Yahoo will sooner or later realize that they can't buy "cool", and that their either going to render Tumblr into yahoo, thereby ruining it, or let Tumblr go off on its merry way by selling it to someone else, or to it's prior owners who, thanks to Yahoo, have $1.1 billion to buy it with.

IMO, the net of this purchase is that in a few years, Yahoo will again not own Tumblr and will be about $900 million lighter for their trouble.

At least the EU and China aren't so rigidly individualistic that we'll poison our children for temporary comfort. I do feel bad for Canada and Mexico though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Riiiiight.

I don't disagree. My simple example was intended just as barebones "here's how insurance works".

The US system has a terrible pricing disconnect from healthcare consumer to healthcare payor, and consequently consumers have very little pricing power.

Maybe in your country. In mine, it's more like 9 out of 10 eat butter from a jar. That's not really the point, though. Yes, we could very significantly reduce our overall healthcare spending if people actually took care of themselves. Even if we did, random disease strikes. A young friend of mine survived brain cancer. A 20-year-old friend of mine didn't survive a different cancer. Both endured lengthy and expensive treatments. Neither were linked to particular behaviors, they just drew the short straw. THAT is what insurance is for, and no matter how much you pare down the waste and cost, if it's done right, the bucket is still empty at the end of the year (on average, and hand waving a bit about cash reserves for exceptionally bad years).

Once people have serious ailments is the wrong time to intervene. If granny's 150 pounds overweight, good luck getting her to adopt an exercise regime. Really, we need to look in elementary schools and ask why so many kids are chubby and can't run. Some of them are your future 40 year olds in mart carts, and it's truly a crying shame. It doesn't have to be this way.

The freeloaders who have paid thousands into private health insurance without taking any benefits and then lose their job, can't pay, and get NONE of that money back when they need it?

Oh, you're one of those people who don't understand how insurance works. Let me help you out.

I'm one of those people who pays every year and gets virtually no medical treatment. Healthy as a horse. I should absolutely get my money back. Right?

Wrong. Here's a simplified example for you. There are 10 people in my fictional world. There's only one malady: heart attack. It strikes 10% of the people per year, and costs $100k to treat. Mere mortals like you and I can't just absorb a $100k hit, but we can absorb $10k/year in insurance costs. Everybody throws $10k/year in a bucket and the one guy per year (on average) who has a heart attack gets to take the money out of the bucket and use it for his treatment.

The bucket is an insurance company. You should see that the money that the 9 of us put in there who were healthy that year isn't still sitting there. It got paid out to the guy who wasn't healthy.

Or the freeloaders who are completely avoiding doctor visits to avoid getting any preventative care or diagnoses they need in order to keep pre-existing conditions from appearing on their health records (and end up costing the insurance companies and/or the government 100x what it would have if they had dealt with their issues earlier)?

There's this notion of freedom. It's not all about saving money. If I don't want to go to the doctor, that's really none of your business. Now, should I bear the costs of not getting preventive care? Sure! I used to have a dental plan like that. Get your twice a year routine cleaning and exam and everything is covered 100%. Don't, and you pay a percentage of the cost of fixing the teeth you didn't take care of.

The fact is, healthcare costs would be far lower if we had a single payer system.

No, that's just a claim backed up by no evidence you've presented.

Cover EVERYONE at a federal level, then none of your concerns about private corporate interest are relevant.

And that, regrettably, is the typical appeal to authority that harkens back to the days when mommy and daddy could make everything all better. The federal government is just a collection of people like me and you. Some of them are very good at their jobs. Some of them are very bad. Most of them are average. You know, just like the rest of us.

The problem with federalizing it is that you get just one option. You get saddled with the choices that are made by a set of bureaucrats at the top. You naively assume they'll be the right choices for you, but that's not necessarily true. Many like to point at countries like Canada as a claim that it works fine. Well, I have family in Canada and they don't think it works fine. Canadians also have an exercise another option when they need better or faster treatment: they come to the US.

There are definitely things we should reform about the healthcare industry. Pre-existing conditions is part of it, but Obamacare did that already. Separating health insurance from employment should happen. Some sort of incentive to get us to stop being a nation that eats and couch surfs itself to death would go a long way to bringing costs down. There are lots more.

It's not about Google ignoring the order. Google could diligently remove all copies of the video from their servers. They can't remove it from mine, or yours. For that, the judge would have to order me and you to remove it, and not being under his jurisdiction, I expect I could ignore him with impunity (as long as I don't travel to .ie ever).

Actually, that's been done.

http://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria.html

Pretty cool, imo.

It sounds like you're saying it should be actionable if one person steals your work, but if everyone steals your work, it shouldn't be.

IMO, Warner Bros is in a "live by the IP, die by the IP" place. If they took someone else's work and used it for commercial gain, I don't have a problem with the creator whacking them on the head for it. The foolproof defense, oh big companies who make your fortunes by creating characters, is just never to steal someone else's characters.

Education should be a local issue.

Why?

Oooo! I'll answer! Education, like most things, should be a local issue because people tend to screw things up. If it's a local issue and they screw it up, you can move. Moving out of Louisiana isn't a huge deal. If it's a national issue and they screw up, you have to leave the country, which for most people with family and other attachments, is a much bigger deal.

For the same reason mutual funds and hedge funds exist (spare me the anti-rich-people jokes, please). If I know how to get a good return on invested money, I can either invest my small pool of money and make x% on that, or offer the service of knowing how to get a good return on invested money and get a smaller % of a potentially MUCH larger pool of money. This works out to a lot more dollars per year for me and for you, assuming my skills are genuine. If they're not, then I'm deluding myself (and you) or I'm a fraud. Telling the difference between those possibilities is often hard.

...but what is the scientific process that presented us with that idea?

In a word, geology. Actually worth learning something about before claiming it's all BS.

There's an unfortunate tendency to label "heroes" people who suffer some dramatic, tragic fate. The crews of Challenger and Columbia were hailed as heroes, when in reality they weren't any more heroic than any other space shuttle crew, just a lot more unfortunate.

If most of your health care comes from ER visits, you're probably doing it wrong.

Your point, though, is valid. Price comparison at the consumer level is all but impossible. Try walking into your doctor's office and asking how much for an appointment. They won't be able to tell you. The real answer is "it depends on what we end up doing, and what rates your insurance company negotiated, if you have one".

Nonsense. Wanting someone who planted a bomb in a crowd of people to suffer in the same way his victims did doesn't make you a psychopath. It makes you vengeful. IMO, anyone who has watched any of the video of the immediate aftermath or seen still images of the carnage could quite reasonably want the perpetrator(s) to suffer.

No one underwrites the losses. That's what the interest and fees are for. Or do you think that 4% + 7.9% should be entirely risk free for the lender?