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OK, well, you're both wrong.
violent crime rates
relatively stable since the peak in 1993, though has been steadily increasing since 2005

gun ownership associated with homicide
This, however, is undeniable... more guns, more homicides:

...in areas where household firearm ownership rates were higher, a disproportionately large number of people died from homicide.

The NIH has written an excellent review of stem cell therapy for myocardial infarction for those interested. It hasn't been updated in several years, but it should provide a lot of the biological context and rationale for these types of experiments.

It's interesting that you claimed that I was wrong apparently without researching.

The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population.

"data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world"

"two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world."

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1893020

Now. My agenda lies in disproving myths. What's yours?

Evolution states that we came from a "big bang".

To quote an old post here, "You must think that we're discussing Darwin's other great scientific work, On the Origin of Spacetime." Evolution says nothing of the sort. Evolution is a theory in the field of biology.

Before this big bang, everything in the universe existed as pure energy, then for some reason, space and time came into existence and all of the matter that we see today is a result of this sudden, massive transformation of energy into matter. My question is this: First, if matter didn't exist before energy, then what triggered the "bang"? Next, for the bang to happen, laws of physics would need to be in place. So did the laws of physics always exist? did energy always exist? did time always exist, or as I said before, was time a result of the big bang? How did this explosion trigger the creation of space?

This type of thing really needs to be studied in depth. Reasoning it out by intuition alone will simply not get you anywhere.

Next, has there been any documented case in which a non-living collection of inorganic matter spontaneously became a living organism? Has this foundationally important step ever been observed, measured, or repeated? Even if I take the Big Bang by faith (is there a better description of it?), how did we end up with life?

The fact that evolutionary theory works is independent of the origin of live. Evolution is about change over time. Life could have gotten here by some fascinating chemical abiogenesis, or it could have been popped in by magic. Evolutionary theory holds either way. Again, you're pulling in ancillary topics that aren't really relevant because you're assuming that evolutionary theory's job is to replace your entire belief system about the universe. It's not.

For example, every form of life would need a means of reproduction in every generation of its existence. If there was a problem with this reproductive system at any point, it would be the end of the species since it is incapable of producing offspring.

A problem with the reproductive system would be a problem for that particular individual organism, not for the entire species. Can you describe a more specific example?

Along a similar vein, every organism has a means of sustaining itself. In most cases it's either photosynthesis, digestion, or chemical processing (as we see on the floor of the deep sea). How could the process of turning light into usable energy have been done gradually?

Have you actually looked into this to see if any work has been done, or are you simply assuming that it's a gap in humanity's knowledge because it's a gap in yours?

In the case of mammals, how could the process of digestion have been done gradually?

Digestion in its many forms predates mammals significantly. If you're asking how an organism with no digestive system at all could develop a modern human digestive system, it wouldn't. Nobody has suggested anything of the sort.

A more glaring example of this would be the Bombardier Beetle, whose defense mechanism, if incomplete, would result in the immediate death of the organism.

Again, have you actually checked this claim? It's simply not true.

The difference between myself and many of those who believe in evolution is that I have absolutely no problem admitting it.

I hate to be overly harsh here, but I think that another major difference is that you don't seem to have done much research into the actual data behind the theory of evolution.

Actually even that's disputable...

Well no, not seriously. The increased risk of thyroid cancer is documented, and while thyroid cancer itself is rarely fatal, treatment for it is usually removal of part or all of the thyroid gland, which causes problems all of its own, but people don't talk about that when they flout that nobody died "from cancer" due to three mile island.

This is why. As an aside, this does not prevent minors from consuming alcohol on private property in at least 19 states. As well as other ways for minors to consume alcohol, such as having a parent / legal guardian present / consent, as well as if the minor is married and the spouse is present and not drinking. Some exceptions are very picky.

(sung to If you're happy and you know it)

If you're twitter and you're shilling clap your hands
*clap* *clap*
If you're twitter and you're shilling clap your hands
*clap* *clap*

If you're twitter and you're shilling,
if you're shilling and you're twitter,
then you must be
in the little socky list!

