I believe it is improper to charge thousands of dollars for a test that has not been validated and may not be safe. I don't think any of Amen's research has provided clear evidence that patients who have had SPECT scans have superior clinical outcomes to adequately treated patients who have not been scanned. That's really the bottom lineâ"especially with an expensive test that involves significant radiation. At the very least, he should be describing the test as experimental.
Some of Dr. Amen's treatment suggestions also worry me. For example, he recommends: (a) uses for dietary supplements that are not supported by good evidence, (b) EMDR (a highly questionable approach), and (c) hyperbaric oxygen therapy for conditions not generally considered to warrant such therapy.
I don't doubt that many patients who visit the Amen Clinics are helped. The key question, however, is whether or not SPECT scanning is justifiable for most of them. I, personally, would not undergo the test at Dr. Amen's clinic even if it were free. In my opinion, based on current knowledge, the possibility of harm outweighs any potential benefit. Pictures showing that "this is your brain on drugs" may impress some people, but I am far more impressed by quantifiable data (such as tests of mental performance) and clinical consequences (such as improved behavior) than by nonspecific pictures of "holes" in the brain.
So this is an operation that is selling diagnoses and treatments not supported by legitimate scientific research. They wound up with thousands of SPECT scans and decided to do some data-dredging on them, a process that we know is guaranteed to produce false positives http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...https://xkcd.com/882/ , along with any real causative association. They found an association with marijuana, and rushed to publish.
Once it was published in a journal, they made claims in the press release that weren't supported by the data:
According to Daniel Amen, M.D., Founder of Amen Clinics, "Our research demonstrates that marijuana can have significant negative effects on brain function. The media has given the general impression that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, this research directly challenges that notion. In another new study just released, researchers showed that marijuana use tripled the risk of psychosis. Caution is clearly in order."
Clearly false. Association is not causation.
Well played, sir. I looked at the quackwatch site, which had this quote from the Amen Clinics site "Brain-Soul connection." and found that sufficient. Not that that's not an interesting question in general; just that this current research direction seems no more likely to elucidate it than any of the others pursued over the previous 10,000 years.
I'm all for the science, so how can the researchers claim their observations indicate marijuana has 'significant negative effects on brain function'? They didn't study that, they studied regional cerebral blood flow. What that reduced blood flow means is a whole different topic.
Marijuana use is at an all time high, yet dementia rates are at an all time low and falling. And psychosis rates are fairly steady. I have the same issue with these studies as I do with the antivaxxer studies - where are the impacts of this observation in the population and why don't we see changes in public health line up with changes in usage?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying marijuana is good for you nor do I believe it is some magical cure all. I just tend to distrust and question studies on such politicized topics, especially when it makes suggestions contrary to popular observation.
Yep. For any conclusion of a thing being dangerous you need: 1) a demonstration that it is correlated with a higher incidence of the undesirable effect. 2) a demonstration that the undesirable effect is correlated with a higher incidence of the thing. and 3) a plausible mechanism of action.
At this point, all there is is some evidence of 1 in a particular and peculiar subgroup of the population.
"Is the Reward for smoking pop, worth the risk of its side effects should be the real debate."
I hadn't heard about this new drug, but smoking pop seems like it would be challenging, what's the process? And does the brand or flavor matter? How about diet vs regular?
Given its history i would guess that Coca-cola would be an upper. And since Pepsi is supposed to be cool and different from Coke it must be a downer. Is Diet Dr Pepper a hallucinogenic?
In this case, in a proper study Alzheimer's had no business being mentioned at all. The only tenuous connection was that they share a common region of the brain affected. (here's the obligatory car analogy) That's like going out in the morning and finding a flat tire so you tell everyone you lost a wheel on the way to work (so they picture a highway drama involving a risk to life and limb).
The test group were diagnosed with "Cannabis use disorder". That is, not just average users, these patients were hard-core users who already were known to have problems thought to be related and refuse to cut back on use. It is thought that most people with that diagnosis had mental health issues before starting marijuana use. It would be interesting to see how their scans change if any of them can be convinced to reduce their use to more casual levels.
It would also be interesting to know how many (if any in the control group) were casual or occasional users. All we know from the freely available information is that they were not diagnosed with cannabis use disorder, meaning they might be non-users, casual users or even heavy users with no problems thought to be related to use.
As for legalization vs. recommendation, alcohol is perfectly legal and I think that's right and proper. Nevertheless, I don't think beer for breakfast is a good idea at all.
All quite correct. In addition, there is a further question about mechanism; we know about marijuana, THC, cannabinoid receptors, etc. that sufficiently accounts for the action of cannabis and related compounds. We don't know of any mechanism by which marijuana affects blood flow; even any handwaving long shots like a molecule which vaguely resembles another molecule which might correlate with blah blah blah. And we really don't know of any mechanism whereby marijuana affects blood flow specifically in the brain; nor, given the well-known mechanism of THC action do we need any such mechanism to explain its effects; nor do we see a mysterious epidemic of organic brain damage correlating with marijuana use which this would explain, nor does the existing epidemic of Alzheimer's involve marijuana smokers to a significant degree.
