This is how science works. Every single thing someone says gets questioned down to the tiniest detail, trying to take into account everything anyone around can think of that might be biasing the results. It means that, to do it right, you have to avoid attaching emotional significance to what you believe.
Absolutely. I completely agree with you!
It's entirely possible (although, given the circumstances, rather unlikely) that willow bark tea is more toxic than aspirin. It's been in use at least 2000 years (more likely 3000) and it's been used contemporaneously with aspirin all over the world, and it's been the subject of several rigorous studies, but that doesn't mean that new data won't come to light. For example, the studies could turn out to be faked, or maybe we just haven't been paying enough attention to autopsy data, or some such. If that happens, then we re-evaluate.
However, if you look at some of the other posts in this thread (which you will recall started when I simply suggested people do research on aspirin) you'll see that some people have a pre-existing narrative or dogma, which they are incapable of modifying in response to new information. When these people base their dogma on the Bible, we call them religious nuts. When they claim allegiance to "Science", but the scientific method (that you personally are promoting) has been sacrificed in order to worship the trappings of modern corporate science, I say they followers of "Big S Science" - it's a faith-based paradigm that says pills are always better than roots and berries, an inexperienced obstetrician who barely graduated is preferable to a midwife who has successfully delivered a hundred healthy babies, etc. etc. etc. It's a deep-seated, unreasoning belief that whatever comes out of a shiny sterile lab will always be better than anything that doesn't.
Every good experiment starts with a theory, and ends with a reproducible result. But when people skip observation, research and experimentation, when they will go to any length to force-fit data into their pre-existing ideas, they aren't doing science, they're just acting on sheer bloodyminded faith in dogma. They are bigots, whose bigotry happens to be expressed as unreasoning allegiance to what they think is "Science" - but which isn't science at all.
Willow bark tea has been used medicinally for at least two thousand years. Hippocrates (yes, he of the Hippocratic Oath) recommended it as did Galen and this is abundantly documented. It may have been used far more than aspirin, but I have not done the research or the math so I would not make such a claim. During all that time, there have been no documented cases of willow bark fatalities that I can find.
By contrast, aspirin, which has only been in use for a tenth of the time, is known to have killed thousands of people. Most famously because of Reyes' syndrome, which usually occurs in children when they are given aspirin after suffering from influenza. Reye's syndrome is not well understood at this time; some researchers even believe that many of the 1918 influenza deaths were actually caused by aspirin-triggered Reye's. Aspirin also kills people from both acute (2% fatality) and chronic overdose (25% overdose) basically because so many people refuse to believe it is toxic. Additionally, aspirin is known to react dangerously with dozens of other drugs and medical conditions and causes allergic reactions of varying severity in some unfortunate people.
So, the reason I say that willow bark tea is less toxic than aspirin is because that's what the best available data indicates. If further research or future events indicate otherwise, I will modify my beliefs accordingly.
I recommend you independently check out everything I've said before you believe any of it. Science!
OK, Storm. I give up, you win. Empirical data is meaningless, only your completely unsupported suppositions and spur-of-the-moment theories contain any objective truth. Aspirin good, willow bark bad, I get it, I submit, I give up.
Small cars like that are very efficient in continuous driving, and (if you ignore tailpipe emissions) a much better bargain than hybrids.
However, does your car burn zero gas and generate zero pollution while sitting at a stop light with the ignition turned on? Because my prius does. The engine fires up automatically in about a quarter-second if I need it to. It seats two adults and three kids comfortably, too.
I think hybrids are a way that people (who can afford it) can potentially lessen the amount of pollution-related cancers our fellow humans will suffer. If you don't care about anybody else, they aren't really a good bargain. And honestly not everyone can afford a hybrid - the market's distorted, because the costs of pollution are not allocated to those who create the pollution.
The solution to Slashdot would be to have a similar double blind system. If you wish to mod comments on a story, you shouldn't be able to see who the poster is. From the story link on the main page, you'll get an option to either comment on the story and see who the other commenters are or mod comments and not know who the authors are. If you choose the comment option, you won't be able to go back and mod later.
Won't work; I have three computers within arm's reach and could easily use one to find the authors being modded on another.
