padren

To play devil's advocate, if we model Canada's system while trying to ensure we make it different enough to avoid their problems, we have to have a pretty good understanding of what those problems are and how we will avoid them. Without a clear understanding of that, we are setting ourselves up to fall into the same set of problems they do.

I mean freak'n huge. That stuff isn't for the faint of heart.

Sensations/Perceptions that feel real are one thing, and can be achieved with low amounts of energy by manipulating the manner in which the data (electrical signals through nerves) is interpreted in the brain. You can take LSD and see a giant elephant, because you are manipulating those electrical signals with the drug. That is a lot less energy than creating a giant elephant in front of you. Conservation of energy and mass is maintained easily when it's all in your head. To physically create such an elephant would be.... problematic at best with regards to energy requirements. If you 'flew' where exactly would this energy come from, and how would conservation of momentum be maintained? Thing is we see some pretty crazy things that people can do after thousands of years of traditions passed down to hone various skills. Incredibly wicked martial arts for one, and some pretty sweet mind over matter in terms of the perceptions of the individual. We are yet to see any of these result in people able to fly or move stuff with their minds. Due to this, the very idea of such a thing is pretty much in the same category as theories of reptilian aliens running the world, or any other theory that has no physical evidence to support it. If you feel your ideas are being poorly received, please be aware that your voice is no louder or more compelling that 10,000 other voices that all attest to 10,000 other "theories" that are equally fantastic in nature and without any physical evidence all over the internet.

Can you support "Political Reform" without supporting Fidel Castro? Naturally the answer is "of course" but I don't think that is really the question on your mind... if I was to humbly guess, it would be "Why do so many people automatically assume you are against health care reform if you are against current health care bills and fail to separate the two?" If I was to guess to an answer, it would boil down to "health care reform" in their mind (unless watered down to generalities) means something to the effect of either government involvement or guaranteed coverage of some sort... and even if you are in favor of that definition of health care reform that they hold, if you are against the bill they have too much distrust resulting from hearing that line in the past "oh, I am in favor of reform, if you present something that isn't tragically flawed" from people who oppose any government involvement or guaranteed coverage. There are those who say they aren't opposed to that "in theory" but also believe it is theoretically impossible based on their other metrics that their idea of reform requires - so they bait the former group with "fool's errand" style requests to find a suitable solution without ever expecting one to be found that both parties would agree to. They are happy to use that stall because they believe not doing anything is better than any reform that does what those people want to do. So when you say you are in favor of reform, but not these bills, they feel the bite of people who used that line to stall the progress they wanted - it has nothing to do with you of course, just their own personal baggage. And so is life.

Found this and thought it may be of interest to some of us here: http://www.hellofromearth.net/ I would have posted in "Astronomy and Cosmology" but I figured this is really more pop culture with a astro-sci twist than anything pertinent to the discussions there. Would "Congratulations on banging the rocks together, guys" be appropriate? Anyone who needed that tip would miss it.

First, we have to account for vehicle life cycles, since while the manufacture takes a lot, those clunkers will have to be replaced - if one dies a year from now, you've delayed the manufacturing of a car for one year by not trading it in. It will last a year longer because it's newer, and may be made with greener technology a year later, but the difference is no where near the full carbon footprint of building a whole car. Yes, but I believe the national consensus has been that it is an acceptable risk to reduce fuel consumption. The safety concern predates this program, so I don't think it really applies - the program was made at a time that the consensus was already in place, so it can't really be faulted for continuing that school of thought. I do agree that the carbon footprint of manufacturing (as well as reclamation) should be accounted for, but I think it is smaller than it may appear for the reasons above. We do need better ways to grow the economy while reducing our carbon footprint though (at least in my opinion) as the two factors seem almost fatally at odds.