As usually pointed out in such studies, the mechanism could run in the opposite direction; the action of marijuana on the brain might be to reduce its requirements for blood flow which then down-regulates. That is just handwaving on my part, completely blue sky brainstorming (haha), but the suggested conclusion in the paper, that marijuana is reducing blood flow and thus possibly doing damage, is equally handwaving blue sky brainstorming at this point.
What we have here is an observed correlation between three factors; clinical neuropsychological illness sufficient to require medical treatment, marijuana use, and low blood flow to the brain. The causal relationship here could be between any one and the other two, any two and the remaining one, or none at all. This makes it an interesting curiosity probably worth following up, if it can be replicated, but that's all unless subsequent results start to implicate it more solidly.
Of course, the art of grant writing is such that if you can indeed attach your research to whatever great problem the congressional committee responsible for setting budgets for the NIH and NSF and so on consider important then your odds of funding get enhanced. Ideally you'd like to be able to end your paper with "and further research could clarify the role of this effect in causing/preventing/curing cancer", but if you can't manage that, given the congressional mindset recently and for the foreseeable future, "and further research could clarify the role of this illegal drugs in causing/preventing/curing brain damage" is a decent substitute.
Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000.
I think this exemplifies just well the states have been gerrymandered. Seriously, the majority of people vote for one person but the lose by a 3:50 ratio?
The states have now been gerrymandered. Oh dear, that was funny.
no, the districts within the states are gerrymandered, then the states go winner-take-all. and being down by 3000 votes in one state becomes winning 29 electoral votes from that state.
Ah, one dollar one vote. Well, that's pretty much the exact corrupt system the voters just rejected by flushing Hillary away with the rest of the shit.
But if we're going to do it that way, it should obviously be "one tax dollar paid, one vote", not ruled as today by the very wealthy (richest 100 families) who don't actually pay much taxes.
There's no reason that amount of total area won should mean anything at all. Moreover, there's no reason you can reasonably object to cities dominating simply because they happen to be dense areas. Disagreeing with a group doesn't mean you get to use essentially arbitrary criteria to decide you'd like to ignore their wishes.
Social and political interests tend to have a heavy coincidence with geography. If you are on the coasts you care way more about the fishing industry than people in the heartland. If you are in a desert you care more about water conservation. If you are near oil and natural gas your livelihood or the livelihood of your neighbors probably depends on the energy industry. By virtue of being in a population dense area, you automatically have a powerful voting block on various area specific issues. What's more, the people in other areas are not your neighbors, you have much less incentive to protect their interests, and are much less likely to hear their anger and complaints when you don't. By and large people from Wisconsin are not going to be able to come and protest march down the streets of LA if California -- 8 x the population of Wisconsin -- decides corn should be taxed to subsidize making action movies.
The electoral college helps protect various minority populations from being exploited by a tyrannous majority. And that is the main point of our republic, why it is based on constitutional rights, competing branches of government (one of which is not voted on), an electoral college, etc., and super majorities are required to enact any substantial changes. Our government is not a mechanism for enacting the will of the 51% (or even the 60%) on every issue, it is built as a balance of interests which makes the government accountable to the people while also making it fairly difficult for any one group of people to use the government as a cudgel against another group.
that's true of anything. if the majority decides to enact Christianity as the compulsory religion of the land, the electoral college isn't going to protect the minority. that's what the constitution and courts do. much to the irritation of those who want Christianity to be the compulsory religion of the land; whose influence on this matter, ironically, is greatly magnified by the electoral college makeup.
There are many reasons why a straight popular vote is bad and the electoral college is better but the best one I can think of is what happened in the recent election. Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000. If you think that the election of a nation should be swayed by a handful of cities while the rest of the nation is completely ignored, well, you're an idiot.
So, in a hypothetical country where there are a city and two large farms, with 300 million people living in the city and one person living on each of the farms, it would be a big mistake to let the city residents outvote the farmers. Better let the farmers outvote the city residents.
too absurd an example? how about 200 farmers? 2000? 2 million? 200 million? you have a good rational place where you can draw the line and your argument suddenly switches polarity?
That's the thing. You cannot simply "change the Electoral College" as if it's a voter's guide. It is part of the contract between the sovereign states that make up our nation. The smaller states never would have approved of the Constitution if the leadership was all based on popular vote. That is why we have the Senate, rather than just the House of Representatives.
To do anything that modifies or eliminates the EC, you would have to get every state but the dozen most conservative ones to vote to make that change. Good luck on that one.
Again, it is not changing the Electoral College to note that constitutionally the electors have the right to elect whomever they want as president, so long as he or she meets the constitutional requirements. They are most definitely NOT legally or constitutionally required to cast their electoral votes under orders by the state legislature or governor, or any other body.
It is the exact same thing they do with gerrymandering. They go out of their way to draw the map such that there is as few democratic districts as possible, and the democrats there win elections by very high margins, while there is as many republican districts as possible.
Right, it's always "Republicans" gerrymandering, and the poor, unblemished Democrats who are victims of it.
