padren

That's not really what they are talking about - not so much the optimization of audio/visual interfaces (via direct link) but overcoming the shortcomings of such interfaces by communicating "what you mean" instead of "what you click/type/ask." What's why it would need to get much deeper information. One thing I wonder about though, is the impact it could have on a person's conclusions. When you transmit data that is "conclusive" does that sense come from a mountain of data that the user can't assimilate, or does it come by communicating the feeling that something is a conclusive fact? Gifted public speakers already do this in how they deliver their speeches to manipulative ends. Since the beginning of language we have been defending ourselves against evolving oratory attacks on our perceptions but we've never had to cope with direct assaults to the caliber of direct transfer of abstract thoughts and feelings. That side disturbs me more than viruses, data leaks and hacks - though not as much as where the stink'n google toolbar will go.

You'd have more luck signing up for a program that gives you a special formula for a ratio of pennies, quarters, nickels, dimes and dollars into a box, shake it, and get more money out than you put in. No matter how much resonance or magnetic fields are involved you won't get more back out, but at least you will still get out what you put in. Edit: Why is it that a concept such as that no ratio of coins can spontaneously create freshly minted money is easy to understand and grasp, but people are so skeptical that the same would apply to energy?

http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp

John Phoenix, you can think of perpetual motion like this: The Big Bang created a big sheet of paper and crumpled it up, we gain useful energy by unfolding little bits of overlapping paper to increase the total surface area in that spot... but there is no way to increase the actual amount of paper. Some people think you can take a section and fold it back and unfold it, and end up with more surface area than before therefore letting you fold/unfold larger chunks every time and have "an unlimited supply of increasing amounts of paper." Another way to visualize it is to imagine a big tank of oil and water that was created and shaken up during the Big Bang. You have lots of big bubbles of oil already settled at the top, and water at the bottom, and lots of little ones slipping around each other in the middle finding equilibrium. All motion, heat, electromagnetism - every life of every living creature - exists because those bubbles are pushing past each other on their way to establish equilibrium. At this moment during the process the patterns and motion can be somewhat complex and confusing, giving the impression it may be possible to direct these movements into a perpetual loop so they never settle and there will always be motion. However, it's obvious to anyone that knows the basics of how these fluids will interact knows this is impossible - they aren't close minded, it's just not how liquids work. With oil and water it's easy to see why you could never keep the oil and water from reaching equilibrium without constantly adding external energy. With all the forces at play in the real Universe it's easier to be confused but the same thing still applies, and the universe will reach an energetic equilibrium just as assuredly as oil and water will in a tank. Those are the 'big picture' truths that make all the 'little clever machines' fatally flawed from the beginning - they can only obscure how and when equilibrium is reached, not prevent it.

I just have to get in and say something about this: I suspect it's really not as extreme it is often portrayed. You don't have [democrat faction name here] being asked to completely sell out their ideals for The Majority in lock step, where the 'people with funny hair' coalition are being asked to sign off on forced sterilization of people with funny hair simply because the majority of Democrats are in favor of it. It at least appears to me, that the argument is some say we need to go "a foot forward, and an inch to the left" and others say "a foot forward, and an inch to the right" and suddenly everyone sits on their butts and refuses to budge because their special reason for wanting the "inch to one side" isn't being coddled by the majority. It's like trying to organize a straight-8 pool tournament fundraiser for a charity and finally getting everyone to show up, but then everyone thinks they need to sit out 'on moral grounds' because everyone has their own stupid idea of the 'right way to rack' the balls and what types of cues should be eligible. It's not about moral integrity - it's about making mountains out of the smallest differences that only matter to the egotistical arrogant SOB that is willing to derail the whole train that is heading in the very direction he wants to go, because he thinks he has the right special idea of how the little details should be done. When your majority only exists as a result of a lot of people exactly like that but all with different 'special ideas' you get this sort of failure to legislate. In retrospect: The complete implosion of the Republican party has probably been the best thing the Republicans could have done. By becoming so inconsequential they removed any 'common adversary' rallying point and made the democrats feel like there is nothing in the world that could threaten their power, so they can be as lazy and petty as they like. It could be more effective at undoing them than any strong well organized Republican party ever could.

Some videos like that you can feel pretty confident were done in one take. I have no idea how the landing worked out with such a small pool and all the lateral speed. Very impressive though.

