It should of course be mentioned that nearly all of these can be had for free from Project Gutenberg, and probably Goodreads and Google Books as well. There is no excuse any more to have not read them.
Me too. I've been using a week-at-a-glance calendar for 40 years.
I started with store-bought calendars, then when I was working in an art department I made up pages customized to my use, copied them, bound them into a book, and made my own calendar.
I've been trying for 40 years to replace it with a paperless system, but I've tried several and so far nothing works. I'm sure it can be done.
I don't like this idea of, "Hire a trainee to work cheap."
Some of the show is scripted, but when I watch a news program, the most interesting thing is the on-air comments by the invited guests, and the back-and-forth debate. How is Newt Gingrich (or whomever) going to talk his way out of this one? That's also the most difficult thing to get down (as I know from often taking notes on panel debates).
I think a trainee would make so many mistakes that it would cost more to go back and correct the mistakes than it would cost to do it right the first time. One of the major uses of the transcript is for future reference, like the CNN transcripts.
I've sat in trials in federal courts a few times. You can watch the stenographer type the transcript on a monitor in front of you, and it's much better than the TV captions.
These were pharmaceutical patent cases and FDA litigation, mostly technical stuff, chemists being cross-examined.
They had a system with a court stenographer typing into a computerized stenotype machine, and the judge and both parties watching the result on monitors.
I was last in court a few years ago, but I don't think it's changed much.
In the old days of manual stenography, stenotypists used to take dictation at 120 words per minute (which is the high end of normal speaking speed) to pass a certification test, and they could do 150 wpm in bursts. They would type abbreviations into a fanfold paper tape, then read the tapes and type a final version.
Now the computerized systems give them the final version automatically, so they don't have to reread it. Some stenotype systems were more amenable to automation than others, but now everybody uses computerized systems.
The result was pretty close to what the final transcript looked like, although I didn't examine them too carefully. The practice has always been for the stenographer to type a draft, and circulated it to the parties for review. (The stenographer is also allowed to ask a witness to repeat something when the stenographer missed it. That's what they're in court for -- to produce a record.)
Court stenographers also make a lot of money ($100,000 a year or more at the top end), because they sell transcripts to the lawyers. A patent case can be worth $100 million, so what's another $100,000 for transcripts? I don't think the TV caption make anything like that. You get what you pay for.
One of the high points of my physics student days was figuring out the equation for the interference pattern of monochromatic light coming through a narrow slit. It was amazing. You integrated from one edge of the slit to the other, and got a big peak. Then you multiplied that by a sine function and got the interference patterns.
My favorite part of Atlas Shrugged was where they go off to Gault Gulch and live off of perpetual motion, by generating power from static electricity in the air.
BTW you can easily find Atlas Shrugged free online. It's worth reading it (or as much as you can stand) to find out what those acolytes are talking about.
I did a bit of research into Love Canal at that time. (For the record, the best summary I read was an article in C&EN.)
The birth defects were the big problem, and I tried to find the studies. They weren't published, and the EPA told me they contained confidential medical information.
I later figured out the significance of that.
One of the major causes of birth defects is a sexually transmitted virus, and if you were trying to explain a cluster of birth defects, that would be one of the first things an epidemiologist would look for.
Another cause of birth defects is genetic damage. You could have clusters, as a result of a family with one mutation, like the Amish.
In the early 1970's I worked in a machine shop. I was exposed to hand-soaking kerosene at one station, which was being used as a cheap cutting/ drilling oil. I developed small wart-like bumps. At a medical library I looked up if kerosene was carcinogenic. One book stated as a fact, that all petroleum distillates are. Another book stated as a fact that it was not, and that the whole issue of chemical carcinogenesis was 'iffy,' or unsettled. Guess which book was written by a chemical industry affiliated group?
But, Wifi causing cancer? I will believe if given a pile of proof.
About that time I was writing for an environmental magazine. Every time the EPA or OSHA or somebody would ban a compound because it had evidence of toxicity, the users would come up with a new chemical without evidence of toxicity. Or we'd have to figure out what to do with water that was contaminated by dioxins and stuff.
I used to go to the library, and interview scientists (on both sides) and ask them, "How do you know this chemical is safe? How do you know it's dangerous? Where's the evidence?"
I was amazed to find out that for most chemicals in daily use, like the ones you could pick up at a hardware store, there was no good evidence one way or the other.
Think about it. How do you prove a chemical is safe? How do you figure out whether a chemical is dangerous? Do you feed chemicals to people and watch what happens? Do you feed chemicals to rats? Do you go back and look at medical records of people who were and weren't exposed to chemicals?
Computerized records now make it easier to keep track of what happens after occupational exposure, but still, it's damn hard to figure it out. There are a few cases where investigators luck out (to the misfortune of the subjects) and find a well-documented pattern, but most of the time it's a short-term study with a small number of (unfortunate) rats who were checked for a small number of problems.
I haven't kept up with that stuff recently. If anybody has I'd be interested in knowing what's going on.
Blaming wifi or cell phones is easy. Actually digging around and finding the true cause of the cancer is hard. Besides, you might discover the cause was environmental, say, the coating on some cookware, or contaminants in food, drink, laundry detergent, whatever. And discovering a household product triggered a cancer is actionable. Best blame it on the wifi and shift the attention of the pitchforks and torches brigade.
