JohnB

And if a ghost was in fact a conscious entity, how would you get it to co-operate in a consistant and repeatable manner? In that respect, the challenge is worthless.

Not quite. I have continually said that it might be a good place to start. There is a difference. To take your points: Of course. That is why we don't even bother a lot of the time. Private companies create Diagnostic Imaging Clinics that service the surrounding areas. Note that while the feds or insurance pay part of the bill, these are wholly privately owned companies with no managerial or other (except acceptable standards) input from govs. I would add that in many (most) parts of Oz, 100 miles won't get you to the next town, let alone the next clinic. Hell, there are places where 100 miles travel won't get you to your next door neighbours house. A thing to keep in mind about our system is that the govs run the "Public" hospitals. While these will have Clinics incorporated into them, all other Clinics are privately owned. Quite often, even the DI dept in a public hospital is actually a private company leasing space from the hospital and is a separate entity. So there are no "Government" Clinics, which I think is one thing that counts against other UHC systems. Again, how does this make the US situation special in any way? There are massive differences here between city and country costs, fully on a par with the US situation. This is a non-argument, invalid. I think I see what you mean, but I disagree. If a hospital is "Public", then it's on gov land and pays no rent, if "Private", then they own the land and pay no rent. This means that the costs are for equipment and staff, which will be roughly similar. If anything they are higher for those centres outside major areas as a premium is paid to get people to work there. Transport costs for supplies and equipment are also higher. In general, the costs of running a 200 bed hospital will be roughly the same no matter where it is. So again, argument invalid. Whether or not there is a large enough population to support a 200 bed hospital is a different question. Distribution of hospitals is (or should be) based on getting the widest coverage. However, we are a group of nations, not one nation. My point in bringing up the Commonwealth was that it has as it's basic qualification for membership, Democracy. Just as I believe that UHC should be a basic qualification for membership in the group called "Developed Nations." While it shows my view that you should have UHC, it has no bearing on how such a system should be run. Again, so what? Alaska has 16 hospitals with 1,107 beds while North Dakota has 14 hospitals with 2,070 beds. Aside from showing that the average hospital size is smaller in Alaska, what's your point? We have big hospitals, medium sized hospitals and small hospitals too. The American situation is neither unique nor unusual. There is no requirement in a UHC system to only have big hospitals. Smaller local sized hospitals with ambulance transfer to larger city hospitals is quite capable of providing adequate care and treatment. All these things apply in every nation, they are not unique to the US. So another non-argument. None of the above however explains the cost. The fact is that you are already paying 3 times as much per capita as everyone else to recieve second rate services. The question is not what you spend the money on, but rather why does it cost 3 times as much? Is someone profiteering? Just to be clear. I am a fan of our system, it's not perfect, but works tolerably well in providing world class services at reasonable cost. The main reason for comparing the US to Australia is that in the Western World there are only three nations of comparable size. The United States, Australia and Canada, and I know bugger all about the Canadian system. Solutions that work for piddly litle European nations will not work for our nations because of size and variations in needs. The United Kingdom packs 50-60 million people into an area smaller than Michigan, solutions that work there just won't work for us. So it's not that I think you should have our system, it's just that there is nothing else that the idea of a US UHC system can be compared to. The field is severely limited. Some more points as to costs; St. Vincents is a good hospital, BTW. Right next to the high cost Sydney CBD, in one of our largest cities. So why is the US cost per day per bed 8 times the Australian figure? It's not the pay rates, that's for sure. Nurses in Australia recieve about A$22/hour. Payscale. Nurses in the US recieve US$21.90/hour. Payscale. These rates are for Registered Nurses with less than 1 years experience. (They're worth more than that though.) In a nutshell. The US is not special in any way WRT pay scales or costs, yet you pay 3 times as much for less service. (And that's without including bankruptcies and the like which effectively deny some 2 million Americans every year of reasonably priced healthcare.) The system model you are using is flawed. This is where your "District" model falls down. It is esentially a modification of your current "Insurance" model. The current model fails. It doesn't work. It doesn't come remotely close to providing world class care at reasonable cost. A "District" model, as I showed previously, will result in more inequality and less choice for the individual. Tying yourselves as you do to the Insurance companies is creating a class of "serf" workers whose aspirations are limited by what insurance they can get. People are limiting their careers depending on their cover. This isn't "Freedom", it's barely more than slavery. It's just plain wrong. A system that limits the dreams and aspirations of it's citizens is wrong and should be abolished. Not modified or changed, outright abolished. It is against everything your Founding Fathers stood for and dreamed of for your nation. Bollocks. The US economy didn't crumble when health spending was only 10% of GDP, why would it crumble if dropped from the current 20%? Secondly, as has been abundantly shown, the current quality of care is substandard when compared to the ROW. This is the real reason that you have a stumbling block. You have too many State govs (and apparently people) who put their petty posturing and selfishness before the good of all the people. You will never have a working UHC system until your people decide that access to world class service at a reasonable price is more important than petty State rights. You've done this before, in Defence, in Policing, Mail, why not healthcare?