Just out of curiosity, what do the current (albeit limited to specific groups) public options cover? Can Senators get abortions, sex change operations, breast enlargements and elective amputations? Can seniors or veterans? If no one is making a huge stink one way or the other over those plans (either for covering 'bad' things or failing to cover 'important' things) then why can't we just use that as a prototype and refine it later?

iNow's right, that would never make it long enough to be shouted at a TH meeting. If prose like that had any place in politics people would actually remember at least something of what Al Gore was always talking about... whatever that was. Just to be clear, once a town hall meeting has been disrupted, the last thing you want is for it do delve into some senseless exchange of calm rational arguments. You'll be lucky to get a whole sentence out, and if you shout loud enough you can maybe get two into the Mic before someone shouts over you and as long as your two sentences are agreeable to your preferred ideology it really doesn't matter what the content is, as long as it's fiery. You want your 15 minutes of fame on Fox News don't you? You gotta be QUICK!

Yeah, I was all ready to jump on that for about a full second when I had to stop and think - "wait, did she fall for it or...?" But then you had to post the *edit and totally meta this thread, aw!

Oh for the love of all that is good in the world please move this to pseudoscience and speculations. I respect your desire to share this information and debate it's merits but it doesn't really belong in general discussion. The metal and ice comparisons have been tested exhaustively about 50 years ago when the original Titanic Conspiracies sprang up, it may take me a while but I can track down and post some links that should refute many of the claims made in the video. If you could find some sources for independent testing that reproduced his findings those links would be helpful in making your case.

That essentially boils down to the "voucher program" we have for public education and the option to redirect to a more expensive school and make up the difference. The fear is that the "minimum coverage quality" will end up so low that it fails to be adequate at all because not enough doctors (at least competent ones that can be hired by better clinics and hospitals) will voluntarily take jobs in the lower paying bracket that provide that minimum coverage.

That's great on so many levels! Especially when you consider JC's rate structure!

This is really more of a 'fun' and very irreverent (do not take too seriously!) thread just to throw out your own little "sound bite sized" quip that you think would be fun to throw out at a Town Hall Meeting, addressed to either side. Maybe it's deep and thought provoking, a ludicrous red herring that elegantly derails a debate with the subtly of a wrecking ball glued to a shark tied to the front of a freight train or just an "oh snap" moment. The goal is naturally not to get mired in detailed rebuttals to any given sound bite - if you must respond - do it in a very short counter sound bite. Media attention-span sized snippets. Have fun: To go first: Target: Pro public option health care TH meeting: "Why do we decry our poor ranking worldwide for our private health care system and propose a public option, when we do absolutely nothing to improve the ranking of our already public and equally abysmal public education system - do we just not care as long as it's already socialized? " (My own retort of course would be "Imagine the mess we'd have if we had no public option in education - that would truly be a failure on the scale of our current health care system.")

Okay, I completely misread what you were saying as that by covering more people in general the total costs of the system would go down, even if the additional people you covered were 'negative contributors' and such. With regards to what you were saying yes, the cost to employers or individuals goes down, but at the expense of profits for the provider as they end up receiving less per person as they suddenly have better negotiating power. Granted, I won't exactly be crying a river for those who use leverage to push small employers to the breaking point to suck every penny they can out of them but it still is just a redistribution of money instead of saving money. It will lower the amount pulled in by those insurance companies, and thus lower the total pool they have to work with to provide pay outs or at least cut down the number of corporate jets they can afford. Probably a little of both by the time it's all said and done. I do want to add a new element that I realized hadn't been discussed to my knowledge - public to private bleed off. I grew up in Canada before moving to the States as a teen and one thing I remember was the issue of potentially allowing private health care clinics to exist side by side, which was referred to as a 'two tier system' back then. You would not believe the fear and outrage at such a morally bankrupt idea that was kicked up as it was believed that all the good doctors would immediately jump shift off the public wage capped system and run straight to the private clinics to make more money. It's the same fear that was kicked up by the "school voucher program" that taking your kids out of public school and diverting those funds to a private school would dry up funding for public schools and hurt the public option to the point of it being third rate at best. It is a fair question - you can't force a doctor to take whomever you say, so if they can take those they can charge more from, why wouldn't they just avoid taking patients from the public providers that negotiate low rates? Do you force a clinic to accept patients that are on a public option plan that will only pay half of what the doctor intends to charge? If they want to cater to the ultra rich their costs will be understandably higher and there is no reason a government should pay for a hospital stay where patients get Club Med treatment and 4 star meals... but the government can't force that hospital to take public option priced patients without breaking the entire business model of the private hospital. There are not enough rich people in the country to make such hospitals too large of a threat to the talent pool but if you threw in moderately fancy hospitals that still avoided the lower prices that the public option viable it could get rather sticky. If a hospital says "we will charge a bit more, but use that to lower wait times and have better facilities" as a business model to target a specific demographic of people who can afford it and want that service over the bare bones then we could end up with a system where the disparity in health care is not unlike the disparity in under funded community colleges to that of a high caliber university. Perhaps this issue hasn't come up because it's been proven to be a red herring and put to rest, but I haven't heard the reasoning for that yet, so I am curious if it's been covered.