The IEEE Spectrum once had a big news story looking at the scientific evidence on the health effects of electromagnetic fields from power lines.
First question: How much EMF is there in the environment, and where is it coming from? There were studies that measured the EMF in households near power lines and away from power lines.
The strongest sources of EMF were food blenders, electric razors, and hair dryers. They were much stronger than power lines. And the ordinary 120v ac circuits in households were stronger sources than power lines in the back yard.
(Yes, they were intermittent sources, but the (weak) evidence of hypothetical damage (or at least biological effects) showed that intermittent sources had more of an effect (in tissue culture, among others) than constant sources.)
So I used to tell people, "If you're worried about power lines, why aren't you worried about the power lines in your baseboards?"
Nobody believes that since the Republican-majority Supreme Court handed the election over to the Republican candidate in Bush vs. Gore.
So that's what really did it for you? That's when you started doubting the system, when the Supreme Court upheld the legal principle that you can't keep changing the rules of an election after the voting until the other guy wins?
Starting in the 1970s, I worked as a paralegal in some law firms on a different cases, including a few important pro bono stuff. [Long legal experience omitted] There was a big debate at the time about whether the law was just enforcing the privilege of the rich, or whether it actually promoted justice. At one point, they had me convinced that there was some justice in the system, after we won some abortion cases and forced some cities and states to provide housing for the homeless, as they were required to do in their constitutions (which they had ignored). The civil rights laws finally helped negroes fight for right to vote in the South without getting killed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers'_murders as often, and finally gave broad protection to black people and women as well.
So the optimists had me convinced. The law could sometimes, imperfectly, provide justice. American corporate capitalism seemed to be doing pretty good too -- good pay, secure jobs.
Then came Ronald Reagan. The gentleman's agreement up to then in Congress was that each president would choose a distinguished legal scholar and jurist who was impartial and respected by all sides. Reagan openly announced that he would be appointing justices that would give conservatives the results they wanted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Supreme_Court_candidates He deliberately chose young justices (rather than the customary older, experienced justices) to end the normal rotation in the Court. I followed this on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and they were open about what they were trying to do -- which was pack the court. And yes, Scalia was one of the nastiest bullies of all, just making decisions based on his own opinion and coming up with excuses to ignore the law. Since then it's gotten worse.
There were many opinions of the Supreme Court that I didn't like, but I never expected to see something like Bush vs. Gore. The law in Florida was that votes were to be counted according to the intent of the voter. In order to believe that the voters intended to vote for Bush, you'd have to believe that 3,400 Jewish voters intentionally voted for Pat Bucanan, a prominent critic of Israel, instead of Gore and Lieberman. Even Bucanan didn't believe that. The 5 Republican justices ignored Florida law, and the facts, to hand the election to Bush. Since then they've been voting the Republican party line, which has moved far to the right.
So I had to admit that the Marxist cynics were right. The law enforces the privileges of the powerful. No money, no justice.
Write your Congressman and Senators, don't just update their Wiki page.
That's an interesting political science model: Politicians read thoughtful opinions by their constituents, and change their policies based on reasoned facts and arguments.
I had a friend who used to write thoughtful, articulate letters to her elected officials. I thought it was charming, in a naive way.
In my observation, politicians are more likely to get elected based on campaign contributions from special interest groups. In addition to money, there are special interest groups that can actually drive voters to the polls, like AIPAC and the National Rifle Association.
My Senator is Chuck Schumer. He takes in so much money he needs a Brinks truck to come back from restaurant row. I don't think he's influenced much by constituent letters. He's shocked, shocked by the wiretaps under the Patriot Act, which he opposes after he supported it. I think I'd be better off updating his Wikipedia page to reflect that. I wonder if his fanboys will revert it.
It's kind of hopeless, but the best way to make a difference without being a billionaire is to support challengers in the primaries, and third parties in the general elections, in close races.
You may have noticed that persons under 25 are the main customers of that branch of McDonald's.
Perhaps, but I wonder how much they're really spending. For example, here in the United States the Six Flags corporation, which operates themed parks around the country, used to market heavily to teenagers until they realized three things. First, unruly teenagers scare away families and especially families with young children. Second, they tend to break things. Third and finally, they don't spend as much as you might think. In response to these realizations, they reduced the marketing to teenagers, kicked out the troublemakers and their profits improved. Coincidence? I think not.
This one has everything -- video monitoring the streets too. (Contrary to vendor claims, the video hasn't prevented crime.) This sounds like one of those 1950s movies where, the next thing you know, the teenagers will be playing rock and roll and dancing. Don't worry, they don't do this to white kids.
Police Want to Cut Wi-Fi at Crown Heights McDonald's to Prevent Crime By Sonja Sharp on November 15, 2013 8:38am DNAinfo
CROWN HEIGHTS — Phone thefts and teen brawls have gotten so bad at a Crown Heights McDonald's that police asked the management to turn off the Wi-Fi as a way of scattering the after-school crowds, DNAinfo New York has learned.
“We asked them to kill the Wi-Fi there from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. so it doesn’t become a hangout," Capt. Eddie Lott, commanding officer of the 77th Precinct, said of the McDonald's at Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway. "That McDonald's is a big hangout for young people."
