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really good responses!

> It's untenable to wait a week for a heart stent or a broken bone or with appendicitis. There are many, many medical emergencies that require same-hour treatment.

If we both made points like this, it would go on forever. There are non-cosmetic treatments that can be planned for, as well. Say we find an arbitrary percent of treatments can be delayed an arbitrary number of days. Will listing every treatment and the lead time to procedure give an answer? No, because we are not asking a question.

Unless you can remind me/ tell me what question we are asking here. :)

> That's the strength of my argument. Market approaches are inherently passive because they allow things to happen before action is taken. Labor capital is generally less valuable than physical capital. It's cheaper to let accidents happen and people to die than to take preventative action.

I really do mean it. Great responses. You are right, here.

> That's the crux of regulations and why society enacts them; society doesn't want to be the victim in an accident.

But here I have to remind you that life isn't fair. We don't live forever, accidents happen, and our genes set us up for all kinds of maladies. The best way to explain it is that its like standing at the bedside of everyone you cannot save, and letting them go. Thinking about it is a big moral step. Everyone alive today will die, just like everyone before them (except the Virgin Mary if you are Catholic, and so on for all religion).

To save the most amount of people through all time, progress is important. Technological progress. Improvements to medicine (in addition the elimination of hoax or failed remedies, which isn't so much progress as cleaning up) ensure can use creation to our benefit. So you'll never see me say trying to save people is bad, but (I do say) making the treatment less good for all the people to come by putting resources towards making those alive today more comfortable than that person can acquire themselves is true selfishness. Creating a system where people are promised the longest life possible, free of direct charge, is ludicrous. When you say "society doesn't want to be a victim in an accident", you mean individuals are afraid of death and coerce others to pay for their comfort. Or, as happens in America, politicians make people afraid of death and get elected to large salaries by helping people coerce others (the generations to pay off our debt) into paying for their comfort.

Regulations drag on this march to improved longevity much like Luddites drag on automation (which frees labor to be spent on other tasks still too complex for machines). Regulations put penalties on victimless actions and prevent proper criminal prosecution of real crimes. On the business side, regulations place a greater burden on new companies to compete. New advances which are not profitable are stifled through practical failure or smothering through buyouts.

> It's liability to anyone that person interacts with from their employer to the financials that extend credit to them.

You're right, and I even mentioned that earlier - somewhere. D'oh.

But in this case, we can call this risk. Just like with home loans. Bank managers assess the risk associated with each loan taken out, and the bank accepts the risk as a liability. This is he nature of all business on earth. Even the lowly landscaper may be defrauded. Precedent exists to solve these issues in courts. This makes me think how single-payer and medicare are kinda like a constant bailout to medical service providers, but the government has its hand on the tap. And as we can see during this shut down, they shouldn't want that hand near their flow of payment.

We should not divorce the lack of savings in modern families when discussing the difficulties of paying for emergency medical treatment. The lack of saving is a relatively recent development.

> No, not just because. Rather, because there is profit motive in the health insurance industry. It's unprofitable to deliver all the care possible. Without regulation, profit reigns supreme and care level is a distant second. You keep someone from going to doctors as much as you can and you purge people from health plans when they begin requiring too much care.

Voluntary trades do not take place unless both parties benefit. You don't buy an insurance plan if there is a better one for you readily available. In a free market, the only thing stopping prices from dropping are the cost of labor, the cost of providing the service, and profit. We should discount profit, because there have been theories and evidence about the optimal income difference between the lowest and highest earners in a company. The information shows us current top salaries are an anomaly, and I blame governmental action benefiting certain businesses. This creates an effect which insulates established companies from competition, making it possible to keep prices stable and lower labor and operative costs, freeing up money for top salaries and circular profit. So labor and operation! Both are subject to competition beneficial to all. Labor must be paid adequately to attract and retain workers. Operative costs must be the competitive edge and these directly relate to how big the niche is and how much more efficiently the business can service customers in the niche.

New companies will always be more able to disrupt business niches with inflated profit margins as government protection decreases.