*CLAP* *CLAP

No, that charcoal briquette would have prevented no death, since it made the same amount of smoke, except not so ugly and obvious.

Everything I've read about it says they burn more cleanly/produce less smoke. Can you back up this statement?

That lady should have invented "the stove" instead of "corn stalk charcoal".

And what will you use as fuel for these "stoves" you speak of? How will you fund all of these stoves? Will they have flues to exhaust all the smoke produced, and if so, how will these flues be incorporated into their huts and what will they cost? The briquette is not a fix-all, it is an interim solution that can save lives and reduce pollution and deforestation while more permanent solutions can be made available/affordable.

How can smoke induce infections?

Answers here and also here:

Acute respiratory infections
These are the single most important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, killing more than 3 million children under five every year and accounting for an estimated 9 per cent of the entire global disease burden. Extended exposure to high levels of biomass smoke can impair the clearing ability of the lungs and render them more susceptible to infection. The effects may be particularly severe for young children, who tend to stay indoors and are often carried on their mothers backs or laps during cooking.

those countries do not need to be helped to trade: those countries need to be allowed to trade.

Yes, they need to be allowed to trade. But they also need infrastructure. Having to travel for days on foot to sell your wares or services is no substitute for good roads and a reliable phone network if you want to trade profitably.

both US and EU use those pretexts copiously, sometimes against each other, sometimes against neighboring countries and all the time against those that can not afford retaliate

I agree that trade barriers are a major problem for developing countries and need to be addressed. However, I think that this has little to do with the validity of many of the ideas and inventions presented on TED. Many of the inventions I have seen actually encouraged the local economies by creating business opportunities in manufacturing and distribution, while providing health and sanitary benefits (which means people have time and energy to invest in economic growth rather than subsisting). Lifting trade restrictions will not automatically cure malaria, nor will it give every African villager a modern stove before millions have died from smoke-related illnesses. These ideas are not handouts, they are empowering tools and solutions to different problems that all contribute to poverty.

How can smoking up harm society if it has no impact on others?

Again, he said earlier, and we are not in agreement that weed is harmless or has no impact on others. Especially when said impact is a car. And then there's the whole concept of what drug abuse does to families and society. Don't deny these facts and promote weed irresponsibly, because I list that as another example of how people abuse drugs and therefore can't be trusted to responsibly use, distribute and recommend them to others.

I'm sensing this'll go in circles so I'll just state my opinion and provide some links.

Weed impairs motor skills, is a gateway drug in teens, causes seriously adverse and psychotic reactions, and hallucinations and depersonalization that can recur or persist.

So I think it's very powerful and unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

Two cases of "cannabis acute psychosis" following the administration of oral cannabis

Cannabis psychosis following bhang ingestion.

Psychological Responses To Cannabis
Cannabis and acute functional psychosis (in individuals who have no history of severe mental illness), chronic psychosis, amotivational syndrome, Evidence for dependence..

Animals Exposed To Marijuana's Active Component Will Self-Administer

"Tolerance and dependence"

As gateway in teens:
issue of cross-sensitisation of cannabis/opioid receptors

Cannabis use increases risk of psychotic illness

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened

Erowid has an Experience Vault where you can read about negative reactions, but it probably never occurred to you to do that. I'd quote the relevant sections but there are a lot of them, and it's daunting. Maybe I'll organize them one day.

Psychosis and Eventually Schizophrenia

How can smoking up harm society if it has no impact on others?

Again, he said earlier, and we are not in agreement that weed is harmless or has no impact on others. Especially when said impact is a car. And then there's the whole concept of what drug abuse does to families and society. Don't deny these facts and promote weed irresponsibly, because I list that as another example of how people abuse drugs and therefore can't be trusted to responsibly use, distribute and recommend them to others.

