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Chernobyl may have been responsible for the rise in thyroid cancer in the US. Note that we were lied to during that crisis to preserve profit. Is it any wonder that we assume that our government is lying to us about the danger now?

Seriously? How about "from nuclear testing in Nevada"? There is no way anything from Chernobyl in any significant quantities could reach 180 degrees around the globe.

How about 2-fold asthma death increase over 10 year span and other diseases caused by air pollution, that could be almost eliminated by nuclear/electric power?

BMI is only 1 criteria. they also recommend body fat index. It's almost like they are aware of this issue:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/index.html
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/defining.html

BMI is a good general guideline Yes, very athletic people who focus on muscle building will be off? but you know what, they can make an exception based on a Dr.s recommendation.

I mean, pulling a group of people from the extreme edge case is just wankery. BTW, AS and MT where barely obese. So its not like it incredibly off either.

BMI is only 1 criteria. they also recommend body fat index. It's almost like they are aware of this issue:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/index.html
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/defining.html

BMI is a good general guideline Yes, very athletic people who focus on muscle building will be off? but you know what, they can make an exception based on a Dr.s recommendation.

I mean, pulling a group of people from the extreme edge case is just wankery. BTW, AS and MT where barely obese. So its not like it incredibly off either.

no,it's not a joke. It's based no good available numbers.

Explain t me what is unreasonable about it:
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/defining.html

BMI fits for well of 90% of people; however they sue other techniques as well:

"It is important to remember that although BMI correlates with the amount of body fat, BMI does not directly measure body fat. As a result, some people, such as athletes, may have a BMI that identifies them as overweight even though they do not have excess body fat. For more information about BMI, visit Body Mass Index.

Other methods of estimating body fat and body fat distribution include measurements of skinfold thickness and waist circumference, calculation of waist-to-hip circumference ratios, and techniques such as ultrasound, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)."

Do not ignore those who are killed by no fault of their own. How many are killed in accidents caused by someone else?

Unfortunately, this is precisely the point. People are illogical. 600k die every year to heart disease and no one flinches, but it a one-time, ~3000 death event caused a massive response. 24k deaths each year can be attributed to coal power plants, but clearly it's nuclear power that's the major threat. After all, you never know when your local nuclear reactor might be hit by a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

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Thanks to tibit I found this webpage, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has a website at http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ which has a number of papers on health statements of radiation, some include characteristics of nuclear radiation (rest mass, charge, typical energy range, path length, etc.)

The legend of tall proportions is IMHO the overblown chemical toxicity of plutonium. Plutonium is minimally chemically toxic. In fact, the whole linked document only ever mentions radio-"toxicity", not chemical toxicity!

Toxicity of plutonium derives from the biological effects of radiation emitted during the radiological decay of plutonium isotopes.

Chemically it's a nasty metal for sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. AFAIK you can handle solid plutonium with minimal protection (chemical gloves, particulate respirator). Plutonium oxides and hydrides form when exposed to moisture (with and without oxygen present), and those can spontaneously ignite. In a dry atmosphere, handled in gloves so that you won't get it moist from handling with bare skin, it's OK.

Fact: the MAJORITY of the population lose their virginity at an age that qualifies as statutory rape.[citation needed]

According to the United States Center for Disease Control Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance --- United States, 2007:

43.8% of tenth graders report having had intercourse
55.5% of eleventh graders report having had intercourse

Month-of-birth for students will somewhat blur the exact ages figures, but the figures are clear enough for our purposes. Tenth grade consists of the older half of 15 year olds and the younger half of 16 year olds. All of whom are statutory minors. The tenth grade figure firmly establishes that more than 43.8% lose their virginity while statutory minors. Eleventh graders are a mix of the older half of 16 year olds and younger half of 17 year olds. The 16 year olds will pull the percentage down while the over 17 year olds will pull the percentage up. The two effects will roughly cancel out, making 55.5% reasonably close to the result we want as if you had you asked all of them exactly on their 17th birthday.

The 43.8% proves that it is "normal" and "very common" for people to lose their virginity as statutory minors, the 55.5% strongly indicates it is a majority.

Lets be clear of what crossmr (957846) was saying. He was indicating that there was no significant number of minors "looking for something", he said "which leads us to wonder just how many of those 'horny kids' are just law enforcement and are there any actual horny kids left." I think that is wildly out of touch with reality when over 43.8%, and probably 55%, of the entire population were not merely "horny kids", that percentage of the entire population were not merely "horny kids looking for something", that percentage of the entire population were "horny kids looking for something AND successfully getting laid".

For every cop pretending to be a minor and trolling for predators, there are probably ten thousand or more actual minors exploring sexuality on the internet.

-

If you're going to compare deaths from the two modes of generation, you should at least include deaths from uranium mining. Uranium miners probably have elevated cancer rates: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pgms/worknotify/uranium.html And of course uranium miners die in regular accidents just like coal miners, e.g. this one last year: http://www.aggregateresearch.com/articles/19320/Uranium-miner-dies-in-rock-fall.aspx I'm not against nuclear, just bad statistics.

