Then how do you explain all the members of the dominant social group that aren't white, and aren't men? There are rich, powerful women, rich powerful blacks, rich powerful hispanics, etc. Or would Condoleezza Rice not qualify as being part of the dominant social group? The dominant group is defined purely by wealth and power -- being white and male has zero to do with it. White men may be disproportionately represented, but that's really just a legacy of the time when before women and non-whites had any access to wealth whatsoever. As soon as they could get wealth, they began seeping gradually into the elite. The vast majority of white men are, and have always been, down at the bottom, eating shit with the rest of the world. Most white men know exactly what discrimination is like; they probably just don't call it discrimination, because most people accept the status quo of classism and wealth-based discrimination without question.
Who has the better chance of getting a job: a middle class black man, or a homeless white guy? Let's be honest: it's the black guy everytime. Who do people think more of -- the black guy at the office or the white kid who works at your local 7-11? Granted, the white kid at 7-11 gets somewhat better treatment than the Indian kid he works with, but the difference is minor compared to the difference between rich and poor. Wealth trumps all other social factors without exception, and always has throughout all of history (with the possible exception of Communist nations, and even then it's debatable).
Look at discriminatory societies -- for the most part, the wealthy, no matter what their race, gender, or religion, have been treated like kings. Rich women had access to university course materials and direct access to university professors for centuries before universities actually began admitting women. For all peoples whining about the status of blacks, hispanics, etc, in America, just look at how wealthy members of ethnic minorities live. It's not partcularly different from how their peers do. An American Express Platinum works the same way for Tiger Woods as it does for Arnold Palmer. Welfare cheques go no further for whites than they do for blacks.
I call people who worry about race relations idiots because the invariably act as if racial discrimination is the only form of bigotry that matters. Feminists have a tendency to do the same, although that movement has gotten more serious about tackling discrimination in a more general sense (note the extent to which modern feminism concerns itself with socioeconomics).
My point? Lots of white people have suffered discrimination. The poor, teenagers, the elderly, non-christian religious types (white muslims and sikhs, although rare, can get a really hard time, and do you think a white wiccan would last long in Kansas?), the physically or mentally disabled, etc. Lots of white people face staggering amounts of discrimination. People frequently assume that those with diabetes are alcoholics, because of the slurred speech and poor coordination. Think that makes it hard to get a job? White guy that appears drunk versus sober black guy -- who's going to get hired that day? The diabetic will have a hard time even getting in the door of the building, let along getting an interview and a chance to explain that his condition (and even then -- who wants a diabetic on the company health plan?) The obese, even if they genuinely have a glandular disorder that prevents them from maintaining a healthy wait. People with that disorder that makes one sweat all the time. Heck, people who just slightly socially dysfunctional. Most employers will take the charismatic dude from Venezuela over the shy loner from Wisconsin any day of the week.
Actually, most of us have been followed through stores and been treated like criminals. It's called being a teenager. I had my school bags searched so many times that it's appalling. And I'm about as white as it gets, short of considering albinos. As an adult, I can walk into any store wearing a trench-coat and a backpack, and not get a second's flak about it from anyone. As a teenager? No way.
People concerned about race relations are idiots. Discrimination takes place about many more things than just race, and much more intensely. Age, religion, gender, all three affect how one is treated far more than race does. And wealth puts the rest to shame. If you're upper class, you can throw coke-and-daterape parties every night, and never have the cops even drive past your house. If you're lower class, even a regular beer and medium-volume-music party is enough to get a serious grilling from the cops and a fine for noise. A single whiff of pot smoke in the air, and you're all in for a strip-search from sexually deprived cops.
A ludicrous hyperextension? How many people die as a result of automobiles, despite all the laws and licensing surrounding them? How many people do firecrackers kill, even in the most liberal, unregulated conceivable environment? I highly doubt that firecrackers have injured as many people in all of American history as automobils do in a single year. And automobiles are completely unnecessary for most people. Walking and transit could very well substitute for commuters, which is funny because commuters are responsible for the majority of accidents. So yes, most people's car is a LUXURY, the luxury of getting places a bit faster than they would otherwise.
I'm not some ban-the-car radical or anything, but really, let's be realistic. Automobiles create enormous costs in destruction, death, and injury. Just look at the size of the insurance industry surrounding them. Everyone knows someone who was seriously injured in a car accident. Everyone's had an expensive vehicle repair at some point, often through no fault of their own. Firecrackers don't even come close. Fireworks don't come close. Guns don't come close. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything in our society that hurts more people, short of maybe big macs and cigarettes.