"In other words, an EG of 7% in favor of one party in the first election year of a plan
almost certainly means that the EG will favor that same party in each subsequent
election year under that plan.
Professor Jackman noted that the EGs for the 2012 and 2014 races in Wisconsin—
13% and 10%, respectively—were particularly high by historical levels. The EG in 2012
was, according to Professor Jackman, “among the largest scores we’ve seen anywhere”
and “in the top 3 percent in terms of magnitude.” Act 43’s average EG ranked fifth
out of the 206 plans that Professor Jackman surveyed. He testified that he was “virtually certain” that “Act 43 will exhibit a large and durable advantage in favor of
Republicans over the rest of the decade."”
-Whitford v. Gill Opinion
People don't realize that this is pretty much the gigantic fuckup we have in parts of Canada now. While we use FPTP, in Ontario for example. The political parties only need to run for the Greater Toronto Area(GTA), and if you win that and say London or Ottawa, you've won the province. Getting rid of the electoral college will basically make sure that things get worse.
The conservatives, anchored in Alberta and as anti-Ontario as any tea partier is anti-Washington, ran the place for quite a while.
Eliminating the electoral college wouldn't not require candidates to run a nation wide election. Quite the opposite. Politicians could focus on California, New York, Chicago and maybe urban areas in Texas. The rest of the nation wouldn't matter.
In other words, politicians would have to change over to trying to appeal to the majority of the population, and fringe groups would be ignored.
I'm in favour of recounts in general, and for this election in particular. It tells us about the reliability of the election process, and hopefully might shed light on hacking and other skulduggery. The information will be used to fix future problems.
As to Clinton, she's joining because Jill Stein can't call for a recount. In at least one of the states (probably all of them) you can't call for a recount unless you are aggrieved, which means that you think the recount would change the outcome.
Jill Stein can't reasonably say that she might have won, so she officially can't be aggrieved.
Hillary most certainly *can* make that claim, since the margins for her loss are so slim in those states.
That's why she joined the process. For the recounts to happen, she's the one to request them.
Apparently Trump is in favor of recounts also, given then sudden return of his concern about illegals voting. We better recount the whole thing. Or maybe just redo it.
Don't like the system, than change it, don't cheat it, change it.
And if you don't like the system then you could change it,
because the system we have at the moment allows the electors to
vote their conscience.
If there's any purpose at all to the electoral college system,
it's to cover for weird, exceptional cases like a winning
candidate taking office with record disapproval numbers after
losing the popular vote by at least 2 million.
At the time the Constitution was drafted, transportation and communication obviously was not as slick as it has become since, and voters in one state might have little personal knowledge regarding a candidate who had lived and served in a different state. Thus, it would be possible for a person of foul and unstable character to launch a campaign far from where he was known and convince the voters to elect him with false promises and so on. Instead, the voters of the state would select from their own citizenry, well known to them, a set of wise, judicious, and trustworthy men, who would sit together with those of the other states and deliberate carefully and thoughtfully at length to pick an optimal president. In this way, scoundrels would be exposed by the electors of their own state and not chosen. The overrepresentation of the agricultural rural states was a secondary protection for their interests not being outvoted. Somewhat reminiscent of how the leaders of America were selected when it was founded.
good intentions.
Unprecedented in that a candidate frugally ran an election with a singular focus on the electoral vote? That he eschewed votes in deep blue areas to save funds for places that it actually counted? Can you definitively say that the popular vote counts would have been the same had the rules been different?
As for me, my nightmare was Hillary nominating Supreme Court justices. She flat out stated she intended to nominate political activists and get cases heard for the express purpose of over turning past rulings. The court is supposed to be an arbitrator between Congress and the President, not an arm of the President.
really? because my nightmare was that a legally elected president faced with a vacancy on the supreme court and, as is his privilege and duty, selected a candidate who had, in fact, been at one time mentioned by the opposite party as typical of the kind of man they would accept, was instead faced with congress and senate refusing a priori to confirm ANY candidate he out forward, and suggesting that if the next president was also of the opposing party they would just try to get along leaving that ninth seat empty.
The court is supposed to be an arbitrator of cases crossing state boundaries, or involving the federal government, not a pawn of partisan disputes.
The intent of the Electoral College at least in part was to act as a final check against an unsuitable candidate becoming President. Now we can certainly debate Trump's suitability for high office, but as to complaining about the rules, well the EC is actually somewhat vague in that regard. The chief issue I see with Electors voting for someone other than who they are pledged for is that it could, in states where being a faithless electoral, end you up in hot water.
Not a constitutional scholar I by any means, by my quick googling suggests that in most states you'd be within your legal rights, although you'd probably get kicked out of the party.
Stop bitching about how unfair the electoral college is. Go through the legal process to change/eliminate it so this it doesn't happen again, if that's what the people want.
The real trouble is that the Constitution says nothing about how the states choose electors. It's even constitutionally valid for a governor or legislature of one party to just send electors from that party with no election; so the current gerrymander and winner-take-all strategy will still be valid.
That's the point.
Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
Good luck with that. There are kids in their 20s in college who can't budget, can't cook, and if it isn't on Facebook it doesn't exist.