Lott said he had reached an agreement with the managers of the McDonald's to cut the Wi-Fi in the afternoons, but it was still going strong this week — and McDonald's corporate office said the company had not agreed to anything yet.
"As good corporate citizens, we are working with the police to ensure the safety of our customers," the company said in a statement, adding that that McDonald's has hired additional security.
"The police have presented many solutions, one of which includes turning off the Wi-Fi."
The 77th Precinct has seen a 19 percent jump in robberies so far this year compared to the previous year, coupled with a 10 percent increase in felony assaults, NYPD statistics show. Grand larcenies, which police said include many phone thefts, have spiked by nearly 30 percent.
The precinct did not release separate crime statistics for Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway.
While the intersection is far from the only problem spot in the neighborhood, police in both the 77th and the 71st precincts have repeatedly called it one of the most troubling. Earlier this fall, Lott put an NYPD SkyWatch tower at the intersection, videotaping 360 degrees 24 hours a day as both a deterrent and a way of catching suspects after crimes occur.
"That’s why we have the SkyWatch there — we want to prevent those things from happening," Lott told residents in September when asked about the large group fights that routinely break out on the corner, particularly on Fridays.
"Hopefully we can abate that and it won’t become the problem that it was the end of last school year."
Teens, too, say the fights and thefts there have become routine.
"It's very violent — people get chased, jumped, beat up," said Melissa, 16, a student at nearby Clara Barton High School.
"It'll be three girls, five boys, and then their friends jump in. A lot of people get their phones stolen here. People from other schools, if they see someone with a phone, they'll take it."
But while it may curb crime, regular customers like Devonte, 16, said they would be unhappy about losing wireless access in the McDonald's.
"The library's closed a lot, so I can't go there," Devonte said. "The Wi-Fi brings me here mostly.... It'd be kind of upsetting if they turned it off."
FamousandRich a month ago Why don't the geniuses at NYPD just put a pair of cops on post at the location or is that just too easy for these idiots to figure out?
People argue about pennies spent on school lunches, but can't be bothered to track millions spent on surveillance? Numerous cities, especially New York, have demonstrated that contemporaneous analysis of data, and general analysis of trends and patterns, can make a big difference in incidents.
Are you talking about CompStat? Where have they proven that?
You — and others — seem to have misconstrued my argument to mean, the government simply can not do anything. That's not, what I said. They can do it — just poorly.
it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts
Is not it a little early in the conversation for ad hominems?
I base this on several years of the Wall Street Journal comments page, until I gave up on them. And I read lots of conservative articles on health care policy. There are conservatives who change their minds based on the facts, but in my experience they are rare. William Buckley is dead. The WSJ editorial page has turned into a Pravda for the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world
In case you're not used to reading medical journal articles (and most people aren't), the point of these studies is that they took the medical conditions that they most frequently treated, and were responsible for the most deaths, like heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney disease, where different doctors treated the same patients different ways, and they did randomized, controlled trials to see which treatments worked at all and which were better. They also did studies of different VA hospitals to see which hospitals had better and worse outcomes. They tried to improve the hospitals with worse outcomes, and if that didn't work, they shut the departments down.
If you go to any major medical conference, and go to the sessions on important diseases, you'll usually hear them talking about the "VA study." That's because in many medical specialties, the VA did the major, best-designed study to find out which treatments work and didn't work. There are a few private non-government organizations, like Kaiser-Permanente and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who do the same thing, but (not to disparage them), the VA does a lot more of these studies.
The National Institutes of Health also does big studies like that. Of course, with the budget cuts, they can't do as many, and they're being forced right now to decide which important ongoing studies will have to go, as Science and Nature have been reporting.
Everybody who follows medical research knows this. If you say, the government can't do anything well, they'll know that you don't know anything about the reality in this important field.
And as for those complaints about the bad outcomes in VA hospitals -- those are the kind of thing that happen in any hospital. It's easier to find out what happens in the VA hospitals because of their internal accounting and disclosure policies. You'll notice that the story got that information from the government's own review. Try to get that same information from private hospitals. What matters is when doctors who know how to compare hospitals compare large numbers of patients, to see whether there are any statistically significant patterns. When they do that, the VA hospitals usually do well. And when they don't, they find out why and how to change it.
The problem underlying the entire fiasco — and the less-impacting others like it (Amtrak, anyone?) — is that whatever the government does, is done poorly.
I realize that that's a right-wing meme, and it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts, but it's not true.
The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world. I've read the studies that compare them to other centers around the world. They've got the data.
Ronald Reagan got his colon and prostate surgery at Walter Reed. Watch what they do, not what they say.
If you got a head injury in Iraq, you'd have the best chance in the world of surviving with as much of your brain left as possible in the military health system. Ditto with saving a leg or an arm.
The National Institutes of Health is the biggest medical research center in the world. They've done more important research, and won more Nobel prizes, than the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry put together.
I leave it to Gordon Crovitz to explain how the U.S. government created the Internet.
"Natural experiment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment is a well-established term used in science and economics to describe a situation in which a researcher didn't or couldn't do an experiment, but lucked into a situation that could give results similar to what they would have gotten if he did do an experiment.
In this case, you can't castrate boys and bring them up as girls just to advance feminist science.
