a massive step up in safety.

But let's not pretend that driving at 80mph in response to an immediate threat to a human life is something that we need to condemn. Those drivers amount to such a vanishingly small fraction of all accidents that I'm happy to give them a free pass. Go with God, may your tires have good tread, and I hope your passenger makes it.

I'm sure they'll air them at some point in the future, but for now there's a cost for remastering the episodes, and so I'd say it's fair for the beeb to try and recover some of the cost through iTunes/Amazon.