Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality — TED’s organizers recently decided one idea was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes

CroydonC · 9 days

I think it's moved way beyond those three categories, drawn narrowly. And really, does it matter? A forum for airing good ideas can be called anything it likes if it functions as advertised.

shaizer_kaiser · 9 days

I appreciate that halting execution is in some ways treating a symptom, but I think there still is a great deal of value in preventing the system from hurting more people while reform is enacted. It's the Little Dutch Boy approach, but it's lives leaking through instead of water.

Also, IMHO the economics are irrelevant. The morality of execution, and therefore the decision to do so or not, are mostly independent of money.

shaizer_kaiser · 9 days

I definitely agree, but a reasonable, discrete first step is a permanent ban on executions.

shaizer_kaiser · 9 days

Sure, but in light of that reality, we have no business executing people. If we know we're this fallible even with all the nominal safeguards, then a punishment as irrevocable as execution should not be an option.

imrightman · 9 days

That was a painful read. He paints his deep-yellow jaundice and jadedness with a very broad brush. He makes no obvious attempt to either re-channel the energy in productive ways or point out efforts that are working. He spits in the face of those who are aware of the totality of the situation and are working to fix the root of the problem, who may happen to be white. I sincerely hope I never join him in that worldview.

Halo6819 · 15 days

That might explain the issue. The 2560x1440 is about 1.7x pixel count of 1920x1080, or ~2.2GB vRAM with linear scaling, and the 6970 I have is a 2GB version.

Halo6819 · 15 days

Hmm, maybe you're right in that they're older games makes them less GPU intensive. BF3 is known as a GPU punisher, but you're driving almost double the pixels that I am. I guess I should go try one of those and see what my fps is.

Halo6819 · 15 days

Gotcha. Which games have been working for you?

Halo6819 · 15 days

Wow, congrats. What resolution are you running your games at/what games are you playing? I have a 6970 that struggles with BF3 and Tribes (about 30fps) at 2560 x 1440.

redcolumbine · 26 days

While there certainly is some merit to the claim, it's hard to take them seriously. Not only are they wrong about C. difficile treatment, they don't seem to realize that while pharma earns a healthy profit, it also subsidizes efforts like vaccine development.

DangerMFDO · 29 days

I'd wait for a peer-reviewed publication. The author of that article was pretty clearly not up to speed with what she was reporting on.

madcat033 · 1 month

An interesting article, but I'm not sure I agree. As long as there is the freely available opportunity to make a conscious choice and it is clear to the individual, there is no reason to restrict a default response. Taking advantage of freedom of choice is itself a choice, and at all points it is understood that the individual is responsible for his/her decisions. Forcing a person to make a choice removes their freedom to abstain, in a sense. The 'nudge' is a psychological gambit to sway the subject's decisions, but that does not make the subsequent decision anything but the subject's own. One might argue that forcing a decision does not remove a person's ability to defer to another's judgement, but then neither does a default option remove a person's ability to buck the consensus.

This seems to be much more of a lament of people's poor decisions and conventional wisdom projected onto the author's antipathy for government.

God_Wills_It · 1 month

Where are you going to get the oxygen

It's a good point. I suppose I'm envisioning either a substantial enclosed environment or a terraformed planet where there's a sufficiently dense atmosphere. There's added advantage on CO2 planets of food generation, which is admittedly a different subject in a number of ways.

Do you realize how dry it is in most space destinations?

I imagine pretty dry, though my impression is that organic carbon is pretty hard to come by as well, for food or fuel. Moreover, the water used would be recycled as well, I can't imagine it's just cast off. Nuclear does make a lot of sense in space, since it would work just as well on exoplanets or in deep interstellar space. How much refined fuel would have to be brought to said hypothetical off-planet colony? Do we know if Mars has enough fissile materials?

God_Wills_It · 1 month

I think the point is not to fuel a spaceship as it flies so much as efficient systems for permanent off-earth colonies. A hydrocarbon fuel made from recycled effluent would be excellent as a bridge between when the PV panels are generating electricity. Moreover, hydrocarbons are still better for vehicles in the absence of a built-up infrastructure network. And free oxygen is free oxygen.

