@tjs989 notes: "Think about it, when someone needs cancer treatment, or heart surgery where do they go? To the United States because we have some of the most advanced equipment and best doctors."

OK, I thought about it. Maybe I am the first of the two of us to do so.

Your point is that Americans are better off because prohibitively expensive health care keeps less privileged citizens out of the queue, thereby making more room for rich foreigners to purchase time from American doctors. Your global altruism is commendable, but why do you value the interests of rich foreigners above those of your fellow citizens, and quite possibly yourself?

I live in Europe and know of zero examples of people traveling to the US for any type of medical treatment. Many do travel within the EU (often to Germany) when equipment, expertise or capacity is not available locally, with costs funded by their domestic national health. Of course, I might not have researched this as much as you have, but I suspect I have researched it exactly as much (not at all).

Chilaxe notes, sarcastically I assume, "I'd rather ... wait on line a year for an appointment with a doctor!" I am unaware of anybody waiting "a year" for a doctor's appointment, but I do know that I could have a doctor here, at my house, today (it's Sunday), in half an hour, for free. Or go to the emergency room at any time. For free. My regular doctors keeps office hours, but I am sure I could be in to see him some time tomorrow if I needed to. For free.

Don't get me wrong, there are many problems and shortcomings to our health care system here. For example, there _are_ waiting lists for advanced procedures, especially for non life-threatening (yet possibly still quite unpleasant)conditions, and preventative care often gets deprioritized in the face of so many actual fires to put out. People who are especially worried about this can and do buy private health insurance which builds on top of the public one (this should give relief to anybody worried that rich people might not be able to buy extra privileges for themselves just because public health insurance exists). And I say "for free", but of course I actually pay for it through taxes forwarded to the national health insurance scheme. It must be possible to draw a line across the income scale somewhere in which the average persons earning over this line would get cheaper or better health care via private insurance or even per-visit payments, while all below would get it cheaper via taxes because their tax contributions are lower than their actual medical costs. I suppose you could find your score on this scale and decide your position on this issue based solely on whether you are above or below this line, provided you have no social consciousness at all. But this same game lies behind all insurance schemes and also depends on how sick you are. At least in a public system, you will not be denied treatment due to "preexisting conditions".

People love to point out that public services are generally less efficient than private enterprise, but the US system also suffers heavy bureaucratic overhead from insurance company marketing and their convoluted attempts to pay as few benefits as possible. According to Princeton economics processor Paul Krugman, this overhead in the American system is much larger than that experienced in most real-world public systems. See, for example, his editorial, Health Economics 101.

I've not seen Mr. Moore's film yet, though the clips reveal a huge "grass is always greener" problem in his argument--but, hey, it's Michael Moore. I do think, though, that Americans should take a more serious look at existing systems of health care throughout the world and consider how their own system could be better. It looks like this film attempts to do exactly that. American ought not allow a two-word argument ("Socialized Medicine") conjure up outdated images of 4-hour bread lines in Eastern Europe and stop them from considering a nationalized system for health care.

Americans like to talk a lot about freedom, so consider this. How free are you when your boss can hold not only your job and income over your head, but effectively the health and survival of some or all your entire family? Doesn't that make you a bit more willing to sacrifice some personal freedom and put in a little more extra, unpaid overtime?

<RantMode ="Off"> (sorry)

.........Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramón Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish, Ramón Raquello leads off with "La Cumparsita."

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News.
At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity.

Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation, and describes the phenomenon as, quote, "like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun," unquote.
We now return you to the music of Ramón Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York.

This movie is a good introduction to the topic of electronic voting. but it is quite dated and leaves some wrong impressions with the viewer. Since its release (prior to the 2004 elections) there have been several elections as well as numerous studies (to name a few: the Conyers Report, GAO Report of Sept 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Princeton Center Report)which have unanimously found fault with electronic voting accuracy and security. This film leaves the impression that Rep. Holt's bill (then 550, now 811) is the answer to our prayers. Unfortunately, this is not true. In fact, in its reincarnation, its good features are matched by far more dangerous ones which assure that elections will stay out of the reach or supervision of the voters.

After the movie's release, I spent eighteen months distributing it through my free lending library project. In that time, almost 3200 copies of "Invisible Ballots" were distributed.