Remember that these are the same people who in the most basic maths classes always said "when are we ever going to use this in real life". The truth is they never will use algebra in real life, but the smart kids use it every day (ever figured out how many litres of petrol you'd get for $20... you've used algebra).
You cant eliminate dumb, all you can do is teach and hope that most of the students learn (they do).
Also, I know someone with two PHD's who couldn't make a sandwich to save his life. Some people are simply not able to grasp certain concepts and this does not make them dumb, crocheting is a basic skill but it's one I wouldn't have the foggiest how to do.
Like watching a table full of college educated adults trying to work out a 15% tip, let alone split a check. might as well ask the dog and the cat to split the cost of the pet food.
see also:
* You can't believe everything you read on the internet. - Abraham Lincoln
* Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This must be a lie, i've searched twitter for socrates' account and can't find anything like this.
In the literal sense, they are retarded compared to children of similar age 40 years ago. Their grammar and word usage is worse, their punctuation is worse. Their grasp of mathematics is worse. Their knowledge of history is worse. Their cognizance of current events is worse.
No wonder they are susceptible to propaganda for the stupid. They are in fact the ignorant and stupid, relative to their parents and grandparents.
40 years ago, and for a generation previous, the nation valued learning, and education, and knowledge, and wisdom. we were in the space race with the satanic commies, and an arms race, and so on. we had to develop new technological wizardry so we could fight in Vietnam against the locals. Art and culture and literature and music were things to make you smarter. even rock music made you sit around and discuss, just who was the walrus, and what was a goo goo goo joob anyway? seriously discuss it, long into the night. news featured things like 60 minutes that did in depth reporting on stuff that didn't fit between mr. wilson's 30 year old cat and farmer brown's 200 lb pumpkin on the news.
but you can't make tons of money on that stuff!!! mcdonald's makes more money than cordon bleu restaurants. you can't go wrong pitching lowest common denominator to the masses.
then you shut down the budgets for education. lord knows we don't want our schools to actually be pleasant places to be in, let alone temples to higher learning. kids just learn all sorts of things there that contradict their parents.
While I agree with much of your critique of GP, there are still some problems here:
Kids have learned plenty about cause and effect. See above. They've got the math skills to see they can't afford higher education. Why don't you?
Uh, if that were true, why do we currently have this "student loan crisis"? College costs are higher than ever. Percentage of young people enrolled in college has just declined slightly in the past year or two after achieving record levels in the past decade. The chances of getting entry-level jobs for young college grads have been decreasing, yet people keep going to college in numbers that are almost the highest in history.
Basically, I don't see evidence to support your assertion.
Moreover, if average people were able to use logic and reasoning for their finances, we wouldn't have had the mortgage meltdown a few years back. Yes, some people were tricked into loans with bad terms, but many never even bothered to read the terms in the first place -- probably because they couldn't understand them. And yes, I've taught high-school math. I KNOW from experience how many kids actually understand even basic loan terms, let along a complex mortgage. I see it as a huge failure of our educational system that we graduate so many kids who can't do basic financial math and other basic life skills.
But that's why mortgage brokers and the like exist; "this subject is so complex, you need me to steer you through it" Who in the world is going to reply to a mortgage broker who tells them they can indeed have the house they want with "no, i don't think so, you're wrong"? same story for lawyers. "this subject is so complex, you need me to steer you through it" Who in the world is going to reply to a lawyer who tells them they can indeed be found not guilty with "no, i don't think so, you're wrong"?
That's the point.
Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
Good luck with that. There are kids in their 20s in college who can't budget, can't cook, and if it isn't on Facebook it doesn't exist. There are adults high school (drop-outs) who have never applied for even a part-time job and as a result are too afraid of rejection to give it a try (real special snowflakes) They drop out of government-paid trade schools that give them an extra stipend, and they can't budget either, which is why they get iPhones and home internet on a $150 a month plan as soon as their check comes, go to concerts at $200 a pop, eat out with their friends, and then wonder why they have no money for food or rent.
You don't need to teach them critical thinking - you need to teach them basic thinking. Cause and effect, such as "you spend money on sh*t you want, you won't have money for sh*t you need.".
Last week I had the displeasure to watch one second-year college student who works as a cook in a burger franchise screw up making grilled cheese.
Q: How the hell do you screw up making a grilled cheese sandwich?
They don't have basic life skills and you expect to teach them logic? Sheldon says (and Mr Spock agrees) that is illogical. And we have a new generation of teachers who don't know much either, because they were also special snowflakes. They teach from the book because, like the burger cook, they can't do it if it isn't laid out step by step.
Haven't seen this repeated in a few years, but it remains true: You can't make things foolproof, fools are too clever for that.
Slashdot Mirror
This study proves that working for a publicity-hungry quack clinic damages your ability to distinguish between association and causation.
The author http://www.amenclinics.com/sta... works for a clinic http://www.amenclinics.com/ that sells dubious treatments based on dubious SPECT diagnoses.
Quackwatch has this to say:
https://www.quackwatch.org/06R... A Skeptical View of SPECT Scans and Dr. Daniel Amen by Harriet Hall, M.D.