Indeed. Services like MySpace should really be thought of as public spaces. IE: if you let your child wander in one, you shouldn't be *too* surprised when some pervert makes off with them. Would you let your five year old wander around Times Square without supervision?
The Internet is a mighty tool, and like all mighty tools, it is terrifying, dangerous, and not for use by unsupervised children or maniacs.
You know what I wonder? Why are so many pedophiles let out of prison? We live in an age with psychologists, criminologists, advanced statistical techniques, implantable tracking devices, power surveillance systems, etc. A reasonable law-enforcement system would attempt to make intelligent decisions about whether a given sex-offender is rehabilitatable or not, and -- at the conclusion of supposedly rehabilitatable offenders' sentences -- evaluate whether they have in fact been rehabilitated or whether they need more time with the shrinks. And once released, they can be monitored until a certain level of confidence in their rehabilitation has been achieved. Actually, this would be sensible for any kind of repeat violent offender. After all, the legal system isn't just about punishment. Rehabilitating the salvagable criminals and confining the maniacs that can't be fixed is a vitally important aspect of the process.
Firecrackers have a primary use that doesn't involve endangering people -- entertainment. Unless you're refering to the fact that using firecrackers is always dangerous (which is true), in which case -- look at the automobile! I'm not aware of any usage of the automobile that would qualify as "safe". Even a second's distraction can turn ordinary driving into a fatal accident. Car batteries can explode with disastrous results. Exhaust fumes are actually a very efficient means of asphyxiating someone. I suppose if you consider sleeping in one's car to be a primary use, that would qualify as not directly endangering anything (other than perhaps the sleeper's spine).
It is indeed faster -- which is almost certainly why drivers do it. Nevertheless, if a spark ignites the gas, you are completely and totally fucked since you are on the bike when it begins to burn.
Really, this is just typical driver insanity. Drivers always assume that gas stations have these rules about getting off of the bike, turning off your car's engine, not smoking, etc, for the sole purpose of annoying drivers. It ain't so. Every single one of these rules is in place because it produces a substantial statistical reduction in the odds of a serious accident -- enough so that the money saved in not making lawsuit-payouts exceeds the revenue lost when impatient crybabies refuse to gas up at any service station that might take safety into consideration.
Gas takes a lot longer to evaporate than people think, particularly when it has soaked into cloth. That's why keeping oily rags in one's garage is such a danger.
Have you considered what happens when someone "gets pissed off and goes crazy" using commonly available things? I built a potato cannon the other day. That could certainly kill someone. Gasoline is cheap and easily available (even at today's prices, it's pretty affordable as far as tools of mass destruction go). Automobiles can be easily equipped with gas-pedal-bricks. A used car is pretty cheap and easy to get compared to a rocket capable of causing an equivalent level of destruction.
Worrying about what people will do with things is an exercise in stupidity. A creative maniac WILL kill lots of people (although thankfully, creativity is rather rare). I mean, think about this: shotguns are legal, fully automatic machine pistols are not. Which weapon is more lethal? Every piece of research suggests that shotguns are vastly more lethal and practical under nearly any conceivable set of circumstances (just ask a soldier which they'd rather carry -- a pump-action shotgun or a tec-9). Gasoline is legal for unregulated use, while much more stable and less energetic explosives like C4 are not. Automobiles are legal, while firecrackers are not.
Well, NRA members and other supposed freedom-likers mostly vote Republican (the party that seems to do the most actual eroding of rights these days), so I'd say you're fucked. Until American conservatives smarten up and ankle the Republicans in favour of a party that actually respects conservative values, you'll basically alternate between two parties that take turns stripping away the particular rights that they disapprove of.
Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me that Americans who consider themselves conservative -- ie, they oppose wasteful government spending and excessive taxation, they want the troops well supported rather than simply dumped in a ghetto once they're injured, they want leaders who weren't coke-snorting frat boys from New England that lie and pretend to be from Texas, they want guns and blasting caps legal and available for accidents involving children, etc -- vote for a party that goes against everything that conservative ethics calls for. And then they bitch about the Democrats who are actually DOING those things (Clinton having cut government spending, having been genuinely from the south, having increased support for veterans, having NOT been a coker). Don't get me wrong -- I'd hit Clinton with a rock if I saw him. But anyone with basic reasoning could tell that was the conservative, not Dubya.
