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What Dreams May Come

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Re: What Dreams May Come

#241

Post by surge »

darthclue wrote: post #74

Jonathan here. Being woke up by my wife crying because the donations just aren't stopping is both heart-breaking and comforting. For those of you who haven't seen the 'Bucket List' post, here's what it says at the very top: As I try to deal with the reality that is my impending death I can't help but wonder how many things I might have been able to accomplish given just a little more time. When I was diagnosed, I had…

As someone who was diagnosed with cancer back in August at the age of 33, I can relate, thankfully, it was easily treatable, testicular cancer that by all appearances had not spread. I literally gave my left nut to get rid of it.

That was the only thing that really bothered me too, having a, at the time, 8 month old daughter who I might not get to raise. That of all things was my greatest regret and fear.

I had terminal life insurance already to cover loss of income and pay off the mortgage, etc. I'm not saying this to you, nothing you can do about it now, but people if you have a family you care about that relies on you for their well being in anyway, even if its just child care, and extra income, etc. Get some life insurance, insurance is for exactly this reason, highly unlikely events, but events that are financially devastating all the same.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#242

Post by jcromartie »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #237
jcromartie wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got $500K life insurance for $30 a month. That's less than we usually spend on pizza.

How does that work? Considering you would have to live for 1,389 years for them to make a profit, do they make money on... interest?

Because the odds of a healthy 30 year old dying in the next 20 years are slim, they can collect $30/mo from lots of guys like me and pay out to the very few who die in that term.

And, yes, they likely make money on that money while it's not being paid out.

Here is an actuarial table that lays out the likelihood of dying and how long you're expected to live at every age.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html

So, say they collect $7200 from each healthy 30 year old male (when they signed up) over the 20 year term. They just need 70 people to sign up in order to pay out one $500K benefit. Many fewer than 1 in 70 people who sign up will die during the term.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#243

Post by Spockulus_Rift »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #30

So the house you purchased and the van you upgraded to are not yours, disposing of your body costs more than a car, visiting family means you have to stay in a hotel, the basic survival needs of your wife and four children are not guaranteed and you want to visit Disneyland and meet celebrities before you die? Capitalism is beautiful.

Fuck this beggar, fuck his family, fuck Disneyland, and most of all, fuck Wil Wheaton.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#244

Post by glhaynes »

Fomite wrote: post #203
vans wrote: post #135

Sorry if i seem to be rude, but even if you're dying, you're still a human being and i will respect you. So, i won't be full of mercy and so on, i'm just going to be genuine. Your story is sad, as the story for million of people dying from this shit. But, if i help you, maybe i'd be ok with my conscience but this won't change anything for the 999 999 people remaining. If i choose to give money to fight against cancer…

You're treating these like they're exclusive goals. There's no reason you can't give to more than one cause.

But any money you're giving can only be given once.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#245

Post by chaostheory »

gallamine wrote: post #177
chaostheory wrote: post #134

> Pay off our mortgage : $186,000 This is a little strange to me. Unless he was a freelancer, every tech job that I'm aware of has decent life insurance options that would easily cover this. If you add a few more dollars it covers college as well. I definitely can't stress the importance of getting life insurance from a reputable company.

My company only offered a $50k insurance policy. You can purchase $500k for <$20/month for most people.

yup that's my point.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#246

Post by quasque »

robogrowth wrote: post #199
fasteo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right for the wrong reason. The problem with cancer research is that we are trying to solve an unsolvable problem, wasting disproportionate amounts of money. In some sense, cancer is a symptom of a body gone havoc. Research should be targeted upstream, to really tackle the root cause. It is like trying to fix a hardware issue by patching software. Yes, you can get some results by implementing better error cor…

Youre 100% right and im not a food scientist, but i strongly feel the increase on cancer in humans can be attributed to the largely corn based diet humans are fed.. and the other terrible food items were fed by the powers that be. Everything is made with corn or corn byproducts and its not healthy at all.. not only that were feeding it to all our animals.. its a bad bad situation how our food supply is treated, and t…

The rise in cancer incidence is mostly due to people living longer; advancing age is the biggest risk factor for most cancers.

Anyway there are many other risk factors, and evidence for corn itself being one is scant. Alcohol intake, smoking, red meat consumption, lack of dietary fibre, high salt levels in one's diet and obesity are much more concerning, given the correlative evidence.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#247

Post by beingpractical »

darthclue wrote: post #74

Jonathan here. Being woke up by my wife crying because the donations just aren't stopping is both heart-breaking and comforting. For those of you who haven't seen the 'Bucket List' post, here's what it says at the very top: As I try to deal with the reality that is my impending death I can't help but wonder how many things I might have been able to accomplish given just a little more time. When I was diagnosed, I had…

Almost at tears reading this. If I have to die today, the most painful thing will be seeing by family going away from me, and most importantly my precious daughter who is just few months old now.

I run a startup (around wishing & bucket-list) and I keep telling folks - life is short, fulfill every wish you have. Be strong bro, that is all I can say now.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#249

Post by vidarh »

theknown99 wrote: post #180
vidarh wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that doesn't show very well is that the growth rate is dropping fast. It doesn't show this because the year over year growth rate is already small: 1.1% per year between 2000-2005 according to the UN. As such it's a horribly misleading graph. UN projects the population to peak in 2075, at a bit over 9 billion, with yearly growth rates having dropped to 0.33% in 2050 based on current trends. Post 2075 they projec…

Remember when they said we'd run out of coal in the year 2000? Or that the ice caps would have melted by 2012?

Who are "they"?

Hypotheses and projections are constantly refined. But in comparison to estimates on things like coal or climate, the population growth models are almost trivially simple, and while the numbers are adjusted up and down regularly to account for actual data, all data we have show the population growth consistently slowing down.

For starters, one of the things that make the population models straightforward compared to a lot of other things we might try to model, is that we can compare countries, and as it happens there are patterns that have consistently applied to countries as they develop, and that we have detailed data on: As life expectancy increases, growth rates drop to near or below maintenance rates.

Unless the remaining countries with rapid growth are somehow drastically different, it would take massive, earth-shattering changes for the population growth not to stop. It's not realistically a question of if it stops, but when and how high the peak will be, and how much the population will fall back afterwards before growth resumes (the expectation is that it will fall back because we get a "bulge" similar to what we're seeing these days due to the baby-boomer generation, and eventually the people in that bulge will start to die off).

Even many developing countries have long ago entered into the phase where it is not birth rates that is the cause of ongoing growth, but improving life expectancy, which means that their growth will eventually stop.

And with countries like China heading rapidly towards contraction as early as 2030 (with net growth now down to around 1/3 of its peak in the mid 80's, driven by a fertility rate far below maintenance), even the remaining high growth countries would have to dramaticall raise their population growth if we are to continue seeing overall growth.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#250

Post by Florin_Andrei »

adventured wrote: post #62
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #30

So the house you purchased and the van you upgraded to are not yours, disposing of your body costs more than a car, visiting family means you have to stay in a hotel, the basic survival needs of your wife and four children are not guaranteed and you want to visit Disneyland and meet celebrities before you die? Capitalism is beautiful.

What Capitalism? America is the largest welfare state in history. Total government expenditures are nearly the size of China's GDP. What we have is corporatism, plunder by a combination of bureaucrats + government protected corporations (see: Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Exxon, Pfizer, etc). I wish we had Capitalism. All we have is an extraordinarily misdirected, poorly run welfare state.

> America is the largest welfare state in history.

Welfare for the rich. Naked social darwinism for the poor.

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