I think the vaccine-variation idea was considered, but last I heard, it had troubles with ethics boards. Basically, short of getting explicit agreement from people getting the shots, there are medical ethics issues with giving someone a vaccine when you have evidence in hand that says the vaccine you are giving to another person is more likely to protect them both.

It might be better for everyone on the whole, but it also starts sounding a lot like Socialism, and in the US, we tend to try and kill it with fire (or nuke it from orbit) whenever we see that. Sure, we're all a little worse off because of it, but if one person benefits, then it's all worth it.

Yes and no.

The changes seen with influenza are more than just natural selection. It's aggressive mutation, with specific adaptations to encourage mutation and direct it toward areas that are beneficial for the future replication chances of the virus.

In short: It's evolution.

Over the past few decades, the virus has gained a whole new gene. It's adapted to anti-influenza drugs. It's adapted its polymerase to be be stable at higher temperatures (thus allowing for better transmission outside the normal winter months). Ah, but that's just microevolution... you say. Yes, the same way that we don't know how the Grand Canyon formed because we have only ever observed micro-erosion. And continental drift doesn't occur because we have only seen micro-tectonics.

If you don't believe in evolution, then you've got nothing to fear from Influenza, because none of those things will happen. Instead, you have to fear God, because he's the one changing things around, presumably because he likes infecting people... or because he hates scientists.

Note: I'm using the generic "you" here, and not specifically aiming my comments at the previous poster. However, if you refuse to acknowledge the Theory of Evolution, then my comments are pointed at you.

Why not do it the same way that we see if our engineers are failing? We get a whole bunch of totally unqualified people to make up some guidelines based on their lack of experience. Then we have third party evaluators fill out a bunch of forms which turn their performance into a single numeric percentage (with a max of 100). If that number doesn't increase every single year, we start forcing the engineer to work with a group of untrained engineers until the number increases. Wait... That's not how we ensure our engineers aren't failing?

Yes, but that's the goal, isn't it? To have the biggest bar? And we should do whatever it takes to make sure we're swinging the biggest bar on the chart, right? I mean, what's the point in having kids who can think and solve abstract problems when you can't quantify it? What we really need are kids who can do really well at a multiple choice test. That's easy to quantify. Then, when we get really good at it, we can brag to the entire world: "Our children are the very best in the world at multiple choice tests!" And the world will tremble at the thought of ever opposing us in endeavors that have four pre-determined paths where just one distinct path is correct. Of course, if we ever have to deal with situations that require thought, then... But who cares! We just need the biggest bar!

Perhaps the drive for quantification of education performance is related to the fact that many people lack the critical thinking and abstract analysis skills to realize that anytime you turn a nebulous concept like intelligence, learning, success, or understanding down into a number, that you're lying to yourself.

Simple Solution:

In order for a parent to opt-out on a vaccination for their child, they have to pay for the vaccination of another child (presumably from a low-income family).

At least we'd get something out of the idiots who refuse, and the offset of "child of idiot refuser" to "under-privileged child who might not have been vaccinated otherwise" might equalize the herd immunity rates.

You haven't done a shred of research on this, have you?

Vaccines work 85% of the time. If only 15% of the populace is susceptible, the vast majority of diseases will lack the concentration needed to spread across large geographic areas, thus limiting the scope of the outbreak and drastically reducing the number of people involved. For instance: Without humans to spread a disease, most viruses would be a single locale and only get a chance to infect 15% of the people in Sacramento, instead of 15% of people in North America.

Then, if you were thinking logically... or just thinking... then you'd realize that at the beginning, the vaccine would give the first person an 85% chance of immunity. The "herd" immunity would be unchanged, because it's just one guy. As that number went from 1 person to 99% of people, the overall "herd" immunity would reach 85%. I don't know how this is at all illogical to you. Unless you never even tried to understand.

What part don't you get?

The parents aren't actually using any form of critical thinking. For whatever reason (emotional distress, religion) the parents want to believe that they shouldn't get vaccines, or that getting vaccines is the cause of something bad that happened. Or in some cases, something bad happened, and they are looking for a cause. Those people don't care about probability or nuances of genetics and immunity. They want someone to give them a simple answer. They want someone to blame. They want someone to tell them that they are right. They want to feel like they are in control. A million scientists telling them that their child got autism because of random chance, or that no vaccine can be 100% effective, or that strain mutations occur without any prior signs are not even remotely as convincing as one guy --regardless of what degree he might have-- telling them that they are right and vaccines really are bad. You don't even have to support it with experiments, just a folksey-wisdom argument and you're golden.

Never underestimate the power of one person telling someone else what they want to hear.

As someone who has some expertise in this:

The Flu vaccine is actually pretty effective. After all, they pretty much make a new one each year. They've had quite a bit of practice by now. However, getting a vaccine is not a full protection against the flu. The problem is twofold:

First, the flu virus mutates very quickly, and likes to mutate in ways that change its antigen "signature". Though there are some interesting attempts at more general vaccines, currently, you can't even make a vaccine for H1N1 flu strains. You have to pick a specific subgroup of H1N1 strains, because even within the H1N1 type, there are variations that appear differently to our immune system. The same holds for the "old" H3N2 flu, and the even older H2N2 flu. It's not uncommon for a strain to mutate enough over a single season that last year's vaccine no longer works.

Second, because there are so many different strains in the wild and they shift so quickly, you can't create a vaccine that is targeted against all of them. Why not? That wasn't part of my specialty. I think it has something to do with confusing the immune system with too many similar things. Anyway, the point here is simpler: Vaccine makers don't even try to protect against all the strains. They use clinical samples to determine which strains are looking to be the most common, pick the top four or five, and make a vaccine that protects against those.

