21

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Old video footage of space

« on: September 11, 2017, 08:41:35 PM »

All very interesting and I fear headed away from the original question and premise.  Skylab was a low orbit, temperature controlled, oxygenated environment where the astronauts could easily maneuver around without any of the moon landing equipment on.  Solar charging and stable temperatures means that camera battery life from inside skylab is not an issue.  The skylab film would have been transported only through interior cabins and air locked connection ports.  So all of the film/camera/hand dexterity issues brought up just recently are a moot point for the film in question.  The skylab film can't be explained away by CGI, underwater filming, wires, parabolic flight so....  As far as I can tell it must be real which means we've been in low orbit and could see the convexity of the earth.

Please explain how the skylab film from the first post was faked.  I didn't post a movie of the moon landing and skylab didn't go to the moon so it's irrelevant for the purposes of this conversation.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

22

Science & Alternative Science / Re: What makes one theory better than other?

« on: September 10, 2017, 07:44:07 PM »

If you drop the word theory and replace it with hypothesis, you're basically on track.  Statement #2 is neither hypothesis nor theory as it's not testable or falsifiable.

A theory is formed from a lot of hypothesis testing under a broad series of variables.  Something doesn't move from hypothesis to theory until it has been tested from every different angle that we can image and still be supported by the evidence.  Multiple conflicting hypotheses about a single testable set of variables do not coexist after the test has been made and the falsified ones identified.  They are dismissed as they have been proven false.  Even when a concept has moved from hypothesis to theory, it is never safe from falsification.  As technology advances, new variables are discovered or measurement capabilities are improved, it can always lead to a scenario where the theory is falsified and we move on from there.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Hypothesis_vs_Theory

A belief that is held onto despite falsifying evidence is called a Dogma.  I'll use your flashlight experiment to illustrate.  You're told statement #1 is true and upon breaking the bulb and seeing the absence of fireflies, you continue to state that statement #1 is still true.  It is now officially a dogma, not a hypothesis or theory.  You have falsified the statement through reasonable experimentation yet you haven't dismissed it.  The only way that dogma can go back to being a hypothesis at this point is for someone to develop a new technology that somehow demonstrates that there really are fireflies in the bulb that you couldn't see earlier.  At this point new experiments must be conducted to see if this holds true under a variety of different circumstances like time of day, temperature, day of the month or any other variable that you can dream up which could again falsify your hypothesis.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

23

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Old video footage of space

« on: September 10, 2017, 07:01:30 PM »

One of the nice things about youtube is you can watch at 2x speed. Do so and that footage looks a lot more 'earthly'. Now you have around 22 seconds ... and that could be a parabolic flight.

Take the floor out of a standard 747 and I think you have the size.

Not without removing the structural cross members that end up forming the floors.  Inside of them are trusses much like you would see on a crane, called a space frame.  Try pulling microgravity maneuvers without any of those in your tail section and see how long it takes to rip the fuselage in half.

Anyway, if you want to see what a real microgravity parabolic flight looks like then here.



Notice the interior size is dramatically smaller, the weightlessness isn't uniform during the entire maneuver and there is a steady downward pull towards the floor at even the peak of the parabolic flight path.  These physical phenomena are not seen in the original skylab video.  And for the whole 2x thing, overcranking footage in the 1960's and 1970's would have run out of actual storage media long before the length of videos they routinely recorded and posted for the public.  Magnetic video storage of the day just didn't have the capacity to produce the lengths of slow motion film needed for that explanation to work.  Today?  Sure, you could fake it.  Back then, not even with state of the art videography equipment.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

24

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 10, 2017, 05:35:39 PM »

Hospitals don't maintain warehouses nor do they produce any products.  The fact that they have the upper hand in bargaining with insurance companies has to do with service supply not product supply.  Essentially many regional hospital networks border on monopolies.  The official economics term is an oligopoly.  Services don't get stored nor do they expire.  As such step production limitations don't apply the same way.  To increase services, you must the increase variable costs of labor.  To increase products, you have incremental step upgrades to the existing manufacturing infrastructure.  Because the hospitals have the better bargaining position, they get to inflate the overall costs of healthcare through their power of collective bargaining.  In a single payer system, the roles are reversed.  You're conflating the two bargaining points in a 3 point delivery system.  1st bargaining step is pharmaceutical manufacturer/hospital, the second is hospital/insurance.  You're talking about the first one in a single payer world, I'm talking about the second one.  The second one is where hospitals charge insurance companies $300 per bag of IV saline after paying roughly $1 per bag in the first one.