I'm sensing this'll go in circles so I'll just state my opinion and provide some links.

Weed impairs motor skills, is a gateway drug in teens, causes seriously adverse and psychotic reactions, and hallucinations and depersonalization that can recur or persist.

So I think it's very powerful and unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

Two cases of "cannabis acute psychosis" following the administration of oral cannabis

Cannabis psychosis following bhang ingestion.

Psychological Responses To Cannabis
Cannabis and acute functional psychosis (in individuals who have no history of severe mental illness), chronic psychosis, amotivational syndrome, Evidence for dependence..

Animals Exposed To Marijuana's Active Component Will Self-Administer

"Tolerance and dependence"

As gateway in teens:
issue of cross-sensitisation of cannabis/opioid receptors

Cannabis use increases risk of psychotic illness

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened

Erowid has an Experience Vault where you can read about negative reactions, but it probably never occurred to you to do that. I'd quote the relevant sections but there are a lot of them, and it's daunting. Maybe I'll organize them one day.

Psychosis and Eventually Schizophrenia

Not to say that wikigene will always be accurate and there NEVER will be vandalism.

Of course, this goes for peer-reviewed articles too. According to at least one guy, most of them are wrong.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1182327

So the potential for incorrect information really is not unique to this thing. Only the Pope claims infallibility, and frankly he's never proven it.

But will wikigene be completely biological companies lying about their gene of interest and corrupt scientists trying to prove their research? Doubtful.

I have to agree, what NCBI has accomplished with Entrez is pretty amazing. Check out the 'Gene' page for any given gene. Not only do you get the sequence of the gene, transcript, and gene product, but they have literature references, a list of interacting proteins, all sorts of metadata from the Gene Ontology project. If that's not enough, just about any sequence analysis tool out there will accept an NCBI RefSeq ID, making it incredibly easy to use this data any way you want.

I have to agree, what NCBI has accomplished with Entrez is pretty amazing. Check out the 'Gene' page for any given gene. Not only do you get the sequence of the gene, transcript, and gene product, but they have literature references, a list of interacting proteins, all sorts of metadata from the Gene Ontology project. If that's not enough, just about any sequence analysis tool out there will accept an NCBI RefSeq ID, making it incredibly easy to use this data any way you want.

I could be wrong, but doesn't wiki allow you to submit your research as long as it's been published somewhere you can reference? If you discover a gene, you're going to publish it somewhere you can put on your CV.

Anyway, this will be pretty redundant. NCBI already has a gene database that is well crosslinked.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene

As this database is powered by published research and updated by a government sponsored organization, it also cannot easily be vandalized, unlike wiki.

Lastly, a lot of researchers put information about their favorite gene up on wiki currently.
Example: reelin. I couldn't help noticing the last time I looked that one of the major contributors was referencing her own (peer-reviewed published) research on reelin.

Difficult to imagine how someone with this much wealth, presumably obtained via business acumen, could be this naive. The enviros will not simply stand by and permit private interests to carpet the front range with propellers. No way, no how.

They will claim bird extinction. The will claim the composites necessary to build the props are destroying the planet. They'll get a consensus of government funded scientists to assert that large wind farms cause devastating Atmospheric Thermal Depletion*. They'll discover whatever "endangered" prairie critters they have too to prevent anything on this scale.

Forget it.

*should copyright that

I would approach such genetic testing with caution if the health care provider (or service) isn't going to provide a lot of education about your risk factors and how to interpret your results.

Last year, I participated in a medical study to find out what patients' reactions would be to genetic testing http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/may2007/nhgri-03.htm . Education was a key part to interpreting the results. It helped you understand your risk factors.

The genes the NIH tested were largely offset by lifestyle choices--exercise, diet, etc.

Trust me, I went through a whole range of emotions--intrigue, anxiety, curiousity. Hey, it even got our family to talk about our medical histories. By the time I got my results, there were no surprises.

