In that case there's no solution anyway, so the only question becomes whether you do it like in Sweden, i.e. where the patient in most need gets the best surgeon at the best hospital, or you do it likt in the US, where the "richest" patient gets the best surgeon in the best hospital.

And that's, incidentally, why we have much, much better outcomes for the same money.

But in general the answer to your question is "yes". In Sweden you can go to any hospital/doctor to seek treatment. If the same treatment is available by your own county, you can be made to wait a couple of weeks, but even that's not a hard rule, if you push, you can go directly. It's not uncommon for your local doctor to discuss with you where you'd want to go, when you're going for a speciality that is of the "one of a kind in the country" that you seem so afraid you'll miss.

No, I pay out the nose. No question about that. :-) However, I pay a lot less than you do, since that how insurance works (or rather, I pay about the same, but get much, much better care for my money). If you have a large pool with no individual management then insurance gets dirt cheap. Ask any insurance company, it's individually that costs money. (That's why so called group plans for i.e. home insurance you can get from e.g. your union in Sweden are so popular. They're usually about a quarter of the cost for the same service, and that's not because insurance companies are cutting their profits.)

Now, of course your "podiatrist" spiel is just silly. With health care based on need, you'll just be sent home if it turns out that you don't actually have a need. And that's the way it should work. Now of course, if you'd actually go to the doctor because you're to lazy to cut your own toe nails, I'd prefer our system. If you think that's why you're at the doctor there's a good chance there's something wrong with you, but at the other end of your body, and I'd much better that you'd actually go to the doctor then, then not being able to, due to cost. I'd much prefer to have those people in the hands of psychiatrists than running around complaining they can's see a doctor.

No, it's usually yearly for kids, and that's quite frankly often enough.

Also, dentistry (same as in the US) is usually not part of the universal healthcare, but a separate system, so there's a lot more variability in dental care than healthcare proper in the EU. In Sweden for example, only kids (until 18 yo) get free dentistry, as an adult you have to pay your own. Unless of cours it becomes a systemic health care problem.

It's less of a surprise if you consider its pedigree. Al Jazeera took over many if not most of the staff of the Arabic BBC world service channel that was shut down by the BBC as a response to Saudi censorship demands.

So, with that kind of heritage, it's not that surprising that they should be good at what they do.

Nope. As a computer scientist educated in both logic and engineering, it's pretty clear who's words needs to be taken with a grain of salt and who's doesn't.

Hint: it's not his... Misreading "statics" for "statistics" is a huge enough warning flag.

Wireless charging schemes are totally awesome, because I am heavily invested in Texas and Arab Oil.

If you are a non-billionaire, remember profligate waste is super patriotic, and be sure to do your part! For AMERICA! (Or for the heathen foreign ideals of your benighted snail-eating nation, should you not be American.)

If you're a billionaire, I'll see you at the club later. Today we're using Tea Party congressmen as ponies for the polo match, and later we're having naked petroleum jelly wrestling featuring network anchor-babes. It'll be great!

Sure, but that also made it unpopular for its "excessive" wounding effects. That's one reason it was changed. (Even though you aren't signatories to the relevant conventions, you still profess to follow them).

But this is getting off topic. :-) We were talking about the vaunted firepower of the SMLE. While the Lee Enfield might have scared the Germans at Mons, it was past its prime by WWII. Now, 20 (or indeed 30) rounds out of a (semi) automatic that's a whole 'nuther ballgame, the capabilities of the round itself notwithstanding.

Sure, if you want to discuss the particulars I have no beef with what you say. I was just pointing out that 5.56mm is much more marginal than previous rounds had been, just because the lower ends of the spectrum was being investigated, something that hadn't been done before (well, regarding humans at least, even the bigger cartridges were often marginal against horses in FMJ...)

When it comes actual wounding mechanisms, it's interesting to note that even 7.62 NATO in certain loading had a tendency to yaw and break (at the cannelure), so 5.56 was not unique in that respect.

Supposedly a man of Indian heritage (Asian Indian, from India, not Amerindian) will burn fewer calories than a woman of so-called "white" heritage.

Of course, all this is based on "average" people of particular genders or races, and the variance within those groups is probably far greater than the variance between the averages. And you don't necessarily expect astronauts to be average, now do you?

So you're still probably better off picking people with exceptional caloric efficiency who have the other skills you need and leaving race and gender entirely out of the selection process. Don't pre-bias your results with bigotry based on averages - average people are not what you want!

No, that's wrong on many accounts. The german reports of withering Lee-Enfield fire are from the first world war. And since the German army had extensive experience from the Lee-Enfield from the first world war, its capabilities weren't a surprise the second time around. Not by a long shot.