Don't forget that employers avoid fat employees (who wants them sucking down the company health plan?) Fat people usually have fat kids (often, fatter kids), so you get fat poor kids living in the ghetto. Sadly, Jaime Escalantes are in short supply, so ghetto schools tend to give terrible educations.
This is probably the kind of correlation for which you can find dozens of causal links in both directions, common causes, etc. Correlations are often complex like that, particularly when you consider characterists as multivariate as intelligence and obesity.
Any quantity can -- by definition -- can be measured in one number. If it can't be measured in one number, it's not a quantity. It's a vector, or a function, or tensor, or something like that.
Seriously though. It's probably a mix of things. Thinking burns energy. Smart people generally have a better understanding of health issues, and can factor more health information into their decisions -- rather than simple thinking "fatfree=good" while cramming their gullet with foods that are nutrionally indistinguishable from pure sugar, or the opposite, thinking "atkins=good" while packing themselves with bacon and jerky. Intelligent people do things, like hobbies and reading, while the stupid can't handle hobbies or books and so spend more time watching TV -- an activity highly conducive to snacking (especially since so many ads play to the hunger instinct). Stupid people are more likely to be able to fooled by those gay posters for "loving all our natural sizes" (and here I use the word "gay" in the pejorative sense, not the festive or bum-love sense). Stupid people have a much greater capacity for self-deception regarding the consequences of their actions. Etc.
Well, how about you do a survey of people with BMIs over 40. See how many are big fat-asses, and how many are healthy. Then do a survey of people with BMIs under 15. See how many are skeletal. I think you know what the results will be already. Granted, one in ten of the people you survey will defy the trend, but honestly: 90% is a pretty fucking strong trend. Generalizations about humans don't get much better than that. And high BMIs are UNDENIABLY correlated with obesity, and lows BMIs are UNDENIABLY correlated with malnourishment. Is it a perfect 1:1 correspondence? There's no such thing, not in medicine or psychology at any rate. But the correlation is there.
What is it about correlations that makes people so irrational? Why do people suddenly try to dispute the very validity of science and statistics the moment any researcher publishes a correlation?
Technically, all the research team claimed was that they found a link. There is conjecture about about the source of the link, but that's all it is. Heck, the link could be caused by stupid people making bad decisions about food, or not being smart enough to remember when they last ate so they eat again sooner. Heh, it's fun to ascribe ridiculous behaviours to stupid people... Anyway, conversely, we know that the brain brains calories like nothing else, so it could also simply be that intelligent people think more and thus burn more calories, keeping them more slender. I know that when I'm in school, I crave steak and pizza and stuff like that all the time, whereas when I'm on break I tend to eat a lot of low-calorie low-grease stuff like peanut-butter sandwiches and fresh fruit.
This is my favourite kind of response to research -- the "correlations are invalid as long as there is a even a single exception". I like it; the proud irrationalism of it is inspiring.
High BMIs are well-correlated with obesity, because there are serious limits to the amount of muscle-mass that most people can have, while fat-mass can scale much further and much more easily. Sure, there are some people for whom it totally fails, but for a majority it is a good description (not as good as waist-to-hip ratio, but still good). And you KNOW that most people with high BMIs are adipose, not muscular. I can't figure out why, exactly, you would be contrary about it.
Dear god, peoples' laissez-faire attitude towards gasoline is incredible. Working as I do in petroleum retail to pay for school, I see some appalling things. There was one woman who said that she accidentally spills gas on herself all the time. Aside from the hideous level of incompetence that this implies, what about the fire danger, the very real possibility of her washing machine bursting into flames when she throws the clothes into it later? People will stick a gas can in the back of a pickup truck and try to fill it up, ignoring the fact that they are then allowing gas vapors to pool in a metal basin. Motorcyclists who fill their tank while sitting on the bike. You think a crotch full of gas would be fun? It doesn't even have to ignite to make this unpleasant. Gasoline + skin = bad day.
I feel MUCH better about letting a rocket hobbyist have some regulated propellants than I do about letting random jackasses buy a considerably more energetic and unregulated one. Particularly given that most rocket fuels are designed to NOT detonate, something gasoline is more than happy to do under even the slightest confinement.
