Slashdot Mirror

LOS ANGELES — With California entering its fifth year of a statewide drought, Gov. Jerry Brown moved on Monday to impose permanent water conservation measures and called on water suppliers to prepare for a future made drier by climate change.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

Oh well.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu...

The USDM map is updated during weekly shifts that run from Monday to Wednesday. Some are at NDMC in Lincoln, NE, by employees of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Sometimes the map is updated at other locations by USDA or NOAA employees.

There are five categories of drought ranging from D0 (near drought) to D4 (exceptional drought), and they're clearly defined based on observations. Despite this, the USDM map is more arbitrary than many might think. If you click that link, you'll see a variety of indicators for what constitutes each drought category. One challenge is what category to select when different indicators are in different categories. It's also a challenge about how to update the map when there's a rapid change in conditions. For example, if there's an area in D4, but the area receives several inches of rain in a few days, USDM authors are reluctant to reduce the drought category too much in a single week.

There's also the issue of what to do in areas in between observations, where it's somewhat subjective how to draw the contours for the drought monitor. Some local regulations and forms of aid for those impacted by droughts are directly tied to USDM categories. There can be a lot of money involved, and those who have money at stake will lobby the USDM authors to update the map in a way that's beneficial to them.

While reports are supposed to be made to state climatologists, who then pass the information along to the USDM author for that shift, that's not always how it works. Sometimes the USDM authors will receive lots of calls directly from various people in a particular county of region, lobbying for the map to be updated in a way that benefits them. I've heard of USDM authors getting lots of calls from farmers in particular counties, in a coordinated effort to get the drought category raised. I believe that some federal assistance becomes available at the D2 threshold, so often these calls are lobbying for the drought category to be raised to D2. If there isn't other data from that particular area, it's subjective and up to the USDM author for that shift how to proceed.

I've never updated the USDM and I don't work at NDMC, but I know people who do. I'm glad I'm not responsible for updating the map, because the shifts can be quite long if there are a lot of updates, and people can become pretty angry if the USDM author doesn't update the map the way those people want it updated.

Everything you've said is false. I work at UNL and I know people who actually work shifts to update the US Drought Monitor (USDM). I'm not involved with that work, but I've learned quite a bit about what drought is and how the USDM is created.

Drought is based on conditions relative to climatological normals for that particular location. Climate is generally averaged over 30 year periods, so droughts are abnormally dry conditions relative to the average over the past 30 years. While the current D4 (exceptional drought) conditions are around the four corners area, which is generally arid, that's just where it happens to be abnormally dry now. You can look back over the drought monitor archive and you'll see drought conditions in many other areas.

Drought occurs when conditions are abnormally dry. Deserts exist where it's normally dry. In any location, water shouldn't be allocated in ways that are unsustainable. The High Plains are semi-arid, but they're not a desert. Agriculture in that region is driven by extracting water from the Ogallala Aquifer at rates far faster than the aquifer can be recharged. The best options are to bring water from other areas, which can be expensive, or to limit water use in a way that's more sustainable.

When water is brought in from other locations, it's referred to as an aqueduct rather than a pipeline, and such things do exist. For example, Los Angeles gets a substantial amount of water from the Los Angeles and Colorado River aqueducts. The Los Angeles aqueduct is 419 miles long, so water is being transported over quite a distance. The original poster is simply recommending a much more extensive aqueduct system to help alleviate droughts. It's reasonable, provided water isn't being transported from other areas is an unsustainable manner.

And no, not all deserts have been deserts for thousands of years. Sometimes that change happens over shorter time scales, though certainly beyond the 30 year definition of climate. For example, the Sandhills of western Nebraska are now semi-arid, with grass growing in sandy soil. Several hundred years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, western Nebraska was quite a bit drier, and the Sandhills were a desert with active sand dunes. Conditions are wetter now, just several hundred years later, and the dunes are stabilized by the grasses. Transition in and out of desert conditions doesn't necessarily require thousands of years.

I watch it too. Do not even live in the southwest. A few years ago cali was dark red. Now it is light yellow/white.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu...
vs
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu...

I also watch the lake levels at http://lakepowell.water-data.c...

Just semi interesting. Next year is shaping up to be a 'dry one' http://graphs.water-data.com/u...

I watch it too. Do not even live in the southwest. A few years ago cali was dark red. Now it is light yellow/white.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu...
vs
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu...

