I'm afraid that you don't understand the DoJ's purpose to avoid coming down "hard". There really isn't any enforcement of any monopoly laws by any administration w/o considering the economy. Say Intel does a no-no, do you just put them out of business because they've been bad? If you don't want to be re-elected you do that. The most you can consider doing is leveling the field again (hence the $1B payment).

Why? Not because the corporation that does the no-no has any inside influence about this, but because the corporations are 'public' meaning many investement funds and consequently many individual have money tied up in the stock price of major corporations. Corporations don't even have to pay any 'donations' to get this 'protection'.

It's like when one of your kids kicks your other kid, really hard so it causes actual damage. Despite the protestations of the kicked kid that you punish the offending kid by grounding them 'forever', or making them give up their favorite toy to them, the parents don't do that. Also, the parents don't go to the police and file assult charges against the offending kid even though perhaps in other situations social workers might have considered it. All the parents do is slap the offending kid in the hand and hope they learn, but w/o any real consequence. The offending kid doesn't really have to 'donate' anything to the parents for this leniency, all they have to do is know that the parent doesn't want to ruin their life.

This is really the state of affairs of DoJ anti-trust. All companies can do is avoid the confrontation with a monopoly if possible, it isn't a game with rules, it's a jungle out there.

On the other point, I don't think Intel is doing anything specifically to keep Amd around just to avoid anti-trust, it's Intel's largest customers (like HP). They fear the world of being dependent on the single supplier and always steer design wins to the underdog. Just enough to keep them alive, but not so much that they lose too much business to their smaller competitors that just put all their poker-chips in with the product with the best price/performance. Of course 'geeks' don't really care much about this type of nuanced product segmentation games, but it's the biggest thing keeping Amd alive over time.

If Amd gave up the ghost, I don't Intel would care that much. Anti-trust is only a problem with Intel when Amd is still alive and the Big customers are keeping Amd alive (just barely). Because Amd is alive, Intel still has to jump through the anti-trust hoops because the DoJ has to at least slap their hands from time to time.

Don't tell that to the copper thieves... And no, they aren't even smart enough to save their own pitiful lives...

If you get rid of the nickel, you essentially need to get rid of the quarter. You need to have all larger denomination coins divisible by at least one of the smaller denomination coins. Unless, of course, you are a sadist. Getting rid of the nickel seems like a non-starter. However, dumping the dime w/o getting rid of the nickel would probably work.

Logical falacy. Strawman.

Doctors, of course, aren't always honest and often screw up. But Doctors are straw men (and women), in your argument which you are trying to tear down.

The argument about vaccines is not about having unquestionable faith in a singular human being (a doctor). I don't think anyone is suggesting that someone follow a singular doctor's advice about vaccines. Presumably, the doctor herself (or himself), is just folllowing the recommendations of the CDC which you can independently verify and research the information behind.

You might make the case that the CDC's recommendations for vaccines is not honest and screwed up for corrupt or political-agenda reasons, but is the source of your faith more reliable than them for the same reasons?

According to the anti-vax crowd, you are miscounting. Many injections are "multi-valent" now days (1 injection contains protiens coded for what would have been multiple vaccinations). Also, some like RotV are oral suspensions...

Here's a pointer to the current CDC recommendations... http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/0-6yrs-schedule-pr.pdf

As a parent of a 1.5 year old child, here's a few question for you...

What about HepB? given at birth? 1 month? 2 months? Are you spreading those over 3-4 times that recommendation?

What about RotV? Both currently licensed version (Rotarix and Rotateq) are live virus in an oral suspension. The old "proven" one was discontinued in 1999 (apparently seemed to cause higher instances of intussusception), the CDC estimated that 500,000 infants die around the world each year from RotV.

What about DTaP? It's a mixed (only the "P" part is acellular) They recommend 5 doses of this puppy. Are you gonna stretch that one out 3-4x or take the old verisons seperatly? Because when you get older they usually use recommend a totally different one. Gonna test a new experimental vaccinee schedule on you kid?

What about Hib and PCV? They are generally polysac+protein vaccine (no live viri), but they recommend 4 does, up to age 1, are you going to stretch that out to age 4? or age 8 given separatly?

What about IPV? It's inactivated, and it's old, but who gets polo?

See the problem? It's easy to toss some platitude like "I'm not gonna give my kid any new vaccines" and "I'm gonna spread them out", but when you dig into the details, you see that many of the vaccinnes are necessary in short intervals bacause the baby's immune response is so weak and the recommended vaccines already either well tested, or manufactured using more modern (cellular/protein response oriented) techiques.

