..well, so pretty much have all the FUD-spreaders in the CDC, government, and NGOs who've been all telling us that "any moment" we could get a "deadly flu" since the (ha ha ha) Sars "epidemic".

All I've ever gotten is the "Cry Wolf" heebie jeebies.

If you ever find yourself up on charges before a court, I have a piece of advice for you: get a lawyer, a real lawyer. One that understands the law.

Hmm. Half whooosh and half 'me no pay money' and see red. So I must be a regular user, or what?
I actually couldn't care less; only noticed the red stuff at times and was wondering ... .
Silly thing, that!

If you think DC can't kill, LOL - you're not any kind of engineer at all. You're an ignorant fool.

If I have a TB of data to move, a bittorrent client doesn't reduce the amount of data I have to send upstream. What forced for seeded warez doesn't work for unseeded personal files.

Sure. But on the other hand, without extra effort that 1TB external is subject to the same hazards that the PC it's sitting next to is. Plus *I* have to monitor and replace that 1TB on a regular basis.

There's more to backup strategy that just "copy it to an external drive and hope".

And it accomplishes virtually nothing to boot! Seriously, there's a hell of a lot more to running the rover than just steering and driving.

right...i know what you mean. this would be more in the "PR" realm, but educational "PR"...they learn the stuff you're saying they need to know! Realistically speaking it's highly unlikely that a workable idea for use would get "kicked up the ladder" from the community would be anything that wouldn't have been pre-planned anyway.

Generally, it's considered bad form to learn how to operate multi-hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment on the very equipment you'll be operating - not without strict supervision by trained and experienced individuals. The very trained and experienced personnel you've already fired because they're too expensive. The same goes for stuff "kicked up the ladder", not only is there not anyone pre-planning anymore (they've all been fired, remember) there isn't anyone up the ladder to evaluate the idea (they've been fired too).
 
And I haven't even mentioned the problems of volunteer burnout, turnover, and empire building.
 

but don't discount "PR"...it's not just "PR" it's a **next level of involvement** in space exploration for anyone with an internet connection and that is absolutely priceless...seriously how many millions upon millions has NASA and the US gov't as a whole spent to get "kids interested in science"

*Sigh* there's not one single shred of evidence, and we've got a half a centuries worth, that PR for space activities has any concrete result. Zip. Zero. Nada.

Sick citizens cost a state, not in on-the-book expenditures, but in lost productivity and higher hospitalization costs -- especially because of the large number of very sick people covered by hospitals' indigent care pools. This directly translates into higher dollar costs in health care and insurance.

The same insurance that would cost my family $8811/year in Massachusetts would cost an unbelievable $12576 in Mississippi, even though everything else is much more expensive here. Mississippi has the lowest cost of living in the country; Massachusetts is among the highest. Yet they pay 40% more for the same health insurance, when all things being equal you'd expect them to pay 30% less. Why? Is medical care cheaper here? Absolutely not. We're chock full of very expensive, high tech teaching hospitals where the cost of an aspirin would give you a stroke. We have the most expensive cost for medical procedures in the country of any state but Alaska.

So why is health insurance such a relative bargain here? Because we have by far the lowest rate of uninsured people in the country (4.0%) thanks to Mitt Romney's implementation of what later came to be called "Obamacare". Yes, our medical care is more expensive here but because we get preventive care and screening we use less of it.

Mississippi's uninsured rate is 15%, and consequently it's full of poor, unnecessarily sick people. the number of unnecessarily sick people. Here in Massachusetts when you hit 65 you can expect to enjoy 15 years of *healthy* life before your health fails. In Mississippi it's 10.8 years. Mississippi has a shocking infant mortality rate -- a total of 1% of live births. And all those unnecessarily sick babies who didn't get prenatal care cost people living in Mississippi a fortune.

So while Mississippi saves immediate cash outlay by not expanding Medicaid, that's penny wise and pound foolish. People carrying insurance end up spending so much more they could expand Medicaid for a fraction of the costs, and if you're a Mississippian you can expect to get more sick and die younger than any other state in the country. Some deal.

Mississippi has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the country -- a shocking 1% (10 per 1000 live births) of newborns in Mississippi don't make it. Sick, uninsured babies are very expensive.

The Brady Zombies just won't die.

Gun violence and deaths have been trending down for decades while gun ownership has been going up.

Hyperbole just makes you look like a fool.

No one owns landmines legally and while many do have automatic firearms, they are highly regulated and owners go through extensive background checks.

I have a family with kids. Under ACA my cost for a silver level plan, after my tax credit, works out to $712/month. That's a lot: almost as much as we pay for food. But considering how much we use the doctor and even the hospital, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

It's in the 9th.

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

How high is "insanely high"?

For a family with two 40 year-old non-smokers and two children under 21, making the median household income of $50,054/year, the average annual silver plan premium, nation-wide would be $9700/year. That's a lot, but not unreasonable given what a silver plan covers. But here's the kicker: Uncle Sam cuts your taxes to the tune 65% of your premium, so effectively you only pay $3373/year. If you were getting anything close to silver plan coverage for much less than $281/month, I'd be very surprised. You can do this calculation for yourself at http://kff.org/interactive/sub... if you like. If you have a reasonably profitable consultancy, the prospect of paying $9/day to insure four people shouldn't be that daunting.

But some small businesses don't generate much income at first, and the tax breaks in Obamacare don't help you because you aren't paying much federal income tax yet. That's what the Obamacare Medcaid expansion is for. It covers *all* your health care expenses if you make 138% of the poverty line or less. Unfortunately about half of the states have opted not to expand Medicaid, even though the expansion woulds be entirely funded by the federal government. If you live and work in one of these states and make less than 138% of the poverty line, you need to get coverage at work or you're screwed. Even a bronze plan, at $249/month, is more than people who are supposed to be covered by Medicaid expansion can pay. Blocking Medicaid expansion at the state level is a key tactic in ensuring that working people experience Obamacare as ruinously expensive.

Finally, it's important to remember that Obamacare doesn't set insurance premiums. What you pay *for* is regulated, but the *amount* you pay for it is determined by the market. Increases in premiums, or too-good-to-be-true plans that are dropped, result from outlawing practices like dropping you from your insurance when you get sick, or raising the premiums so much when you get sick that you're forced to drop your coverage. So the increased premiums under ACA are simply the market price for insurance that actually works the way people expect it to (i.e., when you get sick, it pays for care until you are no longer sick).

If you are one of those people who pre-ACA had awesome health insurance for your entire family below $100/month, your old insurance was almost certainly too good to be true. Insurance companies dropped those policies when the ACA outlawed the deceptive practices that made them profitable.

Apparently quite a few birds can also see UV. Knowing that, would it be possible to use a UV light system to steer birds away from windmills? It appears that bird deaths is a major problem point for the renewable energy source, so any passive way of warding birds away from them would be a good thing.