Either a designer was involved, or a designer was not involved. There are no other options. The methods used by the designer or by chance are totally separate questions. (Although they may give hints as to the answer of the original question.) It also presupposed the designer to be omnipotent. Life could be an unexpected result of the designed Universe. To assume that everything is the intended result of the designers action presupposes omnipotence and omniscience. Neither of these attributes are required for the existence of a designer to be true. Again, separate questions. The Universe might have been designed by a committee.

I missed the Blogspot link the first time around, thanks for pointing it out again. So, it would appear does a relation of the Blog author: Not being mean, but it appears he is complaining that people who bought shares earlier and cheaper than his relative would make more money in a sale than his relative. I can only say "Well Duh." However, the money side is making things look more dubious by the minute. I can think of a number of ways this type of operation can act as a scam. (And trust me, I know a lot about setting up and running scams.) I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens.

Who are this "they" you speak of? Nobody here is saying that evolution is wrong. I do realise that there are wackjobs out there, but that is the point, they are out there, not here. You are mentally setting yourself against arguments that are not being made here. The question that started this thread was "Is there a scientific case for an Intelligent Designer?". The question was not "Would the existance of a designer validate a particular religion?" nor was it "Would the existence of a designer prove creationism?" There is nothing religious at all about the initial question, as it is a quite reasonable one. Observed fact: The Universe exists. There are only two possible states for the Universe to exist in, it either; a) Has always existed. or, b) Had a beginning. If the Universe had a beginning there are again only two possible reasons for this beginning. either; a) It happened by chance (or however you want to phrase it) or b) It was designed to happen. The question asked in this thread was if there was any scientific evidence for option b). Personal religious opinions don't come into it.

A philosophical point. While ID is flavour of the month with certain sections of the religious community, proof of a designer would not validate any religions beliefs about the purpose of the design. Given the large number of religious variations, it is quite likely that even if they get the part about there being a designer right, they will not be accurate as to the attitudes and intentions of said designer. The physical and scientific aspects of the question are quite separate from any religious aspects and should be viewed as two distinct areas.

Baby Astronaut, from your links and further reading a accept that there are no laws to change. Rules however, are another matter. Any "over unity" electrical device is by definition a "perpetual motion" machine, since it could be hooked up to a generator and run itself. From the USPTO: Hence, under the rules any over unity or perpetual motion machine cannot be patented. Most patent offices have this restriction, otherwise they would be inundated with "over balancing wheel" applications and would get seriously bogged down. I must admit, I find the phrasing somewhat odd. I would have thought that while a machine that runs without external power input could be called many things, "not useful" wouldn't be one of them.