Starting a small saline company in the US would not be easy.  There is a powerful lobby group that suppresses competition in the industry of pharmaceuticals.  It would be on the order of starting up a new cell phone carrier or cable company.  Starting a new pharmaceutical manufacturing entity could be done with a lot of financial backing, but you would need to have patents on medication formulas already in place and probably some already in 1st stage FDA approvals to even attempt to solicit investors.  There's a reason that pharmaceutical manufacturers don't ever make a single product.  They have to be manufacturing giants in order to compete within their own industry.  You're suggesting a business model that can't exist in the US.  You can't start a home saline business out of your garage.  You're not a licensed medical entity or pharmaceutical manufacturer.  I'm simply stating that the "shortage" is artificial, not real and it's expressly due to widespread corporate greed in both the manufacturers and hospitals.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

25

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 10, 2017, 02:32:36 PM »

That's the thing about volume that many seem to miss.  The unit cost of production goes down when you increase volume.  This means that overall profit margins increase.  It's the primary motivating force behind the standardization of almost all manufacturing methods.  From cars to tv's to medications.  Highest volume possible for the lowest amount of minimally skilled people you can squeak by with.  It's the Henry Ford model and it built industrialized America, then abandoned it for China and India because human costs are lower and environmental protections are almost nonexistent.  New factories are not needed for step production increases and saline can produced on demand on site with minimal equipment.  With nothing more than a high school chemistry set, oven, glass IV bottle, basic surgical tubing and needles you could create sterilized IV saline solutions in a home.  I wouldn't recommend it though.

You also are missing the point of collective bargaining and its impact on market forces.  Today, some large hospital networks have the bargaining power in the provider/insurance market.  This means that they have the ability to demand higher payments which ultimately come from the patients.  No difference in service compared to their smaller cousins, just better bargaining position.  In a single payer system, the insurer has the power in that bargaining process which means that hospitals can bill any amount they want to the insurance company, they just won't get it.  In a single payer system, there are no uninsured so there is no way to over bill patients and there are no uncovered losses to make up either.  As a whole, this places market pressure on the providers to become more efficient in delivering healthcare services.  You can charge $20 to hook up an IV or $2 million but you'll receive whatever payment the single insurance company is willing to pay and every one of your patients is covered by that insurance company.  Now it's on you as the service provider to figure out exactly what your unit service costs are determine the best way to provide that service within an acceptable profit margin.  That in turn places market pressure on pharmaceutical companies to keep manufacturing costs in check.

It's worth noting that during this supposed evaluation of how to provide saline in 2015, Baxter's financial performance was so good that it had a stock split.  It's fun for corporations in America to cry poor me to the press when they're posting record breaking profits.  It's all a theater to mask full on corporate greed.  That FDA labelling of saline as a national shortage was, I'm relatively sure, paid for in lobbying funds.  It's just a polite way to say bribes to federal officials.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

26

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Dome

« on: September 10, 2017, 02:08:19 PM »

I didn't search back old threads when I joined but dang, you guys don't get out much.

We may be down to only a couple % of people that actually have read and understand the Bible.

One Nation under God...nope, they don't know him.

Perhaps because the phrase "under God" wasn't added until 1954.  The US was founded on the principle of freedom of religion.  As in the freedom to practice whatever your religion is without official state sanction.  The founding fathers also expressly forbid the creation of an official state religion.  Not all denominations of Christianity take the Bible as a literal historical document or direct wording from the mouth of God.  Some believe that it is more allegorical in nature and used as a teaching tool not unlike how we use children's books.

