Slashdot Mirror

Can be found here http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf. The statistical correlations found were weak, in some cases not even statistically significant. Also, for some questions they didn't see any backfire effect (where corrections make people believe the lies more) for all questions. For example, when dealing with liberals, there was no backfire effect when correcting the misconception that George Bush banned stem cell research (he in fact restricted it to a specific set of cell lines). However, in this case, correction did not alter the belief level although it didn't create a backfire result. Clearly, more research is needed. There's also a relevant older article which shows that uninformed people are more likely to think they are informed. http://ann.sagepub.com/content/560/1/143.abstract. This connects with the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect where incompetent individuals generally overestimate their own competency.

They did control a bit for that; the control group saw a "blank square", according to the actual journal article.

Not entirely sure what "blank" means, but they were generally being shown a screen full of flashing lights: "participants reported that they had seen color blocks without any meaningful pattern".

Seems to me that they should at least have controlled for ANY logos, perhaps for a car rental company or just random corporate logos. It's not at all clear to me whether they've actually proven anything about "fast food logos" rather than complicated shapes in general.

I'm generally suspicious about subliminal programming experiments, and their failure to control for something that seems obvious to me makes me skeptical.

We have passed a law about the same. But there's so few Police on patrol the law just isn't being enforced. I still see plenty of drivers hand holding a mobile, despite the fact you can get a bluetooth headset for £8 in the UK.

The trouble with this is that using a hands free phone while driving is just as dangerous as using a normal phone. _All_ studies (not sponsored by headset manufacturors) have shown this, again and again. See here here here and most obviously here for a few examples. From that last : "Conclusions - When drivers use a mobile phone there is an increased likelihood of a crash resulting in injury. Using a hands-free phone is not any safer.". From Wikipedia : "Driving while using a handsfree cellular device is not safer than using a hand held cell phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies.[15][16] epidemiological,[1][2] simulation,[4] and meta-analysis[6][7]. The increased "cognitive workload" involved in holding a conversation, not the use of hands, causes the increased risk.[17][18][19] One notable exception to that conclusion is a study by headset manufacturer Plantronics.

I can't believe this is not common knowledge yet. The law in the UK differentiates between hands free and normal phoning for _no_ reason whatsoever. Many of these studies were released prior to the introduction of the law in the UK. The cynic in me wonders whether the differentiation is due to the fact that police use hands free, and radios all the time, and making them illegal would make them sad :(. Just to conclude, the people who are tutting at mobile users while talking on their hands free are _just_ as dangerous as those they are frowning upon.

"After controlling for enabling and need characteristics in logistic regression models, Veterans Administration (VA)-only users were 2 to 8 times more satisfied with their outpatient care than were VA nonusers on 5 out of 10 satisfaction measures.". Oh, and I have a source. You appear to have a mysterious "Someone in Congress".

Also, the proposed health care bill doesn't set up anything even slightly like the VA. VA -> single provider of health care, like the NHS in Britain. The proposed public option would have been a step toward having a single payer, but still with multiple independent providers. The proposed bill doesn't introduce either.

... they did discuss the MM papers

Of course, chapters 9 and 11 each mention McIntyre 3 times. Each time, their claim is briefly but not extensively discussed because their conclusions on page 117 include: "The instrumentally measured warming of about 0.6C during the 20th century is also reflected in borehole temperature measurements, the retreat of glaciers, and other observational evidence, and can be simulated with climate models."

As far as I can tell, the largest caveats to emerge from the NAS report are concerns about the uncertainty estimates (especially prior to 1600 CE) and this point on page 115: Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that "the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium" because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.

Second, the two papers you mention (Rutherford 2005 and Wahl and Ammann 2007) are based on CRU data, the Rutherford paper even has Jones and Mann as coauthors.

My point is that those papers can't be affected by the claimed MM PCA "mistake" because they use different methodologies.

There was ample opportunity to cook (deliberately or via unintentional observer bias) the CRU estimates to restore the hockey stick by 2005.

