Just a heads up. I was in a minor accident and took an arrow to the...well, a hard object to the groin. This has led to what I can easily describe as the most amazing pain and swelling I have felt in 45 years. The urologist said it was Epididymitis caused by blunt trauma. I have an ultrasound on monday. Needless to say, this is why I haven't been posting for a few days and won't be until the pain goes away long enough for me to sit at a computer.

I've been in the medical field service business for 30 years. Fixing / installing Cathlabs, Vascular labs,X ray, Mamo and Ultrasound systems.

The battery or such does not cost an arm or a leg. Its the R&D that goes into it. Its the supply chain warehousing parts and the tax on inventory and all that other stuff like profit.

As far as 3rd party servicing. Apple will loose and have to make their service documents/ tools available. Those tools can be different - but come to the same results.



It is in the OEM interests to keep 3rd party service away for many reasons, not just to hoard more business.

We do provide service manuals and parts to 3Rd party. no problem. They are on the web just to get them.



As far as ripping the customer off. That's wrong. Apple will need to address this. I would not think that is common.

It has forward mounted radar, camera, and ultrasound. The radar will be able to distinguish an objects size, position and vector with great accuracy and precision.

This says a little about it:
https://www.quora.com/How-does-Teslas-Autopilot-work-What-are-the-sensors-that-it-uses

Sorry, no. There isn't some moral equivalency here where everyone is entitled to their opinion and we should respect them for it.

Both of those people are white, straight and comfortably middle class. It's easy to get along then.

The republicans of today are a joke. This is a party where Rick fucking Santorum is still an elected official! Where Donald Trump is almost certainly going to be their presidential nominee and he's not even the worst of them (fuck you Ted Cruz).

It's really simple.

If you're against gay marriage, you're not "promoting family values", you're a homophobic neanderthal.
If you support banning muslims from your country, you're not "securing your borders", you're a bigoted asshole.
If you think forcing women to go through vaginal ultrasounds to get an abortion is ok, you're not "pro-life", you're a misogynist.
And if you really think that climate change isn't happening... then you're a fucking idiot.

There isn't a middle ground here. The fact that these issues are even up for debate is depressing as hell.

I look at ultrasounds too. While I understand the sentiment of wanting to show that it's not just a lump of tissue, and it's certainly not a lie, it is also completely unnecessary. The government forcing you to do this is a violation of your rights.

Also, withdrawal of support is not the same as murdering. Even if you believe a fetus is alive and deserves the same protections as any human being, a woman should still have the rights for an abortion. The ethical arguments is thus:

If in some hypothetical situation, an adult human such as yourself, became completely dependent on my body to survive, your right to life does not trump my rights to my body. You cannot force yourself to leech off of my body for the next 9 months. I have the right to refuse you and let you die. It may not be a nice thing to do, and should be avoided whenever possible, but it is my right.

It is strange to me when conservatives who support small government and individual rights (including those who support laws like stand your ground, which lets you kill another human being), does not understand this concept.

Also promoting abstinence has been proven to be ineffective compared to education about birth control.

@VoodooV

I guess you don't look at Ultrasounds. I see them every day.

GOV just want the mother to see that it is not a lump of tissue,which it isn't. A picture is worth a thousand words and watching a life in real time in a womb is not telling a lie to a patient.

I agree these are just roadblocks to slow down the murdering.

A better solution to this quagmire is to promote abstinence.

Hah, yes, that came out a little sideways. I was intending to relate the required 72-hour waiting period, vaginal ultrasound, etc. required for abortion to the background checks, etc. that should be required for owning/purchasing a gun.

A better word would have been 'prerequisites': But having sane prerequisites, ideologically similar to those now required for abortions, would definitely help.

*promote (got me by 5 min)

When a man doesn’t love a woman very very much
He signs away his paternal rights and jizzes in a cup
Then with lots of money and scientific genius
Hormones, pain and of course, um… Jesus

The process begins the way god intended
With a transvaginal ultrasound
With a wand longer than a ukulele
When it comes out of my body, it makes this sound (pop)

I give myself daily intradermal injections
An acute blood thinner and estrogen concurrence
Cryopreservation through hormonal activation
And none of it’s covered by insurance

Then I’m knocked out and you’re removed
And combined with a stranger’s come
And as the saying goes
You win some, you lose some/you dispose of the defective ones in a hazardous waste bin

And then you’re frozen until I’m certain
It’s time to unthaw you into a person
Then you’ll expire or you’ll make the grade
And that, my darling, that’s how babies are made
(It’s so easy and natural)

CHORUS:
Hush little egg baby don’t say a word
Mama’s gonna freeze you til she gets rich

And when that day finally arrives
You’ll be constructed in a petri dish
With sperm donor 8w6-3
The silent partner of our family