I also watch the lake levels at http://lakepowell.water-data.c...

Just semi interesting. Next year is shaping up to be a 'dry one' http://graphs.water-data.com/u...

You need to give up on Slashdot.org. Slashdot has long since been over run with the worst moronic right wing global warming deniers and the lowest IQ types imaginable.

I was listening to a bit on the radio yesterday about a woman who contracted a eye worm that normally only infects horses. She ended up pulling a live worm out of her eye, but it didn't really harm her physical health much at all. She was a good sport about it, and emerged with her mental health, too.

So the CBC brings on the guy from the CDC and he's practically jizzing himself with enthusiasm over this rare cross-species infection (due to face flies, which feed on eye secretions, which allows the parasite larvae to jump ship and enter the eyeball).

They also bring on this other guy associated with Monsters Inside Me.

And what he says, basically, is that for almost every mammal (and presumably bird) you will find at least three different parasite species almost exclusive to that animal, so the parasites are always present in greater diversity in any healthy ecosystem.

Just a few parasites, and we're all supposed to quit? What's with that?

Field Guide: Diseases and Parasites of Marine Mammals of the Eastern Arctic — 2003

So the point is, how do whales actually run away from all the parasites? Where is this beautiful, clean oasis that isn't Slashdot the Fallen? Politics used to be like the grizzly bear, one could hibernate for six months and not miss much. But modern politics is way more like the ocean, with bleached coral reefs, red tides, and entire floating islands of petrochemical detritus.

Why Whale Stress Significantly Dropped After 9/11 — February 2015

HowSound #150 - When a Good Idea for a Podcast is a Bad Idea for a Podcast — May 2017

A good pitch has an idea and a plan.

This episode is about the short-lived podcast "How's Your Day?" It's about invisible, unreported stories that got buried on an iconic news day, with a surprising parallel. They found three needles, then caved, even before launch.

Surprisingly, most of this post-mortem episode is about the amazing day of the whales on 9/11.

It's that I don't feel bad asking the audience to work for it, but I think that's something people push against, they don't want anyone to be confused ever, they want everyone to understand things all the time.

The whale portion starts at 9m00; the whales on 9/11 portion begins at 16m00. Great place to bury your head in the sand for twenty minutes and not deal with the Great Parasite Load.

This is a sixty foot whale with visibility less than the length of their body.

They are acoustic animals, and the (normally) unbroken shipping thrum causes them constant stress, because the ocean is now overrun with ships, and maybe it's time for them to all crawl back up onto dry land, lose a few pounds, and live again like God intended for all mammals.

From your own link, the average farm in America spends $17,000 annually on energy for pumping water.

Actually, my link says the average farm in America that irrigates spent $17,238 in 2012 (though if you divide the $2.7 billion total pumping costs against the 229,237 farms that irrigate, that comes out to $11,778 by my calculator -- close enough for government work, I suppose).

There are just over 900 million acres of farmland in the U.S. That means the ~55 million acres that irrigate are ~6% of total farmland . The other 94% use only water from the sky.

Another way to look at it is that $2.7 billion total irrigation costs across 900 million total acres comes out to $3 per acre . Taking corn as an example, the national average yield of 175 bushels per acre at an exceptionally conservative spot price of $3/bushel (it was about twice that in the same time frame as the above irrigation numbers, and is still higher today) means your $3/acre irrigation expenses are just over one half of one percent of your $525/acre revenue.

Irrigation in the U.S. is minuscule any way you slice it. The only way to make it look even remotely scary is to throw out misleading numbers in a vacuum.

Actually, our intestinal tract is that of a frugivore and shares no traits with mammals adapted to eating meat. The articles you linked are not scientific, and the Harvard article reads like a student paper in human evolution.

Evolutionary theory is the heart of what paleoanthropologists study, and there is no consensus among them about meat eating "making us human". Although some do make that claim, perpetuating the outdated logic of the "Man the Hunter/Man the Killer" theories of the '40s and '50s. Contrasting this, some modern scientists believe that the consumption of tubers was actually the energy source that led to increasing encephalization (brain enlargement) and gut reduction. Others argue it to be starches more broadly, and many effectively claim that any energy-dense food source would do the trick. The goal was simply reaching reproductive age after all, not avoiding cancer or reaching ripe old age in a healthy state.