> But the change came too late.

But

> Nataline’s case was not all that different from the more than 200 liver patients I had seen successfully transplanted every year at that institution.

You shouldn't "natch" on a 1/200+ failure rate when it is better than the 65% chance of living given to her after a successful transplant. This goes back to the moral argument that no one is guaranteed life. Liver transplants are a relatively new and definitely major addition to medicine. Is a government-run process of letting new procedures establish themselves going to be inclusive or slow? Cigna can decide for itself what it wants to approve. There may be plans now (and more in a free market) which pay for more experimental procedures (with various trade-offs in price or coverage), and these plans may pull more people in - influencing established insurers to follow suit if there is enough interest.

The rest of the article is about Wendell Potter's "transcendent empathy" and his new book, which I can match an opposition to.

Yeah they're super cool but not very easy to fly for someone inexperienced. The Phantom is a bit easier than most because it has some GPS features but that also leads to people that don't really know how to fly them suddenly needing to recover from something.

I don't have a big one yet, but something like this is great to learn on, I got one a couple months ago and it's really fun, flies great. Can take a lot of crashing but not invincible, my other 2 friends who got them at the same time killed motors eventually. Mine is still going strong but the battery life has gotten pretty bad. Despite what instructions say the battery is pretty easily replaceable if you can find the right type, but I haven't bought any replacements yet.

i might have lucked out, but you can still ask around. Heck, if you have some friends who play in bands, they may have a practice PA in the basement. And don't let some DJ tell you that you need a huge sound system -- for even a reasonably sized hotel ballroom, you can get away with a pretty small system, unless you want to have it thumping like a dance club.

Heck, Bose makes a [portable one] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0028SPFFC/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=32UY31NOTMPMD&coliid=IWX8GRK1L4AXK) that fits in a suitcase-sized case, and that's only 900 bucks. And that's for a pretty top-notch portable sound system. If you want something smaller and simpler, Fender makes a [conference] (http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Passport-Conference-PA-System/dp/B00J4VTD04/ref=sr_1_1?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1415826755&sr=1-1&keywords=portable+pa+system) sized system for 400 bucks and an [event] (http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Passport-Event-PA-System/dp/B00JFZJMPA/ref=sr_1_2?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1415826755&sr=1-2&keywords=portable+pa+system) sized system for 700. That's if you want to BUY them. You could buy it, use it that night, then return it the next week. I'm not saying you should, but you could. I've thought about buying a PA and DJing weddings, because it's apparently really lucrative. I'd low-ball the price and just enjoy a good meal.

Not sure how many of you are into board games, but Formula-D is this great game about racing open wheel race cars, or street racing, and is a really easy but fun game. Well, this month or beloved city and the Baltimore Grand Prix will be added to that games list of tracks. I am pretty excited for this and just wanted to share with my fellow Baltimorians.

Hey, you may already know this, and if so, sorry, but maybe it'll help someone else.

Vitamin D is super important to preventing and minimizing SAD, and it takes your body a really long time to build and use up VitD, so start getting as much in you now as you can. Lots of time in the sun for all the sunny days we have remaining is the best way to do this. Depending on how your body processes VitD, that might be able to get you to early November, maybe even late November.

After that VitD supplements are the way to go. You should start those around Daylight Savings Time. They can be gotten pretty cheap, and if you're only taking them leading up to and during the SAD season, you run less of a risk of VitD toxicity. (Consult your doctor, obviously, before taking any supplement, much less more than the recommended daily allowance.)

All that said, it's a great idea to have a therapist on hand as well. Best of luck in locating one. I wish I had more info for you there.

Source: My wife has SAD, her VitD levels are around 10 nanograms per mililiter in summer months without taking supplements (normal people have 20 nanograms per mililiter or higher), so she takes about 10,000 IUs a day during SAD months (normal people maybe take 600 IU a day).

EDIT: Just thought of https://www.chasebrexton.org/ They might be worth a call.

EDIT EDIT: You also might be able to access free/cheap counseling services if you're in college.