It gives them time to watch the

mooeypoo and Baby Astronaut. The thing you are missing is that it is impossible to patent an "over unity" device in the western world. They fall under the classification of "Perpetual Motion" machines and as such will not be considered for patent. So until the laws change, there will be no patents. This being the case, the actions of Steorn make some sense. Should the device pan out, then the laws will change and they would then be well placed to launch a court case giving them the patent rights. Just a thought. mooey, they did make their theory available to the panel of 12 that looked at the machine. From their current website it would appear that they intend to make the information publicly available in the near future. I take no isuue with your points 2 and 3, however I think point 1 is wrong. I tried to make the point in the previous thread I linked to, but I don't think I explained myself properly. Such a device (if it works) does not neccessarily break any laws. Hence no rewrite of physics laws would be needed. If I may speculate. Conservation of energy applies to closed systems, this system may not be closed. Physics tells us that there may be forms of "Dark Energy", a term that as I understand it, means little more than "Forms of energy that we cannot currently detect". If we accept the axiom that "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can only change form" (which I do) then I see no problem with the concept that a machine may be a converter, converting previously undetectable energy into a more common form. Should this be the case, then no laws are being broken, however our understanding and interpretation of those laws will need to be revised to encompass a larger viewpoint. However, there seems to me there might be an easy answer to this interesting topic. Steorn are asking for 300 engineers to register with them for development of the technology, after that it will be released generally. Lacking the qualifications for the engineers part, I have registered to be amoung those who recieve the theory and designs when it goes general. From what I've seen in their vids, I doubt I would have much trouble constructing one of their machines. I suggest I try it and find out what (if anything) happens. I would think that if it worked, there are enough brains floating around here to work out why. I would also think that I've been around long enough for people to realise that should there be a result, deliberate deception on my part would not be the cause.

mooeypoo. Steorn issued a challenge a couple of years ago for suitably qualified people to inspect their equipment. The price of the inspection was to be willing to publicly state what you observe. Which is what the engineers in the video are doing. Basically they have created an "over unity" device, or so it would appear. I doubt that they even considered publishing in a journal for the simple reason that none would publish anything that apparently violates physical laws. Nor did Steorn go public in a blaze of publicity. They asked for people to look at the equipment and see if there was a trick involved. It would appear that there is not and those who inspected the equipment found that more energy is coming out of the system than is going in. Maybe Steorn have a theory to explain how, maybe they don't, but the thing appears to work. The link in the 2006 thread no longer works, but it does contain quotes from the original site. If you are interested, the Wayback Machine will take you there. So far, AFAICT, they have not asked for investors, so, weird as it sounds, they may be legit. (And wouldn't that be interesting?)

Read "On the Beach". It scared the bejeezus out of me. City after city going dark as the cloud came south. I haven't seen any recent ones. It would be fair to say though that an "all out" exchange would be less destructive than 40 years ago. Things would probably settle down again within a few years. I've not heard of the report (but I haven't been looking for it either) however I find it hard to credit. Tactical nukes are quite small in effect radius and I doubt the US, with it's very distributed infrastructure would have 9 choke points. That's not to say that aren't 9 dams that would cause massive destruction if blown. Which may be the point of the report. You don't have to take out a city, just deprive it of food and water for a few days and wait. Frankly though, I think an exchange is highly improbable these days.

I think that many are skirting a basic issue here. Same sex couples are not equal with different sex couples in all ways. While the proponents are quite happy to call marraige a "union between two people", they ignore the simple fact that only one type of union can produce children. If we were to use different names to differentiate between the two couples, how is that any more discrimination than calling people male and female. That being said, I suppose I'm one of those who support full equality in every respect except name for same sex couples. Since the two types of relationship are not the same in all respects, it is not unreasonable to have slightly different names.

