This is the problem with the "go somewhere else" argument. There is nowhere else.
This is the disturbing natural of reality -- or perhaps SURreality? -- these days.
I remember suffering through reading Jean Baudrillard's musings about "simulacra" decades ago, when he famously published a set of essays including "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place". Of course, Baudrillard understood that the war DID take place, but he argued that the media portrayals and 24-hour news cycle that emerged had created an almost separate reality.
Long before "The Matrix," Baudrillard talked about constructed reality and its ability to deceive and to woo humanity into complacency. But of course he is a horrendous writer and has rightly been ridiculed for willfully obscure nonsense, and at the time I dismissed what little sense I found as po-mo BS.
Alas, now it feels it has all come to pass, and I think of good ole Baudrillard with each year's new trends into the depths of the simulacrum. Encyclopedias and reference works have ceded their authority to wikiality and truthiness, a la Stephen Colbert. Investigative journalism has been replaced by Facebook and Twitter posts. Most people live within the simulacrum, rarely bothering to try to dig deeper and see whether all of this mediated experience actually corresponds to the real world.
And now we've delegated the authority once possessed by CNN and such to the mob of folks on Facebook. In some cases, this has undoubtedly been a good thing -- bringing a fresh democratic voice to things the "old" media would have never bothered with. But it's also a huge problem, since basic quality vetting, fact-checking, etc. are rarely done by the mob before they retweet, like, and repost.
But that's the "reality" we live in now. Rather depressing. It would not surprise me one bit if this led to a new "dark age" as facts become less important than "likes."
It does not sexualize or exploit her. It depicts her, along with other wounded, terrified children, fleeing a napalm attack. A real napalm attack. IMHO, that means it is not child pornography. It is history.
While I agree (and probably most reasonable people would), the fact is that naked pictures of minors above the age of 2 and under the age of 18 are basically considered "suspicious" in almost every case. A few internet searches will quickly show a multitude of stories from the past decade where innocent people making innocent photos of children (e.g., family photos of a young kid during bathtime) have been investigated under child pornography statutes.
The sad state of affairs today is that basically if you have a nude photo of a kid, it is considered "child porn" until proven otherwise. (And given that possession of "child porn" is modern society's most grievous moral offenses, short of actual child molestation, such suspicion is often a horrific ordeal for innocent folks caught up in it.) For some bizarre reason, society as a whole has adopted a notion of sexualization of nude images of children, even as we strongly punish anyone who seeks to sexualize children directly. It's only in a nation obsessed with such puritanical views of nude bodies that we can get to this point -- nude bodies are simply NOT by default sexual, whether they are children, adults, or whatever.
I.e. HFCS makes you ingest 30% more fructose, which goes directly into triglycerides as by that time you already have plenty of glycogen.
It's worth noting that MOST products containing HFCS use HFCS-42, which has LESS fructose than sucrose. Processed foods, baked goods, cereal, etc. generally uses HFCS-42. Beverages other than soft drinks also frequently use HFCS-42.
It's really only soft drinks that use HFCS-55. Not criticizing your analysis of the sugar content, just noting that not all "HFCS" is alike, and most of the time you see it on a label (outside of soft drinks), it actually has LESS fructose than an equivalent amount of sucrose.
In summary:
1. Fructose, including HFCS is bad for you.
2. Sucrose is also bad for you.
3. There are some good reasons why fructose should be worse than sucrose.
4. There is no actual evidence that #3 is true.
Actually, #4 is false. There is PLENTY of evidence (dozens and dozens of studies) showing problems with pure fructose consumption compared to glucose, in lab rats, humans, etc.
The problem is that there isn't extensive evidence that HFCS (which is approximately 50-50 glucose-fructose, similar to sucrose once broken down, could be more or less depending on the application) is significantly worse than sucrose. Or that HFCS is worse than honey (about the same composition as HFCS) or apple juice (generally more fructose than HFCS), etc.
We actually DO know that pure fructose is bad. The question is whether HFCS has a "high enough" fructose content to make it significantly different metabolically from sucrose or other similar sweeteners. There are some studies indicating a difference, and others that don't. The fact that HFCS has been demonized for roughly 15 years and we only have maybe 3 studies finding a difference (and more that don't) seems problematic to me... if researchers could easily find the HFCS=evil link, they'd be shouting it from the rooftops to get funding from all sorts of "natural foods" groups.
What I DO think people are saying is that the correlation between increasing use of HFCS, and increasing obesity, is suggestive of a link.
The problem with that "study" is that it really is just "suggestive." It cites a lot of research showing the problems of increased sweetener consumption in general, including studies that show obesity problems with sucrose too. (That includes a European study on cane sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which your link says indicates we need a study on HFCS since that's more dominant in the U.S., since none existed at that time.) And the problem is that most of its argument is based on the circumstantial data that HFCS became available in the 1970s, and its rise correlates with the the rise in obesity in America. The problem with that argument is that per capita sugar consumption overall increased something like 40% from the 1950s to the year 2000. So yeah, obesity rose at the same time HFCS rose, but it also rose along with sugar consumption in general.
In addition to that, there is strong clinical evidence, not just of correlation, but of causation.
Yes, that's one of the studies I've seen, along with 2 or 3 others. I've also seen quite a few showing no significant difference between HFCS vs. sucrose. It's fair to say the "jury is still out" in scientific terms, but there MAY be a minor effect for HFCS. I'm NOT trying to downplay that possibility, but the hysteria around HFCS seems mostly based on chemophobia and its name, rather than actual evidence.
Also, when you think about it, a 10% increase in content is not trivial. If you were to raise the caloric content of your diet by 10% and change nothing else, you would expect steady weight gain to ensue.
Yep, kinda like how Americans raised their per capita sugar consumption in general by roughly 40% over the past 50 years. Again, HFCS may have some greater impact here, but arguing about which sugar is the "true demon" is overlooking the much larger issue... people just need to consume less sugar, whatever the source.
Fructose is far worse than glucose, so any sugar with a higher percentage of fructose, (such as HFCS), has measurably worse health effects.
It's important to note that HFCS comes in various versions, and some are actually LOWER in fructose than an equivalent amount of sucrose once split 50-50 into glucose and fructose. For example, HFCS-42 (used in many processed solid foods) contains less fructose than sucrose. HFCS-55, which is frequently used in drinks, is higher in fructose.
It's also important to note that the composition of HFCS is often quite similar to honey in terms of fructose content. (Honey usually has a bit more other random sugars, though.) For all the "natural foods" folks who advocate honey, I'd be interested in seeing research comparing sucrose vs. HFCS vs. honey in terms of physiological response. I've never been able to find such a study, though.
Evidence is here, and many other places as well. All it took was a quick Google search for "fructose glucose liver", and a click on the third link. But then, I've been following this for a while, so I knew what to look for.
Apparently not, since the link you provide actually says sucrose is pretty bad for you too -- in fact, it comes right out and says: "It may not matter whether it's in high-fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, or any other sweetener."
Look, there is voluminous research saying a diet of pure fructose is quite bad. There is voluminous research demonstrating that in a pure fructose vs. sucrose comparison, pure fructose causes all sorts of bad stuff in lab rats, etc.
But the studies that actually show a significant effect with HFCS vs. sucrose are much rarer -- I've only seen maybe 3 or 4 that appear to show an effect, and I've been following this issue for some time too. (There are also quite a few studies which have shown no significant difference in metabolic effects.) I also worry that given the amount of interest in this issue, the very few studies appearing showing a significant effect for HFCS might be an example of publication bias.
But there are a few studies, so I'm hopeful more detailed studies are forthcoming. I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's SOME effect of HFCS being different from sucrose, but there's really not a lot of research actually backing that up. Regardless, there's a HUGE difference in the size of the metabolic problems generated in studies with PURE fructose vs. those considering HFCS. Pure fructose is a real problem in large quantities.
Anyhow, I mostly concur with GP -- the biggest problem in the American diet is increased sugar consumption OVERALL, whether in the form of sucrose, HFCS, or whatever. Your own link notes how sugar consumption has ballooned in the past couple centuries. We have sugar in all sorts of processed products where it's completely unnecessary, and we consume huge quantities of it. Is HFCS worse? Perhaps. But it's only a small portion of the problem -- and as GP points out, guzzling a Coke made with cane sugar is NOT the path to being slim.
At the same time, Twitter forces everything to be reduced to a soundbite. Something we could use less of.
