The point of a Jewish state is that for the first time in modern history, the Jewish people will have a place they are not discriminated against. The Jewish state is not meant to be a place where we discriminate others. Granted, things are not perfect, and I agree that it is easier being Jewish in Israel than Arab, but you can just pick any one of Israel's neighbors to see places where the government treats strangers, women and sometimes even its own citizens with a rough hand. It's always funny when every small slip-up by Israel is covered and shown as a proof to the inhumanity of the Jewish state, when most (if not all) of the Arab states practice human-rights violation on a daily, if not hourly, basis; and with much worse offences.
I submitted this story a few months ago, but it wasn't picked up, so I guess now will be good time to recount the main facts:
A single scan is equal to 3-9 minutes of natural background radiation exposure and would raise the amount of radiation a person is exposed to on a 6-hour intercontinental flight by about 1%. As for cancer risk, 1 million people flying 10 times a week will have 4 additional cases of cancer (using current models of radiation-cancer association). This is compared to the 600 cases of cancer they will get from the flight itself and to the 400,00 cases these people will have over their lifetime.
I can't find the full article anymore (paywall), but the abstract is here. It is interesting to note that the authors also wrote this:
In medicine, we try to balance risks and benefits of everything we do, and thus while the risks are indeed exceedingly small, the scanners should not be deployed unless they provide benefit—improved national security and safety—and consideration of these issues is outside the scope of our expertise.
The article also points out that since TSA officials do not allow outside scrutiny of the actual radiation levels of the machines, we cannot know if they perform as intended or if they expose us to more radiation. But still, I think they are probably a lot safer than you would have thought.
Israel is not a country where people are persecuted for speaking their mind. If you would just look a couple of weeks back, many Arab citizens protested around the country to remember the Nakba. Do most of the Jewish Israelis agree with them? No. Did anyone interfere with their right for peaceful assembly? Not in the least. In places where the assemblies became violent, only there did the police intervene.
Legally? Yes. Of course, if an Arab would try to buy a house in the middle of an orthodox neighborhood, it will be frowned upon, but such will be the case if I, a Jewish person, will buy a house in the middle of an Arab village.
I think in a way it's the same as the situation regarding Cochlear Implants (CI) for profound hearing loss. CI are good for adults that lost their hearing at an advanced age, or for babies that are hearing impaired from birth, provided the CI are implanted at a young age (usually before the age of 6-12 mo). The reason is that every sense in our body has both a receptor part (eye, ear, nose, etc.) and an area of the brain tasked with processing the information*. The area in the brain is developed by being stimulated, just like a muscle is built by use. But it's worse than muscles: if the area has never been used, it cannot develop in a later age, so you have to stimulate it as soon as possible. Today it is known that the sooner you implant a baby with a CI, the better the results. That was the medical side of the issue. The other part is moral: How can we decide for someone if he needs something? Lots of blind and deaf people have succeeded in life without help. OTOH, there is no doubt that life is much harder when you are short one modality compared to everyone else, and this handicap is much more obvious for blindness than it is for deafness. I think the moral dilemma is more difficult for deaf people (esp. deaf children born into deaf families; hearing parents would like nothing better than to have "normal" children). For blindness I don't think there will be any objection to such treatment.
So, assuming the technology gets there (and it will, someday): Medically - The implant will probably be useful for congenital blindness (if implanted at an early-enough age) and for people who have lost their vision in later life. Morally - Although there might be some objection about tempering with a child who is too young to decide for himself, I believe most would agree its for his benefit. At a later age, people can decide for themselves (although I personally would love to get my vision back, if I ever lost it).
* This is a bit of an oversimplification since a bit of preliminary processing happens in the sensing organ.
P.S. I don't think you have to be so pedantic about using both male and female pronouns [s(he), his/her]. Just use the male, and everyone will understand you meant both. Nobody will think you meant to treat only men, and not women.
