Technically, you should never be checking a third party service for vulnerabilities without their explicit consent. As a third party, no you aren't supposed to test sites for vulnerabilities.
"With that said, in the unlikely event that I'm wrong, and that it really was caused by a grossly incompetent vendor, I expect to see that vendor added to a government blacklist and become immediately ineligible for any government contracts going forward. I also expect to see the software in question thrown away and paper ballots used until such time as a suitable replacement can be found. There's no excuse for allowing software that doesn't even meet 2010-era standards to be used for running elections in 2016. None whatsoever."
Uh huh, you just go on expecting. They'll add it to the list right below getting rid of those known vulnerable diebold systems that have recently been shown to be rigging the democratic primary for Hillary Clinton.
You can in fact ignore it. If you are doing something to prevent a worse evil than the one you committed you can attempt to present an affirmative defense. Civil disobedience is another case where you break the law as a form of first amendment protest and can trump lesser laws.
True enough. Instead of the 15/hr minimum wage being proposed I would propose the equivalent of a $15/hr 40hr week basic income.
We can drop the federal minimum wage which eases the burden on small businesses and provides a smoother path to keeping our food supply at reasonable cost and legal immigration.
That isn't actually a living wage in most of the country. At this income level people just need to get additional funds through other social programs and hide income from cash side jobs. Much like people do on social security.
I'd propose taking it to $15/hr and a 40hr week. This is the number being reasonably proposed as a minimum wage but which potentially poses an unreasonable burden on employers. With a $15/hr basic income there is no need to have a minimum wage. It should only apply to citizens at the time it is implemented and their native born citizens thereafter. There should be no income limits.
This has a number of benefits:
* It allows us to utilize lower wage illegal immigrants legally to maintain food production and costs eliminating a big part of the barrier to legal immigration. * It creates inflation as you said (which frankly is critical). * Rather than increasing the burden on business it reduces it dramatically. * It empowers workers so they can barter on a more level playing ground with or without unions. * It provides more disposable income which can spent to vitalize commerce or better yet invested keeping more of the proceeds from global commerce at home. * It enables people who aren't happy with where they live to have the means to relocate perhaps away from a coastal town prone to be hitting by large hurricanes that sits below sea level for instance.
"Yes, your local mom and pop vape shop may not be up for doing the chemical engineering necessary to perform these kinds of tests, but maybe that is a signal they shouldn't have been in the business of compounding drugs in the first place."
Additionally, I'd also point out that you could say the same about local restaurants. Food is not just consumed orally but also exposed to heat and inhaled. Not just the food you ordered but all the food being prepared in the space of the restaurant. We certainly do have regulation and safety surrounding the production of food and testing of the ingredients for safety in food use but we do not require certification of each individual recipe.
Age restriction is not an issue, I've never seen a shop that will sell to minors so the impact there is nil assuming they don't make it difficult or cost anything to be in compliance.
"Also safety testing should be conducted to be sure that: 1) The compounds are relatively harmless not only when taken orally, but when aspirated, 2) the chemicals don't break down into something more dangerous when heated, and 3) the various compounds don't combine in the presence of heat to form new dangerous compounds."
How is that not solved by a consumer testing agency doing the testing and the mom and pop shops mixing their juices with compounds that have been approved?
"Propylene Glycol (PG) and Glycerine (VG) both have the chemical formula C3H8O2."
Notice how they both have three carbon atoms in the "backbone" and either one or none O−H groups (called hydroxyls or alcohols) attached to each one. Oxygen can react with any one of those carbons and will try to form CO2 and water, the most thermodynamically stable products that are possible.
"The flavors used are mostly alcohol soluble"
The flavors are mostly extracted into an alcohol and water base before and sold that way. They are generally fat and/or water soluable. Neither PG nor VG are water so how you get something to dissolve in them isn't particularly important the question is whether or not the body can absorb them which it certainly can. If you don't believe me feel free to grab any random e-liquid touch your finger to it and spread it in a thin line down your arm. Check back in a bit and you will find it is gone. That is more liquid than you would be getting using a vaporizer and far far less surface area than you'd find in your lungs.
Intense psychological trauma. A gun shot might heal, eventually even the scar would fade. The memory of the cabbage gas chamber robber will never leave me for the rest of my days! Even after years of counseling it will be burned alongside goatse.cx and two girls one cup.
"Sounds like you're speaking based purely on your own experience -- as a baby, not as a parent."