Woah, someone's got socialism on the brain. To be clear, that someone is you. I know people are trying to provide things more cheaply to line their own pockets -- that's why the oil is being used up so fast, and why copper is now very expensive (and no amount of cleverness will reduce its price) . Finite supply, clever people thinking up bigger and betters ways to acquire and sell the resource -- that makes the supply dwindle FASTER. Am I proposing rationing? Of course not. Get your head out of the 70s. Cold war's over. We all love the free market (well, all of us except the people who whine every single time they gas up their SUV, which it turns is pretty much everyone). What I'm suggesting is that anyone who thinks that oil wont become completely impractical for use as a fuel someday is completely retarded and doesn't understand basic concepts like that exponentially accelerating usage will exhaust any finite supply.
Ethanol -- right now, as we speak -- already makes up 2.8% of American "gasoline" (to the tune of 16.2 billion litres). A small number of lignin-burning ethanol plants are already in operation, proving the concept. And the ethanol needn't all be produced inside America. There is lots of arable land around the world. Think of what Canada's ethanol-production capacity could be -- and it's not like Canada would need to keep much of it. Extrapolating from your own calculations, the combined populations of the US and Canada would need to use only 12% of their combined land to produce enough oil to supply both nations -- assuming Canadians use as much oil as Americans. Factor in the switch to superior feedstocks and modern processes, and that starts to look pretty reasonable. And even then, this is assuming that America only uses domestic and Canadian ethanol. A global ethanol market could supply a lot more, particularly given America's disproportionately large purchasing power.
We may simply be disagreeing on what constitutes a major change. Doing what we do now, but with better technology and on a larger scale seems like a rather trifling change to me. Getting rid of personal automobiles, or banning the gasoline engine for any use other than long-haul transport, those would be major changes. The whole point of E85 is to prevent people from having to do that most heinous of all things: facing change. E85 lets people use nearly identical vehicles in a nearly identical fashion. Even biodiesel and natural gas represent more substantial shifts in peoples behaviour, since they have to get used to driving with a completely different kind of engine (with the associated differences in the gearing and acceleration and whatnot). Just look at how repulsed people are by the fact that electric vehicles don't make the same noise. Or the fact that most people refuse to drive a continuous transmission vehicle unless the onboard electronics are programmed to artificially make noises and jerks that simulate a gear change.
Funny that you would prefer your own back-of-the-envelope calculations over serious ones made by actual researchers. And "funny", I mean "sad".
E85 plans are usually based on the fact that research and good engineering has yielded much more efficient processes for turning corn into ethanol. Add on the incredble drops in the price of cellulase and lignase, and soon we could be making ethanol from, well, pretty much anything that was ever part of a plant. Your grocery store could have an ethanol plant in the back that turns all the spoiled and unsellable produce (which works out to 30% of all their produce, apparently) into ethanol. This isn't even including, of course, the possibilities of engineered micro-organisms that just sit around and use photosynthesis to make ethanol from atmospheric CO_2 and water. And even then, it's not like every single road vehicle will be using E85; that's really just for light vehicles being used to travel long distances. Commuter vehicles would probably be electric, assuming people can ever come to terms with fast acceleration, smooth rides, low failure-rates, and minimal cost-of-ownership. The present generation of drivers despises those things, but who knows what people two decades from now will like.
The supply of oil, being finite, is inherently dwindling. The fact that oil extraction is increasing has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there is only so much oil.
Interesting fact: most people who win a big lottery are broke again with a couple of years. They have all this money, vastly more than they've ever had before. It seems unlimited. At first they probably stick to their old consumption habits, but gradually they spend more and more. If they have the intellect of dead raccoon (as do most people who play the lottery), then they assume that because they money has yet to run out, that it is indeed unlimited. Right up until the day they try to buy something and discover that they're broke. They have a finite amount of money, their use of it increases exponentially, and then it's all gone.
Of course, if you expect oil to somehow be the one thing on the entire planet with a truly unlimited supply, that's your perogative. The great thing about freedom is that you can believe anything you like, no matter how ridiculous or insane it is.
On a side note, remember when "enviro-types" were saying that our supplies of some metals could become seriously depleted? Has your home town/city/militia-camp had any of those outbreaks of people stealing copper wire from telephone poles? Funny, that. And wasn't natural gas supposed to be the cheap abundant fuel that would run our generators and heat our homes? What's the price of natural gas now? I have trouble dealing with the dissonance between the need to believe that "enviro-types" are automatically wrong as God's true son Dubya proclaims, and the overwhelming evidence that most claims made by environmentalists generally come to pass, if a bit behind schedule at times.
