I'll just leave this light reading here....

Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza emerged in Mexico in March 2009 and by June 10 had rapidly spread to 74 countries (1,2). Nonpharmaceutical interventions for pandemic influenza at the community level were recommended by the World Health Organization before and during the pandemic (3,4). One such nonpharmaceutical intervention was quarantine of contacts of persons with confirmed cases. A key question in closed settings (e.g., military barracks) was how to prevent a secondary outbreak of influenza among those quarantined.

The first identified case of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in mainland People’s Republic of China was imported from the United States and reported on May 11, 2009 (5). On May 29, the Chinese Ministry of Health required that each confirmed case-patient and each contact be isolated and quarantined in 1 separate room to contain transmission of the virus

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/8/09-1787_article

https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/exclusion.htm

There weren't shutdowns because H1N1 wasn't spread before symptoms show, wasn't as easily spread, and wasn't 1/10 as deadly. By denying travel to and quarantining the visibly sick, it was relatively easy to stop the spread. There were many travel restrictions including travel bans, but they were mostly voluntarily. There was screening of passengers and sick ones were denied travel. Also, thanks to preparations, a vaccine only took months to create.
Yes, we got lucky, but we certainly didn't JUST get lucky, we took action AND got lucky.

They actually look pretty repairable... and the problem is that buying them all up for spares has driven up the going rate for them!

https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/singing-fish.htm

@newtboy
@BSR

Think of it a bit like this (quote from Wilde)

"...surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not p. 3cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it"
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And allow me to pop this out:
"the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves"
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This is a stark/bleak example. I don't personally agree with it entirely. As I said, I bring cereal for my students and it's there and free and available unless I don't have time to get to the store or unless I myself am out of pocket change to buy extra food.


I don't ENTIRELY disagree though ----> Which is not to say that I agree.

I would say, YES there are structural changes that need to take place, but I also believe that assistance needs to be there to handle some kind of transition period while a problem is realized.

ALL of that being said

Here is a perfect example of a societal ill in our current system that needs to be addressed. It's a disgusting by-product of a structurally unsound student loan system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9NaPDtAmU


Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1017/1017-h/1017-h.htm

https://www.justice.gov/file/1015126/download
"On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation. "

^The Trump campaign knew about him breaking the law conducting affairs with a foreign adversary but still kept him in the White House until it was clear he was going to be indited.

Also, Flynn and Kushner (again this is prior to swearing in, aka illegal) https://www.wsj.com/articles/flynn-promoted-nuclear-plant-project-while-in-white-house-1505328226

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I can go through the rest, but see for yourself
https://www.justice.gov/sco
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^All the indictments hosted on the justice department's website.

I could go through all of them like I did Flynn above, but thankfully, people are already compiling a list of contacts and the denials associated with said contacts: https://cdn.themoscowproject.org/content/uploads/2018/06/14110352/MoscowProject-TrumpContacts-0618.pdf

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And last but not least, those denials about contact that were made to the investigators arguably constitute obstruction of justice, the thing Nixon and Bill Clinton were impeached for.

Here's a quote from Nixon's first article of impeachment:
"The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:

making false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;

withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;

approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counselling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;

interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees;"

http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment


Honestly now, has Trump made any false or misleading statements about his team's contact with Russia? Has he withheld any relevant evidence?




Did he endevor to interfere with the conduct of an investigation?

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So did he collude with Russia? who cares, no one is being charged or investigated with collusion.

Did he obstruct justice by misleading any US official or interefere with said investigation? That's debateable, and we'll have to see all that Meuller is going to put in the public record before anyone can make a clear decision. But it sure as hell looks bad, and it's very much NOT "Still no crime Still ZERO ZIP NADA"

If you look at the timeline for Nixon or Bill Clinton's impeachment, a lot of staffers (human shields) went down before the investigators got to the top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Watergate_scandal
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/clintontimeline.htm

https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm

You can use the above utility to check your own exposure.

Good guess, they're sympathetic strings.

http://www.hurdygurdy.com/products/opt_symp.htm

Here is a podcast that you might enjoy.

If anyone wonders how to get their hands on a version of the special with the audio from rifftrax dubbed over, drop me a line. It's worth it. See also: https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/the-star-wars-holiday-special-of-1978.htm

Lightning's been in the news lately, after a paper in Nature described how gamma rays from lightning result in matter-antimatter annihilation.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171122131353.htm

(or DOI: 10.1038/nature24630)

Those are harvestmen, not spiders. They are harmless

http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-34.htm

I guess I'm lucky enough to live in a country where less than one-fifth of the electricity is generated by coal. So I don't much think of coal vs. nuclear in terms of the cancer risks as such. I'll never be close enough to the fuel of a nuclear reactor. And I'll likely be exposed to more toxicity from traffic than coal plants.

Also, our CANDU reactors can be powered by decommissioned bombs.

"CANDU reactors are unique in that they use natural, unenriched uranium as a fuel; with some modification, they can also use enriched uranium, mixed fuels, and even thorium. Thus, CANDU reactors are ideally suited for using material from decommissioned nuclear weapons as fuel, helping to reduce global arsenals."

https://cna.ca/technology/energy/candu-technology/

There is still spent fuel to be managed, which isn't trivial, but I'm okay with at taking a few bombs out of circulation in the mean time.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Australia has gone the route of the independent commission. The AEC redraws the lines every few years based on demographic shifts. Works pretty well -http://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/index.htm

17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. 18 For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.…

http://biblehub.com/matthew/5-18.htm