What you see is a lot of judges writing, "This law is clearly unfair and was not intended to apply in this situation, but much as I hate to, I'm forced to follow the law, and sentence you to ten years in jail."
A law making it illegal to photograph the "intimate parts" of women and children in public. What could go wrong? http://www.shutterstock.com/pi...
Actually, in Massachusetts and a few other states, there were laws requiring photo processors to turn photos over to the police if they showed children in a state of undress that was defined very broadly.
There were many cases of parents, including professional photographers, who were turned in by their developing labs because they had taken nude photos of their children. One case involved a family camping trip in the woods.
Sometimes a professional photographer would take hundreds of candid photos of her children, and the prosecutors would take one photo, out of context, which showed a toddler with her legs open, and prosecute them for it.
And no, the prosecutors weren't reasonable. They insisted on plea bargains which would have made the parent a sexual predator. It can easily cost you $30,000 to hire a defense lawyer. People are forced to sell their homes.
So no, it's stupid to pass a law overnight without thinking it out first.
It's stupid to do anything without thinking. That's sort of the definition of stupid.
Yes brilliant. The prosecution was thrown out by the courts because the law was badly written, so they pass another law without hearings, and without giving lawyers a chance to look over it and figure out how to get it right this time.
It takes more than four letters to answer you, but I wouldn't want my life to be in the hands of the juries on some of those day care sex abuse cases. And I wouldn't want to spend my life savings on legal fees. Would you?
New York City does have the financial services industry, and a lot of big law firms, which tend to pay a lot of money.
If any business can afford to be located in New York City, they must have a lot of money, and if they need your skills, they can pay you a lot. They can even pay you enough to live there. Some national corporations used to have a 10% salary premium for employees in New York City.
If your goal is to save as much money as you can, you'd be better off in New York City. You can relocate later.
Voice-Sensitive Regions in the Dog and Human Brain Are Revealed by Comparative fMRI
Highlights
This is the first comparative neuroimaging study of a nonprimate species and humans
Functional analogies were found between dog and human nonprimary auditory cortex
Voice areas preferring conspecific vocalizations were evidenced in the dog brain
Brain sensitivity to vocal cues of emotional valence was found in both species
Summary
During the approximately 18–32 thousand years of domestication [1], dogs and humans have shared a similar social environment [2]. Dog and human vocalizations are thus familiar and relevant to both species [3], although they belong to evolutionarily distant taxa, as their lineages split approximately 90–100 million years ago [4]. In this first comparative neuroimaging study of a nonprimate and a primate species, we made use of this special combination of shared environment and evolutionary distance. We presented dogs and humans with the same set of vocal and nonvocal stimuli to search for functionally analogous voice-sensitive cortical regions. We demonstrate that voice areas exist in dogs and that they show a similar pattern to anterior temporal voice areas in humans. Our findings also reveal that sensitivity to vocal emotional valence cues engages similarly located nonprimary auditory regions in dogs and humans. Although parallel evolution cannot be excluded, our findings suggest that voice areas may have a more ancient evolutionary origin than previously known.
Channel NewsAsia said that police were called to Cantonment Close just after 7:00 am on February 26. Autumn Radtke, 28, was allegedly discovered lying motionless on a second-floor parapet – indicating the possibility that she jumped from a higher floor (though it is unclear what floor she lived on). Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene and preliminary investigations turned up no evidence of foul play. Toxicology results are expected in the coming days.
It has been upheld in US courts that even the minor fame from open-source authorship counts as economic gain (thus reinforcing the GPL's validity as being consequential).
I'd like to know the court citation. I did a quick Google search for "Arms Export Control Act open source software" and it looked like open source and anything else that was public domain was not subject to export restrictions.
As to imports of scientific information, I read about that (I think) in Science, about how some American journals were refusing to accept papers from restricted countries. At least some lawyers argued that the regulations allowed the exchange of scientific information, the journals were wrong, and should start accepting papers.
I've seen submissions in the New England Journal of Medicine from Iran, usually short pieces in their "Images in Clinical Medicine" feature. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... Iran has a pretty good health care system, with doctors trained in the UK.
Iraq used to have one of the best health care systems in the world. Some of the most bitter critics of Saddam Hussein were Iraqi doctors, and I used to read their articles in The Lancet and BMJ. After the war, some of them were treated worse by George W. Bush than they were by Saddam (as in blowing up hospitals).