Well, here's what I think may be sensible in terms of judging this program - which I'll hold off on of course until it has had some time to actually take effect: 1) Did the money get the right bang for the buck? If the program runs dry when only half the target numbers were reached (not dates), then that is a major blunder. The program may have still done good things towards it's objective, but that would be a major factor in failing to get it right. 2) Do the car dealers get reimbursed properly in a timely manner? This will be interesting and hard to judge in today's media, as even a single hiccup will make the 24hr news equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show, and held as "indicative" of the the woes all dealers face, with less information as to if it's systemic or isolated. Other factors may be lost in the sauce - had the car dealership failed to pay taxes for the last 5 years, or have other issues? It's worth noting too that at least some people will attempt to defraud the government with clunkers pulled directly out of scrapyards, and suspicious claims should be held up. 3) Was the program unacceptably open to abuse? It's impossible to be 100% abuse proof, but some people will undoubtedly try to abuse it as previously mentioned. Whether through loopholes or outright fraud, this will probably be contentious because everyone has a different opinion of unacceptable vulnerability to abuse. If the Democrats are anything like the Republicans (scratch that, if the party in power now is anything like the party in power before, it's not ideological) every time someone is caught, it will be shown as a sign it's working because they were caught, and every time someone is not, it will be a sign it's working because no one can see the abuse. Legal loopholes (how long do you have to own a clunker before you can cash in, and if I buy a 'crop' now and I get good deals later?) have the largest capacity to visibly damage this program I would suspect, if they crop up. 4) Does it hurt people? If car repossessions go through the roof following this program it could indicate these people should not have been trying to upgrade right now in the first place. Of course, any increase in sales will result in an increase in repossessions, but I mean specifically inline with the use of the program. Any ideas on other metrics that may help? Are these sound? As to the discussion: I want to avoid judging the program entirely on ideological grounds, because even if I say, hate the idea of going to war with Iraq - it would be entirely unfair of me to judge the effectiveness of the surge on the basis that it's "in the wrong country, stupid" or any such dismissal that preemptively refuses to look at the actual impact. Just because you don't like what a program does, doesn't mean it does that ineffectively. Just try to be clear if you disagree with the goal; whether success achieves that goal, and whether it is successful in hitting it's goal. Those can easily branch into very different discussions. Totally aside fun-time activity: I just tried replacing 'republican' and 'democrat' in my head with 'party in power' and 'opposition party' and tried running through all the rhetoric from Clinton through Bush through Obama replacing the party names with their position. My brain is starting to feel a strange homogeneous haze as it tries to find breaks in the constant drone even across the shifts in power. It's not 100%, but it's interesting to think about.

Lets just examine the claim of "it could have been faked" which, is a claim put forward to reconcile the claim "we did not land on the moon" with all the ticker tape parades and media coverage of us landing on the moon. 1) That is a horrendous undertaking, with a huge portion of the GNP going straight into the efforts. Money wasn't dropped off in dump trucks at NASA, it was all spent on stuff to go to the moon, made my people all over the country - stuff that would be useless to anyone not going to the moon. Why fake a moon landing when it doesn't make you any money, just gets you a bunch of stuff you could use to go to the moon? 2) This is at a time when the USSR had a pretty decent spying program going on over here. The cold war wasn't exactly friendly and winning the ideological race to the moon was worth a heck of a lot when it came to winning minds - enough to spend the kind of money it takes to go to the moon. They didn't get a lot of information out of us they would have liked to during the Apollo program, but considering their aptitude and the sheer scale of conspiracy required to fake something like that you really are asking for a huge leap of faith. In other words: pulling off not landing on the moon would require huge amounts of work and tons of luck at a time when the whole world is watching you land on the freak'n moon. Some parts of that world spying on you and hating you vehemently. Consider the magnitude of effort required to pull off the hoax, and remember that for a moment. Now consider how hard it is to actually go to the moon: Seems really difficult, but according to our understanding of the laws of physics, you can do it with say, a Saturn V rocket. According to our understanding of these great scientific laws, you can protect yourself from the radiation levels we detect out there with... say the shielding in the lunar module. You can get back off the moon again with the thrust of say, the assent module. In fact, you can study rocket science at many Universities and actually confirm all this data. It's out there - mass, fuel, distances, gravity, thrust, radiation levels - and if science says it would take everything in the Apollo program to go to the moon, and we are having all these people around the world build all the things needed for the Apollo program... why the heck wouldn't we just go to the moon? Not to mention - if they didn't go to the moon, and had to make up information they claimed to observe, do you really think no one would have noticed for 40 years that the numbers didn't add up? Satellites wouldn't work if the radiation was way higher than we said it was. We have a lot of satellites in really high orbits and even all the way out to the other planets. We have civilian satellites in geosynchronous orbit - if we faked radiation level data to make it seem like our astronauts wouldn't fry, those satellites would have been built to withstand much lower levels than are out there and they would have fried. People with money would be looking for answers. But, the satellites work, because the data we came up with forty years ago is still sound. You try faking something that good, and having physics agree with you forty years later. And like I said before - if we did have all the numbers right, then it really isn't that hard to go to the moon! Not with all the stuff we built, and according to the math, we needed exactly what we built. That was why we built it in the first place. Schools teach the math that says this works, and lots of other things wouldn't work if that math didn't work. So - you can say you aren't convinced we went to the moon and wonder why we wouldn't challenge such a claim, and all I want to know is how you could think such a cumbersome 'fakery' theory is feasible, let alone more elegant, than the theory of us actually using the science we developed 40-50 yrs ago that still stands today and actually do it.