Actually I'm neither speaking based on my memories of being a baby (of which I have none just like everyone else) nor as a parent. I'm referring to the results of actual objective study of human brain development. As a parent your biological imperative actually negates you from being able to rationally form opinions on the subject. Why on earth you think the perspective of a parent would be more informed or less biased than the experience of having actually been inside the head of a child while being one I can't imagine. Why you think the regular interaction with many children that adults have would not count I can't imagine. Why you think your hormone and instinct fueled skewed parental perspective would one up actual science I can not even fathom.
" If you did, you would know that they have their own sense of humor by 6 months. They have their own sense of style by 12 months. They have their own personalities, wants, and needs. They exhibit creativity.... By the age of 18 months, they even compete with you for power (the "terrible twos")"
Dogs, cats, Parrots, and other Primates exhibit everything you speak of. Researchers do experiment with these creatures but impose ethical boundaries and caution when choosing which experiments to perform and testing before proceeding to testing on these animals. Despite the fact that is much harder to get people to even attempt not to anthropomorphize pre-humans there is no rational justification for a double standard.
"If you want to consider brain functionality as a deciding factor of who "is human" and therefore, what makes someone accountable for homicide, then I'm afraid you're completely properfucked."
If brain function and sentience are not how we determine this I'm not certain exactly how we are going to evolve into something better than we are today. I suppose we could fall back to cuteness and endearingness as is done with breeding puppies and kittens. That should have some carry over to subsequent sexual appeal. Intelligence would of course drop and genetic problems emerge but on the place side as the population becomes too dull to find anything beyond sex to amuse themselves the average age and suitability of the population as desirable sex partners would improve.
They are going to put in costs and overhead so these materials will no longer be produced by small shops using food grade flavorings and will instead be produced by the tobacco industry. The e-cigs used in studies where harmful output was found in the vapor have all only contained the brands produced by the tobacco companies which is a very very tiny portion of those in use. Almost all users end up using local shops producing their own juice because it is superior and you know what is in it and the devices are far superior as well.
Additionally this further likens e-cig vaporizers to tobacco use. There is no smoke, nothing is combusted so there are no dangerous oxides as found in smoke, most of the flavorings have no odor. Even the nicotine (which has health benefits as well as negatives including mental function and concentration) is only found in parts per million in exhaled vapor directly captured from the mouth of a user. If you spread that into the volume of a small half bathroom and hang out in the room chain vaping for hours it is still not even enough to be able to measure it and there are higher concentrations in safe drinking water. Unlike tar from tobacco vegetable glycerin is readily absorbed by the lungs and leaves no lasting damage. The only way you'll build it up faster than you absorb it is to chain vape one of the new sub ohm rigs popularized by vendors because they go through the liquid faster and simply stopping for a day or two would allow the body to catch up.
The VG/PG used for the bases for the liquid are substances approved by the FDA to treat people with severe lung conditions and in asthma inhalers by the FDA. The devices themselves operate in the same manner as the FDA approved vaporizers used to deliver those drugs (although they are far superior with modern electronics since they don't have a FDA granted monopoly with FDA approval costs barring entry to competition).
I would be fine with independent consumer safety testing being required as in automobiles and toys. After all, who is to say we can trust the Chinese companies producing the atomizers and heating elements used in these devices not to be deviating from the specifications and using dangerous chemicals that aren't properly cleaned in the their manufacture. But this kind of regulation is going to make the irrational and uninformed fear mongering being spread now a self-fulfilling prophecy.
E-cigs actually do not involve tobacco or smoking they just have cig in the name so potential buyers will see them as an alternative to such.
They are electronic devices that vaporize a liquid containing low concentrations of nicotine at low temperatures. The result is a fog of particles. In normal e-juice vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol are used as a base, these mostly convert to water with a small amount of heat and the water vapor carries small amounts of them along with the nicotine and some variety of food grade flavoring directly into the lungs of the user. VG and PG are already used in drug delivery devices for people with severe lung conditions (which operate in exactly the same manner as ecigs), asthma, and fog machines (clubs, theaters, etc). This is why the FDA originally tried to regulate them as drug delivery devices.
Everything in the liquid is water soluble and therefore is very efficiently absorbed by the lungs of the user. There are trace particles in the exhaled vapor of nicotine, vg and pg, along with whatever flavoring was used. If there is any odor at all it comes from the imagination of the person smelling it or the flavoring.