Actually, viruses need a cell to REPLICATE. They are kept quite handily in several non-cellular media, as in the kinds used for modified live virus vaccines. Some lyophilized (freeze-dried) MLV vaccines are tested and labeled to have a shelf life of 24 months, and their liquid formulations are rated up to 5 years. (link is a is .doc)

Longevity in the environment is highly variable depending on the variety of virus in question. Viruses are not parasites. They are literally interruptive self-promoting genetic code.
While it is true that most viruses do not survive long without the protection of a host cell (degraded by environmental stressors), influenza in particular and many hardy viruses in general can withstand it for days, weeks, or months. In the random article I most recently read, the figure for influenza survival was as much as 6+ days on non-porous surfaces.

Putting anything in a plastic bag for 3 hours is not going to disinfect it unless some fairly scary chemicals are put in the bag as well (as in cold sterilization).

Plague, by the way, was caused by a bacterium (Yersinia pestis)... or at least that's what the majority of scientific opinion is... (there is another theory involving viruses, but it's not well accepted).

In this case, as others have mentioned, the viral victim is protected from the strain of influenza for a good long while, and that protection will last long after the virus is inactivated. So no worries on the laptop unless it's going to be handed off to someone else. (In that case, pick someone you don't like in the next couple of days).

I also think that the heat of a laptop would tend to decrease the longevity of viral particles on its surfaces, but that's opinion, I haven't looked for a reference.

just don't use it for 2 or 3 days: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6282993

(Survival of influenza viruses on environmental surfaces.)

fMRI has always had issues with the fact that it doesn't measure time-varying signals very well in the brain. Which means that it basically can't track fast brain activity, since it needs 2 to 5 seconds to resolve.

Doppler Sonography by contrast provides a way of measuring neural activity with a high degree of resolution in the time domain:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17290143

Learned this in the very excellent Brain Hacks book by O'Reilly, which isn't about hacking the brain, really, at all, but just a top to bottom description of how the brain works, with various experiments to demonstrate their points (like optical illusions and such). I highly recommend it.

Yes, that's it. The article abstract is a lot more intelligible than the press release:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18587387

They're using Zinc Finger Nucleases:

http://www.zincfingers.org/scientific-background.htm

to target and disrupt the CCR5 gene.

...we have 20-30 years at the current rare we're using Zinc.

Well, if zinc runs out, HIV will be the least of our worries; none of us can survive without it.

Seriously, the amount of zinc in these "zinc fingers" (which already exist in our bodies) is a trace amount.

The water must also be poured onto the leaves at 98.2'c, and preferably still be above 95' when it hits the stomach lining. This helps in the leather-making process. (You don't want it too much colder, say in the 60' temperature range, or you'll get cancer. (pubmed report))

How about all of the embryos that for one reason or another are destroyed by the body itself? Should we be trying to protect those as well? Should we spend money on protecting the "unborn" instead of say, cancer research?

If either of your 2 cases were greater than .001 % of the abortions in the world, you would have a point. But because of a few rare cases, all pre-born humans get no protections?

Look up spontaneous abortion. It's a lot more common than the medically-induced kind. Some estimates put about half of all "pre-born" humans as being discarded in this way, usually because of chromosomal abnormalities.

I agree there's a lot of crap out there (I'm personally annoyed by the "anti-aging" skin-care crap I see on TV), but I don't think that a Google search and the fact that anti-aging is hyped and occupied by questionable characters mean that Dr. de Grey's Methuselah foundation is questionable itself.

In fact, from what I've seen of his work, it appears that his foundation is in fact putting its money where its mouth is (versus lip service and lining the pockets of those involved):

http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=mp_structure

From a cursory review of the site, it appears that the prize has been running since at least 2004 and has awarded monetary prizes:

http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=reversal

So, I would counter that regardless of the fraud, hype and general unpleasantness present in other areas of this field, the Methuselah Foundation is promoting honest research in the area.