I've already linked the results of independent temperature reconstructions. And last year I said: Each time series in the graph I previously linked is referenced in chapter 6 here. Turn to page 469 and examine Table 6.1 (later, if you get bored, consider checking out column 2 of page 466 which reviews the claims of MM03 and MM05.) Every time series is referenced well enough to be found on google scholar-- for example here's one of them. As you've seen from the graph, they all support the abrupt temperature increase in Mann's graph. (I freely admit that all these authors could be drooling morons, sheeple incapable of independent thought, or evil conspirators... any of these scenarios or a linear combination of them would completely discredit my position.)

Notice how all these reconstructions are consistent. Most interesting is PS2004, which reconstructs past temperatures using a borehole. By measuring the temperature of the ground at various depths, past temperatures can be reconstructed using heat conduction equations.

This isn't based on CRU data at all, yet is consistent with it. That's not too surprising, because there's no evidence that the CRU data has been "cooked" as you imply.

You asked for it...

A summary of some literature:
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Provost/Advance/Valian%20Power%20Leadership%20&%20Politics.pdf

For peer-review...
http://www.advancingwomen.org/files/7/127.pdf
"Peer reviewers cannot judge scientific merit independent of gender."

For letters of recommendation...
http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/14/2/191
"Letters written for female applicants were found to differ systematically from those written for male applicants..."

There's a lot out there.

I'm way late to this conversation, but you can objectively say that your boss is wrong.

General consensus in scientific community is that office noise involving speech associated with open cubicle environments can have a significant negative effect on job performance, job satisfaction, and stress levels of employees. Office "white noise" (ie: people walking, doors opening/closing, printers, keyboards, etc.) have much less of or an insignificant effect.

As for listening to music, the same applies but results vary depending on the individual. Music that is interpreted by the individual listener primarily on a melodic or rhythmic level have a positive effect on mental-spatial performance. Lyrics in songs that are not tuned out by listeners generally has the same negative effect as office noise involving speech.

However, as others have noted, the decision your boss is making may not (or likely isnt') be based on evidence and may be prompted by something else unrelated to job performance (music is just the scapegoat).

I'd say the best thing to do is make sure before/after effects of are objectively measured (not just for performance but also for job satisfaction).

music is also a distraction

Sincce you didn't provide a citation, here's one.

It happens to say the opposite of what you assert, but what do they know? They're only experts.

More information about this topic can be found in the
journal Social Studies In Science.

Yours In Baikonur (Cosmodrome),
K. Trout

You want to know the biggest block of demographic opposition to gay marriage? Blacks and Latinos

So, what... blacks and latinos can't hate gays? Interesting, given both communities are known for being deeply intolerant toward homosexuals (which is sadly ironic):

Latinos do not differ from Whites and are more tolerant thati Blacks on the morality dimension of attitudes toward homosexuality but are less tolerant than either of the other groups on the dimension measuring approval of civil liberties for homosexuals.

Citation:

In fact, even after homosexuals emerged, like Blacks a generation earlier, as an offi-
cial "minority" (Barron 1975), research has shown that African Americans possess
disproportionately negative attitudes toward homosexuals (Lorde 1978; Staples 1981).

Citation:

So all you've illustrated is that those who hate gays aren't "no-necked, knuckle-dragging, fag-bashing, Republican-voting, Judy-Garland-hating neanderthals"... rather, they're "no-necked, knuckle-dragging, fag-bashing, Republican-voting, Judy-Garland-hating neanderthals", and/or black/latino. They, nevertheless, still hate gays, and their opposition to same-sex marriage is simply a symptom of that fact.

"As real as real? Macroeconomic behavior in a large-scale virtual world" (links to the abstract with option to download)

Talking on a phone is equivalent to DUI: http://hfs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/2/381

It doesn't matter if you're using a hand-held or hands-free phone: http://hfs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/1/196

In other words, the danger lies in your concentration not being on the road. If you're writing text, you're not concentrating on the road. Therefore I'd be surprised if texting didn't have similar risks.

Please, do the right thing. It won't kill you to wait till you're at a destination to text. It might if you do (and others, unfortunately).

Talking on a phone is equivalent to DUI: http://hfs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/2/381

It doesn't matter if you're using a hand-held or hands-free phone: http://hfs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/1/196

In other words, the danger lies in your concentration not being on the road. If you're writing text, you're not concentrating on the road. Therefore I'd be surprised if texting didn't have similar risks.