Oh, and if it's links you want, here are some facts on that for you. From the article, which represents the best data gathered by the CDC and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control:

Each year, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner related physical assaults and rapes. Men are the victims of about 2.9 million intimate partner related physical assaults.
IPV resulted in 2,340 deaths in 2007. Of these deaths, 70% were females and 30% were males.

In other words, men are about half as much at risk of being assaulted by their intimate partners as women. (Note, however, that this figure also includes men whose parters are themselves men.) What's more, in cases where intimate partner violence is actually life-threatening -- as opposed to your slap in the face example -- the victim is far more likely to be female.

Next up, from the National Institute of Justice:

NCVS found that about 85 percent of victimizations by intimate partners in 1998 were against women ... The studies that find that women abuse men equally or even more than men abuse women are based on data compiled through the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), a survey tool developed in the 1970s. CTS may not be appropriate for intimate partner violence research because it does not measure control, coercion, or the motives for conflict tactics; it also leaves out sexual assault and violence by ex-spouses or partners and does not determine who initiated the violence ... A review of the research found that violence is instrumental in maintaining control and that more than 90 percent of "systematic, persistent, and injurious" violence is perpetrated by men.

Emphasis in the original. And frankly, I'm going to go with legitimate studies from justice sources before I trust your theory about who prefers their partners to be a certain age -- a theory, I might add, that strikes me as coming from someone of limited life experience.

Also seriously: One of the HIPAA loopholes that patients aren't always told about is that HIPAA privacy rules don't necessarily apply when the government gets involved. One could easily argue that Cignet shouldn't have released those 4,500 unneeded records, you bet...but one could also argue that the release of those records didn't automatically trigger a HIPAA violation, as they were released in response to an oversight request, e.g. "Covered entities may usually disclose PHI to a health oversight agency for oversight activities authorized by law." (source: CDC.gov). If HITECH changed that, it'd be news to almost everyone -- when is the last time that the government willingly adopted rules restricting their own capabilities?

Regardless, IMO if they would've done exactly the same release of information BUT responded in a timely fashion to the Government's demands, there wouldn't have even been a $43 fine. Because that's the way that the Government seems to work.

Well of course they are a psuedo-science cult that is convinced that vaccines cause autism. Most of them believe that it is mercury in the vaccine that causes this. The fact that they are wrong does not change the fact that they are consistent in their concerns and beliefs. It also doesn't change the fact that there will always be a few oddballs that go way beyond the party line. Even in psuedo-science cults.

The pro-vaccine groups don't do anyoone any favors by becoming a psuedo-science cult themselves. If the anti-vaccine people think mercury in vaccines is causing autism, which do you think will be better for bringing them over to be in favor of vaccines. Mocking their misinformation, and calling them a psuedo-science cult, or calmly pointing out that there is not mercury in vaccines with a suggestion on where they can verify it?

Of course if they went to the CDC's website, they would find that you were wrong. They would find that it is only used in flue vaccines though.

As for being a psuedo-science cult, go to the CDC's website. The CDC is considered a gold standard in health care, yet when it comes to vaccines, it is loaded with a bunch of appeals to emotion. Stories about kids dying and and getting seriously ill. All of the wording is slanted to imply numbers that sometimes just are not there. The chicken pox vaccine is the case that I tend to point to as an example. Primarily because that is the vaccine that I believe will kill more than it will save. If you look at the numbers presented by the CDC, the chicken pox vaccine will kill more than it will save. In fact even in a perfect world, where the vaccine prevents 100% of deaths from chicken pox, you would only save 50 children a year. Of course, this would change the fact that you would be increasing the risk of death to adults by 20 times. All of the numbers for this are right on the CDCs site, yet somehow they come to the conclusion that it is a good idea. They then proceed to take extremely rare occurrences and use them as scare tactics against parents to trick them into doing the wrong thing for their child.

It is an unfortunate fact that everyone with a current financial stake in the decision for immunizing children for chicken pox makes money by pushing a childhood inconvenience into a deadly adult disease. This is the kind of behavior that encourages the anti-vaccine crowd.

In total, Amy missed more than 2 weeks of work due to Zoe’s illness.

Oh poor Amy... How I feel for you.

The fact is that the CDC itself puts the number of yearly deaths due to the chicken pox prior to the vaccine at only about 100. 50% of those being in the 5% of adult cases. 50 deaths a year is statistical noise. Compare this to the 480 deaths a year caused by cooking at home. It is absurd to be worried about it. Even worse, as the CDC's own numbers show, it is approximately 20X more dangerous for an adult to catch the disease than it is a child. Since the vaccine is not permanent, it can actually increase the risk 20X.

Even though the data on the CDC's site contradicts their recommendation, they appeal to the emotions of parents, and play on their fears.

More like about %20. 43945 motor vehicle deaths (2007@USA)

And remember that they count it as an "Alcohol related fatality" if any one involved had something to drink, including people in parked cars.

