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User: tsotha

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  1. Cigarettes are not the only cause of lung cancer. Lung cancer existed before cigarettes, and will exist even if we ban them. Offhand I can think of a half dozen celebrities and people I know who never smoked but died of lung cancer.

    Anything that can damage your DNA can cause cancer - radiation, various kinds of chemicals, viruses, or just errors in replication. All these things can cause cancer in the lungs. While it's true tobacco drastically increases your odds of lung cancer, you still have about a 14/1000 chance of developing lung cancer even if you've never smoked a cigarette and aren't exposed to statistically significant amounts of secondhand smoke, i.e. you don't live with a smoker or tend bar at a smoke-filled pub.

    So yes, you need early detection.

  2. Though "medical media" people repeat this, it's not true as a general rule. On thing that came out of the Obamacare debates, when people spent a lot of time comparing the US health care system (which is very test heavy) to others throughout the world (particularly in Europe), is that for many cancers the fact that you survive longer after a cancer is detected is purely a statistical artifact of the early detection. For example, let's say you have a cancer that will kill you in five years. Dr A has a test that will detect it in one year. Dr B has a test that will detect it in three years. Further, let's suppose Dr A and Dr B treat you with snake oil, and that after five years you succumb to the cancer. Dr A claims his treatment allowed you to live twice as long as Dr B's, even though the early detection had no effect whatsoever on the course of the disease.

    I think the situation has changed in recent years with new treatment options, but the medical establishment pushed mammograms for decades in pursuit of early detection when it made no statistical difference whatsoever to patient longevity.

    Most of these newsworthy testing breakthroughs turn out to be useless because they produce too many false positives. In the near term this test really only moves the ball forward if that turns out not to be the case and also we have effective treatments we can employ between the new detection threshold and the old one.

  3. Hate to break it to you but this is false. Since the 90s shareholders can sue the senior executives for failing to maximize the profit of the company.

    You can sue for anything. Doesn't mean you'll win.

    The corporate goals are spelled out in the corporation's Articles of Incorporation. It's not true, as a general rule, the officers of the corporation must put profits above all else. In Facebook's case you'd have to read the relevant documents.

    Beyond that, courts give corporate officers wide latitude when it comes to time frames. You can justify nearly anything by saying the PR value of whatever you're doing will pay off in the future.

  4. Re:Facebook is a public company... on Internal Docs Show Human Intervention at Almost Every Stage Of Facebook's News Operation (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Why would you want Congress to try to micromanage the thousands of water districts around the country? What a terrible idea. Even if you believe this is something the federal government should be addressing, this kind of stuff is supposed to be dealt with by the executive branch bureaucracies.

  5. Facebook promised it's customers that it was providing an unbiased aggregation service based on customers posting stories. Since they actually silenced stories they did not want to trend, and inserted those they did, while claiming "we are just an unbiased aggregate", they broke the law.

    That's a stretch. News organizations of all types decide which stories to run and which stories to ignore. The only difference between Facebook and, say, The New York Times is Facebook claimed the process is algorithmic when it's not. But that doesn't mean they broke the law - exactly which law did they break?

  6. Re:Shit me hard with a stick, people are dumb. on Internal Docs Show Human Intervention at Almost Every Stage Of Facebook's News Operation (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, okay, that's fair. But you're talking about 30% of the party there, so it's not accurate to say "Republicans think this..."

  7. A lot of people on this site aren't bright enough to realize "Republican" and "conservative" are partially overlapping sets.

  8. Re:Shit me hard with a stick, people are dumb. on Internal Docs Show Human Intervention at Almost Every Stage Of Facebook's News Operation (theguardian.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Republicans don't care what you do with your reproductive organs. But when you're hosting another human being, we think that human being deserves some legal protection. Yes, that literally is to "protect the children".

  9. Re:Crusader for taxes? on Panama Papers Source Breaks Silence Over 'Scale Of Injustices' (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    The story is those people cheating on the taxes...

    But we don't know if any of them are actually tax cheats. That's an assumption.

  10. Re:Crusader for taxes? on Panama Papers Source Breaks Silence Over 'Scale Of Injustices' (theguardian.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The story here isn't that some people haven't paid taxes. We don't know, after all - just because you have money in a foreign bank account doesn't mean you haven't paid your taxes. The real story is how some of these people managed to accumulate such large sums of money on a relatively small official salary.

  11. Re:when the first comments on posts like these are on Ellen Pao Launches Advocacy Group To Improve Diversity In The Tech Industry (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Against who, though? I'm getting old now, and for my entire life women around me have been given extra opportunities. Free tutoring in college, extra consideration for jobs, easier paths to promotion. It takes a lot of gall to complain about discrimination when you'd still be working in the proverbial mail room without it.

  12. Re:Let's shift that focus a little on Ellen Pao Launches Advocacy Group To Improve Diversity In The Tech Industry (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    It's a shakedown racket. That's what qualifies as a Heroic Woman In Tech idea.

  13. The laws already require you to pay sales taxes on EVERYTHING you buy. But the courts said that out of state sellers did not have to collect the sales tax - you were supposed to figure it out and send it to your state yourself.