That would explain why my neurologist (and many of his peers, according to him) refuse to prescribe generic seizure medication, as many of us will seize on generics. "Sort of a crapshoot", he told me.
Another explanation might be kickbacks, which doctors do not get by prescribing generics. Have you noticed that your doctor receives golf balls, pens, notepads, and occasionally all-expenses-paid junkets to pricy resorts from pharma vendors? The only thing he can't accept is outright cash bribes.
In the USA, all drugs, generic or not, are held to the same standards of purity and quality control - so Occam's Razor makes me think kickbacks are the more likely cause of your neurologists' recommendations.
On the other claw, I can see why you'd want to play it safe when we're talking about seizures!
Honestly, it's the same as taking pills from a doctor. You don't just buy a random bottle and swallow some random amount, or follow directions from slashdot. Instead, find someone local who makes and uses it, and has some credibility, and ask them what they think you should try.
You can also just buy tea bags at nearly any hippy health food store. It will be fairly weak, and buying a commercial preparation really isn't much different from buying aspirin, of course. If you use the tea too heavily it will upset your stomach, if you ignore that and continue to drink it around the clock for weeks it could give you colitis or ulcers, if you ignore that and keep abusing it you could eventually take liver damage.
If you really want to go it alone, which I do NOT recommend even though I do it all the time, use the standard scientific method. Research, observe, hypothesize, experiment, repeat. Be careful to use ridiculously low doses until you're sure you've got the right tree and the right preparation, then steadily increase until you find efficacy. Here's where you can start your research: http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/willow-bark-000281.htm
A childhood friend of my spouse died of Reye's syndrome associated with a single use of aspirin. At least 27% of Reye's deaths are believed to be aspirin-related, based on blood tests and autopsies. Many researchers set the number even higher.
So even ignoring all the other aspirin-related deaths we're talking about thousands of people here. How many people can be proved to have died of willow bark toxicity? None, that I can find. There aren't any documented cases.
Your statement that "you basically have no chance to get poisoned" is rendered meaningless by your caveat of "modulo personal adverse drug reactions". All adverse drug reactions are personal. In particular, death is highly personal.
I predict a misquoting of Raymond Wolfinger in our future.
Therefore you have not sinned against science! ^_^
In reality, both acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) and willow bark tea (which contains salicin, among other things) are useful medicines.
People who worship at the corporate altar prefer the robotically produced, sterile aspirin pill despite its greater toxicity, and smelly hippies who would rather use agricultural products from local sources prefer willow bark despite the difficulties involved in obtaining and using it.
I've used both, perhaps because I'm not biased either way. Willow tea is nicer but aspirin doesn't require brewing.
"Android is GPL" is flat out wrong. Only the linux kernel and a few bits are GPL. The bulk of the code is Apache licensed. You're being disingenuous by dismissing the most interesting parts of the Android system as "cruft layered on top".
Or perhaps we have different interests - I don't find anything outside android's kernel particularly interesting. Does that make me a bad person?
Hmmm, OK, Dalvik is actually interesting, even though it involves Java (which is extremely boring). Point to you.
Nonetheless Google hasn't violated either the GPL or the Apache license, AFAIK. They've given out source to everyone they've given executables, haven't they? Where's the beef?
Android is GPL. You can't change the license on the Linux kernel without permission, and it has never been released under any other license. There is lots of cruft layered on top of the OS that has other licensing, but the OS is GPLed.
Google has released source code for every version of Android that they've shipped, to the people that they shipped to (typically vendors, not users) as required by the GPL. Google is not required to post sources on slashdot, as some people seem to think, and Google is not required to give you source code for devices somebody other than Google distributed.
Yeah, the minute somebody next to me starts using a device that blasts white light into my face, I'm going to put on my polarized sunglasses, which are always in my right inside jacket pocket.
I wouldn't even be trying to defeat his privacy hack, I'm just very light sensitive so I always carry shades.
Building down, the only cost is earth removal and dumping it somewhere.
You're forgetting the water table.
In a sufficiently large, arcology-type underground community, the water's useful and valuable. But you'll probably have to keep pumps running all the time if you don't want to drown or be smothered in mold and algae. Mines that don't pump, flood.
