Rostere

I understand that the facts about radiation dangers are hard to comprehend if you lack technical knowledge. Let me just explain some things which are a common source of confusion: Radiation is not the same thing as radioactive materials, and different radioactive materials are not equally dangerous. So, in general (speaking in very loose terms) it's often far less dangerous to be subjected to radiation for a short while than to inhale or digest certain radioactive materials. Certain parts of the body are more vulnerable than others, and the skin is an effective shield against alpha- and even partially against beta-radiation (types of radiation which quickly become dangerous when they're inside of our body). The burgers you all eat at McDonalds are subjected to radiation as a sanitation measure when they're created. Because no long-lived radioactive substances have been transmitted to the burger, it's not dangerous to eat a short while afterwards. So, if they let irradiated water (heavy water) leave Fukushima, I wouldn't be worried at all. But if they let water containing traces of heavier elements present in the reactor out, that's far more serious. Woldan must have meant that the primary radioactive materials (the reactor fuel) was gone, but other lighter decay products and elements which spread more easily (such as Cs-137) would be very abundant in the surrounding area.

Remember, Norway used to be a part of Sweden. The Nobel peace price has been awarded by Norway (not Sweden) since Norway's independence, as a gesture of goodwill from Sweden's side.

Well, I know that saying from Swedish. "Den enes död är den andres bröd".

The point of UHC is efficiency due to collectively ordering and bargaining for everything that the healthcare system needs. The theoretical maximum efficiency of it gets higher the higher population you've got. You are direly mistaken if you think population size is a real problem here. So if size would be a problem, just split UHC up so that each state has a separate system, and combine the programs as you go forward. If Japan has a functioning health care system, having a functioning system in the US is no harder than having a functioning system in two-three Japans, which obviously is no harder than having one of them. Although you must of course note that you must scale up the bureaucracy according to population. I don't think the fact that the US does not have UHC is necessarily the worst problem though. Exactly... Combine a bicameral parliament with a separately elected president, and states which are governed in such a separate fashion and you can be sure you likely won't ever be able to organize a major political reform of any kind, ever. I guess that's what's meant by "checks and balances". I did not refer to "emergency rooms" (as the are known in the US) or government-subsidized medical care. I meant the fact that you are less likely to see a doctor (is it established practice in the US to make routine yearly medical examinations?) if you think the only outcome is that you will walk away with a fat bill. Thus eventually paving the way for eventual emergency surgery when your bad health catches up with you, making the net cost of your healthcare higher. I'm sorry if I was unclear about the more expensive medicine being "bull****", I didn't mean to say I don't believe there are price differences, rather the opposite, that there are completely bizarre and arbitrary price differences. The article you linked to pretty much sums up what I think. Like with the example with Avastin, something has to be really, really bad when a medicine is more expensive in the US than in Switzerland. It's exactly as bizarre as if I would move to ex-USSR Estonia (country with 62% lower PPP) and find out that a Big Mac cost the equivalent of $9.40 (making it the most expensive Big Mac in the world - everything calculated from PPP and a Big Mac index comparison). With analogous reasoning, if the US was to adapt the same health care system as the UK, the drugmaker would sell Avastin at $3552 a month instead of the bat**** crazy, unmotivated $8800 it costs today. And that is without the better deal the US UHC would get due to subsidizing the drug to five times the population. What I'm suggesting is a little bit different than the current situation. What if instead of the pharmacist being able to recommend a lower-price drug, the doctor was obliged to prescript the cheapest drug and the pharmacist could recommend a more expensive one? All of this with the reservations for there being different active substances, et.c.