I believe it is improper to charge thousands of dollars for a test that has not been validated and may not be safe. I don't think any of Amen's research has provided clear evidence that patients who have had SPECT scans have superior clinical outcomes to adequately treated patients who have not been scanned. That's really the bottom lineâ"especially with an expensive test that involves significant radiation. At the very least, he should be describing the test as experimental.
Some of Dr. Amen's treatment suggestions also worry me. For example, he recommends: (a) uses for dietary supplements that are not supported by good evidence, (b) EMDR (a highly questionable approach), and (c) hyperbaric oxygen therapy for conditions not generally considered to warrant such therapy.
I don't doubt that many patients who visit the Amen Clinics are helped. The key question, however, is whether or not SPECT scanning is justifiable for most of them. I, personally, would not undergo the test at Dr. Amen's clinic even if it were free. In my opinion, based on current knowledge, the possibility of harm outweighs any potential benefit. Pictures showing that "this is your brain on drugs" may impress some people, but I am far more impressed by quantifiable data (such as tests of mental performance) and clinical consequences (such as improved behavior) than by nonspecific pictures of "holes" in the brain.
So this is an operation that is selling diagnoses and treatments not supported by legitimate scientific research. They wound up with thousands of SPECT scans and decided to do some data-dredging on them, a process that we know is guaranteed to produce false positives http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea... https://xkcd.com/882/ , along with any real causative association. They found an association with marijuana, and rushed to publish.
Once it was published in a journal, they made claims in the press release that weren't supported by the data:
According to Daniel Amen, M.D., Founder of Amen Clinics, "Our research demonstrates that marijuana can have significant negative effects on brain function. The media has given the general impression that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, this research directly challenges that notion. In another new study just released, researchers showed that marijuana use tripled the risk of psychosis. Caution is clearly in order."
Clearly false. Association is not causation.
Well played, sir. I looked at the quackwatch site, which had this quote from the Amen Clinics site "Brain-Soul connection." and found that sufficient. Not that that's not an interesting question in general; just that this current research direction seems no more likely to elucidate it than any of the others pursued over the previous 10,000 years.
I'm all for the science, so how can the researchers claim their observations indicate marijuana has 'significant negative effects on brain function'? They didn't study that, they studied regional cerebral blood flow. What that reduced blood flow means is a whole different topic. Marijuana use is at an all time high, yet dementia rates are at an all time low and falling. And psychosis rates are fairly steady. I have the same issue with these studies as I do with the antivaxxer studies - where are the impacts of this observation in the population and why don't we see changes in public health line up with changes in usage? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying marijuana is good for you nor do I believe it is some magical cure all. I just tend to distrust and question studies on such politicized topics, especially when it makes suggestions contrary to popular observation.
Yep. For any conclusion of a thing being dangerous you need:
1) a demonstration that it is correlated with a higher incidence of the undesirable effect.
2) a demonstration that the undesirable effect is correlated with a higher incidence of the thing.
and 3) a plausible mechanism of action.
At this point, all there is is some evidence of 1 in a particular and peculiar subgroup of the population.
"Is the Reward for smoking pop, worth the risk of its side effects should be the real debate."
I hadn't heard about this new drug, but smoking pop seems like it would be challenging, what's the process? And does the brand or flavor matter? How about diet vs regular? Given its history i would guess that Coca-cola would be an upper. And since Pepsi is supposed to be cool and different from Coke it must be a downer. Is Diet Dr Pepper a hallucinogenic?
I smoke mom.
In this case, in a proper study Alzheimer's had no business being mentioned at all. The only tenuous connection was that they share a common region of the brain affected. (here's the obligatory car analogy) That's like going out in the morning and finding a flat tire so you tell everyone you lost a wheel on the way to work (so they picture a highway drama involving a risk to life and limb).
The test group were diagnosed with "Cannabis use disorder". That is, not just average users, these patients were hard-core users who already were known to have problems thought to be related and refuse to cut back on use. It is thought that most people with that diagnosis had mental health issues before starting marijuana use. It would be interesting to see how their scans change if any of them can be convinced to reduce their use to more casual levels.
It would also be interesting to know how many (if any in the control group) were casual or occasional users. All we know from the freely available information is that they were not diagnosed with cannabis use disorder, meaning they might be non-users, casual users or even heavy users with no problems thought to be related to use.
As for legalization vs. recommendation, alcohol is perfectly legal and I think that's right and proper. Nevertheless, I don't think beer for breakfast is a good idea at all.
All quite correct. In addition, there is a further question about mechanism; we know about marijuana, THC, cannabinoid receptors, etc. that sufficiently accounts for the action of cannabis and related compounds. We don't know of any mechanism by which marijuana affects blood flow; even any handwaving long shots like a molecule which vaguely resembles another molecule which might correlate with blah blah blah. And we really don't know of any mechanism whereby marijuana affects blood flow specifically in the brain; nor, given the well-known mechanism of THC action do we need any such mechanism to explain its effects; nor do we see a mysterious epidemic of organic brain damage correlating with marijuana use which this would explain, nor does the existing epidemic of Alzheimer's involve marijuana smokers to a significant degree.