Yes, but the world is full of soundbites. Arguably, almost all news is really just extended soundbites (or things of similar depth). Unless you're doing a 15-minute+ extended feature story on something or a 10,000-word essay, you're often not really getting into any complexity around an issue. The 5 or 6 paragraphs typically devoted to a "story" often oversimplify to such an extent that perhaps a 140-character summary would be preferable, along with a link to an actual extended essay on the topic.
Twitter has its place. As someone who is naturally verbose (as my posts here attest), I think there's a value to such restrictions and concision at times.
I do however disagree with the resources thing. Adding a torrent is far easier than finding it, properly verifying it infringes, and sending a takedown notice. If a company has a legit takedown notice for 10,000 items, 5 of which are wrong, it is really fair to fine them $750,000 despite having an accuracy rate of 99.95%?
If that's the sort of money they'd try to extract from an individual for copyright infringement, yes.
If it were 90% (which it probably is) then it is a problem.
Nope. The "Public Domain" is effectively public property. Taking that property and claiming it as your own is an offense against the public, using government means to enforce your claim. And if the work is actually somebody else's, you are stealing their work.
I'd compare it to a public official using the power of his office for taking public or private land and charging rent on it. Just because his property deeds are 99% accurate doesn't mean that it can't seriously mess up the life of someone who is living on the other 1%.
If anything, corporate fines should be GREATER for mistakes, because they are more likely to be able to absorb the loss. Particularly for repeated ones. You issue 1000 takedown notices and get 5 wrong; okay, you pay a small fine. But if you don't fix the error and issue 5 more incorrect ones in the next batch because of the same type of mistake, the fines should gradually escalate.
And it's still available for free (in a zipped TXT file!) here.
His image of the various vehicles representing OSes is indelibly burned into my brain, as is his vision of Apple as a sort of free-thinking "commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children" that turns out to be a facade, run by a bunch of control freaks who want to dictate your every move. (And before some Apple defenders get ready to attack me, note that Stephenson insults just about everybody in the essay. But the digs at Apple are just the most entertaining and revealing, particularly given that this was written before iPads, iPods, and even OS X.)
Assuming that everything you said about Yelp is on thousand percent true...so what? None of those issues were the point of this court case. It was specifically about whether Yelp is responsible for content posted by its users, which it absolutely is not.
Actually, that's NOT what the court case was about. If it were, the suit would have been tossed without even surviving an intro hearing, since the CDA grants broad immunity for that sort of thing. (Even the summary here notes that this was settled in previous rulings.)
What this suit was about was a lawyer trying to make an end-run around that immunity by claiming that Yelp's contributions to the star-rating system (not the reviews themselves) could constitute libel. (Also, the lawsuit claimed some sort of nebulous action on Yelp's part to actually modify the content of the review, but there was no evidence of this actually presented.)
So say I'm a cop approaching a suspect's car, is a 0.03%/0.005% = 600% difference in risk of getting shot trivial or not? Or if I'm the security service, the ratio of Muslim to non-Muslim terrorists? Most rentals go well, but one horror story can easily wipe out the profit of a hundred ordinary rentals. It could happen with white people, it could happen with black people, it's unlikely to happen with white people and it's unlikely to happen with black people. But if the unlikely is still a lot more likely to happen with black people rather than white people, is that bigotry or risk management?
You should read the other reply I wrote to AC. Yes, estimates are that blacks murderers are 5-8 times more common than white murderers (depending on which stats you look at). Is that important to note? Perhaps. Though you may want to also look at other demographic correlates first -- murder correlates with poverty level, for example. More blacks live in poverty in the U.S. compared to whites -- in fact blacks are roughly 3 times more likely to live in poverty than whites (or 300% in your terms). If the murder rate difference is 6 times, how much can we account for by looking at poverty differences? Crime is also greater in poor neighborhoods, regardless of race.
And there are other factors to consider. The point is that when you put out a naked stat like "blacks are 6 times more likely to be murderers," you give cops a rationale to start looking at all black people a little more suspiciously. But if you instead had a stat that said "crime disproportionately happens in poor communities, and blacks are only TWICE as likely as whites there to be murderers," then it looks a little less dire, no? And take into account some other demographic figures, and the murder rate difference might seem even less.
Statistics can easily be manipulated or misunderstood without context. Similarly, suspects can be misinterpreted without context by the police... and that's really the main point here. Yes, if you see a man doing suspicious stuff AND it's in a bad neighborhood AND he happens to be black, then maybe race MIGHT be a factor to look at (though, as I mentioned in analysis above, it's probably a much smaller factor that we might think).
The problem comes in when you start taking people (and stats) out of context. If you're ONLY looking at race, or PRIMARILY basing your suspicion on race alone, it's really misleading... not only because >99% of people are probably unlikely to murder you, but also because a lot of the danger tends to come from particular circumstances that clue you in AROUND the suspect.
If I've been out partying and is walking home late at night and see a woman walking the same way I bet she's a lot more worried I'll jump her and rape her in the bushes than I am that she'll do the same to me. Because I'm male and she's female and most rapists are male and rape victims female. I'd say it's pretty daft to call that sexist, even though it's entirely based on our sex with no regards to the actual person and wouldn't happen if it were two men or two women. That 99%+ don't drag women into bushes to rape them doesn't mean that fear is false or misguided.
Once again, note the CONTEXT. Someone's been out "partying" (does that mean drinking too? perhaps less able to think clearly or flee coherently? looking more like a target), and it's "late at night" (darkness is inherently more fearful, and criminals like darkness because of the cover it provides). Is the woman alone? Is the man alone? Is the man doing other things suspiciously?
I'd say it's "pretty daft" (to use your term) to apply that logic to ALL circumstances, though. If a woman is walking down a busy sidewalk in broad daylight, should she be fearful of every man she sees -- he could pull her aside and rape her in the bushes!!
The problem with stereotyping crime by race is that is tends to lead cops to be more suspicious of certain races
In fact, you should just move to the ghetto. It's really cheap living, and according to you, 99.9% of the people there are going to be really swell. Go for it!
Now you're just trolling. Either that, or you're completely ignorant of statistics.
At no point did I say or even imply that 99.9% of the people in "the ghetto" are "going to be really swell." What I'm noting -- since you obviously completely missed the point -- is that police officers (and everyone else for that matter) need to take into account a LOT of context to conclude that someone likely is a threat. If you're in a violent neighborhood, obviously you're more likely to run into criminals. Duh.
The problem is that none of this is an adequate explanation or justification for profiling PRIMARILY on race without any of those other circumstances. Is the guy suspicious because he's in a bad neighborhood AND he's acting weird AND there's a bunch of other factors? Or is the guy primarily suspicious just because he happens to be black?
And the history of police action and racial profiling shows that plenty of upstanding black citizens NOT in a bad neighborhood and NOT doing anything suspicious seem disproportionately likely to draw police attention.
That is a problem. THAT is stereotyping based on inaccurate assumptions, given the data. The counter to your discussion about "the ghetto" is to ask why police still seem disproportionately interested in worrying about black people in nicer neighborhoods. As you point out, violence is concentrated in some areas, so those black people in the better neighborhoods are perhaps 99.999% likely NOT to be a murderer. Why do black people still get harassed there?
Black cops do not fear other Blacks more because of inaccurate stereotypes.
It depends on what you mean by "accurate." Are blacks more likely to be offenders than whites? That's what the stats say. But that doesn't exactly equate to a logical argument for "We should be suspicious of every black person we see."
They fear them because of the very real and demonstrably accurate statistical fact of black violence. Blacks kill other Blacks at astronomically high levels. Cops would be suicidal to pretend otherwise.
Hmm... "astronomically high levels"?? Yes, the black-on-black murder rate is much higher than the white-on-white murder rate. But, that doesn't imply that MOST black people are murderers, or even a significant number.
Roughly speaking, black murderers constitute around 0.03% of the black population. Meanwhile, white murderers constitute around 0.005% of the white population.
Here's the thing -- for ALL races, >99.9% of people are NOT murderers. Walking around acting like EVERY black person could potentially be a murderer is nonsensical. Making the assumption that every encounter with a black person will likely escalate to violence is unwarranted, based on your "demonstrably accurate statistical facts."
>95% of priests are NOT child molesters. >99% of Muslims are NOT terrorists. >99.9% of blacks are NOT murderers.
What you're talking about is irrational fear based on stereotypes. Just because the percentage of X crime is higher among population A than B doesn't mean it's reasonable to walk around assuming all of population A are likely criminals.
We do not exterminate or sterilize the genetically deficient, instead we enhance the genes of their offspring and let them carry on. That would increase, not decrease equality.
