Regarding H20, I was not referring to drowning but rather to the few documented cases where drinking too much water has caused death (it dilutes the electrolytes in the bloodstream and can cause coma and death). Granted, this is not "toxicity" per se but more of "an excess of anything can disturb human biology".
As far as the autism rates, I did a reversal of my opinion on the case when I read that article. It certainly makes the parents' viewpoint understandable. If autism rates went up when they started putting thimerosal in vaccines and went back down when they started making vaccines without thimerosal, then at least to me that provides a pretty strong argument that they should not be putting thimerosal in vaccines. Granted, we're talking fewer than 1000 cases per year even at the peak so there are huge margins of error in the statistics. Also, if I were a scientist I would want to understand the mechanism by which thimerosal causes autism before I could reach a definitive conclusion. The reason they were using thimerosal in the first place is that 80 years ago dozens of children died from contaminated vaccines, but they need to find a safer way to preserve vaccines. The judge should have ruled "it is still on open issue" rather than "there is no evidence to support the plaintiffs' claims." We both agree that this needs more research. I'm a software engineer, not an epidemiologist, so I am not the right person to be researching this. I also concede that you have a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of the issues than I do, so your opinion should carry more weight than mine.
Cloning a Neanderthal opens up an enormous can of worms. Darn straight! Imagine what an embarrassment it would be when scientists manage to prove that a Neanderthal actually could have done a better job as president than G. W. Bush!
Would you be tempted to clone a male or a female neanderthal? I know this sounds like a minor detail, but it speaks volumes as to what your true motivation is!
It would be cruel to bring into being an individual with no relatives or culture, who would be viewed as a freak by everyone else. He would be certainly be saddened by the knowledge that his species has long since gone extinct, and further saddened by the reality that the best he can aspire to career-wise is to appear in Geico commercials -- putting him on the same social level as an animated talking Gecko.
H2O can be lethal in high enough concentrations too. It is my understanding that the developing world stopped using thimerosal in most childhood vaccines about 10 years ago. If it was a significant contributing factor in autism, wouldn't we have seen a statistically significant drop in the autism rates by now? Oh shit -- we have seen a drop. Perhaps there is some substance to these parents' claims.
Or as my father used to say "Isn't it strange how many Mexican Restaurants are located right next door to Pet Hospitals?" The frightening thing is, when you drive around looking for it, there does actually seem to be a strong correlation!
Have you tried marrying the rat, then demanding every night when you get into bed that the rat "chew on my cable"? I don't know how effective this is with rats, but it worked really well with my wife -- she won't even go near my "cable" anymore!
My thoughts exactly. If hackers can now make big bucks by writing worms then framing someone else for turning them loose on the world, doesn't that provide a powerful incentive to write more worms???
Funny, I thought your third thought was going to be, "As a bonus, if you use peanut butter, even if the rodents don't get caught in the trap, they will still die from salmonella!"
One caveat with poison: it doesn't kill them right away. I put rat poison in my attic to get rid of the mice that were chewing the insulation off the A/C. Eventually it worked, but not before one of the little fuckers crawled down out of the attic, into my closet, curled up in the toe of my slipper, and died. And I didn't find it until about a month later (although I did think my closet smelled funny.) Don't poison the rats unless you're comfortable with the idea of finding rat carcasses where you least expect them for the next couple of years. (I expected carcasses in the attic, but I also found a dead mouse under the tub when I remodeled.) Mice are pretty small, they dessicate and mummify pretty quickly. Rats would be much worse.
thimerosal contains mercury, not lead. Also, table salt contains Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are highly toxic. Just because an element is dangerous in some forms, doesn't mean it is dangerous in every compound it is found in.
Yes, a group of adult cats is actually called a "clowder". I'd never heard the term before!
If these black cats are anything like the cats I've known, they are going to spend the whole day hiding in a hole somewhere desperately trying to claw these "cat clothes" off of their backs -- in other words, I don't think this campaign will be too successful because nobody is actually going to see these black cats! I've also added "cat dresser" to the list of jobs I'm glad I don't have. Sure, that feline is just going to stand their quietly whilst you strap this on their back...
