Alas, this kind of stuff gets more citations and press, because sampling 5000 people and rating them on a 0.0 to 10.0 personality scale using a questionnaire seems superficially more scientific... 'cause it's got numbers.
This.
Oh, and bonus points if it has meaningless graphs with misleading axes or arbitrary bins/categories.
I will contend that a majority of persistent "trolls" would not necessarily answer on a survey that they enjoy trolling.
You make a lot of great points. I would add -- internet "trolling" is often the result of an anonymous or pseudonymous environment, where you are held less accountable for your actions. It's like the people who are happy to lay on the horn in their car or aggressively tailgate someone (or slow down to "teach someone a lesson"), but they would never randomly scream at someone who was walking too slow on the street or cut in front of them on a sidewalk and start walking slowly. Anonymity changes behavior.
I'd say that anyone capable of aggressive anonymous driving behavior (which seems to be a LOT of folks, perhaps the majority of people at some point, depending on stress level) is also capable of trolling on the internet.
Those people who actually self-identify as "trolls" in such a study are probably primarily either real outliers or people who actually aren't really trolls all the time, but found it amusing to select such a non-conformist choice (see your average Slashdot poll). Thus, the data may also be skewed by people who aren't primarily trolls but have other personality traits that led them to make an unusual choice in an internet poll.
Thermometers contained mercury, and when one broke us kids would play with the amazing metal.
Another thing about this -- exposure to elemental mercury in liquid form is really not very hazardous compared to a lot of common household chemicals. Very little is absorbed through the skin, and even ingested elemental mercury is mostly excreted without being absorbed. Playing with mercury from a broken thermometer for a little while is very unlikely to be harmful with any ventilation, and even if you were in an enclosed area and sniffed it aggressively for an hour, you'd probably absorb about as much mercury into your body as you would by eating a can of tuna. (Seriously -- I've done the numbers.)
The danger from mercury is in the vapor (which IS readily absorbed into your body), so the problem isn't playing with mercury -- it's spilling it on porous surfaces and not cleaning it up properly. A kid rolling around with mercury in his hands for a while is unlikely to result in significant exposure, but a broken thermometer spilling on a rug or couch and being rubbed into the surface where it can release vapors for weeks or months... that can lead to significant exposure to kids.
Also, this points out the issue with CFLs and mercury. Most mercury released from CFLs immediately evaporates from small droplets into a vapor cloud. So even if you have 1/1000th of the amount of mercury in a light bulb compared to a thermometer, breathing in the vapors after a CFL break can cause much greater exposure (which is why government organizations advise evacuation and ventilation before clean-up). It's still not a huge concern for CFLs -- particularly for adults -- but it points out the issue with mercury is inhaling vapor, not playing with it (if followed by proper clean-up).
The biggest danger to children's brains is women drinking while pregnant. I've seen it all too many times in my six decades, it's incredibly sad.
While it is true that heavy drinking is a severe danger to kids' brains during pregnancy, this has only really been established for alcoholic-level abuse. A few years ago, when my wife was pregnant, I spent a significant amount of time reading hundreds of articles on all the supposed pregnancy dangers, and, to my knowledge, there's not a single case of fetal alcohol syndrome/spectrum disorders or malformed infants that has been reported in numerous studies (involving hundreds of thousands of pregnancies) for alcohol consumption less than about 10-14 drinks per week during pregnancy.
Most studies that claim effects for "any" alcohol consumption don't bother to differentiate light/moderate/heavy drinkers. For the few that do, only a handful have shown any significant cognitive differences for light or moderate drinking vs. women who abstain completely. And of those studies that show statistical differences among these groups, they tend to be small effects. And roughly half of those studies show some sort of minor cognitive benefit to light drinking compared to abstaining completely.
After reviewing the literature, I frankly don't believe that alcohol actually has a benefit (even a small one) on developing brains, but I do know there are other studies showing that mother's stress levels and other things can have significant effects during pregnancy. So, for some women, if they have an occasional drink, it may be enough of a benefit to the mother's feeling of well-being overall that it may also help fetal development.
The point is -- being an alcoholic or drinking heavily during pregnancy is indeed a sad and terrible thing. But all the pressure we put on mothers now to abstain from ALL alcohol and soft cheeses and caffeine and cold cuts and whatever else can also have negative repercussions on fetuses in terms of stress and general happiness for mothers. (Plus, many of the risks are much less than doctors tend to imply -- in many cases, you're much, much more likely to be hit by a bus or even struck by lightning than to cause harm to your baby by eating some of the "banned" items.)
Other, more dangerous dangers are blows to the head, and mental and physical abuse.
Absolutely. Physical abuse is a problem. But other big risks for kids under 18 are car accidents, accidental drowning (swimming pools, in particular), suffocation, and fire. Head injuries playing football and such are also a serious concern for older kids. The common worries like guns, drinking poison, etc. are much less of a concern than your swimming pool or safety during your daily commute.
By the way, my original post probably shouldn't have said "grammar" - I really meant something more like "usage." There's my error from fast typing and not enough editing.
The point is: the parent implied people don't know the difference of owning some thing (your) or being something (you're)... on top of that you imply that people make grammar errors, while they are merly doing spelling errors.
I said nothing of the sort. People in my example are not making errors of grammar: they are intending to use a plural, and they know that. They just didn't write it correctly. In essence, I was pointing out punctuation errors: all of your examples involve apostrophes. People clearly know the grammatical function of these words in speech. I was pointing out that apostrophes are probably the most misused punctuation mark in the English language. Since people clearly don't understand the correct roles an apostrophe can play in English, they can't spell things using them correctly.
Actually I'm quite familiar with the usage of apostrophes, and will still occasionally type about apple's and orange's. I know it's wrong and would never type such a thing on purpose, but when I'm thinking six words ahead of my fingers sometimes such things slip through for some reason, and they're easily missed in proofreading,
Yes, this is all well and good, but my point is that I've seen numerous examples of these sorts of errors in situations that would seem to call for more proofreading, like official advertisements, tee shirts, signs, etc. I completely understand that one sometimes makes errors when typing fast. But I don't think that excuses (or explains) official corporate text with major errors put out for public display, does it?
I'm pretty sure EVERYONE regardless if american or not understands pretty well the differences between "their", "there", and "they're", or "its" and "it's", or "your" and "you're" actually is.