Are there any Americans still alive who remember America's fight to become democratic? (I ask rhetorically -- they're all centuries in their graves). Europeans, by contrast, have had democracy stripped from them within living memory, they had to fight like rats to get it back, they had to see that it requires bombing your society to hell in order to remove fascists from power, they had to see that even once you get rid of fascists, some other breed of totalitarian ass comes along and tries to claim power. And even once you're democratic again, it takes a long time to rebuild.
No living Americans have had to face this, so they can be pretty laissez faire about things. After all, they have have their tec-9s and hunting rifles, so shouldn't it be easy to oust the government that has stolen an election? They forget, of course, that like all fascists, they're subtle about stealing the election, they rely on the unthinking masses to keep dissidents from acting, and -- in a pinch -- any weapon that you are allowed to own is so immensely that feeble that the army and police are already laughing at you for thinking that rebellion might even be an unlikely possibility.
Given that a criminal is ANYONE who breaks the law: yes, all of those people were criminals. George Washington, Tito, all criminals. The question is whether being a criminal is a bad thing or not. For example, owning pot is illegal in some countries. Those who have it are criminals. Are they doing anything wrong? Only evil, moronic tyrants with a desperate need to get laid once in a while think so.
Many criminals are heroes, standing up against laws that have no moral or ethical legitimacy or against rulers without any valid claim to their position. Murdering a tyrant is a heroic criminal act. Blowing pot smoke in a cop's face too (although it's a very impolite heroic criminal act). Shooting the soldiers who invaded your country and destroyed any semblance of peace or prosperity? Definitely heroic and criminal.
Way to misuse the word "inexact". In a two party election, you only need to ask 17 randomly selected people who they voted for, as long as they answer honestly. Asking just 17 people gives you 95% confidence in your result. An exit poll that asks 1000 people in each state is so ridiculously accurate that only a truly moronic fool would doubt the validity of the results.
Anyone who doubts that election fraud is going on in the US is either naive, stupid, or is simply willing to overlook it because they're confident that the cheating favours the candidate they support. And you'll note that it's mostly republicans overlooking the fraud (I'm not so deluded as to call them conservatives -- the republican party demonstrates the politics of fascism, not conservativism). Of course, the worst thing is when republicans try to claim that election fraud is okay because both parties do it. If you need any more evidence that they're comfortable with winning an election by fraud and thereby ruling the nation as tyrants, that's it.
You are aware, are you not, that there would be enough money for all of those things ten times over if the cost of ONE war could be saved?
Anyway, if you don't like the science that particle accelerators do, demonstrate that belief by refusing to get any MRI or PET scans, gamma knife surgery when you get cancer, or any of the dozens of other medical technologies that either derive from science learned in particle accelerators, or use particle accelerators directly. Of course, the very instant you need one of those things, you'll suddenly be a profound believer in the value of that science (or a hypocrite -- also a valid option).
Slashdot Mirror
Then how do you explain all the members of the dominant social group that aren't white, and aren't men? There are rich, powerful women, rich powerful blacks, rich powerful hispanics, etc. Or would Condoleezza Rice not qualify as being part of the dominant social group? The dominant group is defined purely by wealth and power -- being white and male has zero to do with it. White men may be disproportionately represented, but that's really just a legacy of the time when before women and non-whites had any access to wealth whatsoever. As soon as they could get wealth, they began seeping gradually into the elite. The vast majority of white men are, and have always been, down at the bottom, eating shit with the rest of the world. Most white men know exactly what discrimination is like; they probably just don't call it discrimination, because most people accept the status quo of classism and wealth-based discrimination without question.
Look at discriminatory societies -- for the most part, the wealthy, no matter what their race, gender, or religion, have been treated like kings. Rich women had access to university course materials and direct access to university professors for centuries before universities actually began admitting women. For all peoples whining about the status of blacks, hispanics, etc, in America, just look at how wealthy members of ethnic minorities live. It's not partcularly different from how their peers do. An American Express Platinum works the same way for Tiger Woods as it does for Arnold Palmer. Welfare cheques go no further for whites than they do for blacks.