The problem with eugenicist movements is never the goals. It always starts out with noble intentions. But who gets to decide what "enhance the genes" means? When do we start "breeding out" Jewishness or blackness or whatever?
Yes, I'm being cynical. But most Nazi doctors didn't start out thinking "I'm going to be evil."
Seriously -- news is mostly entertainment and has been throughout history. Back in the day, you used to have "one stop shopping" for your entertainment in your wandering bard.
The bard was part pop singer, part storyteller, part news reporter ("Have you heard about the plague that has hit far in the east? Or the new queen in the north?"), and part random showman.
Nowadays, we've split these tasks up -- the pop singers are self-explanatory, the storytellers have been split among film/tv and romance novels, and the news reporting is... about as bad as it's ever been.
Just think of the word: news. Isn't it a silly word? Sounds like when a some young kids can't be bothered to talk about senior citizens (too many syllables) and call them "the olds."
Anyhow, the weird thing is that among all of that previous bard entertainment, the "news" for some reason has acquired this association with intellect -- good, moral, upright citizens should be INFORMED by the "news." Whereas nobody looks down on you intellectually if you haven't heard the latest pop hit or the latest romance comedy -- in fact, you might be admired in intellectual circles more for avoiding such ephemera.
If you're a "news junkie" or even just spend a 30 minutes everyday ritualistically watching the 6 o'clock news or reading the newspaper or visiting the same online site for news, try taking a week off sometime. Then go back and see how much you missed that actually mattered. Instead, take that time and read something real -- a book or an in-depth essay on some current issue, perhaps. Knowing stuff requires effort, digesting complex issues, thinking over detailed material. The news is none of these things -- it's spoon-fed infotainment at best, and just plain entertainment at worst.
The TSA hasn't caught any terrorists yet. It's expensive, intrusive, and useless.
The purpose of the screenings is not to "catch terrorists" but to deter the terrorists from even trying. I am not say that the TSA is effective, I am just saying that the lack of arrested terrorists isn't proof that they aren't.
Except every year there's a study published where the DHS or FBI or whoever tried to sneak stuff past the TSA, and >95% of it gets through.
Those are pretty good odds for a terrorist. If there really are that many just dying to get on planes and do whatever, surely some would try with those awesome odds. Either that, or all these terrorists are complete idiots.
And really, they'd have to be an idiot to try to get on a plane to try to cause terror. As many have noted, they could blow up something outside the security zone in an airport and probably cause more mayhem (since they could likely bring more explosives than they could ever get past security in a small bag). Or they could blow up something somewhere else -- like a bus, or a mall, or a crowd, or whatever. Or skip the bomb and do something less predictable... does no one remember after 9/11 when everyone was concerned about various "soft targets"? Like poisoning a water treatment plant for a city. Or blowing up a train track and derailing it. Or whatever. The media talked about this stuff on the news for months after 9/11, because if there were so many terrorists, that's the sort of stuff they'd logically go to, rather than trying to get through airport security.
And yet, no terrorists. No bridges or malls or trains or buses blowing up, no water being poisoned, etc.
If this huge number of terrorists ready to attack the U.S. actually exists, they must be complete morons who have a weird "airplane fetish" and are for some bizarre reason cowed into submission by the 5% chance they might have their bomb discovered by the TSA.
It makes no logical sense. Sure, it's not "proof" in the formal logic sense, but it makes the whole idea that there are this huge number of terrorists out there seem rather silly.
Maybe they aren't important to you, but they are definitely important to people. I like having a slim phone.
The vast majority of people I know buy cases for expensive phones that inevitably make them thicker and bulkier. A significant number of people I know have super-thick protective cases, because they've previously broken a phone or screen or whatever.
If slimness was so utterly important to them, why would they voluntarily buy products to make them thicker? It seems a LOT of people might like a phone that's slightly thicker if it were more durable.
My brother in law has a Google phone (the 6p?) and it feels like every single time he pulls the phone out, somebody says "wow that's bulky!", with a negative connotation.
If I was ever with a group of people who said things like that, I'd quickly find new friends. Unless your brother-in-law was deliberately trying to "show off" his phone or convince other people of how cool it was, there's just no reason for that sort of comment. Who cares what kind of devices other people choose to use? Some women carry around a giant purse the size of a backpack; others a tiny slender one; others none at all. Who cares?
And why shouldn't consumers upgrade? They're ridiculously cheap and you might as well get the best.
Well, "the best" is what's under discussion here. It's not a matter on universal agreement. And, there's always going to be some solid-gold plated version of just about any product out there for some Middle Eastern prince who wants to pay $50,000 to show off his wealth. Why not pay for that to get "the best"? We all make trade-offs for what we think is important.
You want to upgrade? Fine. I don't care. But I will still assert that a significant number of people "upgrade" devices because it's trendy to do so, rather than because they are getting significant ROI. Believe me, I understand the principle -- when I was younger, I did the same thing with gadgets, computer software versions, etc. Then, after a while being an adult, I realized that "new" wasn't always "better."
Amortized, even flagship phones cost $1-$2/day if you keep the phone a normal length of time. People spend an hour on their phone every day of the week, whether it amortizes to $1.06 or $1.13 is really not a factor unless you are poor.
A lot of people use coffee mugs for an hour every day of the week. Should they spend hundreds of dollars every year or two for a new one of those too?
Sure, if you want to pay the premium and have the cash, go ahead. It doesn't bother me. But that doesn't make my opinion any less valid. Nor does it negate the "hype" factor that clearly is significant around certain consumer goods.
Actually I'd argue that the point of soap is cleansing, and that antibacterial action is still cleansing, by killing bacteria, not treating a disease.
"Cleansing" by "detergent" has a very specific regulatory definition. The way soap works to remove dirt is chemically and biologically different from most antibacterial agents. To use an analogy, if you made a product that was intended to "clean brick patios" but it also tended to wash off weed seeds and such (which could infiltrate the patio and grow) through its simple detergent action, that's would be one thing. But if you added a chemical "weed killer" which would target and kill off the weeds, that would be a somewhat different product that works through a different mechanism.
There's a reason for these distinctions -- it avoids confusion in labeling and helps consumers understand what they're really buying. (And yes, I realize the irony of this statement in the context of a place where the FDA allows companies to still use the word "soap" for products that aren't "soap" according to the regulatory definition.)
Accordingly, antibacterial soaps are not drugs and don't require FDA approval.
It's important to note that the FDA doesn't just regulate drugs. They also regulate cosmetics, which most cleansing agents that aren't "true soap" fall under, regardless of whether they also contain a "drug" or not.
Yeah, this is pretty insightful. From the summary:
with a goal of preventing online trolling (scenarios in which various groups deploy tactics to influence public opinion on the internet, by leaving biased, false, misleading, and inauthentic comments, and then artificially amplifying their ratings)
I'd say if you remove "on the internet" from this definition, it's pretty much a description of a lot of actions by modern political parties.
Political parties are not generally interested in being "fair and balanced" -- they cite only the ideas supporting their point of view. They have no interest in lauding alternative political views. That's pretty much the definition of ideological "bias." And it's very common for political parties to focus on facts and information that will make their argument appear stronger, while leaving out inconvenient facts and information that could undermine their argument. In the world of "accuracy" and "truth," that practice can vary from "misleading" to telling an outright "lie of omission." (And that doesn't even count the times politicians deliberately lie outright with misrepresentations so egregious that no rational person could say their perspective is a fair representation of facts -- if this weren't the case, we wouldn't have a multitude of "fact-checking" organizations that rate political statements on their trustworthiness.)
And that leaves "inauthentic." Do we really need to give examples of that for politicians, who routinely get caught in situations like visiting a fast food restaurant to "be among the people" and trying to order something ridiculously fancy or not on the menu? Or going to a grocery store but not having a clue about the prices of everyday items or the kind of stuff "normal people" buy? We have even had things like a Rhodes scholar adopting an Arkansas hick "bubba" personality and rhetoric at times to seem more "likeable." Or Bush Jr.'s similar antics.
As for "artificially amplifying their ratings," just listen to the rhetoric at any rally. You'd think everyone on the planet was standing up and cheering for them from the way they talk about their campaign.
I'm NOT saying political parties are exactly the same as "trolls" -- internet trolls often push these elements to greater extremes (well, maybe not more so than our current Republican candidate). But there's something fundamentally similar about the misleading rhetoric of politics and that of trolls. The main difference seems to be that a lot of internet trolls just do it for the kicks, whereas political parties do it for money and power.