In Oregon, you can videotape to your hearts delight anyone who is fully clothed and not in a location where they would have an reasonable expectation of privacy. You can only get a restraining order against a family member or somebody you have slept with. Recording audio without permission, however, is unlawful. If you could get a stalking order against somebody just on the basis of them following you around with a camera, don't you think most celebrities would have tried that approach already with the paparazzi that are effectively stalking them?
The problem is not the cameras themselves, it is that the person who decides what video should be saved and what should be deleted has too much power. A much better solution would be to stream the video from every one of the cameras live over the internet, and allow everyone to record it at will. Then you could rely on citizens to monitor the cameras instead of paid government employees. In a broader sense, it is not laws that piss me off, but rather selective enforcement of laws. As a general rule, any loss of privacy the government forces on us should first occur to the government decision makers. Security cameras should go up first outside the city officials' bedroom windows, at their workplace, and any other location they frequent. Only then should they consider spying on others.
There was no scientific evidence that Silcone Breast implants caused illness either, but that didn't stop them from driving Dow Corning into bankruptcy with claims that they did. People do have a right to their beliefs, even if they are paranoid delusions, they have a right to refuse to get their kids immunized. What they don't have is a right to is compensation for harm that occurred after another event with no evidence that the other event actually caused the harm. In this case, the original claim was that the mercury (Thimerisol?) caused autism; it was quickly removed from vaccines, and then the claim was changed to the vaccination itself caused autism. When that couldn't be proved, then the claim was changed to several different vaccines taken closely together cause autism. (This last claim isn't quite as ridiculous as the other claims, since vaccine safety is tested a single vaccine at a time, not in combinations.) Yeah, I'm sorry about your kids' medical problems, but, like silicone implants, there is no statistical evidence that the medical problems occur any more frequently in kids that have had the vaccinations than kids that have not. Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc is still a logical fallacy.
My boss at FEI has been doing the exact same thing with VMWare for years. It is already flying in the business world; the only difference now is Dell is pre-installing it.
Because by a strange coincidence, my daughter, who appears to be black also was not learning math. When I complained about it, the school decided that she was receiving appropriate instruction, therefore she must have a learning disability that prevents her from learning math. Although my daughter is easily distracted, I haven't had any problem at all teaching her math. The teacher also insisted that my daughter remain in the "slow readers" class, despite that fact that the school's own evaluation showed she was at least 34th percentile in reading, and she reads very well when working with me. I can only conclude that the all-white staff at this school has lower expectations of students that does not look like them. I've also pointed out that my daughter has complained that she frequently does not hear what the teacher is saying, but the teacher appears to have taken the position that my daughter is lying about this, and has punished her for "not following directions". Oh, and the teacher has refused to do a parent-teacher conference with me or respond to any of my emails, but that is probably more of a case of discriminating against my daughter because her father is an asshole, rather than because of her race.
What is wrong with being a faggot? Absolutely nothing wrong with being a bundle of sticks. Unfortunately, juveniles these days use terms like "that's gay!" and "faggot!" as pejoratives, implying that there is something wrong with having both a feminine and a masculine side to our personalities, or that God made some kind of mistake in giving us our sexual preferences. This ignores the reality that these traits are a continuum, not a binary choice. In my view, everybody is bisexual, but the majority of people (like myself) cluster pretty close to the "turned on by opposite sex" end of the continuum. Some religious groups claim that being gay is a choice and that you can be "reeducated" to their "correct" preferences. To some extent sexual response is learned, but I'm sorry, but if you can be trained to change your preferences, then you were bisexual to begin with -- and you are still bisexual.
Good point. Using an actual name or user name in an egregious example of an offensive statement was a poor decision on my behalf, which I now regret. In the future, I will restrict myself to the use of hypothetical names like "X" in my examples. Sorry Todd... please don't sue me!
If XYZ makes the argument in court that the statement "XYZ is a pedophile!" is defamatory on the basis that it is believable, isn't XYZ defaming himself by publicly claiming that it is easy to believe he is a pedophile?