The real statistics are probably closer to 5000/year, or 10% of all vehicle fatalities. I'd also like to see some research into how skilled the DUI drivers who caused fatalities were. Considering how horrible some drivers are I wouldn't be shocked if the alcohol wasn't a red herring quite often.

CDC death stats

I found this chart to be enlightening. It's from 2003, but the trend should still hold (and the arguments haven't changed since then anyway). Almost 4 times as many people die in car accidents than are murdered by guns (11,920 by gun, 43,340 by car accident) and suicides by gun are about 50% higher than murder by gun (16,907 suicides). So, statistically, you're more likely to die by your own hand by a gun than to be murdered by one. That's...surprisingly comforting.

Heck, accidental poisoning (19,457) is more likely to get you than murder. The point is, I think we over-react to the problem. Gun violence is splashy, but on the decline. The current laws are fine, we don't be legislation by emotion.

There are countries I can think of where firearms are likely more dangerous than vehicles, but the US is not one of them.

From 1999 to 2007, the total motorized vehicle death rate was 14.76 per 100,000. The firearm death rate during the same period was 10.33 per 100,000. That said, I'm not sure it matters much. Each side will frame the numbers in ways that support their bias, and will argue endlessly over which comparison is "more accurate." In the end, the only quantifiable "fact" is that one kills people more often in relation to how many of them exist. Whether that is of import to any argument is another matter entirely.

The numbers are obtainable from the CDC NCIPC if anyone cares to verify them.

It's not hyperbole. Pertussis has undergone a resurgence in the past several years, in part because some parents are not having their kids vaccinated for various worries (of which autism is only the most recent). Pertussis can kill kids.

> All I can say is, you're far too trusting, and whatever "safe" part of the world you live in, I strongly urge you to stay there.

I can do one better. I'll never visit the US, how about that? Because then I won't have to meet people like you, with the attitude you have, and the knowledge that you might have a gun on you to back it up.

Gun deaths in Australia (2006): 27.
Gun deaths in US (2006): 12,791

Your silly bravado becomes even more laughable when you factor in the population. USA has about 14 times the population of Australia (hint: 27*14 is considerably less than 12,791). You are wrong and deluded. Try opening your eyes and maybe visiting a country outside your paranoid, "free" borders.

It most certainly is: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm Most specifically in untested seasonal flu vaccine

The CDC has a lot of information about side effects, in case you are curious.

When the #1 cause of death in your major cities is lung cancer (and the #2 cause of death nationwide), you have a very real problem.

FASTSTATS - Leading Causes of Death

The #2 cause of death in the United States is cancer by several hundred thousand deaths per year, and Lung Cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer-related deaths, and smoking is by far the leading cause of lung cancer cases. There are also lots of smokers in China. Damn near EVERYBODY in China smokes cigarettes... approximately 25% of their population if I remember correctly, while only somewhere around 8 or 9% of Americans smoke... but we have the same exact lung cancer problems. What's the difference?

(^ I wrote that before clicking on your link, and then I read that they DO attribute China's alarming cancer rate to smoking and vehicular pollution. Not poor working conditions and abusive corporate practices. So why even bring it up?)

And I only bring up Foxconn because that's what's been in the news lately as the posterchild for China's "poor working conditions", even though working there is way better than most peoples' alternative: breaking their backs on the family farm for almost nothing.

There is no real world situation where we encounter Polar Express level-of-competence simulacra and our life is threatened if we make an incorrect decision

Today, yes.

In evolutionary past... there are lots of illnesses that cause people's minds to degrade (animal minds, too). The most common one that comes to mind is rabies, which also makes people and animals move in a somewhat zombielike, jerky fashion.

In the modern world, identifying a rabid animal isn't quite as needed, since vaccinations have helped to slow the spread of the disease via "herd immunity" even to the "wild", feral animals that live in many cities and urban areas. Go back a century or more, on the other hand, and identifying it early - in livestock, working dogs, and wild animals - was a much more necessary skill. Hell, identifying an infected food animal is important so as not to eat it.

And then there's African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), leprosy, Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (aka "kuru", "laughing sickness"), and other "prion" diseases.

If you were right this would be a problem, however you are probably wrong, see for example www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.html

The problem here is that both of you are citing websites that have an agenda. According to the CDC, Annual Deaths Attributable to Cigarette Smoking—United States, 2000–2004 are 443,000.

Uh no. Science? You fail it. Unless, of course, you've got some sort of citation to present. Oh look, Triclosan makes poison gas when used in sunlight, that's a whole side topic but pretty hilarious.

Damn but it's funny when people neither read what they're responding to, OR the articles they post in rebuttal.

I guess you missed the part where your own article admitted that the feared "resistant strains" had never been seen, or produced in the laboratory.