The press, being the idiots that they are, don't realize that the FDA doesn't have jurisdiction over "soap." The FDA isn't helping by trying to broaden their reach.
Their order says "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued a final rule establishing that over-the-counter (OTC) consumer antiseptic wash products containing certain active ingredients can no longer be marketed."
That is not soap. In fact, the FDA says it has no jurisdiction over soap, which is confusing because on various webpages they say "Soap," and they do so in the title of said order as well.
Unfortunately, I think you're the one who is confused, though I can understand why. The key is in the definition you quote:
FDA interprets the term "soap" to apply only when the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the product's detergent properties are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds, and the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of products consumers associate with "antibacterial soaps" do NOT meet that definition. Most people think of antibacterial hand soaps, for example, which almost always are based on other detergents, for example the well-known (and maligned among "natural products" fans) sodium lauryl sulfate. These other detergents are commonly produced by other chemical means, which you can look up more information on if you want. They are more common, because they generally produce superior cleaning properties than "true soap" through surfactant properties, foaming properties, etc., which also allow them to be effective under a greater variety of conditions (e.g., hard water).
Note that the FDA allows such products still to be marketed as "soap" as long as they have cleansing characteristics and purposes similar to traditional "true soap." Hence the confusion here. The FDA's announcement and reporters' use of the term "soap" was probably meant to inform consumers of the common vernacular association of the term, as well as how these products are marketed, not the technical regulatory definition.
The number of "true soap" products that are ALSO "antibacterial" is probably quite small, because most of the "true soap" products used in situations where antibacterial soaps are common are marketed to be "natural" and thus are unlikely to contain a lot of these antibacterial agents.
And even where such products exist, there is a regulatory argument to be made by the final element of the FDA definition, i.e., "the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap." According to traditional definition, "soap" is not "antibacterial." These products are making a claim of additional action -- rather than just being a cleanser or detergent, they are also an active antibacterial agent, hence, I'm not sure they'd satisfy the criterion of being "represented SOLELY as soap."
It would be very interesting to know how much human editing was done on the final trailer.
Well, from the Youtube video description:
Utilizing experimental Watson APIs and machine learning techniques, the IBM Research system analyzed hundreds of horror/thriller movie trailers. After learning what keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, the AI system suggested the top 10 best candidate moments for a trailer from the movie Morgan, which an IBM filmmaker then edited and arranged together.
Obviously this is just a brief explanation, but to me this implies the "Ai system" did little more than suggest 10 moments from the movie to string together. The human editor then actually did all the work of editing the clips, choosing the order, etc. That implies a HUGE amount of freedom on the part of the human -- if I can use a 1-second clip or a 20-second clip from a particular "moment" (perhaps edited as many movie clips in trailers are?) and I can put the order however I want, then most of the actual "filmmaking" is done by the human here.
It would be interesting to see a comparison with a randomly chosen set of "moments" from the film. Could a skilled filmmaker make a reasonable trailer from them too? I'd bet with this flexibility that it could be done in a lot of cases. Not that this AI did nothing, but how much value did it really add?
Uhmm... hold on a second here. If it's the local IRS office that closes the deal with you, even if they break the rules, they are the ones breaking rules, not you.
Huh? You're the one who didn't pay taxes. The IRS agent may have been ignorant or even knowingly exceeded his authority (and may be duly punished), but that doesn't exempt you from your duty under the law.
If the mayor of your town says, "Hey -- murder's okay on Thursdays, so go ahead and kill those annoying deliquents down the road if you like today," I don't think you can get off a murder charge by saying, "But the mayor told me so! He broke the rules, not me!" Perhaps the mayor could be charged with something too, but you did in fact murder people.
Why should you be on the hook for that? If you buy a service from some company for a price they agree on, then their parent company decides you need to pay 10X the price, do you legally now owe that?
Business sales policies are not laws. However, there are laws which govern sales contracts. If your local company sells you a product under an illegal sales contract, the parent company could very well have it nullified in court. In case you didn't get it here -- the governing authority here is the LAW, not any particular person or entity.
Otherwise they would know that "slim, bendable, metal, trendy" are NOT an attractive features in phones,
"Slim" was an attractive feature about 15 years ago, when many phones were still somewhat buiky. Then phones became plenty slim for most folks.
"Trendy" is indeed a significant factor -- otherwise iPhone sales would be maybe 1/4 of what they are. Note: this is not a direct criticism of the iPhone, only that the features promised with each minor upgrade aren't very significant. The only reason why most people keep upgrading is because they are convinced that version X+1 must be cooler than version X.
Also, while iPhone had some really cool and unique interface stuff that increased usability early on, that stuff is pretty standard on a lot of cheaper phones now... yet people keep paying the Apple premium.
and "plastic, waterproof, long battery life and standards compliant" are.
Agreed. I don't know that "plastic" is important so much as "durable," but the others are pretty high on my list.
The source for "we use Wikipedia" also said they just use it for metadata on locations and the actual location API didn't get the location wrong just the search engine subject result.
The thing is -- this is still disturbing on many levels. Repeat after me: Wikipedia is NOT a STABLE source of reliable information. Wikipedia is NOT a STABLE source of reliable information. The very idea that ANYONE is using Wikipedia for ANY application where accuracy or reliability may be desired is disturbing.
And now someone's going to trot out a reference about how Wikipedia is "more accurate" than Britannica or whatever. Maybe it is, at any given moment. And it's certainly more exhaustive on many topics now. But one significant difference between Wikipedia and more traditional sources is that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, at any time -- and that can mean improvements, but it can also mean introducing errors, either accidental of deliberate (vandalism).
Paper Britannica, whatever its flaws are, doesn't spontaneously generate new typos every time I open it.
And a few years back we could all laugh this off while still praising the great things Wikipedia was doing. No more. Wikipedia's active editors are shrinking all the time, but the vandals show no sign of shrinking... if anything, they seem to be growing and becoming smarter to evade the bots that will revert obvious vandalism (e.g., random insertions of profanity). And that doesn't count random, well-meaning mistakes that people introduce or deliberate attempts to slant entries in a particular way.
And if you think you haven't seen vandalism, you probably don't realize how subtle it can be. I still remember a few years back when I discovered an odd century error in a history article -- something was listed as 19XX when it obviously should have been 17XX. Then I noticed another one in the article. I checked the edit history and found a vandal who had been going through and changing random DIGITS in DATES for history articles. The ones I saw were rather obvious. But in other articles he had just changed a year or decade, in which case few people were likely to notice the discrepancy. These edits had been live for weeks... nobody had noticed them.
Such vandalism might stay in entries for years. Media sources now use Wikipedia frequently and even academics sometimes take info from it without verifying. (Particularly for something that would seem obvious, like a basic date for a common event.) Now what happens when those academics start putting the wrong dates in books because they read it on Wikipedia? Before, when I saw a different date in a history book, I might even assume it might be because there was some scholarly debate over when an event happened exactly... now it could just be arbitrary randomness introduced by the vandals.
The ONLY thing we have going for us to protect Wikipedia is that MOST of these vandals can't help themselves. They don't have the initiative to build up a reputation of a few good edits before embarking on a mission of anarchy, nor do they have the discipline to refrain from just being a troll. The date-editing vandal I mentioned above was eventually caught and his edits reverted, but ONLY because he finally posted "X is a dirty slut!" or something on a prominent female historical figure's article, leading someone to check out what this guy had been doing. But as I said, his edits stood for weeks without anyone noticing. Do we really want to rely on the trolls outing themselves as our main safety net??
Go to more obscure articles, and lots of bad stuff can happen. Just a week ago I was reading an article on American history, and I encountered a few sentences that seemed quite surprising and unlikely. They seemed to be propaganda based on current political stuff going on in the U.S., but it was framed as though it was a part of a historical event. I looked some of this up, and couldn't find any source for this -- I'm reasonably cer
Also, if you inject a dose of epinephrine standard for prophylaxis treatment into a vein, it'll cause a hypertensive surge that will kill you fairly quickly.
And if you inject a dose of insulin directly into a vein, it can cause blood sugar to plummet sending you into a diabetic coma.
Yes, the danger of intravenous injection for epinephrine is greater, but there can be dire consequences in either case. In any case, it IS possible to inject accidentally into a vein with an EpiPen too, probably not as likely as with a syringe, but both are perfectly safe if injected into a standard area (most commonly large outer muscle of thigh).
Slashdot Mirror
This is the problem with the "go somewhere else" argument. There is nowhere else.