jackson, I don't know that the actual numbers are of value sometimes. In a given area of medicine you will probably have 10 times as many sufferers as we do, but you also have 10 times as many people to pay for treatment facilities. It's more about percentages then total numbers, if you get my drift. To that end, it should actually make the job of providing care easier for you than it is for us. To have a DI machine/population ratio of 1 per million means that we would have 22 machines in the entire nation whereas you would have more than that in some cities. We already fly people 1,000 km for a scan because we can't afford more machines. As to district based insurance, I see a number of problems. Firstly, it is a modification of your current system, which isn't working. At some point, like a car, you have to admit the problem, junk the old one and start afresh. Frankly that is what I think you should do. Secondly, why cut the US up into little chunks? Let the insurance companies vie for business across the entire nation. I just can't see a logical reason for restricting their market, they should be able to provide service across state lines. After all, isn't the basic premise of UHC that all Americans should have roughly equal access to facilities? This is only possible if the insurance companies and service providers aren't restricted to states or districts. Thirdly, districts are political divisions that change over time. It is manifestly unfair for someone to have their insurance cover changed without their consent simply because the districts borders have been redrawn. Fourthly, as I understand your system, most districts don't have an infrastructure system in place as this is provided by the various State and County Depts. Moving to District based would incur many costs and duplications of effort as "District Health Depts" would have to be created and maintained. These admin costs are already too high with the pdf you linked to showing them at 7% for the current system, so adding more admin will only cause the costs to go up. Remember that Oz runs at circa 3% for doing the same job. You nations culture is different from mine. The whole "States Rights" psychosis is very strange to me. Bottom line is, that if you lot want UHC for all Americans, then the States will have to give up some rights. They will have to rise above their petty small time differences and act in concert for the benefit of all Americans. I do think that a system administered by the State Health Depts will have the best chance for you. They already have an established infrastructure that can be used for the new system. I can think of a few reasons to model your new system on ours. Firstly, our "rebate" style system is probably closer to what the US psyche will accept. Nobody here or in the US would accept govt mandated items. For example, neither nation would accept a UHC system that allowed only the mandated type of spectacle frames. It isn't govs business what type of frame or lens I want for my glasses. A far better option is for the gov rebate to pay say $200 for new glasses. (or maybe 70%) This means that I can freely choose my lenses and frame from what is available in the market and is within my budget. A rebate style system also encourages people to ask about costs. In one of the vids linked to previously, it was put up as something amazing that Drs had a fee scale on the front counter. This is standard under our system. Drs always discuss costs of procedures with patients, it is a basic consumer right to be informed of the costs of a product. You wouldn't buy a car without knowing the information of costs, would you? Why should healthcare be different? Another reason for adopting a modified Aus system is that we have done a lot of the legwork already. In our "Shedule of Fees", which lists what the feds will pay for for each operation/test/whatever we've worked out what it costs to have a CAT scan/whatever and what the rebate will be. The purchase/running costs of such things should be roughly comparable between our nations so you could use our schedule as a baseline to work from, modifying it to suit your needs. Rebates could be made available from your local Social Security Office thereby using existing infrastructure to administer the system. You'll notice that for the basics, the Insurance industry has been cut out of the loop. My readings on your system show that around half of the money spent by the US fed gov is going to the insurance companies. Instead, the money goes straight to the hospitals (or actually the State gov responsible for the hospital) or directly to the consumer. This puts pressure on the hospitals to be very exact when assessing prices, rather than your current system where nobody seems to know the actual price of anything. Another benefit is that under our system, even as a private patient in a private hospital, the feds cover 70% of the cost. This means that Insurance companies are covering the "Gap", the difference between the sceduled fee and what the hospital actually charges. The bottom line of this is that where you now need cover for a $100,000 procedure, this gets reduced to $30,000 "Gap" coverage. Obviously this leads to a reduction in premiums for all concerned. You'll notice that at no point in this system is anybody "forced" to do anything. I have the free choice of whether to be insured or not, the main difference being whether it bothers me to share a ward with 3 other guys. It doesn't, so I don't. Note that by making this decision I take the responsibility to pay for my glasses in full, out of my own pocket. If I had insurance the company would pay. But I'm not going to pay $500 per year for something that costs me $300 every two years. It's my choice. Doctors and Hospitals are not "forced" in any way to hold their fees down to the "scheduled" ones. They can charge whatever they want, but the rebate amount will stay the same. I am not tied in any way to my job, I can choose to change at any time without penalty. Nor am I effected if I move from city to city or to another State. I have complete freedom in this respect. One plus for you for the change is that as you say there are a number of disused hospitals spread over the US. (The TV series "Scrubs" is filmed in one.) These could be reopened by the State govs as part of the change. Which gives the others impetus to compete with the new ones. One thing is that there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Drs and Insurance companies proclaiming the end of the world. Drs will leave, Insurance companies will close, the usual doom and gloom. Ignore it. We had the same things here when we started. We still have Drs and Hospitals and Insurance companies. By all means work out the system that is best for you, I'll add comments about what I think, but ultimately the choice is yours. By rough figures, you are spending about $1.5 T more than you need to. (When you look at the per capita figures) So I think it would be reasonable to chuck another $20B at reopening hospitals and the like and to change to a different system. There is one cultural change that you will need to make. Americans will have to act and behave in a manner that is based on what is good for all Americans, not just their own tiny part of it. I said it before regarding govs, but it also applies to people. Anything else will divide your nation. UHC is a benefit of living in an advanced society, the developed world knows this and acts on it. It means that all our citizens should have a better standard of living than those in the second and third world. A society and standard that those nations can look to and emulate for the benefit of all citizens of all nations. The "Commonwealth of Nations" that Australia and others belong to has as it's most basic requirement for membership that a nation must be a Democracy. I put it to you that the definition of a developed nation must include: incorrupt police, fair and just legal systems, fire services, nation wide education, free elections and UHC, as these things benefit all citizens of the nations they exist in. Cheers.