I also believe that they have a ways to go to reverse the stagnation in the industry (thanks to the religious right's anti-stem-cell-research beliefs) and the general newness of the field, but you need to start somewhere. Imagine how far we'd be today if the NIH stem cell policy wasn't written by right-wingers:

http://stemcells.nih.gov/
http://stemcells.nih.gov/policy/

Half of the process is convincing the world that it's possible to reverse/end aging and get the funding taps opened up, while the other half is building up research on the basic science that needs to occur first.

I agree there's a lot of crap out there (I'm personally annoyed by the "anti-aging" skin-care crap I see on TV), but I don't think that a Google search and the fact that anti-aging is hyped and occupied by questionable characters mean that Dr. de Grey's Methuselah foundation is questionable itself.

In fact, from what I've seen of his work, it appears that his foundation is in fact putting its money where its mouth is (versus lip service and lining the pockets of those involved):

http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=mp_structure

From a cursory review of the site, it appears that the prize has been running since at least 2004 and has awarded monetary prizes:

http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=reversal

So, I would counter that regardless of the fraud, hype and general unpleasantness present in other areas of this field, the Methuselah Foundation is promoting honest research in the area.

I also believe that they have a ways to go to reverse the stagnation in the industry (thanks to the religious right's anti-stem-cell-research beliefs) and the general newness of the field, but you need to start somewhere. Imagine how far we'd be today if the NIH stem cell policy wasn't written by right-wingers:

http://stemcells.nih.gov/
http://stemcells.nih.gov/policy/

Half of the process is convincing the world that it's possible to reverse/end aging and get the funding taps opened up, while the other half is building up research on the basic science that needs to occur first.

Exactly what I wanted to say, People on Slashdot are Tech Savvy people, at least if I generalize, and we (at least) I tend to try anything that comes new, so I tried IE8 beta ..I was using Firefox3 RCs and Opera betas and the list goes on. It is a classic case of comparing apples and oranges, even though, we know that the spectra looks very much alike

The fallacy here is that the assumption that the government or science has any firm idea of how to force somebody else or even one's self to not be fat. There's just that fascist impulse to raise the hammer of punishment and expect the overweight to find a way.

Here's a set of links on various ties between obesity and infection, to get the pot boiling.

• TCS Daily - Eating Some Crow on Fat
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Lipid metabolic changes in experimentally induced ...[Indian J Exp Biol. 2001] - PubMed Result
• Obesity Virus?
• BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity 'may be linked to virus'
• Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis -- Lee 1 (21): pe24 -- Science Signaling
• An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increase...[Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result
• Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005] - PubMed Result
• Gut microbiota and its possible relationship with ...[Mayo Clin Proc. 2008] - PubMed Result
• Biology News: Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Symposium: Emerging Role of Pathogens in Chronic Diseases ... Uses the term 'Infectobesity'.

The fallacy here is that the assumption that the government or science has any firm idea of how to force somebody else or even one's self to not be fat. There's just that fascist impulse to raise the hammer of punishment and expect the overweight to find a way.

Here's a set of links on various ties between obesity and infection, to get the pot boiling.

• TCS Daily - Eating Some Crow on Fat
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Lipid metabolic changes in experimentally induced ...[Indian J Exp Biol. 2001] - PubMed Result
• Obesity Virus?
• BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity 'may be linked to virus'
• Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis -- Lee 1 (21): pe24 -- Science Signaling
• An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increase...[Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result
• Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005] - PubMed Result
• Gut microbiota and its possible relationship with ...[Mayo Clin Proc. 2008] - PubMed Result
• Biology News: Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Symposium: Emerging Role of Pathogens in Chronic Diseases ... Uses the term 'Infectobesity'.

The fallacy here is that the assumption that the government or science has any firm idea of how to force somebody else or even one's self to not be fat. There's just that fascist impulse to raise the hammer of punishment and expect the overweight to find a way.

Here's a set of links on various ties between obesity and infection, to get the pot boiling.