I doubt you've spent a lot of time around average Americans discussing grammar. Your assertion depends fundamentally on the idea that people know what an apostrophe means. I'd say at least 10-20% of Americans do not. If they did, you wouldn't, for example, see lots of signs, posters, and even tee shirts with company logos (I'm not kidding!) using apostrophes to form plurals, e.g., "APPLE'S, MELON'S - BUY ONE GET ONE FREE"
Americans may understand that these words have different meanings, but a significant percentage would not be able to consistently identify the correct usage, since they don't actually know the correct spelling or use of apostrophes. (Though you're right that an even larger number probably can't or don't care about proofreading. And don't even get me started on how my iPhone actually always autocorrected "its" to "it's"... finally forcing me to turn it off or look like an idiot when I forgot to go back and fix text that had been "helpfully" auto-"corrected.")
That's because it's possibly the only relationship type that could actually be bad for society in an objective, measurable way.
"That's because it's possibly the only relationship type that could actually be bad for society because that's my opinion."
There, FTFY.
Monogamous marriage conveniently gives us guys a stable supply of women by preventing wealthy men from keeping harems (the best they can do is cheat rampantly).
So, (1) supposedly monogamous societies already have rich people who attract multiple partners, yet there appears to be no "shortage of women."
And (2) it's okay for rich men to have these relationships, but having a moral idea in a society requiring them to commit to supporting those women and the children those relationships produce -- well, that would be bad. Got it.
Otherwise you'd have a lot of pissed-off guys who don't value their lives too much. See: Middle east, right now; Dudes blowing themselves up for afterlife virgins.
Hmm... all it takes for peace in the Middle East is monogamy. Good to know.
Look -- for thousands of years much of Western Europe has been predominately monogamous, and for most of that time, women were oppressed, and dudes were happy to murder, rape, pillage, and blow things up, often in the belief that they were doing "God's will." So, empirically, I don't think you have strong proof that monogamous societies naturally don't have such problems.
The reason women are oppressed in the Middle East is because you have a society that still thinks it's okay to stone a woman for adultery, or to cut off somebody's hand for random offenses... etc. That is, it's a culture that hasn't yet accepted the moral changes to respect women that have really only happened in Western countries in the past century or so.
The reason women are oppressed and forced into marriage as little girls, etc. in isolated religious groups is because cult-like religious groups in the middle of nowhere often do that kind of crap, whether they encourage polygamy or not.
The flaw in your logic is that somehow by allowing Bob to marry both Sally and Jane... or Jane to marry both Bob and Jim... or even Sally to marry both Jane and Megan... that these relationships will somehow cause all women in the West to say, "Screw feminism and all that we've worked for in the past hundred years! I wanna wear a burqa, find a rich man who already had five other wives, and support the enslavement of young girls!"
Obviously that seems a little unlikely. Some women might want that, but most won't. And the idea that the only thing standing between Western society and the Middle East's morals is monogamy protecting women from making bad choices.... all I can say is that that infantilizes women and is rather offensive.
The reason some cultures have war and loonies and abuse of women is because most societies throughout history have had war and loonies and abuse of women... enforced monogamy didn't cure those things in Western society even over many centuries, so the idea that it would solve the Middle East's problems (or that loosening the restriction would result in an immediate devolution of the West) is just nonsense.
The government's crack down on polygamist sects was based on sexual abuse of minors and welfare fraud.
I'm pretty sure both of those things are illegal, regardless of how many spouses one has. If people commit these acts, as they might do in isolated wacko communities whether polygamous or not, they should be prosecuted for those crimes.
So why do we need to arrest people for polygamy again?
Polygamy encompasses the idea of more than one spouse -- including 1 man + multiple women or 1 woman + multiple men or some other combination. You seem to be mistaking "polygamy" for "polygyny." If you want to talk specifically about polygyny, please use that term. Otherwise, anyone who knows the definition of words will assume that polyandry, etc. are included in your discussion.
Hope it works for you. With a foot of snow followed by rain and a refreeze, you're potentially looking at it packing down to a 3 inch thick layer of ice or more. That's nearly impossible to break apart... and if it stays cold, you could have days or weeks of a slippery sidewalk. Shovel it now, then periodically salt; everything stays clear. My rule is if I'm not certain it will melt within 24 hours or so, it's generally better to shovel. Or be prepared to wait until it all melts.
I want to make this clear - people didn't know last time how bad it would be, the storm was supposed to pass to the south and it shifted north.
I don't want to rehash arguments that everyone had a couple of weeks ago, but the National Weather Service alerts began shifting the area of winter weather "advisory" to metro Atlanta the day before. They declared a "Winter Storm Warning" at 3:38 AM the day of the storm, which told everyone that dangerous road conditions were coming to metro Atlanta.
Thus, there was actually at least eight or nine hours of warning before anything started falling from the sky in Atlanta.
Don't get me wrong: I know some people probably didn't pay attention to that before their morning commute, and didn't realize that things had shifted. So, I can understand how your average person might have missed something. But schools and governments have no excuse -- with an ice storm coming that close to a major city, they should have been paying close attention in the night before the storm. They had enough time to cancel school and warn people to consider staying home. They did not.
As another poster said, this isn't fair. Lots of us drive with winter tires, I doubt anyone down there has even heard of them.
While this is true, winter tires still don't do much if there's 1/2" to an inch of ice on the road, as there was in some parts of the South yesterday and this morning. And even if they have salt -- which they often don't -- there was too much ice to keep up the melting.
A few inches of snow is not a big deal if you're used to driving it and have proper tires. However, I've lived in many different parts of the U.S., and an inch of ice is enough to shut down things in most places -- north or south.
An extreme view of that would even include something like biology or astronomy. If someone thought that their body or the earth or whatever was god's design and that's it, why bother studying it? Why bother to develop a cure for a disease if the disease is part of god's plan?
There are lots of people who find all sorts of reasons not to study biology, mostly because they don't give a crap about it. Whether they are religious or atheist or agnostic or whatever doesn't matter.
What you're talking about is a VERY small and specific extremist group of people, only PART of whom might have the philosophical objections you're making up. I've known very devout religious people who are scientists, and they study science because of their religion, because they have a respect for what they believe to be "God's creation," and they believe that coming to a greater understanding of it is a valuable thing.
I appreciate your point, but you're grasping at straws a little here. Yes, there might be some religious fanatics who might choose not to study biology for some reason, but there are also lots of non-religious people and even other religious fanatics who also have plenty of reasons they don't care about biology either. I don't think your group is that significant, given that historically many of the greatest scientific advances were made by people who had strong religious beliefs.
Why bother to study the stars if everything that's important is on this planet?
Who told you that? I suppose there are some religious fanatics who believe that, but most religious people I know think nothing of the sort. I know a few astrophysicists at some of the top universities in the U.S. who go to church regularly. (And I'm not talking about religious universities -- I mean top-tier research places.) Same thing with biologists. So what?