This is the disturbing natural of reality -- or perhaps SURreality? -- these days.
I remember suffering through reading Jean Baudrillard's musings about "simulacra" decades ago, when he famously published a set of essays including "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place". Of course, Baudrillard understood that the war DID take place, but he argued that the media portrayals and 24-hour news cycle that emerged had created an almost separate reality.
Long before "The Matrix," Baudrillard talked about constructed reality and its ability to deceive and to woo humanity into complacency. But of course he is a horrendous writer and has rightly been ridiculed for willfully obscure nonsense, and at the time I dismissed what little sense I found as po-mo BS.
Alas, now it feels it has all come to pass, and I think of good ole Baudrillard with each year's new trends into the depths of the simulacrum. Encyclopedias and reference works have ceded their authority to wikiality and truthiness, a la Stephen Colbert. Investigative journalism has been replaced by Facebook and Twitter posts. Most people live within the simulacrum, rarely bothering to try to dig deeper and see whether all of this mediated experience actually corresponds to the real world.
And now we've delegated the authority once possessed by CNN and such to the mob of folks on Facebook. In some cases, this has undoubtedly been a good thing -- bringing a fresh democratic voice to things the "old" media would have never bothered with. But it's also a huge problem, since basic quality vetting, fact-checking, etc. are rarely done by the mob before they retweet, like, and repost.
But that's the "reality" we live in now. Rather depressing. It would not surprise me one bit if this led to a new "dark age" as facts become less important than "likes."
It does not sexualize or exploit her. It depicts her, along with other wounded, terrified children, fleeing a napalm attack. A real napalm attack. IMHO, that means it is not child pornography. It is history.
While I agree (and probably most reasonable people would), the fact is that naked pictures of minors above the age of 2 and under the age of 18 are basically considered "suspicious" in almost every case. A few internet searches will quickly show a multitude of stories from the past decade where innocent people making innocent photos of children (e.g., family photos of a young kid during bathtime) have been investigated under child pornography statutes.
The sad state of affairs today is that basically if you have a nude photo of a kid, it is considered "child porn" until proven otherwise. (And given that possession of "child porn" is modern society's most grievous moral offenses, short of actual child molestation, such suspicion is often a horrific ordeal for innocent folks caught up in it.) For some bizarre reason, society as a whole has adopted a notion of sexualization of nude images of children, even as we strongly punish anyone who seeks to sexualize children directly. It's only in a nation obsessed with such puritanical views of nude bodies that we can get to this point -- nude bodies are simply NOT by default sexual, whether they are children, adults, or whatever.
I.e. HFCS makes you ingest 30% more fructose, which goes directly into triglycerides as by that time you already have plenty of glycogen.
It's worth noting that MOST products containing HFCS use HFCS-42, which has LESS fructose than sucrose. Processed foods, baked goods, cereal, etc. generally uses HFCS-42. Beverages other than soft drinks also frequently use HFCS-42.
It's really only soft drinks that use HFCS-55. Not criticizing your analysis of the sugar content, just noting that not all "HFCS" is alike, and most of the time you see it on a label (outside of soft drinks), it actually has LESS fructose than an equivalent amount of sucrose.
In summary:
1. Fructose, including HFCS is bad for you.
2. Sucrose is also bad for you.
3. There are some good reasons why fructose should be worse than sucrose.
4. There is no actual evidence that #3 is true.
Actually, #4 is false. There is PLENTY of evidence (dozens and dozens of studies) showing problems with pure fructose consumption compared to glucose, in lab rats, humans, etc.
The problem is that there isn't extensive evidence that HFCS (which is approximately 50-50 glucose-fructose, similar to sucrose once broken down, could be more or less depending on the application) is significantly worse than sucrose. Or that HFCS is worse than honey (about the same composition as HFCS) or apple juice (generally more fructose than HFCS), etc.
We actually DO know that pure fructose is bad. The question is whether HFCS has a "high enough" fructose content to make it significantly different metabolically from sucrose or other similar sweeteners. There are some studies indicating a difference, and others that don't. The fact that HFCS has been demonized for roughly 15 years and we only have maybe 3 studies finding a difference (and more that don't) seems problematic to me... if researchers could easily find the HFCS=evil link, they'd be shouting it from the rooftops to get funding from all sorts of "natural foods" groups.
What I DO think people are saying is that the correlation between increasing use of HFCS, and increasing obesity, is suggestive of a link.
The problem with that "study" is that it really is just "suggestive." It cites a lot of research showing the problems of increased sweetener consumption in general, including studies that show obesity problems with sucrose too. (That includes a European study on cane sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which your link says indicates we need a study on HFCS since that's more dominant in the U.S., since none existed at that time.) And the problem is that most of its argument is based on the circumstantial data that HFCS became available in the 1970s, and its rise correlates with the the rise in obesity in America. The problem with that argument is that per capita sugar consumption overall increased something like 40% from the 1950s to the year 2000. So yeah, obesity rose at the same time HFCS rose, but it also rose along with sugar consumption in general.
In addition to that, there is strong clinical evidence, not just of correlation, but of causation.
Yes, that's one of the studies I've seen, along with 2 or 3 others. I've also seen quite a few showing no significant difference between HFCS vs. sucrose. It's fair to say the "jury is still out" in scientific terms, but there MAY be a minor effect for HFCS. I'm NOT trying to downplay that possibility, but the hysteria around HFCS seems mostly based on chemophobia and its name, rather than actual evidence.
Also, when you think about it, a 10% increase in content is not trivial. If you were to raise the caloric content of your diet by 10% and change nothing else, you would expect steady weight gain to ensue.
Yep, kinda like how Americans raised their per capita sugar consumption in general by roughly 40% over the past 50 years. Again, HFCS may have some greater impact here, but arguing about which sugar is the "true demon" is overlooking the much larger issue... people just need to consume less sugar, whatever the source.
Fructose is far worse than glucose, so any sugar with a higher percentage of fructose, (such as HFCS), has measurably worse health effects.
It's important to note that HFCS comes in various versions, and some are actually LOWER in fructose than an equivalent amount of sucrose once split 50-50 into glucose and fructose. For example, HFCS-42 (used in many processed solid foods) contains less fructose than sucrose. HFCS-55, which is frequently used in drinks, is higher in fructose.
It's also important to note that the composition of HFCS is often quite similar to honey in terms of fructose content. (Honey usually has a bit more other random sugars, though.) For all the "natural foods" folks who advocate honey, I'd be interested in seeing research comparing sucrose vs. HFCS vs. honey in terms of physiological response. I've never been able to find such a study, though.
Evidence is here, and many other places as well. All it took was a quick Google search for "fructose glucose liver", and a click on the third link. But then, I've been following this for a while, so I knew what to look for.
Apparently not, since the link you provide actually says sucrose is pretty bad for you too -- in fact, it comes right out and says: "It may not matter whether it's in high-fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, or any other sweetener."
Look, there is voluminous research saying a diet of pure fructose is quite bad. There is voluminous research demonstrating that in a pure fructose vs. sucrose comparison, pure fructose causes all sorts of bad stuff in lab rats, etc.
But the studies that actually show a significant effect with HFCS vs. sucrose are much rarer -- I've only seen maybe 3 or 4 that appear to show an effect, and I've been following this issue for some time too. (There are also quite a few studies which have shown no significant difference in metabolic effects.) I also worry that given the amount of interest in this issue, the very few studies appearing showing a significant effect for HFCS might be an example of publication bias.
But there are a few studies, so I'm hopeful more detailed studies are forthcoming. I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's SOME effect of HFCS being different from sucrose, but there's really not a lot of research actually backing that up. Regardless, there's a HUGE difference in the size of the metabolic problems generated in studies with PURE fructose vs. those considering HFCS. Pure fructose is a real problem in large quantities.
Anyhow, I mostly concur with GP -- the biggest problem in the American diet is increased sugar consumption OVERALL, whether in the form of sucrose, HFCS, or whatever. Your own link notes how sugar consumption has ballooned in the past couple centuries. We have sugar in all sorts of processed products where it's completely unnecessary, and we consume huge quantities of it. Is HFCS worse? Perhaps. But it's only a small portion of the problem -- and as GP points out, guzzling a Coke made with cane sugar is NOT the path to being slim.
At the same time, Twitter forces everything to be reduced to a soundbite. Something we could use less of.
Yes, but the world is full of soundbites. Arguably, almost all news is really just extended soundbites (or things of similar depth). Unless you're doing a 15-minute+ extended feature story on something or a 10,000-word essay, you're often not really getting into any complexity around an issue. The 5 or 6 paragraphs typically devoted to a "story" often oversimplify to such an extent that perhaps a 140-character summary would be preferable, along with a link to an actual extended essay on the topic.
