Burma Shave!

I'm wasting mod points to agree here.

I have a bit of experience in this area. I live in a developing country and house cancer patients in my home. When they are terminal and the hospital cannot help anymore I help them get back to their families (often 1000+ miles away) or offer them a comfortable place to die and bring families to them (resources permitting). The biggest thing that I've found that these families need is to know and be known by their dying father/mother/etc. before the end. The "life advice" is a nice part of that but when I can encourage and facilitate a father opening up to his son or daughter about his past, his failures, his thoughts, his pain, his love, his adventures, his first kiss, his best friends in grade-school, his favorite games of soccer in school, how he met his wife (the child's mother), and any number of other stories... THESE things are what the grown child treasures. OP: I would advise making individual videos that each tell a story from your past. Talk about times you were disappointed. Talk about the humbling secrets that others cannot tell because no one else knew the story but you. If you list off your achievements it means little. Your wife and family members know those. Tell her about when you first learned about science and what joys it brought. Tell her how you felt when you started educating others and the way your heart flipped when you met your wife. Tell her how your almost dropped her when she was born because you were so emotional. Tell her that you knew so little about being a father that you put the diaper on wrong the first few times. Tell her about watching her grow and how frustrating and hard it was to be self-sacrificial for those years and how much it took out of you to do that. Tell her that she was worth so much more than the years you've been given to be self-sacrificial.

These stories and emotions will, I believe, be treasured far more than encouragement to pursue understanding differential equations, elliptic curve encryption, chemical biology, Linux kernel contributions, or any number of geeky things.

Well done for caring about how you leave your family. That is rare and you are to be commended for it. I like to tell my patients that they are not running out of time. They are running into eternity. You don't have to drag your feet in this. There will be tremendous pain and there will be devastating days and nights as your body weakens. You are running into eternity OP. I hope you run your race well.

Spartacus

Honestly, that statement is just ridiculous. Don't be foolish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Oh come on. That's offensive? Of course people want their beliefs accepted as universal truth. That's pretty much how opinions work. If you think it's true, you think others should also. If it offends you that people want you to think like them, then you must get offended a lot.

I'm on my phone. Can someone RTFA and tell me if this is good or bad news? TFS is unclear on the matter.

I live in Mozambique. Check my posting history. This is my home. I'm an American but have lived here for about 5 years and don't have plans to go anywhere.

There are VERY LARGE CORPS that do massive scale farming here. These corps receive large subsidies from the government here, mostly because they negotiated freakishly one-sided deals many years ago when the government was a baby and prone to being taken advantage of. These corps get "free and unimproved seeds" from the government and it is important that those policies change so these large corps actually start having to buy their seed and so that they sell quality food to Mozambicans.

I work and spend every day with very poor Mozambicans. They do not buy their seed. By the way, the time frame on that co-operation policy was to do that by November 2012. Again, I am with poor, subsistence farmers in Mozambique every day. They are not buying expensive seeds and being locked into some expensive cycle. They harvest their crops, replant what they can from their crops, purchase from each other the seed they don't have from their own crops.

Also, it's worth noting that the report The Guardian is quoting from has a bullet point RIGHT BELOW the one you bolded and hyped. Here it is: Implement approved regulations governing seed proprietary laws which promote private sector investment in seed production (basic and certified seed).

This is just to point out that the government here is thinking about making sure that proprietary seed DOESN'T lock poor farmers into some expensive cycle. I know it makes for a shocking story to pretend like things are black and white/good and evil but, at least here in Mozambique, there is more than just "ZOMG, THINK OF TEH POOR AFRICANS AND THEIR FARMS!"

Realistic movie idea:

Dystopian society in not-so-distant future where the oppressive government has passed such strict gun control and anti-gay laws that the noble resistance has resorted to bright, neon-colored 3D-printed weapons to fight the tyrannical regime, simultaneously demonstrating their right to bear arms and to choose their sexual orientation.

Oh wait... did I just offend everyone at once?

...is to have a couple of leafs (leaves?) catch fire.

That'll make them edgy.

Although, this was meant to be funny, the more I think about it, it might actually work.

Could this tech finally solve the "everyone would need a pilots license" problem of consumer level flying cars? Maybe cars could be developed that rely on the person inside the to drive on roads but as soon as liftoff is initiated an auto-pilot like this one DARPA is making could take over completely removing the human factor from the flying hunk of metal.
Not saying it's imminent but perhaps this is a step in the direction of ubiquitous personal flying vehicles that could solve a lot of transportation problems and get people/things to places "as the crow flies" instead of "as the wolf runs". It would just be an automated crow instead of a human one.

My guess is that this 30% increase aren't more of the stereotypical autistics who are unable to care for themselves, it's identifying people who would benefit from behavioral therapy. Thus, as we better understand and better understand how to help those with it, your statistic will become less and less true. With respect to individuals who lead a very difficult life due family members or friends who have severe autism, autism itself isn't tragic, certain cases of autism are tragic. My condolences if you know someone who has a tragic case of autism. It is not my intent to exacerbate your pain.

The autistic spectrum is wide and the irony of these diagnoses from physicians is that many of the most skilled and respected physicians are high-functioning autistics. If I ever have someone doing a thoracotomy on me to repair my hemorrhaging aorta, I don't want my cardiothoracic surgeon to have a kind, bubbly, empathetic personality. I want a detail-oriented freak who understands his craft so intricately that he can save my life with nothing but unimaginable focus. The sharpness of his mind and the dullness of his personality can actually be, in fact, a benefit in many cases.