Just a little historical context as to why perhaps not all FE supporters use scripture as a literal description of the shape of the earth for things like the presence or absence of a dome.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

27

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Old video footage of space

« on: September 10, 2017, 01:48:30 PM »

The video that you are criticizing was not presented as evidence and was not part of the initial question.  My questions were specific to footage on page one from skylab in the 1970's.  I would be happy to hear your rebuttals on that video.  The one you are making a critique of was supplied by a FE supporter in an effort to dismiss all video evidence as faked without actually explaining the physical phenomena demonstrated in the video that I posted initially.  Ad Hominem attacks against NASA will not explain the weightless acrobatics demonstrated in the skylab video.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

28

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 10, 2017, 07:21:49 AM »

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-baxter-saline-investigation-0415-biz-20170414-story.html

Artificial shortage to increase profit margins and potential violations of Federal antitrust laws.  It's cheap to make, easy to transport and can actually be made on site by any hospital with basic compounding equipment.  Creating an artificial shortage allows them to justify a 300% price hike.  There's a revolving door between the FDA and big business that would be less effective with collective bargaining.

Just cause it's published in a magazine doesn't mean it's acceptable at face value.  If you want to believe De Beers, diamonds are a rare and extremely valuable gemstone even though they weren't until De Beers bought up almost all of the mines to control the supply and launched the most successful advertising campaign of modern media.  Fake markets result in fake prices.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

29

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Antarctic 24-hour sun cycle

« on: September 10, 2017, 07:07:36 AM »

And now it looks to me like Tom and others are beginning to concede the point that the South Pole definitely has similar daylight traits as the North Pole... thus the search for a new map model must begin in earnest.

If you read the Flat Earth literature works the bi-polar model (not that specific map, however) has been around since at least 1918, and is said to have been created immediately after the South Pole was discovered as to include that new data into an updated Flat Earth model. Read the book "The Sea-Earth Globe and its Monstrous Hypothetical Motions" by Zetetes. The concept of a South Pole has been accepted in the society since there was a South Pole. It is not some new thing.

I'm genuinely curious about this.  Has the FE community conducted any substantial experiments or produced any substantial writings since the discovery of the atomic bomb?  Is the Bishop experiment the only accomplishment of the community since the cold war?  New data is gathered and examined daily in modern science, surely there must be something.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

30

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is an experimental result that would convince you the Earth is a globe?

« on: September 10, 2017, 06:52:38 AM »

Well, my knee jerk reaction would be to tell you that they aren't likely to provide you with an honest answer.  From my limited observation, they seem intent on not having a testable hypothesis scenario because they're afraid of what will happen when the data comes in.  It's much safer to attempt to throw shade on any data that the rest of us supply and when out of other options, claim some magic variable that no one can measure is critically important in explaining why the round earth support data is woefully wrong.  I would love to see an honest answer from the flat Earth community to your question, however, I would recommend that you don't hold your breath.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

31

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 10, 2017, 06:40:08 AM »

You also need to factor in things like supply and demand.
IV saline solution is expensive because alot of companies said "Yeah... let's not sell this cause it's not making enough money" so there is a shortage of those.  Not to mention all the requirements for producing it. (sterilization and such)

Plus medical school.  Alot of these other nations have better student loan programs.  Also, lawsuits.  The USA is lawsuit city.  If a doctor makes a mistake, even if it's minor and not permanent, people have sued.  Some are frivolous and thrown out, others are not.  Either way, an insurance company covers the legal fees.  This is unheard of in other nations.  Also, other nations also subsidize procedures so it helps.

In the end, the problem, when it gets right down to it, is that people are dicks.

There isn't a shortage of saline and current costs are under $1 per unit.  The same mechanism applies to otc meds,  crutches, bandages and anything else that can be unbundled to increase reimbursements.  Unbundled charges are a creative way of transferring costs, nothing more.

Sure lawsuits play a role, but that can't be factored into the cost per procedure because the risk ratios are too complicated to calculate.  That's why we don't have any comprehensive lists for any chronic disease risk factors either.

Perhaps if everyone in the US agreed that we are all in this together and that we are stronger United than divided, we could stop being dicks to each other so much.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

32

Flat Earth Theory / Re: FE model evidence

« on: September 09, 2017, 04:14:53 PM »

Here's an example.  In the 100 proofs comes this little pearl of wisdom "If the Earth were a globe, a small model globe would be the very best - because the truest - thing for the. navigator to take to sea with him. But such a thing as that is not known: with such a toy as a guide, the mariner would wreck his ship, of a certainty!, This is a proof that Earth is not a globe."  Let me sum up the ignorance of this proof.  You need a scale to measure accurately and the scale would be far too small for a toy globe to be practical for anything.  That is why a ship carried multiple map of differing scales so that detail could be seen and measured.