My lawyer costs money. The teacher's lawyer is provided for free by the Oregon Education Association, so I'm at a bit of a disadvantage in any legal pissing contest, aren't I? Personally, I find the OEA stance that "We have no legal obligation to actually educate your child, but if you complain about it, we will sue you!" to be somewhat offensive. Furthermore, I believe accusations of racism are appropriate when it is an established fact that 2/3 of Black students at my daughter's school fail to meet the state minimum proficiency standards for math, as opposed to about 15% of White students. My exact statement was "I believe you are a racist, a pathological liar, and a child abuser." I don't believe that meets the legal definition of defamation, but that doesn't stop a lawyer from threatening me by saying things like "I'm sure you know litigation is very expensive and details of your personal life will be made public." Yes, but that cuts both ways, doesn't it?
If you are going to stay something controversial, be sure you consider the potential consequences and be willing to accept responsibility before you yap your mouth off.
Is there some specific reason why this rule does not apply to people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter?
For the record, I don't consider the claim that "Todd Knarr has sex with farm animals!" to be defamatory. I don't know Todd, but I'm fairly certain reasonable people would NOT find the statement believable. I will stipulate that I did deliberately make a statement that I knew to be false and offensive, on the basis that no sane person would believe it to be true. Likewise, I don't know and I don't want to know what these trolls said, but I'm still pretty sure that no sane person would take their accusations seriously.
The teacher's lawyer claims he doesn't need to prove any actual damages in order to sue -- in others words, the teacher can sue for _intent_ to make her lose her job, regardless of whether she lost her job or not. Sort of makes it difficult to hold people accountable for their actions when you're afraid to complain about them for fear of being sued, doesn't it? Couldn't the trolls turn around and sue the Leshers for libeling and harassing them? How about a counterclaim of barratry? I suspect the libelous statements were made by minors below legal age who have no assets anyway, in which case no sane lawyer would take on the case and the most the Leshers could accomplish is injunctive relief to prevent any further negative statements. But the Leshers have already done far more damage to their reputations by triggering the "Streisand Effect" than the original trolls, whom most people would have promptly ignored -- just like we ignore trolls here on slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as the autism rates, I did a reversal of my opinion on the case when I read that article. It certainly makes the parents' viewpoint understandable. If autism rates went up when they started putting thimerosal in vaccines and went back down when they started making vaccines without thimerosal, then at least to me that provides a pretty strong argument that they should not be putting thimerosal in vaccines. Granted, we're talking fewer than 1000 cases per year even at the peak so there are huge margins of error in the statistics. Also, if I were a scientist I would want to understand the mechanism by which thimerosal causes autism before I could reach a definitive conclusion. The reason they were using thimerosal in the first place is that 80 years ago dozens of children died from contaminated vaccines, but they need to find a safer way to preserve vaccines. The judge should have ruled "it is still on open issue" rather than "there is no evidence to support the plaintiffs' claims." We both agree that this needs more research. I'm a software engineer, not an epidemiologist, so I am not the right person to be researching this. I also concede that you have a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of the issues than I do, so your opinion should carry more weight than mine.
Cloning a Neanderthal opens up an enormous can of worms. Darn straight! Imagine what an embarrassment it would be when scientists manage to prove that a Neanderthal actually could have done a better job as president than G. W. Bush!
Would you be tempted to clone a male or a female neanderthal? I know this sounds like a minor detail, but it speaks volumes as to what your true motivation is!
It would be cruel to bring into being an individual with no relatives or culture, who would be viewed as a freak by everyone else. He would be certainly be saddened by the knowledge that his species has long since gone extinct, and further saddened by the reality that the best he can aspire to career-wise is to appear in Geico commercials -- putting him on the same social level as an animated talking Gecko.
H2O can be lethal in high enough concentrations too. It is my understanding that the developing world stopped using thimerosal in most childhood vaccines about 10 years ago. If it was a significant contributing factor in autism, wouldn't we have seen a statistically significant drop in the autism rates by now? Oh shit -- we have seen a drop. Perhaps there is some substance to these parents' claims.
