Hey! All back from Cuba! Boy did I get used to "Cuba Libres" pretty quick

I will send you a link to the vids I took, slight delay on that, you see I ended up on the beach in the small hours with a bottle of rum, which lead to night swimming and leaving the fancy pants new camera on the beach... guess I made some beachcombers day!

So when I get a camera to read the sole surviving SD card with I will be able to load em up.

You were right about the sunscreen too, now I can finally say I've had sunburn bad enough to gimme a nosebleed!

Monday back in work was hard, thinking I was snorkelling a shipwreck in the bay of pigs on Friday.


In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
As long as you're going to Cuba, pick me up some cheap prescription drugs. Like Viagra. It's for....a friend.

Hey, have a blast. If you get any cool videos load 'em up on YouTube or whatever so I can see them. And use plenty of sunscreen. You know how you Irishmen burn in the sun.

Rottenseed told me you ran out of Viagra, so this might do the trick.

As long as you're going to Cuba, pick me up some cheap prescription drugs. Like Viagra. It's for....a friend.

Hey, have a blast. If you get any cool videos load 'em up on YouTube or whatever so I can see them. And use plenty of sunscreen. You know how you Irishmen burn in the sun.

In reply to this comment by moodonia:
Hey KP! Alas I'm not anywhere special, yet. I'm off to Cuba this saturday! Going away with family, havent had a holiday in so long, I cant wait to not work for two weeks. I hope your doing good? This place really wasnt the same without you.

Oh i bought an amazingly cheap HD camcorder (Kodak Playsport) that is waterproof so if I survive my inevitable shark attack while snorkelling I'll be sure and send you the link so you can submit it under EIA i guess

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Just checking to see where you're currently at in the world. You're not on a boat, are ya?

Seriously, if there's a good video that comes out of this story, I hope you get to post it. Would be fitting.

>> ^Farhad2000:

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.
It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.
>> ^chilaxe:
I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.



Exactly. his entire point is that we need explorers precisely because we dont know what they'll find out, thats what exploration is. It is a widely believed myth that the people who were against Columbus' attempt to sail around the world to reach India(which was the original plan for the exploration) all thought the earth was flat, they didnt actually think so, their main argument was that the distance would be too great, and as such they were completely right, not only did they figure that Columbus wouldnt make it, so the investment in the ship would be wasted, but even if he DID make it all the way to India, the distance would still make commercial traffic unfeasible. And they were actually right on all points. The entire beauty and nature of exploration, however, is that you can bump into America on the way over there, and there is no way to tell you this in advance. To tell you in advance what the return on the investment in exploring is, we need to explore.. well, you get the point.

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.

It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.

>> ^chilaxe:

I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.

Viagra

That wasn't the holy spirit, his Viagra finally kicked in.

That was the worst Viagra commercial I have ever seen.

I know this is dipping into conspiracy theory here, but the thing that stuck out in my mind after reading that article was "...Risks of ingesting fluoride include Chronic Kidney Disease, Thyroid Disease, reduced brain development in children, reduced IQs, dental fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis, and increases in hip and other bone fractures. ..."

Paired with the fact that 'They' want us to drink more and more water per day under the guise of 'General Health and Wellbeing' just adds more fuel.

>> ^Sagemind:

"ANOTHER LOOK AT FLUORIDE IN THE WATER SUPPLY"
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/fluoride.htm


--


The water-table-effect is scary as well, guaranteeing that humankind as a whole is affected, rather than just civilized/urban areas. Why stupify 50% of the population when you can get 100%?

</tinfoil_hat>

Seriously though, potentially scary stuff... Pharmaceuticals in the water table are cause for a lot of *fear as well. I can't wait until literally everyone with a penis is walking around with a permanent hardon due to the massive amounts of Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra being dumped into the world-water-supply. Funny shit.

And no one will be depressed, but they may all be potentially suicidal.

I wonder about birth control as well. Surely 100% of the medication isn't being metabolized, so it would gather in waste water also. Population decrease, lower IQ, and perma-stiffy's the world 'round.

I gotta say, I LOL'd when the lady cried about the Viagra.

I didn't even get an email for the sc2 beta, or maybe I did, probably burried under the 200 collegedegree/viagra spam mails I get every day. Anyways just checked bnet and I'm in. You up for some 2vs2?

>> ^imstellar28:
Instead of shooting where I was you should have shot where I was going to be!


Sounds like a spot for Viagra.

Old news mate, Santas' been drunk for years. Where's Viagra Santa?

Bill is funny, but his views on alt. med are wrong. When he states that treatments we've been using for 50 years haven't worked at all, he is dead wrong. Cancer is much too complicated to practically wipe out with a single solution, like polio or small-pox.even still, for white people the survival rates for cancer has gone from 39 percent in the 60's to 62 percent in 1998; this despite the cancer rates having increase (National Cancer Institute, Cancer Rates and Risks, 1998). I’m not sure where they are at now in 2009 but you can bet its better.

PS, they have been increasing for other races too, but for what ever reason, whites have increased the most.


I dont know if rotty is trying to point out another fallacy or if he is actually perpetuating it; surprise results in clinical trials does not mean "big pharmas (doesn’t) know WHY things work in many cases.". The end result might not be the same as the initial intent before and after the trials, but that’s how a lot of discoveries are made, and they might not have initially known the mechanism behind the end result, but they know the mechanisms by the time it is released on the market, that’s what the FDA requires by law of them. Teflon, microwaves, penicillin and Viagra where all accidental discoveries, but we obviously now know how they work and did know how they worked before they were released.

an interesting point; pharmaceutical companies need to know the mechanisms, risks, and effects of medicine before they release them ( via FDA, clinical trials and lab tests ) but alternative medicine companies ARE NOT REQUIRED TO TEST, PROVE OR UNDERSTAND THE MECHANISMS OR RESULTS THEY CLAIM OF THEIR PRODUCTS! simply because the legal classification of "alt. med".

gwiz, i don’t know if you heard this, but you may be pleased to know (since we are definitely on the same page on this), that acupuncture has been proven no more effective that a placebo; double blind studies have shown it doesn’t matter if you puncture the skin in the "appropriate places"(according to acupuncture techniques), if you puncture the skin in random places, or if you don’t puncture the skin at all (using "stage knife" needles that only look like they are puncturing); there is no difference! This means that the only benefits you get from acupuncture are merely placebo and not medically valid.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1897636,00.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19250001?ordinalpos=7&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDoc
Sum

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1518#more-1518

Yeah, i have a serious hair up my ass when it comes to this too. Especially when you hear public figures like bill saying that current medicine is not working and that bullshit, unproven quackery; the reason is that some people will take that advice and drop effective treatments for the alternative ones, usually get ripped off and often end up dying.

check this site out to see what i mean

http://whatstheharm.net/

>> ^gwiz665:
What he said in the beginning:
"There's only medicine or not medicine"


Guess what, big pharmas don't know WHY things things work in many cases.

Viagra was to be a blood pressure medicine which attracted much attention after the trials. Why...^^^.

Many pharmas do not know WHY their product do what they do, they just make sure they do NOT do other (harmful) things to patients.