Posts by Kyle Matthews
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It's OK, your carbon footprint increase is negligible. The bus already runs, so unless you've pushed it over the magical number where they put another bus on, hardly any increase there at all.
The true magic of public transport! You can let your wife have the rollerblades back in compensation.
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I haven't had to do the same since I moved back to NZ but I hear it's just the same, except you wait at different places in the process.
I think that's it's on the same, or I'd argue, largely the same with some differences, because of a lack of money, expertise, resources, beds etc in NZ. If you threw more money into the NZ system, you could come out with shorter queues. If you threw more money into the US system, you'd most likely come out with bigger profits for the HMOs, and the same length queues.
Here the medical system largely cares about patients, health, best outcomes, short waiting lists. There the care that parts of the system (health care professionals) put into that have been distorted by HMOs/insurance/profits.
Ben - I was more referring to totally non-urgent stuff, no sane hospital in the US or NZ is not going to do the same thing (but woe betide you if in the US your HMO thinks you possibly could have rung them to get permission first, you may be stuck with the bill).
A friend of mine was in a car accident recently, and her insurance disputed the cost of the ambulance that took her to hospital (but not the cost of the hospital care itself). The accident wasn't life-threatening, but it was certainly worthy of a trip in an ambulance, especially given that her car was totalled. Eventually they agreed to split the cost, which for a short ambulance trip was something like $4000 US.
There are unfortunately lots of ways to be screwed by your HMO it seems. It astounds me that people should have to worry about these things before seeking urgent medical care.
Have we learned nothing from the teachings of Homer?
I must have missed that episode of The Simpsons. Or is that in the upcoming movie?
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So how do they measure it?
In general, you could be considered to be on a site if you continuously 'hit' pages within it, without a break of longer than 5 minutes. Or 10 minutes. Depends on the type of site - PA you'd say longer because it has long pages of comments, and decent length blog entries.
So if you moved around the site, going to a new page every few minutes, it'd measure the total amount of time without that break, and record that.
If you did as you do, and left the page open without clicking links of posting replies, it wouldn't measure that total time, as you wouldn't have hit the server for those hours.
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What about all the money wasted on faceless bureaucrats and unnecessary form filling by our GPs?
Stories told to me by friends about their experiences with the US health system, insurance companies, etc, make our system look sane and efficient in comparison.
Seriously, monkeys on acid could design a better health system than some of the moronic things I've heard. It'll be interesting to see what Michael Moore's Sicko movie has to say and the reaction to it.
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A public low cost/no cost wireless network (& perhaps the odd wireless laptop) for the wards in the public hospitals would be a great way for patients & their families to overcome some of the isolation that occurs at hospitals.... & great way to get some informed advice whilst waiting for a doc ;op
Given that last night Chch hospital admitted that staff shortages in their emergency dept possibly contributed to the death of a patient, I'm not sure if internet access is top of their list of things to spend money on now.
Congrats on the baby. It's all uphill from now, honest.
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What’s your beef about Panama?
Because you've skipped over the bits where the US supported a tyrant (Noriega was a CIA informant) and then jumped in and invaded a country when he became less than convenient.
Like some other country that's in the news a bit recently.
And they reserved the right to invade Panama again to protect their security interests. Which could be translated as 'run your canal the way we want or we'll take over it again'.
But you've rightly reminded me of another reason why the US suddenly finds morals crossing over with foreign policy. We can add 'The Panana Canal' to 'Oil'.
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A big R.E.S.P.E.C.T to the person brave enough to upload a torrent and be the initial seeder for a 78 gig file! They must have one hell of a connection....
There's no need for the upload if you have a server, just cap the file straight to the server. Though seeding out 78GB... that's commitment to 'the cause'.
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I forget who it was who said it, but “the constitution is not a suicide pact”. A very sensible sentiment that covers issues like rendition and robust interrogation quite well.
I watched Road to Guantanamo last night. You're talking out a hole in your head James. Bush's (largely successful so far) attempt to find a space between American law, and international law, to hold these people and treat them worse than dogs is truly horrific. Talk about human rights abuses.
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Isn't there some (highly illegal) system out there that lets you view broadcast TV streams over the net?
Slarty has mentioned torrents. You might also be thinking of a system where someone streams their tv straight to a feed. I've never tried it, and I can't give you a name, but I understand it works quite well. A friend uses it to watch sport that we don't get in NZ, and he says it's fairly clear and works well live. You also get to watch the person at the other end changing channels during ad breaks!
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So let me see, let’s think about countries where the US either imposed its will or stayed around long enough to significantly influence the society. Japan, Germany, South Korea spring to mind, and are three of the most successful countries in the world over the last 60 years since the US began its involvement.
I like this game of "let's name the country". I'll take 'V' for Vietnam, and you can pretty much take your pick of a punch of countries in Central America, but the invasion of Panama and the involvement in Nicaragua come to mind pretty quickly.
And Japan and Germany were pretty successful countries before US involvement. Both have been major players in their regions, economic and military and cultural strengths well into the 19th century, and indeed before. You can't link their current strength and say that it's due to US involvement.