The starch and tuber hypotheses used to get shot down because the earliest controlled use of fire didn't seem to emerge until relatively recently (200,000-400,000 years ago), and root starches require cooking in order to fulfill the kind of calorie counts that would have been necessary. With older and older dates emerging for human's control of fire (possibly as early as 1.7 million years ago), there is a growing belief that the development of cooking with heat in general was the key contributor to encephalization.

Anyone claiming that there is a scientific consensus on these matters simply isn't reading enough paleoanthropological literature. Every single dietary claim has been argued ferociously for decades. There are a few simple facts that no one seriously working in the field would argue however:

The human digestive system is that of a frugivore and has no specific biological gut adaptations that would be expected of a species that "evolved to eat meat". The same is true of our hominin ancestors. And based on dental calculus analysis and corprolite data, our ancestors ate shit-loads of plants.

Ketosis can be induced using any high-fat diet, including 100% plant-based. It is extremely dangerous to human health though, and does not support an argument for evolution via meat. There actually are a lot of whole food plant-based keto people out there.

Evolutionary theory is the heart of what paleoanthropologists study, and there is no consensus among them about meat eating "making us human". Although some do make that claim, perpetuating the outdated logic of the "Man the Hunter/Man the Killer" theories of the '40s and '50s. Contrasting this, some modern scientists believe that the consumption of tubers was actually the energy source that led to increasing encephalization (brain enlargement) and gut reduction. Others argue it to be starches more broadly, and many effectively claim that any energy-dense food source would do the trick. The goal was simply reaching reproductive age after all, not avoiding cancer or reaching ripe old age in a healthy state.

This is why you can survive on poor diets. You simply need to reach the age of reproductive viability.

By "selective breeding has nature taking a hand in the outcome" do you mean typical drift during reproduction causes "most babies, puppies and kittens self-abort?"

Nature is cruel and absolutely fair. The punishment for failure is always the same: death. But nature is also careless. Every 'natural' breeding brings in a boatload of baggage, most of it needed but some of it possibly not. An example is that Munkin kittens are adorable, short legged and perfectly healthy. But the mutation is lethal when inherited from both parents.

Instead of playing the genetic lottery with every trait in an animal or vegetable we can now tweak that single bit to see what happens. Now, waiting to thoroughly test that each change doesn't suddenly cronenberg the whole planet is probably not in Monsanto's financial plans for this quarter. But is certainly beats inbreeding corn until it rots in the sun.

Link to preprint: http://www.unl.edu/diocles/Com...

Diocles laser homepage: http://www.unl.edu/diocles/dio...

Link to preprint: http://www.unl.edu/diocles/Com...

Diocles laser homepage: http://www.unl.edu/diocles/dio...

Not to "one up" you, but I have not so fond memories of being stationed at Offutt AFB, Neb. back in '77 when they set he record number of days below 0F at 36 days....you can see the numbers from nearby Lincoln at the site below. I had a mile to walk to and from work for mid shift in thin fatigues. We had -70 wind chill one day....Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

http://snr.unl.edu/lincolnweat...

Have reached lows. Have a look at the map at

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

Just 5 percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions, the lowest level of drought here since government scientific agencies began updating the U.S. Drought Monitor on a weekly basis in 2000.

Don't you know, picking things up and putting them down is a great field to be in for any human...

Seriously though, I wonder if a vacuum cleaner like device (what a pneumatic tube used to do) can be used for dealing with specific types of uses, how about picking fruits?

Some fruits could be picked with a suction device but transporting things via pneumatic tubes comes with a "sudden stop issue" that is incompatible with fruits that must be picked ripe.
http://food.unl.edu/fruits-continue-ripen-after-theyre-picked

On an unrelated note I can come up for a few more things that can be automated by a 'right hand robot'...

Paging Mr. Wolowitz...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb627xDlqBs

As a Californian, I say Californians should have no right to vote in national elections until they prove they are US citizens.
I'd extend that to any state that has an illegal immigration problem. And I'd support a Constitutional Amendment to require proof of national citizenship to vote in national elections. (I would NOT approve of any federal law other than a Constitutional Amendment to require this nationwide - currently, the Constitution says that States run their elections.)