As usually pointed out in such studies, the mechanism could run in the opposite direction; the action of marijuana on the brain might be to reduce its requirements for blood flow which then down-regulates. That is just handwaving on my part, completely blue sky brainstorming (haha), but the suggested conclusion in the paper, that marijuana is reducing blood flow and thus possibly doing damage, is equally handwaving blue sky brainstorming at this point.
What we have here is an observed correlation between three factors; clinical neuropsychological illness sufficient to require medical treatment, marijuana use, and low blood flow to the brain. The causal relationship here could be between any one and the other two, any two and the remaining one, or none at all. This makes it an interesting curiosity probably worth following up, if it can be replicated, but that's all unless subsequent results start to implicate it more solidly.
Of course, the art of grant writing is such that if you can indeed attach your research to whatever great problem the congressional committee responsible for setting budgets for the NIH and NSF and so on consider important then your odds of funding get enhanced. Ideally you'd like to be able to end your paper with "and further research could clarify the role of this effect in causing/preventing/curing cancer", but if you can't manage that, given the congressional mindset recently and for the foreseeable future, "and further research could clarify the role of this illegal drugs in causing/preventing/curing brain damage" is a decent substitute.
Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000.
I think this exemplifies just well the states have been gerrymandered. Seriously, the majority of people vote for one person but the lose by a 3:50 ratio?
The states have now been gerrymandered. Oh dear, that was funny.
no, the districts within the states are gerrymandered, then the states go winner-take-all. and being down by 3000 votes in one state becomes winning 29 electoral votes from that state.
Ah, one dollar one vote. Well, that's pretty much the exact corrupt system the voters just rejected by flushing Hillary away with the rest of the shit.
But if we're going to do it that way, it should obviously be "one tax dollar paid, one vote", not ruled as today by the very wealthy (richest 100 families) who don't actually pay much taxes.
so elect the guy who pays no taxes.
There's no reason that amount of total area won should mean anything at all. Moreover, there's no reason you can reasonably object to cities dominating simply because they happen to be dense areas. Disagreeing with a group doesn't mean you get to use essentially arbitrary criteria to decide you'd like to ignore their wishes.
Social and political interests tend to have a heavy coincidence with geography. If you are on the coasts you care way more about the fishing industry than people in the heartland. If you are in a desert you care more about water conservation. If you are near oil and natural gas your livelihood or the livelihood of your neighbors probably depends on the energy industry. By virtue of being in a population dense area, you automatically have a powerful voting block on various area specific issues. What's more, the people in other areas are not your neighbors, you have much less incentive to protect their interests, and are much less likely to hear their anger and complaints when you don't. By and large people from Wisconsin are not going to be able to come and protest march down the streets of LA if California -- 8 x the population of Wisconsin -- decides corn should be taxed to subsidize making action movies.
The electoral college helps protect various minority populations from being exploited by a tyrannous majority. And that is the main point of our republic, why it is based on constitutional rights, competing branches of government (one of which is not voted on), an electoral college, etc., and super majorities are required to enact any substantial changes. Our government is not a mechanism for enacting the will of the 51% (or even the 60%) on every issue, it is built as a balance of interests which makes the government accountable to the people while also making it fairly difficult for any one group of people to use the government as a cudgel against another group.
that's true of anything. if the majority decides to enact Christianity as the compulsory religion of the land, the electoral college isn't going to protect the minority. that's what the constitution and courts do. much to the irritation of those who want Christianity to be the compulsory religion of the land; whose influence on this matter, ironically, is greatly magnified by the electoral college makeup.
The vote of each state.
There are many reasons why a straight popular vote is bad and the electoral college is better but the best one I can think of is what happened in the recent election. Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000. If you think that the election of a nation should be swayed by a handful of cities while the rest of the nation is completely ignored, well, you're an idiot.
So, in a hypothetical country where there are a city and two large farms, with 300 million people living in the city and one person living on each of the farms, it would be a big mistake to let the city residents outvote the farmers. Better let the farmers outvote the city residents.
too absurd an example? how about 200 farmers? 2000? 2 million? 200 million? you have a good rational place where you can draw the line and your argument suddenly switches polarity?
That's the thing. You cannot simply "change the Electoral College" as if it's a voter's guide. It is part of the contract between the sovereign states that make up our nation. The smaller states never would have approved of the Constitution if the leadership was all based on popular vote. That is why we have the Senate, rather than just the House of Representatives.
To do anything that modifies or eliminates the EC, you would have to get every state but the dozen most conservative ones to vote to make that change. Good luck on that one.
Again, it is not changing the Electoral College to note that constitutionally the electors have the right to elect whomever they want as president, so long as he or she meets the constitutional requirements. They are most definitely NOT legally or constitutionally required to cast their electoral votes under orders by the state legislature or governor, or any other body.
It is the exact same thing they do with gerrymandering. They go out of their way to draw the map such that there is as few democratic districts as possible, and the democrats there win elections by very high margins, while there is as many republican districts as possible.