Of course weird religious beliefs might keep some small number of people from studying science. But I think that number is miniscule compared to other potential problems in the U.S. -- like not respecting intelligence, like the worship of sports and entertainment over things like science and knowledge, like the quest for highest salaries over intellectual fulfillment or personal integrity, etc., etc.
That Isaac Newton was rational with respect to physics and math does not prove that he was rational in all things. He most certainly was not a biologist. His opinions/beliefs with respect to biology/creation should be given no more authority than any other random person.
Were a person as smart as Newton raised in today's society and be made aware of all the things that we've come to learn since then, I don't think he'd be a creationist.
You obviously don't know much about Newton, nor do you realize how crazy many smart people are.
Numerous studies have shown that brilliant people aren't actually better at changing their beliefs when confronted with sound evidence against them -- in fact, they are often more likely than less intelligent people to find apparent "holes" in the contradictory evidence presented and hold fast to their original beliefs. Intelligence just gives them more ways to dismiss opposing arguments.
Newton believed all sorts of things that make little sense to us today, and many of them were actually lampooned by scientists of his own time. But they made rational sense in his warped genius brain. And, in fact, it was some of these "crazy" ideas (like mystical invisible forces acting over distances) that gave birth to some of his greatest scientific insights.
James Madison, the father of both the Constitution and the First Amendment, consistently warned against any attempt to blend endorsement of Christianity into the law of the new nation.
While what you state is true, I would also note that the assumed meaning of the First Amendment has changed over the years.
Note that it says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, i.e., the federal government has no right to establish a religion, nor does it have the power to make a law that would disestablish a state religion.
This is a crucial point missed by many folks -- a few states continued to have official established state religions for decades after the First Amendment was passed. The original amendment was about restrictions on the federal government's power, not a restriction on ALL interaction between church and state (pace Thomas Jefferson).
Of course, the First Amendment's meaning was reconsidered over time, and eventually (in the 20th century) it was finally assumed to apply to state and local governments as well. But that's actually not what it did when the Founders first passed it.
(P.S. I'm NOT at all advocating that religion should be a greater part of the government; I'm just trying to keep historical facts in their proper context.)
Before anyone makes any anti-rational assumptions about me while reading this post, let me be clear that I'm a staunch defender of evolutionary theory, and I've even defended it here a number of times before.
Really now, what do you think the chances are that someone who grew up believing that the planet is 6,000 years old would choose a career in science?
And before you tell me, "Everyone believed in that stuff back then!" it isn't true. Newton was a wacko outlier in many ways, including his beliefs that he could show the detailed past chronology of the universe and calculate the date it would end. Many scientists of Newton's time had grave suspicions about those sorts of things, and they would certainly not consider it respectable "science" to write on such matters.
Nonetheless, Newton managed to come up with some of the greatest advances of all time in a number of areas of physics and mathematics.
I want to be clear: I don't think creationism should be taught in science classes in schools either, but your logic that no student with a religious upbringing would ever be curious enough about the world to want to study science is faulty.
In my experience, the reason people choose careers in science has little to do with whether they are religious or not. And unless they want a career in a small group of scientific disciplines, what they think of evolutionary biology is unlikely to play a major role in their work.
Now, of course, continuing to believe the earth is 6,000 years old -- that's a more difficult one to square with lots of scientific disciplines (from archeology and geology to cosmology), but there are lots and lots of people who are religious but who do not subscribe to that literal belief. Lots of scientists have qualms that evolution has "all the answers," but nevertheless function quite well.
Not every creationist is a "young earth" creationist (and in fact, I'm pretty sure the vast majority are NOT), and a detailed understanding of evolutionary theory is not required for most scientific study.
One of the best things that Bill Nye said in the recent debate was to encourage people to choose careers in science, and warning that the rash of anti-rationalism is going to have very negative consequences for the US. Those words might have fallen on deaf ears at the creationism museum in Kentucky, but it's the right idea.
I don't think you've spent a lot of time reading arguments by the "Creation science" crowd. I'd hardly call them "anti-rationalist" -- they have their brand of reason. They understand very well the way to put together a logical train of thought. They just don't begin with the same axioms as you do for that logical tree. Hence, they might be "anti-empiricist" to some degree.
I'm not trying to defend it. But regardless of those people, most Christians who just have "faith" in whatever creation story they subscribe to don't tend to think about such things in a "rational" manner. Heck, most humans don't tend to think or act "rationally" most of the time.
And many people are capable of constructing logical arguments in other areas of thought, even if they subscribe to weird axioms in another one.
I agree with Bill Nye on a lot of things, but the idea that religious beliefs are some sort of impediment to getting people to sign up to study science, or that such people must be "anti-rationalist" is just nonsense. People -- including even atheist scientists -- are irrational. If anything, it's people like Richard Dawkins and the militant atheist crowd who drive religious people away from studying science... not the religion itself.
The biggest impediments to getting students to study science in the U.S. probably have to do with stereotypes about "geeks" and "nerds," along with anti-intellectualism. Wanna get people to study science? Change those attitudes first.
So long as what people are adding is verifiable, who cares who they are?
Well, in my opinion, the only way to really fix Wikipedia would be to allow expert help -- and in many cases, that may actually benefit from having someone with intimate knowledge of something.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia policies discourage experts from contributing (sometimes by official policy, sometimes just by the attitude of frequent editors). It's really more like the Wild West... with some bizarre lawyer-like class running everything.
The only way to bias a Wikipedia article while remaining verifiable is to delete stuff, and that's where the wars tend to happen.
That's not true at all. The "verifiability" requirement is probably one of the most broken elements of Wikipedia, next to the "notability" criterion. Not that facts shouldn't be verifiable: of course they should be, and of course reputable sources should be used. However,
Verifiable != True
Nor should we think that verifiability is some sort of useful proxy for truth. There an important reason why people tend to swear in legal proceedings to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Stating "facts" without context is useless. I can tell you that the "deadly chemical" X has been found in a number of snack foods, for example. But what does that mean? Normally, people don't actually mention things unless they are notable, so the fact that I mention this seems to mean that there must be a greater significance. It seems to imply that someone put that chemical in snack foods, or that the manufacturer used contaminated ingredients, or that the manufacturer didn't do adequate screening and quality testing, or something else bad.
But what if I now add the facts: "Chemical X occurs naturally in soil, groundwater, and most food items at a rate of 10 ppb. In the snack foods in question, chemical X had a concentration of 0.02 ppb."
Now, all of those implications seem way off-base, no? Not only did we make an incorrect assumption from a true statement, but we actually assumed the opposite of what is true: apparently, whatever the manufacturer is doing, they are actually producing a safer-than-average product. But the concentration is still non-zero, as it is in almost all food products.