But here's a thought for you: Since triclosan acts on bacterial cell walls in almost the exact same fashion as soap and water, just 100's of times more effectively (yes, soap DOES kill bacteria, not just wash it off for all you poorly informed people), why does nobody suggest we should stop washing our hands with soap? It's going to produce resistant strains too right...and at an even greater rate because it's LESS outright lethal...right?

Anti-bacterial and antibiotic are not synonyms. The "main deadly effect" you're concerned about is not a result of anti-bacterial soap, it's a result of people misunderstanding basic science but thinking they still have a valid opinion.

Uh no. Science? You fail it. Unless, of course, you've got some sort of citation to present. Oh look, Triclosan makes poison gas when used in sunlight, that's a whole side topic but pretty hilarious.

Actually, in plenty of schools that's exactly what they will do.

Welcome to the days where school has become nothing but a crappy day-care replacement.

No, I'm serious. In most public schools, the purpose is not for the kids to learn. The purpose is to pay substandard wages to a bunch of idiots who were too dumb to realize what they were really getting into, give them zero support and tools to actually enforce classroom discipline, and then tell them to just keep the kids in the building between the hours of 8 and 5 so the absentee parents can go off to work.

The schools have financial incentive to pack as many fucking kids in per classroom as possible. And even if there is a kid so bad (knifing, bringing guns, obviously bringing drugs, etc), good luck getting rid of the kid. The most you can do is have them sent to "alternative school" for a month, and in the meantime the deadbeat shithead parents are busy getting a lawyer and spinning sob stories to the media about how their "good little angel" is getting a bad rap because of the "racist teacher who obviously hates them."

The whole system is fucking broken. The feds give out money on a per-head basis, so the schools want to pack in as many kids as possible even if it means overloading the rooms. The localities enact truancy laws that stuff the good-for-nothings into schools with the kids who are actually there to learn. 5 of 9 shitheads in black robes say we can't even check for legal status and kick out the worthless leeching motherfuckers who ought to be deported. Parents scream and complain if their "good little gifted angel", who's actually an unmotivated little retard, doesn't get into the same class as the kids who ought to be on an accelerated track. And when little Roshanjam, the 9th son of Shaniqua who has 8 other half-brothers and no daddy for any of them, gets into fights and gangs and knifes people and someone actually hauls him in, there she is crying and screaming "racism" and unwilling to accept that no, her kid is a criminal little punk who has his head straight up his own ass.

*My* statistic? It's not mine, these stats are from the US Centers for Disease Control. If you have a beef with actual research results from actual scientists looking at actual patients in the real world, go argue with them:

So sayeth the CDC: "While 3.3 million Americans are allergic to peanuts or tree nuts, 6.9 million are allergic to seafood. Combined, food allergies cause 30,000 cases of anaphylaxis*, 2,000 hospitalizations, and 150 deaths annually.**"
GO READ: http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/foodallergies/

* "cases of anaphalaxis" ranges from just-detectabe-itchy-mouth to fall-down-choking as other commenters have noted.
** Which adds up to about 10 deaths yearly from peanuts or tree nuts, in the entire USA (pop 350M).

The CDC references NIH work: "Report on the Expert Panel on Food Allergy Research, June 30 and July 1, 2003, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health." [PDF 190K]
GO READ MORE: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/dait/documents/june30_2003.pdf

Your school *might* have a person with a potentially fatal peanut allergy. However, asserting that there have been 2+ (in all of your 5 years of teaching) is statistically disputed by the CDC, NIH, and AMA. I'm not angry, I'm just disgusted by wild kooks who "feel" that their anecdotal reports carry more weight than serious research involving many thousands of people. You get to have your own opinions, not your own facts.

The cold, hard numbers indicate that most of the "alerts for serious peanut allergies" at your school are either (a) misinterpretation by parents (who foolishly believe "detectable response" == "possible death"), or (b) misdiagnosis by Dr/allergists who would rather overprescribe than miss that 1 in 30M potential death.

What you have in your school, judging by your numbers and CDC data, are 1-3 kids per year whose parents are overprotective or hypochondriacs, or kids prone to panic attacks (which loosely mimics anaphalactic shock) when confronted with unmanaged fear.

[Citation needed]

"Peanut allergy is the most common cause of death due to foods" and "peanut allergies affect 2% of the population" http://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=9&sub=20&cont=517

The CDC seems to put it at more like 1% for peanuts and tree nuts combined http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/foodallergies/

That's a lot more than 1 in 30 million.

Aw, man, you're going to start being civil. Okay, me too.

I thought I was already being civil?

More generally, let's go over this from first principles.

1. You can't get electrocuted or feel a shock unless there is current flowing. I can't prove this one but it's what Wikipedia says too.

Agreed.

2. You can't have a current flow unless there is a potential difference. That's derived from Kirchhoff's mesh rule: the sum of the emf in a circuit is the sum of the potential drop in the circuit.

Again, no arguments here.

3. You can't have a potential difference if there is only one wire, because there's nowhere to establish a difference: there isn't a circuit, by definition.