Some valid critics of these devices:
1. They leak, when filling and services the devices or when they break down they can leak and some increased absorbtion of nicotine through the skin can occur. The levels are higher than you would get from vaporizing the juice but not dangerous. 2. PG can cause minor temporary irritation of the through and lungs. These substances are used for drug delivery already and are well studied there is no damage. 3. The resulting water vapor can cause irritation of the lungs. Again, this is temporary. The amount of water vapor is tiny, comparable to being in real fog and breathing the moist air. The body simply absorbs the water. 4. VG buildup. The body can and will absorb VG, unlike the tar from tobacco but it is possible to inhale it faster than the body can remove it. This is especially a risk with new sub-ohm vaporizers which are promoted by vendors as providing more flavor and having a fun subjective feeling because you are blowing large plumes of vapor out. Simply stopping for a period of time will allow the body to catch up and fully absorb the VG. 5. Odor. Most e-juice is odorless but flavorings are by definition volatile compounds which can have an odor component. Obviously we choose these odors because people typically find them pleasant. For example vanilla but others might disagree. This would seem to present roughly the same impact as flowers, baking, or fresh baked goods but some can find the smell of such things offensive. 6. Dangerous compounds in the vapor. Most of these claims come from testing the direct vapor output of devices produced by the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry has a long history of using unsafe additives to their products. However it is worth mentioning that even in the case of those devices the concentrations found are in parts per million, the partial absorption into the lungs may or may not be enough to be dangerous but those concentrations spread into the volume of air in a small private office for example would be too small to even measure and several orders of magnitude lower than the level of arsenic in typical drinking water.
Invalid claims
1. PG is present in the vapor and toxic. Technically everything is toxic, including water. The concentration is the key here, pg is not concentrated enough or quantitative enough in the vapor absorbed by the lungs to be dangerous to the user and certainly not to third parties. 2. Smoke is dangerous. Smoke is the byproduct of combustion. When a substance undergoes combustion the resulting byproducts that form the particulate of smoke are often dangerous oxides (since burning is essentially rapid oxidation with a byproduct of heat and light). Even thought he vapor in an e-cig looks similar to smoke it is not smoke, no combustion has occurred and none of the dangerous byproducts of combustion occur in
This is a false dichotomy. Mostly the problem is that we are biologically programmed to protect the young to improve their chances of surviving to become fully developed humans. This is just an arbitrary line in the sand. Fetus and baby are both examples of early stage potential humans, in other words, not yet and may never be humans. In this case, definitely would never be without artificial aid humans. Without our instinct to protect the young the logical boundry would be when the brain is fully or almost fully developed many years after birth. There is certainly no sound reason for having higher ethical boundaries than we would have for experimentation on any other animal of similar intelligence before that.
If we are caving to our animal instincts by setting a double standard it is only fitting that we turn to nature to set the arbitrary line in the sand and nature sets that boundry at birth. In the case of a start to finish incubation we simply look at the ideal timeline for a fully mature and healthy natural birth which is a full term nine month period.
Of course we are talking about incubating a fetus to bring it to full maturity here. You seem to be talking about terminating which is exactly the opposite of the objective here. There is no reason not to incubate one from start to finish and there is no reason to incubate one beyond full term since that could retard natural development in response to external stimulus and/or nurture.
Ridiculous. Just because people in NY are overly sensitized to guns doesn't actually change anything. A knife, a club, a really big rock, or even just a strong and/or well trained individual all present a potentially lethal threat and of those options the gun is the least likely to kill without the robber intending to do it. The actual harm inflicted by the individual is the relevant factor here not being threatened by a competently selected tool.
No babies are involved in an abortion and frankly it's a stretch to call it a brain for several years after the birth. We are biologically programmed to adore and protect babies but look who's talking isn't actually real.
I'm simply suggesting that researchers are the cautious types and can be trusted to make reasonable judgements, with consent, as to what they will be able to safely accomplish here. There certainly is nobody else who is better qualified to make this judgement. I see no ethical problem with incubating a fetus to full term or attempting to do so in progressive steps that you have sound reason will be successful.
Unlikely but one distinct difference between a psychologist and psychiatrist is that in psychiatry they emphasize that there is an underlying physical interaction to every thought and feeling and this is used to ignore the distinction between a physical addiction (such as opiates which cause a chemical interaction which ultimately converts into chemicals to which you form a dependence) and psychological addiction in which you find activities fulfilling and your brain triggers the release of "rewards."