Please, do the right thing. It won't kill you to wait till you're at a destination to text. It might if you do (and others, unfortunately).

Sigh. I get that you are trolling, but just in case anyone else misunderstood the point...

The full article claims that "The most surprising finding from the 20-year study...was how help provided by the juvenile justice system substantially increased the risk of the boys engaging in criminal activities during early adulthood." My point was that this is not surprising, but rather predictable as it simply supports commonly and long-held theories in criminology that have been studied extensively before. Did you really think a study in 2009 (even with its longitudinal nature) is the first to explore social learning concepts outlined over 100 years ago?

From the article "Differential Association Theory" (Matsueda, Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior : Volume 1, Historical, Conceptual and Theoretical Issues, 2001. -- updated from Matsueda's original 1988 article):

Empirical research using survey data on adolescents has generally found support for this structure. Research finds that the process of learning definitions of delinquency is structured by delinquent peers, family structure, parental attachment, neighborhood problems, and social class...

...And then goes on to list a variety of past studies and over 30 references where this information came from. Also please note: In the social sciences, there is no such thing as a "law."

To correct a mistake in my original post, Sutherland's original uses of "differential association" occurred in the 1930s and 1940s (further expounded on in his 1978 work Criminology with Donald Cressey).

Your not adding anything to the conversation

"You're". Not: "your".

See, something has been added. Your grammar was frequently atrocious in your earlier screeds, but I decided to give you a free pass for those ones. You really should concentrate on getting the basics of English down, because using it poorly reflects badly on your message, no matter what you are saying. Or trying to say.

I addressed the merits of your case earlier, with regard to the physical location of the plant used to operate the gaming, versus the residence of the gamers. You argued that the WTO had no remit in this case. The WTO panel disagreed, and in accepting arbitration, the US *and* Antigua both accepted remit. You are, in effect, second guessing the legal and political teams from two countries as well as an international panel of jurists. As with idiosyncratic stock picking, there is a very, very small probability of you being correct in this instance, versus a very high probability of you not being correct in this case. I have read your bloggish/fisking-style arguments againt the WTO decision and they are unconvincing and merely reiterate or restate many of the initial arguments of the US deposition in the first round of hearings. These arguments were judged at the time to be of insufficient merit to prevent the arbitration from proceeding. Your stubborn refusal to recognise that a legally constituted body delegated to come to a resolution of this difficult problem bespeaks a cognitive difficulty in accepting wisdom.

Sometimes, you just have to admit that you are wrong. The problem is that when your intellectual capabilities constrain you from recognising the domain borders of your inexpertise, there is a high probability that you will overestimate your capabilities.

If Microsoft can have an OS monopoly with a 'mere' 90% of the market, I think we can safely call the conservative TV & talk radio business a monopoly.

Call it trolling if you will but I think that there is something to the idea that liberal-leaning folk don't feel comfortable getting their news from a single source, or at least a source that takes itself too seriously. While a guy like Keith O is well-liked, internet comments about various segments that he does are usually split 50/50 as to whether or not he's a complete blowhard...even when he's accurate. That sort of condescending tone actually bothers some folks, and while I don't like to generalize, I think a larger portion of such folks lean left.

Then again, some say that everything outside of FNC and Laura Ingraham has a liberal slant (two sayings come to mind: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," and more importantly, "there's no accounting for taste").

You know what? Not only does the right have a near-monopoly on echo chamber news, but they actually reinterpret satire of that news to be sincere.

I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I have noticed that another case was thrown out despite the temperature being 179 F and that the Cambridge News reports that McDonald's serves hot coffee today at 85 C (185 F) in the UK and other places in the US serve coffee at up to 195 ÂF. Surely if the temperature itself is too high, then these establishments should be forced to drop their temperatures or shut down. What is the point in litigating after something happens? Isn't it better to just shut them down before there is harm?

Perhaps I should have said, "That doesn't make it sound any less absurd." because it doesn't. It still sounds bizarre to punish someone for doing something and then let them and other people continue to do it.

Does slashdot not do the  (degree) symbol or something?