You see this sort of thing on Wikipedia all the time from people with agendas, and from people who are just ignorant of the larger context.
Particularly in low-profile articles on obscure topics (like the humanities), you'll often see citations and quotations from scholarship that is 50 years old and from a book that isn't even on the topic of the article. Yes, it was "published" in a "reliable source" perhaps even in a book by a major university press, so it meets quite high standards of "verifiability," but it's not particularly representative of scholarship or what most people know to be true.
Someone with an agenda on a topic can really skew things this way. An article has citations to 5 scientific articles published in credible journals claiming X -- well, it looks like X is true. But almost every area of knowledge has some disagreement. What if there are actually 100 articles on the same topic that claim not-X, but they just don't happen to be in Wikipedia? The only person who becomes aware of this is the rare Wikipedia editor who does a search of the scholarly literature in some obscure field. Otherwise, articles can exist for years claiming things that are obviously not true. (In fact, given the propensity for scholars to exaggerate claims and implications in their own research, it's quite easy to even find 5 articles that don't even have data to prove X, but nevertheless assert X to be true in their discussion sections... while there might be 25 articles actually on topic out there which refute X.)
So yeah, there are loads of ways to skew an article by providing "verifiable facts" from "v
Maybe you're right, and if that's all this particular poster meant, fine.
Except he didn't say, "I have a low id, so that proves I've been around for a while, and I don't like this beta crap." Instead, he complained that that number would not be displayed everywhere, and then said he would leave.
As I said in my previous post, I have great respect for many of you guys who have been around for a long time and have contributed good things for years.
But I've also heard a lot of people at various times over the years trying to assert that their low id deserves some other recognition or respect, beyond just when you happened to register. Clearly the implication of GP's post is that he cares that people continue to see his number... for some reason. And that the fact it has only 5 digits is of some significance toward that argument.
First off, before I say anything else, let me be perfectly clear: I hate Beta as much as everyone else, and if classic (or at least something very close to it) ceases to be available, I'll leave.
However, this kind of crap disturbs me:
I have a 5 digit userid (of course the beta won't display that anymore).
I'm gone if the beta is forced on me.
That's what you're worried about most?!?
I'm sure this will cost me karma, but I don't give a damn about how many digits your userid has. It tells me absolutely nothing about you, other than that you were probably alive 15 years ago. (Although, I'm sure at least some dead people have passed a userid onto someone else....)
There are lots of people with low IDs who have been an important part of the community for many years. I applaud those of you who fit into that category. Some people were away for a long time and came back. Great.
There are also lots of people with low IDs who haven't posted in a decade, and only come on to complain or make some troll-like comment every so often. There are others who only show up when some stupid userid pissing contest gets started. ("You think you have a low number, look at mine!" "No -- you moron, I have only 4!" "Ha -- mine's smaller!" The only pissing contest in the world where smaller is better....)
I'm not against displaying a userid. I like it because it's traditional to this site. I can see how it was useful back in the day.
For the record, I've never posted about this before, but I did browse the site for at least a few months back in 1998 or 1999 -- and I'm certain I even signed up for an account and made a handful of posts. But for the life of me, I can't remember the name I signed up under -- I was trying to be clever, and I used a name I never used before. And I don't have access to the email account I used to have, so there's no way to figure it out... not that I care that much. It would be meaningless, because I didn't come back for 6-7 years, and only then did I actually start contributing seriously. Having that number tacked onto my comments would give me an air of respect or legitimacy to some people that I wouldn't deserve.
I used to care, and one day I spent a couple hours trying to figure out what my old username might have been... but after being really active here for over half a decade, I can safely say that I don't give a crap about that anymore. I don't even notice the numbers, except as identifiers sometimes. I care about posts that are actually helpful and insightful, not about what your name or number is.
If we want to put some metric that tells us something about your status or contributions to the Slashdot community, how about the total number of modded up posts, or +5 posts, or some karma measure, or the number of modded up posts per year or something? (Just not the stupid Beta "trophies.") That would actually tell me something about whether you're likely to have something good to say, or whether you're a good citizen in the community. Your userid does not.
I really mean no disrepect here. But if your 5-digit userid is the thing you care about most concerning this move to Beta... well, I think you might want to reconsider your priorities. I give a damn about the community. I give a damn about good structured commenting systems that are clearly displayed and easily accessible.
And I'd be happy to keep the userid system for tradition's sake -- it ain't broke as far as I'm concerned, except when comments like this come around.
I care about Slashdot. I don't give a damn about your ego around some meaningless number.
The volume of a cylinder is linear with height and square with radius. The average person's radius doesn't (or isn't supposed to) scale proportionally with their height, so weight shouldn't follow a cubic formula.
Yes, but people are NOT cylindrical, anymore than they are spherical. Are you seriously claiming that a 7'-tall man should have the same shoulder, chest, waist, and hip size as a 5'-tall man? (Not to mention same head circumference, same arm and leg circumference, etc.)
That's why BMI is ridiculously idiotic.
There are better metrics, although they're slightly to a lot more complicated.
Look -- the exponent of 2 is dumb, as GP said. As you point out, the exponent of 3 isn't right either. There actually have been plenty of empirical studies that show where that exponent should lie (somewhere between 2.3 and 2.7 -- if you want more precision, you need to take into account sex and general frame size, as I posted on below).
So, why exactly are you so eager to defend a measurement that is both theoretically AND empirically stupid?
There are even better (and as you point out -- more complicated) metrics, but we could make a significantly better one by simply choosing a more reasonable exponent. To me, that doesn't even qualify as "slightly more complicated." Few people calculate their BMI by hand, and those that do are probably able to use a calculator or spreadsheet or even freakin' Google to plug in an exponent other than 2.
To get something usable for individuals you would not only need to correct for gender but also for skeletal proportions (body shape,) by the way. Imagine two people, the same height, but the pelvic girdle and shoulders of the one is twice as wide as the other. Their healthy weights are NOT going to be the same.
Yes, of course. This is a great point. I was trying to point out that we could still make significant improvements to the "simple" BMI formula without requiring additional information or measurements.
But yes, if you want even more accuracy for individuals, you'd be better off with a model that takes frame into account. People who are older may still remember the tables many physicians used to use before BMI took over almost everything in the 1980s or so. I distinctly recall tables like that which were separated by sex and by frame: "small frame," "medium frame," and "large frame." Obviously even those 3 categories wouldn't reflect every individual, but it would still be a better approximation when coupled with a slightly modified BMI.
Slashdot Mirror
Alas, this kind of stuff gets more citations and press, because sampling 5000 people and rating them on a 0.0 to 10.0 personality scale using a questionnaire seems superficially more scientific... 'cause it's got numbers.