Twitter has its place. As someone who is naturally verbose (as my posts here attest), I think there's a value to such restrictions and concision at times.
I do however disagree with the resources thing. Adding a torrent is far easier than finding it, properly verifying it infringes, and sending a takedown notice. If a company has a legit takedown notice for 10,000 items, 5 of which are wrong, it is really fair to fine them $750,000 despite having an accuracy rate of 99.95%?
If that's the sort of money they'd try to extract from an individual for copyright infringement, yes.
If it were 90% (which it probably is) then it is a problem.
Nope. The "Public Domain" is effectively public property. Taking that property and claiming it as your own is an offense against the public, using government means to enforce your claim. And if the work is actually somebody else's, you are stealing their work.
I'd compare it to a public official using the power of his office for taking public or private land and charging rent on it. Just because his property deeds are 99% accurate doesn't mean that it can't seriously mess up the life of someone who is living on the other 1%.
If anything, corporate fines should be GREATER for mistakes, because they are more likely to be able to absorb the loss. Particularly for repeated ones. You issue 1000 takedown notices and get 5 wrong; okay, you pay a small fine. But if you don't fix the error and issue 5 more incorrect ones in the next batch because of the same type of mistake, the fines should gradually escalate.
His image of the various vehicles representing OSes is indelibly burned into my brain, as is his vision of Apple as a sort of free-thinking "commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children" that turns out to be a facade, run by a bunch of control freaks who want to dictate your every move. (And before some Apple defenders get ready to attack me, note that Stephenson insults just about everybody in the essay. But the digs at Apple are just the most entertaining and revealing, particularly given that this was written before iPads, iPods, and even OS X.)
Assuming that everything you said about Yelp is on thousand percent true...so what? None of those issues were the point of this court case. It was specifically about whether Yelp is responsible for content posted by its users, which it absolutely is not.
Actually, that's NOT what the court case was about. If it were, the suit would have been tossed without even surviving an intro hearing, since the CDA grants broad immunity for that sort of thing. (Even the summary here notes that this was settled in previous rulings.)
What this suit was about was a lawyer trying to make an end-run around that immunity by claiming that Yelp's contributions to the star-rating system (not the reviews themselves) could constitute libel. (Also, the lawsuit claimed some sort of nebulous action on Yelp's part to actually modify the content of the review, but there was no evidence of this actually presented.)
So say I'm a cop approaching a suspect's car, is a 0.03%/0.005% = 600% difference in risk of getting shot trivial or not? Or if I'm the security service, the ratio of Muslim to non-Muslim terrorists? Most rentals go well, but one horror story can easily wipe out the profit of a hundred ordinary rentals. It could happen with white people, it could happen with black people, it's unlikely to happen with white people and it's unlikely to happen with black people. But if the unlikely is still a lot more likely to happen with black people rather than white people, is that bigotry or risk management?
You should read the other reply I wrote to AC. Yes, estimates are that blacks murderers are 5-8 times more common than white murderers (depending on which stats you look at). Is that important to note? Perhaps. Though you may want to also look at other demographic correlates first -- murder correlates with poverty level, for example. More blacks live in poverty in the U.S. compared to whites -- in fact blacks are roughly 3 times more likely to live in poverty than whites (or 300% in your terms). If the murder rate difference is 6 times, how much can we account for by looking at poverty differences? Crime is also greater in poor neighborhoods, regardless of race.
And there are other factors to consider. The point is that when you put out a naked stat like "blacks are 6 times more likely to be murderers," you give cops a rationale to start looking at all black people a little more suspiciously. But if you instead had a stat that said "crime disproportionately happens in poor communities, and blacks are only TWICE as likely as whites there to be murderers," then it looks a little less dire, no? And take into account some other demographic figures, and the murder rate difference might seem even less.
Statistics can easily be manipulated or misunderstood without context. Similarly, suspects can be misinterpreted without context by the police... and that's really the main point here. Yes, if you see a man doing suspicious stuff AND it's in a bad neighborhood AND he happens to be black, then maybe race MIGHT be a factor to look at (though, as I mentioned in analysis above, it's probably a much smaller factor that we might think).
The problem comes in when you start taking people (and stats) out of context. If you're ONLY looking at race, or PRIMARILY basing your suspicion on race alone, it's really misleading... not only because >99% of people are probably unlikely to murder you, but also because a lot of the danger tends to come from particular circumstances that clue you in AROUND the suspect.
If I've been out partying and is walking home late at night and see a woman walking the same way I bet she's a lot more worried I'll jump her and rape her in the bushes than I am that she'll do the same to me. Because I'm male and she's female and most rapists are male and rape victims female. I'd say it's pretty daft to call that sexist, even though it's entirely based on our sex with no regards to the actual person and wouldn't happen if it were two men or two women. That 99%+ don't drag women into bushes to rape them doesn't mean that fear is false or misguided.
Once again, note the CONTEXT. Someone's been out "partying" (does that mean drinking too? perhaps less able to think clearly or flee coherently? looking more like a target), and it's "late at night" (darkness is inherently more fearful, and criminals like darkness because of the cover it provides). Is the woman alone? Is the man alone? Is the man doing other things suspiciously?
I'd say it's "pretty daft" (to use your term) to apply that logic to ALL circumstances, though. If a woman is walking down a busy sidewalk in broad daylight, should she be fearful of every man she sees -- he could pull her aside and rape her in the bushes!!
The problem with stereotyping crime by race is that is tends to lead cops to be more suspicious of certain races
In fact, you should just move to the ghetto. It's really cheap living, and according to you, 99.9% of the people there are going to be really swell. Go for it!
Now you're just trolling. Either that, or you're completely ignorant of statistics.
At no point did I say or even imply that 99.9% of the people in "the ghetto" are "going to be really swell." What I'm noting -- since you obviously completely missed the point -- is that police officers (and everyone else for that matter) need to take into account a LOT of context to conclude that someone likely is a threat. If you're in a violent neighborhood, obviously you're more likely to run into criminals. Duh.
The problem is that none of this is an adequate explanation or justification for profiling PRIMARILY on race without any of those other circumstances. Is the guy suspicious because he's in a bad neighborhood AND he's acting weird AND there's a bunch of other factors? Or is the guy primarily suspicious just because he happens to be black?
And the history of police action and racial profiling shows that plenty of upstanding black citizens NOT in a bad neighborhood and NOT doing anything suspicious seem disproportionately likely to draw police attention.
That is a problem. THAT is stereotyping based on inaccurate assumptions, given the data. The counter to your discussion about "the ghetto" is to ask why police still seem disproportionately interested in worrying about black people in nicer neighborhoods. As you point out, violence is concentrated in some areas, so those black people in the better neighborhoods are perhaps 99.999% likely NOT to be a murderer. Why do black people still get harassed there?
Black cops do not fear other Blacks more because of inaccurate stereotypes.
It depends on what you mean by "accurate." Are blacks more likely to be offenders than whites? That's what the stats say. But that doesn't exactly equate to a logical argument for "We should be suspicious of every black person we see."
They fear them because of the very real and demonstrably accurate statistical fact of black violence. Blacks kill other Blacks at astronomically high levels. Cops would be suicidal to pretend otherwise.
Hmm... "astronomically high levels"?? Yes, the black-on-black murder rate is much higher than the white-on-white murder rate. But, that doesn't imply that MOST black people are murderers, or even a significant number.
Roughly speaking, black murderers constitute around 0.03% of the black population. Meanwhile, white murderers constitute around 0.005% of the white population.
Here's the thing -- for ALL races, >99.9% of people are NOT murderers. Walking around acting like EVERY black person could potentially be a murderer is nonsensical. Making the assumption that every encounter with a black person will likely escalate to violence is unwarranted, based on your "demonstrably accurate statistical facts."
>95% of priests are NOT child molesters. >99% of Muslims are NOT terrorists. >99.9% of blacks are NOT murderers.
What you're talking about is irrational fear based on stereotypes. Just because the percentage of X crime is higher among population A than B doesn't mean it's reasonable to walk around assuming all of population A are likely criminals.
Think of it as eugenics done right
Putting the "eu-" back in eugenics?
We do not exterminate or sterilize the genetically deficient, instead we enhance the genes of their offspring and let them carry on. That would increase, not decrease equality.