Anyway, Colbert is generally a positive influence. His "fake punditry" is pungent social comment, with the intent of nudging the his audience to think about these issues. While being funny, which keeps them coming back. All in all, a good thing.

Good, except some people can't tell the difference

Poe's Law. I can't tell if this is satire from the center-left or wingnuttia from the right.

It's like a reverse-deja-vu of The Colbert Report.

Most of your post makes good sense (although simplistic, I'd guess) until

Cortisone shots don't fix anything, they just relieves the pain and lubricates the joints while your body heals itself.

Try to check if you actually know something before opening mouth. Or did you think that the Slashdot crowd wouldn't understand the word "inflammation" and went for the car analogy: "lubrication"?

You are correct that corticosteroids do not directly aid the healing of the damage, but they are not helping because of their lubricating effect. They modulate the immune response, which is how they relieve the pain and inflammation. The "truth" here is probably more complicated than what we know about it. (Yes, I realize the linked research deals with muscles and not bone or connective tissue, it's just illustrative.)

sustained - jury will disregard

ROFLMAO, if you think that a jury actually DOES disregard things like that, you're a loon.

This is unfortunately not true. I have met Christian fundamentalists right here in Alberta Canada who actively promote nuclear war. They honestly believe that a nuclear war is in effect Armageddon and it will bring the second coming where all the righteous will be swept up seconds before the bombs hit.

"Millions of Americans, primarily premillennialist fundamentalist Christians, believe that God has foreordained a global nuclear war as the precursor to the Second Coming of Christ"

http://jhp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/4/92 I stole that quote from here

Oh ... my ... god. Apparently, I got it wrong. It wasn't some off-the-cuff excuse. They actually wrote up the paper!

More links.

What? The last link in THA goes to a fluffy news article on the university website. At the end of the article is a link to the actual study:

"An online copy of the study, 'You cannot be serious! Public Understanding of Technology with special reference to `Hawk-Eye' Public Understanding of Science, 17, 3, 283-308 can be accessed at:
http://pus.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/0963662508093370v1"

The aptly named sage publications has this to say

http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/1/123

What is the Problem with Experts?

OK, here is a study.

HERE is another.

Of course, with those two, all I can read is the abstract, since I'm not paying for the whole shebang.

The ObscenityCrimes story is full of references if you care to look them up. However, many of them are books and others are print media that you may or may not have free access to over the web, (New York Times, 16 May 2000, F7) for example.

Finally, HERE is another one that looked full of data and IS a real world study. It also, has an order form. However, there are several links of the bottom that link back to this article. Just about all the sagepub articles include them.

So they are there. I'm sorry that the one you researched got you nowhere. There are others that you may consider to be more reputable if you look hard enough.

Oh, here is another, but it's 43 pages long. I found it by googling the article title from another sources sited list. Here is the google search I used.

OK, here is a study.

HERE is another.

Of course, with those two, all I can read is the abstract, since I'm not paying for the whole shebang.

The ObscenityCrimes story is full of references if you care to look them up. However, many of them are books and others are print media that you may or may not have free access to over the web, (New York Times, 16 May 2000, F7) for example.

Finally, HERE is another one that looked full of data and IS a real world study. It also, has an order form. However, there are several links of the bottom that link back to this article. Just about all the sagepub articles include them.

So they are there. I'm sorry that the one you researched got you nowhere. There are others that you may consider to be more reputable if you look hard enough.

Oh, here is another, but it's 43 pages long. I found it by googling the article title from another sources sited list. Here is the google search I used.

OK, here is a study.

HERE is another.

Of course, with those two, all I can read is the abstract, since I'm not paying for the whole shebang.

The ObscenityCrimes story is full of references if you care to look them up. However, many of them are books and others are print media that you may or may not have free access to over the web, (New York Times, 16 May 2000, F7) for example.

Finally, HERE is another one that looked full of data and IS a real world study. It also, has an order form. However, there are several links of the bottom that link back to this article. Just about all the sagepub articles include them.

So they are there. I'm sorry that the one you researched got you nowhere. There are others that you may consider to be more reputable if you look hard enough.

Oh, here is another, but it's 43 pages long. I found it by googling the article title from another sources sited list. Here is the google search I used.