Further, California can't even get its ass together with regards to splitting off Northern California and Southern California into 2 states (which is an idea put forth every few years). CA is not leaving the U.S. of A., nor does it have the right to. Even if it did, it would wither and die, literally, because we're in a biiiiiiiiiiit of a drought. And ultimately, there is no fucking way the US Navy would cede that much Pacific coastline to a turkey shit state like CA, there's no way the US would be selling oil/power/water to an annoying brat who ran away from home at prices other than "fuck you", and there's no way Silicon Valley would stay connected to the internet as they know it should CA attempt to pull such a stunt. The last time people left the club, the nation engaged in Civil War, which is still the deadliest war we've ever had, and that was with many states trying to leave. Not even Texas has the balls to actually quit, and Texas would be perfectly fine on its own (plenty of land, food, water, oil, electricity, etc.).

That was my reaction as well. The article states that planet nine is "about 10 times the size of Earth" - which I took to mean it has a diameter of 79,000 miles. For reference, Jupiter's diameter is ~ 86,000 miles. The article also states that the planet has an "orbit that is about 20 times farther from the Sun on average than Neptune's". That translate to around 600 AU. Assuming planet nine has Jupiter's mass: http://astro.unl.edu/classacti... Assuming Jupite's size, but Earth density (roughly 5x greater) : http://astro.unl.edu/classacti... To me that doesn't make sense.

That was my reaction as well. The article states that planet nine is "about 10 times the size of Earth" - which I took to mean it has a diameter of 79,000 miles. For reference, Jupiter's diameter is ~ 86,000 miles. The article also states that the planet has an "orbit that is about 20 times farther from the Sun on average than Neptune's". That translate to around 600 AU. Assuming planet nine has Jupiter's mass: http://astro.unl.edu/classacti... Assuming Jupite's size, but Earth density (roughly 5x greater) : http://astro.unl.edu/classacti... To me that doesn't make sense.

You mean that thing built entirely after the emancipation proclamation on which absolutely zero slaves worked?

http://railroads.unl.edu/blog/...

Seems the facts disagree with your opinion

Whoa, really, Trump is going to bring back slavery?! How much will they cost?! I'll buy two!

Not the 18th century model of slavery deary, the two tier economy which he has spent his entire life building. And you won't be on the buying side of the equation.

Oh wait you're pulling shit out of your ass.

Ironic....

Had not heard that before (have heard the urban myth times). Thanks for the interesting walk through google, other people who have not come across this before might find this page to be interesting.

You made me get off my tablet. Damn it. ;)

Anyhow... http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF...

In addition, later research refuted the original studies that had pointed to DDT as a cause for eggshell thinning. After reassessing their findings using more modern methodology, Drs. Hickey and Anderson admitted that the egg extracts they had studied contained little or no DDT and said they were now pursuing PCBs, chemicals used as capacitor insulators, as the culprit.20

How about:

After many years of carefully controlled feeding experiments, Dr. M. L. Scott and associates of the Department of Poultry Science at Cornell University “found no tremors, no mortality, no thinning of eggshells and no interference with reproduction caused by levels of DDT which were as high as those reported to be present in most of the wild birds where ‘catastrophic’ decreases in shell quality and reproduction have been claimed.”23 In fact, thinning eggshells can have many causes, including season of the year, nutrition (in particular insufficient calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D, and manganese), temperature rise, type of soil, and breeding conditions (e.g., sunlight and crowding).25

There are many others. That's just but one. My understanding is that they really don't want it being used in agriculture because it's persistent. I'm a mathematician and not a chemist nor a biologist. I can't really opine on it. What I can opine on is that the original studies and the book were bullshit and need to be removed from the collective conversation if we want ethics in our science.

A little more effort will find more information, I've found piles of it in the past after hearing about it being used by the Gate's Foundation and wondering what the hell was going on. Bastards... Not the foundation but the people who pushed this shit to begin with.

This is pretty well known stuff. Here's some reading material for you, the ban on DDT was fear mongering nothing more. The estimate is 50m-500m dead since it was banned, there's no solid figures because no one actually knows solidly how many people have died since the ban. But you can do out the math if you really want since 40% of the worlds population lives in areas where you can contract it.

http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF...
http://junkscience.com/2012/03...
http://www.worldwatch.org/node...

It would make a lot more sense to build up a map of regions where areas with the highest shortages are plotted, much like the US drought monitor but worldwide.

There are areas within countries with a lot of water like Canada where there's a shortage because the population density is too high as well as areas where there's no shortage of water even though it's arid because few people live there.

Yet, glyphosate reduced amount of herbicide used.

http://passel.unl.edu/pages/in...