Also, If you spread them out even 2x, which of these terrible diseases are you willing to risk? I'm not doing this to ridicule anyone's position on vaccines, but after you look at the problem (since I've done this recently), you realize it really isn't about educated risk at all, it's about realizing that developing a new drug protocol or vaccine schedule for your own kid using your own limited knowledge is not probably a prudent thing to do, when the standard protocol has been well studied and has documented (but non-zero) risk. Should my child be a clinical trial of 1?

Part of wisdom is recognizing what you don't know. I really don't know this stuff at all, nor do I really know the reputations of any of the sources of data, so any calculations that I do with any accumulated data is likely garbage-in, garbage-out. I'm really just forced to apply occam's razor to the problem. Do I believe there is a global conspiracy concerning giving vaccines to infants and covering up all the negative evidence, or do I believe that the general good of vaccines is illustrated in the preponderance of the evidence and the existance of a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for the small percentage of infants that have side effects. Applying this principle, the general good of vaccines seems a simpler explanation, and often simpler is more likely correct. That was enough for me. Your milage may vary.

Correlation is not causation.

Other studies indicate...

The infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 2.4 times the rate for non-Hispanic white women. Rates were also elevated for Puerto Rican and American Indian or Alaska Native women.
Increases in preterm birth and preterm-related infant mortality account for much of the lack of decline in the United States infant mortality rate from 2000 to 2005.

Seems to me that it's related to lack of access to healthcare than anything like vaccines. If I were to be generous, maybe it's giving vaccines to pre-term infants on the full-term infant schedule (perhaps we should be relying on herd immunity intially and delay vaccines for pre-term babies to match with their gestational age instead)... However who knows, unles syou do a study...

However, if you want to hear a rant about this topic, you can look here. I guess you can find anything on the internet these days (pro and con)....

Perhaps cars aren't the best example. At least in the US, for a time cars were used to be specifically designed for planned obsolescense. For example, the Ford model T was a highly reliable rugged car that used advanced technology and materials and manufacturing techniques of the era to achieve that reliability. Unfortunatly the US car makers eventually decided that a consumption business model would be more profitable than a manufacturing based business model. US car makers then designed cars to wear out and seeded extensive dealer and parts distribution networks to capitalize on this business model.

When the Japanese decided they wanted to enter the US market in the '60s they didn't have all the parts distributors and repair resources that the incumbant US manufacturers had, they also had tax and distribution expenses to deliver products to the US, so they had to design their cars to last longer and be more reliable to justify higher initial product prices and repair prices to penetrate the market. The consumers eventually caught on to the value proposition for this business model and this led to the Japanese car manufacturers caputuring a larger part of the market in the '70s and '80s (the oil prices spiking during that time favoring the smaller Japanese cars didn't hurt either). After suffering major market declines, the US manufacturers essentially had to up their quality game to remain competitive which is why you see all the high quality cars from all manufacturers today.

It wasn't because the car manufacturers couldn't do the high reliability before (they started out that way), it's because they thought the planned obsolescence business model allowed them to make more money (sell, it cheaper, make spare parts, and encourage them to replace the product sooner). It's only after the Japanese car companies forced the US manufacturers away from that model that we get to where we are today.

For example, I don't even see latin mentioned in any of these...

http://hms.harvard.edu/admissions/default.asp?page=requirements

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dcal/documents/TSS_NEJM_reading

http://www.hhmi.org/grants/pdf/08-209_AAMC-HHMI_report.pdf

You might impress a stogy old prof on an admissions committee with a latin class on your course transcript, but I doubt it will help you get a jump start on your medical degree more than learning conversational skills in a non-dead foreign language in preparation for patient care in our now increasingly multicultural society.

Apologies to Dr Sheldon Cooper of course, advanced biology courses are probably a better investment of time if one is aiming towards a jump start on a medical degree ;^) Physics, although important, hasn't changed much in it's application to medicine (other than perhaps radiology), but being on top of genetics and cell biology is becoming increasingly important. Getting the basics down early allow time to learn all the new stuff that is coming down the pipe.

This UV problem is mostly related to older generation IOLs (intraocular lenses). For citation, consider this article from 2005

Last month, my wife (who is also an optometrist) had IOL replacement in both eyes. The opthamologist noted that there were no options worth considering that didn't have UV protection.

Of course different lenses offer differing amounts of UV protection, though, so chosing wisely is still a requirement (as always).