What salary would you prefer teachers earn?

If you calculate on a per-day basis, teacher pay is relatively low for the required qualifications. Whether or not it is relatively high compared to the average family income in Maine says more about Maine than it does teachers.

The voucher issue is complicated and there are many well-intentioned and well-meaning individuals on both sides of the debate. The "success" of vouchers is also widely contested and often leads to unintended consequences:
http://epx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/21/1/40

In any case, the teachers' union is powerful, and I don't agree with all of the actions it has taken. But if teachers believe that the union is not representing them, they don't have to join or can work to create a new union.

http://www.dsgl.org/Articles/woolley.htm &
http://hsx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/1/64

Learn from this:

Microsoft, or one of their marketing partners is employing a technique called "cognitive exhaustion" to try to break down the perception that Vista is a failure.

Whenever there is criticism of Vista, one of their team will ALWAYS respond by raising doubt about the veracity of the criticism, despite the overwhelming evidence that the software IS a dog.

You can learn about the technique in the (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 34, p 419).

Searching on google scholar I found this:

http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/1/109.pdf

Well, not to disagree with you, but to completely disagree with you, pain is actually quite culturally moderated. Read all about it.

Two experiments examined "jeer pressure," which is a hypothesized
inhibiting effect of observing another person being ridiculed. Jeer
pressure was expected to induce conformity to others? opinions;
concern about failing or standing out; and conventional, uncreative
thinking. In both experiments, participants observed videotapes
containing either other-ridiculing humor, self-ridiculing humor, or
nonridiculing or no humor. Participants then completed tasks that
assessed conformity, fear of failure, and creativity. Results of both
experiments showed that participants who viewed ridicule of others
were more conforming and more afraid of failing than were those who
viewed self-ridicule or no ridicule. Creativity was not influenced by
the humor manipulation. Experiment 2 also included a lexical decision
task to assess whether salience of potential rejection mediated the
obtained behavioral effects. Salience of rejection mediated the
effects of humor on fear of failure but not the effects of humor on
conformity.

Basing them on a very low-res image of something that looks like a cheap particle effect in a 3D game (at least at this resolution it does) is unlikely to provide any new insight.

Were the information as sparse as you suggest here, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. But what's happening is that there is an entirely new cosmology being constructed right before our eyes, and it works *very* well -- in fact, far better than the conventional theories are working. You wouldn't know it if you weren't paying attention -- and very few people on Slashdot in fact are.

If I can digress for a moment, I'd like to point out something somewhat subtle and very important for the Slashdot scene. There is a psychological phenomenon called "jeer pressure", and you can see it in action on the Slashdot forums whenever the subject of a plasma-based or electric universe comes up:

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 4, 474-485 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167200266006
© 2000 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Jeer Pressure: The Behavioral Effects of Observing Ridicule of Others
Leslie M. Janes
University of Western Ontario

James M. Olson

University of Western Ontario, jolson@julian.uwo.ca

Two experiments examined "jeer pressure," which is a hypothesized inhibiting effect of observing another person being ridiculed. Jeer pressure was expected to induce conformity to others? opinions; concern about failing or standing out; and conventional, uncreative thinking. In both experiments, participants observed videotapes containing either other-ridiculing humor, self-ridiculing humor, or nonridiculing or no humor. Participants then completed tasks that assessed conformity, fear of failure, and creativity. Results of both experiments showed that participants who viewed ridicule of others were more conforming and more afraid of failing than were those who viewed self-ridicule or no ridicule. Creativity was not influenced by the humor manipulation. Experiment 2 also included a lexical decision task to assess whether salience of potential rejection mediated the obtained behavioral effects. Salience of rejection mediated the effects of humor on fear of failure but not the effects of humor on conformity.

http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/4/474

What's happening is that every time that I try to educate people on Slashdot about what the Electric Universe states, people inevitably ridicule me. This ridicule is basically acting as a normalizing force that results in conformity on this board.

The Slashdot forums have been taken over by "bullies". These people have no problem with ridiculing things that they've actually read very little of. They believe that they can judge competing theories in about ten minutes of reading. What they are actually doing is reading far enough to learn what the theory's conclusions are, and basing their own willingness to read any further on whether or not they appreciate the conclusions.

