. . . patient stupidity.

If a doctor recommends a vaccine for a child, and the parents refuse the vaccine, then the child catches the flu and dies. Guess what? The doctor is open to litigation. It is a sad state of affairs, but the end result of that lawsuit is probably either settlement out-of-court or a judgment against the doctor. After all, why didn't the doctor educate the parents how they were wrong about autism risks? Why didn't the doctor show studies to the parents so they could have made a more educated decision? The fault will not be on the parents' heads -- at the very least the doctor will have to pay an attorney to defend from the inevitable lawsuit.

Why should a doctor saddle up with 1) Patients that refuse care and 2) Legal risk. If I were a family physician and I had people putting themselves or dependents at risk against my medical advice (A.M.A.), I would "fire" them, too. In the end, we aren't talking about emergency care here. We are talking about medical maintenance, and they can find someone else.

Have you ever seen the headache that ensues when your raid controllers realize that only one of your drives has a file? Eee gads.

Let me tell you, RAID 1 just means that you are twice as likely to be fucked and files cost 2x as much to store.

This reminds me of one day, my brother and dad went up to Fort Campbell in Kentucky to play some paintball. The only people playing were them, one 13-year-old walk-on, and a squad of troops. Now, my brother and dad have a lot of experience. So they took the walk-on and let the 8 troops play on the same team.

3 v 8

The 13-year-old was eliminated every match. So were the 8 army guys. Neither my brother nor father was ever hit.

It is hard to express how important experience is. In combat, it's strategy and nerves. I have no doubt that a bunch of 60-year-old vets would wipe the floor with 20-year-old people with less experience. They would have their shit together and would out-think and out-maneuver their opponent.

. . . destroyed their vacation

WAAAAaaaaoaooooooh!

Is this car a part of the Volkswagen Center for Drivers Who Can't Park Good and Wanna Learn to Drive in the City Too?

Kind of like communism, democracy, socialism -- in truth, all 'styles' of government end up being a hybrid that can function In The Real World. Even in America, the bastion of democracy, we really live in a semi-socialist republic, but the basic ideals are /based/ on democracy.

LIbertarianism is no different -- it would not be a /pure/ libertarian government, but rather a government based on the tenant that the rules apply to everyone, and that individuals still have rights.

You just said that HDTV was an improvement over NTSC, but then said that Blu-Ray, which is an even greater improvement than HDTV over the same resolution (DVD/NTSC), is not enough of an improvement.

Most HDTV is 720, some over-the-airwaves is 1080i. BluRay is 1080p and has uncompressed audio. It's dramatically better. I don't understand the contradiction in your analysis.

I wonder what percentage of students in college today can calculate sine/cosine in radians without a calculator to give them the answer. I bet it is very few because most of them were raised thinking that using a calculator to get the answer right was important. To understand theory, someone needs to work through it. They need to prove the theory. You don't do that plopping answers in a calculator -- you do that by going through and manually examining the mechanics of the problem. You show your work.

In the real world, once someone is supposed to know their stuff, sure use a calculator. It would be foolish not to. But the point of school is not to get the answer right. The point of school is to 1) Teach people how to learn to understand issues, and 2) Teach people basic theory in different subjects. Having a computer spoon-feed answers in math is a bad idea.

The best math teachers I ever had shared one thing in common -- they disallowed calculators in their class. And as fun as a kindle or ipad may be, I'd wager a hefty sum that reading a novel in paper is (at least currently) more intuitive and less of a barrier to the material than reading it electronically. I hate to be a "get off my lawn" type, but I feel that schools should be actively resisting any technological "aid" to teaching that is not something directly taught by the class.

Math classes should be "show your work."
Language, history, and Literature should be "show your notes."
Intro to programming should be "show your algorithms" -- more switch design and less "hello world."

I can see benefit to computers in more advanced programming courses, as well as in history courses that want to include videos and/or art. But really, there is very little place for a computer in sub-college school work. People need to learn to think on their feet.

Just my $0.02.

What increases autism rates is an increase in the diagnosis of autism.

I don't know if people have realized this, but nobody is an asshole anymore. Now people are 'borderline personality disorder' or 'aspergers' or 'bipolar' -- but people haven't changed, just diagnosis.

Personally, I still think some people are still just assholes. Not that I don't ascribe to mental illness -- I most certainly do believe people can have those aforementioned conditions -- but I think problems are over-diagnosed and over-medicated.