But that didn't matter since rifles were passe. The German infantry squad was armed with the Mauser (shortened version of the full length rifle of WWI) throughout WWII. But that didn't matter as the rifle squad had the newly invented general purpose machine gun to form around. It was even considered the sole reason for the squad's existence. (See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...). Note that only NCOs etc. were supplied with any kind of automatic weapons, in most cases the "Schmeisser" submachine gun. The rest of the squad was basically there to carry ammunition for the machine gun and to provide flank cover for the crew. And the German rifle squad could definately put more rounds on target than a British rifle squad of the time, the "mad minute" not withstanding.

The sturmgewehr 44 didn't come out until (you guessed it), 1944, and was never a standard rifle squad rifle. It's cartridge was emphatically not developed with any "only need to wound" factor taken into account. Instead it was recognised that most targets were human, and only 150m away or so (max 300). So much could be saved by developing a cartridge for that situation instead of a cartridge that could topple a horse at shorter ranges and a man at 1000m (the original design specifications actually hinged on the effectiveness against horses, as stopping a cavalry charge was still very much the order of the day). So instead the "kurz" round was developed to give rifle like performance out to a couple of hundred meters, but allowing the carrying of more ammunition both on the person and in the gun, and much lower recoil, which becomes important in a fully automatic weapon.

The "wound not kill" design parameters don't come into effect until 5.56mm NATO and the corresponding USSR rounds were introduced in the late sixties/seventies. (As can be observed by their abysmal performance in a full metal jacket to actually stop a man. They still kill without much problem.) Horses were out of the picture when 5.56mm NATO was developed, so that together with "wounding factor" (wound not kill wasn't really a factor when designing rifle ammunitio) is why they got away with such a weak cartridge. Which was actually weaker from the beginning but the Army kept insisting on being able to penetrate a steel helmet at 300m, so the case had to be lengthened and lengthened to fit enough propellant. That gave the unfortunate case dimensions that are with us still to this day.

>wasn't there a journalist who published a blog and used that as the only notable reference to create a fake article? :)

I can recommend you a fascinating pair of books: The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis and The Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes. There is a very long history of circular self-reference among dishonest journalists and scientists; for example Fred Singer would write a letter to the Wall Street Journal, then write an Op-Ed piece for a smaller outfit using the Wall Street Journal as a reference, then write an article for WSJ referencing the op-ed. In each case the claimed accuracy of the sources would be boosted - first in the letter it might make a bald claim like "tobacco is proven not harmful" or "global warming is beneficial" and the the op-ed would go on to state that "the wall street journal says tobacco is proven not harmful" then in the final piece "prominent scientists have repeatedly proven that tobacco is not harmful" (Singer really is a physicist or something like that). Eventually the final WSJ article would be cited in thousands of journals and papers funded by Singer's paymasters - this is still going on, the articles are still cited today. Read the books to find out more.

And it's interesting that the reason for this was a lack of nuclear weapons sophistication. Making a hydrogen bomb required hydrogen (isotopes) as fuel. But how to store it? The first idea was using liquid hydrogen, but then you need a railway car full of cryogenic equipment to keep it liquid. That's the design parameters the Soviets used for their ICMBs, i.e. we need to be able to shoot a railway cart to the US. Teller and co. then realised that by using lithium in the Teller-Ulam design you could make the bomb much, much smaller and lighter, and the US ICBM were designed with that in mind, i.e. we need to shoot a family car to the Soviet union. (The Soviets then got clever, and didnt' actually fire a cryogenic H-bomb, while the US actually did, and then it turned out in Ivy Mike that lithium was the gift that keep on giving...)

So, when the space race started in earnest, the Soviets had these great big bloody rockets, and hence could loft a heavy Sputnik (~80kg) into space without much trouble, while the anemic US rockets barely managed close to a tenth of that (~13kg). It took quite a number of years before US heavy lift capability had caught up.

No, not really. While the article says "government" that's not quite true. In Sweden we have a long tradition of "business as government", and wholly (or partially) government owned businesses. That's what's at play here: The fibre to my house was pulled by the local energy company (district heating and electricity). That company, while wholly owned by the local (municipal) government runs a surplus, and hence isn't subsidised by taxes. But they do enjoy a government monopoly.

What they do, do is provide the basic infrastructure that others can offer their services on, whether that service, be delivering broadband or electricity. Now, in order to do so, they require coverage of their cost, but are not in the market to squeeze it for all it's worth.

Hence I pay $50 a month for 100/100Mbps internet, basic cable and IP telephony. That money goes to my service providers who then (in turn) pay the energy company.

Sure they can. Without exposure no-one will come to their gigs. And the proceeds from those they sure can eat. Well, rather, they can buy stuff to eat, even if money is high in fiber, their nutritional value apart from that is lacking.

Even major acts don't make much money off of selling their recorded music, RIAA has seen to that, but the exposure leads to better other ways to make money. Exposure is basically where the entire game is at.