The Plasma Universe theory, perspective or point of view -- whatever you want to call it -- is real, very alive, relatively rich in detail and history, and supported by multiple unrelated disciplines. It is a true synthesis of all of the natural sciences, but what it concludes is that plasmas in space are being mathematically modeled incorrectly. And this is where people tend to turn off. In plasma-based cosmologies, plasmas are electrodynamic entities that, like in the lab, respond with electrical resistance and luminosity to changes in their charge density. In conventional cosmologies, astrophysicists *assume* that plasmas are "perfect conductors", they *assume* that space is "quasi-neutral" -- that a given volume of space essentially has equal numbers of positive and negative charges -- and they *assume* that magnetic fields are "frozen-in place" within a plasma (as opp

I have no idea why these earlier tests aren't being used (looking for rapid excessive head growth, lack of eye contact, etc) - especially since they don't require fancy equipment or major investments.

I find the head growth particularly fascinating (here's a link to the abstract)
http://jcn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/22/10/1182

I was actually more curious about what 'hakoniwa' was. Apparently, it translates to "Sandplay Therapy". Here's a link that describes the overall concept:

http://tcp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/1/93

First off, I'm glad to see people out there thinking hard about education and how their aspects of education tie in with other people as well. There was a lovely paper by Reed Stevens and others not too long ago that comes at your idea from a different direction. (link)

Not precisely my field, but there's lots and lots of work being done in all aspects of integrating science and math with reading and writing. Visit your local friendly PsycInfo database for starters. I find it more useful than google scholar, but if you're at a school and don't have access to PsycInfor through a university, google scholar can help too. Depending on how theoretically-minded you are, ERIC (run by the US government) is also a good repository to search through. It tends toward the less theoretical.

I suggest you look for "Writing across the curriculum", "content-area reading / literacy", hmmm... "Science (scientific) Discourse", the works of Jay Lemke, Ann Brown for a start. There's a ton of stuff out there. Actually, you may want to search the back issues of Review of Educational Research (RER) and Review of Research in Education (RRE)

You should also problematize your assumption: that science is all about lectures and (by connotation) cookbook labs. There's a ton of work out there saying that teaching school science shouldn't be like that, but it has a hard time penetrating the actual practice of everyday teachers. But for a good read on what we'd like science to actually be, I recommend Taking Science to School. It's targeted to grades k-8, and it's somewhat US-centric (and I've inferred from your request that you're not a USian), but it's still a great read, and you can read the whole thing for free online (one PDF page at a time, though, which was enough of an encouragement to me to actually buy it.)

My last warning - you're venturing into the zones of thought which usually drive teachers into graduate school. I started down similar roads, and now I'm a professor. The challenge is getting people to really think along these lines, but remain a practicing teacher.

No that is not true. OCD occurs in the same percentage of the population, independent of the culture. See

this.

Major league baseball is a protected monopoly. At least in that it is protected from anti-trust suits. Link here.

I can find no information on the NFL and I am suspicious of that one because of the XFL, USFL, etc. There have been football leagues in competition with the NFL. Not so for baseball, unless you count the negro leagues.

1 in 56?

Don't be ridiculous. Where have you got this figure from?

Gillberg et al 9:10000
Lauritsen et al 4.7:10000
Ehlers et al 36:10000

They are European figures (mostly Scandinavian)

In the UK?

57:10000 and that's Autistic Spectrum disorders *including* Asperger's.

Even the National Autistic Society figures only suggest 36:10000

So I'd love to know where your 'reported' figure comes from.

Dan

(NT partner of AS girlfriend)

After RTFA, I found out Ted Bryant is the Tsunami expert in this group of researchers. While researching for my thesis, I was confronted with his book, "Tsunami: the underrated hazard". This work, while being quite easy to understand, can hardly be called scientific based on his way of making citations (grouping all references at the beginning of a chapter which leaves you without the possibility to look up where he drew his conclusions from).

Reviews of his book can be found here: http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/5/637 and here http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0025-3227(03)00086-0 and here: Synolakis, C.E., and G.J. Fryer, 2001. Book Review: Tsunami: the underrated hazard by Edward Bryant, Eos, Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 82, 588 (can't find a quick link right now).