Comcast has a great product with absolutely the worst customer service on the fucking planet. Seriously shoot-yourself-in-the-head service. However, the speeds are great where I am, and we can't get FiOS inside the city.

My parents and in-laws have used both services, and liked both. Honestly, I only have good anecdotes for the core internet offerings of either service. If you have a stomach for dealing with bad customer service, I'd recommend Comcast if the price is better. Otherwise, FiOS all the way.

If you get Comcast, I'd highly recommend getting your own Docsis 3.0 modem instead of renting - it'll pay you back pretty fast and you'll know that you're getting the best possible speeds that way - Comcast was renting me a Docsis 2.0 modem for like $8/mo for the first month I had the service, and the speed improved a lot when my new modem arrived.

That's basically what I wanted to do but everything is really really really rigged to prevent up and coming people from developing anything to help customers. My work around was basically just to do "consulting" for people wanting to DIY with the various systems and to offer my support i/e I basically come by and build it for you but you still gotta be there because otherwise it wouldn't be a DIY it'd be a me doing it which would require me to have all kinds of stupid expensive licenses that ultimately make everything too expensive. There's just so many people going around telling others how "complicated" everything is and that they need to hire a contractor to do it but it's just a huge huge huge lie. It's not complicated at all and really the biggest and most important thing to know is safety. What sort of systems are required for you to have them on your house, that kinda stuff. Most regions a simple island protection is the main thing you need for your inverter which is what basically any grid-tie inverter will have. It's setup so it can sense when the grid goes down and will shut down the system when that happens so the lines aren't energized when they are being worked on. HOA's are another gigantic pain in the ass because it's basically just ignorant lazy stay at home mom's or old people who know nothing about technology who want to tell you what you can and cannot do to make your house better. I actually had a HOA down in georgia try to tell me that putting up solar panels will drive down the value of the other houses around me....seriously they said that. I have no idea how anyone could think that's a possibility but oh well. So I got around their control by just installing the panels on PVC pipes on the ground and attached wheels on them so they were mobile when I wanted them to be. They were no longer a "permanent structure or addon" so the HOA couldn't do or say anything. Loved that one. Also had my neighbor try to tell me that I couldn't do solar because "global warming is a lie"..... I didn't even need his permission I was just asking how he felt about it.

I got into it at first because my dad wanted a solar panel system and so I started researching it for him for pricing. I would get quotes for 2kW systems(generates 2kWh's per hour) for like $20,000 and I just didn't understand how it could be that expensive. So I researched it by physically building my own panels and systems. Was able to build my own solar panel, cells and all for 72 watts at $50 and being able to make one per day or so based on materials. Then I found pre-made things solar panels, inverters, batteries, etc.... and put together a 2kW system and it only cost roughly $2000 or 10x less than what that company wanted to sell it for. Basically it just seemed to me that they didn't actually WANT to have people adopt more solar and were just in it for a quick buck. I hate that. A standard house uses anywhere between 30-50 kWh's per day so buying a 2kW system is almost enough to go off the grid entirely since a kWh is calculated at kW's times hours so a 2kW system will generate 2kWh's per hour or 16+ kWh's per day. You can also cut down on your power consumption drastically by doing away with all the converters in all your system i/e those power bricks on the cords. Pretty much everything you have uses DC power but it converts it from AC so if you were to just use DC it would cut out a good amount of waste. Only issue would be to make sure you have the correct voltage but that's simple by using a buck-boost converter on each socket so you can just set the voltage you want and you're good to go. It'd actually be super cool looking. https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Converter-Adjustable-Regulator-Transformer/dp/B00J03PBW0/ref=pd_cp_23_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00J03PBW0&pd_rd_r=TMDYZV4BN1T9BFJNRN58&pd_rd_w=bRJs2&pd_rd_wg=4RLeo&psc=1&refRID=TMDYZV4BN1T9BFJNRN58 basically you could even cut out a little section so the controls and display are visible to you. Idk about you but I think it would look awesome and really really high tech. Only areas that you can't do that would be anything with motors in them because they do actually usually need AC power so your fridge and central air/window unit would still need AC.