I disagree a little here. You don't need two "wires", just two "conductors". It seems like it's only a distinction in semantics, but the distinction will become clear later.

4. As such, if you touch a single wire, there cannot be a current flow. (I'm neglecting the capacitance of a body, but I specifically noted that in the original post -- and that's what I measured with the Keithley, and it's negligible.)

You still haven't convinced me that a rabbit has no path to ground. I have no reason to disagree that in your lab with an insulating floor and insulated shoes that your body would conduct practically zero current to ground, but in the real world, electrical shocks and even electrocution can result from contacting a hot wire, no need to contact both hot and neutral at the same time.

Here's an example: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/stateface/ca/92ca014.html

5. Cutting a single wire, regardless of its voltage, still does not provide a potential difference, as there is still no circuit.

I still don't see how cutting the wire matters -- the rabbit did not cut the wire (did it? Do they really chew through the wire? I assumed they just bite through the insulation). In any case, can we just throw #5 out since it has no relevance at all?

Let's review to my original post, just to make sure everything is covered.

I said: "if the appliance isn't drawing power right then" -- which means no current is flowing, which means the entire line is at the same potential. So, no potential difference, so no way for there to be any current flow.

Here's where you've lost me again -- regardless of whether the power is on, the hot wire will have a potential of 120V at all points along it, and the neutral will have a potential of 0V. (in reality, voltage drop of the wire will cause a tiny difference in potential along the wire (increasing as current draw increases), but not enough to be meaningful.

Likewise, I said "as long as they only chew through one wire at a time" meaning the rabbit does not establish a potential difference between two lines: the rabbit is at a high potential with respect to ground but there isn't a circuit, so no current can flow.

This is the source of our disagreement - I say that any animal on a normal household surface without special protective gear will have a path to ground. It may be conductive or it may be capacitive, but it's a path nonetheless.

Particularly if he's chewing a refrigerator power cord, since in most cases he's going to be touching the metal (grounded) frame of the refrigerator to gain access to the cord. After looking at my refrigerator, I don't see how a rabbit could reach the part of the cord near the floor without touching some part of the refrigerator.

Unless there is a contagious factor, the only nationwide stats you will find on injuries (broken arms) is from insurance carriers.

This is perhaps technically true insofar as the US government is an "insurance carrier", but it is not meaningfully true in that while the US government does national collection of statistics within its "insurance" programs for their covered populations, it also does so more generally through the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, which gathers injury statistics from a variety of sources (directly from hospitals who record this in discharge and emergency department records, and via public survey methods.

Yes, coronary disease is a big problem and yes it's the major killer in the US but it isn't the major killer worldwide, just in developed nations. You'll notice on the first link that cancer is still way up on causes of death in the US and, despite your claims to the contrary, I can assure that now in my second year of medical school that coronary syndromes are a major focus in medical education and research.

The work these scientists did is certainly not the first implementation of this idea but it's quite worth the investment. Stenting is not a miracle cure and likely wont ever be; it's just delaying the inevitable. The only powerful approach to reducing heart related deaths is prevention and education; even then, most deaths due to 'old age' are written up as heart related deaths so they'll keep going up as we get better at fighting the world's real number one killer: simple infections.

Then again, I'm an idiot ......

Your first sentence is correct. The second paragraph is only tangentially related to the truth. The third is a fairy tale.

What? You really didn't know, and didn't bother to read the articles linked to, that cows were fed animal parts? I don't know why I'm bothering, you'll probably not read it, but here's a link to a CDC, a US federal agency, page on how BSE or Mad Cow Disease possibly originated by feeding cows meat-and-bone meal from other cows or from sheep.

Falcon

Why don't you tell that to the families of people that have died from work violence. You know, the type that show up with a gun and start shooting people. Want to bet many had good job performance reviews?

Bet you don't care about those people though do you. Let them die is your motto. Just don't fuck with anything that YOU consider private. EVEN if you post it online.

I can understand the argument of people getting set up. All I have to do is look at fuck wads like you to see that possibility. But to arrogantly say, all that matters is job performance?

1. And you're answering that to a post which actually said it'll be used to do some covert racial or religious or political discrimination.

It already happens too. If you think someone surely can't just happen to find more flaws online for blacks or foreigners than for blacks without getting sued... guess what? It already happens. In a study, for the same resume they found out you had about 50% more chances to get called for a job interview with a name like John than a name like Ulambongo, and nobody gets sued for those uncannily non-uniform results. Welcome to the new world of online checking, where you don't even have to guess by name, and can just look on Facebook for whether that guy is a black or muslim or whatever you don't like.

But at any rate, the relationship to your retarded rant is... what? Are you willing to claim that racial and religious and political profiling (which are the kind of things the GP predicted) are actually necessary to predict who'll shoot up the place? Or did you have your canned rant and just had to use it whether it fits or not?

2. And your argument is... wait, what? The tiny percentage of workplace deaths? According to CDC data, that's an average of 800 per year, with the maximum being about 1000 in 1994, and the minimum just over 500 in 2006.