I really don't understand the "role" this ship is supposed to play. It sounds a lot like a WWII style battleship, but those have been made obsolete for a reason - too vulnerable to aircraft, and had they survived that they'd still be too vulnerable to submarine or other missile delivery systems. If we could build this giant ship, we could probably drop tungsten rods from space, which is a theoretical weapon system even harder to defend against - you pretty much have to get out of the way and that isn't easy. Any anti-missile defense system could be overwhelmed, and if this is such a large expensive target than it would be worth the effort to do so. Withstanding a conventional warhead is one thing, a nuclear something else entirely - and if this thing was a super powerful threat it would be a target. Even conventional weapons used to bust bunkers hundreds of feet underground would probably devastate any seaborne vessel, no matter the armor. The best defense against modern day missile technology isn't to have thicker armor, but to have more, smaller vessels spread out so no single hit can fully cripple your responsive force. Aircraft carriers are the largest vessels today, but even if it was feasible I doubt anyone would want to take them all and merge them into a single supercarrier - a single target is more vulnerable and can only be deployed to one area at a time. Other than being super cool, what is the function of this behemoth vessel, and what can it do that a fleet of vessels built with the same sum resources can't?

That's actually the opposite of what I am saying: while the pervading feeling about death is it leads to oblivion as if we never existed, I am suggesting that, if time itself is entirely relative and there is no objective point in the 'present' anymore than being at mile marker 454 on a highway is an objective 'here' than every moment of life exists independantly, including the moment of death, which already exists and does not stop any other point of our life from being experienced consciously. I am suggesting that death is just the end of new stuff, but everything that we've ever been and every moment we've every said "I am right here right now" is still out there, and we still feel we are there as completely as we do right now - in all those moments at once, and without any end. The feeling that "time is fleeting" is the illusion, and we will always exist as points in space and time. In that sense there isn't really an "end" and honestly that makes the most sense to me logically. Just based on what I have gathered from physics and stuff, it seems the most logical possibility without requiring assumptions that require further assumptions. What perplexes me though, is how we always do feel like we are in only one moment of time and moving forward - because if that is an illusion it's one heck of a convincing one, and I don't know how to reconcile the fact that it is most likely an illusion and how I have such a strong identity as an individual moving forward through time towards and end. I guess that's what sketching me out the most. It probably won't show us, as we probably won't be around to see it. The whole deal with the concept I am considering is to consider life, death and the universe from a perspective that has the least possible number of assumptions that require further assumptions. This could all be a dream, but that assumption implies the assumption of a dreamer, etc, so using the fewest assumptions that require further assumptions I've tried to analyze the situation with just the barest facts we assume to be true about physics, which I could of course have wrong, but they seem to be the most inline with occam's razor.

Firstly - very vague, so I have to ask... seriously? You can get a noise citation if you wake someone up in the neighborhood at 4am because of loud music, etc. But in general - no, waking someone up is not specifically illegal, other conduct that results in waking someone up (harassment, noise ordinances, doing so after breaking into someone's house while they are sleeping, etc) may be. So seriously, uh, why do you ask? I mean, every coma patient that was ever woken up would be testifying in tears sending their doctors to jail if it was illegal, it's a silly question.