So hush little egg baby don’t be sad
Just because I never fucked your dad

VERSE 2:
I know there are orphans everywhere
But I’m going to pretend that isn’t real
Don’t look at me like that just cause I admit it
You had kids and you knew the deal

Yeah I feel guilty about overpopulation
And ruining the environment for forever
But Osama Bin Laden had 20 kids
So fuck you or whatever

Sadly procreation is not a meritocracy
And we need to prevent a real life Idiocracy
Though it may be the ultimate form of narcissism
It’s also a way to re-reverse reverse Darwinism

Gonna mute the sound of that ticking clock
I just need the sperm now I don’t need the cock
My ovaries are like hey girl I’m over here
And I’m all like shhhh

I want all the stuff I don’t need a bucket list
It doesn’t make me greedy it just makes me feminist
Now I’m thinking back through all the guys I’ve dated
If they heard this song they’d fucking hate it

CHORUS:
Hush little egg baby don’t you cry
You’ll have the best genes mommy can buy

I don’t want to wait until I get in dire straights
My friends say if I want kids I should go out on some dates
But these working bitches don’t have time to leave it to the fates
The world deserves more Riki’s and the world deserves more Kate’s

So hush little egg baby dad’s are overrated
He did what mattered when he masturbated

BRIDGE:
Hush little egg baby just hold firm
Mama’s gonna buy you designer sperm

And if that sperm gives you random traits
Mama’s gonna test your dna

And if your dna doesn’t make things clear
Mama’s gonna just have to live in fear

And if that fear turns into guilt
Mama’s gonna hold onto what we built

And if I hold too tight as to suffocate
I’ll buy you lots of things to overcompensate

And if that overcompensation’s too transparent
I’ll pretend it’s somehow better with no male parent

And if you say but mom who’s my dad
I’ll say I don’t know and it’s just too bad

And if that badness forms a hole in your heart
I’ll want to make it up to you but won’t know where to start

I’ll probably start by saying it’s just you and me
And there’s no such thing as a normal family

So fuck being normal and let’s do this shit
Momma’s gonna freeze you til she… gets…. rich

Cool how they've learned now the cavitation from ultrasounds can allow stuff to pass through the blood brain barrier.

Infant genders should not be discovered until the moment of birth. Seriously. Screw ultrasounds. They are not harmless.

At the moment of a (unmedicated) birth, there is a build up and release of the most powerful love and attraction hormones known to science (and many that are unknown). These hormones affect everyone in the room.

This negative emotional response would never occur if the boy discovered the gender as he witnessed the birth first hand.

Lived in Ontario (28 years), Brisbane, Australia (5 years), Alberta (7 years), and now Texas (14 years).

Agree with pretty much with Boneremake on Alberta, gets more points than Ontario. My Australian experience was good, in both the city and rural (blew an eardrum due to infection in Longreach QLD at Xmas... the doctor was drunk when they wheeled him into emerg, but he was a gentle, caring drunk).

Small things in Ontario are manageable - anything requiring stuff beyond typical emergency room patching up in more rural locations (my definition - anywhere far enough from Toronto that you can't see the nighttime glow, so north of Newfenmarket sort of) is quite lacking (v. long wait times for things like weekly dialysis, MRI, even open MRI, GI tract scoping, ultrasounds, contrast X-rays etc). Parental unit #1 with diabetes requiring 3 times a week dialysis almost snuffed it as there were only 4 chairs in the unit 14 miles from home, got on the list and had to wait for someone to die before getting on the team. Finally snuffed it when they shut down these 4 chairs and the new unit was now a 90 mile round trip 3 times a week for man who could barely walk or see. Died from exhaustion, not diabetes. 2nd parental unit needs an MRI for some serious GI issues, can't keep food down, losing weight rapidly. Wait 4.5 months and we'll see if we can get you in. I'm having her measured for the box.

Having said that, the situation is easier to describe in Texas, the land of excess (excessive wealth and excessive poverty).

Good health insurance plan, preferably through employer with lots of employees = wait times for advanced procedures measured usually in minutes or hours, sometimes days, but not weeks or months. You get taken care of, and your birthing room at the local maternity ward looks like the Marriott (just Couryard though, so no mini-bar or microwave).

Mediocre or no health insurance plan = pray you never get sick enough to require more than what you can buy at the CVS or splint up by watching do-it-yourself first aid videos on youtube, because an unplanned night in the hospital or a trip to emerg in the short bus with swirly lights followed by admission can, for many, wipe them out or sure eat up Bobby's college fund. No exaggeration. I have insurance, but for a reference point, one night in hospital (elective) for a turbinectomy (google it people) including jello and ice cream came in at $14,635. Yes, one night. 24 hours. Do the math. An emergency room visit for a forearm cut requiring 13 stitches (and I didn't even bleed on their white sheets - just cut through the skin to the fat tissue) was billed at $2,300 bucks. Our new baby tried to exit the meatbag as a footling breach, so emergency C-sectioned him out, and one extra night in hospital (2 in total) - all up, billed at just shy of $24K. We now have 3 full service hospitals within 5 miles of our house, and a full service children's hospital in the same radius. And they just started building another. Somebody's making money. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance is shitty (huge deductibles, huge copays) you will eat much of these types of costs. Rule: cheaper to die than get sick.