Right, it's always "Republicans" gerrymandering, and the poor, unblemished Democrats who are victims of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"In other words, an EG of 7% in favor of one party in the first election year of a plan almost certainly means that the EG will favor that same party in each subsequent election year under that plan. Professor Jackman noted that the EGs for the 2012 and 2014 races in Wisconsin— 13% and 10%, respectively—were particularly high by historical levels. The EG in 2012 was, according to Professor Jackman, “among the largest scores we’ve seen anywhere” and “in the top 3 percent in terms of magnitude.” Act 43’s average EG ranked fifth out of the 206 plans that Professor Jackman surveyed. He testified that he was “virtually certain” that “Act 43 will exhibit a large and durable advantage in favor of Republicans over the rest of the decade."” -Whitford v. Gill Opinion
People don't realize that this is pretty much the gigantic fuckup we have in parts of Canada now. While we use FPTP, in Ontario for example. The political parties only need to run for the Greater Toronto Area(GTA), and if you win that and say London or Ottawa, you've won the province. Getting rid of the electoral college will basically make sure that things get worse.
The conservatives, anchored in Alberta and as anti-Ontario as any tea partier is anti-Washington, ran the place for quite a while.
Eliminating the electoral college wouldn't not require candidates to run a nation wide election. Quite the opposite. Politicians could focus on California, New York, Chicago and maybe urban areas in Texas. The rest of the nation wouldn't matter.
In other words, politicians would have to change over to trying to appeal to the majority of the population, and fringe groups would be ignored.
The Clinton campaign announced today they're joining the recount process: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11...
I'm in favour of recounts in general, and for this election in particular. It tells us about the reliability of the election process, and hopefully might shed light on hacking and other skulduggery. The information will be used to fix future problems.
As to Clinton, she's joining because Jill Stein can't call for a recount. In at least one of the states (probably all of them) you can't call for a recount unless you are aggrieved, which means that you think the recount would change the outcome.
Jill Stein can't reasonably say that she might have won, so she officially can't be aggrieved.
Hillary most certainly *can* make that claim, since the margins for her loss are so slim in those states.
That's why she joined the process. For the recounts to happen, she's the one to request them.
Apparently Trump is in favor of recounts also, given then sudden return of his concern about illegals voting. We better recount the whole thing. Or maybe just redo it.
And if you don't like the system then you could change it, because the system we have at the moment allows the electors to vote their conscience.
If there's any purpose at all to the electoral college system, it's to cover for weird, exceptional cases like a winning candidate taking office with record disapproval numbers after losing the popular vote by at least 2 million.
At the time the Constitution was drafted, transportation and communication obviously was not as slick as it has become since, and voters in one state might have little personal knowledge regarding a candidate who had lived and served in a different state. Thus, it would be possible for a person of foul and unstable character to launch a campaign far from where he was known and convince the voters to elect him with false promises and so on. Instead, the voters of the state would select from their own citizenry, well known to them, a set of wise, judicious, and trustworthy men, who would sit together with those of the other states and deliberate carefully and thoughtfully at length to pick an optimal president. In this way, scoundrels would be exposed by the electors of their own state and not chosen. The overrepresentation of the agricultural rural states was a secondary protection for their interests not being outvoted. Somewhat reminiscent of how the leaders of America were selected when it was founded.
good intentions.
Unprecedented in that a candidate frugally ran an election with a singular focus on the electoral vote? That he eschewed votes in deep blue areas to save funds for places that it actually counted? Can you definitively say that the popular vote counts would have been the same had the rules been different?
As for me, my nightmare was Hillary nominating Supreme Court justices. She flat out stated she intended to nominate political activists and get cases heard for the express purpose of over turning past rulings. The court is supposed to be an arbitrator between Congress and the President, not an arm of the President.
really? because my nightmare was that a legally elected president faced with a vacancy on the supreme court and, as is his privilege and duty, selected a candidate who had, in fact, been at one time mentioned by the opposite party as typical of the kind of man they would accept, was instead faced with congress and senate refusing a priori to confirm ANY candidate he out forward, and suggesting that if the next president was also of the opposing party they would just try to get along leaving that ninth seat empty.
The court is supposed to be an arbitrator of cases crossing state boundaries, or involving the federal government, not a pawn of partisan disputes.
The intent of the Electoral College at least in part was to act as a final check against an unsuitable candidate becoming President. Now we can certainly debate Trump's suitability for high office, but as to complaining about the rules, well the EC is actually somewhat vague in that regard. The chief issue I see with Electors voting for someone other than who they are pledged for is that it could, in states where being a faithless electoral, end you up in hot water.
Not a constitutional scholar I by any means, by my quick googling suggests that in most states you'd be within your legal rights, although you'd probably get kicked out of the party.
Stop bitching about how unfair the electoral college is. Go through the legal process to change/eliminate it so this it doesn't happen again, if that's what the people want.
The real trouble is that the Constitution says nothing about how the states choose electors. It's even constitutionally valid for a governor or legislature of one party to just send electors from that party with no election; so the current gerrymander and winner-take-all strategy will still be valid.