This.
Oh, and bonus points if it has meaningless graphs with misleading axes or arbitrary bins/categories.
I will contend that a majority of persistent "trolls" would not necessarily answer on a survey that they enjoy trolling.
You make a lot of great points. I would add -- internet "trolling" is often the result of an anonymous or pseudonymous environment, where you are held less accountable for your actions. It's like the people who are happy to lay on the horn in their car or aggressively tailgate someone (or slow down to "teach someone a lesson"), but they would never randomly scream at someone who was walking too slow on the street or cut in front of them on a sidewalk and start walking slowly. Anonymity changes behavior.
I'd say that anyone capable of aggressive anonymous driving behavior (which seems to be a LOT of folks, perhaps the majority of people at some point, depending on stress level) is also capable of trolling on the internet.
Those people who actually self-identify as "trolls" in such a study are probably primarily either real outliers or people who actually aren't really trolls all the time, but found it amusing to select such a non-conformist choice (see your average Slashdot poll). Thus, the data may also be skewed by people who aren't primarily trolls but have other personality traits that led them to make an unusual choice in an internet poll.
The study comes as websites are increasingly weighing steps to rein in trollish behavior
I'm just impressed that the summary correctly spelled "to rein in."
Signed, :)
A Grammar Troll.
Thermometers contained mercury, and when one broke us kids would play with the amazing metal.
Another thing about this -- exposure to elemental mercury in liquid form is really not very hazardous compared to a lot of common household chemicals. Very little is absorbed through the skin, and even ingested elemental mercury is mostly excreted without being absorbed. Playing with mercury from a broken thermometer for a little while is very unlikely to be harmful with any ventilation, and even if you were in an enclosed area and sniffed it aggressively for an hour, you'd probably absorb about as much mercury into your body as you would by eating a can of tuna. (Seriously -- I've done the numbers.)
The danger from mercury is in the vapor (which IS readily absorbed into your body), so the problem isn't playing with mercury -- it's spilling it on porous surfaces and not cleaning it up properly. A kid rolling around with mercury in his hands for a while is unlikely to result in significant exposure, but a broken thermometer spilling on a rug or couch and being rubbed into the surface where it can release vapors for weeks or months... that can lead to significant exposure to kids.
Also, this points out the issue with CFLs and mercury. Most mercury released from CFLs immediately evaporates from small droplets into a vapor cloud. So even if you have 1/1000th of the amount of mercury in a light bulb compared to a thermometer, breathing in the vapors after a CFL break can cause much greater exposure (which is why government organizations advise evacuation and ventilation before clean-up). It's still not a huge concern for CFLs -- particularly for adults -- but it points out the issue with mercury is inhaling vapor, not playing with it (if followed by proper clean-up).
The biggest danger to children's brains is women drinking while pregnant. I've seen it all too many times in my six decades, it's incredibly sad.
While it is true that heavy drinking is a severe danger to kids' brains during pregnancy, this has only really been established for alcoholic-level abuse. A few years ago, when my wife was pregnant, I spent a significant amount of time reading hundreds of articles on all the supposed pregnancy dangers, and, to my knowledge, there's not a single case of fetal alcohol syndrome/spectrum disorders or malformed infants that has been reported in numerous studies (involving hundreds of thousands of pregnancies) for alcohol consumption less than about 10-14 drinks per week during pregnancy.
Most studies that claim effects for "any" alcohol consumption don't bother to differentiate light/moderate/heavy drinkers. For the few that do, only a handful have shown any significant cognitive differences for light or moderate drinking vs. women who abstain completely. And of those studies that show statistical differences among these groups, they tend to be small effects. And roughly half of those studies show some sort of minor cognitive benefit to light drinking compared to abstaining completely.
After reviewing the literature, I frankly don't believe that alcohol actually has a benefit (even a small one) on developing brains, but I do know there are other studies showing that mother's stress levels and other things can have significant effects during pregnancy. So, for some women, if they have an occasional drink, it may be enough of a benefit to the mother's feeling of well-being overall that it may also help fetal development.
The point is -- being an alcoholic or drinking heavily during pregnancy is indeed a sad and terrible thing. But all the pressure we put on mothers now to abstain from ALL alcohol and soft cheeses and caffeine and cold cuts and whatever else can also have negative repercussions on fetuses in terms of stress and general happiness for mothers. (Plus, many of the risks are much less than doctors tend to imply -- in many cases, you're much, much more likely to be hit by a bus or even struck by lightning than to cause harm to your baby by eating some of the "banned" items.)
Other, more dangerous dangers are blows to the head, and mental and physical abuse.
Absolutely. Physical abuse is a problem. But other big risks for kids under 18 are car accidents, accidental drowning (swimming pools, in particular), suffocation, and fire. Head injuries playing football and such are also a serious concern for older kids. The common worries like guns, drinking poison, etc. are much less of a concern than your swimming pool or safety during your daily commute.
By the way, my original post probably shouldn't have said "grammar" - I really meant something more like "usage." There's my error from fast typing and not enough editing.
The point is: the parent implied people don't know the difference of owning some thing (your) or being something (you're) ... on top of that you imply that people make grammar errors, while they are merly doing spelling errors.
I said nothing of the sort. People in my example are not making errors of grammar: they are intending to use a plural, and they know that. They just didn't write it correctly. In essence, I was pointing out punctuation errors: all of your examples involve apostrophes. People clearly know the grammatical function of these words in speech. I was pointing out that apostrophes are probably the most misused punctuation mark in the English language. Since people clearly don't understand the correct roles an apostrophe can play in English, they can't spell things using them correctly.
Actually I'm quite familiar with the usage of apostrophes, and will still occasionally type about apple's and orange's. I know it's wrong and would never type such a thing on purpose, but when I'm thinking six words ahead of my fingers sometimes such things slip through for some reason, and they're easily missed in proofreading,
Yes, this is all well and good, but my point is that I've seen numerous examples of these sorts of errors in situations that would seem to call for more proofreading, like official advertisements, tee shirts, signs, etc. I completely understand that one sometimes makes errors when typing fast. But I don't think that excuses (or explains) official corporate text with major errors put out for public display, does it?
I'm pretty sure EVERYONE regardless if american or not understands pretty well the differences between "their", "there", and "they're", or "its" and "it's", or "your" and "you're" actually is.
