Comment Re:who cares (Score 1) 253
I love my country, I love the truth. I, however, do not conflate the shenanigans of Rome-On-Potomac with my country.
I love my country, I love the truth. I, however, do not conflate the shenanigans of Rome-On-Potomac with my country.
Farmers around the world already deal with Roundup-resistant strains of weeds. It's not impossible or perhaps even unlikely that, with the widespread use of glyphosate, some resistance among crops would appear.
Every one of those cases that I've seen has involved someone who knew that they were using a Monsanto product and were fully aware of the patents at hand. I'm not fond of Monsanto's practice, but the farmers were on shaky legal ground to start with.
In this case, one of Monsanto's (presumably patented) development products got out. I wonder if there's a case for invalidation based on negligent behavior allowing it out into the wild. Some level of doubt can be applied to products brought to market, but for those that never should have left a controlled environment, there may be other legal issues at hand.
I also wonder if there's not a chance of this being a random mutation. Does Monsanto put markers in its products that could be used to determine this?
Robot surgeons can't do rounds to check on patients, and even if they could, they would still have to be resterilized between patient visits.
I agree that culture changes are necessary. Gawande has written in the past about how introducing a simple checklist to prevent line infections at Johns Hopkins--widely seen as one of the premier hospitals in the country, if not the world--and giving nurses the power to call doctors on a missed step while also having the administration back the nurses cut the infection rate from 11% to zero, likely saving at least eight patients and dozens of infections per year.
But Gawande also notes that doctors have egos, and easily bruised ones at that. This kind of thing doesn't go over well with a lot of them who see nurses as interfering or overstepping if they call out a missed step. Given the shortage of doctors, I expect that it will be a while before most hospital administrations are willing to back their nurses in mandating that every step be followed.
You're thinking of the washing that you do in the bathroom. I looked up Gawande's words and found that I understated the time to wash. Here's how he describes it.
First, you must remove your watch, rings, and other jewelry (which are notorious for trapping bacteria). Next, you wet your hands in warm tap water. Dispense the soap and lather all surfaces, including the lower one-third of the arms, for the full duration recommended by the manufacturer (usually fifteen to thirty seconds). Rinse off for thirty full seconds. Dry completely with a clean, disposable towel. Then use the towel to turn the tap of. Repeat after any new contact with a patient.
Almost no one adheres to this procedure. It seems impossible. On morning rounds, our residents check in on twenty patients in an hour. The nurses in our intensive care units typically have a similar number of contacts with patients requiring hand washing in between. Even if you get the whole cleansing process down to a minute per patient, that’s still a third of staff time spent just washing hands.
And it's not always possible to hire more staff, especially when strict adherence to washing means you have to hire half-again as many staff to do rounds. While there are some private hospitals making a healthy profit, not all of them do, and there are a lot of hospitals that are run by governments, churches, or non-profits and their margins are thin to non-existent. The need to purchase new equipment just to keep up with other hospitals can obliterate that margin in a single purchase. Doctors tend to send their patients to whichever hospital has the shiniest toys and patients want it that way. Failure to keep up with the newest technology puts revenue at risk and may mean cutbacks that further damage the hospital's ability to effectively treat its patients.
It's not so much common sense as it is a rush to get to patients. I have all three of Dr. Atul Gawande's books where he discusses at length how the medical profession works. He talks about how there's only so much time to see patients and washing hands before seeing each one to avoid moving infections between patients takes precious time. Proper washing takes at least 30 seconds. Multiply that by the number of patients seen on rounds, and it adds up.
Even when his hospital added gel dispensers to walls, people were in such a hurry that they forgot. One of his patients became infected with MRSA and he was left wondering if it happened because he neglected to wash his hands. There was no way to know, and the patient was put in jeopardy, not to mention having to stay in the hospital even longer.
Solutions like this are done out of desperation.
Aren't memories great? My guess is you had the CoCo (TRS Color Computer). Released in 1980. The original models had cassette (if my memory is correct) and a couple years later were offered with disk drive.
Floppies were a great step forward then... now I'm glad we don't have to deal with them. That is the cure of technology... nothing ever remains great.
I am almost positive that the hard card I got was for the Model IV. It is possible that I am confusing it with the Tandy 1000, but I don't think so. I remember getting the "card" which was almost the full length of the case and was heavy enough to kill a water buffalo. Now that i am typing this, I am trying to visualize puting it in the case... maybe it was the 1000 after all.
I'll have to ask my dad if he remembers.... this is really bugging me now
TRS-80 Model I with 4K of RAM. I was 6 and the thing came with a wonderfully put together BASIC programming manual. The beauty of the system is that you didn't need a lot of theory (any really) to get started.
10 CLS
20 PRINT "JOE WAS HERE"
30 GOTO 10
This was amazing to me. I ended up writing a few games, some math function and anything else I could do in 4K. Later on I went into programming as a career before turning to the dark side of management.
Ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I shall not put!
How does joining one group preclude you from associating with others outside of that group? I serve on the board of a technology group and a chess group.
Second question: If you think joining a high IQ group precludes you from interacting with folks with other skills not measured on an IQ test, then doesn't joining a special interest group also exclude you from really cool people that might excel in areas other than that special group?
Third question: Where did I say IQ isn't a measure of something valuable? I do think it isn't everything.
Except "this generation" isn't some monolithic block of people. Some will get fucked over by their openness, some will thrive from it, just like anything else.
I don't go about broadcasting my information, but I have made the conscious choice to accept that ANYTHING about me is potentially knowable by anyone, and I have made a conscious effort to arrange my life in such a way that even if my deepest, darkest secrets were known to the entire planet, nothing terribly important to me would be all that negatively impacted. It actually has been a pretty nice exercise in sorting out what is ACTUALLY important to me vs. what I only thought was important due to convention.
I disagree. In 1992 Clinton had to say he didn't inhale, and now we have a president who said that was the whole point and happily admits he dabbled. We've gone from it being an absolute career killer for any politician to even be *suspected* of being gay to it not being THAT big a deal if someone is openly gay. On stuff that people used to be scandalized by, we've gotten better because it's become more common to the point where people are more easily able to relate. So, I really don't think that the same standards you or I or other people of whatever the "older" generation will hold with younger people, especially those who have grown up in a more permissive world.
Seriously - years ago when Clinton was being hounded over *GASP* a blowjob from an intern (and lying about it under oath) would you have felt confident saying that a half-black, half-white guy who admitted to smoking weed ("Did I inhale? That was the point") with a really foreign sounding name would be elected President of the United State not once but twice, and both times with a very solid majority? We're starting to care less and less about dumb shit that doesn't matter - and every year as more and more of the old guard die off we get more permissive.
On your point about felons and acceptance of same, I don't disagree that by and large we vilify (whether correctly or not) those who have been incarcerated, but there is a rather strong trend towards recognizing that just because someone has been imprisoned doesn't necessarily mean it was just or right. A LOT of people in this country who have been imprisoned were put away for drug crimes, and as you might have noticed, states are starting to realize how fucking stupid that is and slowly moving to change it.
Shit is changing, the rate of change is increasing, and I honestly don't see irrelevant shit that people post on Facebook or whatever turning into something career ending for those seeking office or positions of responsibility. There will be exceptions (look at hypocritical assholes insisting that Weiner isn't fit for office for showing his dick on Twitter yet shockingly those same people are completely silent when one of theirs is caught trying to suck some dude off in a men's room despite being staunchly anti-gay) but it'll get better.
most of them would end their lives are food or slaves.
Heh.
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect. - Freeman Dyson