Obviously, yes, there is an underlying chemical interaction but psychological addiction is easier in that it can be replaced with other habits and behaviors you find fulfilling which will cause your brain to generate more of what you are actually addicted to. It is also much more difficult to cure because you can't detox and the neural pathways that have formed will be long lasting if not permanent. Physical addition over time almost always also results in psychological addiction.
What I think people forget is that neither is actually evil in and of itself. We are all addicts and junkies addicted to behavior patterns and lots of substances. It is reasonably safe to say that every normal functioning human is addicted to sugars for instance. Sugars are cheap and plentiful and the behavior carries no social stigma as long as you are a functioning sugarholic.
"Digital detox experts" and other addiction experts have a decided financial bias on this topic and it shows in their research. One common thing you see is scanning the brains of people who use a drug over time and pointing out changes in brain structure. Our brains are dynamic structures and reorganize themselves, of course there is a change in structure and show this as proof of the damage. You could pick any frequent and common activity performed over a long period of time and demonstrate a change in brain structure and they know this.
Teens build camaraderie through online interaction and not going out to movies these days.
To an out of touch parent it may appear your child is gaming alone. In reality they likely have a chat and/or voice connection to their friends and are playing a game together through the net. This is no less social or camaraderie than sitting in a room playing a board or video game together but parents would see one as social interaction and the other as isolation.
That's all fine and dandy if the city cares to do so because some lady is holding a bag of fruit beside the road hoping you'll buy a piece so that her family can shelter from the rain. All public property should allow equal access to everyone and provide no priority access based on payment or the amount of payment.
So long as food trucks are allowed to sell from the roadside there is no valid reason to prohibit the poor from doing so and if there are permits to be had the fees, as all fees required by government, should be paid by tax dollars. A food truck that can afford to pay a $200 fee should not be given priority over an individual who cannot on public property. You aren't 200x more entitled to use public property because you have 200x more to spend on permit/filing fees. If nobody is allowed to use the space so be it although someone attempting to work to care for their family certainly is making better use of the roadside than someone parking a car.
None of that has any relevance to a private home owner who happens to be near the public space in question though.
If they are setting up on someone's private property and asked to leave that is criminal trespass and requires nothing but a simple call to the police to resolve. Although if they make enough money businesses in the US consider it perfectly ethical to pay the fines and continue trespassing.
If however they are on public property and you are for some reason annoyed by that, tough luck. I remember finding that out the first time I lived somewhere that people would commonly park in front of my home. In front of your house is not your house or property and you have no rights to it, not even the part the city requires you to pay the upkeep for.
As a younger boy I'd go camping with my grandfather. He didn't believe in state and national parks with concrete camping and people on top of each other with nothing but a small screen of trees between creating the illusion you are actually in nature. We'd take a boat down river and pick a spot. The state automatically owned all land within X number of feet of all rivers and streams. This was actually so they could legally regulate it. As a rule grandpa had talked to someone, their father before them, or something of the sort for the private property in most cases at some point over the years out of courtesy and we'd disturb things as little as possible because we ourselves wanted to enjoy these sites and didn't want to ruin them. But the reality is we were on public property and entitled to be there whether the private property owners nearby liked it or not.
If they are actually on the property but out front of your house is not your property at least not from the sidewalk forward, even if the city requires you to pay for the upkeep it's still public property.
As for unlicensed and no permit, that is never an issue for the person who happens to own a near by house. It may or may not be an issue for the city that isn't getting it's cut (or the official who isn't) but a guy with a bag of oranges isn't really likely to be able to bribe an inspector anyway... and if you don't think that's how it works you've never been a local business trying to get through it before. The code is complicated and enough stuff left to the inspectors discretion they can tie you up for years on what is obviously a good faith effort to be compliant and possess no actual risk. They'll schedule the follow up to see if you moved a curtain 6 months out at each step. But almost all of that applies to fixed vendors. Mobile vendors like food trucks often either require no special permits or only need one to park in certain areas of the city.
I'm not sure if there actually is a place where someone with no fixed or mobile installation like the illegal holding a bag of oranges beside the road actually requires any sort of permit.
No, I don't think the guy standing by the road with a bag of oranges is hurting anyone beyond the manner of minor annoyance. A grocery store likely accidentally throws away more good fruit than one of those people will peddle in their best month in a single day.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, you should never be checking a third party service for vulnerabilities without their explicit consent. As a third party, no you aren't supposed to test sites for vulnerabilities.