But these pediatricians had a group of infants who were born with severe deformities, including genital deformities, and were naturally partially castrated.
The doctors had to do something with these infants. If they left them with their internal organs hanging out of their abdomen, they would die (as they did in earlier times). So they repaired their bodies as best as they could.
At that time, they were unable to repair them with male genitals, so they had to do something else. They could have repaired them into males with no genitals at all. Or they could repair them as females by constructing female genitals. Surgeons are often in a position where neither alternative is good, and if you do nothing they die, so they have to choose the best bad option. That's what they did.
Go to a pediatric ward and you'll see kids with wheelchairs, fatal degenerative diseases, cancer, breathing tubes, feeding tubes. Doctors can't always cure them, so they do the best they can.
At that time, the doctors believed -- as many people here are arguing -- that gender is determined by environment, not genetics. If that were true, they could turn them into reasonably well-adjusted girls, so that's what they decided to do. It turned out the doctors were wrong. That was the natural experiment.
Unfortunately, personal observations and theories are all anybody's got on this issue. Scientists can't ethically experiment on children, so they're left to try to tease causality out of statistical regressions.
As I said above, there was a natural experiment done on boys who were born without functioning genitals, and were surgically converted to girls and brought up as girls. Despite that, they behaved as boys from early infancy, and most of them spontaneously insisted that they were boys, even before puberty.
Here's a classic, often-cited study. To summarize it, some boys are born with an abdominal defect that leaves their bladder or genital organs exposed and malformed. Years ago, surgeons weren't able to reconstruct male organs, so they "converted" the infants at birth to females. They told the parents to keep this secret from the child, and bring them up as girls. So this was a scientific experiment of bring up boys as girls, to the greatest extent imaginable.
As it turned out, most of the boys rebelled against being brought up as girls, and followed male rather than female behavior. Even as infants of a few months of age, they preferred male toys, such as weapons, and male playing, such as aggression and fighting. As they got older, the preference for male behavior, such as fighting and construction toys, was even more noticeable. Boys played with toy guns. They didn't play with tea sets. And they had strong preferences for male clothing.
Any reasonable person would have to admit that this is strong evidence that sexual behavior is largely innate, not environmental.
If you can surgically change a boy to a girl, bring him up as a girl, and have him insist on following male behavior instead, then you could expect the same results from a similar experiment with bringing up girls as boys. If girls have an inherent preference for (or against) certain careers, you'll find more (or fewer) women in those careers, even without discrimination against women, and even despite all the affirmative action and encouragement in the world.
I don't object to women studying engineering; I encourage it. But I would expect that even with the best gender-free STEM education in the world, you're not going to have equal results of as many women in every discipline of engineering as men. It seems to max out at 10%.
Science magazine has also published a lot of work on gender in science and science education. There are some efforts that succeeded and other efforts that failed. Women in biology and medicine, success. Women in engineering, relatively rare.
The evidence goes against somebody suing an employer and saying, "There are more male than female engineers, therefore you're discriminating, and not giving us opportunities, and you should pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars." Which happened in many industries in the 1970s.
********************
Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth
William G. Reiner, M.D., and John P. Gearhart, M.D. N Engl J Med 2004; 350:333-341 January 22, 2004 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa022236
Background
Cloacal exstrophy is a rare, complex defect of the entire pelvis and its contents that occurs during embryogenesis and is associated with severe phallic inadequacy or phallic absence in genetic males. For about 25 years, neonatal assignment to female sex has been advocated for affected males to overcome the issue of phallic inadequacy, but data on outcome remain sparse.
Methods
We assessed all 16 genetic males in our cloacal-exstrophy clinic at the ages of 5 to 16 years. Fourteen underwent neonatal assignment to female sex socially, legally, and surgically; the parents of the remaining two refused to do so. Detailed questionnaires extensively evaluated the development of sexual role and identity, as defined by the subjects' persistent declarations of their sex.
Results
Eight of the 14 subjects assigned to female sex declared themselves male during the course of this study, whereas the 2 raised as males remained male. Subjects could be grouped according to their stated sexual identity. Five subjects were living as females; three were living with unclear sexual identity, although two of the three had declared themselves male; and eight were living as males, six of whom had reassigned themselves to m
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It should of course be mentioned that nearly all of these can be had for free from Project Gutenberg, and probably Goodreads and Google Books as well. There is no excuse any more to have not read them.
That's a good point. Actually, some of the more recent books went back into copyright under the Micky Mouse copyright extension act. James Joyce only went into public domain in 2012. http://joycefoundation.osu.edu/joyce-copyright/fair-use-and-permissions/about-law/public-domain http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/01/james-joyce-public-domain.html
But the idea of having the entire Great Books on a Kindle that weighs less than a Modern Library Giant Edition is awesome.
I'll second that. That's a subset of the Great Books.
I'd add the Apology of Socrates and On Liberty by John Stuart Mill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_books#Sample_list
Me too. I've been using a week-at-a-glance calendar for 40 years.
I started with store-bought calendars, then when I was working in an art department I made up pages customized to my use, copied them, bound them into a book, and made my own calendar.
I've been trying for 40 years to replace it with a paperless system, but I've tried several and so far nothing works. I'm sure it can be done.
That T-square and Rapidograph pen had a long run.