All known cultures? No. For example, right here in America, the original Americans -- specifically, the Native Americans of the Great Plains -- had what you would define as homosexual marriage. From http://plainshumanities.unl.ed...:

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French explorers, traders, and missionaries in the Mississippi Valley occasionally encountered Native Americans who could be classified neither as men nor women. They called such individuals berdaches, a French term for younger partners in male homosexual relationships. In fact, Plains Indian berdaches are best described as occupying an alternative or third gender role, in which traits of men and women are combined with those unique to berdache status. Male berdaches did women's work, cross-dressed or combined male and female clothing, and formed relationships with non-berdache men.

See also http://www.sinclair.edu/academ... , which notes that those relationships ranged from promiscuity to stable marriages, depending on the tribe. Among the Crow, for example, physiologically-female berdaches generally married women.

So you see, both acceptance of transgendered individuals and homosexual marriage is a long-standing American tradition.

drought map shows no drought in PNW.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

sorry, we're taking your water.

Having actually worked with uranium, just disposable gloves are enough (although you wear two pairs to avoid whipping stuff off and poking through). My lab's policy is not online, but you can find plenty of other instructions around from labs. It quite clearly says gloves and lab coat are appropriate, and that shielding is needed for storage, but not even in the case of depleted uranium. Since you have some bone to pick with Americans, you can find similar documents from plenty of other countries too.

Fast neutrons are very rare in uranium (less than 50 ppm of decays in U238, on the order of ppb for U235) unless you have a source of slow neutrons to induce fission (e.g. a lot of uranium plus a moderator). And as the previous poster quite clearly said, gloves do not shield you from fast neutrons.

You will also see those procedures warning you of the reactivity of uranium, that dust is pyrophoric and will burn on contact with air. Uranium will oxidize quickly even in the precess of cold water.

You tell people to read a book, yet show absolutely no signs of you having read a book on the topic, or even showing any effort to look things up from any source, since you are getting things wrong that take 10 seconds to look up.

That understanding was based on a scare program. The truth is quite the opposite.

I own a dry land farm in Southwest Oklahoma. I don't like the price of GM or Hybrid seed but I sure pay it every time. I need less fertilizer, fuel, insecticide, water and herbicide than with public domain seed. The patents on seed don't last forever and they will still be good in coming years as they are rotated to preserve the patents and to stay ahead in the arms race between insects, weeds and GM plants. Twenty or thirty years form now the GM genetics we use now will be useful again as the pest will have lost most of the resistance the developed to them.

If you look on the drought monitor http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ there is a dark red spot in Oklahoma that been there for years. My place is in the middle of that. Some years have been a bust but the fellow that farms it has harvested the best crop of both cotton and wheat off it ever made in the last 5 years on an unbelievably small amount of rain.

The only thing different is being able to farm it no till due to GM Cotton in rotation with conventional bred alfalfa hay and Hard Red Winter wheat. He kept what little moisture he had by not disturbing the soil. My family has farmed that place for right at 100 years with better average yields almost every year until the last 7 year drought. It will make that up when the drought breaks as they always do. I've been though 3 and my family has been thou 9 and 2 really bad weather events. My grandfather was very impressed by his grand fathers stories of the Year with out a summer. My great grand mother's stories of the winters of 1885-1886 and 1886-1887 when 75% to 80% of the cattle on the range in the USA froze to death in the "Great Dieup" kept the winter of 1899 from killing even more cattle when Galveston Bay froze over in a 5 day cold spell at 9 degrees F.

I'll take modern farming thank you as the world was on the edge of starvation using organic methods in 1900 before the Fritz Haber invented an efficient way to make ammonia from natural gas and electricity.

Red

How long is your timeline? The weather service says that most of California is in "exceptional" drought conditions. Looking at the legend with a little gallows humor, it looks like they might have added "exceptional" to the scale because "extreme" was no longer a sufficient descriptor. I would hope their timeline is at least a couple of hundred years. So why would you say wet?

and really, no where for large numbers of people to go.

Siberia.

One day, people will be saying how cold this place used to be.

Nebraska... think "Sahara".

Probably import some camels back over here.

Besides, there used to be camels here ...

Here would be a link to a state college: http://creditevaluation.unl.ed...

Wow... I have to admit, that looks a HELL of a lot more appealing than what it got you at my uni!

I wonder if that more reflects the school itself, or just the passage of time since my school days.

