....and she mentioned that they had an elderly woman come in for a doctor's visit.

As usual, the woman was told to bring her current medications, so they could make sure about what she was taking, cross reactions, etc.

She came empty handed. The doctor proceeded to gently explain to her (right away) about why it was so important to bring them while the whole time she tried to explain: she doesn't TAKE any meds.

His reply was an astonished, "At all?"

Eventually she got through to this (young) doctor that no, despite being 74 years old, she was on NO ongoing medications, except the occasional aspirin for when she had a headache.

It was this nurse's impression that the doctor was a) disbelieving, and b) absolutely determined that this woman MUST have some sort of undiagnosed malady that she wasn't being treated for. They tested her all over the place - no diabetes (but rather high blood sugar...she said she'd just had coffeecake that morning), high-ish blood pressure but nothing needing treatment, etc. She was just a normal, healthy old person.

Why would you think a heat pump is more efficient?

If I use the 10% light output, and the rest of the energy is coming out as heat (which I definitely need, and directly decreases my heating bill), how could a heat pump be MORE efficient? I'm using all the output of the bulb?

While the whole system is very cool and 200' sounds like a lot, remember that at highway speeds, a car is covering ~100' per second, so 2 seconds to identify, contemplate, and react to that obstacle.

Logically, in oncoming situations (as a worst-case), two highway-speed vehicles 'detecting' at 200' have only about one second (actually less thanks to inertia, given that control-input and -effect isn't instant) to resolve, contemplate, and react.

I have to imagine the guys working on these systems are acutely aware driving home every day of how astonishingly capable our brains are.

Let's be semantically clear: they prove the system can work, not that the law can work. The law includes the federal end, which - despite desperately optimistic coverage and rationalization by all the major media except Fox who swings 180 degrees the other way (that *everything* is a disaster regardless of evidence) - is still pretty badly fucked, to wit: yes, the Federal website is minimally functional. The rest of it? You know, the functional working bit? Not so much.

Depending on who's reporting, something between 33% and 75% of the people "signed up for care" through the website either have no paperwork, wrong paperwork, or something else preventing their insurer from getting that person signed up automagically; further, nothing happens until the insurance companies actually get PAID. And take a wild guess exactly who the bill says is responsible for paying the insurers if they don't get it from those people? Yes, the taxpayers. So in March, we could already be talking about a mitigatory payment from the government to insurers of TARPish proportions. Why do you think the insurance firms were lobbying IN FAVOR of the ACA? They get MILLIONS of new customers and a 'guarantee' they get paid.

On which basis then, to be logically consistent, we should be talking about water vapor, shouldn't we?

...thing takes on a much less catastrophic feel when you recognize that honeybees are an INVASIVE SPECIES, and that this continent was perfectly-well vegetated without them.

$70bn to save 1 million jobs...so, about $70,000/job?

That's almost as dumb math as "cash for clunkers".

Light duty industrial robot: $60,000.

So, 4000 hours of labor (can work continuously) = about 6 months of 8-hour-day $15/hour labor.

Thank you for COMPLETELY validating everything I've always thought about environmentalists. Much appreciate the laugh on a Monday morning.

A nation of 1.4 billion people, with a gdp of $8 trillion, the largest nation in the world, will manage to reach the moon before a couple of handfuls of mostly-private teams with budgets perhaps 1 MILLIONTH of theirs.

Go China!

I'm 100% certain that in this circumstance, environmentalists WOULD be complaining angrily about 'destruction of saline environment' and 'harm to local species'.

I'm not kidding at all.

Culture and civilization are all great, but doesn't really change the fact that deep down we're social ANIMALS, and probably the greatest evolutionary advantage that we have had was that we could cooperate.

There's a clear Darwinistic pressure to confirm, so long as there's a little percentage of (expendable) individuals willing to experiment creatively - since for the bulk of history and prehistory, 'creativity' was a great way to get you and others killed.

Here's my idea: offer an insurance program that kicks OUT when you do something deliberately disregarding reasonable methods of protection.

1) smoke? Then no, your lung-cancer isn't covered.
2) don't believe in vaccines? Then no, your measles/mumps/rubella isn't covered.
3) Like to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? No prob, but no coverage for head-related injuries resulting from a motorcycle incident.

Anyone interested?

The sad fact is that in terms of humanity, it IS good that their offspring are afflicted, and hopefully sterilized. The fact that the parents are likely done reproducing means that they're functionally irrelevant.

-Darwin.

Look, it's unreasonable to simply say "men do this, women do this" and try to justify it with (usually) an elementary-school understanding of biochemistry.

HOWEVER....
to suggest that the hormonal change which RADICALLY alters otogeny (either developing testes and the subsequent hormonal consequences, or continuing on to developing ovaries) which then results in relatively consistent changes in brain structure, sexual attraction, body chemistry, etc. along one of two tracks DON'T have any impact on brain capabilities just because the idea of gender differences makes us uncomfortable with our 21st century politically-correct sensitivities is also unreasonable.

Females show a statistically superior skill in verbal fluency, across cultures.
Males show a similar skill advantage in spacial reasoning.

That's a simple fact. To suggest that other differences are only limited to trivial superficialities is a desperate rationalization, not a logical inference.

BTW the whole "women are paid less" thing has been debunked so many times that the only people repeating it are ardent feminists and the willfully ignorant.