Just FYI, W4W 3.11 was the first Microsoft 16-bit OS capable of running the 32-bit wolverine TCP/IP stack... which is also what Win95 ran. Wolverine was very reliable and stable for a Microsoft product.
My memory of such things is not reliable, but I think you could have downloaded wolverine onto your W4W3.11 system, ditched trumpet, and gotten the same increased network stability that you got from upgrading to Win95.
At the time I was running slackware linux systems that were incredibly painfully difficult to set up and get running, but then never, ever crashed for any reason. Mad shouts to Pat Volkerding!
So of course Google could link all my various accounts together to get a more complete profile of me,
They already have. So have several other organizations.
but not really sure what they'd do with it.
In Google's case, they sell access to your eyeballs. That is, they target advertising in their search engine (at least) towards your profile. It's fairly benign, all you have to worry about is someone more evil getting into their data.
In the case of the other organizations profiling you, well, what they are doing is selling your profile.
All of the marketing gets directed at the spam account. They likely get more advertising bucks if they can say they're selling access to multiple personas (even if they all lead back to me) anyway, so it's probably win/win.
True, that. But it's not private in the sense that some people value. It's just reasonably safe from the viewpoint of identity theft protection and the like. Which is good enough if you trust your government at all.
It IS free as the cost of Win 7 HP has been published several times, it is $15 a copy.
I don't know what Win 7 HP is, but $15 will buy my family a meal, so if $15 is so meaningless to you that you consider it "free" then please send me $15 as soon as possible.
Why do you hate America? Only liberals believe in actually paying our debts.
Here in the United Tea Party States we know that if we just pray real hard and eliminate all taxes, everything we need will be supplied by Jesus, riding on a golden unicorn.
So just stop it with your socialist ideas about providing for the common defense and general welfare. True patriots know that George Washington didn't like that sort of thing, and that's why he put the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance.
When I read your post, I at first thought you were pointing out that you get what you pay for, and thus wise investment is always good policy for both individuals and groups.
And then I thought, well, maybe he's also pointing out that some worthwhile goals are not achievable by individuals or markets and that an equitable, democratically controlled pooling of resources has historically been shown to be a useful way to defeat such problems of scale.
But on the second reading, I realize you might be just another freeloader who wants other people to pay your bills. I detect a hint of irony. Are you one of those "taxation is theft" nut cases, perchance?
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what HAS Rome ever done for US?
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely. I completely agree with you!
It's entirely possible (although, given the circumstances, rather unlikely) that willow bark tea is more toxic than aspirin. It's been in use at least 2000 years (more likely 3000) and it's been used contemporaneously with aspirin all over the world, and it's been the subject of several rigorous studies, but that doesn't mean that new data won't come to light. For example, the studies could turn out to be faked, or maybe we just haven't been paying enough attention to autopsy data, or some such. If that happens, then we re-evaluate.
However, if you look at some of the other posts in this thread (which you will recall started when I simply suggested people do research on aspirin) you'll see that some people have a pre-existing narrative or dogma, which they are incapable of modifying in response to new information. When these people base their dogma on the Bible, we call them religious nuts. When they claim allegiance to "Science", but the scientific method (that you personally are promoting) has been sacrificed in order to worship the trappings of modern corporate science, I say they followers of "Big S Science" - it's a faith-based paradigm that says pills are always better than roots and berries, an inexperienced obstetrician who barely graduated is preferable to a midwife who has successfully delivered a hundred healthy babies, etc. etc. etc. It's a deep-seated, unreasoning belief that whatever comes out of a shiny sterile lab will always be better than anything that doesn't.
Every good experiment starts with a theory, and ends with a reproducible result. But when people skip observation, research and experimentation, when they will go to any length to force-fit data into their pre-existing ideas, they aren't doing science, they're just acting on sheer bloodyminded faith in dogma. They are bigots, whose bigotry happens to be expressed as unreasoning allegiance to what they think is "Science" - but which isn't science at all.
Willow bark tea has been used medicinally for at least two thousand years. Hippocrates (yes, he of the Hippocratic Oath) recommended it as did Galen and this is abundantly documented. It may have been used far more than aspirin, but I have not done the research or the math so I would not make such a claim. During all that time, there have been no documented cases of willow bark fatalities that I can find.
