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City Officials Almost Ban Foam Cups
localhost00 writes "The city of Aliso Viejo, CA nearly banned foam cups when they learned they are produced from a substance known as 'dihydrogen monoxide.' A paralegal working for the city apparantly found a professionally designed web site put up to describe the dangerous properties of this chemical.
Apparantly, the report about Dihydrogen Monoxide was written by a then 14-year-old Nathan Zohner who was researching the gullibility of fifty ninth graders."
Maybe this is why people shouldn't take any document on the Web at face value unless they check the sources or credentials. Not only can there be research study oriented "fake web pages", but there also can be pranks and out of date information (many pages do not have timestamps). I know many professors at my university view Web references as something that you use at last resort, when all other reference sources fail. However, another problem is that there IS a lot of good content on the web, and sometimes they disappear and can never be located again, unless they were lucky enough to have been crawled over by archive.org
Nice, law making officials have been put on the same level of discerning information as a class of high school freshman. This gives me great confidence in our legaslative bodies.
People react here just the same as ninth graders, it would seem.
But seriously, they shouldn't name that stuff so dangerously. I can understand the confusion. Erm, that's a standard naming convention for molecules. (IUPEC Naming maybe? Can't remember.)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
So before you start lambasting Kawhlefornia (Terminator speak for California), remember these shows prove it happens everywhere.
Oh look a puppy!
Funny, as a teenager I always thought of myself as being a lot more intelligent than the average adult (much to their chagrin) - and up until now (as I approach 30) I haven't seen much evidence showing I was wrong. I'm constantly running into cashiers who cannot make change without their cash register, salespeople who have no clue about the products they are selling, people who can barely spell (a visit to nearly any chat board is enough to turn my stomach). Seems like despite all the progress we seem to be making, the bottom half (two-thirds?) of our population seems to be regressing further and further. My Grandfather (who had to quit school in grade two to help his Dad on the farm) has writing and math skills that make him look like a scholar relative to the average McDonald's cashier with a high school diploma.
I think our approach to designing products aimed at the lowest common denominator might actually be responsible for all of this. Think about it the next time you pick up a cup of coffee with a warning on it stating that coffee is hot. If a paralegal (a "research expert" if you will) can be fooled by a smart 14-year old, what does that say about our society?
The beauty of this site and the others that perpetuate this is that it is 100% factual. Exposed inhalation will kill you, you'll drown. It is a critical ingredient in acid rain, it does react explosively with certain chemicals etc.
Its designed to catch people with knee jerk reactions that cant be bothered to do even a brief investigation of the facts. Its a way of showing the people that are always claiming the sky is falling for the fools that they are.
You shouldn't take ANY document at face value... it doesn't matter if it's on the web or not.
this isn't an Internet thing... get a grip.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Pretty easy to take potshots at elected officials. In cases like this one, they're well deserved. However, I submit that expecting perfect decision-making 100% of the time from leaders is akin to expecting coders to write non-trivial code that works perfectly on first execution.
Which is not a blank check to politicians, letting them go out and debug their way to a reasonable course of action.
Ultimately, if we're that pissed off about stuff, we have to get involved, whereupon we'll see some of the complexities involved.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I don't mean to be pedantic, but your point does expose a rift between different sorts of environmentalists. A true "tree hugger" would far prefer the use of styrofoam to that of paper which comes from - dare I say - trees!
Another great battle is over wind power. You'd think all the environmentalists would be on top of that one. Not so - it disrupts migratory patterns and splatters a lot of birds, so many conservationists are against it. Same with things like tidal power (similar effect on fish).
Again, pedanticism aside, the environmental "faction" is far more fractured than you might think. Frequently the anti-global-warming, conservation, and wilderness camps take diametrically opposing views.
You really should check your electronegativies before saying bonds are covalent. This is pretty basic chemistry and explains amongst other things why water is liquid at livable temperatures for we humans and many other phenomenon.
You can find more about naming of chemical structures via IUPAC the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
"However, I submit that expecting perfect decision-making 100% of the time from leaders is akin to expecting coders to write non-trivial code that works perfectly on first execution."