You can't be serious!!! You are being blind to ignore the evidence that Kaeroll and I have presented. Our names will go down with the greats: Copernicus and Curie, Einstein and Columbus,.....um, um,......Laurel and Hardy. Detecting it is not enough. Without a proper understanding of Dark toast we will not be able to counteract it's effects. We need to understand it so that our cat experiments can be concluded successfully. @CharonY. What's this about popcorn? It sounds intriguing.

How anthropogenic. Why would a designer want to communicate with us? That is partly my point, all the reasons "Why" are based on what we might want, almost by definition, we can't know "Why" the designer would do it. We can only wonder and theorise from our severely limited perpsective. Hence it's Philosophy, not science. Not really. I think that if there is any hard evidence, it will be in the "fine" structure of reality. I have doubts that we know enough yet to look comprehensively enough to see those signs if they exist. There is also the matter of whether we would recognise a sign even if we saw it.

You answered your own question right here. It's called "Weather". Despite the light tone, I'm actually quite serious. Climatic "extreme" events occur all the time. So there always have been and always will be odd unseasonal weather. Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Thank you for proving my point Bascule. Undramatic changes can be made to look very dramatic simply by squashing one axis and stretching the other. By the same token the opposite effect can be acheived by squashing the vertical axis and stretching the timeline. Both graphs, yours and Junksciences are correct as they are based on the data, however people looking at graphs should be aware that may be an "intent" behind the representation beyond "reporting the facts". You'll notice that my comments in the previous post were general and applied to both sides of the debate. Do you have a problem with people being advised to look beyond rhetoric and dramatic advertising?

Exactly!!! So your housemate didn't cause the disappearance of the toast and I do not have a housemate to cause a disappearance. The toast vanishes naturally thereby proving our theory of "Dark" toast!!!!!! It is truly wonderful to meet a fellow researcher in this highly under rated area.