I doubt you've spent a lot of time around average Americans discussing grammar. Your assertion depends fundamentally on the idea that people know what an apostrophe means. I'd say at least 10-20% of Americans do not. If they did, you wouldn't, for example, see lots of signs, posters, and even tee shirts with company logos (I'm not kidding!) using apostrophes to form plurals, e.g., "APPLE'S, MELON'S - BUY ONE GET ONE FREE"
Americans may understand that these words have different meanings, but a significant percentage would not be able to consistently identify the correct usage, since they don't actually know the correct spelling or use of apostrophes. (Though you're right that an even larger number probably can't or don't care about proofreading. And don't even get me started on how my iPhone actually always autocorrected "its" to "it's"... finally forcing me to turn it off or look like an idiot when I forgot to go back and fix text that had been "helpfully" auto-"corrected.")
That's because it's possibly the only relationship type that could actually be bad for society in an objective, measurable way.
"That's because it's possibly the only relationship type that could actually be bad for society because that's my opinion."
There, FTFY.
Monogamous marriage conveniently gives us guys a stable supply of women by preventing wealthy men from keeping harems (the best they can do is cheat rampantly).
So, (1) supposedly monogamous societies already have rich people who attract multiple partners, yet there appears to be no "shortage of women."
And (2) it's okay for rich men to have these relationships, but having a moral idea in a society requiring them to commit to supporting those women and the children those relationships produce -- well, that would be bad. Got it.
Otherwise you'd have a lot of pissed-off guys who don't value their lives too much. See: Middle east, right now; Dudes blowing themselves up for afterlife virgins.
Hmm... all it takes for peace in the Middle East is monogamy. Good to know.
Look -- for thousands of years much of Western Europe has been predominately monogamous, and for most of that time, women were oppressed, and dudes were happy to murder, rape, pillage, and blow things up, often in the belief that they were doing "God's will." So, empirically, I don't think you have strong proof that monogamous societies naturally don't have such problems.
The reason women are oppressed in the Middle East is because you have a society that still thinks it's okay to stone a woman for adultery, or to cut off somebody's hand for random offenses... etc. That is, it's a culture that hasn't yet accepted the moral changes to respect women that have really only happened in Western countries in the past century or so.
The reason women are oppressed and forced into marriage as little girls, etc. in isolated religious groups is because cult-like religious groups in the middle of nowhere often do that kind of crap, whether they encourage polygamy or not.
The flaw in your logic is that somehow by allowing Bob to marry both Sally and Jane ... or Jane to marry both Bob and Jim... or even Sally to marry both Jane and Megan... that these relationships will somehow cause all women in the West to say, "Screw feminism and all that we've worked for in the past hundred years! I wanna wear a burqa, find a rich man who already had five other wives, and support the enslavement of young girls!"
Obviously that seems a little unlikely. Some women might want that, but most won't. And the idea that the only thing standing between Western society and the Middle East's morals is monogamy protecting women from making bad choices.... all I can say is that that infantilizes women and is rather offensive.
The reason some cultures have war and loonies and abuse of women is because most societies throughout history have had war and loonies and abuse of women... enforced monogamy didn't cure those things in Western society even over many centuries, so the idea that it would solve the Middle East's problems (or that loosening the restriction would result in an immediate devolution of the West) is just nonsense.
The government's crack down on polygamist sects was based on sexual abuse of minors and welfare fraud.
I'm pretty sure both of those things are illegal, regardless of how many spouses one has. If people commit these acts, as they might do in isolated wacko communities whether polygamous or not, they should be prosecuted for those crimes.
So why do we need to arrest people for polygamy again?
Polygamy encompasses the idea of more than one spouse -- including 1 man + multiple women or 1 woman + multiple men or some other combination. You seem to be mistaking "polygamy" for "polygyny." If you want to talk specifically about polygyny, please use that term. Otherwise, anyone who knows the definition of words will assume that polyandry, etc. are included in your discussion.
Hope it works for you. With a foot of snow followed by rain and a refreeze, you're potentially looking at it packing down to a 3 inch thick layer of ice or more. That's nearly impossible to break apart... and if it stays cold, you could have days or weeks of a slippery sidewalk. Shovel it now, then periodically salt; everything stays clear. My rule is if I'm not certain it will melt within 24 hours or so, it's generally better to shovel. Or be prepared to wait until it all melts.
I want to make this clear - people didn't know last time how bad it would be, the storm was supposed to pass to the south and it shifted north.
I don't want to rehash arguments that everyone had a couple of weeks ago, but the National Weather Service alerts began shifting the area of winter weather "advisory" to metro Atlanta the day before. They declared a "Winter Storm Warning" at 3:38 AM the day of the storm, which told everyone that dangerous road conditions were coming to metro Atlanta.
Thus, there was actually at least eight or nine hours of warning before anything started falling from the sky in Atlanta.
Don't get me wrong: I know some people probably didn't pay attention to that before their morning commute, and didn't realize that things had shifted. So, I can understand how your average person might have missed something. But schools and governments have no excuse -- with an ice storm coming that close to a major city, they should have been paying close attention in the night before the storm. They had enough time to cancel school and warn people to consider staying home. They did not.
As another poster said, this isn't fair. Lots of us drive with winter tires, I doubt anyone down there has even heard of them.
While this is true, winter tires still don't do much if there's 1/2" to an inch of ice on the road, as there was in some parts of the South yesterday and this morning. And even if they have salt -- which they often don't -- there was too much ice to keep up the melting.
A few inches of snow is not a big deal if you're used to driving it and have proper tires. However, I've lived in many different parts of the U.S., and an inch of ice is enough to shut down things in most places -- north or south.
An extreme view of that would even include something like biology or astronomy. If someone thought that their body or the earth or whatever was god's design and that's it, why bother studying it? Why bother to develop a cure for a disease if the disease is part of god's plan?
There are lots of people who find all sorts of reasons not to study biology, mostly because they don't give a crap about it. Whether they are religious or atheist or agnostic or whatever doesn't matter.
What you're talking about is a VERY small and specific extremist group of people, only PART of whom might have the philosophical objections you're making up. I've known very devout religious people who are scientists, and they study science because of their religion, because they have a respect for what they believe to be "God's creation," and they believe that coming to a greater understanding of it is a valuable thing.
I appreciate your point, but you're grasping at straws a little here. Yes, there might be some religious fanatics who might choose not to study biology for some reason, but there are also lots of non-religious people and even other religious fanatics who also have plenty of reasons they don't care about biology either. I don't think your group is that significant, given that historically many of the greatest scientific advances were made by people who had strong religious beliefs.
Why bother to study the stars if everything that's important is on this planet?
Who told you that? I suppose there are some religious fanatics who believe that, but most religious people I know think nothing of the sort. I know a few astrophysicists at some of the top universities in the U.S. who go to church regularly. (And I'm not talking about religious universities -- I mean top-tier research places.) Same thing with biologists. So what?
