It is a serious loss to archaeology that the site didn't get a proper excavation before being overrun with development.

But this statement just jumped out at me and pegged my bullshit meter:

"...probably because European microbes had preceded actual Europeans..."

To toss something like that out makes one laugh, did the microbes build boats? Cling to migrating birds? Drift on the wind? Well...?

You are making a fundamental assumption about healthcare that is WRONG.

You seem to believe that when something is free, consumption will rise without limit. We are not talking about handing out free big screen TVs here. How many people do you think will sign up for chemotherapy just because it is a good deal?

The costs of quality health care for everyone can readily be estimated. Take an average of what health care costs per capita for citizens for other advanced nations with universal health care.

That is about what we would pay.

No shit.

That amount is less than what we pay now.

That's stupid.

I want restaurant meals about as often as I can have them because they are pleasant. I want to receive medical care only when necessary, because it means I am sick and that is not pleasant.

Get it?

This is another BS argument offered by people opposed to universal health care, because it would unleash some kind of collective madness where every citizen in the US would go the doctor twice a week with complaints like "I'm tired" or "I have an itch on my shoulder". Puhleeze.

Idiots like Old Joe who trot out examples of foreigners coming here for operations or treatment are fools. Those foreign patients are coming here for access to our medical care not for access to our F****d up insurance system. Yes we have great medical technology and practitioners, which those patients pay out of pocket for. They have zero interest in participating in our health insurance system because it is a joke.

But it comforts the idiots who present this argument, because they think it provides absolute proof of American exceptionalism and by showing that our health care system is the best in the world.

BTW-Those foreigners who come here for treatment and can afford to pay out of pocket are either rich or sacrificing everything they have for their treatment. Suggesting that paying directly for health care would work for average people is a total farce. Old Joe if that is what your "www.health-pact.com" scam is, then you don't have a snowballs chance in hell of success.

The nutritional profile (and flavor and texture) of farm-raised fish can't help but change if their diet switches from eating other fish (the sardines and mackerel) to little pellets of purina fish chow. This should sound familiar to anyone who is trying to get more Omega 3 fats into their diet, and learns after reading up a bit that not just any old salmon will do. If the farm-raised salmon have a diet that is deficient in Omega 3, their flesh will be too.

There are some other problems that will need to be solved as well. When you take fish, which normally live in a diverse ecosystem that has evolved over time to self-regulate, and confine them to pens that mirror the high concentration of a single species in one area that conventional ranching uses with cattle and pigs, the farmer will need to resort to artificial tools to counteract some of the effects that wouldn't be seen in the natural ecosystem - like antibiotics to keep the fish from getting sick. Might want to throw in some kind of growth hormone too, so the fish get big faster...it's just a matter of doing the arithmetic. How much money is saved in fish chow by making the fish grow faster with some kind of magic muscle juice?

...Currently I have negotiated with over 400 medidcal providers,...

It's nice that you think medical care is this some kind of third world bazaar where we should all haggle over prices like we were buying little trinkets and such, but for those of use who want to live in the modern world something slightly more efficient is required. Single payer care for all US citizens.

Maybe you should present your bartering scheme to the AMA, I bet they would be all over that. You just know doctors time is best spent negotiating with every patient about how much they are going to pay. We certainly wouldn't want them to spend too much of their time doing things like providing medical care when they could be haggling with clowns about how many chickens they'll take for an appendectomy.

and that team would include some members with the expertise required to assess the math behind the claims made for products and then summarize that in a way that other team members can use the assessment to perform their work. I mean duh.

Do you think that the guys that investigate airline accidents all need to be experts in metallurgy so that they can all analyze problems with the metal parts? AND be experts in the combustion of fuel in the engine? AND be experts in the aerodynamics? AND be experts in the electronic systems?