it was a perfect storm. The original paper had only one author come out against the MMR, and originally, before he probably realized how much money he could make becoming a vaccine denier, he only came out against the triple vaccine and suggested reverting to individual ones until further study was done. Then of course he realized a fool and his money can be easily parted, and he became a real issue. Had he not walked down that path, and stuck to only saying the triple may be problematic and moving back to the individuals was fine, he wouldn't have been quite as ostracized.

Considering how troubled the MMR triple roll out was (see problems with the vaccine in Japan for example, a strain issue) it compounded an already worrisome issue. And of course, Measles had been mostly removed from the population as the inidividual vaccine had been around quite a while, and a generation of parents hadn't experienced it, so when the triple hit in the early 90s, it was a "new" vaccine for a disease people hadn't experienced in decades.

A lot contributed to the fear mongering, and now lots of bad information exacerbates the problem.

the US doesn't need to enforce the right at the asteroid, or even in space. The nice part of all those other countries is they are right here on earth, well within reach of all those aircraft carriers. So unless one of those countries first moves most of it's assets off planet, those aircraft carriers matter.

actually in many countries it is that black and white, what you mean to say is "in the US where companies want the ability to mail you a credit card without doing any verification, it doesn't work".

in most countries I have lived besides the US, it takes 2-3 weeks, and 2-3 forms of separate, verified information for me to get a credit card (or open a bank account). Now that isn't representative of a majority of countries in the world, but I can at least talk about 3 other first world countries that have active banking systems and credit markets without nearly as many holes for identity theft.

Actually, the last time I did it, it required my passport, work visa, proof of home address via a public utility bill, and a letter of employment from my employer which needed to validate my address, work status, and name for a bank account. The credit card could be done remotely, but I had to mail copies of this all in, and get the copies certified for some documents (namely, ID documents).

Sure, it's a bit of a pain in the ass. But then again, no country ever had its economy grind to a halt because it took a week to get a personal credit card.

if you get to know the inside of collection agencies, you'll see why. Ebay sends bulk data on delinquent accounts to a collector, that collector then is paid purely as a percent of the money he collects for you. Ebay has 0 costs involved in this beyond sending data to the collections company. It's also why you may keep getting called for the same delinquent account.

But, beyond sending it to a collector, they aren't going to spend the time and money of their employees' to get that money. It's too expensive in effort and paperwork, if not just salaries. Collection agencies make their money by specializing and pooling together delinquent accounts from tons of companies (hospitals, doctors offices, ebay, etc, etc) and applying the same high pressure tactics that can be scripted to get as many to pay something as possible.

yep, I had a citibank issued card years ago. And a couple months after canceling it someone got hold of the info (didn't fish it out of the trash, I hold all old cards for quite a while before dumping them) and started charging it.

Citi had a rule that even though it is a canceled card, if any charges come in during the next 3 months, they will automatically reactivate the card. well a few months later I got a letter saying I was months behind and when I called, they said this was standard policy. When I tried fighting them, they reported me as delinquent. Lucky I have money and don't need credit for any big purchases in the US, else I'd have been screwed. It took 3 years of fighting them to get it corrected and probably 60+ hours of my time. Because, even once they finally admit they f'ed up and clear the account, you are probably stuck with all the leg work of contacting each credit bureau to confirm they corrected the record (they didn't' at 2 of them and I had to do a bunch of back and forth getting letters that it was an error) and then contacting any credit issuer who may be giving you bad terms because of it (easy for me, less so if you have a large number of loans).

if I understand, it is playing 4 heads up matches simultaneously. It is losing in 3 of the matches, and winning in 1. To even be winning in 1 is pretty damn amazing though, as I'm sure they don't lose to anyone who isn't damn good. It also looks like a second match could swing back its way. Nothing certain as they are only half way done, but this computer is doing damn well. I'm sure if I played 20 top level players in heads up, no limit, I would lose against all 20 by a pretty damn large margin.

this isn't uncommon in the arab oil countries even 30 years ago, but now it is getting very rare. it's more complicated than "the government pays". You have to remember just 1-2 generations ago, they were all dirt poor. Having lots of children usually slowly shrinks to having 2-4 then finally 0-2. And of course, you were listening to someone who really doesn't know what they are talking about, and going by (most likely) a couple of people they know. The fertility rate in Kuwait is 2.6. This is significantly higher than other countries with their income, but in the last 50 years it is down from over 7. The national shock of the Iraq invasion stopped the collapse in the fertility rate, but had it continued, it could easily have tracked with the emirates to 1.8.

That's because chess and poker are different. In chess all players know the complete state and the best move is to make the beat move possible, regardless of what your opponent may be thinking.

This is why poker is harder. Chess isn't an AI problem,because it does not need to learn about the nature of your play. The engine need merely take the board and solve for the best move. But a good poker AI must find a way to infer your thinking patterns else it is just playing an odds game and will dump excess information about its own hand every betting round.

the opium experience of china, first, was unique in many respects and was not repeated in any other country, and second is a great example of why governments should not be taxing, especially for general fund uses, any vice. Even the Maoists, the occupying Japanese, and the standing governments for over 100 years derived most of their funds from opium taxes. The Opium wars themselves were complex, and opium imports were not the only reason (note that by the time of the second war, or soon after, domestic production of opium in 19th century China dwarfed imports, Opium was a major economic engine of the country).