Of course weird religious beliefs might keep some small number of people from studying science. But I think that number is miniscule compared to other potential problems in the U.S. -- like not respecting intelligence, like the worship of sports and entertainment over things like science and knowledge, like the quest for highest salaries over intellectual fulfillment or personal integrity, etc., etc.
That Isaac Newton was rational with respect to physics and math does not prove that he was rational in all things. He most certainly was not a biologist. His opinions/beliefs with respect to biology/creation should be given no more authority than any other random person.
Thanks for confirming my point!
Were a person as smart as Newton raised in today's society and be made aware of all the things that we've come to learn since then, I don't think he'd be a creationist.
You obviously don't know much about Newton, nor do you realize how crazy many smart people are.
Numerous studies have shown that brilliant people aren't actually better at changing their beliefs when confronted with sound evidence against them -- in fact, they are often more likely than less intelligent people to find apparent "holes" in the contradictory evidence presented and hold fast to their original beliefs. Intelligence just gives them more ways to dismiss opposing arguments.
Newton believed all sorts of things that make little sense to us today, and many of them were actually lampooned by scientists of his own time. But they made rational sense in his warped genius brain. And, in fact, it was some of these "crazy" ideas (like mystical invisible forces acting over distances) that gave birth to some of his greatest scientific insights.
James Madison, the father of both the Constitution and the First Amendment, consistently warned against any attempt to blend endorsement of Christianity into the law of the new nation.
While what you state is true, I would also note that the assumed meaning of the First Amendment has changed over the years.
Note that it says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, i.e., the federal government has no right to establish a religion, nor does it have the power to make a law that would disestablish a state religion.
This is a crucial point missed by many folks -- a few states continued to have official established state religions for decades after the First Amendment was passed. The original amendment was about restrictions on the federal government's power, not a restriction on ALL interaction between church and state (pace Thomas Jefferson).
Of course, the First Amendment's meaning was reconsidered over time, and eventually (in the 20th century) it was finally assumed to apply to state and local governments as well. But that's actually not what it did when the Founders first passed it.
(P.S. I'm NOT at all advocating that religion should be a greater part of the government; I'm just trying to keep historical facts in their proper context.)
Before anyone makes any anti-rational assumptions about me while reading this post, let me be clear that I'm a staunch defender of evolutionary theory, and I've even defended it here a number of times before.
Really now, what do you think the chances are that someone who grew up believing that the planet is 6,000 years old would choose a career in science?
Well, Isaac Newton did, and he even wrote books about details of Biblical chronology.
And before you tell me, "Everyone believed in that stuff back then!" it isn't true. Newton was a wacko outlier in many ways, including his beliefs that he could show the detailed past chronology of the universe and calculate the date it would end. Many scientists of Newton's time had grave suspicions about those sorts of things, and they would certainly not consider it respectable "science" to write on such matters.
Nonetheless, Newton managed to come up with some of the greatest advances of all time in a number of areas of physics and mathematics.
I want to be clear: I don't think creationism should be taught in science classes in schools either, but your logic that no student with a religious upbringing would ever be curious enough about the world to want to study science is faulty.
In my experience, the reason people choose careers in science has little to do with whether they are religious or not. And unless they want a career in a small group of scientific disciplines, what they think of evolutionary biology is unlikely to play a major role in their work.
Now, of course, continuing to believe the earth is 6,000 years old -- that's a more difficult one to square with lots of scientific disciplines (from archeology and geology to cosmology), but there are lots and lots of people who are religious but who do not subscribe to that literal belief. Lots of scientists have qualms that evolution has "all the answers," but nevertheless function quite well.
Not every creationist is a "young earth" creationist (and in fact, I'm pretty sure the vast majority are NOT), and a detailed understanding of evolutionary theory is not required for most scientific study.
One of the best things that Bill Nye said in the recent debate was to encourage people to choose careers in science, and warning that the rash of anti-rationalism is going to have very negative consequences for the US. Those words might have fallen on deaf ears at the creationism museum in Kentucky, but it's the right idea.
I don't think you've spent a lot of time reading arguments by the "Creation science" crowd. I'd hardly call them "anti-rationalist" -- they have their brand of reason. They understand very well the way to put together a logical train of thought. They just don't begin with the same axioms as you do for that logical tree. Hence, they might be "anti-empiricist" to some degree.
I'm not trying to defend it. But regardless of those people, most Christians who just have "faith" in whatever creation story they subscribe to don't tend to think about such things in a "rational" manner. Heck, most humans don't tend to think or act "rationally" most of the time.
And many people are capable of constructing logical arguments in other areas of thought, even if they subscribe to weird axioms in another one.
I agree with Bill Nye on a lot of things, but the idea that religious beliefs are some sort of impediment to getting people to sign up to study science, or that such people must be "anti-rationalist" is just nonsense. People -- including even atheist scientists -- are irrational. If anything, it's people like Richard Dawkins and the militant atheist crowd who drive religious people away from studying science... not the religion itself.
The biggest impediments to getting students to study science in the U.S. probably have to do with stereotypes about "geeks" and "nerds," along with anti-intellectualism. Wanna get people to study science? Change those attitudes first.
So long as what people are adding is verifiable, who cares who they are?
Well, in my opinion, the only way to really fix Wikipedia would be to allow expert help -- and in many cases, that may actually benefit from having someone with intimate knowledge of something.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia policies discourage experts from contributing (sometimes by official policy, sometimes just by the attitude of frequent editors). It's really more like the Wild West... with some bizarre lawyer-like class running everything.
The only way to bias a Wikipedia article while remaining verifiable is to delete stuff, and that's where the wars tend to happen.
That's not true at all. The "verifiability" requirement is probably one of the most broken elements of Wikipedia, next to the "notability" criterion. Not that facts shouldn't be verifiable: of course they should be, and of course reputable sources should be used. However,
Verifiable != True
Nor should we think that verifiability is some sort of useful proxy for truth. There an important reason why people tend to swear in legal proceedings to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Stating "facts" without context is useless. I can tell you that the "deadly chemical" X has been found in a number of snack foods, for example. But what does that mean? Normally, people don't actually mention things unless they are notable, so the fact that I mention this seems to mean that there must be a greater significance. It seems to imply that someone put that chemical in snack foods, or that the manufacturer used contaminated ingredients, or that the manufacturer didn't do adequate screening and quality testing, or something else bad.
But what if I now add the facts: "Chemical X occurs naturally in soil, groundwater, and most food items at a rate of 10 ppb. In the snack foods in question, chemical X had a concentration of 0.02 ppb."