"With that said, in the unlikely event that I'm wrong, and that it really was caused by a grossly incompetent vendor, I expect to see that vendor added to a government blacklist and become immediately ineligible for any government contracts going forward. I also expect to see the software in question thrown away and paper ballots used until such time as a suitable replacement can be found. There's no excuse for allowing software that doesn't even meet 2010-era standards to be used for running elections in 2016. None whatsoever."
Uh huh, you just go on expecting. They'll add it to the list right below getting rid of those known vulnerable diebold systems that have recently been shown to be rigging the democratic primary for Hillary Clinton.
"...but he still broke the law and MUST be prosecuted if there is evidence, which there clearly is. It not like there is a choice in the matter."
Actually there is, the prosecutor has discretion.
"It is the law, and you can't just ignore it."
You can in fact ignore it. If you are doing something to prevent a worse evil than the one you committed you can attempt to present an affirmative defense. Civil disobedience is another case where you break the law as a form of first amendment protest and can trump lesser laws.
"Breaking into or executing code on a system without permission is a criminal offense. Even if he was doing it ostensibly for the greater good"
You actually can make an argument that you committed a crime in order to prevent a greater evil. It is a valid defense.
https://www.google.com/search?q=affirmative+defense&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
The AI has named itself lobo and has ripping muscles and a large throbbing manhood.
True enough. Instead of the 15/hr minimum wage being proposed I would propose the equivalent of a $15/hr 40hr week basic income.
We can drop the federal minimum wage which eases the burden on small businesses and provides a smoother path to keeping our food supply at reasonable cost and legal immigration.
That isn't actually a living wage in most of the country. At this income level people just need to get additional funds through other social programs and hide income from cash side jobs. Much like people do on social security.
I'd propose taking it to $15/hr and a 40hr week. This is the number being reasonably proposed as a minimum wage but which potentially poses an unreasonable burden on employers. With a $15/hr basic income there is no need to have a minimum wage. It should only apply to citizens at the time it is implemented and their native born citizens thereafter. There should be no income limits.
This has a number of benefits:
* It allows us to utilize lower wage illegal immigrants legally to maintain food production and costs eliminating a big part of the barrier to legal immigration.
* It creates inflation as you said (which frankly is critical).
* Rather than increasing the burden on business it reduces it dramatically.
* It empowers workers so they can barter on a more level playing ground with or without unions.
* It provides more disposable income which can spent to vitalize commerce or better yet invested keeping more of the proceeds from global commerce at home.
* It enables people who aren't happy with where they live to have the means to relocate perhaps away from a coastal town prone to be hitting by large hurricanes that sits below sea level for instance.
"Yes, your local mom and pop vape shop may not be up for doing the chemical engineering necessary to perform these kinds of tests, but maybe that is a signal they shouldn't have been in the business of compounding drugs in the first place."
Additionally, I'd also point out that you could say the same about local restaurants. Food is not just consumed orally but also exposed to heat and inhaled. Not just the food you ordered but all the food being prepared in the space of the restaurant. We certainly do have regulation and safety surrounding the production of food and testing of the ingredients for safety in food use but we do not require certification of each individual recipe.
Age restriction is not an issue, I've never seen a shop that will sell to minors so the impact there is nil assuming they don't make it difficult or cost anything to be in compliance.
"Also safety testing should be conducted to be sure that: 1) The compounds are relatively harmless not only when taken orally, but when aspirated, 2) the chemicals don't break down into something more dangerous when heated, and 3) the various compounds don't combine in the presence of heat to form new dangerous compounds."
How is that not solved by a consumer testing agency doing the testing and the mom and pop shops mixing their juices with compounds that have been approved?
"Propylene Glycol (PG) and Glycerine (VG) both have the chemical formula C3H8O2."
Notice how they both have three carbon atoms in the "backbone" and either one or none O−H groups (called hydroxyls or alcohols) attached to each one. Oxygen can react with any one of those carbons and will try to form CO2 and water, the most thermodynamically stable products that are possible.
"The flavors used are mostly alcohol soluble"
The flavors are mostly extracted into an alcohol and water base before and sold that way. They are generally fat and/or water soluable. Neither PG nor VG are water so how you get something to dissolve in them isn't particularly important the question is whether or not the body can absorb them which it certainly can. If you don't believe me feel free to grab any random e-liquid touch your finger to it and spread it in a thin line down your arm. Check back in a bit and you will find it is gone. That is more liquid than you would be getting using a vaporizer and far far less surface area than you'd find in your lungs.
Intense psychological trauma. A gun shot might heal, eventually even the scar would fade. The memory of the cabbage gas chamber robber will never leave me for the rest of my days! Even after years of counseling it will be burned alongside goatse.cx and two girls one cup.