This seems to be exactly the problem. There is a free market whose main source of income relies on people actually being sick. The end result of that is bound to be that everybody pays for "emergency" healthcare (people usually are willing to pay in order to not die), but seeking preventive care before a disaster happens becomes more expensive, since more people opt out of it. You get to hear a lot of bull**** about stuff like "drugs are more expensive in the US". Of course they are not intrinsically more expensive. If you're a traveled person you will know that the US is generally a very cheap place compared to, say, Norway (as mentioned before). Yet the costs for drugs are generally cheaper or equally expensive over there. The only difference is the bureaucracy you will have to go through in order to obtain your medicine. Obviously, as has been shown by anecdotes in this thread, it's not impossible to find fairly-priced drugs in the US. It's just that a lot of people end up buying expensive drugs (I take the "Lipitor" mentioned before as an example). Why is that? I can only assume that it is because of an imperfect free market - customers are unable to survey the market and make informed decisions of their own. What about requiring doctors by law to prescribe the cheapest alternative by default, unless the patient insists otherwise? Considering how someone must be making insane amounts of money from the current system, I think such a law would never pass Congress, but you can always speculate. I was positive about Obamacare at first, but after learning more about (in the last few months or so) it I'm deeply sceptical. It might very well end up doing more harm than good. The best thing would be to throw out the entire system and start over from scratch. As you say, the laws of economics dictate that waste will increase significantly. Yet nothing has been done to fundamentally change how the system works. But I've really not seen you argue why the US should not just copy/paste the healthcare system in, say, Australia or New Zealand? Things seem to be better in every measurable way over there. And if you disagree (and let's put utopias aside for a minute), which country would you choose as a blueprint for a healthcare system? As long as there is a template to follow, I'm sure reform in the US could be very swift.

Anyway, regardless of how you think this all should be solved, I think there is one thing we all might agree on: healthcare is ridiculously overpriced in the US. And even with its high price, Americans don't live very long lives or get a lot in return. Let's have a look here. You know something is way, way off the rails when you've got higher costs than even Norway and Switzerland. So why don't you just simply copy/paste the system of some other country? New Zealand and Japan seems from the list to be two modern countries with cheap and well-functioning healthcare. Why don't you just send observers over there, see how they get the same thing as you do for less than half the cost and then use their system instead? (That's certainly something I would like to tell the politicians in my own country from time to time...)

The Boko Haram/ Procul Harum discussion reminds me about reading about al-Shabaab referred to as "al-kebab"...

That's really a quality that applies to any fiction, even the fictions we create in our heads every day. It's certainly very vague and applies to almost anything, I'd say it's more of a way to look at hypothetical scenarios. Concerning computer games, Arcanum did this excellently. You assume certain things - for example, fantasy races in an industrial world, and explore what follows logically from those assumptions. Orcs become exploited factory workers and bandits, elves are struggling with the subjugation of nature by technology, lizardmen are being hunted for their hides, dragons were extinct and are displayed as dinosaur skeletons are today, and so on. It had been an easy thing to do to just give an orc some cool steampunk gear and stop there. The interesting stuff is what goes beyond the game mechanics and graphics, how the premises of the game world shape the history and current society in the fictive world.

Simulation is the most important part for me. "What if..." is the most interesting part about fantasy worlds.

It's kind of funny to talk about Warhammer: Total War when we already have SotHR and Dark Omen, games which frankly in my opinion have more interesting battles than the current Total War games. But I guess it's the strategical map that people are after...

I think it's great that the UI guy was a Baldur's Gate fan. I loved that UI. I've still to see a better one, actually.

