birdog1960

um, no. canadian med school applicants generally have a less than 10% success rate at finding a spot despite a socialized system that pays doctors significantly less on average than the us.http://en.wikipedia....chool_in_Canada. pretty sure it's still very competitive in great britain also. but in a way you may be somewhat correct. the changes may in fact decrease the number of applicants considering careers in medicine versus finance or law. and that might be a good thing. i'm convinced there are plenty of excellent candidates that just want to be doctors. yep. uk, too.http://www.themsag.com/medical-school-statistics/cat_13.html

agreed. we all pleasure seek. plenty of science to support that: rats starving for an endorphin buzz and such.but does the agribiz and restaraunt industry have to exploit it so aggressively? just check out kessler's thesis in the book i cited. there are food scientists targeting brain pleasure centers to sell more blooming onions and the like. and there damn good at it. and it works.so what is the solution? one possible countermove is to tax unhealthy foods, especially these designer foods. this makes them less attractive to produce and consume. just like cigarettes. but i'm sure this will be summarily dismissed by much of the rest of the board.

the loss of diversity in plant food sources is what worries me. it's akin to purposefully limiting drug companies to making a few antibiotics. what happens if, despite the genetic engineering, a mutant plant virus makes one of the major soy species useless?

some underappreciated consequences of huge american agribusiness: http://nationalfork.com/companies-like-monsanto-destroy-world-agriculture/

anybody that thinks we have top 10 coaches probably also thinks we have a top 10 qb. and even having those = playoffs not necessarily sb. we have neither. we have enough to squeak by the bad teams.

you might want to reconsider http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/legal-topics/regulatory-compliance-topics/health-care-fraud-abuse/professional-courtesy-in-context-health-care.page or at least not make public that you do it fro referring docs.

does anybody still do that? professional courtesy? talk about an example of giving to those not in need. and you give free general anesthesia to colleagues? or is it just the office based docs that are expected to write off their care?

an excellent reference source on the subject from a former fda commisioner: http://www.amazon.co...d kessler books probably won't surprise anyone that i see this guy as a hero and truthspeaker.

fruits and vegetables. i'm serious about local being the answer. imagine the costs decreasing if local growers were used by a sizable portion of the population. people are eating fruit from south america everyday in the summer and fall while local is readilty available. we've become accustomed to unspotted apples anf "perfect' lettuce. nithing else will do enev if it's actually better. and make no mistake. this was be design. americans are always lured to more attractive things even if they're likely to hurt. there told to every day by advertising on every pstime available.

glad you got your roughage. have a nice dump. but sf is not everywhere. i agree. there's room for much better choices. not only from the poor but of the overweight execs i see. and from me and i suspect, at times, you. but the food industry (agibusiness) could help out a great deal by producing healthier foods at lower cost. there's much less profit margin in carrots than engineered corn. and much of that is the gov't doing. anybody know who said we're doomed when we grow to feed the machines? always makes me think of "terminator".

this is very true. but tar paper shacks and rusted single wides excluded, people can become much more self sufficient. nevertheless, provisions are needed for the aforementioned. and that's up to we, the people. also, it's interesting to consider the food sources available to the urban poor. much lower quality at much higher cost. hillary clinton brought this to light during her campaign. no money and bad possible food choices at high cost = diabetes, heart disease, obesity, hypertension, gout, hyperlipidemia, early death and, most important to the cons, high health care costs. you won't find a whole foods in urban poor neighborhoods. mostly glorified mini marts. better stores are just not profitable there. but there's always community gardens, pie in the sky? not really. pilot programs have been successful. but look at the guff michelle obama gets for planting the seed.

they take wic and food stamps at our farmers market. cue the negative comments about takers.