"Sounds like you're speaking based purely on your own experience -- as a baby, not as a parent."
... By the age of 18 months, they even compete with you for power (the "terrible twos")"
Actually I'm neither speaking based on my memories of being a baby (of which I have none just like everyone else) nor as a parent. I'm referring to the results of actual objective study of human brain development. As a parent your biological imperative actually negates you from being able to rationally form opinions on the subject. Why on earth you think the perspective of a parent would be more informed or less biased than the experience of having actually been inside the head of a child while being one I can't imagine. Why you think the regular interaction with many children that adults have would not count I can't imagine. Why you think your hormone and instinct fueled skewed parental perspective would one up actual science I can not even fathom.
" If you did, you would know that they have their own sense of humor by 6 months. They have their own sense of style by 12 months. They have their own personalities, wants, and needs. They exhibit creativity.
Dogs, cats, Parrots, and other Primates exhibit everything you speak of. Researchers do experiment with these creatures but impose ethical boundaries and caution when choosing which experiments to perform and testing before proceeding to testing on these animals. Despite the fact that is much harder to get people to even attempt not to anthropomorphize pre-humans there is no rational justification for a double standard.
"If you want to consider brain functionality as a deciding factor of who "is human" and therefore, what makes someone accountable for homicide, then I'm afraid you're completely properfucked."
If brain function and sentience are not how we determine this I'm not certain exactly how we are going to evolve into something better than we are today. I suppose we could fall back to cuteness and endearingness as is done with breeding puppies and kittens. That should have some carry over to subsequent sexual appeal. Intelligence would of course drop and genetic problems emerge but on the place side as the population becomes too dull to find anything beyond sex to amuse themselves the average age and suitability of the population as desirable sex partners would improve.
They are going to put in costs and overhead so these materials will no longer be produced by small shops using food grade flavorings and will instead be produced by the tobacco industry. The e-cigs used in studies where harmful output was found in the vapor have all only contained the brands produced by the tobacco companies which is a very very tiny portion of those in use. Almost all users end up using local shops producing their own juice because it is superior and you know what is in it and the devices are far superior as well.
Additionally this further likens e-cig vaporizers to tobacco use. There is no smoke, nothing is combusted so there are no dangerous oxides as found in smoke, most of the flavorings have no odor. Even the nicotine (which has health benefits as well as negatives including mental function and concentration) is only found in parts per million in exhaled vapor directly captured from the mouth of a user. If you spread that into the volume of a small half bathroom and hang out in the room chain vaping for hours it is still not even enough to be able to measure it and there are higher concentrations in safe drinking water. Unlike tar from tobacco vegetable glycerin is readily absorbed by the lungs and leaves no lasting damage. The only way you'll build it up faster than you absorb it is to chain vape one of the new sub ohm rigs popularized by vendors because they go through the liquid faster and simply stopping for a day or two would allow the body to catch up.
The VG/PG used for the bases for the liquid are substances approved by the FDA to treat people with severe lung conditions and in asthma inhalers by the FDA. The devices themselves operate in the same manner as the FDA approved vaporizers used to deliver those drugs (although they are far superior with modern electronics since they don't have a FDA granted monopoly with FDA approval costs barring entry to competition).
I would be fine with independent consumer safety testing being required as in automobiles and toys. After all, who is to say we can trust the Chinese companies producing the atomizers and heating elements used in these devices not to be deviating from the specifications and using dangerous chemicals that aren't properly cleaned in the their manufacture. But this kind of regulation is going to make the irrational and uninformed fear mongering being spread now a self-fulfilling prophecy.
E-cigs actually do not involve tobacco or smoking they just have cig in the name so potential buyers will see them as an alternative to such.
They are electronic devices that vaporize a liquid containing low concentrations of nicotine at low temperatures. The result is a fog of particles. In normal e-juice vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol are used as a base, these mostly convert to water with a small amount of heat and the water vapor carries small amounts of them along with the nicotine and some variety of food grade flavoring directly into the lungs of the user. VG and PG are already used in drug delivery devices for people with severe lung conditions (which operate in exactly the same manner as ecigs), asthma, and fog machines (clubs, theaters, etc). This is why the FDA originally tried to regulate them as drug delivery devices.
Everything in the liquid is water soluble and therefore is very efficiently absorbed by the lungs of the user. There are trace particles in the exhaled vapor of nicotine, vg and pg, along with whatever flavoring was used. If there is any odor at all it comes from the imagination of the person smelling it or the flavoring.
