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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."
You know they forgot to put the word gullible in the dictionary right?
Thousands of people die on beaches every year from DHM inhalation.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
In my experience they dont allow things on the internet that are not true. Case in point I will be getting a check from Bill Gates real soon as I have done my part and forwarded his email.
Latest news: the 14-year old has just been hired by SCO as their new "information minister"
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 Not only can there be research study oriented "fake web pages", but there also can be pranks and out of date information (many pages do not have timestamps).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.
"City Officials Almost Ban Foam Cups"
And this is almost news...
That stuff is nasty. Not only is it made from petroleum (America's crack), but it doesn't biodegrade and may leach toxins into the food it holds. Also, if it burns, it releases toxic particulates into the air.
The term "outside the box" is squarely within the box at this point.
From the state who wants to ban the use of "Master" and "Slave" in hard drive designations... God I hate California
Little Johnny was a chemist.
Little Johnny is no more.
'Cause what he thought was H2O.
Was really H2SO4
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?
You'd think when they'd been in school THAT long, they wouldn't be so gullible!
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?
Reminds me of the advice of one of my professors - "Live on the East Coast for a while, but be prepared to leave, because for every year you live out there, you get more cynical. Live on the West Coast for a while, but be prepared to leave, because for every year you live out there, you lose an IQ point."
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
I learned a lot from the recent election in California. I learned that you can get a job even when you have no qualifications. So, I've decided to be a supermodel.
You'll find that when they ban water and legalize marijuana, they're actually on crack.
...
They list a 1986 MSDS on the site, and a search confirms the entry. However, a search for the manufacturer points back to the hoax website. I think maybe msdsonline has falled for it, probably through lack of due diligence.
"I forgot my mantra."
That's right. Marathon runners are vulnerable to hyponatremia. Massive sweat + intake of unsalted water leads to sodium ion imbalance inside the body. It's one of those nasty conditions where the brain gets disoriented so the victim doesn't realize that they are headed for death.
Hyponatremia a Concern for Marathon Runners
I know the Slashdot stereotype is that nobody *here* has to worry about such things, but actually, I bet there are people in the Slashdot community who run this far and this hard.
Honest mistakes are forgivable. But, exaggeration on the other hand, well I'm not so sure about that.
In fact, exaggeration is utterly unforgivable in all circumstances.
dihydrogen monoxide is nasty thing, which can harbor bacteria and other nasty things to you.
It is best to dilute it slightly with ethanol, as this kills the bugs.
Adding hops, barley, yeast, and letting it mix for a while is a very good way of adding the ethanol.
This is obviously a blatant attempt at california(n) flamage, but...
With a small amount of research I'm sure you can pull up stupid laws and occurences for just about every state in the union. You want to know why people love california? Let me list some reasons without trying to sound like a tourist commercial:
- Extremely varying climates all within a relatively small area (i.e. Desert, Beach, Mountains all within a hour or so of each other)
- Strong cultural heritage throughout the state
- Southern california has some of the best weather in the US, bar-none.
- Napa Valley, Big Bear, Hollywood, Alcatraz, Catalina Island, Sea World, just to name a few
If you're looking for real reasons not to move to California, I can give you those too:
- Everything is expensive
- California traffic has been compared to a day in hell
- major metropolitan areas are very crowded.
- no smoking in bars or restaurants (seriously)
Obviously they did zero research on this before they had their knee-jerk reaction
I think the irony in that statement has been accurately summed up =)
arcane for life
I can't even think of an example where someone with that background would involve themselves in politics.
Jimmy Carter.
"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."
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?