Here's my rebuttal:  If the earth were a flat plane, there would be no distortion when mapped out on a flat piece of paper.  But such a thing is has never been seen and no navigator of any vessel would be foolish enough to travel using the FE map models in the wiki.  That ios proof that the earth cannot be flat.

Yeah - the "100 proofs" thing is a joke.  I was thinking of writing a piece debunking every one of them and calling it "100 debunks" - but my fingers are getting a little arthritic after 40 years of sitting in front of a computer typing - and it just didn't seem worth the pain involved!

If mariners were using flat maps to navigate by because they were more accurate than a globe - then how come we can't just use their maps to establish, once and for all, the map of the Flat Earth - something that Tom Bishop insists is completely unknown to them.

The reason that mariners DON'T take a globe along is that they need 1:1,000 scale maps - and keeping an 8 meter (26') diameter ball in the captains cabin of a small sailing ship is just a teensy bit less convenient than a drawer full of flat bits of paper.

Whoever wrote the 100 disproofs document was clearly a complete idiot and had never in his entire life even so much as glanced at a maritime navigation map.   Such maps go to great pains to explain what map projection they are using to get from a sphere to a flat map - and to point out the distortions that arise from that.  These AREN'T maps that assume that the earth is flat...they are drawn on the assumption that it's round.

If the idea that ship's captains don't use a sphere to navigate by is a "proof" of Flat Earthism - then I'm afraid I have to say that the fact that they use maps that are "projected" from a sphere is clear proof that the Earth ISN'T flat.

If you've ever looked at such large scale navigation maps (my father had a collection of all of the aviation maps of East Africa from when he flew for the Flying Doctor service there) - the first thing you notice is that if you try to line up their edges to make one big map - they don't fit together properly...and that's because each one is a flat projection of a sphere and the only way to put them together so that the edges match is to glue them onto a 24' diameter ball!

The 100 proofs thing is an embarrassment - and even the most ardent FE'ers should be able to admit that at least half of it's ridiculous criticisms are junk...they don't even agree with current FE theories.

I think that the underlying problem here is that the FE model isn't based in any science at all.  The claim that it can be demonstrated empirically through experimentation has produced nothing substantial.  It only works in the context of religion or literary fantasy, both I'm ok with as long as the FE community drops the science facade.  There is no empirical flat earth evidence, just assertion.  What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.  It's like having an argument over who has the better imaginary friend.

If there is actual empirical evidence that is missing from the wiki that supports the FE model, please point me to it.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

33

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 09, 2017, 04:01:45 PM »

There's distinct financial incentives for the hospitals, medical associations and physicians to make excessive testing the standard of care.  Ever wonder why you had to have an X-ray before an MRI even when the issue in question would never show up on X-ray? Insurance companies in the US are still regulated by state and federal agencies which include the responsibility to pay for "medically necessary" tests and interventions. Medical necessity is established by peer reviewed research the funding of which is regulated most heavily by the federal government. All of the for profit interest groups representing the pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals, DME suppliers etc all spend heavily to ensure that the fed declares their incentivized testing and treatment procedures as "medically necessary" then double down and sponsor researchers and medical school textbooks that essentially teach new physicians the same thing.

Ever wonder why it's ok for a physician to prescribe a medication off label (for a non FDA approved symptom or diagnosis) and not have it labeled as experimental procedure even though that's exactly what it is?

I have never wondered or experienced anything of what you described.

I never said America wanted universal healthcare, merely that as a whole it would be healthier at a lower annual cost.

Nope.
It would cost more. Know why?  Because right now some people get no medical care.  When you add them in, costs go up.  Some negotiating will happen but largely, it'll be unchanged for a while.  Only after a generation, when most of the lingering medical problems are treated or being dealt with will the prices go down as people get treated sooner (and this avoid more expensive treatments later)


But the end cost is still gonna be higher.  Maybe not for individual services but overall.

As to where our collective tax dollars are spent, perhaps we should ask politicians to justify unnecessary expenditures in much larger budgets before issuing a blanket statement that we can't afford a universal healthcare system.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

Vet health care takes a big chunk of that defense budget.  Just fyi.