Some valid critics of these devices:
1. They leak, when filling and services the devices or when they break down they can leak and some increased absorbtion of nicotine through the skin can occur. The levels are higher than you would get from vaporizing the juice but not dangerous.
2. PG can cause minor temporary irritation of the through and lungs. These substances are used for drug delivery already and are well studied there is no damage.
3. The resulting water vapor can cause irritation of the lungs. Again, this is temporary. The amount of water vapor is tiny, comparable to being in real fog and breathing the moist air. The body simply absorbs the water.
4. VG buildup. The body can and will absorb VG, unlike the tar from tobacco but it is possible to inhale it faster than the body can remove it. This is especially a risk with new sub-ohm vaporizers which are promoted by vendors as providing more flavor and having a fun subjective feeling because you are blowing large plumes of vapor out. Simply stopping for a period of time will allow the body to catch up and fully absorb the VG.
5. Odor. Most e-juice is odorless but flavorings are by definition volatile compounds which can have an odor component. Obviously we choose these odors because people typically find them pleasant. For example vanilla but others might disagree. This would seem to present roughly the same impact as flowers, baking, or fresh baked goods but some can find the smell of such things offensive.
6. Dangerous compounds in the vapor. Most of these claims come from testing the direct vapor output of devices produced by the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry has a long history of using unsafe additives to their products. However it is worth mentioning that even in the case of those devices the concentrations found are in parts per million, the partial absorption into the lungs may or may not be enough to be dangerous but those concentrations spread into the volume of air in a small private office for example would be too small to even measure and several orders of magnitude lower than the level of arsenic in typical drinking water.
Invalid claims
1. PG is present in the vapor and toxic. Technically everything is toxic, including water. The concentration is the key here, pg is not concentrated enough or quantitative enough in the vapor absorbed by the lungs to be dangerous to the user and certainly not to third parties.
2. Smoke is dangerous. Smoke is the byproduct of combustion. When a substance undergoes combustion the resulting byproducts that form the particulate of smoke are often dangerous oxides (since burning is essentially rapid oxidation with a byproduct of heat and light). Even thought he vapor in an e-cig looks similar to smoke it is not smoke, no combustion has occurred and none of the dangerous byproducts of combustion occur in
This is a false dichotomy. Mostly the problem is that we are biologically programmed to protect the young to improve their chances of surviving to become fully developed humans. This is just an arbitrary line in the sand. Fetus and baby are both examples of early stage potential humans, in other words, not yet and may never be humans. In this case, definitely would never be without artificial aid humans. Without our instinct to protect the young the logical boundry would be when the brain is fully or almost fully developed many years after birth. There is certainly no sound reason for having higher ethical boundaries than we would have for experimentation on any other animal of similar intelligence before that.
If we are caving to our animal instincts by setting a double standard it is only fitting that we turn to nature to set the arbitrary line in the sand and nature sets that boundry at birth. In the case of a start to finish incubation we simply look at the ideal timeline for a fully mature and healthy natural birth which is a full term nine month period.
Of course we are talking about incubating a fetus to bring it to full maturity here. You seem to be talking about terminating which is exactly the opposite of the objective here. There is no reason not to incubate one from start to finish and there is no reason to incubate one beyond full term since that could retard natural development in response to external stimulus and/or nurture.
Ridiculous. Just because people in NY are overly sensitized to guns doesn't actually change anything. A knife, a club, a really big rock, or even just a strong and/or well trained individual all present a potentially lethal threat and of those options the gun is the least likely to kill without the robber intending to do it. The actual harm inflicted by the individual is the relevant factor here not being threatened by a competently selected tool.
No babies are involved in an abortion and frankly it's a stretch to call it a brain for several years after the birth. We are biologically programmed to adore and protect babies but look who's talking isn't actually real.
I'm simply suggesting that researchers are the cautious types and can be trusted to make reasonable judgements, with consent, as to what they will be able to safely accomplish here. There certainly is nobody else who is better qualified to make this judgement. I see no ethical problem with incubating a fetus to full term or attempting to do so in progressive steps that you have sound reason will be successful.
"But this would of course raise the next question - of where we should put the next limit"
Full Term.
Unlikely but one distinct difference between a psychologist and psychiatrist is that in psychiatry they emphasize that there is an underlying physical interaction to every thought and feeling and this is used to ignore the distinction between a physical addiction (such as opiates which cause a chemical interaction which ultimately converts into chemicals to which you form a dependence) and psychological addiction in which you find activities fulfilling and your brain triggers the release of "rewards."