    Sort of, yes. The ruling is based upon the principle a state cannot compel people and businesses in other states to enforce its laws. If they could it would eventually result in a huge mess of conflicting regulations and obligations.

  14. Re:an easier way to make up revenue. on Should You Pay Sales Tax on Internet Purchases? South Dakota Law Could Be The Test (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    If this was really easy they'd have done it already.

  15. Re:This is already done in Illinois on Should You Pay Sales Tax on Internet Purchases? South Dakota Law Could Be The Test (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Amazon doesn't have to collect tax for states in which it doesn't have a business presence. Amazon does collect such tax, because part of the company's strategy is to roll out same day delivery, it it can't do that without a lot of warehouses (read: business presence). Amazon's volte-face on this issue is purely self-serving - before the company decided to put warehouses everywhere the company refused to collect sales taxes, but now it supports mandatory tax collection to avoid being at a competitive disadvantage.

  16. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    because conservatives are such noted supporters of contraception...

    Conservatives are noted supporters of "Do whatever the hell you want, just don't expect me to foot the bill."

  17. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    15000? How many orders of magnitude wrong is that?

  18. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Great idea! Let's make policy based on the 0.000001% case.

  19. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Do you need birth control to avoid pregnancy?

  20. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Translation; I'm going to force you to have an unwanted baby, but I bear no responsibility for the end result of the force.

    Translation: Women have no agency. Of course we should allow them to kill babies - they can't help it if they don't have any self control.

    Good old paternalistic Marxists. Quick to "help" people as long as the lumpen proletariat knows upon which side the bread is buttered.

  21. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Translation: Women are breeding machines. Oh, and because it's all so very Libertarian, pregnant women shouldn't get any publicly-funded health care either.

    Not at all. Conservatives simply don't believe in infantilizing women by pretending they simply have no way to avoid pregnancy.

    And yes, people should pay their own way. They only people who should get publicly funded health care are people who can't afford it.

    Fucking Jesus, who died and made you God, that you can impose your will on the decision a woman and her doctor makes? What makes you so fucking special? Considering the numbers of actual babies who die or suffer every year, even in the US, due to poverty and a lack of decent health care, why not show some fucking compassion for them, rather than fetuses.

    Fucking Jesus, who died and made you God...

    That's pretty funny coming from someone who spends his time thinking up new ways to spend my money.

    ... that you can impose your will on the decision a woman and her doctor makes?

    Aren't we forgetting someone? ... a woman, her doctor, and the baby, right? The woman had ways to avoid the situation. So did the doctor. The baby? Not so much.

    Considering the numbers of actual babies who die or suffer every year, even in the US, due to poverty and a lack of decent health care, why not show some fucking compassion for them, rather than fetuses.

    More horseshit. Infant mortality rates aren't any higher in the US than they are anywhere else. In a lot of places babies are counted as stillborn if they die within 24 hours. That's the benefit of socialized medicine - you don't get better care, but you do get comforting statistics from the medical bureaucracy.

    Beyond that, if you want a kid, have a kid. But taking care of that kid is your responsibility, not mine. I'm under no obligations to see that your kid is fed and clothed and has proper medical care. That's your job as a parent, and if you can't swing it don't have kids.

    But I have questions for you, Mr freedom-loving guy. Why is your party so intent on taking away my freedom to defend myself, and my freedom of speech?

  22. Re: This is sad seeing republicans... on 2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Republicans haven't meaningfully stood for small government... ever. It's a trope passed out to the Libertarian wing of the party, but it's just a load of shit.

    It's certainly true there are a lot of Republicans that would like to see a smaller government. There just aren't enough to control the party. There are, however, far more small-government Republicans than there are small-government Democrats.

    As to freedom, well, so long as it isn't women looking to control their own bodies, or cis individuals picking the bathroom of the gender they identify with, oh no, not then.

    Yeah, this is a load of horse shit. A baby's freedom to live certainly supersedes the mother's freedom to kill him or her. As to the bathroom thing, again, there are two freedoms at odds. I don't have any interest in sharing a public restroom with women regardless of how they view themselves.

    You have a child's view of freedom.

  23. Re:I like it, but... on Your Pay Is About To Go Up (gawker.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, sure. But the place I was referring to had exempt people making less than the non-exempt people on a forty hour basis, i.e. even before overtime. That's why I like the new rule - too many companies have been misclassifying people. If you're flipping burgers you're an hourly employee even if your boss makes you a vice president.

  24. I like it, but... on Your Pay Is About To Go Up (gawker.com) · · Score: 1

    The exempt/non exempt classifications have been kind of bendy over the years. Back when I managed people we had a lot of jobs in which the exempt people made less per hour than the non-exempt, which seemed wrong to me. It's sort of implicit that if you're exempt you're making more money than the hourly guys.

    From a policy perspective I like it, but this is a big sort of change I would have thought you needed Congress to okay. I'm a little bit concerned the bureaucracy seems to be just kind of ruling by fiat these days.

  25. That's who we should pay attention to on economics issues. Greece.