Insert boob joke here
By battery we mean capacitor.
Ignorance and confidence, that's always a winning combination.
Sadly, it seems to be one lately.
ignodence? or confignorance? we absolutely need a new word for that particular combo.
That's the point. Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
Good luck with that. There are kids in their 20s in college who can't budget, can't cook, and if it isn't on Facebook it doesn't exist.
Remember that these are the same people who in the most basic maths classes always said "when are we ever going to use this in real life". The truth is they never will use algebra in real life, but the smart kids use it every day (ever figured out how many litres of petrol you'd get for $20... you've used algebra). You cant eliminate dumb, all you can do is teach and hope that most of the students learn (they do). Also, I know someone with two PHD's who couldn't make a sandwich to save his life. Some people are simply not able to grasp certain concepts and this does not make them dumb, crocheting is a basic skill but it's one I wouldn't have the foggiest how to do.
Like watching a table full of college educated adults trying to work out a 15% tip, let alone split a check. might as well ask the dog and the cat to split the cost of the pet food.
Careful! You (and bartleby.com and GP) might be spreading a misattributed quote.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2...
see also: * You can't believe everything you read on the internet. - Abraham Lincoln * Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This must be a lie, i've searched twitter for socrates' account and can't find anything like this.
In the literal sense, they are retarded compared to children of similar age 40 years ago. Their grammar and word usage is worse, their punctuation is worse. Their grasp of mathematics is worse. Their knowledge of history is worse. Their cognizance of current events is worse.
No wonder they are susceptible to propaganda for the stupid. They are in fact the ignorant and stupid, relative to their parents and grandparents.
40 years ago, and for a generation previous, the nation valued learning, and education, and knowledge, and wisdom. we were in the space race with the satanic commies, and an arms race, and so on. we had to develop new technological wizardry so we could fight in Vietnam against the locals. Art and culture and literature and music were things to make you smarter. even rock music made you sit around and discuss, just who was the walrus, and what was a goo goo goo joob anyway? seriously discuss it, long into the night. news featured things like 60 minutes that did in depth reporting on stuff that didn't fit between mr. wilson's 30 year old cat and farmer brown's 200 lb pumpkin on the news. but you can't make tons of money on that stuff!!! mcdonald's makes more money than cordon bleu restaurants. you can't go wrong pitching lowest common denominator to the masses. then you shut down the budgets for education. lord knows we don't want our schools to actually be pleasant places to be in, let alone temples to higher learning. kids just learn all sorts of things there that contradict their parents.
While I agree with much of your critique of GP, there are still some problems here:
Kids have learned plenty about cause and effect. See above. They've got the math skills to see they can't afford higher education. Why don't you?
Uh, if that were true, why do we currently have this "student loan crisis"? College costs are higher than ever. Percentage of young people enrolled in college has just declined slightly in the past year or two after achieving record levels in the past decade. The chances of getting entry-level jobs for young college grads have been decreasing, yet people keep going to college in numbers that are almost the highest in history.
Basically, I don't see evidence to support your assertion.
Moreover, if average people were able to use logic and reasoning for their finances, we wouldn't have had the mortgage meltdown a few years back. Yes, some people were tricked into loans with bad terms, but many never even bothered to read the terms in the first place -- probably because they couldn't understand them. And yes, I've taught high-school math. I KNOW from experience how many kids actually understand even basic loan terms, let along a complex mortgage. I see it as a huge failure of our educational system that we graduate so many kids who can't do basic financial math and other basic life skills.
But that's why mortgage brokers and the like exist; "this subject is so complex, you need me to steer you through it" Who in the world is going to reply to a mortgage broker who tells them they can indeed have the house they want with "no, i don't think so, you're wrong"?
same story for lawyers. "this subject is so complex, you need me to steer you through it" Who in the world is going to reply to a lawyer who tells them they can indeed be found not guilty with "no, i don't think so, you're wrong"?
That's the point. Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
Good luck with that. There are kids in their 20s in college who can't budget, can't cook, and if it isn't on Facebook it doesn't exist. There are adults high school (drop-outs) who have never applied for even a part-time job and as a result are too afraid of rejection to give it a try (real special snowflakes) They drop out of government-paid trade schools that give them an extra stipend, and they can't budget either, which is why they get iPhones and home internet on a $150 a month plan as soon as their check comes, go to concerts at $200 a pop, eat out with their friends, and then wonder why they have no money for food or rent.
You don't need to teach them critical thinking - you need to teach them basic thinking. Cause and effect, such as "you spend money on sh*t you want, you won't have money for sh*t you need.".
Last week I had the displeasure to watch one second-year college student who works as a cook in a burger franchise screw up making grilled cheese.
Q: How the hell do you screw up making a grilled cheese sandwich?
They don't have basic life skills and you expect to teach them logic? Sheldon says (and Mr Spock agrees) that is illogical. And we have a new generation of teachers who don't know much either, because they were also special snowflakes. They teach from the book because, like the burger cook, they can't do it if it isn't laid out step by step.
Haven't seen this repeated in a few years, but it remains true: You can't make things foolproof, fools are too clever for that.