Vet health care wouldn't be so expensive if we stopped invading other countries or occupying them indefinitely.  Just FYI.  Probability dictates that the longer you are placed at higher risk of severe injury, the more likely you are to experience it.

You are right that some people don't get medical care and they die untreated.  Other people get medical care and don't pay for it because they are medically indigent.  Those people significantly drive up healthcare costs for those that do have health insurance because they only receive emergency medical care when a small problem has progressed into a larger and more expensive problem.  Those high costs are passed on to the insured populations by jacking up the charges for incidental items like saline.  An IV bag of salt water shouldn't cost over $300, but it does because, if you have insurance, you pay for healthcare expenses of the uninsured that didn't die.

In the end costs should not be higher per person or as a whole as is shown in all the available data we currently have to pull from.  No other country in the world pays more per capita on healthcare than the US.  Single payer systems pay less per capita per year and achieve better results.  Collective bargaining is a powerful check on costs.  Compare the price in USD for a simple MRI in the US vs any other single payer first world nation.  Good luck even finding out the cost of an MRI in the US without having it done and billed first.  That's not regularly shared information.  In other countries, the costs for the procedure are much lower because it's not cutting edge technology.  The equipment has already paid for itself and no longer needs to command a high price per procedure.  As a result, hospitals are not allowed to dramatically inflate the costs to cover losses elsewhere.

You may not have ever been given an off label prescription, but there's a good chance that you have and didn't know it ever happened because doctor's don't have to tell you when they do it, why they are doing it and you'll never see a difference in price when you pick it up at the pharmacy.  That's the power of one large company (pharmaceutical manufacturer) negotiating against several smaller companies (insurance carriers) instead of 2 large companies negotiating.  The power of collective bargaining.

Largely the healthcare argument boils down to Americans not really liking other Americans that they don't personally know.  It's a general attitude of greed or selfishness.  It's no great surprise that the UK single payer system was formed immediately after WWII when the whole country was united in solidarity to rebuild their communities and country.  That's when a concept like universal healthcare makes sense because the overwhelming majority of the country was united.  The US is anything but united right now which makes our name rather ironic.  The US didn't feel the same after WWII either because, by and large, there was almost nothing to rebuild after the war.  Other than Pearl Harbor, there were no attacks or bombings on American soil during WWII so there wasn't a feeling of solidarity after the war was won.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

34

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Using airline flight data.

« on: September 09, 2017, 03:31:41 PM »

No Tom,

In transportation distance matters as well.  Mileage is needed to ensure you don't run out of fuel and die.  Using the round earth coordinates to traverse both halves of the world or in your model both hemiplanes has yet to cause a large number of flights or ships to suddenly run out of fuel mid trip.

They would have known from previous trips and assessments of the Round Earth lat/lon readings how much fuel they would need to bring for xxx Round Earth miles.

If you travel 300 miles on a road trip, according to your GPS, and your tank is half empty you have an idea on how much fuel you need.

The miles of cabling that run under the ocean to connect the continents and create "the internet" had to be physically made and laid.  As did all of the continental cabling that connects California to New York, Paris to Krakow etc.  These are physical lengths of cabling that had to be manufactured and placed along carefully measured routes that just so happen, in your opinion, to match up perfectly with the Lat/long coordinates.

How do you know their methodology?

To answer your second question, because they had to apply for permits in all municipalities in order to establish the cabling lines in the first place.  When installing public infrastructure along roadways, each local government requires zoning approval in the form of schematics, materials properties, engineering assessments, environmental assessments etc which are all kept on public record.  When crossing national borders, the permitting process becomes even more complicated.  Ever wonder why road crews spend a lot of time with surveying equipment prior to a major road overhaul?  It's because in the event that they hit the buried cabling, water lines or gas lines bad things happen.  They have to accurately measure the roads and compare their measurements to the building permits on file to ensure that they don't blow up a city block or create a 2 foot high geyser or you know get any of their employees killed.  Almost all of the time, they're successful at this endeavor, so...