So, what happens if they guess wrong, and a rare strain from the previous year suddenly spreads wildly? Well, you don't get vaccine effectiveness. What if one of the popular strains goes through some mutations early in the season? Well, same effect. You've probably got a vaccine that won't help much. Is this the fault of the vaccine? No. It's the fault of the virus that mutates faster than vaccines can be created and tested. They are trying to find ways to make them faster, but that would only work if you were willing to get multiple shots per year. The better solution is to find a way to make vaccines that apply to larger groups of strains, but it takes time and lots of data.

Of course, this all gets thrown out the window if you're a fan of Intelligent Design (aka: Creationism). In that case, vaccines don't work because God hates you and chose to use his powers to fiddle with a Germ Spirit and make it immune to the poisons created by the Unbelievers. He's punishing you for not having more faith in him. Of course, there's nothing you can do in this case, so there's no point in trying to understand exactly why it happened.

That sounds great and all, but how can you quantify "learning how to learn", thinking skills, and abstract analysis?

And without quantifying them, how do you make Powerpoint presentations about education with bar charts that don't need thinking skills or abstract analysis to understand?

And without those bar charts, how do prove that America really is far superior to every single country in the world? Obviously we need the bar charts. And in order to make those bar charts to justify our chest-beating and egotism, we need them to show things that are easily quantified. So, we should only teach our children things that can be easily quantified.

Thus: We shouldn't teach our children to think, because it doesn't serve our egos. Luckily, since they won't be able to think properly, they'll come to the same conclusion when they grow up. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader whether or not we're on the first iteration of this.

Free Speech doesn't mean that you can say whatever you want without consequence.

It simply means that the act of speaking ideas cannot be restricted or made illegal. For specific cases of ideas, it can.

If you want to say: "I am going to go get my shotgun and kill Bob", the government can't stop you. However, it can charge you with assault or other possible crimes (attempted murder?) as the words you spoke are the expression of a crime. See also: Slander and the release of information directly leading to the harming of others.

More to the point: Calling the police on this guy is a service to society and the guy himself, as the most likely person to be hurt in the near future, was him. His detainment is probably a good thing for him and his family, as he clearly needs help.

Unless you're another conspiracy theorist who feels he was wrongly detained for speaking the truth. Er... You don't actually believe that, right? Is there anyone near you who might be willing to call the police for the rest of us who don't want to be caught in the crossfire as some idiot CT crazy tries to topple the government by attacking a local police station.

It's not the axe that is the part that's threatening.

It's the fact that he's clearly unhinged. Axe, 9/11, whatever. He sees himself as the vanguard of a revolution, and he's already got specific targets for how that revolution will start.

Yeah, I expect the axe was a metaphor. I expect that he did still have enough sense to use some operational security and not say exactly what plans were going through his mind. But it seems at least likely that he actually had plans. That's certainly enough to detain him. Has he committed a crime yet? Not that I can see, but depending on the threats he tossed out and just how public they were, I'd say its a grey area. I'm certainly happy that he's being looked at by professionals.

That said, it disgusts me that this gets lumped under Anti-Terrorist Activity. I don't think for a second he was a terrorist. He's just a crazy. However, he's a crazy with delusions of starting a violent revolution and the training to actually hurt people in his failed attempt at it. We should try to protect ourselves against crazy, but labeling them as terrorists because its scarier or easier is highly irritating to me.

Unfortunately.

Tom never fit in. He is the largest of a list of throwbacks to a different writing style (namely: the style used in The Hobbit) that end up turning into jarring inconsistencies in the book. Yeah, I know a lot of people love the mystery and like to speculate on how he was actually God (ie: Eru) and how the chapter set up the idea of Ents and Ringwraiths. That's fine, academically, but the reality is that it simply injected confusion and nonsense into the narrative. The Hobbit fed on things like this, proving that the world was a strange and sometimes deceptively powerful place. But the rest of LoTR doesn't continue this. Yes, the world has powerful things in it... and the story is about those powerful things striving against each other.

Tossing in an omnicient, omnipresent, and omnipotent weirdo who defeats trees with prose doesn't strengthen the book. However, it seems it was left in because it introduced a larger world to readers who had not read The Hobbit.

It's a bit more explicit than that

The Aragorn/Arwen story is a adapted form of the Beren/Luthien story. B/L supposedly existed first (in JRRT's mind) but it first hit paper as A/A. I mean, it even includes the male suitor being taken in by a king of a forest realm (who is actually out-shone by his more mystical wife). The parallel should be obvious. That said, when translated to movie form, I'd think that the style and situation would be sufficiently different that most people would not notice.

And then the case can be made that the Elves in LoTR are a stand-in for the Valar of the First Age Silmarillion.

And if you don't see a parallel between Morgoth and Sauron, then you're not reading the same books I am.

I get the feeling that Silmarillion was the story that JRRT wanted to create, but knew that it was far too disjoint to make a proper novel. LoTR was a book that managed to stitch together a bunch of those prototypes into something the rest of the world might enjoy.

It does if the book you bought was stolen from the rightful owner

Figure it out: You didn't buy the book. You bought stolen information. By copyright law, you're only allowed to have a copy of the art if you legally obtain the right to a copy (a license, more or less). In that case, you did not. You obtained a false license from a retailer who did not have the legal authority to sell you access to the book. As such, your access to the book was removed as it was never legally given to you.

The grandparent isn't concerned with truth.

They're just pushing their "The Man Is Keeping Me Down" and "The Police Are Out To Get Me" conspiracy theories.

Just file him/her away with the Flat Earthers, Hollow Earthers, and Moon Landing Deniers.