There are simply some situations that defy logic. I think a third possibility is that Assad's offensive is not going nearly as well as people think it is. He supposedly has total air superiority with fixed wing and helos, ground support from Hezbollah, and Iranian and Russian logistical assets. It's entirely plausible that he resorted to chemical weapons to try to gain a dominant upper hand that he has been unable to achieve prior to this. Plus he gets the added benefit of killing the opposition civilian support base. It's a win-win. I don't know Rostere, but I just find the level of resistance to even the concept that Assad is to blame by people who are clearly very bright totally stupefying. Edit: My apologies - that last bit was over the top. I have to disagree, I do not think there are any situations which defy logic. That said, there are people who act irrationally (consciously against what would be their own interests), or people who are idealists instead of pragmatists, but I don't think Assad himself fits in that camp or that it's the most likely explanation. If you are referring to me when you are talking about "resistance to even the concept that Assad is to blame" remember firstly that I am in general for an intervention. Currently I think that it would be diplomatically impossible, however. Secondly, I made clear the possibility that either side had used chemical weaponry. I am however firm in my belief that I think the attack had the sole purpose to frame the other side (whichever side used it). Clearly Assad had feigned (or so it seems?) chemical attacks on his own troops earlier. I don't need to tell you why it would be in the rebels' interest to make a chemical attack on themselves. However currently the evidence which exists on this attack is insufficient to implicate either side without uncertainty.

The visual style is horrid, 0/10. Plus I'd like the conversation window to be docked to the bottom of the screen.

What is really stupefying to me is why either side chose to use chemical weapons. I'd say either the rebels used chemical weapons in order to make it look like Assad was the culprit, or Assad used chemical weapons to fake being under chemical attack by rebels.

I wonder what Freud would say: http://goo.gl/WURZ3R That you're gay for Putin, it seems. And you too obviously, since you seem so eager to talk about it. Besides, what could possibly more gay than a Space Marine avatar?

I wonder what Freud would say: http://goo.gl/WURZ3R

So... I guess I should feel insulted now? @licketysplit - Jon Stewart should get the peace prize. Let's hold off awarding those peace prizes until something gets accomplished shall we? a few points: 1) Fox News represents one view and is hardly indicative of the entire US media. Their biased rhetoric is legendary and even die hard conservatives have to laugh about some of it. 2) That being said, there is a lot of skepticism (and rightfully so) that Assad and Putin are serious about this and it's not just a stall tactic. 3) The onus is on Assad and Putin to deliver on their "promises" and make this a workable initiative. Assad and Putin do not get to dictate the conditions unilaterally. Not if they expect the US to back off the threats of attack. 4) I think you underestimate what the US public knows about foreign aid disbursements and particularly the major expenditures to Egypt, Israel etc. Those figures are in the news frequently. So was the running tally for the cost of the Iraq war, the running tally in Afghanistan and the cost of Libya. In fact, Libya was a drop in the bucket (<1 bn$) compared to foreign aid (>72 bn$). I don't entirely agree with your characterization of what is "wasted" foreign aid. My own personal "cut list" would be different from yours. Slightly off topic: I have one request: Can you provide a link to support the assertions about poverty and education in the US? My sources don't agree. US poverty was at 15.1% living below the national poverty line which is less than Germany, Belgium, and Japan and only slightly greater than the UK or Denmark. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=69 US Teritary education attainment rates for 25-64 year olds are surpassed by only four countries in the world. In the US, the percentage of parents who have not attained an upper secondary education is smaller in the U.S. than in many OECD countries – 17%, compared to 33% across all OECD countries – the odds that the children of these parents will be in higher education are particularly low, at just 29% (odds of 0.29). These odds are below every other OECD country except Canada and New Zealand. The one area the US is behind in the starting age of education. US enrollment of 4 year olds lags, but our education system is geared to start formal education at age 6. http://www.oecd.org/education/CN%20-%20United%20States.pdf Take a deep breath and try not to read things into my post which I have not tried to say. I don't think Fox News is indicative of US media in general - in fact, when I think about it (if you want to raise the subject), I'd say they're somewhat of an outlier. But I'm really struggling to figure out what made you think I did in the first place, so would you help me out on that? (Just as an anecdote, I would estimate that US media is my primary overall news source, so I can't help the feeling that you've raised a somewhat bizarre accusation) Of course there is scepticism against Putin (to address your points 2) and 3)). My issue with Fox News is that they seem to believe that Putin has "won" over Obama or the US in any way, when facts on the ground remain the same. Putin has revealed the silliness in the exaggerated focus on chemical weapons as a "red line", that is all. Whether or not they go ahead with this plan to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons cache or not changes very little as far as I can see. You're right that I might underestimate the knowledge of the public about the US budget. My personal impressions are solely from editorials in papers, comments on the Internet, forum users such as yourself, and so on. I guess the only thing which could settle the issue is a poll of some kind conducted on US citizens? Nevertheless I find the amount of economically motivated heated discussion going on around the cost of low-cost operations compared to similar high-cost operations disturbing (you mention Libya as an example). Please pay attention when you're replying to my posts - I was strictly discussing military foreign aid and not foreign aid in general. The argument was that there is a rough equivalence between military aid and own military expenses - both represent some sort of projection of military power - added to the previous point about the sometimes irrational focus on certain low-cost expenses over far larger ones. I made the statement that "lots of people are poor and uneducated in the US". I didn't really compare the US to any specific other country, it was meant to represent the argument of the people who want to make use of their tax dollars at home. You're right in that a very high percentage of US have went through tertiary education - saying that "lots of people are uneducated" was a rather pretentious and smug statement in hindsight. Regarding poverty I'm afraid my impression is still that there are "a lot" of poor people in the US, looking at your own data I'm used to countries with a lower poverty ratio (there are lots of different ways of measuring poverty and there seem to be few, if any, consistent worldwide studies, further complicating discussion on this subject). But in any case that is mostly beside the point, I did not mean to misrepresent facts to make the US look bad in comparison to other countries, just to make an example why people might not want to spend their tax dollars on overseas military operations. Since I don't live in the US myself I might have come across as trying to start some sort of silly "which country is the best" contest, which I do not want to engage in.