That's 500 in 310,000,000 people or roughly 1.5 per _million_ people.

So you're going to justify discrimination against literally tens of millions of people to maybe prevent a tiny percentage of 500 deaths a year? Even as scaremongering attempts to justify why someone else needs to bend over for the good of the corporate or government overlords, this has to take the cake for failed sense of proportions.

Asshole. Seriously, what a mother fucking asshole.

Cretin. Seriously, what a cretin.

"I bring it up because there is a tremendous degree of diversity: racially, economically, culturally, etc that most european nations simply do not have to contend with."

So London 1993-1997 - Infant Mortality rate 6.0 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/DS16/DS16_cap07.pdf
US 2004 Infanct Mortality rate 6.8 ? http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.htm

Does London's SocioEconomic and Cultural diversity measure up for you consideration?
(Ignoring that fact that the London figures are from last century.)

Still think it's because black babies have some kind of genetic thing going on?

I appreciate your use of sarcasm to give me a good skewering, but correct me if I am wrong, but the UK isn't highly segmented by race into socio-economic strata, at least not to the same extent the USA is.

here are some links you might find interesting
http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2008/r081015.htm?s_cid=mediarel_r081015
http://www.birthactivist.com/2009/11/cdc-releases-new-report-comparing-us-and-european-infant-mortality-rates/

(you'll note, btw, that premature infant mortality is lower in the US than the UK for all gestational age ranges up to 37 weeks)

Pay particular attention to the chart. Why such a high statistic in violence in the US? It shows the homicide rate for males 15-24 years of age in the U.S. We essentially blow the curve with nearly 5 times the homicide rate in this group as compared to the next closest nation:

http://www.netwellness.org/healthtopics/domesticv/graph.gif

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article542.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july-dec99/violence_12-16.html

This last one is one that I find most troubling from the CDC:

omicide and suicide are responsible for approximately one fourth of deaths among persons aged 10--24 years in the United States.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5329a1.htm

Everybody likes to think of themselves as normal.

The US department of health defines 'moderate' drinking as 1 drink per day, and heavy drinking as anything above 2 drinks per day. http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/faqs.htm#moderateDrinking

According to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology, only about 10% of Americans have more than 2 drinks per day. By comparison, over 35% of Americans consider themselves abstainers. More than half the population has at most one drink, if they drink at all. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/153/1/64

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your level of alcohol consumption, this study suggests you're probably healthier than those 35% abstainers. But stop fooling yourself: you're consuming several times the normal amount of alcohol and by any reasonable definition, you are a heavy drinker.

Ebola only occurs in one part of the world unlike malaria

Except that's not true. Here's a table of known cases of ebola outbreaks published by the CDC. In 1976 there was one in England. In the US the first one was in 1989. Other countries with outbreaks not in Africa is Italy and the Philippines.

Falcon

You might want to look at the list of known Ebola outbreaks before you determine where to site your stockpile.

Rape culture is the idea that our culture minimizes the damage of rape, marginalizes rape victims, blames the victims for being raped, and gives rapists the idea that they can safely get away with rape. The phrase, regrettably, is frequently wielded as a blunt weapon to silence criticism and stifle critical thinking. One might even end up with the idea that it's an inherently wrong idea, that we in no way have a rape culture. I'll admit, it's easy to think that when you see the phrase abused.

From now on, whenever I think we don't really have a rape culture, and people are making a big deal deal about it, I'll re-read your post. Only someone deeply subsumed by rape culture could conclude that "forced to have sexual intercourse" somehow didn't necessarily mean rape. Do you also also think that many mugging "victims" weren't actually mugged, since they "chose" to hand over their possessions even though they didn't want to? Apparently someone who "choses" to have sex because they fear for of losing a job, a grade, a recommendation, a "friendship," or a relationship that they badly need (or at least think they need) hasn't been raped.

All too many rapists will justify their rapes to themselves and their friends with comfortable lies like, "She chose to have sex with me," happily ignoring that the "choice" was coerced. It's an easy lie to tell themselves when enablers like you are eager to leap to their defense. They'll tell themselves that "Her no really meant yes,"since you're so eager to tell them that it happens frequently. Of course, this means ignoring that if no really means yes, it means they're screwing someone playing mind-games with them, which is pretty much guaranteed to end badly.

Thank you, I guess, for reminding me that rape culture is a very real problem.

It has become fashionable among nerds to identify with Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Rainman to the point anyone who is even remotely socially awkward or left brain oriented to be called autistic, followed by the implication that autism fills an important role in society. The reality is somewhat different. With a few famous exceptions, patients tend to have trouble taking care of themselves - many are profoundly disabled - while actual leaders in engineering, technology, and science tend to have normal mental health. (though many of them may be assholes, but that's another story)

Do you know anyone who is autistic? I think not. You are counteracting the bullshit of Rainman Autism with the bullshit of Gilbert Grape Autism. The truth is that like all people, most Autistics are somewhere in the middle. I am very involved in Adult Autistic skills classes (where we teach life skills and coping strategies), and my child is Autistic, most of his friends are Autistic (shocking I know, how can he have friends if he is a mouth foaming invalid).