Or as my father used to say "Isn't it strange how many Mexican Restaurants are located right next door to Pet Hospitals?" The frightening thing is, when you drive around looking for it, there does actually seem to be a strong correlation!
Have you tried marrying the rat, then demanding every night when you get into bed that the rat "chew on my cable"? I don't know how effective this is with rats, but it worked really well with my wife -- she won't even go near my "cable" anymore!
My thoughts exactly. If hackers can now make big bucks by writing worms then framing someone else for turning them loose on the world, doesn't that provide a powerful incentive to write more worms???
Funny, I thought your third thought was going to be, "As a bonus, if you use peanut butter, even if the rodents don't get caught in the trap, they will still die from salmonella!"
One caveat with poison: it doesn't kill them right away. I put rat poison in my attic to get rid of the mice that were chewing the insulation off the A/C. Eventually it worked, but not before one of the little fuckers crawled down out of the attic, into my closet, curled up in the toe of my slipper, and died. And I didn't find it until about a month later (although I did think my closet smelled funny.) Don't poison the rats unless you're comfortable with the idea of finding rat carcasses where you least expect them for the next couple of years. (I expected carcasses in the attic, but I also found a dead mouse under the tub when I remodeled.) Mice are pretty small, they dessicate and mummify pretty quickly. Rats would be much worse.
Perhaps you misunderstood your big brother when he was bragging about all the pussy he has eaten...
thimerosal contains mercury, not lead. Also, table salt contains Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are highly toxic. Just because an element is dangerous in some forms, doesn't mean it is dangerous in every compound it is found in.
If these black cats are anything like the cats I've known, they are going to spend the whole day hiding in a hole somewhere desperately trying to claw these "cat clothes" off of their backs -- in other words, I don't think this campaign will be too successful because nobody is actually going to see these black cats! I've also added "cat dresser" to the list of jobs I'm glad I don't have. Sure, that feline is just going to stand their quietly whilst you strap this on their back...
In Oregon, you can videotape to your hearts delight anyone who is fully clothed and not in a location where they would have an reasonable expectation of privacy. You can only get a restraining order against a family member or somebody you have slept with. Recording audio without permission, however, is unlawful. If you could get a stalking order against somebody just on the basis of them following you around with a camera, don't you think most celebrities would have tried that approach already with the paparazzi that are effectively stalking them?
The problem is not the cameras themselves, it is that the person who decides what video should be saved and what should be deleted has too much power. A much better solution would be to stream the video from every one of the cameras live over the internet, and allow everyone to record it at will. Then you could rely on citizens to monitor the cameras instead of paid government employees. In a broader sense, it is not laws that piss me off, but rather selective enforcement of laws. As a general rule, any loss of privacy the government forces on us should first occur to the government decision makers. Security cameras should go up first outside the city officials' bedroom windows, at their workplace, and any other location they frequent. Only then should they consider spying on others.
There was no scientific evidence that Silcone Breast implants caused illness either, but that didn't stop them from driving Dow Corning into bankruptcy with claims that they did. People do have a right to their beliefs, even if they are paranoid delusions, they have a right to refuse to get their kids immunized. What they don't have is a right to is compensation for harm that occurred after another event with no evidence that the other event actually caused the harm. In this case, the original claim was that the mercury (Thimerisol?) caused autism; it was quickly removed from vaccines, and then the claim was changed to the vaccination itself caused autism. When that couldn't be proved, then the claim was changed to several different vaccines taken closely together cause autism. (This last claim isn't quite as ridiculous as the other claims, since vaccine safety is tested a single vaccine at a time, not in combinations.) Yeah, I'm sorry about your kids' medical problems, but, like silicone implants, there is no statistical evidence that the medical problems occur any more frequently in kids that have had the vaccinations than kids that have not. Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc is still a logical fallacy.
My boss at FEI has been doing the exact same thing with VMWare for years. It is already flying in the business world; the only difference now is Dell is pre-installing it.