I call people who worry about race relations idiots because the invariably act as if racial discrimination is the only form of bigotry that matters. Feminists have a tendency to do the same, although that movement has gotten more serious about tackling discrimination in a more general sense (note the extent to which modern feminism concerns itself with socioeconomics).
My point? Lots of white people have suffered discrimination. The poor, teenagers, the elderly, non-christian religious types (white muslims and sikhs, although rare, can get a really hard time, and do you think a white wiccan would last long in Kansas?), the physically or mentally disabled, etc. Lots of white people face staggering amounts of discrimination. People frequently assume that those with diabetes are alcoholics, because of the slurred speech and poor coordination. Think that makes it hard to get a job? White guy that appears drunk versus sober black guy -- who's going to get hired that day? The diabetic will have a hard time even getting in the door of the building, let along getting an interview and a chance to explain that his condition (and even then -- who wants a diabetic on the company health plan?) The obese, even if they genuinely have a glandular disorder that prevents them from maintaining a healthy wait. People with that disorder that makes one sweat all the time. Heck, people who just slightly socially dysfunctional. Most employers will take the charismatic dude from Venezuela over the shy loner from Wisconsin any day of the week.
People concerned about race relations are idiots. Discrimination takes place about many more things than just race, and much more intensely. Age, religion, gender, all three affect how one is treated far more than race does. And wealth puts the rest to shame. If you're upper class, you can throw coke-and-daterape parties every night, and never have the cops even drive past your house. If you're lower class, even a regular beer and medium-volume-music party is enough to get a serious grilling from the cops and a fine for noise. A single whiff of pot smoke in the air, and you're all in for a strip-search from sexually deprived cops.
I'm not some ban-the-car radical or anything, but really, let's be realistic. Automobiles create enormous costs in destruction, death, and injury. Just look at the size of the insurance industry surrounding them. Everyone knows someone who was seriously injured in a car accident. Everyone's had an expensive vehicle repair at some point, often through no fault of their own. Firecrackers don't even come close. Fireworks don't come close. Guns don't come close. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything in our society that hurts more people, short of maybe big macs and cigarettes.
The Internet is a mighty tool, and like all mighty tools, it is terrifying, dangerous, and not for use by unsupervised children or maniacs.
You know what I wonder? Why are so many pedophiles let out of prison? We live in an age with psychologists, criminologists, advanced statistical techniques, implantable tracking devices, power surveillance systems, etc. A reasonable law-enforcement system would attempt to make intelligent decisions about whether a given sex-offender is rehabilitatable or not, and -- at the conclusion of supposedly rehabilitatable offenders' sentences -- evaluate whether they have in fact been rehabilitated or whether they need more time with the shrinks. And once released, they can be monitored until a certain level of confidence in their rehabilitation has been achieved. Actually, this would be sensible for any kind of repeat violent offender. After all, the legal system isn't just about punishment. Rehabilitating the salvagable criminals and confining the maniacs that can't be fixed is a vitally important aspect of the process.
Firecrackers have a primary use that doesn't involve endangering people -- entertainment. Unless you're refering to the fact that using firecrackers is always dangerous (which is true), in which case -- look at the automobile! I'm not aware of any usage of the automobile that would qualify as "safe". Even a second's distraction can turn ordinary driving into a fatal accident. Car batteries can explode with disastrous results. Exhaust fumes are actually a very efficient means of asphyxiating someone. I suppose if you consider sleeping in one's car to be a primary use, that would qualify as not directly endangering anything (other than perhaps the sleeper's spine).
Really, this is just typical driver insanity. Drivers always assume that gas stations have these rules about getting off of the bike, turning off your car's engine, not smoking, etc, for the sole purpose of annoying drivers. It ain't so. Every single one of these rules is in place because it produces a substantial statistical reduction in the odds of a serious accident -- enough so that the money saved in not making lawsuit-payouts exceeds the revenue lost when impatient crybabies refuse to gas up at any service station that might take safety into consideration.
Gas takes a lot longer to evaporate than people think, particularly when it has soaked into cloth. That's why keeping oily rags in one's garage is such a danger.
Worrying about what people will do with things is an exercise in stupidity. A creative maniac WILL kill lots of people (although thankfully, creativity is rather rare). I mean, think about this: shotguns are legal, fully automatic machine pistols are not. Which weapon is more lethal? Every piece of research suggests that shotguns are vastly more lethal and practical under nearly any conceivable set of circumstances (just ask a soldier which they'd rather carry -- a pump-action shotgun or a tec-9). Gasoline is legal for unregulated use, while much more stable and less energetic explosives like C4 are not. Automobiles are legal, while firecrackers are not.
Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me that Americans who consider themselves conservative -- ie, they oppose wasteful government spending and excessive taxation, they want the troops well supported rather than simply dumped in a ghetto once they're injured, they want leaders who weren't coke-snorting frat boys from New England that lie and pretend to be from Texas, they want guns and blasting caps legal and available for accidents involving children, etc -- vote for a party that goes against everything that conservative ethics calls for. And then they bitch about the Democrats who are actually DOING those things (Clinton having cut government spending, having been genuinely from the south, having increased support for veterans, having NOT been a coker). Don't get me wrong -- I'd hit Clinton with a rock if I saw him. But anyone with basic reasoning could tell that was the conservative, not Dubya.
This is probably the kind of correlation for which you can find dozens of causal links in both directions, common causes, etc. Correlations are often complex like that, particularly when you consider characterists as multivariate as intelligence and obesity.
Any quantity can -- by definition -- can be measured in one number. If it can't be measured in one number, it's not a quantity. It's a vector, or a function, or tensor, or something like that.
Seriously though. It's probably a mix of things. Thinking burns energy. Smart people generally have a better understanding of health issues, and can factor more health information into their decisions -- rather than simple thinking "fatfree=good" while cramming their gullet with foods that are nutrionally indistinguishable from pure sugar, or the opposite, thinking "atkins=good" while packing themselves with bacon and jerky. Intelligent people do things, like hobbies and reading, while the stupid can't handle hobbies or books and so spend more time watching TV -- an activity highly conducive to snacking (especially since so many ads play to the hunger instinct). Stupid people are more likely to be able to fooled by those gay posters for "loving all our natural sizes" (and here I use the word "gay" in the pejorative sense, not the festive or bum-love sense). Stupid people have a much greater capacity for self-deception regarding the consequences of their actions. Etc.
What is it about correlations that makes people so irrational? Why do people suddenly try to dispute the very validity of science and statistics the moment any researcher publishes a correlation?
Technically, all the research team claimed was that they found a link. There is conjecture about about the source of the link, but that's all it is. Heck, the link could be caused by stupid people making bad decisions about food, or not being smart enough to remember when they last ate so they eat again sooner. Heh, it's fun to ascribe ridiculous behaviours to stupid people... Anyway, conversely, we know that the brain brains calories like nothing else, so it could also simply be that intelligent people think more and thus burn more calories, keeping them more slender. I know that when I'm in school, I crave steak and pizza and stuff like that all the time, whereas when I'm on break I tend to eat a lot of low-calorie low-grease stuff like peanut-butter sandwiches and fresh fruit.
High BMIs are well-correlated with obesity, because there are serious limits to the amount of muscle-mass that most people can have, while fat-mass can scale much further and much more easily. Sure, there are some people for whom it totally fails, but for a majority it is a good description (not as good as waist-to-hip ratio, but still good). And you KNOW that most people with high BMIs are adipose, not muscular. I can't figure out why, exactly, you would be contrary about it.
I feel MUCH better about letting a rocket hobbyist have some regulated propellants than I do about letting random jackasses buy a considerably more energetic and unregulated one. Particularly given that most rocket fuels are designed to NOT detonate, something gasoline is more than happy to do under even the slightest confinement.
Woah, someone's got socialism on the brain. To be clear, that someone is you. I know people are trying to provide things more cheaply to line their own pockets -- that's why the oil is being used up so fast, and why copper is now very expensive (and no amount of cleverness will reduce its price) . Finite supply, clever people thinking up bigger and betters ways to acquire and sell the resource -- that makes the supply dwindle FASTER. Am I proposing rationing? Of course not. Get your head out of the 70s. Cold war's over. We all love the free market (well, all of us except the people who whine every single time they gas up their SUV, which it turns is pretty much everyone). What I'm suggesting is that anyone who thinks that oil wont become completely impractical for use as a fuel someday is completely retarded and doesn't understand basic concepts like that exponentially accelerating usage will exhaust any finite supply.