I know it can be frustrating to people who don't identify as Autistic but who are most likely Autistic (Asperger) according to the DSM-IV criteria, which are plain text, very easy to read and apply. The truth is that Autism is a syndrome, in the literal definition of the word. A set of shared symptoms. As the traits that are part of the syndrome become more valued in our society, more people will identify with them, and see them as part of their core personality. The truth is, if you can't understand facial gestures, you don't make friends easily, you don't care what other people think, you grind on MMOs all day, and you have normal or above intellegence and language development, congratulations, you have the right to say that you have Asperger's... It is a voluntary club, and it is ok if you want to stay in the closet; but I find the people that are most annoyed by the Nerd Asperger boom, are the ones most likely to actually meet the criteria.

I am old school, diagnosed at age 4 because of severe language delays and self destructive repetitive behavior, draconian 1980s special ED, therapies, medication, all of that. As a grown-up I am not a "leader" of science and industry, but I have a what I consider to be a white collar, lucrative software development job, a wife, kids, the house in suburbia, the SUV with leather seats, the whole 9 yards.

A survey of college women found that 2.8 percent had experienced either a completed (1.7 percent) or an attempted (1.1 percent) rape within a 9-month timeframe.
13.7% of undergraduate women had been victims of at least one completed sexual assault since entering college: 4.7% were victims of physically forced sexual assault; 7.8% of women were sexually assaulted when they were incapacitated after voluntarily consuming drugs, alcohol or both; and 0.6% were sexually assaulted when they were incapacitated after having been given a drug without their knowledge
Finally, a national-level study of college and community based women found that approximately 673,000 of nearly 6 million current college women (11.5 percent) have ever been raped, and approximately twelve percent of these rapes were reported to law enforcement

I'm not questioning the underlying idea that rape is pervasive and wrong. What I'm getting at is that by dragging out exaggerated, faulty numbers you introduce weakness into an argument. Those men in that room would have been horrified to hear that 13.7% of women had been sexually assaulted on campus - but that numbers not sexy enough for widespread hyperbole. All it took was for one guy to do a little digging into the stats, find the body of literature that criticized the methodology of that one source, and campus rape became a joke to half the community. Instead of disgust we had widespread disdain for the claim itself, and that is extremely damaging.

There is something extremely patronising, or condescending, which presumes that people cannot be motivated by subtle or nuanced arguments – every problem doesn’t have to directly affect 98.43% of the population to count.

For your future knowledge, it is 1-in-5 not 1-in-4. I would consider those to be almost the same. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00049859.htm "Female students (20.4%) were significantly more likely than male students (3.9%) to report they had ever been forced to have sexual intercourse."

"thecarchik writes....A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 1.1 percent increase in self-reported obesity....The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed"

thecarchik lied to us, because the CDC study doesn't say a word about fuel.

Here's the CDC study, does anyone see anything about fuel? Neither do I.

What the article is really quoting is a 2006 story on Entrepreneur.com titled "economic impact of obesity on automobile fuel consumption" which does conclude that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed, but unfortunately all the references in that article are dead tree so someone would have to go through a lot of effort to fact-check.

I'm not doubting us being fatter has cost more in fuel consumption just as it no doubt has cost more in health care costs, I'm just saying the that the article is misleading, that claiming this is a CDC study was an attempt to make the story sound far more credible than the real source, a 4 yr old story on entrepreneur.com. The linked article is honest and does say it's not the CDC study, but the Slashdot post directly states the CDC study is responsible.

In other words.... it's a trap!

Among women 15–44 years of age in 2002, 11 percent answered yes when asked, ‘‘Have you ever had any sexual experience of any kind with another female?’’ (The wording of this question was less restrictive and less specific than the questions about men having oral or anal sex with men.)

. They also threw a little light on those bisexual responses

Approximately 1 percent of men and 3 percent of women 15–44 years of age have had both male and female sexual partners in the last 12 months (table B). Among females, 5.8 percent of teens and 4.8 percent of females 20–24 years of age had had both male and female partners in the last 12 months; percentages were lower at ages 25–44. Among men, about 1 percent had had both male and female partners in the last 12 months at each age

. That only applies to the previous 12 months though so its a little hard to tease out a full answer.
Give the reports a look, they really are quite interesting.

Only if you were over the age of 32 (i.e. you had experienced H1N1 before 1978). This thing killed a few thousand kids in the US.

Exaggerate much? The CDC reported a total of 276 pediatric deaths due to H1N1 during last years flu season. If you include the tail end of the season before that, the number is closer to 600.

In my local school districts, representing tens of thousands of children, the infection rate was close to 25% at its peak. Not a single serious complication in the bunch. H1N1 was a virulent beasty, but it was significantly less lethal.