Damn, a post that is Informative, Insightful and Funny all at once, with a dash of Flamebait and most definitely Underrated (and I am saying this while it is scored +5 Informative). Well done, sir!
If you are so helpful, I will ask about something that has bothered me for a while: Most of the CFC was produced in the northern hemisphere. Assuming the weather systems of both hemispheres are pretty much separated, why is it that there is a much bigger ozone hole over the southern pole than over the northern pole? I would assume the reverse would be true.
To all the anti-deniers: I don't doubt the fact that CFC caused the ozone hole. It is just that this is a small issue I would like to understand more clearly. If you can't give me a straight answer w/o using curse words, I would ask you to refrain from answering. Thanks!
If you'd read the link I posted, you'd see that fasting blood glucose above 130 is abnormal, even for a pregnant woman. Yes, pregnancy causes an insulin-resistant state (in all pregnant women) that probably is meant to ensure enough glucose for the fetus, but combined with a natural tendency for type 2 Diabetes, you can get Gestational Diabetes. And conversely, a pregnant woman who has GDM, probably has a natural tendency for Diabetes, and thus has a higher chance to have Diabetes later on in her life.
I didn't say that getting pregnant makes women more liable to having Diabetes. The thinking today is that women who are prone to Diabetes, may have it unmasked (as gestational diabetes - GDM) during pregnancy due to the hormonal changes in pregnancy and the pregnancy-induced insulin-resistance state.
Of course not, first line treatment for Diabetes is lifestyle changes: Proper diet, weight-loss and regular exercise. Only after failure of these measures do you recommend drug treatment (usually oral drugs, and only later Insulin and other drugs given by injection). The benefit of classifying the patient as having Diabetes, is that there is a better chance of her conforming to the lifestyle recommendations. If you tell some one that he may have a disease, he will not necessarily listen to your recommendations. However, if you tell him that he has Diabetes and that if he doesn't lose weight he will have to start taking drugs or risk a heart attack, there is a greater chance that he will do something about his weight and diet. Just look at all the people who stopped smoking after having their first heart attack. Nothing like a nice slap in the face (metaphorically speaking) to make someone wake up and smell the coffee.
Doctors must remember that the way we determine what "normal" values are is by fitting large samples to a bell curve, chopping off the ends at 1 or 2 standard deviations, and calling the middle "normal".
Well, it all depends on the disease/condition. Gout is a disease diagnosed by certain symptoms. Having those symptoms w/o high uric acid is still regarded as gout, while high UA w/o those symptoms does not merit treatment. However, there are diseases that are defined by lab results, and not because we are looking for extra patients but because early recognition and treatment can prevent morbidity and mortality. For example, Diabetes is defined as fasting glucose above 126. The reason is that people who have a higher fasting glucose level have a greater chance of complications (heart attack, stroke, kidney trouble, vision loss, etc.). Early treatment may prevent these complications. The same is true for hypertension and other diseases. Another issue, is screening for diseases before they erupt, for example, mammography for breast cancer. Yes, breast cancer screening may save only 1 life in 1000 over 10 years. However, many other women will be diagnosed earlier and thus may need smaller surgery (for example Lumpectomy. which preserves the breast vs. Mastectomy, which removes the entire breast) and less systemic treatment (i.e. chemotherapy and radiotherapy). On the other hand, some women will have false positive results and the cost and suffering of doing a work up for a benign breast mass should be taken into account when suggesting a screening procedure. This is part of the reason why there is an argument about the age above which to recommend mammography for women (40 vs. 50 years old). Regarding the cost-benefit ratio, saying that a drug saves only 1 life in 100 is misleading. What is the cost of giving 100 people cholesterol-lowering drugs? Most of these drugs cost pennies and their side-effects are, usually, negligible. Yes, thresholds for treatment are being lowered. Sometimes because of bad reasons, such as covering your ass from malpractice suits and industry lobbying, but most of the time it is due to greater understanding of disease (esp. the early stages of diseases) and better and safer medications.