Around 8:44 about sums up what I'm thinking. I'm not a great chess player, but you must be one lousy chess player! Because it's not good if the chemical weapons are removed, leaving Russia strongarming Eastern Europe, and resurgent in the Mideast when the US is apparently backsliding and impotent. Because Russia is presently under the control of the most rapacious oligarchical kleptocrats in human history. As oby would confirm, if oby was actually Russian, and could remember and be consistent in her spelling and grammatical errors. I'm with BruceVC on this one. Please, you can't possibly believe that the powers that be can't focus both on Syria and Eastern Europe? I frankly don't see how the situation in Syria changes anything, although possibly both situation are symptoms of the same winds of change. But really, you have got to deal with it - the US' part of the global economy has declined since about the end of WW2 and so the time as "the sole global superpower" was bound to end. The ideas that Fox News seems to be spreading (that Russia has somehow outmaneuvered the US) is really quite stupid. That facts on the ground are exactly the same as before. The US can attack Syria on exactly the same premises as before. The fact that Russia (and China?) has been "bizarro-Israeling" Syria is not new, and has not changed recently. The problem is that Obama has been trying to sell the war to the US public as necessitated by Assad's use of chemical weaponry. My own issue with Assad is that he is a dictator slaughtering his own population - I'd support the US in a short, focused effort to destroy his military capabilities from the air and in giving support to democratic resistance movements. But I'm not the one who's paying for all of that. A lot of people in the US are uneducated and very poor, and if the American public wants to spend the money at home instead, I don't think Obama should attack Syria. But then the US is already throwing away billions in military aid to Israel, the Egyptian military, and for many other dubious and wasteful purposes. I guess the argument for going to war against the wishes of the people is that the people have no idea how their tax money is spent anyway, and they won't notice the cost for an intervention in Syria.