Just give it a rest already. You're spouting misinformation that's not helping anybody. But here we go again:

1. Never said flu shots had lots of egg in them, only that it's a risk factor, a well known one, with several allergic reactions to its name, though many/most people with an egg allergy can well tolerate a flu shot. The allergy is one of the reasons that there are now "egg free" flu vaccines available. Furthermore didn't say that most iatrogenically induced cases of anaphylaxis wasn't from something else. They are.

2. Re celiac disease. That's not the definition of an allergy. Your definition also fits other intolerances such as a bog standard lactose intolerance. But OK. If you won't believe me:

"Celiac disease differs from IgE-mediated food allergies in several important respects. Celiac disease is NOT mediated by allergen-specific antibodies including IgE. Celiac disease is a delayed hypersensitivity reaction where symptoms develop 48-72 hours after ingestion of the offending food which is in contrast to IgE-mediated food allergies where symptoms develop rather quickly (within minutes to hours after ingestion of the offending food)."

"Celiac disease does share some common features with IgE-mediated food allergies. Celiac disease is immunologically mediated, though not by antibodies. Celiac disease does affect only certain individuals in the population. And, most importantly, individuals with celiac disease must avoid the causative protein fraction, gluten, in their diets."

(from: http://food.unl.edu/allergy/ce...)

To reitterate. NOT AN ALLERGY! And if you can't get the basics right, why would anyone listen to you for any other advice when it comes to this area?

3. Wrong as well. But I'll let you do the googling.

4. The fact that RASTs are in general the most reliable are why they're used as a complement to all diagnoses of allergies. If you get a high response on a drug mediated allergy on a RAST test then it's very probable that you will respond negatively to that drug. But if you don't that's doesn't really clear you. There are relatively speaking fewer false positives, so they do have diagnostic value depending on the outcome. Now, since most people aren't allergic to anything, pure maths mean that doctors avoid them as they wouldn't make a very good screening tool. Once you get to an allergist though, you'll see them used a lot more. In general practice not so much.

5. Yeah, right...

"How many people has the US executed for being homosexual?"

Quite a few in the past:

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/...

And perhaps quite a few more in the future:

http://www.toledonewsnow.com/s...

Im not sure if youre serious.

A multi-ton object would not have any appreciable gravitational pull. The largest man-made objects ever created do not create an appreciable gravitational field. Using the calculator here:
http://astro.unl.edu/classacti...
An asteroid with a mass of 4*10^18kg at a distance of 1km from a Saturn 5 rocket fully loaded (Mass of 4 * 10^7kg) would feel an acceleration of 0.000000001 m/s^2, and would accelerate the rocket at a rate 10 orders of magnitude higher. The only noticeable effect would be the rocket being pulled into the asteroid, barely altering its course before joining it.

That completely ignores how insanely expensive even that minuscule experiment would be.

Another indicator of public understanding of science focuses on understanding of how [scientists] generate and assess scientific evidence, rather than knowledge of particular facts. Past NSF surveys have used questions on three general topics—probability, experimental design, and the scientific method—to assess trends in Americans' understanding of the process of scientific inquiry.
...
Understanding of what it means to study something scientifically is considerably lower, at 18% in 2010. Correct responses on this question are lower, in part, because the task of expressing a concept in one's own words is more difficult than recognizing a correct response to a multiple-choice style close-ended survey question.

This is still much higher than I would expect based on occupation, since STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] fields account for only 6% of the workforce. However, even though, as you say, "[m]ost people are not in a position to understand themselves and their own thinking", this is not insurmountable. Surveys similar to the NSF one I linked shows that over the past 25 years, the literacy rate has doubled (from 10% in 1988); clearly, the public can learn to understand rational, scientific methods.

Even if this conclusion is wrong, what do you think the proper method is to deal with the irrational nature of humans? Set up some sort of inner cabal of "great minds" to run the world (ignoring the fact they're just as human, therefore just as irrational, as anyone else)? Try to find some inhuman ("angelic") agent to run the world, and hope their goals remain humanly comprehensible? Or just give up and go back to the caves?

A subscription ain't all it used to be cracked up to be. The 2-minute-between-comments plumb disappeared a few weeks ago. At 5 minutes I participate far less frequently than I used to.

Speaking of which, and to further erode comment quality (not going to wait 5 minutes to post on another thread), I'll just mention that the kde-redhat project has been doing this on Fedora for about seven years and it works well.

http://mirror.unl.edu/kde-redh...