Obviously, yes, there is an underlying chemical interaction but psychological addiction is easier in that it can be replaced with other habits and behaviors you find fulfilling which will cause your brain to generate more of what you are actually addicted to. It is also much more difficult to cure because you can't detox and the neural pathways that have formed will be long lasting if not permanent. Physical addition over time almost always also results in psychological addiction.
What I think people forget is that neither is actually evil in and of itself. We are all addicts and junkies addicted to behavior patterns and lots of substances. It is reasonably safe to say that every normal functioning human is addicted to sugars for instance. Sugars are cheap and plentiful and the behavior carries no social stigma as long as you are a functioning sugarholic.
"Digital detox experts" and other addiction experts have a decided financial bias on this topic and it shows in their research. One common thing you see is scanning the brains of people who use a drug over time and pointing out changes in brain structure. Our brains are dynamic structures and reorganize themselves, of course there is a change in structure and show this as proof of the damage. You could pick any frequent and common activity performed over a long period of time and demonstrate a change in brain structure and they know this.
Teens build camaraderie through online interaction and not going out to movies these days.
To an out of touch parent it may appear your child is gaming alone. In reality they likely have a chat and/or voice connection to their friends and are playing a game together through the net. This is no less social or camaraderie than sitting in a room playing a board or video game together but parents would see one as social interaction and the other as isolation.
That's all fine and dandy if the city cares to do so because some lady is holding a bag of fruit beside the road hoping you'll buy a piece so that her family can shelter from the rain. All public property should allow equal access to everyone and provide no priority access based on payment or the amount of payment.
So long as food trucks are allowed to sell from the roadside there is no valid reason to prohibit the poor from doing so and if there are permits to be had the fees, as all fees required by government, should be paid by tax dollars. A food truck that can afford to pay a $200 fee should not be given priority over an individual who cannot on public property. You aren't 200x more entitled to use public property because you have 200x more to spend on permit/filing fees. If nobody is allowed to use the space so be it although someone attempting to work to care for their family certainly is making better use of the roadside than someone parking a car.
None of that has any relevance to a private home owner who happens to be near the public space in question though.
If they are setting up on someone's private property and asked to leave that is criminal trespass and requires nothing but a simple call to the police to resolve. Although if they make enough money businesses in the US consider it perfectly ethical to pay the fines and continue trespassing.
If however they are on public property and you are for some reason annoyed by that, tough luck. I remember finding that out the first time I lived somewhere that people would commonly park in front of my home. In front of your house is not your house or property and you have no rights to it, not even the part the city requires you to pay the upkeep for.
As a younger boy I'd go camping with my grandfather. He didn't believe in state and national parks with concrete camping and people on top of each other with nothing but a small screen of trees between creating the illusion you are actually in nature. We'd take a boat down river and pick a spot. The state automatically owned all land within X number of feet of all rivers and streams. This was actually so they could legally regulate it. As a rule grandpa had talked to someone, their father before them, or something of the sort for the private property in most cases at some point over the years out of courtesy and we'd disturb things as little as possible because we ourselves wanted to enjoy these sites and didn't want to ruin them. But the reality is we were on public property and entitled to be there whether the private property owners nearby liked it or not.
If they are actually on the property but out front of your house is not your property at least not from the sidewalk forward, even if the city requires you to pay for the upkeep it's still public property.
As for unlicensed and no permit, that is never an issue for the person who happens to own a near by house. It may or may not be an issue for the city that isn't getting it's cut (or the official who isn't) but a guy with a bag of oranges isn't really likely to be able to bribe an inspector anyway... and if you don't think that's how it works you've never been a local business trying to get through it before. The code is complicated and enough stuff left to the inspectors discretion they can tie you up for years on what is obviously a good faith effort to be compliant and possess no actual risk. They'll schedule the follow up to see if you moved a curtain 6 months out at each step. But almost all of that applies to fixed vendors. Mobile vendors like food trucks often either require no special permits or only need one to park in certain areas of the city.
I'm not sure if there actually is a place where someone with no fixed or mobile installation like the illegal holding a bag of oranges beside the road actually requires any sort of permit.
No, I don't think the guy standing by the road with a bag of oranges is hurting anyone beyond the manner of minor annoyance. A grocery store likely accidentally throws away more good fruit than one of those people will peddle in their best month in a single day.