I disagree. WWII allowed us to gain the military and technological advances that put us at the top of the food chain. WWII was a whole different story. We were attacked. Prior to that there was not much interest in involving ourselves in what was seen as a purely European affair. But then again nobody really knew Hitler was busy exterminating an entire race either. That might have shifted sentiment if it was known. WWI was a good example of a bad intervention. I could easily make the case they US involvement did nothing for us and may have actually made things worse. Korea and the Gulf War were also good interventions because we were defending an ally from an invasion. Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, now this were all expensive mistakes from which nothing good came on our part. I think the Gulf War was a good intervention, and I do believe American involvement in WW2 had a positive effect on the world. I'm unsure about WW1 - I'm sure I could find points both for and against - but I'm leaning towards saying it was a good intervention. You should check up how South Korea really was during the Korean war. It was a brutal, repressive dictatorship (and to be honest, at the time many people would probably have preferred to have lived in North Korea, global politics aside, very ironic of you compare it to the current situation) on a patch of land with no resources at all to talk about. The intervention in itself was also an atrocity in terms of the use of overwhelming force against civilians (compare Dresden, et.c.). Military leaders on the losing sides of wars have been convicted in international courts for less. The South Korean government might have been "allies" of the US on paper, but really Guard Dog, you have got to have one ounce of moral fiber in your body. You don't "ally" with dictatorships of that kind. You talk about "rights" and the American constitution but you're willing to pay a fortune to save a brutal dictatorship overseas which ****s in the face of those very same "rights" of it's own people? It's pointless to aid a foreign dictatorship when the only outcome is a different flavor of totalitarianism. By the same logic of yours, the US should also have aided Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. You can argue Libya was expensive (although it's a fart in the ocean compared to Iraq or Afghanistan) but the intervention was in my mind perfectly justified, and close to perfectly executed. Libya is today ruled by a democratic government and the future of many Libyan citizens looks much brighter. Remember the protests which took place in Benghazi after terrorists had attacked the American diplomats? I have not seen that amount of sympathy expressed for the USA in any Arab country. You have got to admit that intervention was a service to the world and the "right" thing to do, the only way you can argue against it is that the US shouldn't have paid for so much of it. While certainly true sincere democratic movements tend to get marginalised in wartime, even in the west most of the anti democratic measures that have been taken recently have been dressed up in the rhetoric of war. I'd go back to the Spanish Civil War comparison, where there were plenty of sincere democrats, but they got marginalised by the more extreme groups (Falange/ Fascists; Communists) who had better troops, better training, better support and had the 'moral clarity' to push their vision and ideology against nominal friends as well as enemies. And when it comes to moral clarity the typical hard jihadi makes Generalissimo Francisco Franco look like an all inclusive chardonnay socialist. I'd love to continue the comparison with the Spanish civil war because it helps to prove my point perfectly well! In fact, it's the best historical example I could think of to support my stance. Let's see who received aid, from whom, and how things went down: The Fascists received by far the most foreign military aid - from (Fascist) Italy, and from (Fascist (National Socialist)) Germany. A significant amount of people on this side were various monarchists and the like, who received no direct support from the big Fascist nations and were consequently marginalized within the faction. The Communists received far less, but still somewhat significant aid from the Soviet Union. Compared to the aid sent by Italy and Germany, this aid had many prerequisites - the Soviets wanted to be sure they were supporting people of the exactly same ideology as themselves and were very hesitant to support more centre-left aligned factions, evident in the sizable NKVD staff in Spain (for comparison: Italy sent an army of 100000 men, the Soviets sent 500 men but had over 1000 military ideological advisers present. The rightful democratic government of Spain - nominally Socialist - received close to no direct foreign aid from democratic nations. Eventually the upper leadership were left almost entirely powerless as independent, splintered groups of different left-wing persuasions fought against the Nationalists on their own fronts. Now WHY were the democratic movements marginalized again? Of course because they had ZERO international support. That, and well, that only. The performance of various factions correlates very well with their support from other countries here. Imagine if the US, UK and France had sent the democratic, legitimate government of Spain the same aid the Fascists offered their allies? That would have meant (approximately) an army of over 300000 men and loads of ammunition and equipment. It would have turned the war easily. No, the Spanish civil war was lost only because democratic governments worldwide failed to come to the assistance of the democratic movements in Spain. And it's easy to argue the exact same thing is happening in Syria: democratic governments fail to rally to the side of our ideological allies because we think they are too "mixed up" with Islamists (the parallel between Democratic Socialists/Communists and FSA/Jihadis is almost perfect here). Meanwhile the jihadis get full support from countries of their ideology, marginalizing the other rebels.