It's hard to figure out how many cases there would have been without the vaccination program, but the vaccinations probably prevented a few thousand deaths, prevented 30,000 serious but non-fatal complication, and about $30 billion in sick days.

No, it is pretty easy. The outbreak peaked and waned BEFORE vaccination was available to most and absolutely before those that were vaccinated were able to develop resistance (some 4 to 6 weeks after vaccination). In other words, the vaccination program was a complete boondoggle.

Go look at Google Flu Trends. Unless you were really "lucky", you were not able to get a vaccination for H1N1 until mid-October. This means resistance didn't develop until mid-November to early-December. By that point, the outbreak was completely over.

I wonder if the fan site has asked the marketing people to intervene. Usually, although lawyers can get lots of money, marketing people HAVE lots of money and that can make a difference to the upper echelons.

Alaskan crab fishing is ok as a "dangerous reality TV" show. Apparently the stats for Alaskan crab fishing is 356/100,000/year. That's a lot - getting on for 1 in every 100,000 per day. (US National Average workforce fatality rate is 7.0/100,000/year.) I wondered if North Sea fishing was worse - it has a vicious reputation and the North Sea has no landmass between it and the north pole. However, statistics indicates that the mortality rate is 151 x national average in the UK, and the UK's national average is 0.5 deaths per 100,000 people. That puts the North Sea fishermen at a paltry 76/100,000/year. Not safe, by any standards, but many times safer in absolute terms. In relative terms, the US' workforce fatality rate is 14x worse than that in the UK, but the Alaskan crab fishing is only 4.7x as deadly as North Sea fishing. By this standard, North Sea fishing is the deadliest fishing occupation relative to the health and safety of the country involved.

I'd like to see the citations for your numbers.

I live in an area where gun collecting, clay shooting, sport course shooting, still target shooting, hunting, and just putting ammo into cans are common hobbies. I remember far more deadly beating around here than accidental gun deaths.

Accidental deaths tend to be in the form of cars, motorcycles, ATVs, boats, and farm machinery. Accidental gun deaths are caused when people with no respect for the power and utility of firearms pick them up at the corner shop without sufficient training.

About 30% of Americans polled by Gallup own firearms personally and 40% say they have a gun in their home. 47% of men in some demographic groups personally own at least one firearm.

In 2001, 800 to 900 gun deaths were accidental in the US. About 11,000 were homicides, and the biggest number -- about 58% of all gun-related deaths in 2001 -- were suicides. Other sources have higher numbers, but I didn't find anything higher than 1,500 annually in a quip that sounds extremely anti-firearm in a top-ten list of accidental deaths.

Now, since there are around 300 million people in the US and around 300 million firearms, I'd say less than 1000 accidental deaths is much better than the situation for accidental death for motorists and passengers in cars (33,040 of whom died in 2005) or bicyclists (of whom 784 died in 2005, but at 3 to 11 times as many deaths per mile as those in cars).

About 5,000 people die from food poisoning each year in the US, with about 1,800 of those dying from known pathogens. Seventy-five percent of those known pathogens are strains of just three pathogens: Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma.

Remember that top ten list I mentioned? Firearms accidents were listed at #7, although if using other sources for the number they would have fallen possibly at #8 or #9.

Death by gases (poisoning and asphyxiation) are in the same neighborhood as accidental gun deaths. Suffocation (choking blocking the respiratory tract or asphyxiation just due to lack of oxygen and not some other gas getting in its way) is double or more, as are fire-related deaths and drownings.

Roughly double the items in the previous paragraph to find 8,600 people per year lethally poisoned by solids or liquids including truly poisonous foods but not foods contaminated by infectious food-borne pathogens like salmonella.

Almost double that again to find that nearly 15,000 people plunge to untimely deaths each year.

Motor vehicle crashes (accounting for over 43,000 fatalities per year according to their unnamed sources) lead by a huge margin. That's more than suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths by gun put together.

I guess it's time to tell people about the dangers of letting their loved ones around ladders, stairs, food, and especially cars.

The alternative is an archaic system of elder care called "families". I understand it was practiced in some parts of the world back in the 20th century.

US Life Expectancy [PDF]:

Born 1900: 49

Born 2000: 77

Immediately from this we can see the task of looking after an old person is not the same. Very, very unfortunately, this is not even close to being the problem.

Compounding the life expectancy is the birth rates over the period. For example, in Britain already the number of pensioners exceed the number of children. By 2060 there will be 2 adults of working age for every 1 pensioner. Adults of working age of course includes 16+ year olds, university students and so on, and people in the vital early years of building careers.

The demographics are frightening. Yet it doesn't end there. There's a massive pensions crisis looming, people are buying homes later and are more debt-ridden - few people have any real capital anymore.

The demographic time bomb has been well understood, almost from the moment it began ticking. It very likely will have far more severe consequences (at least here in the West) than The Environment, but it's just being swept under the carpet. Let's be clear, the need for pensioners to remain autonomous and allow families to remain working is utterly critical.