• TCS Daily - Eating Some Crow on Fat
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Lipid metabolic changes in experimentally induced ...[Indian J Exp Biol. 2001] - PubMed Result
• Obesity Virus?
• BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity 'may be linked to virus'
• Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis -- Lee 1 (21): pe24 -- Science Signaling
• An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increase...[Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result
• Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005] - PubMed Result
• Gut microbiota and its possible relationship with ...[Mayo Clin Proc. 2008] - PubMed Result
• Biology News: Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Symposium: Emerging Role of Pathogens in Chronic Diseases ... Uses the term 'Infectobesity'.

The fallacy here is that the assumption that the government or science has any firm idea of how to force somebody else or even one's self to not be fat. There's just that fascist impulse to raise the hammer of punishment and expect the overweight to find a way.

Here's a set of links on various ties between obesity and infection, to get the pot boiling.

• TCS Daily - Eating Some Crow on Fat
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Lipid metabolic changes in experimentally induced ...[Indian J Exp Biol. 2001] - PubMed Result
• Obesity Virus?
• BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity 'may be linked to virus'
• Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis -- Lee 1 (21): pe24 -- Science Signaling
• An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increase...[Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result
• Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005] - PubMed Result
• Gut microbiota and its possible relationship with ...[Mayo Clin Proc. 2008] - PubMed Result
• Biology News: Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Symposium: Emerging Role of Pathogens in Chronic Diseases ... Uses the term 'Infectobesity'.

Brenner, like a lot of older wet-lab scientists, makes some good points but goes way too far in his criticisms. High-throughput biology is increasing our understanding of basic cellular processes at an exponential rate. The key point he misses, I think, is that high-throughput techniques are certainly low-output on a per-experiment basis compared to traditional tecnhiques -- but "low" is not the same as "no", and if you do a very large number of experiments in parallel, there's a good chance that one or two of them will yield useful data. Furthermore, with large public repositories like GEO, there's a good possibility that the hundreds or thousands of experiments that don't yield useful results for your work can still be useful to someone else.

a physician, at last ...

so, what should I do ? I have f...... big bones ... Should I be sterilized just in case my would-be children get the same bone structure ?

"People in the ideal range" ... "CONCLUSION: Overweight status was associated with longevity and underweight with short life, due to lower and higher mortality, respectively, from CVD and cancer." from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17537093 ... looks like you're wrong ... and there a lot of other studies that say the same thing: no fat gets you dead sooner.

BMI measures only "beauty" ... go peddle your eugenics some place else.

now mod me troll, please

Survey Says: You're wrong.

Your lovely anecdotes appeals to a simplistic logic that doesn't stand up in the face of actual statistics.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/state_data/data_highlights/2006/index.htm

For every person that dies there are 20 people living with health issues as a result of smoking.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/smoking.htm

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/smoking.html

Education is a good thing: The better your education, the lower the chance that you will smoke, eat crap food, or engage in other lifestyle risks that are statistically proven to shorten or complicate your life in the long run.

Your post is not Insightful, except for those who want to support your short-sighted worldview that lifestyle of an individual doesn't impact the community as a whole.

You choose to have an unhealthy lifestyle, and thus there are incentives to encourage you to change.

Last I checked, I have very little control over my genetic code (still trying to invent that time machine so I can kill my father before I was born...)

That said, I'm rather unhappy that as a moderate consumer of alcohol, my insurance could group me with binge drinkers and charge me more money, even though there's evidence that moderate drinkers are healthier than non-drinkers. Who gets to decide what's science and what's not?

This story is a dupe which is more than one year old. From the discussions in many mainstream media back then I remember some dermatologist advising full body sunlight exposure for 10 minutes every day (not more though).

The original publication is here. Honestly I wonder why we did not see any follow up untill now.

In case you like to read: #18565885, 18424428 and 17540555
(no open access, I'm afraid).

This story is a dupe which is more than one year old. From the discussions in many mainstream media back then I remember some dermatologist advising full body sunlight exposure for 10 minutes every day (not more though).