I don't like this idea of, "Hire a trainee to work cheap."
Some of the show is scripted, but when I watch a news program, the most interesting thing is the on-air comments by the invited guests, and the back-and-forth debate. How is Newt Gingrich (or whomever) going to talk his way out of this one? That's also the most difficult thing to get down (as I know from often taking notes on panel debates).
I think a trainee would make so many mistakes that it would cost more to go back and correct the mistakes than it would cost to do it right the first time. One of the major uses of the transcript is for future reference, like the CNN transcripts.
That's because your pinkie is the easiest finger to make a mistake with, and the semicolon is right under your ;pinkie. I do it all the time.
Speed is more im;portant than accuarcy.
I've sat in trials in federal courts a few times. You can watch the stenographer type the transcript on a monitor in front of you, and it's much better than the TV captions.
These were pharmaceutical patent cases and FDA litigation, mostly technical stuff, chemists being cross-examined.
They had a system with a court stenographer typing into a computerized stenotype machine, and the judge and both parties watching the result on monitors.
I was last in court a few years ago, but I don't think it's changed much.
In the old days of manual stenography, stenotypists used to take dictation at 120 words per minute (which is the high end of normal speaking speed) to pass a certification test, and they could do 150 wpm in bursts. They would type abbreviations into a fanfold paper tape, then read the tapes and type a final version.
Now the computerized systems give them the final version automatically, so they don't have to reread it. Some stenotype systems were more amenable to automation than others, but now everybody uses computerized systems.
The result was pretty close to what the final transcript looked like, although I didn't examine them too carefully. The practice has always been for the stenographer to type a draft, and circulated it to the parties for review. (The stenographer is also allowed to ask a witness to repeat something when the stenographer missed it. That's what they're in court for -- to produce a record.)
Court stenographers also make a lot of money ($100,000 a year or more at the top end), because they sell transcripts to the lawyers. A patent case can be worth $100 million, so what's another $100,000 for transcripts? I don't think the TV caption make anything like that. You get what you pay for.
Right. I took a course like that too.
One of the high points of my physics student days was figuring out the equation for the interference pattern of monochromatic light coming through a narrow slit. It was amazing. You integrated from one edge of the slit to the other, and got a big peak. Then you multiplied that by a sine function and got the interference patterns.
My favorite part of Atlas Shrugged was where they go off to Gault Gulch and live off of perpetual motion, by generating power from static electricity in the air.
BTW you can easily find Atlas Shrugged free online. It's worth reading it (or as much as you can stand) to find out what those acolytes are talking about.
I did a bit of research into Love Canal at that time. (For the record, the best summary I read was an article in C&EN.)
The birth defects were the big problem, and I tried to find the studies. They weren't published, and the EPA told me they contained confidential medical information.
I later figured out the significance of that.
One of the major causes of birth defects is a sexually transmitted virus, and if you were trying to explain a cluster of birth defects, that would be one of the first things an epidemiologist would look for.
Another cause of birth defects is genetic damage. You could have clusters, as a result of a family with one mutation, like the Amish.
In the early 1970's I worked in a machine shop. I was exposed to hand-soaking kerosene at one station, which was being used as a cheap cutting/ drilling oil. I developed small wart-like bumps. At a medical library I looked up if kerosene was carcinogenic. One book stated as a fact, that all petroleum distillates are. Another book stated as a fact that it was not, and that the whole issue of chemical carcinogenesis was 'iffy,' or unsettled. Guess which book was written by a chemical industry affiliated group?
But, Wifi causing cancer? I will believe if given a pile of proof.
About that time I was writing for an environmental magazine. Every time the EPA or OSHA or somebody would ban a compound because it had evidence of toxicity, the users would come up with a new chemical without evidence of toxicity. Or we'd have to figure out what to do with water that was contaminated by dioxins and stuff.
I used to go to the library, and interview scientists (on both sides) and ask them, "How do you know this chemical is safe? How do you know it's dangerous? Where's the evidence?"
I was amazed to find out that for most chemicals in daily use, like the ones you could pick up at a hardware store, there was no good evidence one way or the other.
Think about it. How do you prove a chemical is safe? How do you figure out whether a chemical is dangerous? Do you feed chemicals to people and watch what happens? Do you feed chemicals to rats? Do you go back and look at medical records of people who were and weren't exposed to chemicals?
Computerized records now make it easier to keep track of what happens after occupational exposure, but still, it's damn hard to figure it out. There are a few cases where investigators luck out (to the misfortune of the subjects) and find a well-documented pattern, but most of the time it's a short-term study with a small number of (unfortunate) rats who were checked for a small number of problems.
I haven't kept up with that stuff recently. If anybody has I'd be interested in knowing what's going on.
Blaming wifi or cell phones is easy. Actually digging around and finding the true cause of the cancer is hard. Besides, you might discover the cause was environmental, say, the coating on some cookware, or contaminants in food, drink, laundry detergent, whatever. And discovering a household product triggered a cancer is actionable. Best blame it on the wifi and shift the attention of the pitchforks and torches brigade.
The IEEE Spectrum once had a big news story looking at the scientific evidence on the health effects of electromagnetic fields from power lines.
First question: How much EMF is there in the environment, and where is it coming from? There were studies that measured the EMF in households near power lines and away from power lines.