We may simply be disagreeing on what constitutes a major change. Doing what we do now, but with better technology and on a larger scale seems like a rather trifling change to me. Getting rid of personal automobiles, or banning the gasoline engine for any use other than long-haul transport, those would be major changes. The whole point of E85 is to prevent people from having to do that most heinous of all things: facing change. E85 lets people use nearly identical vehicles in a nearly identical fashion. Even biodiesel and natural gas represent more substantial shifts in peoples behaviour, since they have to get used to driving with a completely different kind of engine (with the associated differences in the gearing and acceleration and whatnot). Just look at how repulsed people are by the fact that electric vehicles don't make the same noise. Or the fact that most people refuse to drive a continuous transmission vehicle unless the onboard electronics are programmed to artificially make noises and jerks that simulate a gear change.
E85 plans are usually based on the fact that research and good engineering has yielded much more efficient processes for turning corn into ethanol. Add on the incredble drops in the price of cellulase and lignase, and soon we could be making ethanol from, well, pretty much anything that was ever part of a plant. Your grocery store could have an ethanol plant in the back that turns all the spoiled and unsellable produce (which works out to 30% of all their produce, apparently) into ethanol. This isn't even including, of course, the possibilities of engineered micro-organisms that just sit around and use photosynthesis to make ethanol from atmospheric CO_2 and water. And even then, it's not like every single road vehicle will be using E85; that's really just for light vehicles being used to travel long distances. Commuter vehicles would probably be electric, assuming people can ever come to terms with fast acceleration, smooth rides, low failure-rates, and minimal cost-of-ownership. The present generation of drivers despises those things, but who knows what people two decades from now will like.
Seriously -- you act as researchers who propose
Interesting fact: most people who win a big lottery are broke again with a couple of years. They have all this money, vastly more than they've ever had before. It seems unlimited. At first they probably stick to their old consumption habits, but gradually they spend more and more. If they have the intellect of dead raccoon (as do most people who play the lottery), then they assume that because they money has yet to run out, that it is indeed unlimited. Right up until the day they try to buy something and discover that they're broke. They have a finite amount of money, their use of it increases exponentially, and then it's all gone.
Of course, if you expect oil to somehow be the one thing on the entire planet with a truly unlimited supply, that's your perogative. The great thing about freedom is that you can believe anything you like, no matter how ridiculous or insane it is.
On a side note, remember when "enviro-types" were saying that our supplies of some metals could become seriously depleted? Has your home town/city/militia-camp had any of those outbreaks of people stealing copper wire from telephone poles? Funny, that. And wasn't natural gas supposed to be the cheap abundant fuel that would run our generators and heat our homes? What's the price of natural gas now? I have trouble dealing with the dissonance between the need to believe that "enviro-types" are automatically wrong as God's true son Dubya proclaims, and the overwhelming evidence that most claims made by environmentalists generally come to pass, if a bit behind schedule at times.
No living Americans have had to face this, so they can be pretty laissez faire about things. After all, they have have their tec-9s and hunting rifles, so shouldn't it be easy to oust the government that has stolen an election? They forget, of course, that like all fascists, they're subtle about stealing the election, they rely on the unthinking masses to keep dissidents from acting, and -- in a pinch -- any weapon that you are allowed to own is so immensely that feeble that the army and police are already laughing at you for thinking that rebellion might even be an unlikely possibility.
Many criminals are heroes, standing up against laws that have no moral or ethical legitimacy or against rulers without any valid claim to their position. Murdering a tyrant is a heroic criminal act. Blowing pot smoke in a cop's face too (although it's a very impolite heroic criminal act). Shooting the soldiers who invaded your country and destroyed any semblance of peace or prosperity? Definitely heroic and criminal.
Anyone who doubts that election fraud is going on in the US is either naive, stupid, or is simply willing to overlook it because they're confident that the cheating favours the candidate they support. And you'll note that it's mostly republicans overlooking the fraud (I'm not so deluded as to call them conservatives -- the republican party demonstrates the politics of fascism, not conservativism). Of course, the worst thing is when republicans try to claim that election fraud is okay because both parties do it. If you need any more evidence that they're comfortable with winning an election by fraud and thereby ruling the nation as tyrants, that's it.
Anyway, if you don't like the science that particle accelerators do, demonstrate that belief by refusing to get any MRI or PET scans, gamma knife surgery when you get cancer, or any of the dozens of other medical technologies that either derive from science learned in particle accelerators, or use particle accelerators directly. Of course, the very instant you need one of those things, you'll suddenly be a profound believer in the value of that science (or a hypocrite -- also a valid option).