If they couldn't publish their stuff in American medical journals, the British journals are happy to publish high-quality work.
Or were you under some deluded impression that private sector is some magical saviour, with a ward against all things that could possibly be bad or go wrong?
You have accurately summarized the American right-wing faith in a nutshell.
The amount of mental gymnastics you must have had to perform to reach that conclusion based on the comment you referred to is astonishing and takes a special kind of stupid to achieve.
I'm glad you appreciate the hard work, effort and (most of all) money that the Koch brothers have put in to advancing the cause of stupidity for the 21st century. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Not really, no. Our system costs twice as much for less effective medicine.
I agree that Obamacare (AKA Romneycare) isn't really the answer but the GOP wouldn't allow an actual comprehensive system to get through the House.
Here's a citation from the peer-reviewed literature that supports your claim.
It's important to realize that when we say that Canada and other health care systems cost half as much as ours with about the same outcomes, that's not an ideological slogan like the Republicans use, but we have science-based facts to back it up.
http://www.openmedicine.ca/art... Open Medicine, Vol 1, No 1 (2007) Vol 1, No 1 (2007) > Guyatt A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States
Methods: We identified studies comparing health outcomes of patients in Canada and the United States by searching multiple bibliographic databases and resources. We masked study results before determining study eligibility. We abstracted study characteristics, including methodological quality and generalizability.
Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92–0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.
Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.
Speaking of ideological slogans from the Republicans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02... Health Care Horror Hooey Paul Krugman FEB. 23, 2014 (Right-wingers convinced Americans that farms are being broken up to pay "death tax" estate liabilities, but there is not one singe example. Now the Republicans are creating Obamacare horror stories, which don't hold up upon fact checking. In the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claimed "Bette in Spokane" had lost hergood insurance and was forced to pay $700 a month more. Local reporters found the real Betty, and found out [Bette Grenier had a catastrophic plan, and she refused to look on the ACA web site.] In Michigan, Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch Brothers, is running an ad about Julie Boonstra, who has leukemia, saying that her new policy will have unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. But Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that she will be saving more than she will be paying in out-of-pocket costs. [The Obamacare out-of-pocket maximum is $6,350. Her premiums were cut in half, from $1,100/mo to $571/mo.]) the true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads.
There is one filter that filters out the infra-red light and prevents you from seeing through bathing suits. There's another filter that lets through the infra-red light and filters out everything else and lets you see through bathing suits.
That's because Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan came up with a lot of (relatively) liberal programs, which Nixon supported.
Another one was the guaranteed annual income.
Ralph Nader said that except for foreign policy, the Democrats have moved to the right of Nixon.
there are many meaningful differences between the main two parties. If you think that is not the case, then please, illuminate us as to what you think is important? What is it that "actually matters" that isn't different between the Democrats and Republicans that you think should be different?
Let's take the policy issue I know most about, health care. As most people on Slashdot realize, we spend twice as much on health care as most other developed countries because we pass all our health care payments through an unnecessary, inefficient, parasitical private insurance system. According to the polls, most Americans wanted a Medicare-type system. Yet the Democrats gave us a health care system based on a model created by the Heritage Foundation. So we now have an even more inefficient, expensive system that reduces choice.
Of course the basic problem is the politicians for both parties are dependent on campaign contributions from corporations and other groups with a vested interest in the same legislation that the politicians are voting on. In most other developed countries this would be considered bribery, and the politicians would be disgraced and prosecuted.
So both the Democrats and the Republicans are more responsive to the wealthiest 1% than to the rest of us put together.
GE's fault was that they irresponsibly polluted the Hudson River in the first place. Yes, everybody was doing it at the time, but that's the problem. We had an irresponsible chemical industry, and electrical industry, and if the government isn't watching them, they'll do some of the stupidest, most dangerous things imaginable that cost them much more money, and harm many uninvolved people, in the long run. GE didn't even admit that PCBs were harmful until they wound up in the courts, and all their remediation was the result of court settlements. And this company was building nuclear power plants.
I went to a panel at the New York bar association on PCBs. There was a guy from GE who was still arguing that we didn't have evidence that PCBs were harmful. His argument was that there was a factory in Italy that blew up where people were exposed to higher levels of PCBs without apparent harm. Actually, the factory was producing a different PCB. It turned out that PCBs are a whole class of compounds, and you can't extrapolate from one PCB to another. If one PCB happens to be shaped to wrap around your DNA, it could cause cancer. You can't dismiss that possibility.