The strongest sources of EMF were food blenders, electric razors, and hair dryers. They were much stronger than power lines. And the ordinary 120v ac circuits in households were stronger sources than power lines in the back yard.
(Yes, they were intermittent sources, but the (weak) evidence of hypothetical damage (or at least biological effects) showed that intermittent sources had more of an effect (in tissue culture, among others) than constant sources.)
So I used to tell people, "If you're worried about power lines, why aren't you worried about the power lines in your baseboards?"
Nobody believes that since the Republican-majority Supreme Court handed the election over to the Republican candidate in Bush vs. Gore.
So that's what really did it for you? That's when you started doubting the system, when the Supreme Court upheld the legal principle that you can't keep changing the rules of an election after the voting until the other guy wins?
Scalia on Bush v Gore: ‘Get Over It’
Starting in the 1970s, I worked as a paralegal in some law firms on a different cases, including a few important pro bono stuff. [Long legal experience omitted] There was a big debate at the time about whether the law was just enforcing the privilege of the rich, or whether it actually promoted justice. At one point, they had me convinced that there was some justice in the system, after we won some abortion cases and forced some cities and states to provide housing for the homeless, as they were required to do in their constitutions (which they had ignored). The civil rights laws finally helped negroes fight for right to vote in the South without getting killed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers'_murders as often, and finally gave broad protection to black people and women as well.
So the optimists had me convinced. The law could sometimes, imperfectly, provide justice. American corporate capitalism seemed to be doing pretty good too -- good pay, secure jobs.
Then came Ronald Reagan. The gentleman's agreement up to then in Congress was that each president would choose a distinguished legal scholar and jurist who was impartial and respected by all sides. Reagan openly announced that he would be appointing justices that would give conservatives the results they wanted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Supreme_Court_candidates He deliberately chose young justices (rather than the customary older, experienced justices) to end the normal rotation in the Court. I followed this on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and they were open about what they were trying to do -- which was pack the court. And yes, Scalia was one of the nastiest bullies of all, just making decisions based on his own opinion and coming up with excuses to ignore the law. Since then it's gotten worse.
There were many opinions of the Supreme Court that I didn't like, but I never expected to see something like Bush vs. Gore. The law in Florida was that votes were to be counted according to the intent of the voter. In order to believe that the voters intended to vote for Bush, you'd have to believe that 3,400 Jewish voters intentionally voted for Pat Bucanan, a prominent critic of Israel, instead of Gore and Lieberman. Even Bucanan didn't believe that. The 5 Republican justices ignored Florida law, and the facts, to hand the election to Bush. Since then they've been voting the Republican party line, which has moved far to the right.
So I had to admit that the Marxist cynics were right. The law enforces the privileges of the powerful. No money, no justice.
Write your Congressman and Senators, don't just update their Wiki page.
That's an interesting political science model: Politicians read thoughtful opinions by their constituents, and change their policies based on reasoned facts and arguments.
I had a friend who used to write thoughtful, articulate letters to her elected officials. I thought it was charming, in a naive way.
In my observation, politicians are more likely to get elected based on campaign contributions from special interest groups. In addition to money, there are special interest groups that can actually drive voters to the polls, like AIPAC and the National Rifle Association.
My Senator is Chuck Schumer. He takes in so much money he needs a Brinks truck to come back from restaurant row. I don't think he's influenced much by constituent letters. He's shocked, shocked by the wiretaps under the Patriot Act, which he opposes after he supported it. I think I'd be better off updating his Wikipedia page to reflect that. I wonder if his fanboys will revert it.
It's kind of hopeless, but the best way to make a difference without being a billionaire is to support challengers in the primaries, and third parties in the general elections, in close races.
Nobody believes that since the Republican-majority Supreme Court handed the election over to the Republican candidate in Bush vs. Gore.
I don't even think the idealistic lawyers believe that. They've had too much experience with the courts.
It's like the Greek philosopher Thrasymacus said: law is the interest of the strong.
During the cold war, we heard stories about how the Communist governments monitor their citizens.
Now our government is monitoring us in ways that the East Germans would envy.
Here's something useful you can do:
-- Find out how your Congressman and Senators voted on these policies.
-- Add it to their Wikipedia page.
-- Don't vote for them if they don't support the Fourth Amendment.
You may have noticed that persons under 25 are the main customers of that branch of McDonald's.
Perhaps, but I wonder how much they're really spending. For example, here in the United States the Six Flags corporation, which operates themed parks around the country, used to market heavily to teenagers until they realized three things. First, unruly teenagers scare away families and especially families with young children. Second, they tend to break things. Third and finally, they don't spend as much as you might think. In response to these realizations, they reduced the marketing to teenagers, kicked out the troublemakers and their profits improved. Coincidence? I think not.
Was that before or after they went bankrupt?
You may have noticed that persons under 25 are the main customers of that branch of McDonald's.
Outside McDonald's, it's a public street. It would probably be a violation of the noise laws to play deliberately annoying sounds.