To avoid "Jerry Springer Syndrome" (polling bias) could we get some statistics on reoffender rates for murderers? I know sexual predators (a subset of sex offenders) have a higher rate of reoffense but given that 1) these criminals don't get out for a long time, if at all and 2) most murders I think are usually 3rd degree and spontaneous/crimes of passion... I think we have a situation where our view of criminals comes from a very small sampling of the worst offenders from a much larger criminal population. Not making excuses for criminals - but they should be treated based on how they actually are, not how we perceive them as a result of a hyper hysterical media.

I'm trying to put my figure on the nature of the experience of consciousness and the impact of death with the absolutely least number of hypothetical unknown factors - just based on what we understand about time and physics etc. My thought is: 1) right now we are conscious, and we are alive 2) before and after we exist, there is no consciousness, no measure of time or any such thing. 3) if time is just a point, such as a point in space/time there is no objective 'now' just the relative 'now' experienced by any consciousness in that moment. So really, my question is - will death have any real effect at all? It will certainly mean there are no future moments of consciousness, but it doesn't actually change what has already happened... but if time has no objective 'present' that defines where we are (because there would then be no objective singular me in any single point in time that coincides with the objective present, just me in all the points of time where I was conscious throughout my lifespan) and time exists as a dimension than the point in time where I am dead is already out there in the future - and it's having no impact on any past experience. Whether the universe is deterministic or probabilistic (with many worlds) then my future(s) already exist just as tangibly as anything in my present or past - including my death. So why should I experience a fading that slips into oblivion for all eternity, etc? The strangest thing is that consciousness feels like being at a point and moving forward through time in the present, but that is a pretty understandable illusion that would manifest regardless of whether or not 'time' moved forward like that. If it is an illusion, then every moment coexists at once each with us certain we just arrived there from the moment preceding it and certain we are about to move into the next. I find it quite baffling, but my best estimation is that life is not a 'once through' of consciousness from the time you are born to the time you die - every moment you are alive exists equally and without an objective 'moment' in which it's being lived, just a subjective one pertaining to that point in space and time. Regardless of death then, all those moments will continue to exist all equally convinced it is in 'the present' and that which creates this illusion of consciousness over time will persist indefinitely - just with nothing more than the sum of our lives. Does that make any sense? Any other ideas that can account for all these factors?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p101&continuous=1 Clip 3 is on Germany's system, it's from the video iNow posted here

Apparently the "Clunkers for Cash" program has been used as an example of how the Federal Government can't do anything right, with it running out of money so fast. I get that the program has been "unexpectedly popular" but what I don't understand is, they budgeted 3 billion dollars to run 3 months, but are they running out because of the demand, or because of unanticipated costs? Everything I hear tells me that they basically budgeted the program for $3b to move x cars over n months, but the only real way to claim it has "failed" is if the $3b has been spent to move far less than x cars - the factor of 'n months' seems to be just a factor of working unexpectedly well. So, were they off on the amount of money per car due to administrative costs etc, or are those projections on track, and just moving much faster than expected? I am trying to nail these figures down, because it seems like the only way to really evaluate the program. Sure - the government clearly made an error in projecting use, but so far I haven't seen any evidence they messed up the program itself at all, which seems to be what a lot of people in the media are saying and decrying it as an embarrassing boondoggle exposing the soviet style inefficiencies that systemically plaque this administration.

Maybe we all need to go to town hall meetings to yell "ah, shut up ya crank and get your facts straight" and sit down immediately after - can we consider this a memo?