If people are writing code that has similar effects to laws, ie people go to jail or get executed, get money taken from them by force in the form of fines, or otherwise effect people's lives in a nonvoluntary way, then they better damn well get it right on first execution after its release.
This is simply an indication that 95% of the population is scientifically illiterate.
Unfortunately science education is not mandatory like english and basic math are. Nor is it taught in a manner that supports curiousity and interest.
Given that we live in an increasingly technical dependent society it's scary to find pseudoscience and scientific ignorance so rapidly on the rise. For those struggling to separate science and pseudoscience, a good book putting science's role into a clearer perspective is Carl Sagan's book: "The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark." I have a few copies and lend it to people when they need it. (Note: there are other good books too this is just one that comes to mind).
The underlying skills of critical thought and a healthy dose of skepticism are the basis of good science. Even basic concepts like Occam's razor are not widely understood or accepted. People need to be made to understand that science is not just ugly formulas in physics class, but that it forms the basis for all things that define our modern high standard of living.
If less than 1% of congress men ever elected have any scientific background how do you expect them to put forth a meaningful policy on scientific education or even understand basic issues.
Rather than sitting here in self congratulatory bliss about other people ignorance, we should take our responsibility as the scientifically literate (to some degree anyway) seriously and do what we can to educate people around us. Take an active role in science outreach programs, or at the very least lobby your elected representatives.
Yes, it is a slow difficult up hill battle, but 300 years ago 95% of the population was illiterate, today most can read and write. This is mostly due to a number of dedicated individuals that convinced their government of the need for literacy.
Ignorance is bliss... Unfortunately for me its to late...
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
But corrugated paper is easier to recycle if you have a bloody great big cooking range to hand .....
..... as long as the packaging is made with due regard for its secondary purpose {burning certain plastics in a cooking range would not be such a good idea}. You'll never have enough packaging to run on that alone, of course, but that's not quite the intention.
Cardboard soaked with organic grease burns fairly cleanly, especially if it isn't the only thing drawing the fire. It's made from plants, so it's not going to add any more CO2 to the atmosphere. It reduces the amount of fossil fuels used for cooking. It reduces the need to transport used containers to recycling plants {which often uses as much or more energy than initial manufacture}.
Burning food packaging in the stoves used to cook the food seems to make perfect sense
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
No, this should be a cautionary tale in so many ways:
1. Just because it's on the Internet does not make it an authoritative source. I find the Internet to be a large shallow source, good for getting a direction and possible further sources for research, but not a replacement for libraries, technical journals/publications and a thousand other, more traditional, knowledge resources.
2. In the words of Mark Twain, "common sense isn't!"
3. Intelligence is not a prime prerequisite for paralegals or politicians.
Pretty easy to take potshots at elected officials...
Politicians make it soooo easy to take potshots at them! If they don't like being shot at, maybe they should quit painting targets on themselves. In other words, if they don't like being called stupid, they should stop doing stupid things!
No-one is expecting them to know chemistry, they are expecting them to want more than a slick website as proof that a substance needs a ban.
Otherwise you could just make a slick web page saying that Windows gives you cancer, and they'd ban it too!
Hey, wait a minute....
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Perhaps a portion of your argument that was left out would go as follows.
Alcohol and many other legalized drugs have been around not just for decades but for centuries. We have a solid and firm knowledge of the health risks these drugs present and how to manage those health risks.
MDMA [Ecstasy] has been in common usage for only the past few decades at the outside. There have not yet been adequate tests preformed to gauge the effect MDMA will have on users over a long period of time, particularly recreational users as opposed to prescription users.
One strong argument against many kinds of drug legalization is that it is well and truly possible to kill yourself with an overdose without trying very hard. The only legal RECREATIONAL drug this is possible with at the moment is alcohol, which requires a fair bit of effort to actually induce alcohol poisoning.
Note -- I am aware that impaired judgment can kill and that Alcohol may cause judgment to be impaired. Of course, getting a blowjob can also cause judgment to be impaired. Neither is really safe while driving. Care should be exercised when under the influence of any mind altering susbstance (booze, pot, sorority chicks, Bawls, etc)
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.