This one has everything -- video monitoring the streets too. (Contrary to vendor claims, the video hasn't prevented crime.) This sounds like one of those 1950s movies where, the next thing you know, the teenagers will be playing rock and roll and dancing. Don't worry, they don't do this to white kids.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20131115/crown-heights/police-want-cut-wi-fi-at-crown-heights-mcdonalds-prevent-crime
Police Want to Cut Wi-Fi at Crown Heights McDonald's to Prevent Crime
By Sonja Sharp on November 15, 2013 8:38am
DNAinfo
CROWN HEIGHTS — Phone thefts and teen brawls have gotten so bad at a Crown Heights McDonald's that police asked the management to turn off the Wi-Fi as a way of scattering the after-school crowds, DNAinfo New York has learned.
“We asked them to kill the Wi-Fi there from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. so it doesn’t become a hangout," Capt. Eddie Lott, commanding officer of the 77th Precinct, said of the McDonald's at Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway. "That McDonald's is a big hangout for young people."
Lott said he had reached an agreement with the managers of the McDonald's to cut the Wi-Fi in the afternoons, but it was still going strong this week — and McDonald's corporate office said the company had not agreed to anything yet.
"As good corporate citizens, we are working with the police to ensure the safety of our customers," the company said in a statement, adding that that McDonald's has hired additional security.
"The police have presented many solutions, one of which includes turning off the Wi-Fi."
The 77th Precinct has seen a 19 percent jump in robberies so far this year compared to the previous year, coupled with a 10 percent increase in felony assaults, NYPD statistics show. Grand larcenies, which police said include many phone thefts, have spiked by nearly 30 percent.
The precinct did not release separate crime statistics for Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway.
While the intersection is far from the only problem spot in the neighborhood, police in both the 77th and the 71st precincts have repeatedly called it one of the most troubling. Earlier this fall, Lott put an NYPD SkyWatch tower at the intersection, videotaping 360 degrees 24 hours a day as both a deterrent and a way of catching suspects after crimes occur.
"That’s why we have the SkyWatch there — we want to prevent those things from happening," Lott told residents in September when asked about the large group fights that routinely break out on the corner, particularly on Fridays.
"Hopefully we can abate that and it won’t become the problem that it was the end of last school year."
Teens, too, say the fights and thefts there have become routine.
"It's very violent — people get chased, jumped, beat up," said Melissa, 16, a student at nearby Clara Barton High School.
"It'll be three girls, five boys, and then their friends jump in. A lot of people get their phones stolen here. People from other schools, if they see someone with a phone, they'll take it."
But while it may curb crime, regular customers like Devonte, 16, said they would be unhappy about losing wireless access in the McDonald's.
"The library's closed a lot, so I can't go there," Devonte said. "The Wi-Fi brings me here mostly.... It'd be kind of upsetting if they turned it off."
FamousandRich
a month ago
Why don't the geniuses at NYPD just put a pair of cops on post at the location or is that just too easy for these idiots to figure out?
People argue about pennies spent on school lunches, but can't be bothered to track millions spent on surveillance? Numerous cities, especially New York, have demonstrated that contemporaneous analysis of data, and general analysis of trends and patterns, can make a big difference in incidents.
Are you talking about CompStat? Where have they proven that?
You — and others — seem to have misconstrued my argument to mean, the government simply can not do anything. That's not, what I said. They can do it — just poorly.
Is not it a little early in the conversation for ad hominems?
I base this on several years of the Wall Street Journal comments page, until I gave up on them. And I read lots of conservative articles on health care policy. There are conservatives who change their minds based on the facts, but in my experience they are rare. William Buckley is dead. The WSJ editorial page has turned into a Pravda for the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world
Citation needed?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22Veterans'+Affairs%22
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1007474
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7979780
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/86/1/121.abstract
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/93/12/2128.abstract
In case you're not used to reading medical journal articles (and most people aren't), the point of these studies is that they took the medical conditions that they most frequently treated, and were responsible for the most deaths, like heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney disease, where different doctors treated the same patients different ways, and they did randomized, controlled trials to see which treatments worked at all and which were better. They also did studies of different VA hospitals to see which hospitals had better and worse outcomes. They tried to improve the hospitals with worse outcomes, and if that didn't work, they shut the departments down.
If you go to any major medical conference, and go to the sessions on important diseases, you'll usually hear them talking about the "VA study." That's because in many medical specialties, the VA did the major, best-designed study to find out which treatments work and didn't work. There are a few private non-government organizations, like Kaiser-Permanente and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who do the same thing, but (not to disparage them), the VA does a lot more of these studies.
The National Institutes of Health also does big studies like that. Of course, with the budget cuts, they can't do as many, and they're being forced right now to decide which important ongoing studies will have to go, as Science and Nature have been reporting.
Everybody who follows medical research knows this. If you say, the government can't do anything well, they'll know that you don't know anything about the reality in this important field.
And as for those complaints about the bad outcomes in VA hospitals -- those are the kind of thing that happen in any hospital. It's easier to find out what happens in the VA hospitals because of their internal accounting and disclosure policies. You'll notice that the story got that information from the government's own review. Try to get that same information from private hospitals. What matters is when doctors who know how to compare hospitals compare large numbers of patients, to see whether there are any statistically significant patterns. When they do that, the VA hospitals usually do well. And when they don't, they find out why and how to change it.
The problem underlying the entire fiasco — and the less-impacting others like it (Amtrak, anyone?) — is that whatever the government does, is done poorly .
