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Comment Re:What's so American (Score 0) 531

What is this Cold War obsession with misrepresenting Marxism in as many ways as possible just to make it seem ridiculous (or evil)? ... One of the biggest contradictions of human intelligence is its desire to over-simplify the world - to make up for our human sense of inadequacy:

You seem to have demonstrated that contradiction in whitewashing Marx. You over-simplify by focusing on Marx's economic theories* while ignoring the terrible evil that he advocated.

Marx is the father of modern political genocide. (5:18-7:40)

...the Marxist progression of history is based on an increasing voluntary desire to do labour - from socialism through to communism ...

I expect after seeing political genocide in its various flavors that "voluntary" labor isn't too hard to get. That was certainly Stalin's experience.

* And those certainly aren't without their issues.

Submission + - Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe (washingtonpost.com)

cold fjord writes: The Washington Post reports, "Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent. The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer ... It is unclear which governments have acquired these tracking systems, but one industry official ... said that dozens of countries have bought or leased such technology in recent years. This rapid spread underscores how the burgeoning, multibillion-dollar surveillance industry makes advanced spying technology available worldwide. “Any tin-pot dictator with enough money to buy the system could spy on people anywhere in the world,” said Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, ... “This is a huge problem.” "

Submission + - Amazing New Invention: A Nail Polish That Detects Date Rape Drugs (geek.com)

stephendavion writes: Checking to see if your drink has been tampered with is about to get a whole lot more discreet. Thanks to the work of four North Carolina State University undergrads, you’ll soon be able to find out without reaching for a testing tool. That’s because you’ll already have five of them on each hand. The team — Ankesh Madan, Stephen Gray, Tasso Von Windheim, and Tyler Confrey-Maloney — has come up with a creative and unobtrusive way to package chemicals that react when exposed to Rohypnol and GHB. They put it in nail polish that they’re calling Undercover Colors.

Submission + - Analysis Of The War Of 1812 Finds Same Failures That Led To 9/11 (io9.com)

An anonymous reader writes: io9 reports, "This month is the 200th anniversary of the British capture of Washington, DC, and the torching of the White House. How did this disaster happen, despite ample warnings? A CIA analyst who pored through historical documents blames the same types of intelligence failures that preceded Pearl Harbor and September 11th. ... CIA analyst William Weber addresses this very question in a study published in the most recent issue of Studies In Intelligence. ... Weber's study is sort of an historical version of the "9/11 Commission Report," which pointedly faulted U.S. officials for a "failure of imagination" that kept them from understanding and anticipating the al Qaeda threat. "

Comment Re:Because they could't sue the Government (Score 1) 212

.... and will be forced to do without or make do with crocus tea (Hellllloooooooooo shaman!) rather than a well controlled manufactured drug.

That's kind of the point - there was no "well controlled manufactured drug" since there was no standard dosage.

Oral colchicine had been used for many years as an unapproved drug with no prescribing information, dosage recommendations, or drug interaction warnings -- FDA approval

.

And it has some dangerous potential side-effects beyond simple drug interaction.

Without dosage and interaction information you're in the supplement world.

Dangerous supplements

Comment Re:Because they could't sue the Government (Score 2) 212

I'm pretty sure that interactions with drugs created or repurposed in the recent past don't have a history going back millennia.

The drug ritonavir, which is used to treat AIDs, for example, was only approved in 1996 and it apparently has an interaction with colchicine. The shamans aren't going to be a help with learning that.

Comment Re:Because they could't sue the Government (Score 1) 212

A big part of the blame should go to the failed market and its greedy occupants that cause $1 worth of chemicals to cost more than many people make in a year.

A big part of the problem discussing this is clueless people that assign no cost or value to the development and maintenance of scientific and industrial facilities to support investigation of new drugs, and the many person-years of scientific research to identify new drugs, develop the means to economically manufacture them, test them to ensure that they are safe and effective, deal with the growing government bureaucracy, get them to market, and deal with the court cases from the outliers and mistakes.

How about this - we have two drug markets that you can sign up for. One drug market is pretty much as things are today, but maybe with a bit less regulation. The other drug market is one in which anyone that can scrape $1 of chemicals into a pouch and get it to drug stores can sell it for whatever they think it is good for. Maybe they could honor that second market name with a name: patent medicine.

Which will you be signing up for?

Comment Re:Because they could't sue the Government (Score 2) 212

Except that the site was NOT required. Most states did NOT implement their own site, and either default to the federal site or formed a regional partnership.

In order to qualify legally for the subsidies under the law each state had to set up its own exchange. If the state is going to have an exchange then people need to have a way to access it. How are you going to do that without a web site? Snail mail? Telephone? Currier?

Obamacare’s Architect Agreed That Only State Exchanges Could Offer Subsidies

There are many states where people are not legally eligible for subsidies. They have been illegally receiving them, but they shouldn't count on that to last..

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