By contrast, aspirin, which has only been in use for a tenth of the time, is known to have killed thousands of people. Most famously because of Reyes' syndrome, which usually occurs in children when they are given aspirin after suffering from influenza. Reye's syndrome is not well understood at this time; some researchers even believe that many of the 1918 influenza deaths were actually caused by aspirin-triggered Reye's. Aspirin also kills people from both acute (2% fatality) and chronic overdose (25% overdose) basically because so many people refuse to believe it is toxic. Additionally, aspirin is known to react dangerously with dozens of other drugs and medical conditions and causes allergic reactions of varying severity in some unfortunate people.
So, the reason I say that willow bark tea is less toxic than aspirin is because that's what the best available data indicates. If further research or future events indicate otherwise, I will modify my beliefs accordingly.
I recommend you independently check out everything I've said before you believe any of it. Science!
OK, Storm. I give up, you win. Empirical data is meaningless, only your completely unsupported suppositions and spur-of-the-moment theories contain any objective truth. Aspirin good, willow bark bad, I get it, I submit, I give up.
Small cars like that are very efficient in continuous driving, and (if you ignore tailpipe emissions) a much better bargain than hybrids.
However, does your car burn zero gas and generate zero pollution while sitting at a stop light with the ignition turned on? Because my prius does. The engine fires up automatically in about a quarter-second if I need it to. It seats two adults and three kids comfortably, too.
I think hybrids are a way that people (who can afford it) can potentially lessen the amount of pollution-related cancers our fellow humans will suffer. If you don't care about anybody else, they aren't really a good bargain. And honestly not everyone can afford a hybrid - the market's distorted, because the costs of pollution are not allocated to those who create the pollution.
When you get to the point of actually making up numbers just so that you can avoid doing any science, you aren't reachable by argument any more.
Your faith is too strong to be swayed by mere observable reality.
Congratulations, drawing conclusions from evidence you have seen with your own eyes is very wise! And increasingly rare, I often think.
It's interesting, though - the whole point of generics is that they are supposed to be the same thing as the branded drug. Somebody's cheating.
Won't work; I have three computers within arm's reach and could easily use one to find the authors being modded on another.
Another explanation might be kickbacks, which doctors do not get by prescribing generics. Have you noticed that your doctor receives golf balls, pens, notepads, and occasionally all-expenses-paid junkets to pricy resorts from pharma vendors? The only thing he can't accept is outright cash bribes.
In the USA, all drugs, generic or not, are held to the same standards of purity and quality control - so Occam's Razor makes me think kickbacks are the more likely cause of your neurologists' recommendations.
On the other claw, I can see why you'd want to play it safe when we're talking about seizures!
Honestly, it's the same as taking pills from a doctor. You don't just buy a random bottle and swallow some random amount, or follow directions from slashdot. Instead, find someone local who makes and uses it, and has some credibility, and ask them what they think you should try.
You can also just buy tea bags at nearly any hippy health food store. It will be fairly weak, and buying a commercial preparation really isn't much different from buying aspirin, of course. If you use the tea too heavily it will upset your stomach, if you ignore that and continue to drink it around the clock for weeks it could give you colitis or ulcers, if you ignore that and keep abusing it you could eventually take liver damage.
If you really want to go it alone, which I do NOT recommend even though I do it all the time, use the standard scientific method. Research, observe, hypothesize, experiment, repeat. Be careful to use ridiculously low doses until you're sure you've got the right tree and the right preparation, then steadily increase until you find efficacy. Here's where you can start your research: http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/willow-bark-000281.htm
A childhood friend of my spouse died of Reye's syndrome associated with a single use of aspirin. At least 27% of Reye's deaths are believed to be aspirin-related, based on blood tests and autopsies. Many researchers set the number even higher.
So even ignoring all the other aspirin-related deaths we're talking about thousands of people here. How many people can be proved to have died of willow bark toxicity? None, that I can find. There aren't any documented cases.
Your statement that "you basically have no chance to get poisoned" is rendered meaningless by your caveat of "modulo personal adverse drug reactions". All adverse drug reactions are personal. In particular, death is highly personal.
I predict a misquoting of Raymond Wolfinger in our future.