Why? That's my point. Why would the designer do it? I doubt that we would understand the answer. Not neccessarily, if looking for data either way, it would be helpful to know what you are looking at. Looking at the surface of the pond doesn't tell you much about the bottom. If there was a designer, it is reasonable to assume that the proof is in the fine structure of the bottom, not the ripples on the surface.

antimatter. Nobody here (or anywhere else AFAIK) is actually arguing that the world hasn't warmed in the last century or so. If you don't mind a simple anecdote for that. In the late 1800s the Thames River froze to the extent that people could iceskate on it in winter. It no longer freezes. Ergo, it's warmer now than it was then. The difference between the two opposing sides is simply whether CO2 is the "Big Bad" or not. There are many things that "force" the climate system. There are also many "feedback" systems involved. To further muddy the waters, it would seem that some things sometimes act as a "forcing" and other times act as a "feedback" depending on the situation. If you do a search of this forum and some of the others here you will find any number of threads on the topic. As a starting point, read them and make sure you follow any links provided. The only way understand a debate is to understand the arguments involved. Always be aware of sources and especially scales when looking at graphs. The one Mokele linked to is based on GissTemp and looks quite dramatic, but the effect is not so great when you compare it to this one. Both are from the GissTemp data, but time periods and scales are different, hence they look very different. Also be aware that different groups of researchers use different "baselines". Temps are reported as "anomalies" in the form of +.17 or -.05 compared to the baseline average. Looking again at the graph Mokele linked to, you will see that you get a different average if you use the period 1880-2000 than if you use the period 1940-2000. Using either of these is a valid choice, but if you are going to compare one set of data to another, you need to ensure they are using the same baseline as well. (Or can be converted to the same baseline.) Junkscience has a rather good page where they have plotted the data from all the major feeds. Have a good read and don't be afraid to ask questions.

jackson, not ignoring you, just taking time to put together some more complete ideas.

Ah yes, the "Interference Effect". I've noticed it myself on many occasions. While the cause is uncertain, it is my theory that unseen pieces of toast are effecting the cats trajectories. Given the large amount of evidence of interference, it is my belief that this invisible and undetectable, or "Dark" toast may in fact make up nearly 95% of all the toast in the Universe. Experiments have shown that all toast is moving towards this state. Direct observation shows that toast will get darker the longer you leave it in the toaster. (The mere fact that it remains visible could be considered evidence against my theories, but only by those unused to the concept of exhaustive testing.) Time is obviously a factor in the transformation from "Light" to "Dark" toast as the observations mentioned above prove. So by placing the "Semi-Dark" toast on a plate and placing the plate on the table and leaving it overnight, the toast completes its transformation and disappears. Science is amazing!!!!!!

It's actually the "Butter side Down Law", a derivative of "Sods Law". I believe this to be a very underused energy resource. By the combination of "Sod's Law" and the "Cat Foot Law", the cat should stop just above the ground and begin to rotate rapidly, thus providing an energy source when hooked to a generator. Practical application requires more experiment though. Firstly there is a problem with firmly securing the toast to the cats back. Superglue doesn't work very well as it glues the toast to the fur rather than the cat. Staples are not a viable option as they don't penetrate the toast well enough. My attempts at sewing have left me rather scratched, but the doctors think they will save my right eye. Relative masses must also be considered. Is one piece of toast enough? Or should I use enough toast to equal the weight of the cat? However, if I use multiple pieces of toast, they will have to be stacked on top of one another and the "Law of Diminishing Returns" may come into play. I am certain that there is a large source of energy to be found here as during my experiments I discovered that tying toast to a cats back and then holding it upside down and dropping it, causes the cat to travel to the floor where it undergoes massive acceleration and disappears out the door. I believe this acceleration effect is due to the system being unbalanced WRT the cat/toast mass equilibrium. I remain confidant that with further experimentation, a more patient cat and a large government grant, success is within my grasp.

I like that a "related" video is of the "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest 1957". Seems rather appropriate somehow.

I think the only problem with this analogy is that with those things it would be relatively obvious what they were designed for. In the case of the Universe, we have no idea what it was designed for, f it was designed. A major problem with the idea of an Intelligent Designer is that any entity with the power, lifespan and intelligence to actually concieve and carry out such a design would be so far above us that it's actions and motives would be incomprehensible to us. Somewhat equivalent to an ant trying to understand the design of a skyscraper. Because of the unknowns and the unknowables, I think debate on Intelligent Design falls into the category of "Philosophy" more than any other.