Rex and his crew do a great job.

teabags don't compost -

Yes, they do, if you use the right composting method, a worm composting bin.

A person's response to the gaming experience is not determined on a rational basis.

If a game is stimulating enough, a person will experience physiological responses that some describe as reactions to stressors - this includes a central and peripheral nervous response mediated by catecholamines (dopamine, adrenaline/norepinephrine, noradrenaline/norepinephrine) (sympathetic nervous system-adrenal-medullary arousal), and possibly pituitary-adrenal-cortical arousal, which results in a release of ACTH, and thus, cortisol. Such responses may be associated with a number of physiological effects, and influence the body's use of energy. Maladaptive psychological states, such as that of increased hostility, are sometimes associated with these changes. Here is an article which offers a pretty good introduction on the topic.

If you're prone to maladaptive responses to stressful situations, to some extent, this can be mitigated by training (hence, the biofeedback article). However, I'd be willing to guess that a lot of hardcore gamers (not all) who suffer the most severe stress effects may notice some hitches with the idea of trying to manage their stress response while gaming. Some will not be able to mitigate their stress response to a meaningful extent. Some will be able to mitigate their stress response, but it will hit eventually as they keep gaming (possibly manifesting itself pretty quickly and powerfully). Some will find that mitigating their stress response compromises or interferes with their gaming experience or their level of play, and will drop the idea altogether. Still, it's a worthwhile effort, because it has the potential to help some people.

Don't drop context: "genes from entirely separate species"

Jellyfish & potatoes: "A full-length cDNA corresponding to the RNA genome of Potato leafroll virus (PLRV) was modified by inserting cDNA that encoded the jellyfish green fluorescent protein (GFP) into the P5 gene near its 3 end." I'd say jellyfish and potato are separate species...

Or soil bacteria & potatoes: "Colorado potato beetle (CPB) resistance has been achieved through the incorporation of a gene for the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) protein into potatoes." Again, two separate species which wouldn't normally have any mechanism to transfer genes. Oh, and this example is in our food chain.

You were saying?

Yep, probably in her head. Like in her hypothalamus.

And, more to the point, it might help the OP's GF's rash. Although some icy hot or an ice cube might be a good trial device and quite a bit smaller than the prototype.

First: thanks for putting effort in your answer.

One last little point, I think such studies are often overstated but not necessarily deliberately so--rather, with the genuine belief that the assumptions and generalizations being made are valid.

Yeah, probably at least in part. For the record, though: I was referring to how PR departments and the media in general spin pretty much every nutritional study into what amount to either flat out lies or terribly misleading statements. Using 'X linked to Y' in the headline leads most people away from the commutative nature of the relation, but I guess headlines like 'X and Y associated with each other' sell less ads.

@1a:
The thing with preservatives is that we've actually evolved quite strikingly to like their taste. I'm specifically talking about naturally occurring preservatives like salt, pepper, garlic, onions, sugar, soy sauce and pretty much every herb in existence. See f.i.: http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/spice.pdf and http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/111215/srep00196/full/srep00196.html#/f4
Digestive systems generally suffer from thriving colonies of 'wrong' gut bacteria (the poop transplant is becoming a more and more popular cure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy ) or mechanical issues (lack of fibers etc.), not necessarily from having a hard time breaking down food.

@1b:
If I'm not mistaken, oxidization requires being exposed to oxygen. There's a reason why some stuff can be stored for weeks in a closed package and mere days when the packaging is opened. There's still oxygen exposure, but it is greatly reduced and fairly predictable.

In addition to that, 'non-packaged food' may also have been or be exposed to significant amounts of oxygen and other deteriorating influences. Sure, if you take stuff directly from your own garden you have total control over that, but this is not an option for daily nutrition for pretty much everyone.
Things like frozen vegetables have been indicated to be better in containing nutrients like vitamins than 'fresh' vegetables. See f.i.: http://www.smdisteel.org/~/media/Files/SMDI/Containers/Container%20-%20UC%20Davis%20Executive%20Summary.pdf
or a more popularly written one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1255606/Why-frozen-vegetables-fresher-fresh.html

With regard to the supplements: they do seem to have an effect for children with glaring deficiencies: http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5094
We're very aware that deficiencies of certain vitamins can cause diseases or disorders, but it seems that just overloading our body with the pure versions of them has a bad effect, as per TFA. I guess that means we should exercise some .. moderation ;-)

@2:

I'm sure you know as well as I that labels such as "all natural" and "heart-healthy" are little more than marketing slogans.