Because by a strange coincidence, my daughter, who appears to be black also was not learning math. When I complained about it, the school decided that she was receiving appropriate instruction, therefore she must have a learning disability that prevents her from learning math. Although my daughter is easily distracted, I haven't had any problem at all teaching her math. The teacher also insisted that my daughter remain in the "slow readers" class, despite that fact that the school's own evaluation showed she was at least 34th percentile in reading, and she reads very well when working with me. I can only conclude that the all-white staff at this school has lower expectations of students that does not look like them. I've also pointed out that my daughter has complained that she frequently does not hear what the teacher is saying, but the teacher appears to have taken the position that my daughter is lying about this, and has punished her for "not following directions". Oh, and the teacher has refused to do a parent-teacher conference with me or respond to any of my emails, but that is probably more of a case of discriminating against my daughter because her father is an asshole, rather than because of her race.
What is wrong with being a faggot? Absolutely nothing wrong with being a bundle of sticks. Unfortunately, juveniles these days use terms like "that's gay!" and "faggot!" as pejoratives, implying that there is something wrong with having both a feminine and a masculine side to our personalities, or that God made some kind of mistake in giving us our sexual preferences. This ignores the reality that these traits are a continuum, not a binary choice. In my view, everybody is bisexual, but the majority of people (like myself) cluster pretty close to the "turned on by opposite sex" end of the continuum. Some religious groups claim that being gay is a choice and that you can be "reeducated" to their "correct" preferences. To some extent sexual response is learned, but I'm sorry, but if you can be trained to change your preferences, then you were bisexual to begin with -- and you are still bisexual.
Good point. Using an actual name or user name in an egregious example of an offensive statement was a poor decision on my behalf, which I now regret. In the future, I will restrict myself to the use of hypothetical names like "X" in my examples. Sorry Todd... please don't sue me!
If XYZ makes the argument in court that the statement "XYZ is a pedophile!" is defamatory on the basis that it is believable, isn't XYZ defaming himself by publicly claiming that it is easy to believe he is a pedophile?
My lawyer costs money. The teacher's lawyer is provided for free by the Oregon Education Association, so I'm at a bit of a disadvantage in any legal pissing contest, aren't I? Personally, I find the OEA stance that "We have no legal obligation to actually educate your child, but if you complain about it, we will sue you!" to be somewhat offensive. Furthermore, I believe accusations of racism are appropriate when it is an established fact that 2/3 of Black students at my daughter's school fail to meet the state minimum proficiency standards for math, as opposed to about 15% of White students. My exact statement was "I believe you are a racist, a pathological liar, and a child abuser." I don't believe that meets the legal definition of defamation, but that doesn't stop a lawyer from threatening me by saying things like "I'm sure you know litigation is very expensive and details of your personal life will be made public." Yes, but that cuts both ways, doesn't it?
Is there some specific reason why this rule does not apply to people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter?
For the record, I don't consider the claim that "Todd Knarr has sex with farm animals!" to be defamatory. I don't know Todd, but I'm fairly certain reasonable people would NOT find the statement believable. I will stipulate that I did deliberately make a statement that I knew to be false and offensive, on the basis that no sane person would believe it to be true. Likewise, I don't know and I don't want to know what these trolls said, but I'm still pretty sure that no sane person would take their accusations seriously.
The teacher's lawyer claims he doesn't need to prove any actual damages in order to sue -- in others words, the teacher can sue for _intent_ to make her lose her job, regardless of whether she lost her job or not. Sort of makes it difficult to hold people accountable for their actions when you're afraid to complain about them for fear of being sued, doesn't it? Couldn't the trolls turn around and sue the Leshers for libeling and harassing them? How about a counterclaim of barratry? I suspect the libelous statements were made by minors below legal age who have no assets anyway, in which case no sane lawyer would take on the case and the most the Leshers could accomplish is injunctive relief to prevent any further negative statements. But the Leshers have already done far more damage to their reputations by triggering the "Streisand Effect" than the original trolls, whom most people would have promptly ignored -- just like we ignore trolls here on slashdot.