"Every home has it's quirks" doesn't imply that literally, every home must, by definition contain at least one (oh wait, plural, make that) two or more quirks. It means you should expect quirks when you buy a home. Likewise, you should expect software to contain potential bugs. "There is no such thing as an unloaded gun" is similar but more cautionary example. It really has more to do with conventional wisdom than computer science, though it is true that statistically it is highly probable that any given piece of useful software will contain bugs.

By that logic we should be able to extend the pool to include illegal immigrants and all save even more money - including the ones who wouldn't be paying into it. The reason we are saving money isn't because we are increasing the pool - it's because the current system wastes too much money trying to keep "undesirables" out of it and the secondary costs involved in uncollected emergency treatment, losses of livelihood, etc. If we are going to include all the uninsured in the pool, we will include people that either can't pay in or are known to have conditions that will cost the pool far more than they will contribute - it's like insuring someone for car insurance so they can retroactively make an expensive claim on an accident they already had. The two reasons for doing this is 1) the moral imperative and 2) keeping those people out incur costs across the board that are higher than letting them in. Reason #1 speaks for itself, but #2 is the result of our very inefficient system of keeping those people out. I don't personally think it is very likely that we could ever have a private system that can keep "undesirables" out that is more efficient than letting them in because unless the uninsured just roll over and die (and not contribute to the economy anymore of course) they will find a way to be treated even if they get stuck with bills they can't pay, which still costs everyone in the end. I am in favor of universal coverage because reason #1 is enough for me, and consider #2 a welcome practical benefit. Even if we could somehow magically not incur the costs associated with the uninsured while they are uninsured I'd still support covering everyone - but it would cost us more money or force us to 'spread what we have around' for lower quality.

That's a real hard one to nail down because even from an ethical standpoint (how much is reasonable morally) varies depending on what we have to work with at any given moment. Is it ethical to borrow against the lives of our grandchildren so we can get treatments that let us live an extra 5 years comfortably? If we come up with an ethical amount to ration right now in a time of debt and crisis and recession... will that amount still be ethical if we got out of debt and have a lot more money to throw around or, alternatively, cut taxes with? And to tie directly into what you said - how equitable is the rationing distributed? In any system where anyone has no coverage, they receive 100% rationing on all but emergency room care. The funny thing is I totally understand the emotional argument that I think sits in the back of everyone's mind: I work hard, I pay my bills - and that should be worth something when my child gets sick. I don't want my kid* to suffer an extra period of time just because Uncle Sam says the heroine addict welfare bum Iend up paying for got in line ahead of my kid by five minutes. If I am worried about my kid, I should be able to work harder, and get something better for that effort - a premium service, shorter wait times. But when you have those premium services that cost more, that will siphon off the talent from the 'standard' services and the liberals will cry foul and everything I've worked harder for will be 'redistributed' so everyone, including the do-nothings never have to see someone who works harder than them get something better than what they have. Now - that is an emotional argument and the only reason we can avoid it is because our current system is in such disarray - we should be able to cover everyone and end up with a better system for "the hard working people" too. I think though, many people are skeptical that it will and it's the underlying stance that keeps people uncertain. It is an interesting question - if we had the option of either style of system at equal levels of efficiency how far would people be willing to go to ensure everyone was covered, knowing it would cost themselves more? (* just as an example, I don't have kids actually)

Shouldn't that be "the UFOs came, 59 years ago?" The existence of UFOs is a known fact, and not even contended. It's well known that not all observed objects have been identified, and some of those unidentified objects do appear to be flying, so unidentified flying objects are to be expected. So really, I'm sure what all the fuss is about. Whether they are vehicles and contain aliens is of course an often made assertion, but that isn't about to be settled by some 50 year old photos, sorry. If they are lil aliens then they really need a stern talking to.... if you can travel from another star system you should at least have the technology to, I dunno, turn off your running lights when you don't want to be seen. Did they just leave the blinker on for the last 50,000 light years? If they want to be seen then it's either part of some galactic fraternity pledge dare, or they deserve "Worst. First Contact. Ever." award to be handed out by Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. If they want to say Hi then that's cool, but if they want to hover around all shy like they can do whatever they want I've got work to do.