The problem with eugenicist movements is never the goals. It always starts out with noble intentions. But who gets to decide what "enhance the genes" means? When do we start "breeding out" Jewishness or blackness or whatever?
Yes, I'm being cynical. But most Nazi doctors didn't start out thinking "I'm going to be evil."
Sports are entertainment not news
News are entertainment not news
FTFY.
How 'bout: News are entertainment. Full stop.
Seriously -- news is mostly entertainment and has been throughout history. Back in the day, you used to have "one stop shopping" for your entertainment in your wandering bard.
The bard was part pop singer, part storyteller, part news reporter ("Have you heard about the plague that has hit far in the east? Or the new queen in the north?"), and part random showman.
Nowadays, we've split these tasks up -- the pop singers are self-explanatory, the storytellers have been split among film/tv and romance novels, and the news reporting is... about as bad as it's ever been.
Just think of the word: news. Isn't it a silly word? Sounds like when a some young kids can't be bothered to talk about senior citizens (too many syllables) and call them "the olds."
Anyhow, the weird thing is that among all of that previous bard entertainment, the "news" for some reason has acquired this association with intellect -- good, moral, upright citizens should be INFORMED by the "news." Whereas nobody looks down on you intellectually if you haven't heard the latest pop hit or the latest romance comedy -- in fact, you might be admired in intellectual circles more for avoiding such ephemera.
If you're a "news junkie" or even just spend a 30 minutes everyday ritualistically watching the 6 o'clock news or reading the newspaper or visiting the same online site for news, try taking a week off sometime. Then go back and see how much you missed that actually mattered. Instead, take that time and read something real -- a book or an in-depth essay on some current issue, perhaps. Knowing stuff requires effort, digesting complex issues, thinking over detailed material. The news is none of these things -- it's spoon-fed infotainment at best, and just plain entertainment at worst.
The TSA hasn't caught any terrorists yet. It's expensive, intrusive, and useless.
The purpose of the screenings is not to "catch terrorists" but to deter the terrorists from even trying. I am not say that the TSA is effective, I am just saying that the lack of arrested terrorists isn't proof that they aren't.
Except every year there's a study published where the DHS or FBI or whoever tried to sneak stuff past the TSA, and >95% of it gets through.
Those are pretty good odds for a terrorist. If there really are that many just dying to get on planes and do whatever, surely some would try with those awesome odds. Either that, or all these terrorists are complete idiots.
And really, they'd have to be an idiot to try to get on a plane to try to cause terror. As many have noted, they could blow up something outside the security zone in an airport and probably cause more mayhem (since they could likely bring more explosives than they could ever get past security in a small bag). Or they could blow up something somewhere else -- like a bus, or a mall, or a crowd, or whatever. Or skip the bomb and do something less predictable... does no one remember after 9/11 when everyone was concerned about various "soft targets"? Like poisoning a water treatment plant for a city. Or blowing up a train track and derailing it. Or whatever. The media talked about this stuff on the news for months after 9/11, because if there were so many terrorists, that's the sort of stuff they'd logically go to, rather than trying to get through airport security.
And yet, no terrorists. No bridges or malls or trains or buses blowing up, no water being poisoned, etc.
If this huge number of terrorists ready to attack the U.S. actually exists, they must be complete morons who have a weird "airplane fetish" and are for some bizarre reason cowed into submission by the 5% chance they might have their bomb discovered by the TSA.
It makes no logical sense. Sure, it's not "proof" in the formal logic sense, but it makes the whole idea that there are this huge number of terrorists out there seem rather silly.
Maybe they aren't important to you, but they are definitely important to people. I like having a slim phone.
The vast majority of people I know buy cases for expensive phones that inevitably make them thicker and bulkier. A significant number of people I know have super-thick protective cases, because they've previously broken a phone or screen or whatever.
If slimness was so utterly important to them, why would they voluntarily buy products to make them thicker? It seems a LOT of people might like a phone that's slightly thicker if it were more durable.
My brother in law has a Google phone (the 6p?) and it feels like every single time he pulls the phone out, somebody says "wow that's bulky!", with a negative connotation.
If I was ever with a group of people who said things like that, I'd quickly find new friends. Unless your brother-in-law was deliberately trying to "show off" his phone or convince other people of how cool it was, there's just no reason for that sort of comment. Who cares what kind of devices other people choose to use? Some women carry around a giant purse the size of a backpack; others a tiny slender one; others none at all. Who cares?
And why shouldn't consumers upgrade? They're ridiculously cheap and you might as well get the best.
Well, "the best" is what's under discussion here. It's not a matter on universal agreement. And, there's always going to be some solid-gold plated version of just about any product out there for some Middle Eastern prince who wants to pay $50,000 to show off his wealth. Why not pay for that to get "the best"? We all make trade-offs for what we think is important.
You want to upgrade? Fine. I don't care. But I will still assert that a significant number of people "upgrade" devices because it's trendy to do so, rather than because they are getting significant ROI. Believe me, I understand the principle -- when I was younger, I did the same thing with gadgets, computer software versions, etc. Then, after a while being an adult, I realized that "new" wasn't always "better."
Amortized, even flagship phones cost $1-$2/day if you keep the phone a normal length of time. People spend an hour on their phone every day of the week, whether it amortizes to $1.06 or $1.13 is really not a factor unless you are poor.
A lot of people use coffee mugs for an hour every day of the week. Should they spend hundreds of dollars every year or two for a new one of those too?
Sure, if you want to pay the premium and have the cash, go ahead. It doesn't bother me. But that doesn't make my opinion any less valid. Nor does it negate the "hype" factor that clearly is significant around certain consumer goods.
Actually I'd argue that the point of soap is cleansing, and that antibacterial action is still cleansing, by killing bacteria, not treating a disease.
"Cleansing" by "detergent" has a very specific regulatory definition. The way soap works to remove dirt is chemically and biologically different from most antibacterial agents. To use an analogy, if you made a product that was intended to "clean brick patios" but it also tended to wash off weed seeds and such (which could infiltrate the patio and grow) through its simple detergent action, that's would be one thing. But if you added a chemical "weed killer" which would target and kill off the weeds, that would be a somewhat different product that works through a different mechanism.
There's a reason for these distinctions -- it avoids confusion in labeling and helps consumers understand what they're really buying. (And yes, I realize the irony of this statement in the context of a place where the FDA allows companies to still use the word "soap" for products that aren't "soap" according to the regulatory definition.)
Accordingly, antibacterial soaps are not drugs and don't require FDA approval.
It's important to note that the FDA doesn't just regulate drugs. They also regulate cosmetics, which most cleansing agents that aren't "true soap" fall under, regardless of whether they also contain a "drug" or not.
Where I'm from, they're called politicians.
Yeah, this is pretty insightful. From the summary:
with a goal of preventing online trolling (scenarios in which various groups deploy tactics to influence public opinion on the internet, by leaving biased, false, misleading, and inauthentic comments, and then artificially amplifying their ratings)
I'd say if you remove "on the internet" from this definition, it's pretty much a description of a lot of actions by modern political parties.
Political parties are not generally interested in being "fair and balanced" -- they cite only the ideas supporting their point of view. They have no interest in lauding alternative political views. That's pretty much the definition of ideological "bias." And it's very common for political parties to focus on facts and information that will make their argument appear stronger, while leaving out inconvenient facts and information that could undermine their argument. In the world of "accuracy" and "truth," that practice can vary from "misleading" to telling an outright "lie of omission." (And that doesn't even count the times politicians deliberately lie outright with misrepresentations so egregious that no rational person could say their perspective is a fair representation of facts -- if this weren't the case, we wouldn't have a multitude of "fact-checking" organizations that rate political statements on their trustworthiness.)
And that leaves "inauthentic." Do we really need to give examples of that for politicians, who routinely get caught in situations like visiting a fast food restaurant to "be among the people" and trying to order something ridiculously fancy or not on the menu? Or going to a grocery store but not having a clue about the prices of everyday items or the kind of stuff "normal people" buy? We have even had things like a Rhodes scholar adopting an Arkansas hick "bubba" personality and rhetoric at times to seem more "likeable." Or Bush Jr.'s similar antics.
As for "artificially amplifying their ratings," just listen to the rhetoric at any rally. You'd think everyone on the planet was standing up and cheering for them from the way they talk about their campaign.
I'm NOT saying political parties are exactly the same as "trolls" -- internet trolls often push these elements to greater extremes (well, maybe not more so than our current Republican candidate). But there's something fundamentally similar about the misleading rhetoric of politics and that of trolls. The main difference seems to be that a lot of internet trolls just do it for the kicks, whereas political parties do it for money and power.