They're pitching it as a supplement to current systems, but I think the ultimate goal is not to be a major source of fuel/energy on Earth.

nancyds · 1 month

I'm not sure energy density is really the key figure here. That's entirely true for mobile energy sources, but these will probably be placed just outside demand centers in cheap space. The total cost for a whole container's worth of battery materials will likely be somewhere between $650,000 and $800,000. This paper suggests a 40 kW photovoltaic installation would need a 14 kWh energy storage system for power delivery smoothing (assuming it's a reliable report and I'm reading it correctly). This review, much more comprehensive, reviews a large number of energy storage methods and their advantages/disadvantages. This particular system looks like it would fit somewhere between the "Medium-power application in isolated areas (individual electrical systems, town supply)" and "Network connection application with peak leveling" categories due to it's modest energy capacity (2MWh) but supposedly good durability and cost per unit energy (~$400/kWh by my rough approximation). For either of those settings, space sounds like it would not be the critical limiting factor.

Rivensteel · 1 month

Thanks for the illuminating conversation. Do you have other sources where I might get better analysis? It sounds like the commentary started with facts, but you disagree with the conclusions he drew.

Rivensteel · 1 month

Is China really the threat this commentary claims? In capability it seems to be, and there would not be the capability without the intent to use it at need.

Is it even possible to support the apparent schizophrenic approach the military is being asked to take? On the one hand there's the Millenium Challenge 2002 threat of asymmetric warfare and counter-insurgency tactics, and then there's the threat here of a smaller, more technologically advanced military performing wide area denial.

Maybe the network-centric model is the right one, but needs to be carried out with a large number of lower cost/value units to improve redundancy and resiliency.

HGpennypacker · 1 month

Not to be pedantic, but the infection of the eye is trachoma.

carniemechanic · 1 month

Thanks very much for your thoughtful responses. If you would, I'd like to share my own opinion.

As someone in the medical field, I can't be anything but strongly pro-choice. The lives we live are too hard and too complicated to make many rules about abortion that are absolutely true for everyone in all cases.

There are the commonly cited examples of rape and incest as reasons for abortion that are hard to deny. There are medical conditions with a very real risk of death to both mother and child. There are fetuses discovered to have terrible illnesses that will cause unimaginable suffering to them and their family, leaving them debt and grief after a short life of pain and indignity. There are ill children she would be capable of supporting and which would leave her broken; I cannot choose for those mothers which fetuses to carry and which to end, it is her decision alone.

What of a too-young mother with high ambitions for the future, who cannot psychologically or financially support a child, and who is pregnant as a result of the failure of multiple forms of contraception? One of the best ways to create stronger, healthier families is to empower the women and mothers. One of the best ways to empower women is through education and control of their own fertility. If we want to lift undeveloped nations and our own impoverished out of their disadvantaged state, it's hard to do better than letting women control the number of children they have through contraception and abortion to reduce the already intense strain on their resources.

Adoption is always an option, certainly, but the long list of unadopted children in this nation alone makes me doubt that as a truly available option. So long as the fetus is dependent on the mother, I

The fact is, neither you nor I want abortions to occur. No one is cheering when they happen. In my eyes, the best way to achieve that is through sex ed and contraception. A strong system of sexual education for the young, when paired with freely-accessible contraception, would do more to reduce abortion than any other initiative. To paraphrase President Clinton, I want abortion to be accessible, affordable, safe, and rare.

MasterGolbez · 1 month

If patient A goes on to release the proprietary information, and the only possible source was the treating physician, it would be pretty clear what the path of the leak is.

MasterGolbez · 1 month

Trust me that, as someone in medicine, I want that to be unequivocally true. However, referring only to "health needs" and not specifically allowing informing the patient sets off some alarm bells as "health needs" could be drawn to specifically cover only treatment and not informing the patient. That's not how I'd like to define it, but it's not an unreasonable interpretation of the text.

However, if you and awesome___ are right, that such information cannot be barred from disclosure to the patient, I will definitely be much happier.

MasterGolbez · 1 month

I think that's not a given, since construction of NDAs may vary and "health needs" is not very specific. Reasonable release to parties who need to know will almost without question include those not under NDA.

MasterGolbez · 1 month

From the language, it sounds like it's only exact chemical components/composition is the gagged information, so I agree that "your water is contaminated" isn't a problem here. My problem is that you can't really go further than that--other substances to avoid, long-term health consequences, how to cleanse contaminated surfaces, etc, without leaving enough clues to break NDA.

In this particular case, there's probably no great harm to the patient. It's the precedent of gagging a physician within the doctor-patient relationship when the confidential item is what is causing harm is not a pleasant one.

MasterGolbez · 1 month

I don't disagree that there is a strong ethical and moral need to inform the patient and I strongly reject attempts to alter the physician-patient relationship, but the plain text of the law does not allow for the release of that information.

That was not trolling. I don't like the law, but I think the intent of plain text interpretation is clear.

MasterGolbez · 1 month

As a medical professional, I would love to, but I would have to talk to you first because I would be directly violating this law.

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