To address your first rebuttal.  Eh, no.  That's not how long distance air travel works.  When a new airplane design is created, they don't just load it up with people, launch it and hope no one dies along their maiden voyage so that they can track how much fuel they used for future flights.  It's not like running out of gas in a car where you can pull off the side of the road and wait for AAA to come by with a gas can.  An airplane would crash, people would die and most likely that company would be sued for wrongful deaths by family members of every passenger probably leading to bankruptcy.  Being as how this doesn't happen routinely, it's safe to conclude that they take distances based on the RE coordinate system, projected fuel performance as established during the design and modeling process and reasonable margins of error to ensure that they don't run out of fuel half way there.

You sound like you're getting desperate Tom.  Your arguments don't even make any sense anymore and you're purposefully avoiding discussing the real points of the argument.

Distance is measured, time is measured, speed is defined by those 2 measurements and can be measured as well.  When you know 2, you can solve for the 3rd.  Round earth model coordinate systems have routinely delivered people to their destinations for a long time.  The FE model doesn't even have an accurate measurable map to test navigation with. 

If the earth were truly flat, it would be simple to create a flat map with no distortion that accurately measures all of the continents and oceans.  This map doesn't exist, therefor reductio ad absurdum the earth can't possibly be flat.  Done.

Thank you,

Critical Thinker

35

Flat Earth Theory / Re: FE model evidence

« on: September 09, 2017, 02:23:40 PM »

So, no rebuttal to my previous methodological issues with the Bishop experiment or general lack of evidence for a flat earth?  Any long distance 2 point visual exercise in attempting to see drop off can be dismissed as flawed experiments because they don't measure several variables if the initial assumption is truly that the earth is round.  In order to address confounding factors many data points would have to be collected but they just aren't in any of these experiments.  The 100 proofs are utter verbal nonsense and a wordy rebuttal could be made for every one of them.

Here's an example.  In the 100 proofs comes this little pearl of wisdom "If the Earth were a globe, a small model globe would be the very best - because the truest - thing for the. navigator to take to sea with him. But such a thing as that is not known: with such a toy as a guide, the mariner would wreck his ship, of a certainty!, This is a proof that Earth is not a globe."  Let me sum up the ignorance of this proof.  You need a scale to measure accurately and the scale would be far too small for a toy globe to be practical for anything.  That is why a ship carried multiple map of differing scales so that detail could be seen and measured.

Here's my rebuttal:  If the earth were a flat plane, there would be no distortion when mapped out on a flat piece of paper.  But such a thing is has never been seen and no navigator of any vessel would be foolish enough to travel using the FE map models in the wiki.  That ios proof that the earth cannot be flat.

There you go.  The FE model lacks any empirical evidence of any kind.  Unless there is something missing from your wiki that has real experiments then the FE model is based on pure fantasy.

Thank you,

Critical Thinker

36

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Using airline flight data.

« on: September 01, 2017, 07:35:50 PM »

I'm not talking about the coordinate devices one bit. I'm talking about surveyor distances, that thing all maps are based on. 1 mile = 5280 feet. This is true for every surveying method, even triangulation.

You will need to show that the lat/lon system matches up to 1 mile = 5280 feet in the real world, not just insist that it does.

Tom,

You don't seem to be following the history of map making very well so let me explain.  No there is too much, let me sum up.  At one point it was commonly believed that the earth was flat.  Then we started measuring things with other things like feet, inches, meters.  Then we argued about which method of measurement was superior.  Then we finally agreed to standardize measurements in general so that we all knew that we were measuring the same things the same way.  By this time, we had measured all of the measurable things on land and tried to make them fit on a flat piece of paper, sailed around the world a few times without falling off the edge or stubbing our toes on a gigantic ice wall and figured that all of the problems we were having drawing our maps on a flat piece of paper might just go away if we drew them on a round thingy instead.  At that point, measurements around the round thingy matched all those things we measured with other things earlier and we all lived happily ever after yelling at Garmin for telling us 10 times that we needed top turn eventually only to recalculate because we went under some heavy branches overhead on a cloudy day and hadn't bothered to actually look for the turn in the road we knew about 10 minutes earlier.

Does that make more sense Tom?

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

37

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 01, 2017, 06:13:19 PM »

3 of which are possible for a lower cost in a single payer system.  In a single payer system everyone has insurance and all providers accept that insurance which makes coverage and access to providers more attainable.  Better access to pediatricians and birth control counseling can lower teen pregnancy rates.  In the US the states with abstinence only sex ed programs or, even worse, no sex ed programs have the highest rates of teen pregnancy.  Teens when educated on the proper use of contraceptives and family planning are able to significantly reduce teen pregnancy rates across socioeconomic strata.