The press, being the idiots that they are, don't realize that the FDA doesn't have jurisdiction over "soap." The FDA isn't helping by trying to broaden their reach.
Their order says "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued a final rule establishing that over-the-counter (OTC) consumer antiseptic wash products containing certain active ingredients can no longer be marketed."
That is not soap. In fact, the FDA says it has no jurisdiction over soap, which is confusing because on various webpages they say "Soap," and they do so in the title of said order as well.
Unfortunately, I think you're the one who is confused, though I can understand why. The key is in the definition you quote:
FDA interprets the term "soap" to apply only when the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the product's detergent properties are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds, and the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of products consumers associate with "antibacterial soaps" do NOT meet that definition. Most people think of antibacterial hand soaps, for example, which almost always are based on other detergents, for example the well-known (and maligned among "natural products" fans) sodium lauryl sulfate. These other detergents are commonly produced by other chemical means, which you can look up more information on if you want. They are more common, because they generally produce superior cleaning properties than "true soap" through surfactant properties, foaming properties, etc., which also allow them to be effective under a greater variety of conditions (e.g., hard water).
Note that the FDA allows such products still to be marketed as "soap" as long as they have cleansing characteristics and purposes similar to traditional "true soap." Hence the confusion here. The FDA's announcement and reporters' use of the term "soap" was probably meant to inform consumers of the common vernacular association of the term, as well as how these products are marketed, not the technical regulatory definition.
The number of "true soap" products that are ALSO "antibacterial" is probably quite small, because most of the "true soap" products used in situations where antibacterial soaps are common are marketed to be "natural" and thus are unlikely to contain a lot of these antibacterial agents.
And even where such products exist, there is a regulatory argument to be made by the final element of the FDA definition, i.e., "the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap." According to traditional definition, "soap" is not "antibacterial." These products are making a claim of additional action -- rather than just being a cleanser or detergent, they are also an active antibacterial agent, hence, I'm not sure they'd satisfy the criterion of being "represented SOLELY as soap."
It would be very interesting to know how much human editing was done on the final trailer.
Well, from the Youtube video description:
Utilizing experimental Watson APIs and machine learning techniques, the IBM Research system analyzed hundreds of horror/thriller movie trailers. After learning what keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, the AI system suggested the top 10 best candidate moments for a trailer from the movie Morgan, which an IBM filmmaker then edited and arranged together.
Obviously this is just a brief explanation, but to me this implies the "Ai system" did little more than suggest 10 moments from the movie to string together. The human editor then actually did all the work of editing the clips, choosing the order, etc. That implies a HUGE amount of freedom on the part of the human -- if I can use a 1-second clip or a 20-second clip from a particular "moment" (perhaps edited as many movie clips in trailers are?) and I can put the order however I want, then most of the actual "filmmaking" is done by the human here.
It would be interesting to see a comparison with a randomly chosen set of "moments" from the film. Could a skilled filmmaker make a reasonable trailer from them too? I'd bet with this flexibility that it could be done in a lot of cases. Not that this AI did nothing, but how much value did it really add?
Uhmm... hold on a second here. If it's the local IRS office that closes the deal with you, even if they break the rules, they are the ones breaking rules, not you.
Huh? You're the one who didn't pay taxes. The IRS agent may have been ignorant or even knowingly exceeded his authority (and may be duly punished), but that doesn't exempt you from your duty under the law.
If the mayor of your town says, "Hey -- murder's okay on Thursdays, so go ahead and kill those annoying deliquents down the road if you like today," I don't think you can get off a murder charge by saying, "But the mayor told me so! He broke the rules, not me!" Perhaps the mayor could be charged with something too, but you did in fact murder people.
Why should you be on the hook for that? If you buy a service from some company for a price they agree on, then their parent company decides you need to pay 10X the price, do you legally now owe that?
Business sales policies are not laws. However, there are laws which govern sales contracts. If your local company sells you a product under an illegal sales contract, the parent company could very well have it nullified in court. In case you didn't get it here -- the governing authority here is the LAW, not any particular person or entity.
Otherwise they would know that "slim, bendable, metal, trendy" are NOT an attractive features in phones,
"Slim" was an attractive feature about 15 years ago, when many phones were still somewhat buiky. Then phones became plenty slim for most folks.
"Trendy" is indeed a significant factor -- otherwise iPhone sales would be maybe 1/4 of what they are. Note: this is not a direct criticism of the iPhone, only that the features promised with each minor upgrade aren't very significant. The only reason why most people keep upgrading is because they are convinced that version X+1 must be cooler than version X.
Also, while iPhone had some really cool and unique interface stuff that increased usability early on, that stuff is pretty standard on a lot of cheaper phones now... yet people keep paying the Apple premium.
and "plastic, waterproof, long battery life and standards compliant" are.
Agreed. I don't know that "plastic" is important so much as "durable," but the others are pretty high on my list.
The source for "we use Wikipedia" also said they just use it for metadata on locations and the actual location API didn't get the location wrong just the search engine subject result.
The thing is -- this is still disturbing on many levels. Repeat after me: Wikipedia is NOT a STABLE source of reliable information. Wikipedia is NOT a STABLE source of reliable information. The very idea that ANYONE is using Wikipedia for ANY application where accuracy or reliability may be desired is disturbing.
And now someone's going to trot out a reference about how Wikipedia is "more accurate" than Britannica or whatever. Maybe it is, at any given moment. And it's certainly more exhaustive on many topics now. But one significant difference between Wikipedia and more traditional sources is that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, at any time -- and that can mean improvements, but it can also mean introducing errors, either accidental of deliberate (vandalism).
Paper Britannica, whatever its flaws are, doesn't spontaneously generate new typos every time I open it.
And a few years back we could all laugh this off while still praising the great things Wikipedia was doing. No more. Wikipedia's active editors are shrinking all the time, but the vandals show no sign of shrinking... if anything, they seem to be growing and becoming smarter to evade the bots that will revert obvious vandalism (e.g., random insertions of profanity). And that doesn't count random, well-meaning mistakes that people introduce or deliberate attempts to slant entries in a particular way.
And if you think you haven't seen vandalism, you probably don't realize how subtle it can be. I still remember a few years back when I discovered an odd century error in a history article -- something was listed as 19XX when it obviously should have been 17XX. Then I noticed another one in the article. I checked the edit history and found a vandal who had been going through and changing random DIGITS in DATES for history articles. The ones I saw were rather obvious. But in other articles he had just changed a year or decade, in which case few people were likely to notice the discrepancy. These edits had been live for weeks... nobody had noticed them.
Such vandalism might stay in entries for years. Media sources now use Wikipedia frequently and even academics sometimes take info from it without verifying. (Particularly for something that would seem obvious, like a basic date for a common event.) Now what happens when those academics start putting the wrong dates in books because they read it on Wikipedia? Before, when I saw a different date in a history book, I might even assume it might be because there was some scholarly debate over when an event happened exactly... now it could just be arbitrary randomness introduced by the vandals.
The ONLY thing we have going for us to protect Wikipedia is that MOST of these vandals can't help themselves. They don't have the initiative to build up a reputation of a few good edits before embarking on a mission of anarchy, nor do they have the discipline to refrain from just being a troll. The date-editing vandal I mentioned above was eventually caught and his edits reverted, but ONLY because he finally posted "X is a dirty slut!" or something on a prominent female historical figure's article, leading someone to check out what this guy had been doing. But as I said, his edits stood for weeks without anyone noticing. Do we really want to rely on the trolls outing themselves as our main safety net??
Go to more obscure articles, and lots of bad stuff can happen. Just a week ago I was reading an article on American history, and I encountered a few sentences that seemed quite surprising and unlikely. They seemed to be propaganda based on current political stuff going on in the U.S., but it was framed as though it was a part of a historical event. I looked some of this up, and couldn't find any source for this -- I'm reasonably cer
Insulin is harder to fuck up than epinephrine
[Citation needed]
Also, if you inject a dose of epinephrine standard for prophylaxis treatment into a vein, it'll cause a hypertensive surge that will kill you fairly quickly.
And if you inject a dose of insulin directly into a vein, it can cause blood sugar to plummet sending you into a diabetic coma.
Yes, the danger of intravenous injection for epinephrine is greater, but there can be dire consequences in either case. In any case, it IS possible to inject accidentally into a vein with an EpiPen too, probably not as likely as with a syringe, but both are perfectly safe if injected into a standard area (most commonly large outer muscle of thigh).