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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."
Come on people. This is the state that wanted to make oreo cookies an age restrictred item, and the state that required electronic equipment not to use the master/slave nomenclature because it offended only one person. Obviously they did zero research on this before they had their knee-jerk reaction. I bet we will soon see warnings on bottled water like we do some other items... "This product is known to the state of California to cause an unknown disease.." Remind me never to live there.
Actually, there really is something called water overdose and apparently it can kill you.
The DHMO site is at least 6 years old. I used to have it linked on my science education web site. I was smart enough to put it under the category of "weird science" or "science humor". Can't remember which as it is no longer active. Thought it was funny and didn't think anyone would ever buy into it... well anyone who actually graduated the 7th grade, at least.
I think the first thing they should ban is that paralegal, from ever having access to politicians enough to convince them of crap like that.
But, Seriouslly, they really should ban styrofoam cups, those things take forever to degrade, and are nasty pollutants. USe paper cups instead!
But on the bright side, you can dissolve styrofoam in gasoline (or other hydrocarbons). When you add enough, the solution becomes viscous and sticky (just like honey). If you love the smell of napalm in the morning, styrofoam is your friend. :)
I should note (as an artist) that different kinds of water behave differently in paint. I would have just assumed it was distilled water had I seen the bottles. Not that you would need particularly pure water for latex paint, but some people like to buy the Rolls Royce of everything.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Of course they're scams / humor sites, but they look really real!
I'm somewhat surprised by these, too. I believe they're encouraging people to commit a felony (identity theft), as well as fraud (not paying debts). I believe this may mean they are engaging in a criminal conspiracy, even if they don't know the other parties to the conspiracy. IANAL, someone please review and respond?
Here's some links:
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Penn and Teller, on thier Showtime show 'Bullshit' did a similair trick to expose the ridiculous ignorance of the liberals at this earth-day type event. They went around and got a tons of signatures from people for thier support in the ban of 'dihydrogen-monoxide'. it was pretty damn funny and it did well in exposing the lack of credibility on the part of these groups.
It was an unelected paralegal doing the research who fell for the DHMO joke. Did you consider that along the way, someone (quite possibly an elected official) spotted the bad research and stopped the monkey business?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I'm not worried about honest mistakes, but unhonest exploitation of the gullible does worry me. Legal professionals (the wealthy ones) understand all too well how to exaggerate the truth and worse, how to sugar-coat a lie.
Honest mistakes are forgivable. But, exaggeration on the other hand, well I'm not so sure about that.
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Free your mind - Flush your toilet
Leah Betts died of drinking too much water. She took an Ecstasy tablet while her {rabidly anti-some-drugs} dad was out -- then heard he was due back before she would wear off. Fearful of a bollocking on his early return, she drank several litres of water in a misguided attempt to counteract the effects of the drug. This caused an electrolyte imbalance, leading to multiple organ failure -- including the brain -- and eventual death.
Legal ecstasy tablets probably would include an information sheet detailing safe usage practicesm and this would never have happened. However, the government, breweries and the tobacco companies all would prefer for you to believe that she was killed by a tab of ecstasy.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Yeah, and my first thought is that they were going to vote something a paralegal brought to them into law without checking it out???? I think that's an even worse reflection on these public officials.
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Anyway the inspectors came around to check them out; and insisted on knowing what their cleanup method would be if they spilled the stuff.
"We don't need one."
At this point the inspector went into rant mode, threatening extensive punitive penalties if a cleanup methodology wasn't produced immediately.
(Indeed so effective was the desert at catalysing the peroxide, the team were jokingly considering abandoning their expensive silver catalysts, and using desert instead... but I digress.)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"> I think our approach to designing products aimed at the lowest common denominator
This is a consequence, not the cause. The problem is our education system and the way it encourages stupidity. Read about that and the solution to it in th
Montessori Method. It's old and, sadly, is the sort of stuff nobody teaches children any more.
A friend of mine with a sweating problem drank enough water to do that to himself once. He didn't die though, he just had a seizure, and a free trip to the hospital. When I used to work for Roaring Camp narrow gauge railroad at the tender age of 15 (at which time I was about 6'4") I was the trackwalker, meaning I followed the narrow gauge steam train up the hill to make sure it didn't toss anything out of the firebox or the stack that was going to catch the forest on fire. I drank a lot of water, and I took salt tablets on the hottest days. I don't know if it was necessary, but I'm not dead, and it got well over 100 several times, and I was hauling my chubby ass up hill five times a day on hot, busy days. My only compensation was minimum wage and being in umpteen zillion japanese tourist videos.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But on the bright side, you can dissolve styrofoam in gasoline (or other hydrocarbons). When you add enough, the solution becomes viscous and sticky (just like honey). If you love the smell of napalm in the morning, styrofoam is your friend. :)
We used to do this in the boy scouts. We'd then pour/mold the mixture onto a newspaper, twist the newspaper around the stuff, and make a "starter log" for camping. Make 'em two or three inches thick, throw a couple into your fire pit, and you've got a great way to start a fire. Very good for drying out damp wood and getting a blaze going.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
I'm not sure one can blame education or general intelligence for this -- at least not directly.