I disagree. WWII allowed us to gain the military and technological advances that put us at the top of the food chain. The US has been declining in power (relative to the rest of the world) since about the end of WW2. IIRC the most significant growth in US power (again, relative) took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Didn't see much people here painting things black and white until your post. Evil dictator Assad against sincere freedom loving democratic movement of the FSA and its allies. I was told they'll be organizing a Gay parade in support to their homosexual brothers and sisters on the outskirts of Damascus and al-Nusra is holding a convention up north about religious tolerance. Hope they won't be bombed by Assad's air force or artillery. Oh wait, here is a video from the religious tolerance convention by al-Nusra funded by SA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z61zo1Zpxe4 (I'm sure they're chanting Obama, not Osama) What are you talking about? I know perfectly well which movements exist among the rebels. How am I painting things black and white? By the way, a significant part of the really extreme groups are really foreign jihadis. This has been asserted both by Assad's media and Western journalists. Do you really think that it's possible to get the 'go ahead' from Russia or China? There is no evidence in the world that could convince these countries. Russia - doubtful, China - possible. Really, I am sure there is some concession Obama could make which would get them on his side. This is all under the assumption that the US is not in this to spite Russia's interests in the region.

That entire crazy discussion might feel a little less "out of the blue" if you consider that the issue of a Jewish religious/racial right to the land of Israel/Palestine is what drives most Israeli (Jewish) right-wing parties.

To be honest, like I said earlier, I'm actually for an intervention in Syria. Obama has proven earlier his common sense in military matters during the Libyan civil war (as opposed to the military and financial fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan). I'm all for a similar intervention in Syria. It's just all too bad that he does not seem to actively seek the approval of the UN, in this case Russia and China. Of course there are extremists among the ranks of the rebels. But don't paint things black and white. There are also sincere democratic movements. Regardless of the incident of chemical weaponry, he's a dictator who has been brutally oppressing his own countrymen. Beyond all doubt, destroying Assad's air force and artillery would be a service to Syria's population. The US has but a limit on this operation to 60 days, I think 30 or 40 might be enough. Plus, for Sannom: Qatar is very likely not supporting Sunni extremists, but most likely a movement resembling the FJP from Egypt or Turkey's AKP.

I really don't see the problem with Obama bombing Syrian artillery positions, army airports, and such stuff. Unlike the war in Afghanistan, in Syria there exists very clear military targets. My only worry is that sooner or later the incompetent/lunatic military men will target foreign embassies (like in Serbia) or foreign journalists. Hopefully the civil war will be over by the time they've finished bombing the obvious military targets. In the best case we will get another Libya.

A limited intervention consisting of military strikes from the air, pending approval by congress? Obama: I had my doubts, but turns out you're a very sensible person after all. I hope this turns out something like Libya. Just make sure not to discriminate between Assad's forces and the jihadis (sadly I don't believe that is likely). Public opinion. Nobody would fall today for the argument that "CIA said so". Whether through incompetence or intentional deception, nobody sensible believes anything that comes out of the CIA these days.

I'm with Josh 100% on this one. But of course historical/physical/other real-world knowledge does not matter much if the audience does not know anything. A more believable (or really, internally consistent) setting is always to prefer, but the benefits get increasingly smaller as you approach 100% internal logical inconsistency. Just ignore Gromnir, he's tried to use as an argument both that Star Wars apparently sells and that "William Faulkner might be the greatest American author". He's obviously a troll.