I no longer send it out, although I still have a thousand copies left. I prefer that people see newer and more up-to-date documentaries on the subject: among them, "Commander "N Thief", "Stealing America: Vote by Vote", "Swing State Ohio", "No Umbrella", "American Blackout", "Eternal Vigilance" and "The Right To Count". (Don't forget the HBO documentary "Stealing Democracy".) If you would like to read a review of any or all of these, you are welcome to visit www.OpEdNews.com and go to the writers archives where the reviews are listed among the other articles and reviews that I have written.

I welcome any correspondence on this topic. It is near and dear to me. Without free, fair, secure and transparent elections, with full citizen oversight we are justifying lowering voter confidence and making democracy nothing more than an ill-fitting hat.

Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEdNews
joan@OpEdNews.com

i found this site (needs java)

http://www.myphysicslab.com/

quite cool too

http://www.seb.cc/particles/

and

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~traer/physics/

(click on the examples)

i found this site (needs java)

http://www.myphysicslab.com/

quite cool too

http://www.seb.cc/particles/

and

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~traer/physics/

(click on the examples)

Part 1b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymEn_YxZqZw


Here's part 2 filmed 13 years later.
2a
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9UY8Zqg-Q
2b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCyvzI2aVUo
2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BrCBq2FY_U
2d
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKxr08GEE54

One of the most interesting parts is in the later half of 2c where his wife contrasts the differences in episodic vs semantic memory.

Good post antiuser, you might also like "The Man Who Slept for 19 Years"(not posted online) about a car accident victim, additionally, Mindshock's "Sex on the Brain" episode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbFkz1_C5SU The first one is amnesic(still thinks it's 1984) both exemplify the the effects of temporal lobe damage to emotional constraint.

Some the most interesting videos I've seen was over at Princeton's webmedia site:
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/
Like Michael S. Gazzaniga, Dartmouth University: "Personal Identity, Neuroethics and the Human Brain"
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/20050414gazzanigaVN350K.asx
This was, by far, one of my favorites. He cites some fascinating studies.

For the record:

Apparently Bush had SAT scores higher than both Kerry and Bradley but lower than Gore.

That being said, Bradley, who in all likelihood would have never entered Princeton without his ability to shoot a basketball, did go on to be a Rhodes Scholar. Check out the story at Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/73787/

There is some good information on the SAT at Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT

>> Maybe that's the wrong approach. Everyone has different taste.

Well, you're right. My priority/goal when reviewing the queue (or, back when I had time to do so), was to maximize my utility. The more filtered/upvoted a video is, the more likely it is to be good. "top 15 queued sift videos expiring soon" is a good example..those are bound to be good.

I'm totally down with hiding the posters (See Blind orchestra auditions better for women, study finds). But I contend that the bias from gold star posts is nothing compared to the (potential) impact of collective voting blocks.

zeth_rb asked, "You need a Princeton Professor and two students to confirm that a "computer" voting machine can be hacked?"

Yes. There's a difference between stating that something is or isn't true, (i.e., Diebold machines are flawed) and proving that the flaw exists.

You need a Princeton Professor and two students to confirm that a "computer" voting machine can be hacked? Ok... I don't think anyone here didn't know that*SARCASM On a side not he published his results before they could be looked over for release in a peer reviewed journal. Why, so he could get the publicity before election otherwise his publication would have come out after election and no one would have given a sh!t. I've seen this same story article on all major news networks.

ahh memories

From Wikipedia:

The television show Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989–1993) starred Neil Patrick Harris as a brilliant teenaged doctor who was also faced with the problems of being a normal teenager, despite having graduated from Princeton University at age 10[1]. The show was set in Los Angeles and ran for four years on ABC. It was created by Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley. The soundtrack of the series is by Mike Post and uses Post's trademark mid to late 1980's Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. The concept for the show was allegedly inspired by the story of Dr. Howard A. Zucker who became an MD at age 22 and had a cousin who worked in programming at ABC at the time.[citation needed]

Trademarks of the show include Doogie's best friend, the fast-talking and mischievous Vinnie Delpino, played by Max Casella, climbing in through his window, and Doogie writing in his diary on his computer at the end of each episode.