Bottom line: GE contaminated the Hudson River with low levels of PCBs of all kinds, and nobody can figure out definitely how dangerous it is to be exposed to low levels of each PCB over long periods of time. GE spent a lot of money, and $1/2 billion sounds right, but they still couldn't undo the damage and they couldn't restore the Hudson River to its original state. There used to be commercial fishing on the Hudson River, and because of the uncertainty, that industry is gone. They (and we) were lucky that over time it didn't turn out to be as bad as some of the Japanese pollution cases.
GE shouldn't have contaminated the Hudson River in the first place. Upstate New York was an industrial area, and there was a lot of dumping pollution like that, of which Love Canal is another case.
I knew chemists from those days, and there was an attitude of, "By the time this becomes a problem, I'll be retired and gone." They knew the mess that they were creating.
I knew an editor from one of the McGraw-Hill electrical industry magazines who insisted to the end, in articles and editorials, that PCBs were harmless. Yeah, PCBs had great dielectric properties and they didn't burn. I was sorry to see them go. But what about the toxicity?
I'm reluctantly forced to let the individuals and corporations off the hook and escape their personal responsibility. It's the whole industry and their attitude up to the 1960s that was responsible. They provided lots of jobs, and created lots of useful modern products like electrical components and appliances, and GE commendably paid taxes, supported the community, and promoted science education (unlike tax-avoiding tech companies today). But they fucked up royally with their toxic waste disposal and we should at least acknowledge that and learn from it.
My conclusion: I don't want to hear about how the wonderful free market and personal responsibility will keep us safe, and government regulation will drag us into poverty. We can't trust corporate executives who are getting bonuses for their quarterly performance to be just greedy enough but not too greedy.
We need government monitoring and regulation to keep an eye on them, and make sure they don't fuck up again, and kill a lot of people, and incidentally go bankrupt (as the asbestos companies did).
Unfortunately, we have an entire political party, the Republicans, who have gone crazy and want to destroy government oversight. We also have a Democratic Party that is often ready to follow them over the cliff, in return for some (admittedly huge) campaign contributions.
The American Chemistry Council, meanwhile, called the review a "rehash" of the authors' first review.
"This iteration is as highly flawed as the first, as once again the authors ignore the fundamental scientific principles of exposure and potency," said council spokesman Scott Jensen.
"What is most concerning is that the authors focus largely on chemicals and heavy metals that are well understood to be inappropriate for children's exposure, are highly regulated and/or are restricted or being phased out. They then extrapolate that similar conclusions should be applied to chemicals that are more widely used in consumer products without evidence to support their claims. Such assertions do nothing to advance true scientific understanding and only create confusion and alarm."
Well, what do you expect the American Chemistry Council to say? They're the industry group of chemical manufacturers that lobbies against environmental regulations. (Unlike the American Chemical Society which includes academic chemists and publishes journals like Environemental Science & Technology.)
without evidence to support their claims.
Who has the burden of proof?
Do we have to prove that these compounds are dangerous, in order to get them out of the environment?
Or do the manufacturers have to prove that they're safe, in order to put them into the environment in the first place?
Pregnant women can take care of tobacco, alcohol, and cocaine themselves.
(The numbers of women in that age group who smoke has gone down dramatically in the last generation, the women I know quit alcohol during pregnancy, and cocaine among pregnant women turned out to be exaggerated.)
How can a pregnant woman protect herself against lead, if auto exhaust from leaded gasoline fills the air with it? Only government can do that job.
Similarly, General Electric dumped hundreds of tons of PCBs into the Hudson River, where it's impossible to remove. Is that supposed to be the woman's responsibility and not GE's responsibility?
Do you believe that every pregnant woman should get a degree in analytical chemistry and a home lab?
Some things are individual responsibilities, and some things are government responsibilities. Actually, some things are corporate responsibilities, but the U.S. corporations don't accept those responsibilities so the government has to clean up after them.
Slashdot Mirror
It could but it usually doesn't.
What you see is a lot of judges writing, "This law is clearly unfair and was not intended to apply in this situation, but much as I hate to, I'm forced to follow the law, and sentence you to ten years in jail."
A law making it illegal to photograph the "intimate parts" of women and children in public. What could go wrong? http://www.shutterstock.com/pi...