What we may have lost is the ability to detect bullshit. The tendency seems to be for adults to accept official looking information presented in an expected manner, or to believe statements from someone holding a microphone in front of a video camera.
I say "adults" only because I've seen a few "man on the street" spoofs where adults are caught up while their children look on in disbelief just before calling bullshit on the so-called interviewer. Some of Rick Mercer's "Talking to Americans" segments are particularly memorable examples.
Of course, this is completely anecdotal on my part. Not to mention some of the folks who got caught on this particular hoax were young adults. Adult enough, perhaps, to start believing what "experts" suggest to them without thinking critically about what is being presented to them.
The problem is a lack of critical thinking, I suggest, and not some arbitary level of intelligence (which is impossible to measure and compare, anyway).
Examples about making change or spelling may be a bit misleading. I've never been strong with arithmetic (not mathematics) even though I worked for years in the service industry. I never learned the tricks and shortcuts people use to quickly calculate change or percentages. I'm not sure there is much my schooling could have provided to help this. After 35 years I just know I should use a calculator, and check my figures twice.
Many people find spelling problematic. Especially English spelling, which is hardly a normalized language; being a good English speller requires a fair amount of sheer memorization. In fact, new research suggests that some so-called learning disabilities have almost nothing to do with intelligence or ability to learn. Dyslexics have different brains that may actually be better at some tasks than non-dyslexic brains. Dyslexics can read and comprehend letters and words the same as everyone else, but the part of the brain the recognizes words shapes and establishes a lexicon "buffer" is the problem.
-- clvrmnky
Did you consider that the paralegal could've been the patsy to save face for the elected official ?
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Free your mind - Flush your toilet
Hmmm... Maybe it would help if a few extra eyes checked over that legislation before it gets released? Any chance of getting pre-release legislation published on sourceforge? I have to admit that I like the idea of open-source legislation. Not sure how it would work though...
It's not just politicians. On their series Bullshit, Penn and Teller sent a petition to ban DHMO to a Greenpeace rally. The only thing more disturbing than the people who were willing to sign after hearing selected facts about water, was the number of people who signed without even hearing the pitch.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
... well before you're able to consume enough THC ...
You're assuming consumption is by inhalation; by ingestion, especially in concentrated form (hashish or THC tablets), it is surely possible.
Just as it is difficult to achieve alcohol poisoning when drinking normally because of the same self-limiting effects (although it is possible), it is also possible to chug a litre of pure ethanol and likely induce death.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I dont care what any study says on that. ive smoked plenty of pot to know that i wouldn't be safe driving if i was high on it.
hahahaha, heehehehehehe, hahaha, there's a tree, hee hee hee, CRASH!
you get the idea.
Yes, I get the idea that you're probably one of the ones that shouldn't be smoking pot. You know, in about 18 years of smoking the stuff and being around people who do, I have never met ONE person that would behave like your described scenario. The dumb-ass giggly shtick, I always took that to be a hollywood fabrication. "Reefer Madness" and its influence springs to mind. But I guess some people just can't handle mind-altering substances.
I recall hearing about a study that tested (in simulators) driving abilities of straight, stoned, and drunk people. Guess what? The stoners tended to be the more careful, better drivers. Part of that I think is that when you're high, you know you're high, you know you need to compensate for attention-span etc. When your piss-drunk, you tend to forget that you're drunk, and figure being a complete idiot is just normal behavior.
I got 150 on an IQ test right after sucking down a huge bowl of weed. I would never have been able to do that while drunk.
I'm not sure if this is what you are referring (reefering??) to but I have only come across one documented death by marijuana consumption. And it was not caused by toxic levels of THC. I read the article over a year ago so it's a bit hazy, but basically some guy had oodles of weed and found out the cops knew about him. So he ate it all.
Apparently it was so much that he caused his stomach to burst. Therefor the death was marijuana related, however it was really just death by eating too much. The THC probably just made the whole death thing slightly more bearable, but it's not what killed him.