Infant mortality, substance abuse and untreated mental health diseases are much more prevalent among the working poor in the US.  Those that cannot afford commercial health insurance or can't afford to use it in our current system.

Instead of asking who should pay for the $300+ bag of salt water, we should ask why any hospital is able to charge $300+ for a bag of salt water that cost them $1.  They do it to cover the costs of providing health care services to the uninsured or under-insured.  If everyone is ensured with one insurance company, they again have greater collective bargaining and we could even start to change the profit incentive for our healthcare system as a whole.

Right now we reward more tests and procedures not better outcomes.  If physicians were instead graded on markers of healthy life expectancy, instead of how many prescriptions they write out and how many blood draws they order, maybe we could get some bang for our buck.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

But America doesn't WANT that.  They WANT "those people" to suffer or figure it out themselves.  It really isn't about what's better.  I mean, you always have trade-offs.  For profit system means faster services (usually).  But some are excluded.  Single payer means everyone gets health care but it's usually slower because they can't afford literally everyone to have great care at quick times.

And in America, a New Yorker would rather have care himself and NOT pay for some guy in Texas whose probably a Republican anyway.
And in Texas, those ranchers don't want their hard earned money going to free loading liberals in California who are just mooching anyway.

And we do not reward more tests and procedures.  We reward less tests and procedures and more paperwork.  Insurance companies want just enough tests to say "Yes, this is what's wrong, we don't have to pay for anything else" but not so many that they pay more than they need to.  It's a balancing game with paperwork at the focal point.  Justify why you need this test and we'll pay for it.... eventually.  Probably.

There's distinct financial incentives for the hospitals, medical associations and physicians to make excessive testing the standard of care.  Ever wonder why you had to have an X-ray before an MRI even when the issue in question would never show up on X-ray? Insurance companies in the US are still regulated by state and federal agencies which include the responsibility to pay for "medically necessary" tests and interventions. Medical necessity is established by peer reviewed research the funding of which is regulated most heavily by the federal government. All of the for profit interest groups representing the pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals, DME suppliers etc all spend heavily to ensure that the fed declares their incentivized testing and treatment procedures as "medically necessary" then double down and sponsor researchers and medical school textbooks that essentially teach new physicians the same thing.

Ever wonder why it's ok for a physician to prescribe a medication off label (for a non FDA approved symptom or diagnosis) and not have it labeled as experimental procedure even though that's exactly what it is?

I never said America wanted universal healthcare, merely that as a whole it would be healthier at a lower annual cost.

As to where our collective tax dollars are spent, perhaps we should ask politicians to justify unnecessary expenditures in much larger budgets before issuing a blanket statement that we can't afford a universal healthcare system.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

38

Flat Earth Theory / Re: FE model evidence

« on: September 01, 2017, 05:58:08 PM »

Please provide proof that your distance measurements are consistent on both a flat earth and round earth.  You either invalidate distance for your own experiment or validate it for the geology proof in the Airline data thread.  I'm ok with either.

Neither of these needs to happen. The Bishop Experiment is a sound disproof of the Round Earth Theory (which can, but doesn't have to, serve as evidence of the Flat Earth Theory). Effectively, it's a reductio ad absurdum - you take Round Earth assumptions (distances, extent of curvature) for granted, combine it with observational evidence (you can clearly see something that should be obscured by the curvature, if the assumptions were true), and you arrive at an absurd conclusion. Therefore, either the assumptions or the observation was incorrect. Since Google Earth's images support the observation, we know it was the assumptions that failed.

So no, assuming RE distances for this experiment has no weigh on your qualms with how distances work on FE. That is completely off-topic for this subject.

The data points, calculations and conclusions only work in the Bishop experiment in the event that the earth is flat and Tom has repeatedly insisted that Lat/Long can't be accepted as accurate on a flat earth. This negates the accuracy of one of the only measurements taken during his experiment.