Actually, in Massachusetts and a few other states, there were laws requiring photo processors to turn photos over to the police if they showed children in a state of undress that was defined very broadly.
There were many cases of parents, including professional photographers, who were turned in by their developing labs because they had taken nude photos of their children. One case involved a family camping trip in the woods.
Sometimes a professional photographer would take hundreds of candid photos of her children, and the prosecutors would take one photo, out of context, which showed a toddler with her legs open, and prosecute them for it.
And no, the prosecutors weren't reasonable. They insisted on plea bargains which would have made the parent a sexual predator. It can easily cost you $30,000 to hire a defense lawyer. People are forced to sell their homes.
So no, it's stupid to pass a law overnight without thinking it out first.
It's stupid to do anything without thinking. That's sort of the definition of stupid.
Yes brilliant. The prosecution was thrown out by the courts because the law was badly written, so they pass another law without hearings, and without giving lawyers a chance to look over it and figure out how to get it right this time.
Like Marilyn Monroe walking over a subway grate.
Pervs click here http://ibnlive.in.com/news/mar...
It takes more than four letters to answer you, but I wouldn't want my life to be in the hands of the juries on some of those day care sex abuse cases. And I wouldn't want to spend my life savings on legal fees. Would you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
New York City does have the financial services industry, and a lot of big law firms, which tend to pay a lot of money.
If any business can afford to be located in New York City, they must have a lot of money, and if they need your skills, they can pay you a lot. They can even pay you enough to live there. Some national corporations used to have a 10% salary premium for employees in New York City.
If your goal is to save as much money as you can, you'd be better off in New York City. You can relocate later.
You want sin city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...
http://www.cell.com/current-bi...
Voice-Sensitive Regions in the Dog and Human Brain Are Revealed by Comparative fMRI
Highlights
This is the first comparative neuroimaging study of a nonprimate species and humans
Functional analogies were found between dog and human nonprimary auditory cortex
Voice areas preferring conspecific vocalizations were evidenced in the dog brain
Brain sensitivity to vocal cues of emotional valence was found in both species
Summary
During the approximately 18–32 thousand years of domestication [1], dogs and humans have shared a similar social environment [2]. Dog and human vocalizations are thus familiar and relevant to both species [3], although they belong to evolutionarily distant taxa, as their lineages split approximately 90–100 million years ago [4]. In this first comparative neuroimaging study of a nonprimate and a primate species, we made use of this special combination of shared environment and evolutionary distance. We presented dogs and humans with the same set of vocal and nonvocal stimuli to search for functionally analogous voice-sensitive cortical regions. We demonstrate that voice areas exist in dogs and that they show a similar pattern to anterior temporal voice areas in humans. Our findings also reveal that sensitivity to vocal emotional valence cues engages similarly located nonprimary auditory regions in dogs and humans. Although parallel evolution cannot be excluded, our findings suggest that voice areas may have a more ancient evolutionary origin than previously known.
Looking more like suicide. Sad whatever it was.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/03...
Channel NewsAsia said that police were called to Cantonment Close just after 7:00 am on February 26. Autumn Radtke, 28, was allegedly discovered lying motionless on a second-floor parapet – indicating the possibility that she jumped from a higher floor (though it is unclear what floor she lived on). Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene and preliminary investigations turned up no evidence of foul play. Toxicology results are expected in the coming days.
It has been upheld in US courts that even the minor fame from open-source authorship counts as economic gain (thus reinforcing the GPL's validity as being consequential).
I'd like to know the court citation. I did a quick Google search for "Arms Export Control Act open source software" and it looked like open source and anything else that was public domain was not subject to export restrictions.
http://oti.newamerica.net/blog...
http://www.mtu.edu/research/ad...
As to imports of scientific information, I read about that (I think) in Science, about how some American journals were refusing to accept papers from restricted countries. At least some lawyers argued that the regulations allowed the exchange of scientific information, the journals were wrong, and should start accepting papers.
I've seen submissions in the New England Journal of Medicine from Iran, usually short pieces in their "Images in Clinical Medicine" feature. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... Iran has a pretty good health care system, with doctors trained in the UK.
Iraq used to have one of the best health care systems in the world. Some of the most bitter critics of Saddam Hussein were Iraqi doctors, and I used to read their articles in The Lancet and BMJ. After the war, some of them were treated worse by George W. Bush than they were by Saddam (as in blowing up hospitals).