You said "probably".
Therefore you have not sinned against science! ^_^
In reality, both acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) and willow bark tea (which contains salicin, among other things) are useful medicines.
People who worship at the corporate altar prefer the robotically produced, sterile aspirin pill despite its greater toxicity, and smelly hippies who would rather use agricultural products from local sources prefer willow bark despite the difficulties involved in obtaining and using it.
I've used both, perhaps because I'm not biased either way. Willow tea is nicer but aspirin doesn't require brewing.
Science rejects your suppositions stated as fact and demands skepticism. ^_^
I believe if you do a little research, you'll find that it's highly unlikely that willow tea has harmed as many people as aspirin.
Or perhaps we have different interests - I don't find anything outside android's kernel particularly interesting. Does that make me a bad person?
Hmmm, OK, Dalvik is actually interesting, even though it involves Java (which is extremely boring). Point to you.
Nonetheless Google hasn't violated either the GPL or the Apache license, AFAIK. They've given out source to everyone they've given executables, haven't they? Where's the beef?
Android is GPL. You can't change the license on the Linux kernel without permission, and it has never been released under any other license. There is lots of cruft layered on top of the OS that has other licensing, but the OS is GPLed.
Google has released source code for every version of Android that they've shipped, to the people that they shipped to (typically vendors, not users) as required by the GPL. Google is not required to post sources on slashdot, as some people seem to think, and Google is not required to give you source code for devices somebody other than Google distributed.
Yeah, the minute somebody next to me starts using a device that blasts white light into my face, I'm going to put on my polarized sunglasses, which are always in my right inside jacket pocket.
I wouldn't even be trying to defeat his privacy hack, I'm just very light sensitive so I always carry shades.
Oh, look - pr0n!
You're forgetting the water table.
In a sufficiently large, arcology-type underground community, the water's useful and valuable. But you'll probably have to keep pumps running all the time if you don't want to drown or be smothered in mold and algae. Mines that don't pump, flood.
Just FYI, W4W 3.11 was the first Microsoft 16-bit OS capable of running the 32-bit wolverine TCP/IP stack... which is also what Win95 ran. Wolverine was very reliable and stable for a Microsoft product.
My memory of such things is not reliable, but I think you could have downloaded wolverine onto your W4W3.11 system, ditched trumpet, and gotten the same increased network stability that you got from upgrading to Win95.
At the time I was running slackware linux systems that were incredibly painfully difficult to set up and get running, but then never, ever crashed for any reason. Mad shouts to Pat Volkerding!
Yeah, and XML-encapsulated SQL, definitely needs at least one layer of XML. Definitely.
I weep for my country, when I think that God is just.
They already have. So have several other organizations.
In Google's case, they sell access to your eyeballs. That is, they target advertising in their search engine (at least) towards your profile. It's fairly benign, all you have to worry about is someone more evil getting into their data.
In the case of the other organizations profiling you, well, what they are doing is selling your profile.
True, that. But it's not private in the sense that some people value. It's just reasonably safe from the viewpoint of identity theft protection and the like. Which is good enough if you trust your government at all.
I think you misspelled "crap".
I don't know what Win 7 HP is, but $15 will buy my family a meal, so if $15 is so meaningless to you that you consider it "free" then please send me $15 as soon as possible.
Why do you hate America? Only liberals believe in actually paying our debts.
Here in the United Tea Party States we know that if we just pray real hard and eliminate all taxes, everything we need will be supplied by Jesus, riding on a golden unicorn.
So just stop it with your socialist ideas about providing for the common defense and general welfare. True patriots know that George Washington didn't like that sort of thing, and that's why he put the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance.
When I read your post, I at first thought you were pointing out that you get what you pay for, and thus wise investment is always good policy for both individuals and groups.
And then I thought, well, maybe he's also pointing out that some worthwhile goals are not achievable by individuals or markets and that an equitable, democratically controlled pooling of resources has historically been shown to be a useful way to defeat such problems of scale.
But on the second reading, I realize you might be just another freeloader who wants other people to pay your bills. I detect a hint of irony. Are you one of those "taxation is theft" nut cases, perchance?
All right ... all right ... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what HAS Rome ever done for US?