This book is a worthwhile read. Through his life he was forever the Guy Who Wrote that Poem/Song We Love, while also a hardcore do-it-for-the-money lawyer in D.C. He defended free black men and black men suing for their freedom in court consistently, but then was a huge supporter of the The American Colonization Society who, instead of wanting to give citizenship to free blacks, thought a good third way was to send them back to a colony in Africa. Like most Americans, he has a complex history.

https://www.amazon.com/What-So-Proudly-We-Hailed/dp/1137278285/ref=la_B001HCXCSW_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502979979&sr=1-2

I'm selling all my home brew equipment and books asking 300, its an all or nothing deal sorry. I will provide pictures for any one interested.

1-glass carboy and hauler

1-bottling bucket with spout

1-fermenting bucket with lid

1-1 gallon glass carboy

1-2 gallon bucket

1-Hydrometer

3-Air locks

1-Thermometer

1-wood stirring paddle

1-40 quart stock pot

1-turkey fryer with the timer removed

1-20lb empty propane tank

1-capper and about 50 -60 beer bottle caps

1-corker for wine bottles and some corks

Auto siphon, tubing, racking cane,some PBW cleaner and Star Sanitizer left over, I have I think 12 empty wine bottles and probably have about an empty case worth of beer bottles.....I mean pretty much everything you need to brew or make wine.

Books are listed below and are in great shape.

How to Brew Beer

Designing Great Beer

For The Love of Hops

Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation

Hop Variety hand book

The Homebrewer's Garden

Selling a Pioneer DJ DDJ-SB2 DJ Controller. Got as a gift, played around but I'm not much of a DJ :) , I have all the packing and cables that came with it! $200.00 OBO
Pic of it on my desk

Here is the same thing on amazon: Amazon

Also selling Rogue Fitness Pull-up bar, well used, plenty of hearty life left. $100 http://www.roguefitness.com/p4-pullup-system

Also have a free LSAT prep book I found. Power Score Logic Reasoning Bible.

Live in Fed Hill but can meet anywhere for the most part in afternoons.

2015 Apple MacBook Air

13.3", i5, 128 GB with box, manual, wall adapter, extension piece and clear Speck case (has cracks on the corners). Computer has only 58 battery cycles on it. A small surface nick on the right of the trackpad which is barely noticeable, about the size of a ball point pen tip. Computer has been wiped clean with a fresh installation of Sierra OS.

TIMESTAMPS

Looking for $625

SURCO Spare Tire Bike Rack BT300 (Holds 3 Bikes)

No longer need, perfect condition, used maybe 5 times. Have key in hand! This product features:

• Heavy duty mounting plate attached to any spare tire
  
• Secures and locks bikes to rack
  
• Securely gripped in non-scratch padded channel
  
• Heavy duty steel construction
  
• Rust resistant black powder coat finish
  
  This product fits the following vehicles: 1997 - 2006 Honda CR-V, 1996 - 2005 Toyota RAV4, 1997 - 2006 Jeep TJ, 1997 - 2017 Jeep Wrangler, 2001 - 2006 Suzuki XL-7
  
  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00029KBF8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=bikerackhq-20&linkId=ff4976c51b0022931987c85ec7645e97
  
  Looking for $80

It is basically garbage and a waste of my hard-earned taxdollars. The reason it is garbage is because the assumption is that building highways reduces congestion. This is not true. What it does is increases capacity which means more people will then drive as the capacity has increased...so you end up back where you started...a congested road. This is what will happen in the short-term.

This, coupled with trends of one-car ownership and the beginnings of driverless cars, means this is a waste of taxpayer dollars as the demand won't exist either so there is not a need to build more highways. This is what will happen in the long-term.

Indeed, sticking what what already exists may be enough to meet the demand of a reduced car culture and more efficient and computerized driving patterns.

Arguably, a better solution is to build out more efficient regional public transportation such as trolleys, busses, rail, bike lanes, etc for a more long term solution. In the short-term shore up what already exists.