Ontario and AB might have longer wait times, but even an 83 year old woman in a rural Ontario village with no pension, insurance, income or large stacks of cash can (eventually) get the health care she needs without spending unjustifiable amounts of money. Happy birthday mom.

My 2¢

They can immediately tell it's not real through use of their sonar, which gives them an ultrasound-like picture of the insides of it.

I imagine that's why they find it so fascinating. Had they thought it the real deal, they wouldn't be paying any special attention to it. If the goal of the program was to document natural behavior, it's died aborning.

@hpqp You mean like with trans-vaginal ultrasounds?

"I consent to you penetrating my vagina but only under extreme duress"

Sounds mighty rapey to me.

There should be a separate ballot whereby those who vote to approve the banning of abortion in cases of rape are put on a list whereby they must become the adoptive parent of a "rape baby" while also paying for all medical treatment for the mother including counselling. See how far their principles take them then.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

Why is a heartbeat so important? Deer have heartbeats and yet, every fall, the forests are filled with armed Republicans.
Since we clearly only care about killing humans, if a line is to be drawn in the sand, then I say it needs to be on the basis of the development of a definitively human quality in the fetus.
I must have missed your comment earlier and wanted to reply, but the latest three replies in that thread were already mine, and the last one is, to me, the most important, so I figured I'd reply here.



I put the heartbeat comment in parentheses because it wasn't the point in itself, but illustrative of how quickly the fetus develops. After seeing my own developing children on an ultrasound, I can understand the reasoning behind the "mandatory pre-operative ultrasound" legislation a few states have instituted. I was very surprised by how quickly things go from "dark blob" to "vaguely humanoid" to "little person" and I suspect a non-trivial proportion of people seeking abortion may be as uninformed about it as I was. I was not at all expecting to hear their heartbeats when we did, which is why the heartbeat illustration carries weight with me.

I think your "line in the sand" is a perfectly rational approach. I disagree personally, but I can appreciate that you're taking a reasoned approach and I would be willing to accept it as a basis for legislation on the matter.
It gets problematic when we attempt to define "a definitively human quality". On one extreme, a human fetus is and will be a human fetus. On the other extreme, even newborns only look human, and exhibit few, if any, behaviors that distinguish them from primates. (Primate rights, or animal rights in general being another hot potato, tying in to the "only care about killing humans" sentiment.)

What, to you, would constitute a "definitively human quality"? Limbs? Beginning of neural development?
(This directly ties into what I think is that "most important question", so if you'd like to reply in the original thread, that's great.)

Live Action public relations:
"AUSTIN, May 29 -- Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, TX encouraging a woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is first in a new series titled "Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America," exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.

"I see that you're saying that you want to terminate if it's a girl, so are you just wanting to continue the pregnancy in the meantime?" a counselor named "Rebecca" offers the woman, who is purportedly still in her first trimester and cannot be certain about the gender. "The abortion covers you up until 23 weeks," explains Rebecca, "and usually at 5 months is usually (sic) when they detect, you know, whether or not it's a boy or a girl." Doctors agree that the later in term a doctor performs an abortion, the greater the risk of complications.

The Planned Parenthood staffer suggests that the woman get on Medicaid in order to pay for an ultrasound to determine the gender of her baby, even though she plans to use the knowledge for an elective abortion. She also tells the woman to "just continue and try again" for the desired gender after aborting a girl, and adds, "Good luck, and I hope that you do get your boy."

"The search-and-destroy targeting of baby girls through prenatal testing and abortion is a pandemic that is spreading across the globe," notes Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action. "Research proves that sex-selective abortion has now come to America. The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is a willing participant."

Six studies in the past four years indicate that there are thousands of "missing girls" in the U.S., many from sex-selective abortion. The U.K., India, Australia, and other countries ban sex-selective abortion, but the U.S., save for three states, does not. On Wednesday, Congress will debate the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act (PRENDA), which would ban sex-selective abortions nationally.

"Planned Parenthood and their ruthless abortion-first mentality is the real 'war on women'," says Rose. "Sex-selective abortion is gender discrimination with lethal consequences for little girls."

The complete, unedited video and transcript can be viewed at www.ProtectOurGirls.com, a hub of research and information on sex-selective abortions.

Live Action is a youth led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending the human rights abuse of abortion. They use new media to educate the public about the humanity of the unborn and investigative journalism to expose threats against the vulnerable and defenseless.

For further information, please contact Dan Wilson or Jameson Cunningham with Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or (800) 536-5920 and email at media@liveaction.org"