not really. grow your own. can. freeze. go to the farmers market when it's open. i'm sure i'll be accused of being a hippie but it's doable. we just finished our fresh tomatoes from the garde but have lots canned and frozen,. and guess what? they're way better than anything you'll get at the supermarket. still have plenty of home grown squash, beets and potatoes. funny thing is, supermarket food is kinda like ambien or prilosec. once ya start ya don't think you can do with out it. example: supermarket beef tastes better to me than grass fed i can get from my neighbors for way more money. lamb is just as good or better locally. same with pork. milk? ever had raw milk. yuk! to get it, we had to buy a share in a milk cow (my wife makes cheese from it). that's how screwed up the system is though. if you want it you have to jump through hoops. to protect the corporate farmer. btw, local eggs here are miles better than the supermarket (orange, tasty yolks) and only cost a bit more. edit. ill also add that you don't need a ton of space. a pressed wood raised bed 3.5 x 7 ft filled with miracle grow soil will produce amazing results in a decent spot.

yet we subsidize corn to make fructose corn syrup and expensive ethanol for fuel, as a form of corporate welfare for the likes of archer daniels midland and cargill. why not subsidize local growers and farmers markets, if we're going to subsidize at all? healthier food and less fuel to ship. makes too much sense and doesn't benefit big business.

no question that racism is still around. i was heartened however, by the response to a scheduled public kkk rally in a small city here in rural virginia last year. they were greatly outnumbered by disapproving regular folks and while protected by police, their gathering didn't go very well (fortunately, there was no violence, just lots of cries of "shame"). for people to deny the existence of racism is to deny the existence of hate groups. check out the southern poverty law center map sometime.i did see an edition of a romney sign with a silhoutte of obama with much more pronounced african features than he actually has. the meaning was not subtle.

sheltered? you mean from medicaid patients and the uninsured? uncontrolled, untreated chronic disease is rarely romantic, i assure you.

and you're the judge of who is worthless? charity giving is a small sliver of the safety net. look back and see how well poor folks did and how long they lived before dem sponsored and repub stymied medicare and social security came into existence. but only the worthless died early needlessly, right?

nope, he never said that. he said give away everything to the poor and do it willingly. a far cry from what most of us do but much clos so if you believe that all of our talents are gifted, including those which produce wealth, don't the wealthy have a mandate to care for those less gifted? keep it up...you're the reason the republican party is destined for continued failure. they'll soon be realizing that and showing you the door...

you really believe that on the whole, republicans are adhering to His teachings on the poor more closely than democrats? self delusion is a scary thing.

you've left out a few. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/jesus-quotes_n_898695.html#s308894&title=Luke_41619

well, not entirely...http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/10890510-a-protest-with-a-differencemillionaires-march-to-washington-to-beg-for-highertaxes

i say both. why the artificial limit of one?

all it takes is for them to be repeated, especially in writing. but go on and think that this isn't an area that repubs need to change. we liberals are counting on it.

the morality issue is where we differ. i believe politics and morals are tightly linked. so did many of the great political philosophers like plato and aristotle. they spent many pages attempting to define "good". others believed the converse eg "beyond good and evil" yet morality was still part of the discussion. at any rate, introducing morality and introducing crudeness are two very different things. "when in rome" i suppose. just seems so many of the romans are cons.

i had a minor epiphany saturday. went to a formal dinner and across the room saw a very conservative colleague with whom i'd had animated political discussions before. never anywhere near as animated as some "debates" here but aggressive enough that we both heard from our wives later. so i walked towards him at the dinner and saw his back stiffen. and i shook hands and congratulated him on a major recent publication and we talked amicably for quite a while. the election never came up. it was a win -win.then i came home (too tired these days to party late into the night) and sparred with tytt for a bit. and endured the slings and arrows and threw some less pointed ones back. but the epiphany was that the internet seems to enable if not encourage bad behavior and that the worst behavior on this board seems to come from the right. repeatedly. and i don't see that as much in the real world in face to face dealings even from my far right friends and aquaintances of whom there are many.. and that's just sad and makes me wonder who we're really debating.so westside, i can understand your reticence to continue here. but as far as i'm concerned, come back any time. you're input is more than welcome.