If they couldn't publish their stuff in American medical journals, the British journals are happy to publish high-quality work.
Or were you under some deluded impression that private sector is some magical saviour, with a ward against all things that could possibly be bad or go wrong?
You have accurately summarized the American right-wing faith in a nutshell.
The amount of mental gymnastics you must have had to perform to reach that conclusion based on the comment you referred to is astonishing and takes a special kind of stupid to achieve.
I'm glad you appreciate the hard work, effort and (most of all) money that the Koch brothers have put in to advancing the cause of stupidity for the 21st century. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Not really, no. Our system costs twice as much for less effective medicine.
I agree that Obamacare (AKA Romneycare) isn't really the answer but the GOP wouldn't allow an actual comprehensive system to get through the House.
Here's a citation from the peer-reviewed literature that supports your claim.
It's important to realize that when we say that Canada and other health care systems cost half as much as ours with about the same outcomes, that's not an ideological slogan like the Republicans use, but we have science-based facts to back it up.
http://www.openmedicine.ca/art...
Open Medicine, Vol 1, No 1 (2007)
Vol 1, No 1 (2007) > Guyatt
A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States
Methods: We identified studies comparing health outcomes of patients in Canada and the United States by searching multiple bibliographic databases and resources. We masked study results before determining study eligibility. We abstracted study characteristics, including methodological quality and generalizability.
Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92–0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.
Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.
Speaking of ideological slogans from the Republicans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Health Care Horror Hooey
Paul Krugman
FEB. 23, 2014
(Right-wingers convinced Americans that farms are being broken up to pay "death tax" estate liabilities, but there is not one singe example. Now the Republicans are creating Obamacare horror stories, which don't hold up upon fact checking. In the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claimed "Bette in Spokane" had lost hergood insurance and was forced to pay $700 a month more. Local reporters found the real Betty, and found out [Bette Grenier had a catastrophic plan, and she refused to look on the ACA web site.] In Michigan, Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch Brothers, is running an ad about Julie Boonstra, who has leukemia, saying that her new policy will have unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. But Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that she will be saving more than she will be paying in out-of-pocket costs. [The Obamacare out-of-pocket maximum is $6,350. Her premiums were cut in half, from $1,100/mo to $571/mo.])
the true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads.
There is one filter that filters out the infra-red light and prevents you from seeing through bathing suits. There's another filter that lets through the infra-red light and filters out everything else and lets you see through bathing suits.
http://www.komonews.com/news/p...
So if we tax them 50% of their income after the first $100,000, there's nothing unfair about that.
Does it have the infra-red filter that lets you see through bathing suits?
How about punching a straw through the paper bag?
Some people are just control freaks. Did you ever have a teacher like that in grade school?
Distribute paper bags for them to put on their heads. Punch eyeholes.
There's no need to suppress press. The US found that out long ago.
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.
That's right.
That's because Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan came up with a lot of (relatively) liberal programs, which Nixon supported.
Another one was the guaranteed annual income.
Ralph Nader said that except for foreign policy, the Democrats have moved to the right of Nixon.
there are many meaningful differences between the main two parties. If you think that is not the case, then please, illuminate us as to what you think is important? What is it that "actually matters" that isn't different between the Democrats and Republicans that you think should be different?
Let's take the policy issue I know most about, health care. As most people on Slashdot realize, we spend twice as much on health care as most other developed countries because we pass all our health care payments through an unnecessary, inefficient, parasitical private insurance system. According to the polls, most Americans wanted a Medicare-type system. Yet the Democrats gave us a health care system based on a model created by the Heritage Foundation. So we now have an even more inefficient, expensive system that reduces choice.
Of course the basic problem is the politicians for both parties are dependent on campaign contributions from corporations and other groups with a vested interest in the same legislation that the politicians are voting on. In most other developed countries this would be considered bribery, and the politicians would be disgraced and prosecuted.
So both the Democrats and the Republicans are more responsive to the wealthiest 1% than to the rest of us put together.
That's what matters.
Read Lois Ember's coverage of Love Canal in C&E News or ES&T. Love Canal was a waste disposal site. I followed Love Canal pretty carefully.
If I dumped a bunch of lead in your back yard, wouldn't that be a crime?
If I dumped a bunch of lead in your air, wouldn't that be pretty much the same thing?
Please define "a bunch".
At $0.95 a pound a large enough block might have me saying yes please.
It is the nano-schoshi amounts that some crazy expensive instrument can measure
that bothers me.