Great book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

I live right outside Baltimore and have used one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Mohu-MH-110583-Antenna-Premium-Connectors/dp/B004QK7HI8

It works very well and the picture is great.

You can use this site to figure out the best place to put your antenna based on the direction the stations are coming from
http://disablemycable.com/station-finder/

There are outdoor antennas as well that you could get but in my opinion the Leaf indoor is the easiest

Anybody interested in this may also be interested in reading Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City

http://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457468272&sr=8-1&keywords=not+in+my+baltimore

Roads are like the Field of Dreams, "If you build it they will come" and fill up all the lanes.

Great book on Traffic and Traffic design: https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

A friend was telling me he used one that was about the same size and thickness as a laminated sheet of paper with a wire hanging off. He said that he got better reception with that than with his expensive powered antenna - not sure of the brand info, I'll report back if I find out.

Edit: It may have been this based on the reviews.

Sharper Image Super Wave Oven

Never opened, never used - gifted, no use or room for it

I'll take $40 obo

Not in My Neighborhood is a great place to start.

I also have the flat antenna. I got it off Amazon. You can buy a more expensive flat antenna for better reception. I have this one.

​

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IF70T4M/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For Sale: Fitbit Charge (version 1, like this one on amazon) in Black XL size, I only wore it once so essentially brand new. Includes original box and stuff. $50 cash.

Edit: Product is still available.

We don't really need to speculate endlessly, there are entire books written about how the disparities in our community came about. We need to continue using the data and scholarship we have, including publications from professors at local universities and longstanding members of the community. It isn't simple and it is complex, for sure. But it's not a situation where we just throw our hands up and say "oh well, just send in people with guns, it's too hard to think through this situation."

Even though I know this is a loaded question and you really don't care, here are some books for you to read that will answer your question.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

This is one is more Baltimore specific Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City .

Here is the mobile version of your link

The short answer is Redlining, Drugs, and manufacturing.

Here's the defacto book on redlining these days.

Edit: Spelling.

If anyone is interested in a good read on how racial prejudice has shaped the very fabric of Baltimore, check out Not in My Neighborhood by Antero Pietila.

One surprising fact he dug up out of the dirty (open) secrets was that the anti-Semitic sentiment was so strong in Baltimore, a third segregated tier of housing (i.e., in addition to segregation for whites and blacks), unique to the city, catering specifically to Jews developed and was even used into the early 1970s. It was so bad that Joseph Meyerhoff (yes, that Meyerhoff), a Ukrainian Jew who's family fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire when he was 7, refused to sell or rent to other Jews (Pietila 2010: 136-140).

> I disagree because, much like the "Left vs Right" rhetoric, I think that labeling things as "racist" and blaming issues on "racism" is just too shallow of a discussion. Every issue that a country faces is almost never caused by a single factor. There are decades, if not centuries, worth of ongoing circumstances that lead to the present state of affairs.

Well, I'd say at least the problems we are seeing now have started with a racist foundation that was built upon rapidly without equal hastily accountability, and in the case of Baltimore, it's the White flight of the early 20th century in response to affluent Blacks moving into places like Bolton Hill that were the catalyst. This then spread to actions and polices implemented by municipal officials, realtors and housing developers like someone above mentioned such as Redlining. Add in Blockbusting where realtors used White Flight to sell the same property that was sold for pennies on the dollar for more than their actual value to Blacks. The exemption of Blacks from the G.I. bill after World War II that basically propelled many white families(which worked in tandem with Blockbusting as the rowhomes were abandoned for a suburban lifestyle) and was itself a key factor for laying the foundation for the American middle class. There's a few others like the creation of the interstate highway system(bottom of page 14) that also helped segregate these communites further.

So, to answer your question,
> Is racism a part of it?

Yes, in fact it's overwhelmingly the case here.

Annnnnd if you're interested in some light, well-sourced reading, I think you should check out a book that was recommended to me in this very sub called "Not My Neighborhood" Which focuses primarily on how Baltimore's segregated communities came to be.