So hotel A calculates the cost of a room as X. They price it set at X + 10% (or whatever you want). After 2 months of operation they find out that (some) people steal towels and thus the cost of the room goes up to Y (Y > X). The price is now Y + 10%. Guess what? You steal a towel, everyone pays more! Thanks Clint.
In the civilized world you pay for a product/service, with the terms of the service clear in advance. Neither party can change the terms, because they feel like it*. The hotel cannot suddenly change the price mid-stay, and you cannot add perks at-will. Not all hotels give you the same terms: Some have free Wi-Fi; some charge you $9.99/d. Some have breakfast included; some don't. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that once you agree to the terms, you cannot decide that you can take a towel because you deserve it/the hotel can afford it/you are doing them a favor with free publicity/whatever other great excuse you can make up. Taking a towel without permission is stealing. Stealing is wrong. If everyone were to do it, modern society would cease to exist (and no, I am not overdramatizing).
* Example: Sony removing the OtherOS feature was Bad. Why? it was part of the advertised features of the product. People paid to have it and they removed it with no compensation.
Assuming the regular traveler doesn't heat the towels in the microwave, how is what they are doing count as "ridiculous fraudulent charges"? They had 4,000 towels stolen a month. Now they use a system of towel check-ins so they can track them* and prevent theft. If you rent a movie (if you still do such things) and you don't return it, is asking you to pay for it a "fraudulent charge"? I mean, it's great to rant about "Corporate America" fucking the "Average Joe", but face it, this isn't one of those cases.
P.S. if you've never stolen a towel in your life, you should be even happier about this system. More stolen towels mean higher maintenance charges for the hotel, which in the end means a higher bill for everyone. In the end everyone pays for the towels some of the people stole.
* And like some people noted on this thread, since this is a passive RFID chip, it cannot be used to track you. So don't start with the privacy rant also. kthxbye.
Of the $53 million that has been pledged, $40 million has been collected by successfully funded projects.. The remaining $7 million is the amount of money not collected — pledged to projects that did not meet their funding goals. Of the $47 million pledged to projects whose funding has ended ($40M collected + $7M uncollected), approximately 85% of the funds ($40M) were collected.
So we have $40 million + $ 7 million. And of the $47million, $40 million were collected. Very informative!
It's even worse: some religious nuts are against the LHC, because they think that the point of finding the Higgs boson is to prove/disprove the existence of God (hence, "The God particle"). It's stupid and shifts the spotlight from the actual cool science they are doing.
Although I am all for looking for replacement for animal testing, I think we are not there yet. The reason is that a major part of the testing is looking for the odd allergic reaction, i.e. those that occur in 1 in 10/100/1000 subjects. Synthetic skin is a perfect clone of itself; you have no diversity and esp. no immunological diversity (if they even have something akin to an immunologic response, which I doubt). So this synthetic skin might be good for preliminary tests of new compounds (to see that they doesn't cause a reaction with the skin), but in the end you have to test it on real skin, whether animal or human. OTOH, this skin could probably be good as a leather-replacement.
I agree that mistakes can, and will, happen. However, I would have thought the government had protocols on how to redact documents. For example, in physical (i.e. Not digital) documents you do not use Tipp-Ex but a special ink. The decision of how to redact a digital document should be solved by people who are really knowledgable in the field, and thus you prevent the mistake from happening.
i thought it was implied in the summary, but to make sure I read TFA and just as I thought: the article refers to degradation of drugs in storage, not to being less effective in the body. So, your theory, while nice, is irrelevant in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of a Jewish state is that for the first time in modern history, the Jewish people will have a place they are not discriminated against. The Jewish state is not meant to be a place where we discriminate others. Granted, things are not perfect, and I agree that it is easier being Jewish in Israel than Arab, but you can just pick any one of Israel's neighbors to see places where the government treats strangers, women and sometimes even its own citizens with a rough hand.