The original publication is here. Honestly I wonder why we did not see any follow up untill now.

In case you like to read: #18565885, 18424428 and 17540555
(no open access, I'm afraid).

This story is a dupe which is more than one year old. From the discussions in many mainstream media back then I remember some dermatologist advising full body sunlight exposure for 10 minutes every day (not more though).

The original publication is here. Honestly I wonder why we did not see any follow up untill now.

In case you like to read: #18565885, 18424428 and 17540555
(no open access, I'm afraid).

This story is a dupe which is more than one year old. From the discussions in many mainstream media back then I remember some dermatologist advising full body sunlight exposure for 10 minutes every day (not more though).

The original publication is here. Honestly I wonder why we did not see any follow up untill now.

In case you like to read: #18565885, 18424428 and 17540555
(no open access, I'm afraid).

Dude, you used to be so cool! There is no troll. And no the argument is easily won. Some people have no idea how common non-metric units are in US science. If only I can get kung pawh to cough up some money on a bet. Not likely, but it is fun trying.

Life, my eyesight, both of my legs, etc. Some things can't be priced b/c they are irreplaceable and vital to my happiness.

On the contrary, we can and do price those things every day. The price can be measured by studying what salary is demanded of people to bear what percent risk of loss. See "Changes in the Value of Life, 1940-1980", at http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/risk10.pdf, and "Present Value of Expected Lifetime Productivity, by Age, Gender, and Discount Rate, 1992", at http://www.nida.nih.gov/EconomicCosts/AppendixB_1.html. They crunched the numbers and built an equation showing the risk-versus-wage-demanded curve for average people.

A "100% risk of loss of life" is a special case where the price curve goes to infinity, because money loses its value at the time of death... although in the Middle East we do observe suicide bombers being incented by large (for them) financial benefits awarded to their families. And it's easy to imagine a parent selling (if it were possible) their remaining life in exchange for the money needed to cure a loved one of some terrible ailment.

It would also be possible to get the price for consensual loss of eyesight, if our society allowed people to sell their eyes as donor organs. You too would consider it if the price was right -- say, ten billion dollars cool cash. It's easy to sit in your armchair now and insist that "no price is too high", but it would be a different story if a truckful of cash actually pulled up in your driveway.

Of course, you should be suspicious of me anyway; I'm over 30 :-)

So am I. :P

Two cases of "cannabis acute psychosis" following the administration of oral cannabis

Cannabis psychosis following bhang ingestion.

Psychological Responses To Cannabis
Cannabis and acute functional psychosis, chronic psychosis, amotivational syndrome, Evidence for dependence..

Animals Exposed To Marijuana's Active Component Will Self-Administer

"Self-administration of drugs by animals, long considered a model of human drug-seeking behavior, is characteristic of virtually all addictive and abused drugs. ...The drug-seeking behavior in these animals was comparable in intensity to that maintained by cocaine... This finding suggests that marijuana has as much potential for abuse as other drugs of abuse, such as cocaine and heroin."

See: Tolerance and dependence

Cannabis use increases risk of psychotic illness

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened

Two cases of "cannabis acute psychosis" following the administration of oral cannabis

Cannabis psychosis following bhang ingestion.

Psychological Responses To Cannabis
Cannabis and acute functional psychosis, chronic psychosis, amotivational syndrome, Evidence for dependence..

Animals Exposed To Marijuana's Active Component Will Self-Administer

"Self-administration of drugs by animals, long considered a model of human drug-seeking behavior, is characteristic of virtually all addictive and abused drugs. ...The drug-seeking behavior in these animals was comparable in intensity to that maintained by cocaine... This finding suggests that marijuana has as much potential for abuse as other drugs of abuse, such as cocaine and heroin."

See: Tolerance and dependence

Cannabis use increases risk of psychotic illness

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened

I merely said fluoride is a neurotoxin, and it is.