If it was as black and white as "everyone gets sick from a plague and one person patents the cure, but limits supply to make a profit" we all know that person would have the formula taken from him at gunpoint. No one would look their dying child in the eye and say "It's the free market honey, his patent won't expire for a long time, and by then he'll have enough money to get politicians to change patent laws so, we have to die so the free market may live unfettered, it's our duty." At that moment you cease to believe in your society's benevolent laws and demand by force if necessary what you need to live. When someone's coverage is pulled due to a legal loophole and they are left to die - all of us who are not dropped benefit from that by having lower cost premiums. That person who is left to die has every right* to put that gun to our heads - we are complicit and benefiting from a system that cheated him out of (without drastic action on his part) his life. Who would be expected to honor the social contracts that binds us all together as a society under such conditions? You can't say "it's not our fault he got sick and afford the cure" because we support the very system that renders those costs so unaffordable, and the insurance companies to legally drop coverage under exceptionally suspicious circumstances that would not be tolerated in other nations where the insurance industry isn't allowed to gain such a powerful lobby. Society exists as a result of mutual trust, and while we all feel "cheated" by the corrupt in some fashion, we still feel the benefits outweigh the costs.... that is until you are about to be cheated out of your life - at that moment everyone complicit and benefiting from your being cheated is fair game and that's only natural. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I entirely agree, I was only saying that the model we use for our military while being government run may not be a fit enough model to simply expand to all citizens - not that there isn't a model out there that could.

You can't really make those assertions solidly based on the available information. It's not necessarily true that active service personnel are likely to have on average higher healthcare costs - that all depends on the casualty rates and must be offset by the fact that a lot of people cannot join the military because they can't pass the physical or have medical complications - the armed forces are comprised of probably some of the fittest and healthiest people in America. I have no idea which offsets the other in terms of costs, but it's also beside the point - if the government can pay for 'high risk' recipients, it gives no indication to how much they are paying for these people - for all I know, these people may have costs that are three times higher than the civilian population on average, yet the government could be paying 300 times on each one what civilians pay for themselves. I am not saying there is evidence to that effect - just that we don't have any numbers to evaluate right now, and would need the hard stats to truly work this out. Plus, we need to know the actual quality of service they get.

Wait, what? Which would be a mistake? I thought I was basically saying "you are right and that doesn't say anything about if a government plan CAN work" and also noting that I doubt anyone here would think it did. I agree on the first part, but disagree on the second. Any video should be evaluated on it's own merit and within the scope of it's relevance. Jon has a bias like all commentators but when it comes to "digging for the truth" he has an almost rabid obsession with ripping apart demagoguery and hypocrisy from the right and left and ridiculing it as part of his comedy show. While I think journalistic integrity is an issue that matters a lot to him, he admits himself he does not consider himself a journalist by any stretch - he has no need to show "both sides" of an issue or anything else like that, he just finds things that he thinks will get a laugh by mocking the doublethink and demagoguery in public figures and especially journalists. Re the OP, I personally disagree with Bascule on this video having an argument, let alone 'one of the best' ones, in favor of a single payer system. All I saw was Kristol's arguments against a single payer system going up in flames, and his complete failure to regroup. The issues completely untouched in that interview are: 1) what is the per-capita cost to provide this to veterans, and could we even afford extending that to every US citizen? Is it more or less costly than the system we have now? 2) Is it really that good? Kristol may say it's the best in the world, but he isn't exactly known for having an exemplary command of the facts at hand. 3) Are the current per-capita costs reduced in part due to benefits that are derived from being embedded in a privately run healthcare industry? Are the costs of procedures reduced in a manner through competition and advancement of techniques that would suffer without the free market medical industry running along side it? If we could answer those three questions, then we could seriously consider this an argument in favor of a single payer system or not.

When worded like that it sounds a little abstract and philisophical - I'd take the side of the debate that says it can work, but it's not really on point, the question should be if the current proposals that include government involvement wouldwork. However, I don't think that there was any discussion in that interview really to do with whether Obama's plan would work - it was merely critiquing Kristol's arguments against it, not claiming to state any case for it. I don't think anyone here is taking that from the interview, nor considers the shredding of Kristol's arguments against government aided healthcare as something that supports government aided healthcare. People who decide what to think based on their existing ideology all across the political spectrum already are 'converted' and will view these sorts of interviews as affirmations one way or the other anyway. These sorts of interviews really don't help those people decide what they think of the issue, only decide what they think of the participants and their nefarious biases. That's the real tragedy. They bring these inane arguments up and promote them until they dominate the discussion, and all you can do is point out how inane they are. Even worse, no matter how many times you do that they just seem to repeat the same shtick - if they'd try to get into the real meat of Obama's plan then they could actually win some real points against it - but they are throwing that all away because fear mongering while wholly disingenuous can meet their desired ends more easily. I would have liked to see Jon be more confrontational, but Moore's view is actually really simplistic and idealistic: having people not covered is unethical, and even if aspects of our heathcare system suffered by being "Canadianized" it would be better than we have now overall. But that's a very subjective opinion - based on Moore's idea of "better" and you can't really get a lot deeper. You could ask "really?" and he'd say "yeah" and - if you were really lucky, he may make some sort of Kristolesque statement so self contradictory that you could nail him on that. I haven't seen Sicko so I don't know if he glossed over some of Moore's poor assertions, though it wouldn't suprise me considering the 'quality' of Moore's work in later years.