It's always funny when every small slip-up by Israel is covered and shown as a proof to the inhumanity of the Jewish state, when most (if not all) of the Arab states practice human-rights violation on a daily, if not hourly, basis; and with much worse offences.
I submitted this story a few months ago, but it wasn't picked up, so I guess now will be good time to recount the main facts:
A single scan is equal to 3-9 minutes of natural background radiation exposure and would raise the amount of radiation a person is exposed to on a 6-hour intercontinental flight by about 1%. As for cancer risk, 1 million people flying 10 times a week will have 4 additional cases of cancer (using current models of radiation-cancer association). This is compared to the 600 cases of cancer they will get from the flight itself and to the 400,00 cases these people will have over their lifetime.
I can't find the full article anymore (paywall), but the abstract is here. It is interesting to note that the authors also wrote this:
In medicine, we try to balance risks and benefits of everything we do, and thus while the risks are indeed exceedingly small, the scanners should not be deployed unless they provide benefit—improved national security and safety—and consideration of these issues is outside the scope of our expertise.
The article also points out that since TSA officials do not allow outside scrutiny of the actual radiation levels of the machines, we cannot know if they perform as intended or if they expose us to more radiation. But still, I think they are probably a lot safer than you would have thought.
Israel is not a country where people are persecuted for speaking their mind. If you would just look a couple of weeks back, many Arab citizens protested around the country to remember the Nakba. Do most of the Jewish Israelis agree with them? No. Did anyone interfere with their right for peaceful assembly? Not in the least. In places where the assemblies became violent, only there did the police intervene.
Legally? Yes. Of course, if an Arab would try to buy a house in the middle of an orthodox neighborhood, it will be frowned upon, but such will be the case if I, a Jewish person, will buy a house in the middle of an Arab village.
Yes, I personally know of several such cases. It's not common, but it's not illegal.
I think in a way it's the same as the situation regarding Cochlear Implants (CI) for profound hearing loss. CI are good for adults that lost their hearing at an advanced age, or for babies that are hearing impaired from birth, provided the CI are implanted at a young age (usually before the age of 6-12 mo). The reason is that every sense in our body has both a receptor part (eye, ear, nose, etc.) and an area of the brain tasked with processing the information*. The area in the brain is developed by being stimulated, just like a muscle is built by use. But it's worse than muscles: if the area has never been used, it cannot develop in a later age, so you have to stimulate it as soon as possible. Today it is known that the sooner you implant a baby with a CI, the better the results.
That was the medical side of the issue. The other part is moral: How can we decide for someone if he needs something? Lots of blind and deaf people have succeeded in life without help. OTOH, there is no doubt that life is much harder when you are short one modality compared to everyone else, and this handicap is much more obvious for blindness than it is for deafness. I think the moral dilemma is more difficult for deaf people (esp. deaf children born into deaf families; hearing parents would like nothing better than to have "normal" children). For blindness I don't think there will be any objection to such treatment.
So, assuming the technology gets there (and it will, someday):
Medically - The implant will probably be useful for congenital blindness (if implanted at an early-enough age) and for people who have lost their vision in later life.
Morally - Although there might be some objection about tempering with a child who is too young to decide for himself, I believe most would agree its for his benefit. At a later age, people can decide for themselves (although I personally would love to get my vision back, if I ever lost it).
* This is a bit of an oversimplification since a bit of preliminary processing happens in the sensing organ.
P.S.
I don't think you have to be so pedantic about using both male and female pronouns [s(he), his/her]. Just use the male, and everyone will understand you meant both. Nobody will think you meant to treat only men, and not women.
Damn, a post that is Informative, Insightful and Funny all at once, with a dash of Flamebait and most definitely Underrated (and I am saying this while it is scored +5 Informative). Well done, sir!