And of course, both Opium wars were fought, and lost, not because China was going broke from importing opium, but because the british desperately needed to export opium because they were going broke buying Chinese goods. By the second opium war, even with open opium trade, the British were importing 9x their exports to China (primarily Opium on a silver basis). China, contrary to the common story, was richer than sin and Opium was basically where they were spending all those riches they were sucking from the Brits. Losses were primarily due to the fact China had withered when it became insular after sending out its great fleet and seeing the rest of the world as backwards. It turns out you spend centuries not competing, you will collapse.

For a counter example of society functioning fine, there are estimates that 19th century America had as many opium addicts as we had Heroin addicts at the turn of the millennium. Think about that. Across a much much smaller population, there was heroin dependence on a large scale and yet not only did society function, but it thrived.

Opium usage through out the world points to a pretty self regulating outcome (as in, just like a virus can't kill all humans if it needs humans as a host, opium can't bring down all of society because addicts usually are not capable of influencing said society to make opium more available). And while you can point to the complexities of China as a great warning (as I said, I would not use taxes on these things to fund, say, schools, or medicare, or any such effort because of it) it is pretty unique in showing us a failing society because of widespread opium/heroin (and that assumes you believe Opium was the cause of their problems and not their complete lack of ability to compete with the west). Many of the things Europeans forced on China they forced on Japan as well, without opium as a trigger or a lever.

yes, I'm aware this was quite rambling. it is late, and as your response wasn't filled with righteous indignation about your moral superiority, I thought it would be interesting to reply. apologies for the horrible writing.

there is nothing teenage about it, but I can forgive the fact that you have little knowledge of history and drug use across the millennia, or even a couple hundred years. Society, not just the US or western society but all societies, have had drug use going back far longer than prohibition. And almost all of these countries offered no services to those who found themselves addicted. Just like alcohol, they dealt with it via a series of punishments for those who broke other laws.

Your view isn't invalid, you just gloss over all the assumptions you make, as if they are fundamental or required of a functioning society. It's a pretty common error when people are faced with a suggestion to do things radically different. I personally see absolutely nothing cruel about warning someone against doing drugs because it will lead to a life of poverty, addiction, and early death and then making them face the consequences of their decisions when the turkey comes home to roost. But then, I don't believe it is government's job to try and regulate away stupidity. You obviously believe it is part of government/societies job to regulate away any decisions you deem bad (based on your value system, which again I'm not saying is invalid, just is an assumption). I don't because I feel it fails on a regular basis and leads to the truly detrimental actions of bias being used to determine who gets helps (you know, how a nice middle class white girl caught with heroine goes in for drug treatment and the black male goes in for narcotics distribution). I'm far more scared of prosecutorial discretion in a world with lots of laws and special carve outs than a few drug addicts running around. It didn't bring down 19th century society, or 18th. I figure we will survive it in the 21st.

There has been amazing commentary on why this is. The largest, and most unified group of republican voters are evangelical Christians and within that group, the existance of Israel is seem as a prerequisite to the second coming.

Being all for Israel is a less controversial stance than many others that still panders to a key bloc.

I can only speak from experience in Georgia and NC, but things like "following too close" or "swerving in your own lane" , are completely legitimate excuses to initiate a stop. In my case, a stop because a colored person had obviously too nice a car and I only consented to the search of my car because I was trying to get to Atlanta for a flight and they said they would just hold me there till I missed it.

The law allows cops to stop you as long as they aren't so stupid to forget the standard excuses they can use to initiate a stop without any cause. You know those excuses that boil down to "he said, she said".

freedom also entails the freedom to fuck up your life. Freedom is lots of folks being allowed to make choices you don't approve of, and a lot of those choices may lead to negative consequences. so be it. That is the real price of freedom, people doing things that lead to negative consequences for themselves and their immediate group.

for some reason people seem to assume these decisions were made to be insidious or more infiltrating or all that jazz.

frankly, if you use gmail, they know your real name with a bare minimum of email scanning efforts. I'm sure they not only know my real name, but can draw out my personal and professional network, if they wanted to.

the point, and it made a hell of a lot of sense for folks like me, was to have one account across all services. I hardly ever use Facebook, but I use hangouts, I use g+ to the extent I use any social networks, I watch youtube, I have a gmail account, and I use maps. the better they can integrate across these things, for my use case, the better. I was happy when these accounts all became the same, and I can imagine that for a lot of their customers and devs it was the same.

That they built out a system that fit their use case and learned afterwards a large portion of their customers (who , because they never needed to, never sent an email saying "please keep handles anonymous, don't require real names, etc, etc") hated these changes and it wasn't just a tiny vocal minority. They then did what almost all non-fruit companies do, they backtracked. good for them admitting their error, admitting they didn't realize what so many customers wanted. If apple admitted they created a shit map software and just let people use google maps if they wanted, I'd probably still have an iPhone.

the exact same thing that happens when an alcohol fueled moron gets behind the wheel, or when any tired person gets behind the wheel, or when someone gets behind the wheel after running a marathon and the ensuing endorphin crash makes them conk out.

basically, the exact same thing a trove of other acceptable behaviors cause happens when you take a stim. the real question is why should it be illegal to take when we simply expect people who do all these other activities to not drive. A little education would assuage many of these issues.