On 4-8-2009 0:40, Stephen wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:03:00 +0200, andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 
>> Or perhaps you are not as bad as my wife, she is able to really quote 
>> verbatim (or at least that is what she claims). Quoting both herself and 
>> the other person literally without any indication that it is a quote and 
>> by whom. Which means that if she uses 'you' she can mean either that 
>> other person or herself if she is quoting that other or me if she has 
>> ended the quote. I find it rather confusing at times.
> 
> Ah! A mere male. :) Thus is a common condition for us ;)

Yes a mere male. I can do 4D visualization in my head, but I can't 
handle insufficient or conflicting information.

>> Also sometimes confusing, but what happens to more people, is mentioning 
>> only a first name and leaving to the other person which one of the Johns 
>> you both know is meant.
> 
> But you know that Jan Wit would never do that and Jan Zwart is doing it all the
> time so it must have been Jan who said it. Yes or no? :-)

Well no, more like 'Jean called...' and I have a cousin called Jean who 
might have called, she has a brother with that name as has of our 
neighbours and a close collaborator or two. All might have called and it 
is up to me to figure out which one. You can only do that if at some 
point she refers to something you already know. In which case there was 
no point in mentioning it (for a male). Luckily she is a woman so there 
is a good change that somewhere she mentions a couple of things she told 
a few times before. Then you only have to hope that it is specific 
enough and you can figure it out before she figures out you don't have a 
clue who she is talking about.

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On 08/03/09 21:21, Chambers wrote:
> That, at some point, you have to make a decision about who gets which
> treatments, taking into consideration all the relevant factors (age,
> other conditions, likelihood of success, and cost). Excluding any one of
> those factors - even cost - would be irresponsible.
>
> Once you admit that there's a cutoff point somewhere, then it no longer
> becomes a question of whether or not certain people will be denied
> treatment, but only a question of where that cutoff point is.

	So, what's the cutoff point in Canada, the UK, and France? Citations 
should be included.

	And, BTW, are you suggesting that insurance companies don't emulate 
cutoff points?


-- 
On a Taxidermist's window:
"We really know our stuff."

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On 08/03/09 21:24, Chambers wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> On 08/02/09 22:57, Chambers wrote:
>>> I've seen interviews with several people from his staff who talked of
>>> the pressure exerted on them to present information that fit in with the
>>> higher-up's views (though it's not clear if the pressure came from Bush
>>> himself, or if Cheney was trying to keep him misinformed).
>>
>> Oh sure. However, that doesn't translate to "deluded".
>
> OK, then, maybe "deluded" is a bit strong. "Misinformed," perhaps? Or
> even just "biased?"

	I have to disagree. He/they weren't insisting that intelligence reports 
say what they wanted them to say so that they could 
misinform/bias/delude themselves, but so that they could 
misinform/delude the public.

-- 
On a Taxidermist's window:
"We really know our stuff."

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Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> Once you admit that there's a cutoff point somewhere, then it no longer
>> becomes a question of whether or not certain people will be denied
>> treatment, but only a question of where that cutoff point is.
> 
>     So, what's the cutoff point in Canada, the UK, and France? Citations 
> should be included.

Why?  I'm simply saying that you should consider all factors, not that 
any particular cutoff point should be used.

>     And, BTW, are you suggesting that insurance companies don't emulate 
> cutoff points?

Not at all - I think insurance companies do a great job of figuring out 
when it's feasible to pay for something and when it isn't.

I was responding to what you wrote:
"3. Most of the people I hear from who are against universal health care 
don't claim the US is near the "best". They claim that people who "work 
hard and earn a lot" should get some sort of priority over deadbeats who 
don't. (Not my view, but thought I'd point out that it's not about being 
the best). Effectively, the argument is that access to health care is 
not a human right"

I was basically saying that health care is NOT a universal right, but 
rather is a privilege which is awarded when money is available.  I'm not 
saying anything about how often it should be awarded, or how much money 
we should make available.

-- 
Chambers

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Stephen wrote:
> I believe that IQ tests are a flawed concept.

I agree.  Any meaningful test needs to have a much more specific focus.

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>> I believe that IQ tests are a flawed concept.
> 
> I agree.  Any meaningful test needs to have a much more specific focus.

I, for one, don't agree.  What's wrong with the concept of a generalised 
test to determine an individuals approximate level of mental development?

Of course, I also vehemently disagree with my ex-landlord's position 
that anything said by someone who is mentally impaired is invalid 
explicitly because they're mentally impaired.  That would mean if they 
were able to say "one plus one equals two", regardless of understanding, 
that must then be treated as false.  Which is absurd.  (That whole can 
of worms had been opened by my incidental use of the phrase "can't we 
all just get along," which I still think was in use from the 1960s at 
least, not coined by Rodney King, even if he popularised it.)

*cough*  Sorry.  Ex-landlord had a lot of notions which were of dubious 
veracity.  Like thinking it'd be better to launch satellites from the 
polar regions due to lesser gravity (Earth being an oblate sphereoid) 
and thinner atmosphere, instead of as they are, from as close to the 
equator as possible to get the momentum boost from the rotating Earth. 
And the US Navy's nuclear submarines being able to be completely 
remote-controlled if you send them the right access codes (since it was 
in some movie).  And the US having low-yield nukes (specifically nukes) 
that don't produce radiation, or if they do, it decays within days, 
instead of a century or so.  And file permissions and user accounts in 
UNIX being an add-on module that you had to specifically compile, 
separate from the filesystem, with (modern) UNIX systems having 
programmer-embedded backdoors at the OS level to permit complete access 
to everything in case the admin forgot their password...and claiming 
that a friend decompiled Windows and, by removing commented code, 
decreased the recompiled executable and library size significantly.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Tim Cook wrote:
> with (modern) UNIX systems having 
> programmer-embedded backdoors at the OS level to permit complete access 
> to everything in case the admin forgot their password

Well, that one's true. It's called "single-user mode." ;-)


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Tim Cook wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> Stephen wrote:
>>> I believe that IQ tests are a flawed concept.
>>
>> I agree.  Any meaningful test needs to have a much more specific focus.
> 
> I, for one, don't agree.  What's wrong with the concept of a generalised 
> test to determine an individuals approximate level of mental development?

Absolutely nothing.  However, there's nothing "approximate" about saying 
"Your IQ is 174, and his is 168, ergo you are smarter."

An approximation would be fine.

> And the US Navy's nuclear submarines being able to be completely 
> remote-controlled if you send them the right access codes (since it was 
> in some movie).

The only movie I know of that showed that was Star Trek II ;)

>  And the US having low-yield nukes (specifically nukes) 
> that don't produce radiation, or if they do, it decays within days, 
> instead of a century or so.

Neutron bombs.  They kill off the population, and leave the real estate 
intact.

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> They kill off the population, and leave the real estate 
> intact.

Relatively speaking. It's still a G-D nuclear bomb you're talking about, 
after all. :-)


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Darren New wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> They kill off the population, and leave the real estate intact.
> 
> Relatively speaking. It's still a G-D nuclear bomb you're talking about, 
> after all. :-)

"Although neutron bombs are commonly believed to "leave the 
infrastructure intact", current designs have explosive yields in the 
kiloton range,[11] the detonation of which would cause heavy destruction 
through blast and heat effects. A yield of one kiloton is not high for a 
nuclear weapon, but is still nearly two orders of magnitude bigger than 
the most powerful conventional bombs."

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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