If you are so helpful, I will ask about something that has bothered me for a while:
Most of the CFC was produced in the northern hemisphere. Assuming the weather systems of both hemispheres are pretty much separated, why is it that there is a much bigger ozone hole over the southern pole than over the northern pole? I would assume the reverse would be true.
To all the anti-deniers: I don't doubt the fact that CFC caused the ozone hole. It is just that this is a small issue I would like to understand more clearly. If you can't give me a straight answer w/o using curse words, I would ask you to refrain from answering. Thanks!
You should be modded -1 Factual or -1 On-topic :)
Oblig: Google is Evil.
Glad to be of service.
If you'd read the link I posted, you'd see that fasting blood glucose above 130 is abnormal, even for a pregnant woman. Yes, pregnancy causes an insulin-resistant state (in all pregnant women) that probably is meant to ensure enough glucose for the fetus, but combined with a natural tendency for type 2 Diabetes, you can get Gestational Diabetes. And conversely, a pregnant woman who has GDM, probably has a natural tendency for Diabetes, and thus has a higher chance to have Diabetes later on in her life.
I didn't say that getting pregnant makes women more liable to having Diabetes. The thinking today is that women who are prone to Diabetes, may have it unmasked (as gestational diabetes - GDM) during pregnancy due to the hormonal changes in pregnancy and the pregnancy-induced insulin-resistance state.
Of course not, first line treatment for Diabetes is lifestyle changes: Proper diet, weight-loss and regular exercise. Only after failure of these measures do you recommend drug treatment (usually oral drugs, and only later Insulin and other drugs given by injection). The benefit of classifying the patient as having Diabetes, is that there is a better chance of her conforming to the lifestyle recommendations.
If you tell some one that he may have a disease, he will not necessarily listen to your recommendations. However, if you tell him that he has Diabetes and that if he doesn't lose weight he will have to start taking drugs or risk a heart attack, there is a greater chance that he will do something about his weight and diet. Just look at all the people who stopped smoking after having their first heart attack. Nothing like a nice slap in the face (metaphorically speaking) to make someone wake up and smell the coffee.
It's called Gestational Diabetes, and if they have it, they have a greater chance of having Type II Diabetes later on in their life.
Doctors must remember that the way we determine what "normal" values are is by fitting large samples to a bell curve, chopping off the ends at 1 or 2 standard deviations, and calling the middle "normal".
Well, it all depends on the disease/condition. Gout is a disease diagnosed by certain symptoms. Having those symptoms w/o high uric acid is still regarded as gout, while high UA w/o those symptoms does not merit treatment. However, there are diseases that are defined by lab results, and not because we are looking for extra patients but because early recognition and treatment can prevent morbidity and mortality. For example, Diabetes is defined as fasting glucose above 126. The reason is that people who have a higher fasting glucose level have a greater chance of complications (heart attack, stroke, kidney trouble, vision loss, etc.). Early treatment may prevent these complications. The same is true for hypertension and other diseases.
Another issue, is screening for diseases before they erupt, for example, mammography for breast cancer. Yes, breast cancer screening may save only 1 life in 1000 over 10 years. However, many other women will be diagnosed earlier and thus may need smaller surgery (for example Lumpectomy. which preserves the breast vs. Mastectomy, which removes the entire breast) and less systemic treatment (i.e. chemotherapy and radiotherapy). On the other hand, some women will have false positive results and the cost and suffering of doing a work up for a benign breast mass should be taken into account when suggesting a screening procedure. This is part of the reason why there is an argument about the age above which to recommend mammography for women (40 vs. 50 years old).
Regarding the cost-benefit ratio, saying that a drug saves only 1 life in 100 is misleading. What is the cost of giving 100 people cholesterol-lowering drugs? Most of these drugs cost pennies and their side-effects are, usually, negligible.
Yes, thresholds for treatment are being lowered. Sometimes because of bad reasons, such as covering your ass from malpractice suits and industry lobbying, but most of the time it is due to greater understanding of disease (esp. the early stages of diseases) and better and safer medications.
