The person I was responding to said nobody would ever take over a plane again, period.

People have taken over planes since 9/11. It originating from the US or being a US airline is completely irrelevant to the comment I made or the comment I was responding to.

I've seen some questions raised on how much pollution in the 20th century masked global warming. I think this study shows just how much a relatively small change to a regional temperature can cause comparatively large changes in the area's climate. It should help support the potential changes that could come from a change of only a couple of degrees over the next century.

However, the situation of "the guy in front of me is drunk or high" is (unfortunately) NOT very, very, rare, especially if I'm on the road after about 9 pm, which is frequently for me. I call the cops at least once a month to report an impaired driver. I do have hands-free though, which helps.

When you play my game. We're going to flip a fair coin 10 time, and if it's heads, you pay me 50 dollars, and if it's tails, you pay me 100 dollars. If you refuse to play, you have lost.

Why do people keep saying this? There have been hijackings since 9/11 in which the plane was not destroyed and the hijackers took control of the plane.

For an assuredly incomplete list, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

Pay particular attention to the 10+ ones listed after September 11, 2001.

I love my country, I love the truth. I, however, do not conflate the shenanigans of Rome-On-Potomac with my country. :-) Also, my love is a tough one, the same one I'd have with my son if he got strung out on meth.

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.