The existence of so-called megatsunamis is hardly scientifically proven, especially not by the work of Bryant (he classified sedimentary features embedded in sandstone somewhere in Australia as relics of an ancient megatsunami when in a nearby graveyard the same sandstone wouldn't resist local climate and erosion for more than a few centuries).

The propagation of tsunamis with huge waveheights seems to be limited due to dispersion effects and the so-called "Van-Dorn-Effect" should cause these huge waves to break as soon as they reach the continental shelf (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL02191 8.shtml and http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jmelosh/ImpactTsunami. pdf , but also http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=10986 ).

After working some time in the field of megatsunamis (my thesis concentrated on the Cumbre Vieja Scenario postulated by Ward&Day back in 2001 (http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl. pdf) and, based on scientific grounds, I had to "debunk" it as several researchers have done before me), I have learned to take these reports with a grain (or better, a big portion) of salt.

Circuit Boards:
Integrated Circuit Recycling from Finished Product Printed Circuit Boards
PCs Don't Die--They Become Road Fill
What to do with your printed circuit boards?
USNavy: PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD RECYCLING
Printed Circuit Board Recycling Equipment

CRT Glass:
Cascade's CRT Glass-to-Glass Recycling Program
EPA: Glass-to-Glass Recycling
WRAP identifies four potential markets for television glass (26.01.04)
Cathode ray tube glass recycling: an example of clean technology, mostly in Italian usage in ceramic tiles.

http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/2/16 4
http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/9/96 4
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-2851(199821) 206%3C12%3ACHIFSH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4
http://polyzine.com/arabwomen.html

I wasn't really speaking of Afghanistan, but I believe that now that the US is preventing their tradional means of killing of those that violate their usual morals that they'll adapt like these other neighboring countries and you'll see these honor killings happen there as well. You don't get it. I'm not saying that they are worse off. I'm saying that the girls are in more danger once they actually start acting westernized or sexually active and living what we'd consider and normal teenage life. I bet it isn't happening right now because most are more afraid of the US than of the women. Give it 5-10 years while most have forgotten Afghanistan or Iraq and see how those female suicide rates have climbed. I was first made aware of this through an AOL news article (happening in Turkey) and was surprised. The families were using every means at their disposal to make the female feel that their life was worthless and that to do the best for their family that they should kill themselves. I've just tried searching for any data concerning Afghanistan suicides or honor killings and haven't yet found anything. That only means that the data or news reports aren't open to you or I. It doesn't mean these things aren't happening over there.

http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/2/16 4
http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/9/96 4
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-2851(199821) 206%3C12%3ACHIFSH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4
http://polyzine.com/arabwomen.html

I wasn't really speaking of Afghanistan, but I believe that now that the US is preventing their tradional means of killing of those that violate their usual morals that they'll adapt like these other neighboring countries and you'll see these honor killings happen there as well. You don't get it. I'm not saying that they are worse off. I'm saying that the girls are in more danger once they actually start acting westernized or sexually active and living what we'd consider and normal teenage life. I bet it isn't happening right now because most are more afraid of the US than of the women. Give it 5-10 years while most have forgotten Afghanistan or Iraq and see how those female suicide rates have climbed. I was first made aware of this through an AOL news article (happening in Turkey) and was surprised. The families were using every means at their disposal to make the female feel that their life was worthless and that to do the best for their family that they should kill themselves. I've just tried searching for any data concerning Afghanistan suicides or honor killings and haven't yet found anything. That only means that the data or news reports aren't open to you or I. It doesn't mean these things aren't happening over there.

The myth of the sovereign consumer has been debunked long ago.

Saying it has doesn't make it so.

For someone who is invoking economics, you seem to have a pretty shallow grasp of the field. There is more than the Chicago School, you know. You could start with reading "The Affluent Society" bij J.K. Galbraith. And here's a more recent citation. It's the first hit when you google for 'sovereign consumer' for crying out loud.

It is a given that demand can be manufactured.

No, it's not a given. It's your hypothesis. Please demonstrate it.

Advertising is a billion-dollar industry. QED.