The show characterized the genius Howser as a normal teenager, rather than having the stereotypical traits of TV "nerds" like Screech Powers (from Saved by the Bell) or Steve Urkel (from Family Matters). Steven Bochco revealed that the show's cancellation came abruptly at the hands of ABC executives--before he and the show's staff had a chance to complete the story line.

quantummushroom asked, "1) What about the ballot card? ... It's what gets dropped in the ballot box. What if the voting machine records and the cards' records don't match?"

That's not how it works. Much like your car key, the smart card grants you the ability to use a voting machine. The only thing that card does is signify that you may vote. Before it is ejected from the machine, each smart card is marked as invalid so you can't vote twice. In the normal course of events, the voter returns the used card to a poll worker, who can mark the voter card as valid again and hand to the next voter. [1] Wash, rinse, repeat.

The only record of your vote is on the machine itself. There are no records that have to match up. You, the voter, get no receipt. If the machine catches fire, several hundred or thousand votes may be lost. [2] Gee, it sure would suck if a one or several machines suddenly had amnesia at the end of the day.

One point that I'll mention briefly now and come back to later: Normal voters do *not* get a printed receipt. The internal printer is only used for initial and final tallies [3].

---

quantummushroom stated, "2) That sure is a lot of sneakernet work to infect thousands of machines, one at a time." and "3) Where I live, an armed deputy is assigned to almost every polling place."

The machines run Windows CE [4]. They're vulnerable to viruses. [5] All you need to do to infect a machine is to open the side door, "secured" by what amounts to a desk-drawer lock, insert your our memory card, and reboot. [6] This can be accomplished in under a minute. You certainly won't raise eyes until you've used a voting machine for over twenty.

Let's look at two ways to infect thousands of machines:

First, if you already know which machine will act as the accumulator, you don't have to infect thousands of machines. At the end of the night, the memory cards are pulled from every machine and fed to one that adds all of the cards up. Just infect that machine. And then, if that card is taken to the next polling station for accumulation of several polling stations, even more results can be manipulated. [7]

Second, I quote: "A poll worker, election official, technician, or other person who had private access to a machine for as little as one minute could use these methods without detection. Poll workers often do have such access; for instance, in a widespread practice called “sleepovers,” machines are sent home with poll workers the night before the election [8]."

---

quantummushroom stated: "4) If a victicrat wins any election in a time of war, I'd certainly suspect fraud."

Strawman argument that has no bearing on Diebold machine security.

---

quantummushroom stated: "5) theo47 is correct. Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty."

There's no way to be vigilant while voting with one of these machines because there's no paper trail and no way to guarantee that you voted the way you voted. If the machines break, your vote is lost.

Consider a different model of electronic voting that does offer these things: first off, the voting machine doesn't record any votes. All it does it help you pick candidates. When you're done, hit the print button, which will print out a two-part receipt, of which you keep half. It should be time-stamped, include a way to identify the voter but not reveal their name, and the votes in plain text.

A voter can read it, verify it, put the submission in a ballot box to be scanned later, and take the receipt home. The receipt is a backup, if you will, that could be used if, for example, the ballot box caught fire.

A final thought: Diebold makes ATM's. Do you think they would they use a lock that can be picked in 10 seconds by an amateur [9] on those?

[1] http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf 3.3.2 Voting
[2] ibid. 2.1.2 Denial-of-Service Attacks
[3] ibid. 3.1 Hardware
[4] ibid. 3.1 Hardware
[5] ibid. 4.3 Demonstration Voting Machine Virus
[6] ibid. 2.2.1 Direction Installation
[7] ibid. 4.4 Demonstration Denial-of-Service Attack
[8] Marc Songini. E-voting security under fire in San Diego lawsuit. Computerworld, August 2006.
[9] http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf 2.2.1 Direct Installation

I agree with Dr. Feynman. It is absolutely fascinating that all around all of the time are incredible amounts of interracting electromagnetic field information. And it is interesting to think of our eyes as instruments which are tuned to see a certain spectrum of this informatino, much as a radio is tuned to hear another spectrum.



Richard Feynman, 1985. QED: The strange theory of light and matter. Princeton Univ. Press. ...its a good, quick read, and was forced upon me in my undergrad days.