So hotel A calculates the cost of a room as X. They price it set at X + 10% (or whatever you want). After 2 months of operation they find out that (some) people steal towels and thus the cost of the room goes up to Y (Y > X). The price is now Y + 10%. Guess what? You steal a towel, everyone pays more! Thanks Clint.
In the civilized world you pay for a product/service, with the terms of the service clear in advance. Neither party can change the terms, because they feel like it*. The hotel cannot suddenly change the price mid-stay, and you cannot add perks at-will. Not all hotels give you the same terms: Some have free Wi-Fi; some charge you $9.99/d. Some have breakfast included; some don't. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that once you agree to the terms, you cannot decide that you can take a towel because you deserve it/the hotel can afford it/you are doing them a favor with free publicity/whatever other great excuse you can make up.
Taking a towel without permission is stealing. Stealing is wrong. If everyone were to do it, modern society would cease to exist (and no, I am not overdramatizing).
* Example: Sony removing the OtherOS feature was Bad. Why? it was part of the advertised features of the product. People paid to have it and they removed it with no compensation.
A (house) fly in a microwave is too small as well. (Horseflies are SOL).
How the hell do you know that?
Assuming the regular traveler doesn't heat the towels in the microwave, how is what they are doing count as "ridiculous fraudulent charges"? They had 4,000 towels stolen a month. Now they use a system of towel check-ins so they can track them* and prevent theft. If you rent a movie (if you still do such things) and you don't return it, is asking you to pay for it a "fraudulent charge"?
I mean, it's great to rant about "Corporate America" fucking the "Average Joe", but face it, this isn't one of those cases.
P.S. if you've never stolen a towel in your life, you should be even happier about this system. More stolen towels mean higher maintenance charges for the hotel, which in the end means a higher bill for everyone. In the end everyone pays for the towels some of the people stole.
* And like some people noted on this thread, since this is a passive RFID chip, it cannot be used to track you. So don't start with the privacy rant also. kthxbye.
And why is the summery so roundabout?
Of the $53 million that has been pledged, $40 million has been collected by successfully funded projects.. The remaining $7 million is the amount of money not collected — pledged to projects that did not meet their funding goals. Of the $47 million pledged to projects whose funding has ended ($40M collected + $7M uncollected), approximately 85% of the funds ($40M) were collected.
So we have $40 million + $ 7 million. And of the $47million, $40 million were collected. Very informative!
No, but at least they won't attack it; they will just be indifferent, just like they are to all the other science going on in the world.
It's even worse: some religious nuts are against the LHC, because they think that the point of finding the Higgs boson is to prove/disprove the existence of God (hence, "The God particle"). It's stupid and shifts the spotlight from the actual cool science they are doing.
Although I am all for looking for replacement for animal testing, I think we are not there yet. The reason is that a major part of the testing is looking for the odd allergic reaction, i.e. those that occur in 1 in 10/100/1000 subjects. Synthetic skin is a perfect clone of itself; you have no diversity and esp. no immunological diversity (if they even have something akin to an immunologic response, which I doubt). So this synthetic skin might be good for preliminary tests of new compounds (to see that they doesn't cause a reaction with the skin), but in the end you have to test it on real skin, whether animal or human.
OTOH, this skin could probably be good as a leather-replacement.
I agree that mistakes can, and will, happen. However, I would have thought the government had protocols on how to redact documents. For example, in physical (i.e. Not digital) documents you do not use Tipp-Ex but a special ink.
The decision of how to redact a digital document should be solved by people who are really knowledgable in the field, and thus you prevent the mistake from happening.
i thought it was implied in the summary, but to make sure I read TFA and just as I thought: the article refers to degradation of drugs in storage, not to being less effective in the body. So, your theory, while nice, is irrelevant in this case.
...and take a crap in the torpedo chute.