What I was trying to say was comparing the number 47 to the number 44 has no measurable difference, just an overall difference in ranking. It's like a race - someone may come in #6 and another #7, but whether that is because #7 was 1 second behind #6 or 1 hour behind #6 is completely unknown and since they only consider rank, not time - those numbers do not have enough information to determine a cut off for as to side of "mediocre" one may fall on. The ranks are based on the difference in overall cost, access, speed and quality of the service, but once they are distilled down to mere rankings they loose any relevance other than that one does "some amount better" and one does "some amount poorer" relative to each other. Now once you select two given systems of different ranks, and compare the hard statistics between the two (such as Denmark and the US) you can actually get into some far more meaningful numbers. We can (to use the race metaphor) actually clock the wait times, see how big the gap is, and even decide what wait time we can live with and consider good and what wait time we consider mediocre at best - at which point one or both may fall on either side of that metric. Even when we decide to set an exact amount of time as a cut off after which it is considered mediocre, that exact marker is still arbitrary - if we were fighting a desperate war and needed more doctors patching up troops we may consider longer wait times acceptable due to the harsh conditions. So yes - the information we measure is not arbitrary as when we measure the wait times etc, we measure them all in a uniform fashion and they are then statistics. When we aggregate those statistics into rankings, we get very little information other than what system is technically doing better than another system with no information as to how much better or worse any two systems relatively are. And lastly whatever we think is 'good' or 'bad' in terms of the hard numbers is pretty arbitrary as it's based on our expectations. Does that help alleviate the confusion? A note on the 'red herring' argument: It's all about context: Usually wait times and rationing are used by opponents as a scare tactic to dissuade people from supporting a public system which is disingenuous because those things occur now within the private system. The clearest way to make the argument would be to say that rationing and wait times would be worse under a public system than private system - that would then need to be substantiated, but it at least acknowledges that it happens already. So to simply say "rationing will happen" ticks off proponents because it implies that it doesn't now. When proponents say there won't be rationing they mean worse than what we have now - and of course opponents will be ticked off because of course there will be rationing as it will always occur, even in the system we have now. For the purpose of this argument I think we can all agree: rationing and wait times will always exist. If we want to move forward with that argument it should be on whether wait times and rationing will be worse or better under a new potential system. That way we can drop all the 'who made what claim' regarding 'no rationing' etc etc and move on.

To be fair, if I was to bring a lawsuit about for the purpose of stopping a mermaid hunt so as to protect the endangered mermaid populations of the world... I'd want to file that lawsuit in a country known for it's very liberal drug laws. "Hey your honor, pass the brownies man!"

Just to be clear on the "Prayer may help you" note I think it's worth saying that you should always try to consider the most conservative way of evaluating the information. You can say prayer helped you but then always step back, and consider the statement - all you can really say is the action of prayer was followed by a positive result. You know you prayed, you know a positive result occurred - you can be sure of those as facts. You cannot be sure of the causation, thus to say "Prayer helped you" is a conclusion you drew by observing an action and a subsequent result that appear to follow a cause-effect connection. It may feel cold and almost like "looking a gift horse in the mouth" and overly skeptical, especially when the result is such a godsend - but that doesn't have to be where you finish your investigation, it's just good to be aware that is the most valuable place to start. You start by assessing the most concrete facts that can be established, so when you do feel like drawing conclusions for any reason (science, faith) you are aware of that fact and haven't overlooked unsubstantiated assumptions you weren't aware you even made. If you choose to believe the positive result was the result of prayer because of your faith - then it does your faith more justice to know that is the reason for that belief. To say "Praying helped for me" as if that was an objective fact proving causation to you in your case you are allowing yourself to believe the facts support that and the real reason - your faith - goes unappreciated as the source for that belief. To be a little pedantic I do think that could be clarified - we do see things we suspect have causal relationships and then test them... we are pattern finding creatures by nature after all. The key of course is when those patterns are tested scientifically we don't start with the assumption that the pattern we are testing is valid, and specifically try to invalidate it as much as we try to prove it, and don't adopt it as fact if it can't live up to scientific standards. We see Newton's laws as a result of him identifying patterns, proposing a hypothesis and then proving that hypothesis correct. What we don't see, is that he probably found a myriad of other correlations in his early days and had to work tirelessly to weed out the ones that almost but didn't entirely fit. If he hadn't gone to such effort to invalidate all of his work, we wouldn't have the body of work that does hold true today - he would never have gotten that far because he'd have been too mired in "almost but not quite" explanations that would preclude his subsequent discoveries. In fact - I would love to see a book about all the failed hypotheses of the "great minds" that have given us such great discoveries as Newton. People always seem to have this idea that the finished product always popped into their heads because they were geniuses (they just SAW the pattern) and then the close minded contemporaries of the time booed, stroked their beards, clucked their tongues, and wondered what was to be done with the upstart... only to be overshadowed by the avalanche of evidence of his discoveries later. The great thing is all those great thinkers undoubtedly "just saw" a huge number of patterns, most of which failed to hold up under scientific scrutiny and - in a stroke of real genius - they refined or discarded them without getting all emotional and attached to it. Discovering a pattern is almost an endorphic rush and a lot of people feel like tearing them apart is like beating a pet bunny to "see if it can survive" and instead coddle it. Those people end up cranks and crackpots though, whereas the ones that give us the ideas that survive for thousands of years not only worked hard to invalidate their discovery, but invalidated many many more we never heard of that they felt were just as precious at the moment.