Needleman found that at 10 parts per million they began to see measurable declines on IQ tests. I think that would be a bunch.
GE's fault was that they irresponsibly polluted the Hudson River in the first place. Yes, everybody was doing it at the time, but that's the problem. We had an irresponsible chemical industry, and electrical industry, and if the government isn't watching them, they'll do some of the stupidest, most dangerous things imaginable that cost them much more money, and harm many uninvolved people, in the long run. GE didn't even admit that PCBs were harmful until they wound up in the courts, and all their remediation was the result of court settlements. And this company was building nuclear power plants.
I went to a panel at the New York bar association on PCBs. There was a guy from GE who was still arguing that we didn't have evidence that PCBs were harmful. His argument was that there was a factory in Italy that blew up where people were exposed to higher levels of PCBs without apparent harm. Actually, the factory was producing a different PCB. It turned out that PCBs are a whole class of compounds, and you can't extrapolate from one PCB to another. If one PCB happens to be shaped to wrap around your DNA, it could cause cancer. You can't dismiss that possibility.
Bottom line: GE contaminated the Hudson River with low levels of PCBs of all kinds, and nobody can figure out definitely how dangerous it is to be exposed to low levels of each PCB over long periods of time. GE spent a lot of money, and $1/2 billion sounds right, but they still couldn't undo the damage and they couldn't restore the Hudson River to its original state. There used to be commercial fishing on the Hudson River, and because of the uncertainty, that industry is gone. They (and we) were lucky that over time it didn't turn out to be as bad as some of the Japanese pollution cases.
GE shouldn't have contaminated the Hudson River in the first place. Upstate New York was an industrial area, and there was a lot of dumping pollution like that, of which Love Canal is another case.
I knew chemists from those days, and there was an attitude of, "By the time this becomes a problem, I'll be retired and gone." They knew the mess that they were creating.
I knew an editor from one of the McGraw-Hill electrical industry magazines who insisted to the end, in articles and editorials, that PCBs were harmless. Yeah, PCBs had great dielectric properties and they didn't burn. I was sorry to see them go. But what about the toxicity?
I'm reluctantly forced to let the individuals and corporations off the hook and escape their personal responsibility. It's the whole industry and their attitude up to the 1960s that was responsible. They provided lots of jobs, and created lots of useful modern products like electrical components and appliances, and GE commendably paid taxes, supported the community, and promoted science education (unlike tax-avoiding tech companies today). But they fucked up royally with their toxic waste disposal and we should at least acknowledge that and learn from it.
My conclusion: I don't want to hear about how the wonderful free market and personal responsibility will keep us safe, and government regulation will drag us into poverty. We can't trust corporate executives who are getting bonuses for their quarterly performance to be just greedy enough but not too greedy.
We need government monitoring and regulation to keep an eye on them, and make sure they don't fuck up again, and kill a lot of people, and incidentally go bankrupt (as the asbestos companies did).
Unfortunately, we have an entire political party, the Republicans, who have gone crazy and want to destroy government oversight. We also have a Democratic Party that is often ready to follow them over the cliff, in return for some (admittedly huge) campaign contributions.
From TFA:
Well, what do you expect the American Chemistry Council to say? They're the industry group of chemical manufacturers that lobbies against environmental regulations. (Unlike the American Chemical Society which includes academic chemists and publishes journals like Environemental Science & Technology.)
Who has the burden of proof?
Do we have to prove that these compounds are dangerous, in order to get them out of the environment?
Or do the manufacturers have to prove that they're safe, in order to put them into the environment in the first place?
Pregnant women can take care of tobacco, alcohol, and cocaine themselves.
(The numbers of women in that age group who smoke has gone down dramatically in the last generation, the women I know quit alcohol during pregnancy, and cocaine among pregnant women turned out to be exaggerated.)
How can a pregnant woman protect herself against lead, if auto exhaust from leaded gasoline fills the air with it? Only government can do that job.
Similarly, General Electric dumped hundreds of tons of PCBs into the Hudson River, where it's impossible to remove. Is that supposed to be the woman's responsibility and not GE's responsibility?
Do you believe that every pregnant woman should get a degree in analytical chemistry and a home lab?
Some things are individual responsibilities, and some things are government responsibilities. Actually, some things are corporate responsibilities, but the U.S. corporations don't accept those responsibilities so the government has to clean up after them.