Oh man, don't get me started. In my country, there's a foundation that attaches certain national labels on all types of products. Its board is made up of mainly ex-(marketing)employees of Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Ahold.

Then, the less a food resembles the component ingredients, the less I know what I'm actually eating, and the more a company can, in my mind, easily get away with (whether by intentional profit-grubbing or just because money motivates shortcuts and rationalizations).

True. The upside at this point is that most of the pu

Claim B: Claim A is an urban legend. citation 1 citation 2 and you can find more on the net.

Claim C: Claim B is an urban legend.

Now can someone set up some cameras and prove Claim C? That would be supercool, one level recursive urban legend.

Glass is a solid at ambient temperatures, and does not flow at all below its melting temperature of 500-600 degrees Celsius. The idea that window panes flow downwards over centuries is a myth which has been disproved. Blown glass window panes were thicker on one edge, and were typically installed with the thick side down for stability. There were cases of panes being installed with the thick side up or sideways, thought to be through negligence.

http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C01/C01Links/www.ualberta.ca/~bderksen/windowpane.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Behavior_of_antique_glass

The US has huge institutionalized race problems.

Yep.

In an excellent primer, the Center for American Progress explains the stats behind the disparity:

        According to the latest data, which was collected from schools nationwide during the 2009-2010 academic year, black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates. What’s more, African Americans made up 46 percent of those students who were suspended more than once. During the 2009-2010 school year, 39 percent of all expulsions were of black students (in Polk county, FL that would be 3 times the percentage of the black population) even though they represented only 18 percent of enrolled students at sampled schools. These racial disparities in suspension and expulsion rates cannot be explained, as some contend, by socioeconomic status or by higher rates of misbehavior among students of color. Multiple studies confirm that students of color receive harsher consequences than their white peers for committing the same offenses.

Smoke that you SlashDotterers

The US has huge institutionalized race problems.

Yep.

In an excellent primer, the Center for American Progress explains the stats behind the disparity:

        According to the latest data, which was collected from schools nationwide during the 2009-2010 academic year, black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates. What’s more, African Americans made up 46 percent of those students who were suspended more than once. During the 2009-2010 school year, 39 percent of all expulsions were of black students (in Polk county, FL that would be 3 times the percentage of the black population) even though they represented only 18 percent of enrolled students at sampled schools. These racial disparities in suspension and expulsion rates cannot be explained, as some contend, by socioeconomic status or by higher rates of misbehavior among students of color. Multiple studies confirm that students of color receive harsher consequences than their white peers for committing the same offenses.

Smoke that you SlashDotterers

This points much of the blame at beekeepers trying to control parasites, particularly the varroa mite as the major source of bee poisoning. CCD is of still not understood but modern pesticide practices are reducing the hazard posed by crop spraying. The neonicotonid contamination of beeswax is ppb where several other poisons that harm bees are much more prevalent.

Once you open Pandora's box, you can't shut it again

So let's nail it shut with a few facts from a random but reputable source on the subject of prussic acid poisioning, ....
1. Sudangrass, forage sorghum, and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids are often used for summer pasture, green chop, hay, or silage. Under certain conditions, livestock consuming these feedstuffs may be poisoned by prussic acid (HCN).
2. Exposure to excessive prussic acid--also called hydrocyanic acid, hydrogen cyanide, or cyanide--can be fatal. However, producers can manage and feed their livestock to avoid problems with prussic acid.
3. Grazing stunted plants during drought is the most common cause of poisoning of livestock by prussic acid-producing plants.

Sounds to me that the farmer simply neglected to check his cattle for problems after he moved them. The GM angle has no basis in fact, it is a literary device to attract eyeballs.

Disclaimer: I've labeled myself an environmentalist for nearly 40yrs, I have no problem with GM food because the accusations against it have no basis in reality. I do have a problem with a economic system where it makes commercial sense to rip up mature orange orchards in Australia because we can import them cheaper from California. Unfortunately I don't have an answer and neither do the 'invisible hand' crowd.

Thermite and one-pot reactions of silver. Mature adult supervision required for either.

http://www.unl.edu/nac/forestfarming.htm