Can you quote when you challenge an assertion like that please? It's not clear who suggested that and I didn't see where it clearly was. If it was my comments I do want to be clear I did not suggest that and pretty much said the opposite - it' not a linear ranking, those numbers are entirely arbitrary and only rank the relative ranking between the systems based on a whole lot of esoteric metrics. What is telling, is the relative statistics for #34 and #37 in overall cost, access, speed of service and quality. I'll go one further and say the statistical metric of how 'satisfied' a population is with their system is entirely subjective because no two populations can be assumed to have the same expectations out of their health care systems. A nation like Estonia for instance that has emerged from Soviet control into the free market to excel in the tech industry and such may be far more proud of what they accomplished in the subsequent years, and Denmark may have enjoyed gradual improvements themselves that they are proud of. On the other hand - when one large group of Americans still feel 'cheated' by the fact the Clinton Administration failed on the promise of health care reform... combined with another large group of Americans feeling 'cheated' by liberals placing unfair restrictions on the private health care industry our expectations are skewed by the fact we feel it should be better and has been hampered up by political interferences. In short we are a pretty hard population to find contentment with anything because about 51% of the population always feels the government hasn't done enough and 49% feel it has done too much the wrong way. We are a highly critical of government, and we at times seem to feel like we not only should have our cake and eat it, but we deserve more cake too. Asside from the little bit of 'cake entitlement' we also have a great quality of always feeling we can improve on what we already have. Even with the ranking system being relative and approval ratings being holy subjective to the expectations of a people the cost and access issues remain. We are being beat by Denmark in terms of cost, accessibility, and number of doctors per person. I honestly don't think the Danes have it right though - I think we could have a much better system than they have by being far more free-market based than they are, and I don't think their system would necessarily fit here well and provide the same statistics they get at all. The only real assertion is - they are beating our current system in terms of number of doctors and cost, and regardless of whether Americans will ever be satisfiedwith any system - the system currently is honestly and entirely unsatisfactory and appears to be financially unsustainable.

had to pass on this gem: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3766303,00.html Kind of puts the Birthers in perspective!

...looks across at my dusty language learning books and unrequited gym membership card.

This is a very good observation, though I don't think that it's established that the ranking itself makes Denmark mediocre. If you raced 100 of the fastest humans on Earth, #37 will still likely be anything but mediocre - the runner is likely amazing and just not quite as fast as 36 others. The reason I mention this is because we really don't have a true metric for what mediocre is. The numbers in the overall rating system seem to show Denmark doing far better in at least two categories even though ranking is only different by three. I would be curious to know what other factors went into the ranking. Also, all that aside (Denmark I mean) chances are there are some very mediocre Single Payer systems out there - just that Denmark may not be among them. All that really says is that Single Payer isn't a magic bullet and it can be implemented poorly too. Corruption, technology, trade embargoes, or any other myriad of factors could come into play. A better question may be to ask if there is anything resembling our system even vaguely that is not mediocre. We need to figure out what can work, not what can fail. Not saying that if no such system can be found that it proves our system is fatally flawed - just our chances of finding a way we can fix it without serious changes diminish significantly. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The interesting question there is whether or not we are subsidizing their health care indirectly - they negotiate better prices, so more profits on those items come from us, which goes into researching better products they buy at a bloc discount. The irony is while it may suggest that the European systems may be getting unfairly high marks, it also begs for the disparity to be closed, which pretty much requires we do more things the European way so we can get those prices.