The proof is here:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1852689

Now, the study was done in China and we can debate whether or not it can be trusted, but considering how corrupt our government is with giving FDA approval and authorizing tainted beef and who knows what else, the information I provide is fair and balanced and up for the analysis and interpretation of the reader.

Now, if you want to debate whether thesource is reputable, go ahead. Based on my knowledge of fluoride, and based on my experiences in other countries where they don't have fluoride in their childrens toothpaste and somehow the IQ scores in Europe just happen to be higher than the IQ scores in the USA, I'm willing to consider the possibility or even the likelyhood that long term consumption fluoride is bad for brain health.

Even the toothpaste says do not swallow.

I agree with your comment, but it got me thinking.

Water has a toxicity level too and can cause death by brain swelling. I'm also assuming it would be very uncomfortable to get to the point where one's ingested too much water as with fluoride.

And I believe that if one died from fluoride toxicity before dying of water toxicity, there's something else wrong.

Your comment about hydrofluoric acid in the stomach was interesting, so I looked it up. Since the stomach naturally uses hydrochloric acid in digestion, I looked up what swallowing it would do. Apparently, the same thing as hydrofluoric acid.

Large doses of things tend to harm us. Smaller doses may actually help us, directly or indirectly. Yet the alarmists aren't trying to ban water or food or electricity. Could it be that they're even willing to admit that some things have nuanced applications?

I agree with your comment, but it got me thinking.

Water has a toxicity level too and can cause death by brain swelling. I'm also assuming it would be very uncomfortable to get to the point where one's ingested too much water as with fluoride.

And I believe that if one died from fluoride toxicity before dying of water toxicity, there's something else wrong.

Your comment about hydrofluoric acid in the stomach was interesting, so I looked it up. Since the stomach naturally uses hydrochloric acid in digestion, I looked up what swallowing it would do. Apparently, the same thing as hydrofluoric acid.

Large doses of things tend to harm us. Smaller doses may actually help us, directly or indirectly. Yet the alarmists aren't trying to ban water or food or electricity. Could it be that they're even willing to admit that some things have nuanced applications?

You got the idea right, but the wrong date.

NOT-OD-08-033: Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit ... to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central ... to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication ...

Fortunately, the Public Library of Science is picking up speed nicely. My boss has had work published there already and as a supporter of open access, I'm happy about that.

You said that "Most academic research is paid for by taxpayers in some way. And yet, taxpayers are not permitted to read the fruits of this research without paying for it. As a matter of law any publication arising from public grants should be in the public domain."

This isn't true anymore, at least for NIH-funded research. Research published using NIH grants must now be available to the public via PubMedCentral. It does not require immediate full acces, but it must happen no less than one year after publication.

NOT-OD-08-033: Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research

I don't believe the same is true for physical sciences yet. I should ask my dad, who's a DoE-funded researcher.

While I agree having a board of scientists review an article as opposed to having unsupervised content is not such a bad idea, this article is extremely revealing: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16060722

Statistics can be manipulated, but omitting facts is LYING.

And a nice little graph for the illiterate.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html

77% of firearm related deaths here in Australia were suicides, 90% of those 250 reduced deaths were suicides.

Unfortunately suicide by hanging has increased *exactly* the amount that suicide by firearm has decreased. Homicides involving firearms have decreased by about 1% since 1990 and have been decreasing at the same rate since the 1980s. So those 250 people, most of them are still dead, they just hung themselves.

Australia NEVER had a gun crime problem.

The Institute of Criminology says:
"In total there were 5083 registered firearm related deaths in Australia between 1991 and 2001. Suicides accounted for the majority of these firearm related deaths (77 per cent), followed by homicide (15 per cent)."
- http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html

"When the firearm suicide rate for Australian males declined the hanging rate increased simultaneously, with no statistical difference in the rate of change of the two methods."
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12882416

Everyone *please* stop talking rubbish about Australian gun laws until you read the figures yourself.

Homicides have not been statistically altered by the gun laws here.