Now, all of those implications seem way off-base, no? Not only did we make an incorrect assumption from a true statement, but we actually assumed the opposite of what is true: apparently, whatever the manufacturer is doing, they are actually producing a safer-than-average product. But the concentration is still non-zero, as it is in almost all food products.
You see this sort of thing on Wikipedia all the time from people with agendas, and from people who are just ignorant of the larger context.
Particularly in low-profile articles on obscure topics (like the humanities), you'll often see citations and quotations from scholarship that is 50 years old and from a book that isn't even on the topic of the article. Yes, it was "published" in a "reliable source" perhaps even in a book by a major university press, so it meets quite high standards of "verifiability," but it's not particularly representative of scholarship or what most people know to be true.
Someone with an agenda on a topic can really skew things this way. An article has citations to 5 scientific articles published in credible journals claiming X -- well, it looks like X is true. But almost every area of knowledge has some disagreement. What if there are actually 100 articles on the same topic that claim not-X, but they just don't happen to be in Wikipedia? The only person who becomes aware of this is the rare Wikipedia editor who does a search of the scholarly literature in some obscure field. Otherwise, articles can exist for years claiming things that are obviously not true. (In fact, given the propensity for scholars to exaggerate claims and implications in their own research, it's quite easy to even find 5 articles that don't even have data to prove X, but nevertheless assert X to be true in their discussion sections... while there might be 25 articles actually on topic out there which refute X.)
So yeah, there are loads of ways to skew an article by providing "verifiable facts" from "v
Maybe you're right, and if that's all this particular poster meant, fine.
Except he didn't say, "I have a low id, so that proves I've been around for a while, and I don't like this beta crap." Instead, he complained that that number would not be displayed everywhere, and then said he would leave.
As I said in my previous post, I have great respect for many of you guys who have been around for a long time and have contributed good things for years.
But I've also heard a lot of people at various times over the years trying to assert that their low id deserves some other recognition or respect, beyond just when you happened to register. Clearly the implication of GP's post is that he cares that people continue to see his number... for some reason. And that the fact it has only 5 digits is of some significance toward that argument.
First off, before I say anything else, let me be perfectly clear: I hate Beta as much as everyone else, and if classic (or at least something very close to it) ceases to be available, I'll leave.
However, this kind of crap disturbs me:
I have a 5 digit userid (of course the beta won't display that anymore).
I'm gone if the beta is forced on me.
That's what you're worried about most?!?
I'm sure this will cost me karma, but I don't give a damn about how many digits your userid has. It tells me absolutely nothing about you, other than that you were probably alive 15 years ago. (Although, I'm sure at least some dead people have passed a userid onto someone else....)
There are lots of people with low IDs who have been an important part of the community for many years. I applaud those of you who fit into that category. Some people were away for a long time and came back. Great.
There are also lots of people with low IDs who haven't posted in a decade, and only come on to complain or make some troll-like comment every so often. There are others who only show up when some stupid userid pissing contest gets started. ("You think you have a low number, look at mine!" "No -- you moron, I have only 4!" "Ha -- mine's smaller!" The only pissing contest in the world where smaller is better....)
I'm not against displaying a userid. I like it because it's traditional to this site. I can see how it was useful back in the day.
For the record, I've never posted about this before, but I did browse the site for at least a few months back in 1998 or 1999 -- and I'm certain I even signed up for an account and made a handful of posts. But for the life of me, I can't remember the name I signed up under -- I was trying to be clever, and I used a name I never used before. And I don't have access to the email account I used to have, so there's no way to figure it out... not that I care that much. It would be meaningless, because I didn't come back for 6-7 years, and only then did I actually start contributing seriously. Having that number tacked onto my comments would give me an air of respect or legitimacy to some people that I wouldn't deserve.
I used to care, and one day I spent a couple hours trying to figure out what my old username might have been... but after being really active here for over half a decade, I can safely say that I don't give a crap about that anymore. I don't even notice the numbers, except as identifiers sometimes. I care about posts that are actually helpful and insightful, not about what your name or number is.
If we want to put some metric that tells us something about your status or contributions to the Slashdot community, how about the total number of modded up posts, or +5 posts, or some karma measure, or the number of modded up posts per year or something? (Just not the stupid Beta "trophies.") That would actually tell me something about whether you're likely to have something good to say, or whether you're a good citizen in the community. Your userid does not.
I really mean no disrepect here. But if your 5-digit userid is the thing you care about most concerning this move to Beta... well, I think you might want to reconsider your priorities. I give a damn about the community. I give a damn about good structured commenting systems that are clearly displayed and easily accessible.
And I'd be happy to keep the userid system for tradition's sake -- it ain't broke as far as I'm concerned, except when comments like this come around.
I care about Slashdot. I don't give a damn about your ego around some meaningless number.
The volume of a cylinder is linear with height and square with radius. The average person's radius doesn't (or isn't supposed to) scale proportionally with their height, so weight shouldn't follow a cubic formula.
Yes, but people are NOT cylindrical, anymore than they are spherical. Are you seriously claiming that a 7'-tall man should have the same shoulder, chest, waist, and hip size as a 5'-tall man? (Not to mention same head circumference, same arm and leg circumference, etc.)
That's why BMI is ridiculously idiotic.
There are better metrics, although they're slightly to a lot more complicated.
Look -- the exponent of 2 is dumb, as GP said. As you point out, the exponent of 3 isn't right either. There actually have been plenty of empirical studies that show where that exponent should lie (somewhere between 2.3 and 2.7 -- if you want more precision, you need to take into account sex and general frame size, as I posted on below).
So, why exactly are you so eager to defend a measurement that is both theoretically AND empirically stupid?
There are even better (and as you point out -- more complicated) metrics, but we could make a significantly better one by simply choosing a more reasonable exponent. To me, that doesn't even qualify as "slightly more complicated." Few people calculate their BMI by hand, and those that do are probably able to use a calculator or spreadsheet or even freakin' Google to plug in an exponent other than 2.
To get something usable for individuals you would not only need to correct for gender but also for skeletal proportions (body shape,) by the way. Imagine two people, the same height, but the pelvic girdle and shoulders of the one is twice as wide as the other. Their healthy weights are NOT going to be the same.
Yes, of course. This is a great point. I was trying to point out that we could still make significant improvements to the "simple" BMI formula without requiring additional information or measurements.
But yes, if you want even more accuracy for individuals, you'd be better off with a model that takes frame into account. People who are older may still remember the tables many physicians used to use before BMI took over almost everything in the 1980s or so. I distinctly recall tables like that which were separated by sex and by frame: "small frame," "medium frame," and "large frame." Obviously even those 3 categories wouldn't reflect every individual, but it would still be a better approximation when coupled with a slightly modified BMI.