I realize that that's a right-wing meme, and it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts, but it's not true.
The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world. I've read the studies that compare them to other centers around the world. They've got the data.
Ronald Reagan got his colon and prostate surgery at Walter Reed. Watch what they do, not what they say.
If you got a head injury in Iraq, you'd have the best chance in the world of surviving with as much of your brain left as possible in the military health system. Ditto with saving a leg or an arm.
The National Institutes of Health is the biggest medical research center in the world. They've done more important research, and won more Nobel prizes, than the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry put together.
I leave it to Gordon Crovitz to explain how the U.S. government created the Internet.
NASA put the first man on the moon.
Does the invasion of Normandy count?
"Natural experiment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment is a well-established term used in science and economics to describe a situation in which a researcher didn't or couldn't do an experiment, but lucked into a situation that could give results similar to what they would have gotten if he did do an experiment.
In this case, you can't castrate boys and bring them up as girls just to advance feminist science.
But these pediatricians had a group of infants who were born with severe deformities, including genital deformities, and were naturally partially castrated.
The doctors had to do something with these infants. If they left them with their internal organs hanging out of their abdomen, they would die (as they did in earlier times). So they repaired their bodies as best as they could.
At that time, they were unable to repair them with male genitals, so they had to do something else. They could have repaired them into males with no genitals at all. Or they could repair them as females by constructing female genitals. Surgeons are often in a position where neither alternative is good, and if you do nothing they die, so they have to choose the best bad option. That's what they did.
Go to a pediatric ward and you'll see kids with wheelchairs, fatal degenerative diseases, cancer, breathing tubes, feeding tubes. Doctors can't always cure them, so they do the best they can.
At that time, the doctors believed -- as many people here are arguing -- that gender is determined by environment, not genetics. If that were true, they could turn them into reasonably well-adjusted girls, so that's what they decided to do. It turned out the doctors were wrong. That was the natural experiment.
Unfortunately, personal observations and theories are all anybody's got on this issue. Scientists can't ethically experiment on children, so they're left to try to tease causality out of statistical regressions.
As I said above, there was a natural experiment done on boys who were born without functioning genitals, and were surgically converted to girls and brought up as girls. Despite that, they behaved as boys from early infancy, and most of them spontaneously insisted that they were boys, even before puberty.
Gender is mostly genetic, not environmental.
Here's a classic, often-cited study. To summarize it, some boys are born with an abdominal defect that leaves their bladder or genital organs exposed and malformed. Years ago, surgeons weren't able to reconstruct male organs, so they "converted" the infants at birth to females. They told the parents to keep this secret from the child, and bring them up as girls. So this was a scientific experiment of bring up boys as girls, to the greatest extent imaginable.
As it turned out, most of the boys rebelled against being brought up as girls, and followed male rather than female behavior. Even as infants of a few months of age, they preferred male toys, such as weapons, and male playing, such as aggression and fighting. As they got older, the preference for male behavior, such as fighting and construction toys, was even more noticeable. Boys played with toy guns. They didn't play with tea sets. And they had strong preferences for male clothing.
Any reasonable person would have to admit that this is strong evidence that sexual behavior is largely innate, not environmental.
If you can surgically change a boy to a girl, bring him up as a girl, and have him insist on following male behavior instead, then you could expect the same results from a similar experiment with bringing up girls as boys. If girls have an inherent preference for (or against) certain careers, you'll find more (or fewer) women in those careers, even without discrimination against women, and even despite all the affirmative action and encouragement in the world.
I don't object to women studying engineering; I encourage it. But I would expect that even with the best gender-free STEM education in the world, you're not going to have equal results of as many women in every discipline of engineering as men. It seems to max out at 10%.
Science magazine has also published a lot of work on gender in science and science education. There are some efforts that succeeded and other efforts that failed. Women in biology and medicine, success. Women in engineering, relatively rare.
The evidence goes against somebody suing an employer and saying, "There are more male than female engineers, therefore you're discriminating, and not giving us opportunities, and you should pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars." Which happened in many industries in the 1970s.
********************
Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth
William G. Reiner, M.D., and John P. Gearhart, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2004; 350:333-341
January 22, 2004
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa022236
Background
Cloacal exstrophy is a rare, complex defect of the entire pelvis and its contents that occurs during embryogenesis and is associated with severe phallic inadequacy or phallic absence in genetic males. For about 25 years, neonatal assignment to female sex has been advocated for affected males to overcome the issue of phallic inadequacy, but data on outcome remain sparse.
Methods
We assessed all 16 genetic males in our cloacal-exstrophy clinic at the ages of 5 to 16 years. Fourteen underwent neonatal assignment to female sex socially, legally, and surgically; the parents of the remaining two refused to do so. Detailed questionnaires extensively evaluated the development of sexual role and identity, as defined by the subjects' persistent declarations of their sex.
Results
Eight of the 14 subjects assigned to female sex declared themselves male during the course of this study, whereas the 2 raised as males remained male. Subjects could be grouped according to their stated sexual identity. Five subjects were living as females; three were living with unclear sexual identity, although two of the three had declared themselves male; and eight were living as males, six of whom had reassigned themselves to m
Correction: A massive insurance industry takeover of the government.
With tens of thousands of pages of regulations. When we could have had a single payer system.