Under the current private system you are monetarily penalized for not 'shaping up' - deductibles, perscriptions, higher premiums and preexisting conditions add up fast. Any attempt to reduce these 'monetary penalties' would be big government stepping all over free market healthcare and a step towards socialism... in fact the monetary penalties are often thrown around as the only reason people don't choose to get sick whereas, if we had guaranteed coverage without such penalties - everyone would be huffing black plague recreationally since the medication would be free and breaking the national bank.

What Kristol seemed to be trying to say, yet failed in articulating (by my guess, I am not a mind reader) is: 1) We have great medical support for our veterans (not because we do, but because it's unpatriotic or counter talking-point to admit the contrary) 2) If we offer that amazing level of service to everyone and not just veterans the high per-capita costs (since government is so inefficient) would be unsustainable, but we can get away with it as long as it's just for "the proud few" that serve. His arguments that veterans deserve better healthcare than the rest of us seemed to be an attempt at articulating that. It wasn't so much that Stewart caught him with a solid series of facts that support government run healthcare, but caught him up in the consistency of his talking points which only challenged the consistency of Kritol's claims. It looked like Kristol was caught off guard and, combined with that fellow's proclivity to make broad cavalier claims ("I don't think we deserve the same healthcare as veterans") when he doesn't know what to say, dug himself into a hole rather fast. It was fun to watch, because I don't like Kristol or what he says, and really dislike the arguments against government involvement in healthcare as they seem (to date) to be mostly sound-bite scaremongering. It didn't really advance the argument other than to point out how quickly the talking points can fall apart when challenged even from within their own framework.

The catapult aspect is unsettling, but aren't North Koreans basically in a refugee camp as it is? Conditions are horrible there - it's just currently since the rest of the Asian Pacific Rim can't do much to help them, they aren't anyone's problem. Not that I am saying taking the guy out right now is the best idea - just saying the humanitarian disaster already exists.

First, I take a very libertarian view of gun control - I am against it, unless it's genuinely demonstrable to be unwarrantably harmful to the public. That of course includes some fairly vague constraints, but I can say in a generalized manner that cars can be harmful, but not unwarrantably so... and as such we regulate them but do not ban them. With regards to Iran, I don't think many of the protesters have been anguishing over the inaccessibility of firearms - it does not sound to me that they are what they really want, so I don't see how having access to them would benefit them. It may benefit some of the more radical protesters, who want armed rebellion to create either a more egalitarian or more totalitarian government, but I don't think those are representative of the movement that we are all seeing. Access to weapons have been a mixed bag to radical groups in the past, in places like Ireland and the Palestinian regions of Israel, and I don't exactly see that either of their causes would be advanced by having 2x, 5x or even 10x the weapons they do/did. The Iranians are protesting for their rights under Iranian law, which include free elections and the right to protest - not an all out rejection of Iranian law. They show the failings of their regime by acting within the rights they and all Iranians are supposed to have guaranteed, while that regime fails to honor them. If they were shooting Iranian police in the streets, I think it would hurt their cause more than it would help and justify the heavy handed tactics used by the government. Loosely, these protests have more in common with Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha than the American Revolution.

Actually.... smokers save health care money. They did a study in Canada (this was a decade ago, sorry can't cite reference) to evaluate how much smoking costs the health system, and it was found smokers have a lower total cost due to a lower life expectancy. Not saying it's a "good thing" but in pure numbers, that's the last thing I heard. Newer studies could say something different of course.