On a round earth, atmospheric refraction can very easily explain one of the methodological issues in the Bishop experiment yet they were not measured in any way. Secondly, the Bishop experiment confuses drop off with central bulge height and in the event that the earth really is round, fails to use a centrally located vertical to measure against two known height uprights at both terminal locations to check for a convexity. He then further confounds his empirical evidence by failing to make the same observation in both directions. On a round earth, the experiment is incapable of accurately detecting a convexity over distance under the conditions described and as such doesn't work in a reductio ad absurdum proof either.  It fails to reduce out multiple variables that would still be present under a round earth assumption.

I do believe that this falls under the initial point of my discussion as I requested empirical evidence to support FE theory. Calling the validity of one of the proofs into question should still be on topic. However, I did have to reference other assertions made by the author of the proof in other works to provide proper frame of reference. How can I trust measurements taken by an observer that doesn't actually think the tool used is accurate?

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

39

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Republican Health Care Bill

« on: September 01, 2017, 03:55:09 PM »

We are at a point where the only reasonable way for the government to rein in the rampant corruption in the medical industry is to join most of the rest of the civilized world and give its people universal healthcare.

"But Roundy, governments are so more corrupt than private companies so we'd only have higher medical costs and less services!"

That's not what has been demonstrated in all of the other wealthy industrialized nations of the world (flat or round).  Their governments are able to outperform us in total life expectancy and infant mortality for significantly less per capita expenditures.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

Eh, yes and no.  Most of those countries have very different laws and social norms.
Like lawsuits.  Super common in the US, less so elsewhere so malpractice insurance isn't as bad, if at all.


Also, the companies have deals with drug makers.
And they also usually have fewer doctors.


Finally: America is 'Me First' and does not like thinking every American is worth helping.

One of the benefits of having a single payer system is collective bargaining power with pharmaceutical manufacturers.  It's no great secret that Medicare gets a better deal than a small regional health insurance.  Many of the lifestyle factors associated with total healthy life expectancy can be directly influenced by access to routine primary care which lowers the effects of malpractice claims.  Most malpractice claims boil down to informed consent and whether communication between provider and patient was accurately recorded.  In most cases, gross negligence is too hard to prove and documentation errors are used in lieu as evidence of "not meeting the accepted standards of care."  Infant mortality is the real tell tale factor that we should look at.  For a nation that doesn't have any wars on our soil, you would think that we would perform better than this.  50% higher than Canada & UK, 2-3x higher than many other European countries and just barely better than Slovakia.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

Infant mortality has more than one cause.  Great medical care helps, lower drug use, post teen pregnancies, and medical insurance.

3 of which are possible for a lower cost in a single payer system.  In a single payer system everyone has insurance and all providers accept that insurance which makes coverage and access to providers more attainable.  Better access to pediatricians and birth control counseling can lower teen pregnancy rates.  In the US the states with abstinence only sex ed programs or, even worse, no sex ed programs have the highest rates of teen pregnancy.  Teens when educated on the proper use of contraceptives and family planning are able to significantly reduce teen pregnancy rates across socioeconomic strata.

Infant mortality, substance abuse and untreated mental health diseases are much more prevalent among the working poor in the US.  Those that cannot afford commercial health insurance or can't afford to use it in our current system.

Instead of asking who should pay for the $300+ bag of salt water, we should ask why any hospital is able to charge $300+ for a bag of salt water that cost them $1.  They do it to cover the costs of providing health care services to the uninsured or under-insured.  If everyone is ensured with one insurance company, they again have greater collective bargaining and we could even start to change the profit incentive for our healthcare system as a whole.

Right now we reward more tests and procedures not better outcomes.  If physicians were instead graded on markers of healthy life expectancy, instead of how many prescriptions they write out and how many blood draws they order, maybe we could get some bang for our buck.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker

40

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Old video footage of space

« on: September 01, 2017, 03:42:22 PM »

For me, the most damning video evidence that it is all a hoax, comes from NASA.



I can't see how anyone can look at that and say it is real (2 mins 50+)

Doesn't explain the physical phenomena seen in the Space Lab video.  Please show how they faked that specific video.  Other assertions of it's all fake fail to explain the weightless environment, lack of high velocity air displacement as posited by J-man, increased resistance preventing rapid acceleration from being under water, the complex 3d acrobatics which would have made the last part of the video impossible to accomplish with wire suspension systems and the complete inability to use photo real CGI in 1974.

Thank you,

CriticalThinker