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3 yıl öncediscuss

> People focusing on colonizing Mars when we have such an immediate problem to address TODAY are delusional and actively endangering the most vulnerable people in the world.

I don't agree with the logic that we cannot focus on two things at the same time. It's like saying, "People focusing on making movies when we have such an immediate problem to address TODAY are delusional and actively endangering the most vulnerable people in the world." or "People focusing on curing fibromyalgia when we have such an immediate problem to address TODAY are delusional and actively endangering the most vulnerable people in the world."

The bottleneck to reversing climate change is not money or manpower, it is politics. We cannot force other people (especially in other countries) to do the right thing for the environment. We can, however, do our best to improve things on our side and pressure others to do so as well. And while we are putting our best effort towards that, we shouldn't stop making art, researching medicine, or even, trying to colonize mars.

Also, the research and development needed to colonize Mars may very well yield scientific discoveries that allow us to reverse climate change. And even if it doesn't, and Earth is ruined despite our best efforts here, we won't have all our eggs in one basket.

My point is, I just do not believe that researching colonization of Mars will do anything to thwart our efforts to improve the Earth. Quite the contrary, it may help those efforts.

6 yıl öncediscuss

Fiber can help form stool if you have chronic diarrhea, but it can also help relieve constipation.

You are correct that diuretic refers to peeing; what the poster was probably trying to say was "laxative." And foods high in fiber and sugar can certainly work as laxatives!

6 yıl öncediscuss

Jeez, it's just an expression. They're just saying that it would be way easier to not have to worry about kids at home right now. You're reading way to far into it. They are not saying that they would literally want to trade places, which should be obvious from the statement "I wouldn't give up my kids for anything"

6 yıl öncediscuss

> Preventable medical error is almost certainly in the top 5 causes of deaths in the united states.

This is untrue, a very common myth based on a questionable study out of Johns Hopkins, which included known complications of medical procedures in the classification of "medical error."

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-medical-errors-really-t...

7 yıl öncediscuss

I won't argue for or against marijuana, but I disagree with your argument.

Some drugs are capable of permanently transforming a "sane" individual into one with psychosis or other permanent mental disorders. Even alcohol has been shown to have this effect in some heavy long term users. It's even more common in meth users. It is not "pure bullshit."

7 yıl öncediscuss

> Yay because arguably it's the only way doctor offices are going to keep up with ever changing tech.

Keeping up with the tech is not the problem, it's keeping up with the ever changing regulations, many of which do relate to EHR. You basically need dedicated staff to handle the bureaucratic processes, which is only affordable for large organizations.

7 yıl öncediscuss

> * 3a has a headphone jack. Personally, I adjusted pretty well to Bluetooth headsets but some people really appreciate the jack.

For me, phones lacking a headphone jack is an absolute deal-breaker; the result is that I feel that there is a limited selection for new phones. This feature alone makes the 3a a huge upgrade regardless of the other features.

7 yıl öncediscuss

Specialist doctors do not make 1 million dollars (exceptions are generally those who run/manage their own business, or run a hospital - basically it's their business role that puts them at that salary range). You can easily look at job ads and see common salaries for different specialties, they very dependent on specialty but they do not even approach 1 million.

7 yıl öncediscuss

This may be workable for a certain subset of projects, but programmers often have much more on their system than the end user. End users don't need a bloated IDE, an SQL server, an HTTP server, etc all running at the same time. Trying to run all of these programs on an old computer is of zero benefit to the process. Better to give programmers a new machine with remote desktop access to a slower computer/virtual machine that they can use to test out their software.

8 yıl öncediscuss

This is a serious issue: doctors have a huge disincentive to receive psychiatric care in the US.

It is also completely off-topic.

8 yıl öncediscuss

I can guarantee that there are many people who have no past trauma who have addiction. I can't say exactly how common it is (it may be a minority for all I know), but I know for a fact that they are there.

8 yıl öncediscuss

It's not just you, the wording is a bit weird. Yes, they are trying to say that the definition of the kg will be based on the Planck constant.

Further down, the article says: "The kilogram – will be defined by the Planck constant (h)."

8 yıl öncediscuss

Not sure I understand the disagreement here; I think you're right on. I had an mp3 player before the iPod came out; it's not like iPod was the first mp3 player. The iPod had a nice external "look" and great marketing, but functionally it was much more difficult to use than other mp3 players that were available at that time. I was told iTunes worked better on the mac, but my experience using it on the PC was nothing short of painful. Other mp3 players had the capability of of using simple drag-and-drop functionality to move your mp3's over to the player, without the need to learn a new program and without forcing a different idea of music library management on the user.

8 yıl öncediscuss

That is one definition of racism, but it is not even the most common definition. Individuals can be racist/perform racism. You don't get to change the definition that most people use just because you don't agree with it. Check the dictionary, you will clearly see that "racial prejudice or discrimination" is right there.

8 yıl öncediscuss

I wasn't aware of this, but sure enough, "accent discrimination" is addressed by the EEOC. However, in the case that nobody can understand the person due to such a thick accent, the employer may have some argument that it is not discriminatory. Here is the relevant text from the EEOC Enforcement Guidance on National Origin Discrimination:

Under Title VII, an employment decision may legitimately be based on an individual's accent if the accent "interferes materially with job performance." To meet this standard, an employer must provide evidence showing that: (1) effective spoken communication in English is required to perform job duties; and (2) the individual's accent materially interferes with his or her ability to communicate in spoken English. [1]

[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/national-origin-guidance....

8 yıl öncediscuss

> There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated.

I don't think we need to enforce laws on everyone just to protect a very small minority of people. That would be like making grapefruit illegal because it interferes with some peoples' medications in a potentially dangerous manner.

8 yıl öncediscuss

There is plenty of research that supports alternative teaching methods. The problem is, success in these research studies does not always generalize well to classrooms around the world. There are a few reasons for this, I think.

- When these methodologies are applied at the college or graduate school level, you have a bunch of students who are experienced and skilled at learning in the traditional lecture format. Changing that up in the final years of their educational career is not always going to be successful.

- Anecdotally, many teachers report that less motivated students may fall way behind in alternative teaching methods.

- Not all teachers are adept at teaching using alternative or "flipped classroom" methodologies.

- When students have a bad teacher, the consequences of that are much much worse in flipped classroom than they are in standard lecture format. A bad lecturer will usually still get a certain amount of information across, but a bad flipped classroom facilitator can result in an entire class learning essentially nothing from a course. So there is significant risk to implementing alternative classroom methodologies.

8 yıl öncediscuss

   Boredom and wanting to work on something new is probably the biggest driver

I have to disagree with this point. Switching jobs is a very stressful and scary experience. Most people don't want to jeopardize their income without having some very strong motivator. In my experience, the most common reasons someone changes jobs is:

- Promise of a higher income

- Low perceived stability at the current job (employees want to secure a new job before they're layoffs)

- Toxic work environment

9 yıl öncediscuss

> How is this different from websites that think it's okay to force you to abide by ridiculous password restrictions

The difference is that disabling of "autocomplete" is a user interface issue, and can be addressed by the browser I use. The problem of ridiculous password restrictions is not usually something that can be controlled by the client.

I like the idea of convincing IT to change crazy password policies, but I don't have the mental energy to navigate these huge bureaucracies.

9 yıl öncediscuss

I think it absolutely matters what the charge is. In this case, we are talking about someone who murdered a 4 year old. I don't have too much sympathy for someone who does this.

If you want to talk about people who are in jail for drug charges, that is a different discussion entirely.